Shape Shifter: I've fallen...but I'll get up!

So, I have fallen off the proverbial wagon of 5K training for umm....the past month. I guess I took the month of February off for all of the romantic sappiness that is involved. Not that any of the involved me, but I wanted to have my agenda completely open just in case. HaHa!

I was thinking that perhaps I should change what I blog about. I just bought this Cooking Light cookbook with amazing pictures of what each entree is supposed to turn out like. I have bought the ingredients to several recipes and have made a commitment to cook more. So many of my fellow bloggers are posting these yummy pics of their creations and I could do the same. But something happened that changed my mind...

I used to never consider myself a competitive person, however, now I know better. I am not necessarily competitive with friends and those I love...what would be the point in that? However, when it comes to someone who I have any form of resentment for, I can be quite competitive. (Just some brutal honesty----I'm confessing to the world that I am not Molly). I have recently found out that someone I know has decided to run a 5K in 2010. Now, I have no hostility towards this person. They just seem to be this huge question mark, leaving me only to wonder, "What the heck happened?" And therein lies the resentment---of not knowing.

Here's the thing. I am not evolved enough to just let it go. I want to be the first one to run a 5K, that way it is not me who is 'following' the lead. I have no doubt that this person hasn't even got a clue that I have made this a goal for 2010...that would require some form of communication or interest, which there apparently has been neither of. To be clear, the goal itself is mine...it has been written on my New Year's resolutions (which I did not make this year) for the past several years. I have made it for no one else but myself. I have just found a little fuel for my 'stick with it' fire.

So in the words of Gene Autry, "I'm Back In The Saddle Again!"

Yoganista: Day 6 - Shooting at the walls of heartache. Bang! Bang!

There was a lot of glancing at the clock today. This class went by very slowly. I think it had something to do with my lack of sleep and motivation. It might also have had a little to do with our quick alternations from downward facing dogs to lunges and back (a la Zack Mayo in "An officer and a gentleman", unfortunately there was no fine Navy man in dress whites to sweep me off my feet as a reward for my efforts).



We continued our work on Warrior 2. Our teacher kept emphasizing how important it was for us to engage all of our energy loops continuously as we transitioned between moves (way easier said than done). She said we waste a significant amount of energy otherwise and lose the major benefits of our yoga practice. I saw yet another yoga-dissertation correlation in this little tidbit of info. You see, once I actually start researching or writing it's easy to keep going. The problem for me comes in the starting and stopping. Once I stop, good luck getting me going again and I've also spent an inordinate amount of time just avoiding the thing altogether.



So, that which is true for yoga is also true for writing a dissertation: Be ok with your best effort. Commit to a regular practice schedule. Thank yourself for the work you do each day. If it hurts a little bit, you are probably doing it right.

SBD: 0 L&P: 0

Namaste.

Tonganterror: P90X Bring it!

     So, let me just begin by stating that I am going to bring it.  It's basically already brought.  Like, of all the things that could have been brought, this is definitely one.  My P90X journey begins tomorrow, and Tony Horton has already convinced me that "Bringing It!" is all I ever really needed to know (and no, I didn't learn that in Kindergarten).  

     Let me begin by telling you a little about me.  I am a 28 year old law student.  My undergraduate degree was in guitar (yes, you can actually major in that, and yes, it actually is a real degree, and yes it is rather hard, and yes, I honestly thought I might get a job when I got out of school, and yes, I actually did have one, and yes, you can still go to law school with that degree, and yes I am doing so).  I am a Tongan, and have inherited a healthy appetite as well as a rather large frame, which, after two stressful jobs after college, I have filled out quite nicely.  I was at the doctor's office one day getting weighed in and the digital scale read 410.65 pounds.  I was shocked, but only sort of, because I had noticed that standing in the line at Wal-Mart was getting much more difficult than it should have been.  

     I began a journey that day almost 2 years ago to lose weight.  I am now 55 pounds lighter (365 for the math wizzes in the crowd), but not even half way of where I want to be.  I am an avid swimmer (though much slower than the old ladies at the pool), and I have hit a plateau.  After seeing many transformations of good friends with P90X, I, the Tonganterror, have decided to "BRING IT!".  

