Icy drinks

Today, as I type this in the late afternoon that is rapidly turning dark, it is chilly.  So what am I going to write about? I'm going to give a simple recipe for a lime slush.  Sounds crazy, right?  Well, I find this so refreshing that I love to drink it no matter if the weather is hot or cold .... or even downright frigid as it is today.

In a blender that is capable of crushing ice (don't use a food processor), place 3/4 cup of lime juice, 1 1/8 cup of sugar, enough ice to fill it to the 9 cup line, then add water to the same level.  Blend and crush it with pulses of the blender until all the ice is crushed.  

That's it.  Nothing more.  You can do the same thing with lemon juice, too.  And today after making a batch of lime slush, I was thinking about trying it with you strawberry/kiwi.  

Even in cold weather, I like to have cold drinks sometimes, and certainly ice cream.  Everyone knows my fondness for ice cream.  To sit in front of a good movie with a hot fudge sundae on a cold winter's night while covering myself with a comforter .... yeah, I know it sounds crazy but I like it anyway.

Now that I've had my lime slush, I feel in the mood for hot chocolate.  Time to make a batch.

Stay warm and safe with some good food tonight, folks.

Macaron shells gone wrong

We are only a few days away from winter, and it appears the weather is settling in to be colder every day.

This coming week and the week after, there will be no food orders as I take time off for a couple weekends.  But I will return the weekend of January 6th-8th with our next weekly menu.

Making food was an interesting set of opposites this week in terms of the final product.  On one hand, chocolate chunk grand cookies came out perfectly.  On the other hand, vanilla macarons did not.  If you see the picture above, you will see what I mean.  What are supposed to be nice smooth beautiful macaron shells turned out to be cracked and uneven.  What happened?  Well, I neglected a very important step.  The macaron batter was supposed to be deflated after whisking in the majority of the meringue into the blended almond meal and powdered sugar.  I didn't do that and the result was not pretty.  They tasted great, but did not look great at all.  I even had the notes clearly written in my recipe.  But somehow I didn't take the time to do it.  C'est la vie.  It will be stuck in my head the next time I make these, which will probably be sometime this week.

I'm getting ready to make several batches of cookies and some savory items including my savory egg salad (which will be made as sliders) this week for an important occasion.  I'm excited to be doing this and will be making cookies each day of the week and the dough will be frozen until needed on this weekend for fresh baking.  Plus I will be making a savory pie for someone special who has never had it before, and chicken roasted with herbs.  It will be a fun week in the kitchen.

Stay warm, everyone!  And have a great week!

Shopping ahead

Today is a chilly December day and next week we have very frigid temperatures coming, and that has me thinking about shopping ahead so that I don't have to go out in single-digit cold next week.  

I always find it fun to shop for groceries.  And since I never like to leave things to the last minute, shopping ahead and being redundant in terms of how much of various ingredients I have on hand is always something from which I derive great satisfaction and peace of mind.

There are three grocery stores close to me, and that's a very good thing because sometimes no matter how much I prepare, I get ready to make something and realize that I'm missing an ingredient.  I hate disrupting the rhythm I have established by having to go out to the grocery stores for a single ingredient.  It only takes a few minutes to get to each of the three stores near me, but I still find it annoying if I have to go because I was not as careful in planning as I should have been.

Today I'm making pancakes, brownies, and macarons.  The pancakes and brownies are for my own household, but the macarons are for this weekend's orders.  Why am I making them so early?  They have to be sealed and chilled for 48 hours in order to mature.  Chocolate chunk grand cookies are also on the menu and I will make the dough ahead of time because it needs to sit in the fridge for 24 hours before I bake the cookies.  That chilling time is something I find to be important in almost every chocolate chip cookie I make. 

Over the next several days I will be making many different foods.  It will be a nice activity to do inside while the frigid air is in place here in Kansas City.  Pasta alfredo with chicken, lasagna, and a savory pie are all on the agenda as well as a few other things like brioche and sandwich breads.

As winter approaches, I hope everyone stays warm and eats well.

Frosty morning

 

This morning is frosty and foggy and definitely feeling wintry.  What a great time to think about warm winter foods and fun seasonal treats.

This week we have vanilla macarons and chocolate chip cookies ready for ordering.  For the following two weekends, I will be taking the time off.  But I will return in January with more foods for everyone to try.

The winter season makes me think of foods I've had in the past.  Some of my favorite childhood things have been brought onto my menu, things such as the ice box dessert, for example.  Sometimes, though, I think back to foods that I can no longer find.  I remember there was a great bakery that made amazing Danish.  And then the bakery closed down.  I tried to track down the head baker there after the closure to see if I could talk to him about these wonderful Danish.  But I never could get in contact with him.  He had been doing his job for decades and I don't know if he is completely retired or something else.  But I often think of those Danish and work at trying to recreate them.  So far, though, I have been able to come close, but not quite close enough for my satisfaction.  I have a definite commitment to uncovering the secret of these Danish; not quite an obsession, but it is something that is regularly on my mind when I am thinking of foods I want to add to the menu.

