Cookbook Challenge # 20 - The Cookie Book
Next up on my cookbook journey is The Cookie Book (presented by the Seattle Mariners Wives, 2002), which is exactly what you’d expect based on the title and authorship—as a fundraiser for a local nonprofit, the wives and girlfriends of the Mariners as they were 24 years ago (think Edgar Martinez, Ichiro Suzuki, Bret Boone, etc.) collected a bunch of cookie recipe and did a photo shoot of various players who are now retired with their wives and cute kids, many of whom probably have kids of their own now. (I remember that team very well, and my God does it make me feel old to think of how long ago it was.)
Anyway, the recipes are largely a tour of all the cookies, brownies, and bars you’d likely see at a family gathering or office/church potluck. I went with Nanaimo Bars, contributed by then-Mariners chef Jeremy Bryant. My husband pointed out that the classic recipe includes Bird’s custard powder rather than vanilla pudding mix, but I retorted that part of the point of this challenge is to follow the recipe as written, within bounds of reason and ingredient availability. And they turned out quite tasty, though I wouldn’t win any points for presentation or evenness of layers.
Nanaimo Bars
½ c. butter
¼ c. granulated sugar
1 egg
5 T cocoa
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 c. graham cracker crumbs
1 c. shredded sweetened coconut
½ c. walnuts, chopped
½ cup butter, softened
3 T milk
2 T instant vanilla pudding
2 c. confectioner’s sugar
6 oz. semisweet chocolate chips
In a double boiler pan combine butter, sugar, egg, cocoa, and vanilla until custard-like. Add graham cracker crumbs, coconut, and walnuts. Press mixture into a 9×9-inch square man. Cool.
In a mixing bowl, combine butter, milk, and pudding. Mix well. Add confectioner’s sugar and mix well. Spread over first layer in 9×9 pan. Let stand for 15 minutes.
In a small saucepan, melt chocolate over low heat. Stir constantly. (Here, despite my protestations about following recipes as written, I microwaved them in 30-second bursts, stirring in between, until melted.) Spread evenly on top of two layers in pan. Cool.
Cookbook Challenge # 19 - Favorite Recipes of Alabama Vocational Home Economics Teachers
Favorite Recipes of Alabama Vocational Home Economics Teachers (Third Edition) is the first cookbook older than me that I’ve tackled on this challenge. I don’t know its exact date of publication, but it was sometime in the 1960s and therefore officially Before My Time. It’s one of several cookbooks I inherited from my mother, though I don’t remember her using it very often.
Like most cookbooks of its type and vintage, it’s heavy on desserts of all kinds. But since I made a cake last week, and next week’s cookbook is desserts only, I decided to go with a savory recipe and picked one of several for oven-barbecued chicken. It was OK, but nothing special—I prefer the way Mom made this same dish, which just used bottled BBQ sauce from the grocery store. If I’m going to make my own sauce, I want something more than a vaguely sweet and not noticeably spicy or tangy tomato sauce.
Barbecued Chicken (Oven)
1 large fryer, cut up (I used a pack of thighs and one of drumsticks. I’m pretty sure stores around here don’t even sell whole chickens cut up anymore.)
¼ c. shortening (I used canola oil, because I’m not going to buy shortening special just to pan-fry chicken.)
1 c. chili sauce or catsup (I used chili sauce, since I had most of a bottle left over from when I made hot dog sloppy joes a few weeks ago.)
½ c. water
¼ c. lemon juice
¼ c. minced onion
1 T. Worcestershire sauce
2 T. brown sugar
½ tsp paprika
½ tsp salt
Pan fry chicken until golden brown. Place in a 2-quart casserole or broiler pan. Combine other ingredients in a small sauce pan and bring mixture to a boil. Pour over chicken. Place in oven and bake at 350 F, turning frequently and spooning sauce over chicken at each turning. Cook about 1 hour or until tender. (I cooked it for 45 minutes, because all the pieces tested at 165 F internal temperature by then. More would’ve just dried them out, though I can see it taking longer if I’d used breasts.)
May reading
My reading pace slowed down a bit this month, since I’ve still got all of June and July to finish my Hugos reading. I still finished 14 books, which is a nice pace, and I finished my first three books toward the 2026 Seattle Public Library Adult Book Bingo summer reading program.
Also, my husband just started reading Moby Dick, which honestly sounds more daunting to me than all the 150-175 books I expect to finish in 2026.
Serving Up Scripture by Jennifer Garcia Bashaw and Aaron Higashi. An IMHO excellent guide to reading and interpreting the Bible for progressive Christians of various stripes and/or people deconstructing from more conservative/fundamentalist approaches.
The Space Cat by Nnedi Okorafor. Hugo finalist, Graphic Story or Comic. A sweet, imaginative middle grade graphic novel wherein Periwinkle the cat (inspired by the author's real-life cat of the same name) has adventures in space and battling alien invaders on earth while his humans are sleeping.
They Bloom at Night by Thang Thanh Tran. Hugo finalist, Lodestar YA award. Once again the Hugo and Nebula lists have me reading more horror than I ever would've touched on my own. I feel like more horror has been finaling relative to SF and fantasy in recent years, though that may be biased by the fact I've only recently joined SFWA and started attending WorldCons and therefore trying to read as much of the list as I can. Anyway, this is hella atmospheric (and set in a hellish dystopian Louisiana bayou), so I'm sure a real horror fan would love it.
The Invisible Parade by Leigh Bardugo & John Picacio. Now, I may not love horror, but spooky I am fine with, as long as there aren't too many spiders involved. This children's picture book about a girl whose deep grief for her beloved grandfather is causing her to withdraw from the world, but who begins to come to a place of healing and acceptance via Dia de Muertos, is full of skeletons and graveyard imagery while also being gentle and comforting.
Platform Decay by Martha Wells. The newest Murderbot novella, released today. I confess to being a little disappointed that it was mostly about Murderbot and some new humans, when I could happily read infinite stories about Murderbot, ART, and my favorites among its existing sets of humans (Mensah, Pin-Lee, Ratthi, Gurathin, Amena, etc.). But I love Murderbot regardless.