     Day 1prime:  When my roommate and I first got "the P90X", we immediately started watching the video, from the comfort of our desk chairs in my room.  We weren't quite ready to "bring it".  The screen flashes, some ripped dude is posing in a ridiculous way and then Tony begins laying down the smack about how this workout coming up is going to tear me apart.  The bright red words "BRING IT!" flash on the screen and I suddenly felt like I needed to bring something somewhere and I was hooked. 

     Night 1 Prime:  Fired up by the amazing awesomeness of watching just a few minutes of the "X", we cruised on in to Academy sports and window shopped for equipment.  We settled on $10 walmart yoga mats (...not from the women's section though...ok, they were from the women's section).  We went home and did the workout.  We cried like the little girls who should have bought the yoga mats.  

     Our little preview has inspired me to bring it in every aspect of my life and things are getting interesting.  Tomorrow is the beginning of the actual program and Camp Cupcake has invited me to document the journey here at Challengers of the Unknown for any who may wish to follow my adventures as I "bring it".  Buckle up.  Oh and by the way, the Rock is totally gonna play me in the movie that will inevitably be made of this entire blog.  (He's going to need a fat suit).

Camp Cupcake: Cheating on Cupcakes

Yes, it has finally come to this.

Someday, I will map out this cupcake challenge like a relationship. And, to paraphrase Melissa Gray, who wrote All Cakes Considered, I would have to describe this phase in my relationship with cupcakes thusly:

Only baking cupcakes is like dating the same guy for two years, and you are not sure if you want to get more serious with him or marry him, and then George Clooney or Taye Diggs walks by.

I still love cupcakes.

I still plan to finish baking all of the cupcakes in the cookbook.

But I will be frank: I have made most of the fun recipes in this book. I have made at least one recipe a week for months, and I am getting a hankering for other things. I don't just mean I am getting a hankering to eat something besides a cupcake. I am getting a hankering to bake something besides a cupcake.

For this reason, I did not make any cupcakes this week. I turned my dissertation proposal into my committee, and I celebrated by baking cinnamon rolls. To be precise, I made a full batch of Pioneer Woman's Cinnamon Roll Dough. If you are looking for a good cinnamon roll/sweet roll dough, look no further. This is perfection. It is light and moist, and surprisingly easy to make, even if you have never made anything with yeast in your life.

On Tuesday afternoon, I made the dough.

On Tuesday night, I used half the dough and made this:

And this:

On Wednesday night, I made these, Smitten Kitchen's ranch rugelach, using 1/4 of the batch:

On Thursday night, I made caramel apple sticky buns with the remaining 1/4, but I forgot to snap a picture. So, instead, here is a completely gratuitous picture of George Clooney, as a representation:

I rested on Friday night, after a week of clients, interviews, dissertation, and a few other unexpected things.

And then, on Saturday night, made a triple-batch of Bakerella's red-velvet sandwich cookies. Incidentally, this is a very easy, but completely crowd-pleasing recipe.

I realize that it might seem like I have gone off the deep end, or become a compulsive eater, but there is a method to my madness. It turns out there are a lot of people who help me out on a daily basis, and this was my way of letting them know how much I care about them.

Tomorrow, I'll be back to cupcakes.

Pie Are Squared: Alberta Beasley's Decadent Pecan Pie

Since my two-week deadline to make another pie fell on Valentine's weekend, I decided to make a pie specifically for my husband. This made the decision of which pie to make very easy because he has a clear favorite: pecan pie.
In our five-and-a-half year marriage, I have only made pecan pie for him one other time, a month or two after we got married. Why am I such a bad, depriving wife, you ask? Because really, he wasn't deprived at all. The pecan I made for him was terrible, with a super tough crust. And his mom provides him with at least one pecan pie every time she visits or we visit her. You really can't have pecan pie very often because it is pretty much pure sugar and corn syrup, plus some pecans. Hers is just way better than anything I could make.
Those are my excuses, anyway.

This time, I used a 9" pie pan, so I had ample crust for fluting. I went with a rope crust. It took me a few tries, but I think I eventually got the hang of it.
Try as I might, I could not get my camera to focus on the foreground, so this is as good as it got.


Here's the pie all filled with pecans on top, ready to bake.

Baked!

And then, because it was Valentine's Day, I added some little crust hearts. Aww.

Unfortunately, even though I overbaked it (observe the slightly burned pecans and overbrown crust), the filling didn't totally set, and it was more like pecan soup. It still tasted super good (I had one "slice" and Joel had the rest). But it was disappointing to have it be so soupy. I like to blame the elevation.

