The Pear Squares: A Story of Dealing With It

Some days, everything goes fine. Yesterday was not that day.

I set out to bake the caramelized pear & buckwheat cake from Amber Rose's Love Bake Nourish cookbook. I've enjoyed several of the recipes in the book - she bakes the way I've learned I need to bake - with fruits, whole grains, nuts, and no white sugar. And considering that I had a.) four crazy ripe pears and b.) women coming over for knitting group, yesterday became baking day.

Everything was going fine - I caramelized the pears in butter and maple syrup, and while the pears didn't brown the way the book though they might, the mixture smelled heavenly.

Cupcake of the Summer

We all know by now that Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" is the song of the summer. But the cupake of the summer? Hands down, it's the S'mores Cupcake.

I started with Martha Stewart's recipe for our church's high school girl's retreat - I figured a s'mores-themed cupcake couldn't lose.

Sweet Nothings

Look at these.

I mean, just look.

I made these for a baby shower, and frankly I'm a little obsessed with them.

Sur La Table

...is also the name of a store. But that's not what this post is about.

When not traveling, moving, or raising a spirited (read: obstinate) puppy, I've spent the past year cultivating a new book project. Though new is a bit of a misnomer, since it was cooking in my head well before Jayne made an appearance.

But it's been what I like to call a slow-cooker idea, requiring a lot of time to develop. In between, it has changed tremendously in the best way.

One key component of the book has been the same, however - it has always been about the food.

Well, that and two people who find each other. But they eat well.

The two specific kinds of cuisine found in the book are French and Italian. Now, I'm fairly conversant in Italian food. It's really pretty straight-forward and very accessible. Versions of it can be found in Olive Gardens, Macaroni Grills, and in every restaurant where someone boils pasta and tops it with sauce.

French food...it's a bit trickier.

There is often some technique involved in French cookery, and if not, there's the appearance of technique. You don't find Coq au vin in pizzerias, or cassoulet at buffets. Shari's does not have tarte tatin month. Here in Tri-cities, the likelihood of my finding a little French bistro is well below nil.

But I need it for the book, so I popped onto Amazon and picked out a small selection of books, as well as a blue steel crepe pan that I'm really quite in love with.  But along with the crepe pan, it's obvious that I'll also need a proper Dutch Oven soon, as well as a roasting pan and a tart pan (had one, but the bottom is missing and that's a somewhat crucial piece). Oh, and ramekins.

After flipping through the books - which look amazing - it's very clear that I will have to get over my dislike of whole roasted chicken specifically, and my inexperience when it comes to roasting meats in general.

(I've roasted vegetables - does that count for anything?)

But it's been a good year for expanding my repertoire, since I'm now quite proficient with cutlets, sauces, and roux making. Oh, and custard.

Well, off to contemplate making potato leek soup.  Will post later as the food adventures continue...

Birthday Clafoutis and Book Proposals

See, I thought it was appropriate to make a cherry clafouti for my birthday because the word clafouti sounds like a party in and of itself.  Like confetti. It just tastes better.

I've been circling this recipe for a month or two, waiting for the opportune moment (i.e. a loving reunion with my KitchenAid and assorted bake-ware. Oh, and my sieve) to do something really special with a bag of cherries.

Life is a bowl of cherries. Preferably sans pits.

I could be wrong about this. All I know is:

A. There are a lot of cherries here.

B. There seem to be more cherries than back home.

C. Generally, like the dentist situation in Tri-Cities (*never* have I seen so many dentists' offices. Ever.), it means that there's simply more of them.

But I digress.

A few things about this recipe:

It looks great when you put it together, smells even better in the oven.



Also, it's like, *really* bland.

Fresh out of the oven.

I didn't use the kirsch the recipe called for, and my vanilla beans were about a year old and would have needed some TLC to be usable.  I used my good Mexican vanilla extract, and threw a bit of cardamom and ginger into the flan batter.

On the table, sunning itself.

What really needed to go in was another tablespoon of sugar (which is really something, coming from me - I don't like my sweets overly sweet) and a generous tablespoon of lemon zest.  And maybe an additional tablespoon of flour.

It's certainly not an ugly dessert.  Though I will say, once you cut into it, photogenic isn't a word I'd use.  And the cherries tasted really good. I have more left.  They may very well turn into these.

A note on book proposals: I chatted with my agent this morning.  I told her about how I'd gone to my first critique-group meeting here in Tri-Cities, and how I wanted to tweak the sample chapter in my current book proposal.  The group had pointed out some things about my transitions (mainly, there weren't any.  This is a fault of mine that I freely admit).  The chapter itself was written, mostly, three or so years ago, and I hadn't done a whole lot of heavy-duty editing to it.

My reasoning is that while the sample chapter you include with your proposal should be clean, they also shouldn't be over-thought.  Slaving away at that chapter is kind of like naming livestock - an editor may turn around and say, "Hey, we love it, but how do you feel about writing ______ instead?"

This has happened to me several times.  I've learned to put emotional distance between myself and these chapters.  I work on them, and then I move on.  It's a mental health thing.

Now, I want to work on the sample chapter because I want to like it more than I do. It's an easy fix.  But my agent did point out that editors can be wary of über-perfect sample chapters.  Kind of, when you think about it, like guys on first dates who say they love children, small dogs, and Jane Austen.

