I went out to check on our tomatoes after neglecting them for a few days, and found we have baby tomatoes! Wheeee! It seems my first tomato experiment is coming along! In that vein, here’s today’s book review: How to store your garden produce, by Piers Warren. Great resource!

Totally unrelated, but read this post over at Stainless Steel Droppings about an art scholarship set up in memory of a young artist who passed away, and see if you can donate a dollar or two. If not, at least go and look at the amazing artwork and read about this young lady, and/or pass along the link on your own blog.

Since I don’t have any review cookbooks in hand at the moment (not that I need any more books to occupy my time!), we’re cooking from older cookbooks that we never got around to reviewing, and planning to review those. The lentil & hot dog soup from The Bean Bible was absolutely amazing, particularly made with a package of uncured, all-natural hot dogs that have SO much flavor! Next will be a recipe of lentil cakes with a date & tamarind chutney, and, from a different cookbook, a crustless cheesecake (yum!).

I have become a True Believer in agave nectar. Given my tendency to become hypoglycemic, and my family history of type II diabetes, the potential in a delicious, low-glycemic index sweetener, particularly combined with whole grains and a very talented cook, just goes to my head! If you want to know what I mean, take a look at today’s review of Ania Catalano’s Baking with Agave Nectar! Make sure you take a peek at the slideshow at the bottom—I’ve included photos of the pies and cupcakes we made.

I also reviewed Rebecca York’s Ghost Moon this morning, but it didn’t fare as well. I find myself hoping she just felt uninspired when writing her latest, because I have a hard time reconciling what I read with the reported popularity of her books.

Tomorrow: my first cookware review in some time! But first…

Found at BookLust:

Okay, I didn’t get a review written yesterday. But I have two books read & ready to be reviewed for this coming week (one fiction, one non-), and a cookbook almost ready (cooked from, but I need to read more of it). Speaking of cookbooks, this week we’re cooking from Food 2.0, the cookbook from the chef who cooked at Google for years. Our first experiment from it—a smoothie—was awesome. In order to get everything we needed we made a rare pilgrimage to the Whole Foods Market. Usually the prices there are insane; however, the prices there don’t seem to be rising as fast as elsewhere in response to the higher gas prices, so it no longer seems quite so ridiculous to shop there now and then.

We went to see a movie today (Ruins? The Ruins? Whichever). It was definitely fun, if not overly new or different, and it had some nice touches to it. Mostly it made me curious to read the book, which at this rate will happen on the fifth of never. Sadly, the movie popcorn was so bad it made us mildly ill. I’m used to cruddy movie popcorn, but this went above and beyond. Blech.

I felt like doing something semi-productive this evening, so here are two more re-worked MMORPG T-shirt designs:

It’s our “Murlocs of War” and “Gnomes for Breakfast” designs (’Cry havoc! and let slip the murlocs of war’; ‘Gnomes they’re not just for breakfast any more, they’re also for between-meal snacks’).

Hopefully tomorrow I can get a little gardening done around chores, cooking, reading of review books, etc. Hope you’re all having a good weekend!

I forgot one thing on that list yesterday: we had to trim the cats’ claws. That’s always a real adventure. It’s made easier by the use of Kitty Kaviar as a reward (freeze-dried bonito flakes), but things got interesting when the cats heard another pair of cats fighting in the next yard over. Or mating—with cats it’s hard to tell.

Today’s review is of actor/writer Emmett James’s wonderfully entertaining memoir, Admit One. I highly recommend that you give it a read!

Meanwhile, we improvised a dessert this weekend that I have to share.

Tropical Turnovers

• Frozen sheets of raw puff pastry
• Fresh coconut, shredded. If you can’t find any, use unsweetened dried coconut. If you can’t find any of that, use sweetened (found in the baking aisle), and reduce or remove the agave nectar, honey, or sugar from the recipe.
• Crystallized ginger, minced
• One ripe banana, diced
• One tablespoon agave nectar, honey, or sugar
• One quarter cup water; more as needed
• One egg, lightly beaten

Filling: Combine a small handful each of coconut and ginger in a small saucepan. Add the banana, sweetener (if using unsweetened coconut), and water. Bring to a boil and simmer until all ingredients are tender (add more water a tablespoon at a time as necessary) and the liquid has all but boiled away.

Pastry: Prepare pastry as instructed on the package for turnovers. (The Trader Joe’s package we had said to thaw briefly at room temp, quarter each sheet of pastry, and brush with egg.) Put a spoonful of filling in the middle of each square, fold over, and seal shut. Brush with egg and bake as instructed on the pastry package.

Serve as is, or with a drizzle of honey, agave nectar, or even maple syrup.

The rough amounts of ingredients above made enough filling for two sheets of puff pastry, or eight turnovers. Adjust amounts as necessary for different results.

Good lord, it’s my first cavity in… uh… 20 years? 25? I went to the dentist today and found out I’ll need to get a tooth drilled at the beginning of next month. *sigh* When I used to go to the dentist it was a very painful experience, and even though I know intellectually that dentistry is better now, I’m still terrified of dental procedures.

Anyway, you can expect a review of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Guerilla Marketing tomorrow. I’m now reading an advance copy of The Trouble with Moonlight, and cooking from two cookbooks (one for desserts, one for other). So far neither of the cookbooks is giving a stellar performance, but we’ll see. One has recipes that come out well so far, but the notes have blatant errors in them. The other looks flawless, but the very first recipe we tried produced some unexpected difficulties. At any rate, I promise plenty of details in the reviews!

