Movin’ on up.

So this was just my play-around blog to decide if I really wanted to do this thing.  And turns out, I do.

So, for the most current and legit version, go to www.thepetitfour.com.  I’ve updated and all the posts below have been moved onto the new site as well.

Thanks!

Ay-crumba!

I’m pretty proud of the way my stomach has held up through all of the beatings and violent abuses I’ve put it through.   It must be all scarred and tatted up like some seasoned burly soldier by now, especially after subjecting it to a year of eating in China.  I was never really sure what I was eating half of the time and not really wanting to know, but woo boy, things sure were delicious. Luckily, I only became sick once – on a good ol’ fashioned American meal of pizza and beer two weeks before I went home.  I was reduced to a mushy mess on a Chinese hospital bed with IVs stuck in my arm and unable to stomach anything for a week afterward.  Important lesson learned – there is a reason why Chinese people do not eat their own pizza.

Other than that tragic episode, I very rarely find myself in some form of pain or discomfort (albeit the kind from eating too much) after eating a little somethin’ something’.  So chances are, if you want me to try something, I will heartily agree and dive in with very little trepidation.

But at the same time, there are only a few things that I will never eat again (other than Chinese pizza.).  Most things with blueberries are avoided like I would avoid Patrick Bateman and the mere mention of lemon-based desserts makes me queasy.  Both of these reactions come from very early, scarring childhood episodes of overindulgence.  Eech.

When I saw that this week’s recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie was Blueberry Crumble, my heart sank a little.  Coffee cake? I love coffee cake!  Two types of sugar? Heck yes!  Butter and eggs? I’m there.  Blueberries and…walnuts?  No thanks.  So I jazzed things up a bit and substituted a pint of blueberries for raspberries and peaches and swapped out the walnuts with pecans.  And the results are of the drool-worthy, go to work a little later to prolong the enjoyment of eating this with some coffee type of good.  And they don’t make anyone sick.

Blueberry Crumb Cake (or Raspberry Peach Pecan Crumble Rumble) from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking:  From My Home to Yours

For the crumbs:
5 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (or pecans)

For the cake:
1 pint (2 cups) blueberries or what ever berry you please, not strawberries however – too juicy.  Also, berries should be preferably fresh, or frozen, not thawed)
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
2/3 cup sugar
grated zest of 1/2 lemon or 1/4 orange
3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter at room temp
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350F.  Butter an 8-inch square pan.

For the crumbs: Put all ingredients except the nuts in a food processor and pulse just until the mixture forms clumps and curds and holds together when pressed.  Scrape the topping into a bowl, stir in the nuts and press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface.  Refrigerate until needed.  Covered well with the crumb mix can be refigerated for up to 3 days.

To make the cake:  Using your fingertips, toss the berries and 2 tablespoons of flour in a small bowl just to coat the berries; set aside.  Whisk together the remaining flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg.

In a large bowl, rub the sugar and the lemon/orange zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and aromatic.  Add the butter and beat the sugar with the butter on medium speed until light, about 3 minutes.  Add the eggs one by one, beating one minute after each addition, then beat in the vanilla extract.  Don’t be concerned if the mixture curdles at this stage.  Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the flour and buttermilk, alternately, the flour in 3 parts, buttermilk in 2. Begin and end with the dry ingredients.  The batter will be thick and creamy.  With a spoon, gently fold in the berries.

Scrape the batter into the buttered pan and smooth the top gently with the spatula.  Pull the crumb mix from the fridge and, with your fingertips, break it into pieces.  They don’t need to be perfect and uniform, they’re supposed to be crumbs.  Scatter the crumb mixture over the batter until it’s covered.

Bake for 55 to 65 minutes, o

r until the crumbs are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.  Transfer the cake to a rack and cool just until warm.

When you can taste spring

There’s just something about the first day of spring.  The feeling of reassurance that you’ve made it through another long, dark Midwestern winter, that drinking beers on porches and croquet games will soon be underway.  It’s the day where we can all shimmy out of our puffy jackets and cast our winter hats to the side because today, today you play.

I have this funny feeling about things.  There’s this strange sense of hope that’s been brewing inside for awhile and now I feel like I’m practically bursting with it.  New plans are afoot. I don’t know what it is, but something big is about to happen.  Maybe it has something to do with the sunny skies and the first day of spring, but everything feels light.  Everything feels like a bright, poppy car commercial.  That despite the dreary winter, with the never-ending face-burning cold, the grim economic climate, the encroaching gray on President Obama’s head, everything is going to be ok.