Built on Bones by Brenna Hassett. A chatty, rambling overview of the impact of urbanism on the human body from the Neolithic forward.
Cinder House by Freya Marske. Hugo finalist, Novella. I have no idea how I'm going to rank the finalists in this category, because they're all so good. This is a Cinderella retelling with both Gothic and romantasy elements, and I loved it.
What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher. Hugo finalist, Novella. OK, I will continue to make an exception to my non-love of horror for T. Kingfisher, and I'm going to have to go back and read the first two books in this series. I love the narrator and the voice. And wow, in my admittedly limited experience of reading all the finalists for a particular literary award, this year's Hugo novellas are the best. Uniquely yet uniformly amazing.
The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard J. Evans. First in a trilogy, this history looks at Germany from roughly the end of the Bismarck era through 1933, growing more granular the closer we get to that fateful date. It's obviously not a happy fun read, but it's informative and thoughtful. Also, the fact it was published over 20 years ago makes certain present-day parallels all the more striking--the ineptitude of mainstream parties and politicians, the willingness of many voters to take a shot on a problematic outsider due to dissatisfaction with a genuinely broken status quo, right-wing bias across the justice system from the police up to the highest courts, etc. Though I do take comfort in the fact America has been doing democracy, however imperfectly, for a lot longer--we've got traditions and muscle memory around protest and free speech in particular that just weren't available in Weimar Germany.
The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan. SPL Summer Book Bingo, Historical category. After these last two books, I mainly hope the 2020s won't look as dreadful as the 1930s after time for hindsight. I hope we are doing and will continue to do better, but the jury is still out.
Love Wins by Rob Bell. SPL Summer Book Bingo, Eye-Opening category. I'm counting this as eye-opening because, after having basically deconstructed my evangelical faith and found my way into the Episcopalian form of progressive Christianity, I'm finally starting to read more theological works from my new perspective (as opposed to memoirs and cultural critiques). I found this one thoughtful and fitting my understanding of a loving God, though Bell's chatty-poetic writing style isn't really my cup of tea.
Web of Love by Mary Balogh. SPL Summer Book Bingo, Unplug category. (The definition for this category was "Step away from your devices and read distraction-free," and this book fit as a very rare paperback read for my ebook-loving self.) This is one of Balogh's earlier works, dating to 1990, and I think she grew stronger as a writer later in her career. With that said, I did like the old-school aspect of a romance with a large cast of characters and a longish time frame, almost a historical novel with a romance in it rather than a historical romance.
Adulthood is a Gift by Sarah Andersen. I happened to see this book in either my LT or local library's recommendations and picked it up as a much-needed light and relaxing weekend read.
Kaiju Agonistes by Scott Lynch. Hugo Finalist, Novelette, and also SPL Summer Book Bingo, Under 150 Pages category. Wherein a well-intentioned but baffled alien sea monster tries to stop nuclear proliferation during the cold war era.
Cookbook Challenge # 18 - Life After Pizza
Life After Pizza: A Cookbook for the Fast Food Crowd (Favorite Recipes Press, 1988) was the cookbook that taught me to cook. Oh, my mom was a good cook and a gifted baker, and I learned a lot by watching her, but she didn’t push me to cook or do chores in general—I think as the youngest of four children I was just a tiny bit spoiled in that regard—trusting that I’d learn when I had to. And I did, from this book. It’s every bit as simple, breezy, and basic as the title makes it sound, and I’ll still grab it off the shelf every so often to remind myself of basics like how long to cook a hardboiled egg. I do have one go-to recipe I still make from it, a quick mock minestrone made by combining various canned condensed soups and broths with ground beef, beans, an onion, and pasta. But the point of this challenge is to choose something I haven’t tried already, so I made Bisquick Oven-Fried Chicken and Crazy Cake. Both turned out perfectly tasty in a straightforward, old-school way.
Bisquick Oven-Fried Chicken
Whole chicken cut up or chicken pieces (I used 4 thighs and 4 wings)
¼ cup butter
¾ cup Bisquick
(I ad-libbed and added a generous shake of Cajun seasoning to the Bisquick and dipped the chicken pieces in an egg wash so the batter would stick better.)
Melt butter in a baking dish in a 350-degree oven. Shake chicken in Bisquick in a paper bag until coated. Place in prepared baking dish; do not allow pieces to touch. Bake for 30 minutes; turn chicken. Bake for 15 minutes or until tender.
Crazy Cake
2 cups sugar
3 cups flour
½ cup cocoa
2 tsp baking soda
1 T vanilla extract
2 T vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)
¾ c vegetable oil
2 cups water
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9×13-inch cake pan.
Combine sugar, flour, cocoa, and baking soda and place in prepared pan.
Make 3 wells in dry ingredients. Pour vanilla into 1 well, vinegar into 1 well, and oil into remaining well. Pour water over all. Mix with fork until smooth.
Bake for 30 minutes or until cake tests done. Cool in pan. Frost cool cake as desired.
Cookbook Challenge # 17 - A Feast of Ice and Fire
I bought A Feast of Ice and Fire (Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer, 2012) at the height of Game of Thrones fandom. Based on their Inn at the Crossroads blog—which I was pleased to find still exists with recent content, though you have to wade through a lot of ads to find the recipes—it takes foods mentioned in Martin’s novels and offers a version based on a historical recipe and a more modern interpretation for each. This weekend I made Modern White Beans and Bacon with 17th-Century Baked Apples as a dessert. The bean dish was okay, though not enough to add to my rotation necessarily. The apples, however, surprised me with how good they turned out. Because it was a pretty warm evening, I served them with vanilla ice cream, and all three of us loved them.
Modern White Beans and Bacon
4 pieces bacon, roughly chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1 head curly endive, leaves rinsed and torn
2 large garlic cloves, chopped
1 cup dried white beans, soaked overnight, or one 16-oz can white beans
Salt and pepper to taste
If using dried beans, cook and drain.
