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You may or may not remember my recent post about making oatmeal cookies with peanut oil. Let's just say, it was a disaster, though Turner dutifully ate them. Today I made a new batch with a different recipe (found on my iPod Betty Crocker Cookbook). Thankfully the recipe called for the exact amount of butter and eggs that I had one hand, so I did not have to venture out into the nasty windy that blew through Qingdao today. I also was able to use up the walnuts that have sitting in my freezer.
I decided to use some brown sugar instead of the full amount of white sugar, thinking it would give the cookies an extra boost of flavor, but this plus the required molasses made the cookies a little too "flavorful." I think next time I will omit the molasses if I use brown sugar.
I have to bake in batches of six, so I spent much of my afternoon moving back and forth between computer and toaster oven. Somehow I never seem to make the recommended quantity of cookies. Most of the time I actually get nowhere near what the recipe says. I am even careful to scoop the dough out in rounded teaspoons. This time my cookies were well-shaped, but out of the five dozen called for I got maybe a dozen and a half (after I ate a few). How could I be 40 cookies short? I blame it on a typo in the recipe. Betty needs an editor.
I wish I had my mom's oatmeal cookie recipe. My copy is sitting in a recipe box packed away somewhere. She always makes the best cookies. (Hint, hint, wink, wink.)
I buy a lot of lemons these days. I use them in cocktails, in cakes, and today in a tuna and white bean dip. After a solid week or so of eating out at Chinese restaurants, I felt the urge for some satisfying Western food. To go with the pasta I made for our dinner, I whipped together a dip to eat while we "enjoyed" a cheap bottle of Chinese wine, which wasn't that bad.
One can of tuna. One can of white beans. Some lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, and diced green pepper for color and crunch. Spread it on crackers, et voila, instant appetizer. It was scrumptious.
I said earlier that I had no food news to write about.
I still don't, but I wanted to share a memory that flooded over me while I was preparing myself a quick dinner before my evening class.
I was making scrambled eggs and had bread toasting in the oven. My mom used to make "breakfast for dinner" when we had all had a long day and dinner needed to be simple and satisfying. Scrambled eggs were a staple. She would mix in some cheese, salt, and pepper. Nothing fancy. Served with toast and jam, this meal brings me back to my childhood, which is retreating faster and faster into the past.
I almost came to tears over the frying pan as the eggs turned golden. Maybe it was the Norah Jones playing on my iPod, but the poignancy of such a simple, wholesome food that reminds me of the warmth and care of my mother gave me a knot in my stomach.
I ate my eggs, alone at the table, with homemade bread. I could have been twelve years old again, my sister sitting next to me putting jam on her eggs.
I love you, mom, and all the memories you've given me.
I apologize for my lack of posts lately. We have had house guests, and between hosting, sightseeing, cooking, dining out, teaching, and making lesson plans I just have not had the time. I bowed out of their last afternoon on the town to rest and get my head together.
Lunch.
Nap.
Bake.
My iPod in my apron pocket, listening to The Splendid Table podcast, I made a Lemon Yogurt Cake, simple and light.
Since I do not have any interesting cooking or food news, how about another round of the Chinese Food Quiz? Like usual, submit your guesses for the food product advertised below and wait for the answer in a couple days!
... Colonel Mustard with the candlestick in the library.
No, it was the baking powder.
I bought new baking powder yesterday and made brownies. Miracle of miracles, it fixed my sunken baked goods problem.
The boys are off to Beijing, so it's nice to have some quiet time to relax and accomplish minor tasks like sweep the floor and buy groceries. I've taken our guest, Anya, around for some fun things too, mind you.
Just now I put banana bread in the oven and am contemplating a cocktail. Sounds like a lovely pairing to me. Banana bread always reminds me of my mom, but I think it's a quintessentially American food that many people remember from their childhoods--a quiet weekend afternoon and a loaf, hot from the oven, cooling on the counter. The smell penetrates the house and you can't wait for a slice.
It's warm, soft, but the best part for me is the crust that forms from the cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on the top. Quite a few foods remind me of the past, and the crust of banana bread is one of them. I never wanted the end though--that was always claimed by my mom--but I would eat around the top crust, saving it for last. The caramelized sugar with a few soft crumbs attached, heaven.
If you don't put cinnamon and sugar on the top of your banana bread before you bake it, you don't know what you're missing.
But back to the present.
I have been having difficulties baking for about a month now. Everything is sunken in the middle--cake, brownies, banana bread. I tested my baking powder, which is about a year and a half old, and it still fizzes. I know it's not my recipes because I have been using the same ones for years. I think the culprit may be my toaster oven and it's uneven heating element. I can still bake regular French bread but only because it bakes inside a ceramic pot in the oven, thus regulating the heat. I am going to buy fresh baking soda and powder to make sure it's not just old ingredients. I would rather not buy a new toaster oven since we will only be in China for four more months. If anyone has other thoughts on my failure-to-rise problem, please let me know.
Now is the season for mangoes, and we couldn't be happier. These are mangoes like you've never tasted before, unless you have traveled somewhere in Asia. The flesh is bright orange and sweet, like concentrate. Rarely do we get an unripe one, as the best specimens are usually slightly bruised and a little brown.
They come in three sizes, like the Three Bears. The baby mangoes are about the size of an apricot. Once you peel off the skin, you can pop them in your mouth, chewing the tasty flesh from around the small seed. The medium mango is best peeled and then sliced, while the large mangoes resemble those commonly found in the US, except they are a brilliant shade of orange, not green or pink.
Although it's difficult not to go through a whole bag standing over the sink with the vegetable peeler, I like to put mangoes on yogurt for breakfast or with a flan or panna cotta for dessert.
In other news, our friends Eddie and Anya arrived a couple days ago bringing with them many sought-after goodies from the States. In addition to a bottle of Patron tequila and two bottles of Cholula hot sauce, they brought me a selection of food magazines and my new favorite toy, an iPod Touch.
I had been lusting after the Touch since touching one in Shanghai, but the prices here are slightly inflated. So unbeknown to me, Turner had Anya buy one for me and bring it with her. What a surprise! It has 16 GB of storage so I can put almost all my iTunes library on it, plus my podcasts. It also has Wi-Fi, so I can check my email, the internet, the weather, etc, and browse iTunes and the App Store, where I have found many fun applications.
I downloaded the complete (and searchable!) works of Shakespeare, PocketGod (where you have power over a group of islanders), and two culinary apps: AllRecipes and Betty Crocker. In the AllRecipes app, you just shake the iPod (literally) and three rows align like in a slot machine, matching a course, food group, and cooking method. Then the application gives you a list of recipes that match the result. You can also search the database, but it's much less exciting.
The Betty Crocker app has all 4000+ recipes from the cookbook and you can search by name or tell the app what ingredients you have and what type of meal you want to cook (like garlic AND bread/rolls) and then the app will find recipes that match these parameters. This could be very useful for cleaning out the refrigerator.
I have come up with the idea of a rotisserie chicken application, where you can watch a chicken turn on a spit, dripping juices, crisping skin, and all. There is already an iBeer application where you can slosh a glass of beer around the screen. I figured the chicken app would be the perfect accompaniment. Maybe there would also be an assortment of sauces you could rub on your rotating chicken, like barbeque or Buffalo wing. Now, I'm hungry.