During the next few weeks I have plans to make many foods.  Some will be for additions to the menu.  It's going to be a fun winter season.

If you are trying some new things, please leave a comment and let me know what you're doing.

In the meantime, eat well and take time to appreciate the good things in life.

December

December is here and that means winter is almost upon us.  And that means cold weather with hot chocolate and snow.  My favorite time of the year.

This week, you can order chili and mint chocolate chip ice cream.  For next week, we have chocolate chunk grand cookies and something that is appearing on the weekly menu for the first time -- vanilla macarons.

My youngest daughter and her husband brought me a little gift yesterday:  a whipped cream dispenser and a carton of nitrous oxide cartridges.  I've thought many times of getting one of these to try out but hadn't yet gotten around to it.  So I'm grateful for their gift.  I will try it out with whipped cream toppings for the ice cream this week.

I'm beginning to wind down the 2022 piano teaching year.  The last lessons are in 9 days, on December 14th and then my students will be on holiday break until early January.  During that break, I will cook many things.  Grilled turkey and cheese sandwiches, brioche, chicken with herbs, more ice cream, strawberry and cream cake, sandwiches of various types, and cinnamon rolls.  As you can see, my mind is filled with many things I want to make and explore during the early winter season.

Food is one of the great joys of life so using my teaching breaks to make lots of good food is one of my joys.  As your winter season comes into focus, I hope you get to make and eat great food, and share it with family and friends as well.

That's all for now.  Have a great Monday, all!

A chilly Sunday

 

Today is a chilly Sunday morning with definite hints of the approaching winter.  My silver maple tree, a very ancient and large tree, dropped tons of its leaves suddenly last night.  My backyard pathways and landscaping beds are covered with them.  The air is chilly and damp from overnight rain.  And the skies in the morning the last few days have a particularly wintry appearance that apparently I can see but not many others since no one else seems to get it when I try to describe that appearance.

This coming weekend, two cookies are on offer, one with lemon and a second with molasses and lemon.  For the following week, we have chili and ice cream.  Check them out and put in your orders.

The picture at the head of this post is shami kebabs.  These are made of minced beef, ground yellow split peas or chickpeas, and seasonings.  They are then dipped in whisked eggs and fried in a pan.  They are excellent and I have found they successfully go with many other foods such as rice, chutney, and fried bread or simply by themselves.  And I especially love them on a toasted hot dog bun with ketchup and cheese.

How do I know about these?  It wasn't from learning how to make them.  My life has been graced by the presence of a wonderful woman who has introduced me to this food and many others as well.  

Other foods I have been introduced to recently include chicken karahi, beef nihari, chutneys and daal (lentils) dishes, achar gosht, chicken biryani, chicken haleem, and sheer khurma which is a vermicelli-based dessert.  

I will write more of these in the future, and some of these will probably find their way to a place on the menu of Bruce Bakery and Bistro.

Have a great week!  Winter is coming and I am excited to think about more snowfalls soon.

A recipe for pecan ice box cookies

 

It is a cold Saturday night here in Kansas City with the temperature below freezing and a slight breeze that make the cold just a bit worse.  Perfect for sitting inside and drinking a warm mug of hot chocolate and enjoying a good cookie.

This weekend's food orders have been rescheduled for two weekends from now.  Nothing terrible prompted the reschedule. I simply had a very busy week that included a two-day trip out of the state.  For the upcoming a holiday weekend, I will not offer anything to order.  So grab a few cookies for the following weekend and that aforementioned mug of hot chocolate.

If you want to make a good cookie yourself, then keep reading.  Here's my recipe for pecan ice box cookies.

You will need the following ingredients:

1 cup of Crisco vegetable shortening (use Crisco sticks for the most accurate measurement)

225 grams of light brown sugar

225 grams of granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon of baking soda

1 teaspoon of vanilla

1 cup of chopped roasted pecans (measure the cupful after roasting and then chopping; roast the pecans at 350 for 9 minutes before cooling and then chopping)

470 grams of all-purpose flour

Now prepare the cookie dough using the following steps: 

1.  Cream together the shortening and both sugars.

2.  Mix in the eggs and vanilla.

3.  Mix in the flour and baking soda on low speed.

4.  Mix in the chopped pecans.

5.  Form the dough into a slab approximately 10 inches long by 4 inches wide.  Wrap the slab in plastic wrap and freeze it overnight.