Cook the bacon in a large saucepan over medium-high heat until crisp. Remove the bacon from the pan and set it on paper towels to drain. Add the onion to the drippings and saute until tender.
Add half the endive leaves and cover the pot, cooking until the endive is wilted, about 5 minutes. Add the remaining endive and the garlic, then cover and cook until the remaining endive has wilted.
Add the beans and bacon, cooking until the beans are heated through, stirring often. Season with salt and pepper and serve.
17th-Century Baked Apples
1 T ground cinnamon
4 T sugar
2 T unsalted butter, melted
2 firm, tart red apples
Preheat the oven to 350 F.
Mix together the cinnamon, sugar, and butter.
Slice the apples in half vertically through the core. Cut out the core and seeds, then prick the inside of the apple all over with a sharp knife. Place the apples cut side up in a baking dish and pour in enough water to just cover the bottom of the dish. Divide the cinnamon filling among the apple halves, spreading it to cover the cut surface.
Cover and bake for 1 hour. Provide a fork and knife for your guests to eat the apples with, and enjoy!
Cookbook Challenge # 16 - Under 20
I bought Under Twenty (Weight Watchers, 2013) sometime in 2013 or 2014 when my husband and I were doing Weight Watchers. (We briefly slimmed down, him to his goal weight, me to the lightest I’ve been since before I got pregnant with my son back in 2004, but eventually gained it back, as tends to be the case. With our doctor’s blessing, we’re currently focusing on health at our current size, and I will not be discussing this matter further at this time; please don’t come at me with your diet or how well your GLP-1 is working for you.)
Given that parenthetical, you probably won’t be surprised to hear I haven’t cooked much from this one of late. But after revisiting it for this challenge, I may change that. The title refers to the fact the recipes are supposed to take 20 minutes or less to prepare, which is handy for weeknights even after adding the extra 10-15 minutes for the fact that my chopping skills aren’t chef-speed, time spent rummaging the fridge and pantry for ingredients, etc. And they’re good, healthy recipes for the most part—lots of veggies, not a lot of heavily processed ingredients—and just because I’m trying to avoid the toxic aspects of diet culture doesn’t means I’m against lower-calorie meals.
Tonight I made Chopped Chicken and Peanut Salad, which I expect I’ll make again at some point. It’s always good to have some meals that don’t require turning on the stove for summertime use. (Not that the weather is at all summery today—it’s cloudy and barely crept into the 60s for a high.) However, the dressing was on the bland side, and there wasn’t enough of it to coat all the ingredients. Next time I’ll double the amount and add fresh lime juice.
Chopped Chicken and Peanut Salad
¾ lb fully-cooked grilled chicken breast strips (I used shredded rotisserie chicken from my grocery store’s deli)
¼ c roasted salted peanuts
2 carrots
1 large broccoli stem, peeled (I didn’t bother peeling it)
2 c thinly sliced romaine lettuce
½ red bell pepper, thinly sliced
3 T rice vinegar
1 T soy sauce
¾ tsp grated fresh ginger
¾ tsp dark sesame oil
1/8 tsp black pepper
3 T chopped chives
Pulse chicken in food processor until coarsely chopped. (I skipped this step since my chicken was already shredded.) Transfer to bowl. Pulse peanuts in food processor until coarsely chopped, transfer to bowl. Fit food processor with shredding attachment, and shred carrots and broccoli stem. Transfer to bowl and add romaine and bell pepper.
Whisk together vinegar, soy sauce, ginger, sesame oil, and pepper in a small bowl. Pour over salad and toss to coat. Sprinkle with chives.
Cookbook Challenge # 15 - Sandwiches of History
I’ve seen Barry W. Enderwick’s entertaining historical sandwich-making and tasting videos on TikTok, so naturally I acquired a copy of Sandwiches of History: the Cookbook (2024). In keeping with the spirit of the book, I picked an option that seemed at least moderately weird: Hot Doggy Sloppy Joe from 1970. I tripled the recipe so it would feed the whole family for dinner, and all three of us gave it the same rating: “Huh. Not bad.” Probably not endorsement enough that I’ll make it again, but I wouldn’t have been shocked if we’d all taken one bite and decided we had to order pizza. Really, the tomato sauce and chili sauce made a nice contrast with the saltiness of the hot dogs, which almost makes me think the folks who like ketchup on their hot dogs have a point.
Hot Dog Sloppy Joe (note that this is the single-serving version from the cookbook)
1 hamburger bun
2 tsp unsalted butter
1 hot dog
2 T unsalted butter
1 T minced onion
2 T minced celery
2 oz canned tomato sauce
¾ tsp cornstarch
1 T tomato chili sauce
salt and pepper
1 dill pickle, chopped
Separate the hamburger bun into top and bottom and toast both sides. Butter the inside and set aside.
Cut the hot dog into 1/8-inch thick slices and set aside.
In a large skillet over medium-low heat, melt 2 T butter. Add the minced onion and saute until transparent, 2-3 minutes. Add the minced celery and continue to cook until the celery is soft, 2-3 minutes longer.
Meanwhile, in a bowl, stir together the tomato sauce and cornstarch until completely dissolved. Add to the skillet with the onion and celery mixture. Stir in the chili sauce, salt, pepper, and hot dog slices. Cook over very low heat 15 minutes, or until thickened slightly. Stir frequently to avoid sticking. Spoon the hot dog mixture over hte bottom of the bun and sprinkle with chopped dill pickle. Add the top bun ans serve.
Cookbook Challenge # 14 - Hershey’s Cocoa Cookbook
After a couple of weeks off where my back pain was such that my husband, son, and various restaurants on DoorDash were doing all the cooking, I’m back in my cookbook challenge with one I inherited from my mom, Hershey’s Cocoa Cookbook (1979). I’d planned to try the Chocolate Fudge Cake recipe that I’m guessing by the faintly stained page is the one my mom used to make for my and my dad’s birthdays, but with the lingering back pain I decided to stick with something simple: Chocolate Brownies.
