Ten Olives on Ten Fingers

This is my entry for A Fruit A Month originated by Maheswari
of Beyond the Usual.
This month's host is Priya of Priya's Easy 'n Tasty Recipes.
















This month's subject is olives.
The thing about olives is
that they are perfect on their own.
I always thought
of olives as a huge luxury, something you
get maybe at Thanksgiving.
I love black olives,
green olives, olive salad, when you are surprised by an olive in your salad,
anything olive.

When I was a child I lived for several years in Hawaii.
One day my mother said we were going to visit a woman
and her daughter. My mother told me the woman
was unbelievably frugal and made her daughter
comb her hair with a barrette. I never could figure that
one out. I was sure the girl must be a dork and I would
be bored out of my mind. When I met her she was
just ordinary looking. She was wearing a barrette and her
hair looked perfectly neat. While my mother and the woman sat
in the living room talking the girl took me into the kitchen.
She asked me if I liked olives. She went in the cabinet
and took out a can of black olives and opened it. A can
of black olives back then was an unheard of luxury.
Anyhow, we ate the whole can. She asked me if
I liked to drink the olive "juice." I told her I'd never tried it.
So we drank up what what was left in the can.
I was completely in awe of this girl after that.

So for my recipe. Take ten olives and stick one on the
end of each finger. This is easier to do if you are a kid.
Then eat the olives one at a time.


In honor of this month's fruit my husband composed the following poem.

Mémoire

An olive for each finger,
a finger for every year,
blossoms that do not linger
of cherry, plum, or pear,

sunlight on everything
about this little game;
of years long lost I sing:
and sunlight alone's the same.


How do you like my camel? He's made out of olive
wood from Bethlehem.

Butter Chicken for FBI Gloves

This is my post for FBI Gloves sponsored by the beautiful
website Palachinka. The event is a lot of fun. Every month
a website is chosen and you make something from the site
and then blog about it. I missed the previous one
unfortunately. The website then wasCafe Chocolada.
But I made the banana pudding many times much
to my family's joy.

This month's site under investigation is
What's for Lunch Honey? , a very lovely site indeed.
The recipe I tried is for butter chicken.
I'd never made it before I think I may have goofed on the liquids
because the sauce was a little thin. However the spices flavor of
was good.

This is my entry for Novel Food. Its from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. Jane has a bad experience with oatmeal. To make up for it Miss Temple gives the girls a nice lunch of bread and cheese. I decided to give Jane a Ploughman's Lunch. A nice piece of stilton, some ploughman's pickle, some pickled onions and a roll. Yum!!! Following the quote from the book is a treatise on how to make oatmeal by my guest blogger husband. If only he'd been there at Lowood and they had a microwave they would never have had a bad bowl of porridge!!!

The refectory was a great, low-ceiled, gloomy room; on two long tables
smoked basins of something hot, which, however, to my dismay, sent forth
an odour far from inviting. I saw a universal manifestation of
discontent when the fumes of the repast met the nostrils of those
destined to swallow it; from the van of the procession, the tall girls of
the first class, rose the whispered words--

"Disgusting! The porridge is burnt again!"

"Silence!" ejaculated a voice; not that of Miss Miller, but one of the
upper teachers, a little and dark personage, smartly dressed, but of
somewhat morose aspect, who installed herself at the top of one table,
while a more buxom lady presided at the other. I looked in vain for her
I had first seen the night before; she was not visible: Miss Miller
occupied the foot of the table where I sat, and a strange,
foreign-looking, elderly lady, the French teacher, as I afterwards found,
took the corresponding seat at the other board. A long grace was said
and a hymn sung; then a servant brought in some tea for the teachers, and
the meal began.

Ravenous, and now very faint, I devoured a spoonful or two of my portion
without thinking of its taste; but the first edge of hunger blunted, I
perceived I had got in hand a nauseous mess; burnt porridge is almost as
bad as rotten potatoes; famine itself soon sickens over it. The spoons
were moved slowly: I saw each girl taste her food and try to swallow it;
but in most cases the effort was soon relinquished. Breakfast was over,
and none had breakfasted. Thanks being returned for what we had not got,
and a second hymn chanted, the refectory was evacuated for the
schoolroom. I was one of the last to go out, and in passing the tables,
I saw one teacher take a basin of the porridge and taste it; she looked
at the others; all their countenances expressed displeasure, and one of
them, the stout one, whispered--

"Abominable stuff! How shameful!"




A little later in the day Miss Temple comes to the rescue.

"I have a word to address to the pupils," said she.