Ratings:

Flavor: 9

Execution: 7-I kind of don't feel like the soupiness was my fault because I followed the recipe, but it definitely wasn't a perfectly executed pie.

Difficulty: Easy. Arranging the pecans on top took a little while (the recipe read: just picture in your mind the most delicious-looking pecan pie you've ever seen...arrange the pecan halves on top so the pie looks tempting).

Overall rating: **** 4 out of 5 stars.

Bring It: Core Synergistics

In the last week and a half I feel like my whole world (okay my work related world) has been turned upside down. There have been some major changes going on in my job. (Why I thought Real Estate would be a good place field to go into when the economy just stinks I'll never know!) But I realized something. No matter how much I really didn't want to. No matter how tired I was from lack of sleep from stressing. No matter how much I wanted to eat that ice cream. And no matter how un-motivated I felt in the beginning. Getting up at 5:00 (4:45 on Yoga days) might have been the only thing that kept me from completely falling apart. And while I feel like things are still a little unsettled at work and out of my control this is something I can control.

On Monday's we do something called Core Synergistics. It's a love/hate relationship with this workout. For one the name Core Synergistics is just scary! It focuses on your core which of course is what we all want. Nobody wants the muffin top or the pouch. And we all want a strong back. However, to get that Tony has you doing crazy things like rolling around on the floor from "superman" to "banana" and "prison cell push-ups" which are push ups that you bring a knee in between the 1st and 2nd push up do a 3rd push up and then come back to your feet. The only thing that gets me through this work out is the fact that it's timed and you do as many as you can. If he told me I had to do 25 of those stupid push ups I would probably quit. On the bright side this is my 3rd week and I can definitly tell a difference. The work out was a little easier and the love/hate relationship is slowly becoming more of a love relationship.

Camp Cupcake: Devil's Food Cupcakes

I'm kind of amazed that it has taken me this long to make this recipe. I like chocolate cake. And I bought this very expensive gourmet baking cocoa at William-Sonoma when I was in Fort Worth last year.

Speaking of chocolate, while making the frosting, I discovered something very important:

Unsweetened chocolate and bittersweet chocolate are NOT the same thing.

In terms of the percentages of cacao, it goes like this: unsweetened chocolate (almost all cacao, no sugar), bittersweet chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, and milk chocolate (almost no cacao, it turns out). I have acquired a taste for dark chocolate as an adult, but there are times when it is a little too rich for me. That said, I should have checked this out before I made the chocolate frosting. I was going for something lighter than the chocolate ganache frosting I usually use, so I made the chocolate sour cream frosting instead, but, because I made it with unsweetened chocolate rather than bittersweet chocolate, it still came out pretty dark. I added several cups of powdered sugar to make it sweeter, but it was still pretty dark and very rich.

This was my attempt to take a better picture of my cupcakes than normal. I used the only natural light that comes into my apartment, which comes from the French doors that open into my bedroom. That's why the cupcakes are sitting on my bed.

It was a perfect recipe to take to Relief Society on Valentine's Day, especially since the lesson touched on, of all things, Satan. Hee hee.

Here is a link to the cake recipe. Here's the frosting:

Chocolate-Sour Cream Frosting (Makes about 8 cups)

1 lb. (4 cups) confectioners' sugar, sifted

1/2 c. unsweetened Dutch process cocoa powder

1/4 tsp. salt

12 oz. cream cheese, room temperature

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature

18 oz. BITTERSWEET chocolate, melted and cooled

1 1/2 c. sour cream

Sift together confectioners' sugar, cocoa, and salt. Beat cream cheese and butter until pale and fluffy. Reduce speed to low. Gradually add sugar mixture; mix until combined. Mix in melted and cooled chocolate and then sour cream; scrape down sides of bowl and continue beating until smooth. Use immediately, or store in refrigerator for up to 5 days.

Mother Bird: Baguettes

I know that my goal for this project was a new recipe every week and so far I've only posted once over almost a month. Rest assured, this is not because I haven't been trying new recipes; I've actually tried half a dozen or so since my last post. My real problem is that I stink at blogging. With that in mind, I'll save my excuses for not posting more on this blog (or any of my neglected blogs, for that matter) and get to the food.