So don't kill yourself striving for abject perfection when you're including those sample chapters. Make sure they're really, really, good - and then move on with your life.  There are other things to pay attention to.

Like figuring out how to fix a bland clafouti.

Try saying that three times fast.

Lemon Tartlets in a Small Kitchen

Isn't it pretty? I used the recipe (both the filling and the crust) from the Smitten Kitchen recipe.  With...well...subtle changes.

I decreased the butter in the filling by one tablespoon, mainly because I had one stick short of a tablespoon in the fridge and decided that would have to be enough (don't think that I'm stingy on butter.  I'm not.  This recipe is not short of butter!).

Also, I don't exactly quite have a food processor.  I have a food processing attachment that goes with our immersion blender, which works great, but only ever holds about a cup or so of anything.  So I processed in smaller portions, mixed, processed some more, at least with the filling.  I did the crust by hand.  I realized that my pastry cutter (among many other things) is in storage, and cutting the butter in with knives wasn't floating my boat, so I rubbed the butter in with my (clean) fingers.  Mary Englebreit got me onto that, and sometimes it's quite handy.


Discovered (belatedly) that it would have been easier to simply press the chilled dough into the tartlet pans, rather than try to roll it out using my can of Baker's Joy.  I was afraid of overworking the dough, but as a result of not whaling on it, the crust was thicker than I intended.

But it tasted good.

The tartlet shells did shrink up just the tiniest but, but it actually made it easier to remove from the pan.

As for the lemon filling, it set up without any problems.  However, I actually think I'll use a regular lemon next time with the zest of a second lemon (as opposed to one Meyer Lemon).  Or maybe one Meyer Lemon and the zest of a regular lemon.

Anyway, not as sit up, hold the phone lemony as I wanted it to  be, so I'll tweak that for next time.  And don't get me wrong - there's definitely going to be a next time!

Cooking in a tiny hotel kitchen-let is not for the faint of heart (or specifically for the faint of heart, the kind who order take out all the time.  It can go either way).  With two burners (and one saucepan), it really forces me to streamline the prep process for anything I'm making.  But its been a good exercise in using things creatively.  Rather than sauté veggies every time, I may roast them in the mini-convection oven (which has proved its worth, btw) so I can use that second burner for something else.  If I'm making a brown-butter sage sauce, I skip the browning and melt the butter with the sage in the microwave.  Is it purist cooking? No, but it works.

Though sometimes, it's easier to order Thai.

ECPA Happiness...and Moving

Big, big news in the life of this writer - Simply Sara hit #13 on the prestigious ECPA list. This was sometime last week, or possibly the week before. If I think about it long enough, I remember that it was November 1st, because that's when the list released...but the last couple weeks are a blur. So here's the pertinent information.

1. Simply Sara is #13.

2. You can see it here.

3. It is good. There was rejoicing.

4. We celebrated by packing.

I'd share a picture here, one of Danny lining up all of our DVD cases, except that I don't know where that particular camera is, and I don't know where the connection cord for it is, and I'm not at all motivated to go look.

Just know that it's funny, and it was a lot of DVDs.

Part one of our moving process is over. We've left our apartment for good, the one we moved into after being married for about two weeks. When all of our things were packed up and strewn on the sidewalk outside, I walked to our bedroom, leaned against the door frame and cried. Not that I have a deep affection for that apartment, with its Berber carpet that chewed up the bottoms of my feet, cobweb-prone entryway, and inability to stay heated, but it was our home, and life was changing, and it was changing quickly, and I hadn't quite settled myself out for how I felt about all of the life alterations that were coming at us so quickly.

We moved the bulk of our belongings (and I do mean bulk, and the wonderful people who helped us move would agree) into a storage unit in Portland. The rest of the things are with us, at my cousin's home in Northeast Portland, just a mile from where (conveniently) Danny's job is for the time being.

Things that I thought would fit into our car didn't. Spacial reasoning, I've discovered, is not my thing. We have more packing ahead of us. I'm living pleasantly in denial about it until then.

Memphis is in our future; at this point, it looks like we'll be in Tri-Cities by March-ish, though, which is nice because I wasn't looking forward to trying to pack for a shifty Tennessee springtime.

Until we leave for Memphis, I'm looking forward to exploring Portland for Gemma's sake and tracking down places she'd like. Cacao, Powell's (naturally), Saint Cupcake...all good things, though I'm waiting until tomorrow when I have more energy and don't have to fight the weather quite as much.

Feeling the need to bake something, though I'm not sure what. I've got the Rustic Fruit Desserts book, which has much deliciousness between its pages. The one trickiness is that my cousin's oven is a gas model that requires lighting before use. Now, I'm afraid of ovens as it is, so throw in matches and the manual lighting of gas and it's kind of the trifecta of terror.

That said, I've been lighting the stove successfully (though I tend to jump a foot back once the gas lights) for 24 hours (the lure of tea. You know how it goes) and have yet to die. So logic would hold that I'll be able to conquer the oven soon :-)

Let's see what else...if you're a Portland reader, know that there's a signed copy of Plain Jayne at the Lloyd Center Barnes & Noble.

I'm hoping to be back on track (or, really, on a track at all) for NaNoWriMo. Until then, here's my question for you - how do you pronounce NaNoWriMo?