The tumult of cessation from lessons was already breaking forth, but it
sank at her voice. She went on--

"You had this morning a breakfast which you could not eat; you must be
hungry:--I have ordered that a lunch of bread and cheese shall be served
to all."

The teachers looked at her with a sort of surprise.

"It is to be done on my responsibility," she added, in an explanatory
tone to them, and immediately afterwards left the room.

The bread and cheese was presently brought in and distributed, to the
high delight and refreshment of the whole school. The order was now
given "To the garden!" Each put on a coarse straw bonnet, with strings
of coloured calico, and a cloak of grey frieze. I was similarly
equipped, and, following the stream, I made my way into the open air.

The garden was a wide inclosure, surrounded with walls so high as to
exclude every glimpse of prospect; a covered verandah ran down one side,
and broad walks bordered a middle space divided into scores of little
beds: these beds were assigned as gardens for the pupils to cultivate,
and each bed had an owner. When full of flowers they would doubtless
look pretty; but now, at the latter end of January, all was wintry blight
and brown decay. I shuddered as I stood and looked round me: it was an
inclement day for outdoor exercise; not positively rainy, but darkened by
a drizzling yellow fog; all under foot was still soaking wet with the
floods of yesterday. The stronger among the girls ran about and engaged
in active games, but sundry pale and thin ones herded together for
shelter and warmth in the verandah; and amongst these, as the dense mist
penetrated to their shivering frames, I heard frequently the sound of a
hollow cough.


A few days later Mr. Brocklehurst has this to say about giving the girls bread and cheese:

"Well, for once it may pass; but please not to let the circumstance occur
too often. And there is another thing which surprised me; I find, in
settling accounts with the housekeeper, that a lunch, consisting of bread
and cheese, has twice been served out to the girls during the past
fortnight. How is this? I looked over the regulations, and I find no
such meal as lunch mentioned. Who introduced this innovation? and by
what authority?"

"I must be responsible for the circumstance, sir," replied Miss Temple:
"the breakfast was so ill prepared that the pupils could not possibly eat
it; and I dared not allow them to remain fasting till dinner-time."

"Madam, allow me an instant. You are aware that my plan in bringing up
these girls is, not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence,
but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying. Should any little
accidental disappointment of the appetite occur, such as the spoiling of
a meal, the under or the over dressing of a dish, the incident ought not
to be neutralised by replacing with something more delicate the comfort
lost, thus pampering the body and obviating the aim of this institution;
it ought to be improved to the spiritual edification of the pupils, by
encouraging them to evince fortitude under temporary privation. A brief
address on those occasions would not be mistimed, wherein a judicious
instructor would take the opportunity of referring to the sufferings of
the primitive Christians; to the torments of martyrs; to the exhortations
of our blessed Lord Himself, calling upon His disciples to take up their
cross and follow Him; to His warnings that man shall not live by bread
alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God; to His
divine consolations, "If ye suffer hunger or thirst for My sake, happy
are ye." Oh, madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt
porridge, into these children's mouths, you may indeed feed their vile
bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!"

Now my guest blogger will demonstrate how to make quick meals with three different types of oatmeal and a microwave oven.

The first type is steel cut or pinhead oatmeal, which is by far the trickiest to do with a microwave, as it requires more water and under normal circumstances at least a much longer time to cook. The first step is to measure out a portion (I use a quarter cup with this kind of oatmeal).

After quite a bit of experimenting, I developed this technique for softening up the pinhead oats. I use a metal measuring cup to crush the oats a bit before pouring in the water - just a quick crushing all around the bowl is enough - more if you prefer the oats to be softer. It could be done with a pestle, but I find the metal measuring cup convenient as I'm usually in a hurry.

With other kinds of oatmeal, I use twice the measure of water to oats, but with pinhead oatmeal I use three times the measure - i.e., for one quarter cup of oats, I add three quarters of a cup of water. Salt is a matter of taste and preference of course, but I love the taste of plain oatmeal, and the small measure of salt from the spoon of our "salt pig" is for me the perfect way to bring out the flavor. I add the same amount of salt for all the different kinds of oatmeal.

I cook the pinhead oatmeal a little bit longer than usual in the microwave. I put it on high for four minutes, and the result, stirred slightly, can be seen below.

The next type is the classic rolled oats (the type made famous by the regular Quaker Oats, though Quaker also makes pinhead now in smaller containers). For this I use whatever measuring cup is handy - in this case a plastic one, and I like to use one third of a cup of oats.

With one third of a cup of oats, I add two thirds of a cup of water and the usual salt pig spoonful of salt. (Many recipes suggest one half cup, in which case a full cup of water would be needed.)