These are as basic a homemade brownie recipe as you’d find, and make a rather small batch—nice for your family of three, but maybe you’d want to double it or choose a different option for your office potluck. They’re not as rich and gooey as most modern brownie mixes, more like a soft cookie than a dense cake, but they taste good, and I think they’d be a perfect base to serve a la mode or with berries and whipped cream.
Chocolate Brownies
2 eggs
1 c. sugar
½ tsp vanilla
½ c. butter, melted
½ c. unsifted all-purpose flour
1/3 c. Hershey’s Cocoa
¼ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
½ c. chopped nuts, optional (I left them out because I’ve never been a fan of nuts in brownies)
Beat eggs in small mixer bowl. Gradually add sugar and vanilla; beat well. Blend in melted butter. Combine dry ingredients; gradually add to egg mixture until well blended. Stir in nuts, if using. Spread in greased 8-inch square pan. Bake at 350 F for 30-35 minutes or until brownie begins to pull away from edges of pan. Cool in pan. Frost if desired; cut into squares.
April reading
I haven’t been posting cookbook challenges lately because for the past several weeks I’ve been dealing with a back spasm flareup. I’m starting to get back on my feet (literally!) so hopefully I’ll be back in my cookbook explorations soon.
In the meantime, being laid up and missing over a week of work meant I got a ton of reading done, much of it from the Nebula finalist list:
Into the Wild Magic by Michelle Knudsen. Nebula finalist, Andre Norton Award. This middle grade novel is about a pair of 6th-grade girls, both loners for different reasons, who forge a tentative friendship in the midst of an adventure back and forth between our world and a fantasy kingdom
Disgraced Return of the Kap's Needle by Renan Bernardo. Nebula finalist, Novella. Now that was the bleakest story I've read in recent memory. Very well-written, of course, but oh so bleak.
"The Life and Times of Alavira the Great as Written by Titos Pavlou and Reviewed by Two Lifelong Friends" by Eugenia Triantafyllou. Nebula finalist, Novelette. A meta story--while we learn what happens to Alavira the Great, the real story is between the two friends who are reading it, blogging it, and arguing about it.
But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo. Nebula finalist, Novella. This is a gothic fantasy mystery sapphic romance, which is a lot of things for one novella to be! Fair warning: as an arachnophobe, I had to consciously turn off the visual part of my imagination for a good chunk of this one.
The Nebula Short Story Finalists
I'm counting these as a single "book" for the purpose of tracking how much I've read this year, since doing it any other way would feel like artificially inflating my numbers. I figure it's like reading an anthology or an issue of a short story magazine. Anyway, the stories in question are:
“Through the Machine”, by P.A. Cornell (Lightspeed 5/25) - a cautionary tale about AI
“Six People to Revise You”, by J.R. Dawson (Uncanny 1-2/25) - a cautionary tale about letting other people definie you
“In My Country”, by Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld 4/25) - a cautionary tale about authoritarianism
“The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead”, by E.M. Linden (PodCastle 2/18/25) - the ghosts left behind when the last of an island's population evacuates to the mainland
“Because I Held His Name Like a Key”, by Aimee Ogden (Strange Horizons 6/16/25) - Alan Turing among the fae
“Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything”, by Effie Seiberg (Diabolical Plots 5/25) - the intersection of superpowers and disability
The Name Ziya by Wen-Yi Lee. Nebula finalist, Novelette. I was impressed by the richness of world-building and character development packed in such a short word count.
"Our Echoes Drifting Through the Marsh" by Marie Croke. Nebula finalist, Novelette. Another example of particular, immersive worldbuilding.
"We Begin Where Infinity Ends" by Somto Ihezue. Nebula finalist, Novelette. Another lovely story, one I'd classify as hopepunk, with a beautiful spare elegance to the writing style.
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz. Nebula finalist, Novella. In a near-future San Francisco (2060s? 2070s?) a group of sentient robots take over an abandoned restaurant, and found family and delicious noodles happen. I loved it, though as a (State of) Washingtonian, I was a bit miffed that the civil war in the backstory led only to Californian independence. If this country falls apart, the West Coast had better stick together! Unless we go with Oregon (and British Columbia if they want to come with) and form the Republic of Cascadia.
The Death of Mountains by Jordan Kurella. Nebula finalist, Novella. The challenge of judging a contest like this is that you get stories that are so very different from one another, yet all so good at being what the author set out for them to be. This story, which is basically Death having a debate with a mountain it was sent to kill, reads like a fable you might tell around a campfire on a mountain. And it's lovely in an entirely different way than Automatic Noodle.
Descent by Wole Talabi. Nebula finalist, Novella. A really interesting piece of Afrofuturism with a far-future human community living on a gas-giant-type planet encounter dangers using newly developed equipment to explore their planet's dangerous depths...and if I'd known what I was getting into, I wouldn't have read this one the day before the Artemis II crew returned to Earth. Because it's not like my Gen X Challenger-Columbia anxiety needed extra fuel.
Goblin Girl by K.A. Mielke. Nebula Finalist, Andre Norton Award. This one was a little slow to start, but ended up being fun. The lessons about prejudice and reconciliation weren't at all subtle, but that's not atypical for middle grade fiction.
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. Nebula finalist, novel. Gorgeously written and memorably disturbing historical horror.
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh. Nebula finalist, Novel. This is tagged as dark academia, though it didn't seem especially dark to me--maybe because I read it just after The Buffalo Hunter Hunter! In any case, it's a magic boarding school story from the POV of a teacher, and I enjoyed the intersection of the magical world with mundane bureaucracy and academic infighting.
Jesus Feminist by Sarah Bessey. I don't think I'm really the target audience for this one--it feels more like a series of lectures for a women's retreat than a work of theology/scholarship, which is what I was expecting.
Rome's Greatest Defeat by Adrian Murdoch. A history of the battle/massacre in the Teutoburg Forest, plus a couple of final chapters on how the battle has been interpreted in German culture in more recent centuries. A bit dry and academic, but short and readable.