When I was a kid, I wanted to get out of the Midwest – badly.  I hated the rundown farms, the urban sprawl, and the plain jane-ness of it all.  And winter was the worst.  Every where I looked, everything was gray and wet.  Then I went away for a little bit and then I grew up a little bit.  Now, I understand the quiet, subtle beauty of those firm and faded farms, where the fields dip and roll along the stretches of roads and highway, how those small, ranch houses bubble up into small towns and big towns and rusty cities.  It’s home to me and now I get it, I get the beauty and the quietness of everything.  And I know my fifteen-year-old self is going to hate my twenty-three-year-old self for saying this, but I like it.

Yet there are times when you just need to escape.  It’s always around February and March, when the gray skies and wet ground no longer hold any charming winter quality and you end up looking to the sky, begging and pleading for sun and warmth and dear God, some green.

Which is why the first day of Spring is so important.  It’s the first day of promise and hope and a little bit of redemption.  I, the modern day pioneer woman, made it through the wilderness of urban concrete and steel to reach the end of the season, surviving my cosmopolitan cabin fever and inner-city imprisonment.

So last weekend, with the sun streaming through the windows, playing and twisting itself into geometric shapes along my floor, I dug into Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours, to unofficially take part in Tuesdays with Dorie and more importantly, entice the ever approaching gods of spring and celebrate that we all made it through another winter.

French Yogurt Cake with Marmalade Glaze from Dorie Greenspan

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 ground almonds (or if you don’t like or don’t want to use almonds, just add another 1/2 cup flour)

2 tsps. baking powder

pinch o’ salt

1 cup sugar

Grated zest of 1 lemon

1/2 cup plain yogurt

3 large eggs

1/4 tsp. pure vanilla extract

1/2 cup oil

Preheat the oven to 350F and butter up a loaf pan.

Put the sugar and zest into a bowl and rub the zest into the sugar with your fingers until the sugar is moist and aromatic.  Inhale deeply.  Add the yogurt, eggs and vanilla and whisk until the mixture is well blended.  Still whisking, add the flour, almonds if you’re using them, baking powder and salt.  Once the dry ingredients are fully incorporated, fold in the oil.  The batter will be very smooth, taste delicious, and have a slight sheen.  Pour into loaf pan and bake for 50 to 55 minutes.

The cake’s edges should begin to come away from the sides of the pan and be golden brown.  Let cool for a few minutes in the pan before transferring over to cool on a rack.

To make the glaze, put 1/2 cup marmalade in a small saucepan or a microwave save bowl, stir in 1 tsp. of water and heat until the jelly is hot and liquefied.  Gently brush the cake with the glaze.

On the future and Ira Glass

I think my freak flag is flying again.

For the past two weeks, a day hasn’t gone by without someone asking about my plans after my VISTA contract is completed and what I want out of life.  It’s absolutely unnerving.

Classic Butter Cupcakes with Brown Sugar Frosting

Cheryl, one of our staff attorneys, pulled me into her office one day last week to sit me down and have “a talk.”

“Emily, at my age I’ve realized a few things,” she said as I sat down on her chincey office chair across from her desk.  “One of the things I’ve come to discover is that once you start down a certain path, it becomes much harder to switch life plans.  You’re going to have to start making decisions about what path you want to be on.”  Suddenly I felt like I was back in my my high school guidance counselor’s office, with the bleak off-white walls, the token plants on the windowsills and the hanging dry erase board.  All Cheryl’s office was missing were the laminated motivational statements demanding that “You Be You!” in brash bold colors and Saved by the Bell geometric shapes.  I felt gross.

The next day I was talking to Dawn our financial manager when she suddenly asked, “How old are you? 23? God, you need to figure out what you want to do.  You’re going to be 23, then 24 and next thing you know you’re going to be me and wake up one day, realizing that next year you’ll be 30.”  I just stared at her, thinking “what.the.fuck.”