We have a printer box full of bread and then some. The whole wheat oatmeal rolls are delicious, and the Kachauri is so good it’s taking a supreme act of will to avoid hoarding it for ourselves.

We’re resting our feet for a few moments. Before long it will be time to get changed into fancy clothes and head to dinner. Full reviews to come next week, but I can already tell you how ‘Baker’s Odyssey’ and ‘Artisan Bread’ will fare. To put it simply: YUM!

We didn’t end up making saffron rolls, but I think we made more than enough, so I have no regrets!

The Cheese Sambouseks came out deLIGHTfully delicious. Now we’re making a quadruple batch of corn muffins (with whole kernels and chipotle cheddar), which actually only works out to 24 muffins since this recipe makes small batches.

We’re also baking batches of plain, crusty dinner rolls from the master recipe in the artisan bread cookbook, and they’re coming out beautifully. The whole wheat oatmeal bread has almost finished rising. We still have to decide whether we’re making saffron rolls, and of course we have to make the Kachauri. We ended up appropriating a printer box to put all the baked goods in because nothing else was large enough.

I wonder if our friends realized what they were in for when they asked us to bake bread. I picture Jervis finding out that his wife asked us to do so, looking at her with wide eyes, and saying, “Are you insane?”

Next we made Cheese Sambouseks, made from a batch of Kahk dough surrounding a cheese-and-egg filling (we decided to use a rather untraditional mix of chevre and maple-smoked cheddar). Those are currently in the oven. We’ve also made a batch of Kachauri filling, which is soaked and pureed split peas cooked with spices and such; that will fill a flat bread later. In another half-hour we’ll be able to continue the whole wheat and oatmeal bread recipe, and once we’ve baked all the Sambouseks we can bake the plain rolls from the batch of dough we made last night.

Good to get off of my feet for a moment, but soon it’ll be back to the wonderful smells of baking bread!

As previously mentioned, my husband and I are baking bread for 25 people for a friend’s Twelfth Night feast. Last night we made doughs from the ‘Artisan bread in 5 minutes a day’ book for a plain artisan loaf and a Limpa bread (minus the anise seeds since we couldn’t find any at the store and didn’t have time to order them). Last night we also baked Kahk—a traditional Iraqi recipe for round, crispy breads—from the ‘Baker’s Odyssey’ book.

We’re currently baking rounds of Limpa in roll form; we of course had to ‘quality-test’ the batch, and they’re awesome! Next we’ll bake rounds of plain rolls. We also started a sponge going for whole wheat-oatmeal bread, also from the Baker’s Odyssey book. We still have some cornbread mix from the Make-a-Mix cookbook that we plan to turn into muffins with the addition of some cheddar, whole corn kernels, and cayenne.

Now, back to baking with me!

Thanksgiving has always been a pure excuse to cook for us. When we lived in the Boston area we would invite all the friends of ours who didn’t have family to go back to for the holidays (or who didn’t want to visit family, or whose family was too far away) and feed them a ton of food. It was great fun. Since we’ve moved away, it’s a smaller group—my husband and I, usually an old college friend of mine who comes to stay for a week or two, and a friend or two from the Maryland area.

This year, however, it was just the two of us. We weren’t about to let that stop us from cooking, of course, particularly seeing as we have holiday cookbooks to review! The one big change we made, however, was that instead of planning one big feast day, we made the various dishes whenever we felt like it over the long weekend, so we could take things slowly and enjoy ourselves.

Here’s what we made:

Before Thanksgiving day we made cranberry walnut scones, pumpkin pie, and cheddar rolls. These are all things that can be made ahead of time with no problem. All three recipes tasted amazing; the pie recipe had a few logistical errors, but that’ll come out when I review the cookbook soon.

We roasted a turkey, of course. We brined it as we always do—this contributes so much to a juicy, flavorful turkey that I can’t imagine not doing it now. Then we roasted it the Alton Brown way. This means half an hour in a “NASA-hot” oven (ie 500 degrees F), followed by putting a triangular foil ‘hat’ over the breast meat, and a temperature probe in the breast meat (not touching the bone), and reducing the temp to 350. The bird is done when the temperature probe indicates that the breast meat has reached safe temperature, about 165 F.

Why such a complicated method? Well, dark meat and white meat are safe at different temperatures. By the time the dark meat is safe, the white meat is usually overdone and dry. By tenting the white meat with foil, you end up with both types of meat done around the same time. The initial time in the super-hot oven then ensures an evenly, beautifully browned turkey, which you wouldn’t get if you kept the foil on the entire time.

We made a pear salad with chevre and pomegranate that was to-die-for; a four-bean salad with homemade robust Italian dressing; cheesy potatoes in milk; mushroom pancetta stuffing; sweet potato slices (oven-roasted with herbs, olive oil, seasonings, and orange zest—yum!); Mexican camp bread (wide, flat, pan-fried biscuits, essentially); date cupcakes with toffee filling and coconut frosting; green bean & bacon bundles; turkey dripping gravy; and apple & pear chutney.

My favorite dishes: pumpkin pie; cheddar rolls; stuffing; bean salad; sweet potatoes; pear salad; camp bread; cupcakes; chutney. The potatoes were a bit disappointing, and the green beans were overly greasy (at least the first night), but otherwise the rest of the dishes were quite good too. I’ll be able to review a handful of cookbooks quite soon!

Other things I’m working on and hope to make progress on this week: more T-shirt designs; a review of a book called Thirteen; playing some games (have I mentioned that I cannot WAIT until Pirates of the Burning Sea comes out?!); catching up with some blog reading; catching up with some email.

I hope everyone had a yummy weekend!

Cooking Addict
Lock up your kitchens!