Heart of Iron by C.M. Alongi. I got this because it's based on the author's CaFae Latte video series on TikTok and YouTube--one of those fun serials of short videos where the creator plays all the parts using different costumes and props. The book is more violent and dark--the author recommended that readers take it as a sort of AU to the cozier, more lighthearted video version--but still fun and not at all grimdark.
Darksight Dare by Lois McMaster Bujold. A new Penric & Desdemona novella always means I'm dropping everything to read it right away, and this one did not disappoint.
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang. Nebula finalist, novel (which, yes, I finished after the voting deadline passed--it wasn't included in the judging packet from SFWA, and the hold took awhile to come from the library). More dark academia, and certainly an insightful look at the flaws and challenges of university life, at least as they appear to me in my academic research administration day job at UW.
Cookbook Challenge # 13 - More With Less
More With Less (1976) is a recipe collection published by the Mennonite Central Committee that was very popular among my decidedly non-Mennonite post-collegiate social circle in the early 1990s, largely I think for the somewhat lefty faith-based frugality of it all. It has a few favorite recipes I go back to regularly, notably the Old-Fashioned Bread Omelet, which is a perfect quick, filling meal when you have a few eggs, a little bit of milk and cheese, and the heel end of some good bread, and Kusherie, which is a bit of a production with all the chopping and multiple pots involved but is also how I first experienced the glories of deeply caramelized onions. With that said, it’s very much of its era, and the recipes run to the hearty and bland.
Tonight our dinner was Hearty Lentil-Sausage Soup, which was indeed hearty and on the bland side. Though in fairness, the recipe contributor (Mabel Eshleman of Lancaster, PA) did recommend having Tabasco sauce ready to pass at the table.
Hearty Lentil-Sausage Soup
Brown in 5 qt kettle:
1 lb pork sausage, broken into chunks
Remove meat and pour off all but ¼ c drippings. (Modern sausage and pork in general being leaner than that of 50 years ago, there wasn’t even that much fat left in total.) Add:
2 medium onions, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
4 medium parsnips, cut in chunks (optional)
Cook five minutes until onions and garlic are tender. Add:
2 c lentils
1 T salt
½ tsp marjoram (I used a full tsp of Italian seasoning since it’s mostly marjoram, and the only marjoram-only spices at my local QFC were ridiculously expensive for an herb I rarely use)
2 c cooked tomatoes or juice (I used a 14 oz can diced plus a small can of tomato paste)
2 qt water
browned sausage
Simmer 30 minutes or until tender. (At 30 minutes the lentils were al dente and the parsnips not quite done, so I let it go another 15.) Cut in diagonal slices:
1 loaf Italian bread
To serve, place a bread slice in each soup bowl and spoon soup over bread. (I had a loaf of take-and-bake garlic bread on the shelf, so I heated that up and served it alongside instead.)
Cookbook Challenge # 12 - Grist
Grist: A Practical Guide to Cooking Grains, Beans, Seeds, and Legumes by Abra Berens (2021) is what it says on the tin—an encyclopedic guide to working with both the well-known and more obscure members of those culinary families. As part of our Easter dinner, I made Cranberry Bean Salad w/ Roasted Carrots, which also entailed making one of the condiments from the front of the cookbook, Mojo de Ajo. It all came out pretty good, and certainly paired nicely with the ham. I’m not sure I’ll make the beans or mojo de ajo again, but I for sure will add those roasted carrots to my repertoire as a simple, spicy-sweet way to make use of an accessible, affordable vegetable.
Cranberry Bean Salad w/ Roasted Carrots
1 lb dried cranberry beans
1 onion, cut into chunks
10 sprigs thyme, tied in a bundle
3 bay leaves
1 tsp salt, plus more for the carrots
1 lb carrots, cut in half
olive oil
chili flakes
1 recipe Mojo de Ajo
10 sprigs cilantro, stems and leaves roughly chopped
½ cup pepitas, toasted
In a large pot, cover the beans with water by 2 inches. Add the onion, thyme, and bay leaves. Bring to boil, then turn down to a simmer and cook until the beans are tender (anywhere from 20 to 90 minutes, depending on whether the beans have been soaked and their freshness). When the beans are tender, add the salt and let sit for 10 minutes. Remove the herbs and discard.
Preheat the oven to 400 F. Toss the carrots with a glug of olive oil, a couple pinches of salt, and a pinch of chili flakes. Roast the carrots until deeply caramelized on the outside and tender on the inside, about 40 minutes.
To serve, spoon a heaping serving of cooked beans per person into a bowl and gently fold in ¼ cup of mojo de ajo per serving. Transfer the beans into a serving dish or individual bowls, portion the carrots evenly among the serving dishes, and garnish with the chopped cilantro and a handful of pepitas.
Mojo de Ajo
1 cup neutral oil
20 garlic cloves, peeled and left whole
2 sprigs oregano
3 limes, zest and juice
1 orange, zest and juice
Preheat the oven to 300 F. Combine the oil, garlic cloves, and oregano in a small ovenproof pot. Bake for 45 minutes or until the garlic is soft and fragrant.
Allow to cool. Remove the oregano sprigs, squeezing any oil clinging to the leaves back into the pot. Add the citrus zest and juice and a couple of pinches of salt. Stir to combine, lightly smashing the garlic clvoes with the back of the spoon to make a thick, oily sauce.
March reading
The Nebula finalist list came out this month, so as predicted I picked up my reading pace, finishing a total of 16 books. (OK, some were novellas or novelettes, but that’s still a lot of reading.) Overall, this was a great reading month, before and after diving into the Nebula list.
Imposter Syndrome and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim by Patricia Park. A YA coming-of-age story about a high school senior who, as a scholarship student at a prep school and the ethnically Korean daughter of immigrants who came to America from Argentina doesn't feel like she really fits in anywhere.