Preheat the oven to 350 F before baking.

6.  Cut the frozen dough (do not thaw) in slices approximately 1/4 inch thick from the 4-inch-width side of the dough slab.

7.  Place the slices on a cookie sheet.  They will spread a little so give them some room.  I place 8 slices on a large cookie sheet, 3 vertically on the top, 3 vertically on the bottom, and 2 horizontally in the center.  

8.  Bake in the 350 oven for 12 minutes for regular (slightly pale) or 13 for crispy (darker).

9.  Let them cool to room temperature.

I usually store the cooled cookies in a plastic Zip-Lock bag.  They will last several days when stored that way.  

Give them a try and let me know how it goes.  And don't forget the milk or the hot chocolate!

Stay warm, everyone!

November foods

 

Good morning on this frigid November Sunday in Kansas City.  As the temps are beginning to stay lower for the upcoming winter, I am getting excited as I watch for our first snowfalls to cover the ground just as powdered sugar covers the bouchons in the picture above.

This coming week we have two cookies available for order.  One with lemon and one with molasses and spices.

Next following weekend, I will not be sending out any food.  But I'll be back with more in December.

That's it for today.  Just a short post as I have a very busy week ahead with piano students as I help them all prepare for holiday performances.

Have a great Sunday.  And I will talk to you all soon again.

Cheese and cakes and salads

 

Happy Sunday!  

This coming weekend we have gougères and autumn spice cake with cream cheese frosting ready for ordering.  For the following weekend, we have lemon sablés and molasses cookies with lemon.  

As I was thinking this week about the upcoming winter season and various things I want to cook for the autumn and winter menu offerings, I also thought back to the summer months and some of the salads I made.  It's amazing to think how simple a salad can be and yet how satisfying at the same time.  One of my favorite quick go-to salads this past summer was tri-color cabbage chopped up roughly, shredded carrots, a healthy sprinkling of grated parmesan cheese and a creamy honey mustard dressing.  Every time I fixed this salad and ate it, I found myself ready to make it again at the next meal.  Four simple ingredients, no fancy preparation, nothing extraordinary, just simple good food that was wholesome and delicious and required extremely little time to prepare.  When I eat things like this that are so full of flavor, I often notice that some other processed things are significantly lacking in flavor by comparison.  Sometimes even a piece of candy that usually tastes delicious seems to have only a sugar flavor as my sense of taste has been somewhat altered so that I am truly noticing how much or how little flavor is actually in some of the processed foods we eat.

This is not to say that I'm against processed foods in general.  It's just curious to note how often they don't really seem to have that much flavor when eaten side by side with something that is naturally flavorful and wholesome.  Perhaps at some point some of these processed foods were simply something delicious in someone's kitchen that then were altered as a result of their transition to mass-produced commercial food products.

Just an interesting food thought I happened to have tonight.  Nothing earth-shattering or profound.  But an interesting thought nonetheless.

Have a great week everyone.  Colder weather is undoubtedly the way and that means soon we can start thinking about hot chocolate on frigid mornings.

A little late

Good evening, everyone!  Well, perhaps I should say, "Good morning!"  I'm a little late in getting the weekend blog post up.  And it's about 145 AM here as I type this.  So ... Good morning, everyone!

This weekend we have slow-roasted tomatoes and corn bread both on offer for weekend orders.  Next weekend, we have gougères and autumn spice cake.  All these foods are such excellent fall season foods no matter whether it's warm or cold.

It's very early or very late now, depending on perspective.  That reminds me of a time not long ago when I was up very early making something on a Sunday morning.  I was very groggy, so groggy that when I went to grab the cinnamon, I grabbed cumin instead!  The bottles looked the same.  They are somewhat close in color.  But the real excuse is that I was very groggy, very sleepy still, but I, for some odd reason, couldn't wait to get up and experiment with something new I had in my mind to try.  It doesn't matter what it was, at least not for this story.  All that matters is that I came perilously close to measuring out 2 teaspoons of cumin instead of cinnamon.  Needless to say, that would have had a disastrous effect on what I was baking.  I caught myself at the last minute.  And my planned baking for the day was saved and was a success.

I wonder if one made a mistake like that, how often it would turn out to be a good mistake.  I know for certain that sometimes I have absent-mindedly made such errors that in fact resulted in interesting new food ideas.  I can't say that I've ever made a mistake that created an culinary-world-shattering event, but I've certainly had new ideas prompted by those mistakes and other "what-ifs".  

OK, that's about as much as I can do here as the clock is approaching 200 AM.  All I will say is that I hope if anyone has any interesting stories about fatigue-induced mistakes that they will share them.  Too afraid of embarrassing yourself?  Don't be!  We've all made big mistakes in the kitchen and they always make good stories.