A few weeks ago I found this book in my local library and decided to check it out. It contains a lot of detailed recipes for different kinds of bread from around the world. I decided that I'd start with a bread that I've eaten a lot so I would have a good reference point for judging the recipe, which is why I started with baguettes.

I've tried making French bread before and never has it turned out as great as this did. It had the signature crisp crust with a light, soft center. The recipe makes three smallish baguettes, but you could easily shape it into one larger French loaf or small rounds for bread bowls or sandwiches or whatever you want to make.

Here is the recipe which I've altered slightly in case you're like me and you hate it when a recipe calls for "French white flour" or "compressed yeast cakes" or "tepid water, either filtered or spring water." (I'm not making that up.) It may look like a lot of work, but it was really not too labor-intensive or complicated. It will definitely be my new go-to for French bread. Later I'll post some of the fun things I did with it.

Baguettes

Ingredients:
-3 c. all-purpose flour
-1 tsp. salt
-1 packet active dry yeast (or 2-1/4 tsp. *see note)
-1-1/3 c. lukewarm water

Put half of the flour and half of the salt into a large bowl with a lid.
Dissolve 1/2 tsp. of the yeast in the water and add it to the flour. Mix it with your hand to make a very smooth, thick batter. Cover tightly with the lid or plastic wrap and leave at room temperature until doubled in size and very bubbly, about 8 hours or overnight.

Next day, uncover the bowl and stir the mixture well. Add 1 tablespoon lukewarm water to remaining yeast and stir. Add to the batter, then work in the rest of the flour and the salt to make a firm dough. If the dough feels sticky, work in a little more flour, 1 tablespoon at a time, if there are dry crumbs in the bowl, or the dough feels tough and dry, work in a little more water, 1 tablespoon at a time.

Turn dough onto a work surface and knead very thoroughly for 10 minutes until the dough feels very elastic. Put the dough back into the bowl, cover, and leave as before until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Carefully turn out the dough onto a work surface. Without punching it down or handling the dough too much, divide it into 3 equal pieces and shape each one into a rough ball. Cover with a dry cloth and let rest for 15 minutes.

Using a lightly floured rolling pin, roll out each ball to about 9x12 inches, then starting on a long side, roll up tightly like a jelly roll. Tuck in the ends and pinch the seam together securely. Lightly flour a large, dry cloth and put it on a large tray or board. Carefully set each loaf on the cloth, pleating the cloth in between each loaf to make a barrier and support. Cover the tray with a large sheet of plastic and let rise as before until doubled in size, about 40 minutes. Meanwhile preheat the oven to its highest setting. Put a roasting pan of water on the bottom rack and put the baking sheet in to heat.

Gently and carefully roll the risen loaves onto the heated trays. Make four slashes along the loaves with a small sharp knife. Set the trays in the oven and spray with water. Shut the oven as quickly as possible. Bake for 20 minutes until very golden and crisp, spraying with water again after the first 5 minutes. Tip the loaves off the trays onto the oven racks and bake for 2-3 minutes more for a really crisp crust. Cool on a wire rack.

*Haha, whoops. I forgot to add this note. I just thought I'd share that Costco has the best deal I've seen on active dry yeast. I bought 32 oz. for just under $4 at Costco. I had previously been paying just over $1 for 0.75 oz. at Wal-Mart. !!!

Yoganista: Day 5 - Lunging with Darth Vader

Today we learned a new breathing technique commonly known as Darth Vader breath (aka Pranayama). Basically, you breath in and out through your nose very loudly which is reminiscent of being at the ocean. Breathing through your nose is all fine and good when you are sitting in your “comfortable seat”, but it gets a lot harder when you are working on proper lunge position.

We spent a lot of time lunging today. Like a lot of time, a lot a lot. Everything in yoga builds onto each other. Proper downward facing dog helps with lunges which are the basis for other poses like warrior. Again, I was amazed at all the muscle groups involved in holding the proper lunge. It felt good the first couple of times then I started getting pooped. My legs felt like jell-o leaving class and I worried that the next day would be a killer, but luckily it wasn’t. I’m a bit wary of what tomorrow in class might bring though.

As far as improvements, I think that the meditation part of yoga is helpful and I feel energized on the days that I do it. The vain part of me also noticed a bit more definition in my calf muscles while prancing about in my heels on Sunday. Now, if only the boys would notice.