There Will Be Fire by Rory Carroll. I was 13 when the IRA bombing/attempted assassination of Margaret Thatcher happened, so I must've heard about it at the time--my family watched the NBC Nightly News religiously--but it didn't make enough of an impression on me that I remembered it. Carroll managed to make me feel empathy will all sides, which is remarkable, given that I'm not prone to compassion for terrorists or, for entirely different reasons and on a different level, Thatcherite Tories.
Ruby Finley vs. the Interstellar Invasion by K. Tempest Bradford. Just a charming middle grade novel about a sixth grade aspiring entomologist who finds a strange bug that's maybe not of this world...
The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. Basically an 1830s travelogue by an uncommonly smart, observant, and probably some flavor of neurospicy young man who readers know will later go on to develop the theory of evolution. He's already very much the scientist, though from his observations on geology and geography I'm almost surprised he didn't stumble upon plate tectonics, and he also flirts with germ theory on occasion.
The Wind's Twelve Quarters by Ursula K. Le Guin. I expected to like this better than I did, since Le Guin was an acknowledged master of a genre of fiction that forms the majority of my fiction reading and all of my current writing. But most of the stories in this collection left me a bit cold--they just left me feeling distant, like an observer rather than a sort of vicarious participant. "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" deserves every bit of its reputation as a classic, though.
Nobody's Baby by Olivia Waite. Second in a series of cozy and delightful space mysteries set aboard a generation ship. (Full disclosure: the author is a friend of mine.)
Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham. I thought I knew almost everything there was to know about what led to the Challenger's destruction. We even studied the Morton Thiokol engineers' attempt to get the launch canceled as a Harvard Business School case study in a business ethics class my senior year in college! But this book shows just how deep the technological and especially cultural/management problems were, and of how long a duration. I finished the book amazed that NASA has only lost three crews...but also with just a hint of nostalgia for the child I once was, watching shuttle launches in school, visiting the Marshall Space Flight Center on field trips, and dreaming of maybe becoming an astronaut.
A Radical Act of Free Magic by H.G. Parry. I absolutely adored this book (the second in an alternate history duology that began with A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians), partly for its theme of fighting on in the face of apparent hopelessness, but mostly for the characters and their bonds with each other, particularly the friendship between Williams Pitt and Wilberforce that's the beating heart of the story.
Blessings and Disasters by Alexis Okeowo. Memoir/history/current events journalism by an author who grew up in my own home state of Alabama, though she's a bit over 10 years younger than me and grew up in Montgomery as the child of Nigerian immigrants while I grew up in a rural area not far from Birmingham as a child of mostly Scots-Irish descent whose family showed up around 1820. It's a good book, and I found truth in how she describes Alabamians as simultaneously and genuinely both kind and generous and cutthroat and ruthless.
A Bride's Story, Volume 15 by Kaoru Mori. Latest in this gorgeously illustrated historical manga series.
Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins. I begin my marathon of 2025 Nebula finalist reading with this finalist for the Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction. Collins is an excellent writer, and this book would've kept me turning the pages even if I weren't embarking upon a speed-reading marathon, but I hated the fact that I knew everything was going to end so horribly given that this is the story of Haymitch Abernathy's Hunger Games. Sort of like watching Rogue One that way.
Never Eaten Vegetables by H.H. Pak. Book two in the Nebula marathon is a novelette about a colony ship carrying embryos and one of the embryos in question as a young woman of 26. It took me a few pages to get into the rhythm of the alternating timelines, but I found this quite lovely and moving.
Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou. Nebula reading continues with this Best Novel nominee. This is a gothic horror retelling of the Bluebeard story. I can tell it's excellently done, creepy and disturbing, but I'm not as much of a horror fan as I am science fiction and fantasy, particularly with books like this one which are unrelentingly bleak.
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar. This Nebula Novella finalist was just...chef's kiss...for me. Beautiful writing, satisfying story.
Uncertain Sons by Thomas Ha. Nebula finalist, Novelette category. This one felt old-school to me, and I don't mean that in a bad OR a good way. It just had the feeling of a horror-infused SF adventure that I wouldn't have been surprised to find in, say, a collection of top-quality SF from 1985 instead of among 2025 award finalists.
Wearing the Lion by John Wiswell. Nebula finalist, Novel category. This one is a sheer delight from beginning to end, humor and heart balancing genuine grief and a touch of horror in a tale alternating between the POVs of a sweet-natured himbo Heracles and a Hera showing divine excess in both vengeance and repentance.
Cookbook Challenge # 11 - EveryDayCook
EveryDayCook by Alton Brown (2016) is the second Alton Brown cookbook I’ve drawn, this one focused more on how he cooks at home than his Good Eats repertoire. Out of many good choices, I settled on Breakfast Carbonara (though I served it for dinner) and Hot Saltine Hack. I’ll probably add the carbonara to my regular rotation, and I thought the saltines were interesting. I might try them again some other time with a different flavor than mustard. Chili powder or cumin might be nice, or you could take them in a sweet direction with a lighter hand on the hot sauce and a bit of cinnamon and sugar.
Breakfast Carbonara
1 T grated orange zest
¼ cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
¼ cup fresh bread crumbs (I used panko)
1 T kosher salt
8 oz dry linguine, regular or whole wheat
8 oz bulk breakfast sausage
2 scallions, thinly sliced
4 large eggs, at room temperature
3 oz finely grated Pecorino Romano (I used parmesan because I couldn’t find pecorino romano at the store)
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
Combine the orange zest, parsley, and bread crumbs in a small bowl. Set aside.
Add two quarts water, the salt, and linguine to a large saute pan. Cover and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to low and cook for 4 minutes, or until the pasta is al dente. (I just used my regular pasta into a large pot of boiling salted water technique. I know it’s starting to sound like I’ve substituted ingredients and technique to excess, but I swear it came out a lot like the picture in the cookbook, and I think I stayed true to the spirit of the dish.)
Meanwhile cook the sausage in a 12-inch cast iron skillet over medium-high heat until brown. Add the scallions and cook until fragrant.
While the pasta and sausage are cooking, whisk together the eggs, cheese, and pepper.
