My new favorite spice is smoked paprika. I had read about it on various cooking blogs and fancy food snob websites, and assumed that I would have to get to a fancy food store, and it would be imported from Spain and fabulously expensive. I was wrong, though, when I was looking for something else at the grocery store, and found Smoked Paprika right there in the spice rack.
I remember a few years ago, when I “discovered” chipotle peppers in Adobo sauce, and put them in everything, meatballs, garlic bread, salad dressing. The problem was, from my point of view, that chipotle peppers are a bit too hot for me. They are smoked jalapeno chiles, and a little goes a long way. With the smoked paprika, though, you get a little heat, with some smoke flavor too. And it smells amazing.
I put it in a dry rub for pork loin on Friday. (Sorry, no pictures. Kind of can’t find my camera…) And it was so good, DH didn’t use sour cream on his mashed potato, he just used the juice from his pork. That sounded really gross. Don’t take it that way.
It would also, of course, be good on anything else savory, or eggy. I am thinking about the ancient can of regular paprika in my mom’s spice cabinet, which we broke out whenever we made devilled eggs. I am sure the can is still there, kind of sawdust flavored. You have probably heard the rule “spices shouldn’t celebrate birthdays.” My goal is to use up this jar of smoked paprika before it has to celebrate a birthday.
Ode to Smoked Paprika
08 Nov 2010 Leave a comment
in Uncategorized Tags: favorite things, food
Even Sharks Don’t Celebrate Shark Week
23 Oct 2010 Leave a comment
in arts and crafts, favorite things, holidays, Uncategorized Tags: arts and crafts, favorite things, holidays, sharks
So, like three years ago, I got a great idea for a halloween costume- a surfer being eaten by a shark, head first. I had seen a shark hat on the internet, but it was ridiculously expensive, and I thought, I could make that. Then, the boy wanted to be a praying mantis that year, and wanted me to be a venus flytrap…so I put it off. Then last year, I thought of it again, and googled instuctions, or patterns, whether knit or sewn, and preferably, free, of course. Nothing.
Now, I am a pretty good knitter, good enough to follow patterns, and good enough to figure things out on the back of an envelope. So, I bought some Cascade 220 at the local yarn store, now sadly out of business (moment of silence, please) and examined an extrememely realistic plastic shark out of the boy’s toybox. I started knitting. Like, almost a year ago. What slowed me down was uncertainty about the fins. I wanted to felt the hat, shrinking it on purpose in the washing machine, and I know that I can expect about a 25% decrease in length, but less than that in width, so knowing that, how long do I make the dorsal fins? And the pectoral fins are smaller, but by how much? And the tail, it’s crooked, but is it crooked enough to rip out and try again, or is that the kind of thing felting will hide?
Before felting the shark is floppy and flaccid.
The thing with felting is, there is no going back, so the hat sat in a tote bag for almost a year, not because of a failure of knitting, but a failure of nerve…of will… Anyway, with Halloween coming up again, I figured it was time to do or die, so I took a few photos and threw it in the washing machine. I checked it once in the middle, decided it could go a little longer, then left it in slightly too long. I got distracted. It is really cute, but it isn’t as long as I’d like. Some might say my head is too big. They might be right…
Felted stuff shrinks a mysterious amount- it is hard to predict how it will fit.
Knitting patterns, I have discovered, are hard to write, so if I get organized between now and the rapture, I’ll write it up- this has really great possibilities, of course, thing about the variations of “being eaten by something” costumes. I long for a little blond girl I can dress up as the Princess Bride being eaten by a screaming eel…what about a worm, or a goldfish? Squeeee! Someone needs to have a baby so I can make a goldfish hat!!!!
Oh, wait, someone did have a baby. Excuse me. I have to go buy goldfish colored yarn.
Eyeballs, gills and gums (do sharks even have gums?) then I added lacy picot stitched teeth. I might redo the teeth, except it's kind of a pain.
Rustic Apple Tart and Hand Pies
16 Oct 2010 Leave a comment
in favorite things, food, learning Tags: cooking, favorite things, food, learning, using the harvest
Hand pie- it’s a perfectly cromulent word.
These could have stayed in the oven for another five minutes for that golden brown deliciousness.
Worlds collided today when the girl brought home My First Cookbook, which has a pastry recipe, and I picked a zillion apples from our tree. A surprising number of them weren’t wormy.
Look how many of them don't have worm holes! We don't spray or anything, so worms are the rule rather than the exception.
I chopped enough for a crockpot full of apple sauce, and a pie. Then the girl’s recipe turned out to be for tarts, and I said, what about hand pies? Hand pies, she asked, did you just make that up? Ummmm, no. I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere. So, we’ll cut circles, put in apples, then fold them over. The circle we chose to use was the ring from a half gallon sized canning jar, which made lilliputian sized pies…They’re very cute. The girl made pie crust for the first time, and we actually should have asked Grandma or Great-grandma for lessons, because I think I’ve only made pie crust twice before in my life. The girl did a good job, though, it’s nice and flaky.
Baked them for a surprisingly long time- I guess I’ve learned something with this project, because I keep saying how surprised I am. It took about 25 minutes at 350, which was enough to brown the bottoms and lightly brown the tops. The apples are still a touch crisp, so it could have gone even longer. We had enough for 6 half moon shaped pies, and I rolled the scraps into a freeform circle, dumped the rest of the seasoned apples into the center, then folded the edges up over it, into a rustic apple tart. “Rustic?” she says, as if that isn’t a real word. Rustic is totally a word! The rusitc tart held together beautifully when cooled and sliced.
Promise me you'll eat this with ice cream.
Rustic apple Tart
3 cups sour apples, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon flour
your favorite pie crust recipe, or whatever instant pie dough solution you like best.