It’s starting to freak me out, making me wonder if I’m dripping with so much uncertainty and confusion that I’m creating some other worldly gravitational pull, bringing in every mother within a four block radius to my side.  Perhaps it’s the haggard look I’ve been sporting for the past few weeks from the stress of running Hearts for Housing, or my disheveled appearance because I don’t have enough quarters to do laundry or maybe, just maybe, it’s the look of pure nausea that flashes across my face as I realize that I only have six more months of solid “employment” while I do intelligent things like listen to This American Life.

Whatever it is, everyone’s been abuzz with speculation.  Including myself.

So when times are tough and people keep asking you unanswerable questions on a daily basis, there’s really only one sensible option.  Mainlining shots of tequila.  Or maybe making cupcakes with brown sugar frosting. And then eating those while drinking gin & tonics and watching the Gilmore Girls.

_

These cupcakes are so good, so magical, they will revive any part of you that is currently hiding underneath blankets in your bedroom, begging to remain hidden from any mother who is not your own.

Maybe it’s the fluffy, puffy tops or the surprise texture difference as your teeth break through the ever-so-slight crunch of the cupcake’s crust before hitting the downy, buttery insides.  It could also be the light, permeating never overpower taste of the brown sugar frosting.  Or that the frosting is made with two types of sugar that combine with the butter ever so perfectly, enough so to put a certain pop! into your step.

I think it’d be a bit too brash and presumptuous of me to ascribe any one element to happiness of these cupcakes, so I’ll just say this.  These are perfection.

Classic Butter Cupcakes from The Atlantic

3 cups flour

2 1/2 tsps baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1 cup milk

2 tsps pure vanilla extract

1 tsp. almond extract

8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temp

2 cups granulated sugar

4 eggs, separated

1/8 tsp. cream of tartar

Preheat oven to 350F.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together.  Set aside.  Mix the milk and two extracts together, set aside.

Beat the butter until creamy and smooth.  Then add the sugar in a steady stream, mixing until its light in color and texture, about 3 to 4 minutes.

Add the egg yolks one at a time, beating after adding each youlk until it’s fully incorporated.  Once all the egg yolks are added, beat the mixture until fluffy.

On the lowest speed so the dry ingredients don’t go flying all over, add the flour mixture in 4 additions, alternating with the milk mixture in 3 additions.  Make sure that you fully incorporate each addition before moving on to the next.

In a smaller bowl, whip the egg whites and the cream of tartar until small bubbles appear, about 30 seconds.  Don’t beat the egg whites so much that peaks form, it’s better to err on the side of underwhipping than overwhipping.  Fold the egg whites into the batter until fully incorporated.

Scoop the batter into cupcake holders, filling them no more than two-thirds full.  Place in oven and bake 21-23 minutes.  They will be lightly golden and the tops will be nice and springy when done.

Now for the extra goodies – Brown Sugar Frosting, adapted from Joy the Baker

1 1/2 cups butter, softened

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

2 tsp vanilla extract

2-4 tablespoons milk

4-6 cups powerded sugar, depending on your desired consistency

Cream the butter in an electric mixer.  Add brown sugar and vanilla and mix until fully incorporated.  Slowly add the sugar and the milk, alternating, until you reach your desired consistency.

Top the cupcakes and enjoy!

Rainy day items

Some things that I love:

Dance parties featuring ’80s hair bands

This is good.

Dogs
Red corduroy pants
The BBC Newshour
Afternoon naps
Beer

Sometimes, you just need a beer.  Or two.  Or many.   At the risk of sounding like an alcoholic, it’s man’s other best friend behind your pet.   A couple of my favorite moments involve beer:  celebrating the first sunny day in Brussels with beer on the Grand’ Place with Mary and Kelly;  early summer evenings on wooden porches, giggling and laughing my way through the beautiful bounty of Wisconsin beer; those afternoons of suddenly changed plans as an impromptu stop at the neighborhood bar turned into something so much better than was imagined.

My relationship with beer has not always been a positive one.  I remember opening bottles of beer for my dad and uncles when I younger, only to have some splash on my lips as I accidentally knocked some over.  I would gag as I swiped my tongue across the drops of tangy fermentation that landed on my lips.  When I exclaimed that it was positively gross and I would never drink that stuff, my dad knowingly said my attitude would change later as he passed out the bottles I hadn’t managed to spill.