Drain the pasta, reserving ¼ cup of the pasta water. Add the pasta to the sausage, tossing the pasta to coat in the fat. (I threw in a splash of olive oil because the sausage was super lean.)
Remove from the heat, add the egg mixture, and thin as needed with the reserved pasta water.
Serve immediately with a generous sprinkle of the pasta mixture.
Hot Saltine Hack
2 T clarified butter, melted
1 T hot sauce
1 tsp dry mustard powder
1 sleeve saltines (about 40 crackers)
Heat the oven to 350 F.
Meanwhile, whisk the butter, hot sauce, and dry mustard together in a large mixing bowl. Add the saltines and toss to coat.
Spread the crackers on a half sheet pan.
Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until the saltines just start to brown.
Brown suggests serving these with a sardine pate recipe from the book, but I’m not a sardine person, nor indeed a fish person in general. They’d probably be good with any number of pates or creamy savory spreads, though.
Cookbook Challenge # 10 - What’s For Dessert
After skipping last weekend because I had a back pain flare, I’m back to my cookbooks this week. This afternoon I baked the Crunchy Almond Cake from What’s For Dessert by Claire Saffitz (2022). It bills itself as featuring simple recipes, but I’d say its idea of simple is something like the AllTrails ranking of hike difficulty, where you embark upon what claims to be an easy hike and find yourself scrambling over boulders alongside a mini-ravine in an obscure North Georgia state park and wondering how long it’ll take anyone to find you if you fall and break your leg or worse, not that I’m speaking from very specific personal experience or anything. (Luckily the only thing that fell was my level of trust in the AllTrails app.)
With that said, I’m a far more experienced cook and baker than I am a hiker, so this cake was well within my competency level, but this is not the cookbook for a beginner. My chosen recipe rated as Very Easy, which is the lowest ranking in the book, but as you’ll see it’s fairly time-consuming and fiddly. It’s delicious, though, and would make an AMAZING based for strawberry shortcake or with a rich chocolate sauce. And I’m sure I’d find it quicker and simpler on a second or third attempt.
Crunchy Almond Cake
1 cup sliced unblanched almonds
Melted butter for the pan
¼ cup demerara sugar (I used turbinado, which isn’t quite the same but is what I could readily source)
¾ cup plus 2 T all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
¾ tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt or ½ tsp Morton kosher salt
7 oz almond paste
1 ½ sticks unsalted butter at room temperature
2/3 cup granulated sugar
4 large eggs at room temperature
¼ cup amaretto
2 tsp vanilla extract
Preheat the oven: Arrange an oven rack in the center position and preheat to 350 F.
Toast the almonds: Scatter the sliced almonds across a sheet pan in an even layer and toast until they’re golden and fragrant, 5 to 8 minutes, tossing halfway through. Set aside to cool. Leave the oven on.
Prepare the pan: Brush the bottom and sides of a 9-inch cake pan with melted butter, then line the bottom with a round of parchment paper and smooth it to eliminate any air bubbles. Butter the parchment.
Make the crunchy layer: Lightly sprinkle some of the demerara sugar across the bottom of the prepared pan, then scatter a handful of the toasted almonds on top (it’s fine if they’re still warm). Sprinkle with more demerara sugar, scatter more almonds, and continue alternating until you’ve used all the demerara sugar and toasted almonds and covered the bottom of the pan in an even layer. Set the pan aside.
Mix the dry ingredients: In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt until combined. Set aside.
Cream the almond paste, butter, and sugar: Crumble the almond pasted into a large bowl (your standard mixing bowl if you’re using a stand mixer) and break up any larger pieces with your fingertips. Add the butter and granulated sugar and beat with a hand mixer or stand mixer with the paddle attachment at medium-low speed until the sugar and butter are incorporated. Increase the speed to medium-high and beat, pausing occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl, until the almond paste is broken down into tiny pieces and the mixture is pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes.
Beat in the eggs: Beat the eggs one at a time on medium-high until smooth, then continue to beat until the mixture is very light, thick, and creamy, about 1 minute longer.
Make the batter: Reduce the mixer speed to low and add about half of the dry ingredients, mixing just until the flour disappears, then add the amaretto and vanilla and mix until combined. Add the remaining dry ingredients and mix just until you have a smooth batter. Switch to a flexible spatula and fold the batter several times, scraping the bottom and sides of the bowl, to make sure it’s evenly mixed.
Fill the pan: Slowly and gently scrape the batter into the prepared pan, trying not to disturb the almonds and sugar at the bottom. Carefully work the batter to the edges of the pan with a spatula and smooth the surface.
Bake: Bake the cake until the surface is domed and deep golden brown (it will brown more than you might expect) and a toothpick or cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes (mine took closer to 45). Let the cake cool in the pan for 15 minutes, then, using a small offset spatula or paring knife and keeping it pressed firmly against the side of the pan, cut down and around the cake to loosen it. Invert the cake onto a wire rack and slowly remove the pan, then carefully peel away the parchment if it sticks to the cake. Let cool completely.
February Reading
I read 11 books in February, just like January. I’ll need to pick up the pace soon, once the Hugo and Nebula finalist lists come out.
Brigands and Breadknives by Travis Baldree: The latest entry in the Legends & Lattes cozy fantasy-verse, wherein Fern the rattkin bookseller from Bookshops & Bonedust undergoes something of a midlife existential crisis, along with adventures with a legendary elf adventurer, a goblin, and talking blades.
Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues by Jonathan Kennedy: Its subtitle is a misnomer, as it's more a world history focusing on how infectious diseases impacted history across eight different eras than an epidemiological history of the diseases in question. With that said, I think it's an interesting read, but you should know going in not to expect, say, a deep dive into the Great Plague of Athens and its possible causes, and that he barely addresses the medical side of the great 20th and 21st century pandemics (influenza, HIV, Covid), instead focusing on how socioeconomic factors influenced the impact of the latter two in different parts of the world.