I used to cook it on high in the microwave for three minutes, but now use the one button "popcorn" setting, which cooks for two minutes and thirty-five seconds, which I find sufficient. The result can be seen below.

The third type of oatmeal is made with "porage" oats. These are stone ground or milled and produce a softer, more densely textured oatmeal. As with the rolled oats, I use a third of a cup of oatmeal.

I use either two thirds of a cup of water or occasionally a sixth of a cup more, mixing in the usual amount of salt. As the picture below demonstrates, the porage oats immediately interact with the water, eventually absorbing it.

I cook the porage oats for the "popcorn" setting also. The finished product is stickier than the others, but equally delicious.

Finally, here is a picture of various brands that I have enjoyed.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

I've been away for a long time. This is my first posting of 2009. To celebrate Valentine's Day I like to make sugar cookies. These are filled with homemade strawberry preserves. I used Tasha Tudor's recipe from Take Joy!

5 Cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 pound butter
pinch of salt
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in 3 tablespoons milk.

Cream the butter. Add the sugar. Beat in the eggs. Add the flour and salt. Then add the vanilla and the baking soda and milk. Refrigerate for about 3 hours. Roll out very thinly and cut out
into desired shapes. I use two heart shaped cookie cutters. One large and one small. I cut out the middle of some of the hearts with the small heart. Then I make a sandwich using strawberry jam that has been melted down and cooled.

This is my entry for Novel Food. It is from War and Peace by Tolstoy. Natasha and her brother have been out hunting all day long and go to visit their Uncle where they are given a feast of simple but delicious food. Its one of those days that stays with you your whole life. I would like to present you with the whole feast but I settled for biscuits (her's were rye) apples and honey in a comb.

Inside, the house, with boarded, unplastered walls, was not very clean; there was nothing to show that the chief aim of the persons living in it was the removal of every spot, yet there were not signs of neglect. There was a smell of fresh apples in the entry, and the walls were hung with foxskins and wolfskins.

The uncle led his guests through the vestibule into a little hall with a folding-table and red chairs, then into a drawing-room with a round birchwood table and a sofa, and then into his study, with a ragged sofa, a threadbare carpet, and portraits of Suvorov, of his father and mother, and of himself in military uniform. The study smelt strongly of tobacco and dogs. In the study the uncle asked his guests to sit down and make themselves at home, and he left them. Rugay came in, his back still covered with mud, and lay on the sofa, cleaning himself with his tongue and his teeth. There was a corridor leading from the study, and in it they could see a screen with ragged curtains. Behind the screen they heard feminine laughter and whispering. Natasha, Nikolay, and Petya took off their wraps and sat down on the sofa. Petya leaned on his arm and fell asleep at once; Natasha and Nikolay sat without speaking. Their faces were burning; they were very hungry and very cheerful. They looked at one another—now that the hunt was over and they were indoors, Nikolay did not feel called upon to show his masculine superiority over his sister. Natasha winked at her brother; and they could neither of them restrain themselves long, and broke into a ringing laugh before they had time to invent a pretext for their mirth.

After a brief interval, the uncle came in wearing a Cossack coat, blue breeches, and little top-boots. And this very costume, at which Natasha had looked with surprise and amusement when the uncle wore it at Otradnoe, seemed to her now the right costume here, and in no way inferior to frock coats or ordinary jackets. The uncle, too, was in good spirits; far from feeling mortified at the laughter of the brother and sister (he was incapable of imagining that they could be laughing at his mode of life), he joined in their causeless mirth himself.

"Well, this young countess here—forward, quick march!—I have never seen her like!" he said, giving a long pipe to Rostov, while with a practised motion of three fingers he filled another—a short broken one—for himself.

"She's been in the saddle all day—something for a man to boast of—and she's just as fresh as if nothing had happened!"

Soon the door was opened obviously, from the sound, by a barefoot servant-girl, and a stout, red-cheeked, handsome woman of about forty, with a double chin and full red lips, walked in, with a big tray in her hands. With hospitable dignity and cordiality in her eyes and in every gesture, she looked round at the guests, and with a genial smile bowed to them respectfully.