It took awhile for the shift to happen.  My freshman year of college after I had already discovered the joys (in oh so many embarrassing ways) of mixed drinks, I made a concerted effort to enjoy beer.  I cringe now to think of the time Megan gave me my first Guinness and how I couldn’t control the facial twitch as I took gentle sips.  I thought it would be a good idea to enjoy the beer with a sort of alcoholic training wheel – by adding sweetener.  After I had finished what seemed like an overpowering glass of the tall, foamy beer, I swore I would never drink Guinness again.

It took until my junior year of college, when I studied abroad in Brussels, to really appreciate beer.  Before, I would always opt for fruity mixed drinks or shots to get me through the boozy weekends of college.  But in Belgium, I discovered what beer could be.  The mesmerizing redness of Duchesses de Bourgogne, the tartness of Cantillon, the mystery around the tripel trappiste recipes, the perfect pairing of cheese and beer.  My position turned from beerphobic to beer snob.  Never again will Budweiser of Natty Light touch these lips.  I prefer my beer to be dark and foamy and heavy.  Much like Guinness.  Not something that tastes like water left in a Nalgene for three months.

Kwak at Le Corbeau - my favorite bar in Brussels

Yet this taste for good beer (read: oftentimes expensive beer) doesn’t always put a girl in a good position when she’s living on food stamps.  So sometimes, when times are tough and you’re stressed and you just need a good beer to celebrate that you made it through the day (or weekend), it might feel like you have to make a hard choice between eating well and drinking well.

Actually, you don’t.  Raise your hand if you like good beer.  And if you like to eat filling, homey, salty, cheesy, gooey, flavorful, spicy food when you drink beer? Ok basically I’m asking if anyone likes nachos.  Now raise your hand if your wallet is malnourished (which should be everyone)?

Then crack open a nice cold one, grab a saucepan and put in some toast because you need to make yerself some Welsh Rarebit.

The moment I first tasted Welsh Rarebit I knew I was in love.  It’s just the taste you crave when maybe you’ve had one too many or you wake up the morning after a big night out and your belly is screaming, pounding against your insides all tantrum-like demanding that you put something in it now.

I wish I could show you pictures of it, but my sister and I ate it all.   It’s also about as photogenic as movie theater nachos.  It’s just not pretty.  But it sits pretty in your stomach and on your economic sense of well-being.

And what I love about Welsh Rarebit is that it’s the sort of meal that isn’t glamorous.  You’re not going to find it all trussed up and flirting on the cover of Gourmet.  It’s what you make after going out and your eye makeup makes you look like a character from the Evil Dead movies or on days when all you want to do is not shower and watch movies all day.  I secretly love those kind of moments and I want you to love Welsh Rarebit too.

Welsh Rarebit from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything

2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon mustard powder, or to taste
A pinch of cayenne, or to taste
1 cup milk (or beer)
Worcestershire sauce to taste
Salt and Pepper to taste (I use garlic salt for an extra zing)
Two cups cheese
Bread

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.  When the butter starts to bubble, whisk in the flour.  Continue to cook, stirring until it turns a golden brown, about three to five minutes.  Slowly whisk in the milk (it helps you avoid lumps) until the mixture thickens, another minute or two.  Stir in your seasonings and Worcestershire sauce.

Once the mixture is seasoned to your liking, turn heat to low and stir in cheese until it’s smooth.  If you’re adding beans or anything else, add them now as well.  Once the cheese has melted, remove from heat and slather on toast, enjoy and rub belly.

Other suggestions – put some bacon on the toast before adding the Welsh Rarebit, adding a poached egg, topping with cilantro and/or tomato.

If only life was this easy and delicious all the time

Tradition – everybody’s got one.  These days though, the word has some pretty heavy, and in my opinion unjustly applied, cultural baggage applied to it.  Granted, some traditions are bad – bound feet and nepotism in Chicago politics come to mind – but some are awesome.  Mandatory outdoor beer drinking on spring’s first sunny day or eating Cadbury eggs around Eastertime.  Awesome.

Brioche

One of my favorite traditions when I was a kid was Saturday pancakes.  Whenever I had a friend sleepover or we had a lazy day ahead of us, my dad would wake up and make pancakes for everyone.  These large, fluffy discs of delicousness are the perfect pancake.  And I personally think that any tradition is automatically great if it includes breakfast.  Which is why I promise that if you ever stay at my apartment, I will make breakfast.