SBD: 0 L&P:0

Camp Cupcake: Lavender-iced Brownie Cupcakes

When I first started this project, one of my favorite parts about it was making connections with people over baked goods. There were times when I would stop and think about the people in my life that needed a treat at that moment. I still maintain that we would all get further with one another if we conducted business by first offering each other something homemade. To me, baked goods indicate "I took time out of my life to bake something for you because you are important to me." I think this is why girls take cookies to boys in whom they have interest. I think this is why coworkers pounce on plates of homemade goodies faster than those in the storebought containers (unless they are Oreos). It feels good to think that someone thought about you in the daily progression of his or her life as a person, and not as an assignment, or a piece of furniture to be taken for granted.

But, the reality is, after I started this project, my life got busier, and I became more self-focused. It's a terrible excuse, but that's how I rationalized my behavior. In order to make it easy for me, I had to build it into my routine, which meant I began baking 6 batches of cupcakes a month: one a week for work, one for Relief Society on the week when I teach, and one for Mix 'n Munch on the third Sunday of the month. If I have leftovers from work, I generally drop them off at the Institute Building (where religion classes are held and people tend to just hang out during the day). If there are leftovers in Relief Society, guys generally descend on them as soon as we're done. What I am saying is that I have stopped going out of my way for people, which was one of the things I originally liked about this project.

This week, after our work meeting, I spent literally five extra minutes taking the leftovers to the receptionists, who I tend to forget, and the security guards who work the desks at the entrances to the hospital. One of them said he was craving something sweet. I happened on another as he was describing some recent training he had received for how to handle a shooter in the building (if that doesn't warrant some chocolate, I don't know what does). I have since resolved to do a better job of going out of my way for people.

These cupcakes seem like they should be served at a tea party. The icing is not only dyed lavender, but it is also infused with lavender.

The lavender provides a delicate flavor which, surprisingly, complements the brownie very nicely.

I filled the liners too full. The brownies aren't supposed to rise over the top.

In the end, I sawed the tops off of the brownies to make them easier to ice. Don't worry-I didn't waste these tops.

Martha, of course, also insists that the brownies be topped with crystallized flowers. They sell edible flowers at my grocery store (these would be flowers that do not have pesticides on them). I bought some and attempted to crystallize them.

Here was the end result:

I ended up not using them.

Here is a link to the recipe. I did not get a picture of my finished cupcakes, so I have included the picture on Martha's site, on the off chance you have no plans to click on the link.

Rest assured, mine looked just like that.

Soupa' Slow: Es-spicy Meat-a-balls

Okay, so they weren't actually that spicy, but I made my first ever meatballs! Yum! This is one of those fun recipes where you try to get people to guess the secret ingredient, and they never can. :) Okay, try to guess...nope, that's not it...not that either! Oh fine, I'll tell you...grape jelly! Weird, huh? But super good. So here's how you do it...take your favorite meatloaf recipe and instead of making a loaf, form the meat mixture into balls (OR you can use frozen meatballs from the store). Brown the outsides quickly, and transfer them to the slow cooker. Here comes the fun part. Add a small jar of grape jelly and a bottle of a. ketchup b. chili sauce or c. some of each. I happened to have half a bottle of chili sauce and half a bottle of ketchup in the fridge so I went for option c. I imagine that the more chili sauce you use, the spicier it would turn out. Anyway, just dump those in, stir, and let it cook for a couple hours. Turned out GREAT and was SOOO easy. Would have been SOOOOO, SOOOOO easy if I had gone the frozen meatball route.

Yoganista: And on the 4th day, they sweat.

This morning was an exceptionally cold and rainy one and they had the heater up to make up for that. This was also the first day that we started to do lunges. Heat + core work + lunges = sweat.

What I'm coming to be amazed with in yoga is how many muscle groups we have that we don't utilize. A great thing about this class is that it isn't just about mimicking the poses, but the teacher walks us through and helps us isolate the individual muscle groups that we need to engage to get the full benefits of each pose.

So far, my favorite move is the cat/cow where you start out in a table pose and then on the inhale arch your back like a cat and then on the exhale you stick up your butt and head like a mooing cow. It feels really good. You should try it. You might also like to try a little game that my friends Mike and Amanda play called cow/kitty. One person calls out one of these animals and the other person has to mimic that sound. They get going pretty quick and it makes me giggle a little.