In spite of her exceptional stoutness, which made her hold her head flung back, while her bosom and all her portly person was thrust forward, this woman (the uncle's housekeeper) stepped with extreme lightness. She went to the table, put the tray down, and deftly with her plump, white hands set the bottles and dishes on the table. When she had finished this task she went away, standing for a moment in the doorway with a smile on her face. "Here I am—I am she! Now do you understand the uncle?" her appearance had said to Rostov. Who could fail to understand? Not Nikolay only, but even Natasha understood the uncle now and the significance of his knitted brows, and the happy, complacent smile, which puckered his lips as Anisya Fyodorovna came in. On the tray there were liqueurs, herb-brandy, mushrooms, biscuits of rye flour made with buttermilk, honey in the comb, foaming mead made from honey, apples, nuts raw and nuts baked, and nuts preserved in honey. Then Anisya Fyodorovna brought in preserves made with honey and with sugar, and ham and a chicken that had just been roasted.

All these delicacies were of Anisya Fyodorovna's preparing, cooking or preserving. All seemed to smell and taste, as it were, of Anisya Fyodorovna. All seemed to recall her buxomness, cleanliness, whiteness, and cordial smile.

"A little of this, please, little countess," she kept saying, as she handed Natasha first one thing, then another. Natasha ate of everything, and it seemed to her that such buttermilk biscuits, such delicious preserves, such nuts in honey, such a chicken, she had never seen nor tasted anywhere. Anisya Fyodorovna withdrew. Rostov and the uncle, as they sipped cherry brandy after supper, talked of hunts past and to come, of Rugay and Ilagin's dogs. Natasha sat upright on the sofa, listening with sparkling eyes. She tried several times to waken Petya, and make him eat something, but he made incoherent replies, evidently in his sleep. Natasha felt so gay, so well content in these new surroundings, that her only fear was that the trap would come too soon for her. After a silence had chanced to fall upon them, as almost always happens when any one receives friends for the first time in his own house, the uncle said, in response to the thought in his guests' minds:

"Yes, so you see how I am finishing my days.… One dies—forward, quick march!—nothing is left. So why sin!"

Here's my recipe for biscuits. Its from Bill Neal's Biscuits, Spoonbread,
and Sweet Potato Pie.

Buttermilk biscuits
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
5 tablespoons chilled butter
1 cup buttermilk

Sift the dry ingredients into a bowl. Add the butter
and work it all through the flour with your fingertips.
Add the buttermilk and stir vigorously until the dough forms
a ball. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured
surface. Knead lightly for 10 strokes. Pat the dough
out to about 8x7x1/4 inch rectabgle. Cut into 2 inch
rounds. Place on a baking sheet and bake in an oven 500F
for 8 minutes until lightly browned.

The Dog Ate My...

Every year for my husband's birthday I make him a cassata.
Its based on his aunt's cassata's filling and a recipe
for chocolate icing that I found in a Time-Life Italian cookbook.
Its actually the best thing I make.
It takes forever to do.
Anyhow, I had it all made
and resting in the refrigerator.
My husband and I went out to get him
a present. I come back and...

Well this is my dog Blizzard.

This is what the cake is supposed to look like.

We came home and the refrigerator door was open
and a big piece of the cake was missing.
Please excuse the messy fridge.

Needless to say I was pretty upset.
Also, chocolate is very bad for dogs.
However, he didn't get sick.

I planned to blog about this cake but not under
these circumstances.

To make the cake you need a spongecake.
I use the one from The Fanny Farmer Cookbook.

Separate 5 eggs. Beat the whites
until they stand up in soft peaks. Beat in a tablespoon
at a time 1/4 sugar.

Without washing the beaters,
beat the egg yolks with 1 tablespoon lemon
juice until thick and lemon colored. Add 3/4
cups sugar gradually. Pour over the whites and fold
in gently. Sift together 1 cup flour 1/4 teaspoon salt.

Gently fold flour mixture into the egg mixture.
Pour into 2 nine inch cake pans lined with
parchment paper and bake at 350F for about 20 minutes.

Let cool and slice in half horizontally.

For the filing.

2 pounds of ricotta
1 cup of sugar
1/4 cup orange flavor liqueur (or any flavor you like)
1/4 cup finely chopped chocolate
1/4 cup candied fruit (I use candied grapefruit peel that I make
at christmas)

Beat ricotta till nice and smooth. Add the rest of the ingredients.

Assemble the cake. Take one later of the cake. Sprinkle
with liqueur put in 1/3 of ricotta mixture.
Put cake layer on top of that. Sprinkle with
liqueur. Put 1/3 of ricotta mixture. Another piece of cake.
SPrinkle, ricotta, add the lid.

I stick bamboo skewers in the cake to stabilize it.
Wrap in plastic wrap and put in the refridgerator
for 1 day!!!