And what is better than sitting around your kitchen table, dogs sleeping at your feet, drinking coffee and eating homemade brioche french toast with friends? (Other than my dad’s pancakes of course.) Nothing.  Brioche is a great match for french toast because it’s soft enough to soak up the egg mixture and buttery enough that it melts in your mouth to create that overall warming sensation Eggo commercials want you to have.

Brioche, in addition to having a kickass sounding name and tasting delicious, is also easy to make.  It’s made in a food processor so absolutely no kneading is involved.  Which is great when your apartment is about to be flooded by a bunch of friends when you still haven’t finished cleaning and you need to pick out an outfit to wear for that oh-so large fundraising event you are throwing the next day and your dogs really need to go out on a walk.

Brioche

From Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything”

4 cups all-purpose flour, and more if you need it

1 tsp. salt

1/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsps. instant yeast

8 tablespoons cold butter, cut into chunks, and some to grease your pans

3 eggs and 1 egg yolk

1/2 cup milk, plus 2 tbsps.

1/3 cup water, plus more if necessary

Combine flour, salt, sugar, and yeast in a food processor and blend for 5 seconds.  Add the cold butter chunks and the three whole eggs and process for ten seconds.

With your food processor running, pour the 1/2 cup milk and the 1/3 cup water through the feed tube.  Make sure you don’t drizzle because you want the dough to be wet enough to spin, not clunk around your food processor.  Process for about 30 seconds.

The dough should be batter-like.  If it’s too dry, slowly add additional water, 1 tbsp. at a time.  It’s also ok if your butter doesn’t completely blend.  I actually like have little tiny chunks of butter in the dough because when it bakes, you get these beautiful, tender little pockets dispered throughout the loaf.

Grease a large bowl with butter and scrape your dough into it.  Cover and let rise until at least doubled in size, about 2 to 3 hours.  Deflate the dough and use just enough flour to handle the dough.  Divide the dough into two lumps and shape them into rectangles.  Place each loaf into a buttered loaf pan, cover, and let rise for another hour.

Preheat oven to 400F.  Mix the egg yolk and the remaining 2 tbsp. of milk and brush over the top of each brioche loaf.  Bake the brioche for 30 minutes, or until brown.  When it’s done, it’ll fall very easily from the pan and sound hollow on the bottom when you tap it.

If only everything looked this delicious.

Cut into slices and make into french toast!  Or if you’re not a fan of french toast, brioche is equally tasty as toast with butter.  Or plain.  Or with jam. Or anything really.

Of chocolate cake and friends

I was stressed and slightly overwhelmed at work on Thursday when I just couldn’t stand it anymore.  I needed something to look forward to.  So naturally, as someone who is stressed-and-overwhelmed-at work-because-they-are-planning-an-oh-so-big-fundraiser does, I decided that this weekend would be dinner party weekend and made the necessary phone calls.

So on Saturday as I walked into Christine and Ryan’s apartment, I was armed with a freshly made Mon Gateau au Chocolat and cream ready to be whipped into a delicious frenzy.  I was delighted to not only be greeted by their adorable beagle Junie and our friend Nathan – but by a cheese platter.

Looking at Nathan, and noticing how his nice black sweater was being cupped by freshly pressed white cuffs and Ryan chopping garlic to the sounds of Miles Davis, I turned to Christine and exclaimed “I wasn’t aware this was going to be a fancy dinner party!”

“Weellllll….it wasn’t supposed to be, but then we went to Whole Foods and spent hours trying wine and cheese!” Christine sheepishly told me.  “And check out these crackers!”

As Nathan poured me a hefty glass of Molly Dooker Cabernet, I checked out the delicious expanse of appetizers waiting for me.  Brie, smoked gouda and gruyere were arranged innocently and vulnerably, each with a knife nearby, begging for me to prod and plunder their potent and soft underbellies of delicousness.  Framing the cheese spread, were the biggest, most oblong and beautiful black olives I have seen in a long long time.  “Ryan and Nathan don’t like olives, so they are just for us!” Christine conspiratorially whispered to me.  The most begging offering of all were the crackers, quickly eclipsing the illicit olives.  Christine had dangerously arranged the cracked pepper and rosemary crackers along thin slices of cranberry and rye toast.  And maybe it was the soft light, the Miles Davis softly playing in the background, or maybe I had just been denied soft cheese in far too long, but  the brie was just begging to be spread over the rye toast.  Who was I to deny this perfect union?