SBD: 0 L&P:0
Apparently, my friend L is right (though he'll never hear it from my lips) that women photosynthesize their waste, as I have yet to hear a peep out of any of these ladies!

Soupa' Slow: Boeuf Bourguignon

As I was browsing crockpot.com in search of recipes, I came across this one, and in the spirit of cooking and blogging, just had to make it. I easily found most of the ingredients at my local supermarket, but ran into a little problem when I got to the "red wine" on the list. I know that the alcohol cooks out of wine when used in recipes like this, and I've had plenty of dishes made with wine at restaurants, but the thought of purchasing wine myself created a bit of a moral dilemma for this mormon girl. To make matters worse, grocery stores don't sell any kind of alcohol in Maryland, so if I was going to do this, I had to actually go to the liquor store. In the end I did it. I did get cooking wine and it did come in a little cardboard carton that looked nothing like a bottle of wine, which made me feel slightly better, but I didn't relish the experience, and I don't know if I'll be cooking with wine in the future. Then, to add injury to insult, when I bought the wine at the liquor store, I didn't get carded!! I guess I don't look as young as I feel like I do. Not that I think I look twenty, but aren't they supposed to card you if there is any doubt whatsoever? I wanted to ask the cashier if he was trying to say I looked old, but refrained.

At any rate, the "boeuf borguignon" turned out delicious. And using the slow cooker pretty much eliminates the risk of falling asleep and burning the stew. Here are a few pics of the process...

Yoganista - Day 3: Delayed

Ok, ok, I'm behind again. It didn't help that my third yoga class had to be delayed because I woke up sick that morning. No, I wasn't faking it to avoid yoga. I actually cancelled clients (a first for me) that day and stayed holed up in my apartment watching season 10 of Law and Order SVU. A pretty good day overall, after the nausea and digestive issues ceased later in the day. Then lo and behold the next day was a half day at work due to snow. Happy January to me!



Nothing too exciting happened during this yoga class. It was still a lot more instruction and I didn't leave feeling like I had a great workout, just a bit stretchier. No doubt due to the new position we learned: Supta Padangusthasana. It looks like this:

After doing this stretch on one leg it feels longer than the other. Then you repeat it on the other leg. This stretch is supposed to help prepare you for downward facing dog. I was pulling so hard on the strap to keep my leg in the air that my hands were cramping. A the end of class our teacher let us know that hand cramps means you were doing it wrong. Oops. I'll keep practicing.

Hopefully, sometime soon my Supta Padangusthasana will look like this:

Not!

Even though there were men in my make-up class: SBD: 0 and L&P: 0

Bring It: Week One and I guess Two

I had every intention of writing about my first week of P90X. In my head I had pretty much written about the pain of the workouts. How after my first workout called Core Synergistics I couldn't even laugh. And how I decided to do the diet and after two days with only one carb a day and cutting all sugar out of my life I was so ornery and my boss finally went and bought me a Diet Coke because apparently I wasn't the joy and delight I normally am. Or the fact that I have to eat 7 servings of protein a day. 7!!! And that my poor little body didn't know what I was doing to it. And how I was going to tell you about how they do these painful things like one-legged wall squats and you almost want to cry.


But then time just got away from me and next thing I knew the 2nd week was almost over and I was thinking about how I would write about how I hardly eat any carbs now but I'm kind of okay with it. (Okay with the exception of Sunday night but it was Super Bowl Sunday and I had to try the cake George made and it was delicious!!!) And how my roommate, Treva, now gets up with me in the morning and we work out together at 5:00 AM. And how we make fun of the people on the video and are pretty sure that two of them are having an affair. It's made my work outs so much better. Although at one point we were laughing so hard that we fell out of our yoga pose.



And now we are in the middle of the third week and although I haven't lost a lot of weight I can definitely see definition in my thighs (awesome!) and I actually really love that we've started getting up at 5:00 (4:30 on yoga days) and how great I feel when I go to work and realize that I've worked out for the day and feel kind of awesome.

Camp Cupcake: Mrs. Kostrya's Spice Cupcakes

When I started college, I occasionally got homesick. I discovered that, for whatever reason, watching Martha Stewart Living was one way to beat homesickness. I don't know why. Martha Stewart is not at all like my mother, and the setting of her New England home in no way resembled the house I grew up in Las Vegas, but, for some reason, it was always comforting to watch Martha make doughnuts and search for heirloom produce amid the fall foliage that was always present, no matter what time of year it was.