Make the icing:
Over a double boiler melt 12 oz
semisweet chocolate. Add 2/3 cup
very strong coffee. When nicely melted,
turn off the heat and stir in a tablespoon
at a time 2 sticks unsalted butter.
When all done put in the fridge
to let it harden up. It takes a while
for it to become spreadable. Check it
out every so often and when its good
decorate your cake. The icing is like a
truffle filling. Really yummy.
The cake does well to rest for a while.

The Glass Family Gets Some Ice Cream

This is my entry for Novel Food. It comes from
Seymour an Introduction by J.D. Salinger.
Here we meet Buddy on his way to the
drugstore to buy some ice cream. This must
have taken place in the 1930s. Since there
were seven Glass children and they were buying
Louis Sherry ice cream it must have been a
treat.

It's an Anecdote, sink me, but I'll let it rip: At about nine, I had the very pleasant notion that I was the Fastest Boy Runner in the World. It's the kind of queer, basically extracurricular conceit, I'm inclined to add, that dies hard, and even today, at a super-sedentary forty, I can picture myself, in street clothes, whisking past a series of distinguished but hard-breathing Olympic milers and waving to them, amiably, without a trace of condescension. Anyway, one beautiful spring evening when we were still living over on Riverside Drive, Bessie sent me to the drugstore for a couple of quarts of ice cream. I came out of the building at that very same magical quarter hour described just a few paragraphs back. Equally fatal to the construction of this anecdote, I had sneakers on - sneakers surely being to anyone who happens to be the Fastest Boy Runner in the World almost exactly what red shoes were to Hans Christian Andersen's little girl. Once I was clear of the building, I was Mercury himself, and broke into a 'terrific' sprint up the long block to Broadway. I took the corner at Broadway on one wheel and kept going, doing the impossible: increasing speed. The drugstore that sold Louis Sherry ice cream, which was Bessie's adamant choice, was three blocks north, at 113th. About halfway there, I tore past the stationery store where we usually bought our newspapers and magazines, but blindly, without noticing any acquaintances or relatives in the vicinity. Then, about a block further on, I picked up the sound of pursuit at my rear, plainly conducted on foot. My first, perhaps typically New Yorkese thought was that the cops were after me - the charge, conceivably, Breaking Speed Records on a Non-School-Zone Street. I strained to get a little more speed out of my body, but it was no use. I felt a hand clutch out at me and grab hold of my sweater just where the winning-team numerals should have been, and, good and scared, I broke my speed with the awkwardness of a gooney bird coming to a stop. My pursuer was, of course, Seymour, and he was looking pretty damned scared himself. 'What's the matter? What happened?' he asked me frantically. He was still holding on to my sweater. I yanked myself loose from his hand and informed him, in the rather scatological idiom of the neighborhood, which I won't record here verbatim, that nothing had happened, nothing was the matter, that I was just running, for cryin' out loud. His relief was prodigious. 'Boy, did you scare me !' he said. 'Wow, were you moving ! I could hardly catch up with you!' We then went along, at a walk, to the drugstore together. Perhaps strangely, perhaps not strangely at all, the morale of the now Second-Fastest Boy Runner in the World had not been very perceptibly lowered. For one thing, I had been outrun by him. Besides, I was extremely busy noticing that he was panting a lot. It was oddly diverting to see him pant.



Louis Sherry was a high end confectioner.
Ice cream, chocolate and jam. I'm not
sure when the business closed. Salinger refers
to his chocolates in Raise High the Roof Beam,
Carpenters. Boo Boo evidently liked
to squish them to see what was inside.
I got this tin of Louis Sherry chocolates (no chocolates inside)
from ebay.

I have no idea what kind of ice cream Bessie would have
wanted. Maybe vanilla? Maybe a couple of different
quarts? They were a large family.

I made peppermint ice cream. This is a favorite
of my family. We make it after Christmas
to recycle the candy canes from our tree.


The recipe comes from an ice cream calendar from
1983. Unfortunately when I was making the
ice cream we were having a heat wave
and it didn't harden up as well as it should
have and the candies weren't distributed perfectly.
For the ice cream:

2 cups milk
1 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
2 cups heavy cream
1 cup crushed candy canes
(or peppermint candies)

beat the egg yolks up and
add a bit of milk.
Over Low heat beat the milk and
egg yolks. Add the sugar. Heat
until it covers the back of a spoon.
(I hate it when people say that!!!)
What I mean is don't let it boil
or it will curdle. If you have a thermometer
heat till about 190 F. Immediately
add the heavy cream and take
off the heat. Add half the crushed
candy. Chill thoroughly and make
in an ice cream maker. Just
before its finished churning add the remaining
candy.