As Ryan, the resident Texan, prepared our steaks, the three of us sat and ate and drank our way around the table’s offerings. We flipped through Prince’s 21 nights, making fun of the awful poetry and use of the English language as we addictively ate the cheese in front of us.  Oh self-control, why must you leave me in moments like these?

Our eating frenzy became problematic once Ryan placed his achievement in front of us: asparagus roasted in garlic and olive oil, rosemary roasted red potatoes, and the main entrée’s true beauty – the steak.  Knowing I like my meat medium-rare, a habit I owe entirely to my Belgian host family (the many thanks I owe them for introducing me into this small slice of meat heaven), Ryan had utilized his George Foreman with great skill.  I sliced through this massive hunk of meat and quickly filled my plate with fragrant, swirly liquid as the steak’s juices mingled with the olive oil and herbs.  It would be an accurate statement to say that all four of us went completely silent as we savored this beautifully visceral moment with our food.

And then there was the cake.  At this point, we had moved from the dining room to the couches, where Christine laid on the chaise lounge, rubbing her belly and sleepily shutting her eyes.  The boys tried to fend off the impending and dangerously close food coma by playing Boston and Rush on Rock Band.  I, on the other hand, had work to do.

Pulling out the chilled bowl and whisk, I whipped up a batch of homemade whipped cream, sweetened with just a sprinkling of mint chocolate hot cocoa mix.

Mon Gateau au Chocolat

When all was said and done, I dished out the thick, fudge-like chocolate cake with a dollop of whipped cream to everyone.  I foolishly began to ask how it tasted, only to be admonished by Ryan as he closed his eyes and experienced the first bite.  “This cake is gonna-make-me-prone-to-obesity good,” he said a few moments later.

And well, a girl just can’t ask for a better compliment to her cake.  Plus, this recipe only gets better a day later!

Mon Gateau au Chocolat from Bistro Cooking

12 ounces bittersweet chocolate

2/3 cup unsalted butter

3/4 cup granulated sugar

5 large eggs, separated

1/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

2 tsp. confectioner’s sugar for decoration (optional)

Preheat oven to 350F and butter a 9 1/2 inch springform pan or deep, nonstick cake pan.

Melt the chocolate, butter, and granulated sugar in a double boiler placed over simmering water.  Melt until the mixture is smooth and everything is thoroughly blended.  Set aside to cool.

Separate the egg yolks and the egg whites into separate bowls.  Whisk the egg whites until they form firm peaks but don’t overbeat.

Whisk the egg yolks and flour into the chocolate mixture.  This will be a lumpy but will begin to look like cake batter.  Then, add one-third of the egg whites into the chocolate batter and mix.  Gently fold in the remaining whites slowly and thoroughly, until no streaks of egg white remain.

Pour the batter into the butter pan and bake until the cake is firm and springy, about 35 – 45 minutes.  Cool for several hours before trying to remove the cake from the pan.  The cake is rich and delicious enough that you don’t need frosting, but you can dust it with confectioners’ sugar for aesthetic reasons.  I recommend eating it with just a touch of homemade whipped cream.

“Michigan seems like a dream to me now”

The first time I made granola I was in seventh grade.   I was going through a vegetarian phase that collided pretty heavily with my “I listen to too much Simon & Garfunkel and buy too many beaded curtains” phase.  So here I was, hell bent to do this ’60s hippie throw-back phase right when it hit me – aha! granola.

I went on a search for the perfect granola recipe.  I don’t even remember where I found the recipe, but now it’s somewhere in the giant three-ring binder with “Emily’s Recipes” awkwardly scrawled in a faded purple along the spine, full of recipes printed on our old dot matrix.  I hunted, retrieved and examined hundreds of recipes in only a few short weeks, proudly displaying them to my parents (in quite the haughtily manner, as only a thirteen-year-old girl can pull off).  But I found the recipe.  I found the missing piece in my horribly stereotyped hippie experiment of 1997.

I realized that everything I needed was at the touch of my finger tips already! My parents have always been into oatmeal (does anyone else’s parents give Irish steel-cut oats as Christmas presents? anyone?) so I was surrounded by all the necessary ingredients. Oh, how my parents’ well-stocked kitchen spoiled me from the very beginning.  After I pulled the tray out of the oven, the smell of baked honey, cinnamon and oats drenching our kitchen, I distinctly remember thinking “Really? That was it?  But it’s so easy.”