Toss the apples, sugar cinnamon and flour together in a bowl. Roll out the crust and cut reasonable-sized circles. On reflection, the canning lids, about 3 inch diameter, made very small pies. Place on a parchment paper covered cookie sheet, fill with the apple mixture, fold over and bake for 25 or more minutes. For once, we forgot to put sprinkles on top, but sprinkles would have been good.
For the rustic tart, I was recalling something I read in Cook’s Illustrated a year ago, so there are probably better sources of instructions. Roll out the dough, place apple mix in the middle, with a good 2 inches of border. Fold up the edges and crimp it, then bake for 35 to 40 minutes. Because the top is open, it is easier to test these for doneness- just stab an apple with a paring knife to see if they are soft enough.
First grader’s reading goals
10 Oct 2010 2 Comments
in learning Tags: books, favorite things, learning
I joke that we home school in our family, and then in August we send our kids to the neighborhood public school. Truth comes out in a joke- I am a teacher and general know-it-all, DH is a journalist and general know-it-all. Our kids are becoming know-it-alls. It is nice that we have separate but overlapping fields of knowledge. Actually, you could draw a Venn diagram
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Plants, food, language, linguistics, literature, mythology, show tunes, food, plots of old movies, history of Tudor and Stuart dynasties |
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Weird pop culture references, 80’s sitcoms, the time travel paradox, Star Trek |
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Astronomy, geology, geography, physics, music, pop hits of the 80’s, obscure college bands of the 90’s, Star Wars, AP style, computers |
This shows precisely how nerdy I am, that I would draw a Venn diagram about my nerdiness, but not know how to make the Venn diagram show up on the web. It looked okay on Word. I’ll have to figure out how to do it in an illustration….
Our kids have interests and knowledge areas of their own, including Legos, art, dinosaurs, insects, zoology, the Littlest Pet Shop ‘verse, but I don’t know how to make a Venn diagram for the 4 of us, even in Word, much less make it show up on the web.
All summer we read, talk, go to museums. There is a lot of lying around, playing with Legos and riding bikes, too, but just by the nature of who we are, there is a lot of learning going on.
The girl started reading before kindergarten, and hasn’t stopped. She reads, and re-reads, she complains about movies that get the book wrong. She cruised through the Harry Potter series in about 6 weeks, came up for air, then started at the beginning again.
For a while, the boy seemed to think that reading meant sounding words out, and he hated it. Last summer, he was recognizing words on packages or on signs, and I would compliment him. I would say, “Good job reading!” and he would say, “I wasn’t reading, I just saw the word and I knew it.” He sounded so disgusted with me, but it was just that he didn’t know that is the definition of reading- seeing the word, and knowing it.
Going into first grade, he thought he was a bad reader, because his sister is so good, and the books that he is most interested in, like “The Dinosaur Encyclopedia” are too hard for him to read on his own (I have learned a ton about dinos, because I have read the stupid thing aloud to him so much, but it doesn’t really stay with me, so I didn’t put it in the diagram as an area of expertise)
On the first day of first grade, when they were testing him in reading, the tester had to go find more books to get one at a challenging enough level. He is mostly bored by the books at his level- he wants me to read the dang dinosaur encyclopedia again. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_2_19?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=dk+eyewitness+books&sprefix=dk+eyewitness+books or lately books on Greek myths that I have brought home from my middle school. He thinks he can’t read because he can’t read those, and he already knows everything in the first grade books.
9 weeks into the year, we have our first conferences this week. I wonder what we’ll learn. What are your thoughts about homeschool, public school, unschool?
Simple Pleasures
15 Jul 2010 Leave a comment
in favorite things, gardening Tags: favorite things, gardening
I love my new watering can. Shortly before mother’s day, we strolled into Jax, which is a curious hybrid- farming/camping/ military surplus/ high end housewares store. There was a display of galvanized watering cans out front, and I said, ooooh, and made goo goo eyes at them. My husband took a risk, (I am hard to buy gifts for, did I make goo goo eyes seriously, or was I being ironic? is it wrong to give a practical gift, or should the mother’s day gift be gushy and romantic?) anyway, he took a risk, and bought it for me, and it is even better than I expected. It is my new favorite gardening tool.
I use my pond as a garden water source sometimes- I’ll dip a watering can in and spot-water my tomatoes, and any other new plantings that need it. Then, I use a hose to top off the pond, so the goldfish get fresh water, and the plants get lightly “fertilized” water with the chlorine burned off. This is absolutely the best watering can to use for this- it has a bucket handle, and a pour handle, the spout comes off at an angle very close to the bottom of the can. It is also well balanced, easy to carry, even when full- it holds about 2 gallons. Because the opening on top is so big, it fills very quickly when I plunge it into the water.
My favorite part, I discovered by accident. I was watering a tomato, and set the can down, hoping to kind of prop it up so it would still water for a minute while I pulled a weed. It balanced perfectly, tipped up, slowing pouring the 2 gallons of water out onto my tomato plant. I don’t have to stand around with a can in my hand any more, I can set up the water, pull some weeds, deadhead a few flowers, then refill the can and set it up again.
Why, you ask, don’t I just use a hose? I do, sometimes. I have a soaker hose set up in most of my beds, but really, most of my plants don’t need to be watered on a daily basis. Some, like the tomatoes, really do need water regularly. Some, like lavender, actually resents it. Rain water is enough for a lot of my herbs, and most of my “xeric bed” is set up to thrive on precipitation. Living in a semi-desert area, it works for me to just spot-water the things that need it. Your favorite gardening tool?
This is the can in action, soaking an Oregon Spring tomato plant. Yes, that's a dandelion right under the spout. I just pulled it.
Strawberry Fields for Breakfast 