Even back in those days, Martha had guests on her show. And it didn't matter if the guest was Bill Cosby or Elmo, Martha was still clearly in charge. The only exception was when her mother came to visit. It was comforting to see Martha with her mother and realize that even Martha Stewart, with her vast domestic empire, is a daughter with a mother.

Martha's mother died a few years ago, but this was one of her recipes. I made it for the people I work with. This recipe is good for a winter day, and because it is not very rich, you can eat quite a few without noticing how many you've eaten.

The recipe calls for mace, which I did not own and had never used before. It is a spice, similar to nutmeg. I bought what I thought was mace at the grocery store, but, upon returning home, discovered I had instead bought marjoram. It turns out, they are not interchangeable. I went to another grocery store that did not have mace. To make my trip worthwhile, I finally broke down and bought this:

Don't be fooled by the bad photography: this is a beautiful utensil. I have made several recipes thus far that have called for citrus zest, but up until now, have been using a tiny grater that came with a 24-piece kitchen set I bought at BigLots when I first moved to Lubbock. The Microplane zester is a vast improvement. It made great zest.

Mrs. Kostrya's Spice Cupcakes

(Makes 24)

1 stick unsalted butter

4 c. cake flour

1 Tbsp. plus 1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

2 tsp. ground cinnamon

1 tsp. ground allspice

1/2 tsp. nutmeg (freshly ground if you are so inclined)

1/2 tsp. ground mace

pinch ground cloves

1 1/2 c. packed dark-brown sugar

4 large eggs, room temperature

1 1/2 c. milk, room temperature

Preheat oven to 350. Brush standard muffin tins with butter, dust with flour, or just spray them down with Baker's Joy.

With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter and brown sugar until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in two batches, alternating with two additions of milk, and beating until combined after each.

Fill each prepared cup 3/4 full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through (I never do this, but that's partly because I'm lazy, and partly because my oven bakes pretty evenly) about 20 minutes, or until golden brown. Run a knife or an offset spatula around the rim of the cakes to loosen them. Allow them to cool before removing from pan.

To finish, place cupcakes over wire rack and spoon citrus glaze over tops.

If you don't want your counter to look like mine, put a baking sheet underneath them.

Soupa' Slow's Texas inspired Brisket

We spent New Years in Austin with Jon's family, and New Years Eve day at The (original) Salt Lick (amazing bbq...check out their indoor pit!)

It was so good that I decided to attempt to re-create the brisket. Actually, I just decided to try to cook brisket, period. (I have never done anything like this before...or that's what I thought before I made it...turns out the process I followed was extremely similar to regular old pot roast. The results, however, were slightly more exciting than pot roast.)

The good old Red Checker Cook Book has this recipe for brisket, and I adapted it to a slow cooker. Basically just by putting it in my slow cooker, instead of my oven.

Oven-Barbecued Beef Brisket (p. 340)
Prep: 15 minutes
Roast: 3 hours (I did 6.5 hours on low in my slow cooker)
Oven:325 f
Makes: 10-12 servings

1 3- to 3.5-pound fresh beef brisket (I used corned beef brisket, because I couldn't find fresh, which is why it looks red...it was still delicious)
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup chopped onion
3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons cider vinegar or white wine vinegar (I used regular distilled vinegar)
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon instant beef bouillon granules (I used two cubes chicken bouillon)
1/8 teaspoon ground red pepper (I used red pepper flakes)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups bottled bbq sauce (I used Kraft BBQ Sauce with brown sugar...yum!)

1. Trim fat from meat. Place meat in a 13x9x2 inch baking pan. (I just plopped it in my slow cooker...still half frozen, too...I can't seem to get this defrosting thing right! But the slow cooker doesn't mind!) In a small bowl, stir together water, onion, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, chili powder, bouillon, red pepper, and garlic. Pour over meat. Cover with foil (I covered with the slow cooker lid instead) Bake in a 325 f oven about 3 hours, or until tender (Again, I cooked it 6.5 hours on low in my slow cooker). Remove meat; discard juices. Thinly slice meat across the grain. Place on a serving platter. Serve with barbecue sauce.

I give this one a 9.5! Delicious!!

It was YUMMY! If you are a meat-lover, or just feel like some Texas BBQ, I highly recommend it.