Little did I realize that granola is a snap to make. It’s extremely flexible to individual tastes and basically begs for you to experiment with spice blends.  And for an extra bonus, in these rough-and-tumble economic times, it’s incredibly cost effective because you can buy everything in bulk.  So when my cousin wanted to make granola this week, I was ready and armed to help her on her quest.

No longer using the granola recipe securely placed in the binder still proudly standing in my parents’ cookbook bookshelf, my granola recipe du jour has been snagged from Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything.” And like Mark says in his introduction to the recipe, granola is very forgiving.  If you hate an ingredient, omit it.  If you love something, add it.

6 cups rolled oats

2 cups mixed nuts and seeds (pecans are my personal fave)

1 cup dried and unsweetened fruit, although I usually opt for a mix of regular and orange-flavored Craisins

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg (or any other spice you want. ginger, perhaps? experiment! live life on the edge!  I’ve always wanted to put a sprinkling cayenne on to see if there would be any amazing flavor combo I’ve been missing)

A dash of salt if you please

1/2 c – 1 cup of honey or maple syrup, based on your preference.  Try 1/2 and 1/2 of the honey and syrup – it makes the maple flavoring really mellow.

1 cup dried coconut (optional)

Preheat your oven to 300F

Pour your oats into a 9×13 baking pan and cook them on the stove on low for a few minutes.  You can arrange the baking pan on two stove tops if that’s easier.  You want to cook them on the stove for about five minutes, until they change color and become fragrant.  If you like your individual oats to have a crunch, this is an important step.  I’ve skipped this before and my granola is still good, but it doesn’t have that satisfying crunch I like so much.

Add your nuts to the cooking oats and stir frequently for two minutes.  If you’ve decided to use coconut, you’ll want to add it with the nuts.  After two minutes, take the pan off the stove and add your spices and sweetener.  Make sure you coat the oat mixture as much as possible before you stick the pan into the oven.

Bake for 20 minutes, stirring once or twice during this period.  Take the granola out, let it cool and add your dried fruit.

Voila! Insta-health crunch.

Eat as much as you want and make sure you try it with yogurt as well as just eating it straight out of the bowl with a healthy dose of milk.  Homemade breakfast of champions.  Now take your vitamins.

Technically, I’m Prussian.

I am not Polish.

This might not be surprising to a lot of people, but this is a new development for me.  For as long as I can remember, my grandmother has been going around talking about how Polish she is – enough so that I’ve been walking around thinking that I’m half Polish.

Well, we’re not.  This summer my family went down to Ohio to visit some of our relatives and my grandmother’s sisters.  During the visit,  my grandmother dropped the Polish bomb.

“Gladys, we are NOT Polish,” said Irene, my great-aunt.  “We are French.  Our maiden name is Beaubien for pete’s sake.”

Sooo.  Not Polish.

In honor of my not-heritage, I made paczki (punchkey or poochkey) for Fat Tuesday.

Never really exposed to the art of paczki making (now I know it was for a very good reason), a quick google search yielded a recipe that was found handwritten in someone else’s polish grandmother’s cookbook.  Plus, the recipe featured butter, tons of eggs, cream and deep frying.  Can’t go wrong, right?

12 egg yolks (but I just used 6 whole eggs)

1 tsp. salt

1/8 oz. active dry yeast (about 2 packets)

1/4 c. warm water

1/3 c. room temperature butter

1/2 c. sugar

4 1/2 c. flour

1/3 c. rum or brandy (I chose brandy because it seemed more authentic…I’m not sure how accurate that is)

1 cup warmed whipping cream (I just poured it into a glass jar, nuked it in the microwave and called it good)

1 1/2 cups preserves or cooked prunes or apples or poppy seed filling or custard or whatever delicious filling your heart desires.  To really fulfill my non-Polish potential, I went with the traditional prune filling.

Enough oil, butter, lard or shortening for deep-frying!

Beat eggs and salt in a small bowl for several minutes.  The recipe (found here) says beat until the eggs are thick and pile softly.  I didn’t know what that meant so I just beat the hell out of the eggs.  And then set aside.  These will come in later.

In a different, bigger bowl cream the butter (this is why it’s important to have it at room temp) and gradually add the sugar till it’s nice and fluffy.  While you are creaming the butter and sugar, mix the yeast and warm water together and let it sit to soften.

After the butter and sugar are creamed, slowly beat in the yeast/water mix.

Stir in 1/2 c – 1 c. of the flour into the yeast/water/butter/sugar mix.

Add the rum or brandy and half of the cream.

Beat in half of the remaining flour and add the rest of your cream.

Add the remaining flour and the egg mixture and beat for about two minutes or until the dough begins to blister.  My dough never blistered, but I just kept mixing anyway.  You’re going to want to do a good job of mixing.  I decided to stop beating the carbilicious mixture when it seemed bread-y to me.

Cover the bowl and let it rise until it doubles in size.  I’m impatient and started this recipe at 7 o’clock at night and knew that I wanted to sleep at a relatively normal hour, so I’m pretty sure I only convinced myself that it had doubled in size and it still worked out.  When it doubles, punch it down, cover and let it double again.

Punch it down for extra measure and then roll the dough out onto a floured surface.  When I did this, the dough was very elastic and kept stretching out and shrinking back in a little bit.  Which I think actually worked out really well because I have a tendency to roll things out too thin and you want your dough to be about 3/4″ thick.

When it’s rolled out, cut it out with a circle or a glass.  I chose a glass that was about 2″ wide to cut out the dough.

Put about 1 tbsp. of the filling in the middle of half of your cutouts.  You’re making sandwich-like things here so set aside enough to cover the filling topped bottoms.  I thought that my dough cut-outs were too small so I only used 1/2 tbsp.  Personally, I thought that there wasn’t enough filling in them when all was said and done, but others thought that it was the perfect amount so tomato tomata.

Brush the edges of the dough with water, top the bottom halves and seal the edges really well.  Let the paczki rest on a floured surface for about 20 minutes.

Grab your preferred way of deep frying (I chose shortening in my dutch oven) and deep fry until the paczki are a deep golden brown on both sides.  Pull them out of your dutch oven and let them rest and cool down.  When cool, cover with sprinkled sugar and enjoy!

I know you may be tempted to have them right away (oooh, the warm gooeyness of the prune filling.) but take my word for it, the morning after and the day after – these are delicious.  Warm, soft, gooey, fatty, deliciousness.  Also, I think I would be ok with life if my apartment smelled like paczki every morning when I woke up.

When I brought them to the office today, I was greeted with “WTF are those?” that quickly switched to “oh.my.God.”  Now I just wish I had some left to send to my grandma.

Why hello.

“I’m going to be a firefighter,” Jake, a high school friend told me. “I’ve realized I don’t want to be an engineer and now I don’t know what I want to do with my life.  So, I figure I used to want to be a firefighter when I was five and I might as well try it.”

His path led him to firefighter training and the EMS certification process necessary so he could do all sorts of useful things that firefighters do – nursing wounds acquired from rescuing cats from trees and running through burning houses carrying babies and jumping into those silver trampoline-y things.  And the beauty of it all is that through the firefighter training process, Jake found out what he’s supposed to do – become a nurse.

So in times of personal conflict and identification crisis, why not revert to what our five-year-old selves wanted us to become?  What could possibly be wrong about the dreams and aspirations of five-year-olds?  It’s the perfect age before we all start to become a little bit demented.  And not that I’m having a moment of personal crisis or what have you, I just don’t want to become bored with life.  Nothing is as sad or as painful as listening to that person who talks about everything like he or she has to go brush their teeth.  So, really, what horrible paths would my five-year-old self lead me down?  (If I was my friend Lizzie, I would become a baseball with a blue mohawk.  Maybe that “not demented five-year-old” theory doesn’t really apply as well as I thought it did.)

When I was little I wanted to cook and own my own restaurant.  When I graduated from college I wanted to become a writer.  Five-year-old Emily, meet college Emily.  The goal, the mission, if you please?  I will start to cook more and discover the love for all things cooking and baking I had when I was younger.  In the process I will end my hiatus from writing.  In the meantime, I will pollute the blogosphere with yet another food blog and I will patiently sit by and see where this takes me, just like Jake.  And hey, if not anything else, at least I can secretly hope that this path will somehow end up leading to Oprah.  That’s an admirable goal, right?