Time Loops & Meet Cutes by Jackie Lau: One of my favorite contemporary romance authors dips her toe into SFF with a time loop romance--our heroine gets stuck on June 20 after eating dumplings from a mysterious booth at a night market in Toronto on her way home from work--and it's charming.
Building God’s Kingdom by Julie Ingersoll: This 2015 book is an academic examination of Christian Reconstructionism--a subset of Calvinism that advocates for a form of theocracy (though they don't like it when you call it that). Ingersoll focuses on how a movement that's pretty fringe in terms of adherents who affirmatively follow its precepts is hugely influential within the broader religious right, especially through their focus on Christian homeschooling curricula. And while this was far in the future when Ingersoll wrote this (oh, the good old days), their fingerprints are all over Project 2025.
Breach of Promise by Elisabeth Fairchild: This is one of several traditional Regency romances I discovered in a used bookstore in Sequim, WA during a getaway to the Olympic Peninsula last fall. Books like this were my romance gateway drug as a teen, and I still have a nostalgic love of them. For this particular entry, I enjoyed the section where the hero and heroine were exploring the Cotswold countryside, though I felt like the antagonists were a bit cartoonish, and the hero's noble titles weren't handled quite right--a nitpick of mine since I figured out how they worked and committed the system to memory when I was writing this era and get annoyed when they're wrong. Like, even in a total romp with deliberately anachronistic social mores--which this isn't--IMHO it's best to get those historical and cultural details right. It's not like the people who don't know or care about this stuff will mind them being right, and you'll avoid pulling utter nitpicky pedants like me out of the story.
Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist by Daniel Pollack-Pelzner: I'm as big a Hamilton fan as you'd expect from someone who's really into history and somewhat into musical theater, and I both admire and envy Miranda's talent and the fact he was able to accomplish so much so young. This book did not change any of that, and gave me added insight into all the collaboration and iteration that's gone into making his work so successful. As a writer, my creative work isn't as inherently collaborative, but I could still learn a lot about patience and persistence in editing and rewriting.
The Barren Grounds by David Roberston: This is the first in a middle grade portal fantasy series about a pair of First Nations foster siblings who find a way into a world stuck in an endless winter (somewhat a la Narnia) but populated with animal people from the author's (and the protagonists') Cree heritage. It was a nice Sunday afternoon read for me, though I doubt I'll continue the series--at least for me, it's a very good story for the age group it's written for but didn't have as much crossover appeal for adult readers.
The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson: A deep history of Emmett Till's murder that puts the events and people involved into a rich context of the specific place and time that the atrocity unfolded in.
Useless Etymology by Jess Zafarris: After bouncing off the light fiction read I'd intended for a break between two heavy nonfiction histories, I chose this fun, chatty book about etymology instead. Among other things, I now know that pineapple got its English name from its visual resemblance to a pinecone--which used to sometimes be called a pineapple itself, back when "apple" could mean any fruit or fruit-adjacent thing growing on a tree.
American Midnight by Adam Hochschild: This look at the horrifying, repressive, and often violent assault on Americans' civil liberties during and immediately after WWI delves into little-known history, but on another level it's all too recognizable and familiar.
Over My Dead Body: Unearthing the Hidden History of America’s Cemeteries by Greg Melville: A history and travelogue where the author visits 17 American cemeteries--mostly notable ones, but some obscure--as a sort of journey through how our practices and beliefs around death and dying have changed between Jamestown and now.
Cookbook Challenge # 9 - Rachael Ray Express Lane Meals
So, I forgot to take a picture of this meal…and then I realized that I enjoy cooking, and I like keeping a log of this project, but taking the pictures and getting them to sorta-kinda align properly with the post is fiddly and annoying, so I’m not going to do it anymore! It’s not like I’m expecting or even attempting to have this blog series, or this blog in general, to be some kind of a huge money-making promotional deal for me. It’s more of a diary—I exist, I write things, I read things, and I cook things. (And travel, watch birds, try to identify plants, and all sorts of other things I haven’t written about here as yet.)
With that out of the way, this week’s cookbook was Rachael Ray Express Lane Meals (2006). I have one go-to recipe from it already, easily identified by the cooking stains on the pages: Leek-y Chicken and Couscous. And after this week, I have a second one, despite not being a huge Rachael Ray fan in general. Though I guess it makes sense—it’s basic food for everyday people, and despite certain bougie aspirations most days I’m a basic person just trying to get dinner on the table.
My new recipe is Cowboy Spaghetti, which based on the title I was expecting to have a Tex-Mex vibe, but it’s really more of a cheeseburger or sloppy joe with pasta instead of bread for the starch. Entirely in a good way—all three of us cleaned our plates, and the dish made leftovers enough to keep us in lunches for a couple days.
Cowboy Spaghetti
1 lb spaghetti
1 T olive oil
3 slices bacon, chopped
1 lb ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
3-4 garlic cloves, chopped (I used a generous teaspoon of jarlic)
2 tsp hot sauce
1 T Worcestershire sauce
14 oz can chopped or crushed fire roasted tomatoes
8 oz can tomato sauce
sharp cheddar cheese, grated
4 scallions, trimmed and chopped
salt and pepper
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Salt the water and add the spaghetti. Cook the pasta to al dente and drain.
Heat a deep skillet over medium-high heat. Add the olive oil and bacon. Brown and crisp the bacon, then remove with a slotted spoon to a paper towel-lined plate. (Note: The recipe never says when to put the bacon pieces back. I added them just before adding the spaghetti to the sauce, but you could also sprinkle them as a garnish like the scallions.) Drain off excess fat from skillet if necessary, leaving just enough to coat the bottom. Add the beef and crumble it as it browns, 3-4 minutes. Add the onions and garlic and stir into the meat. Season the meat with salt and pepper, hot sauces, and Worcestershire. Cook for 5 minutes more, then stir in the tomatoes and tomato sauce.
Add the hot spaghetti to the sauce and combine. Adjust the seasonings and serve in shallow bowls, topped with cheese and scallions.
Cookbook Challenge # 8 - Good Eats 4: The Final Years
We own all of Alton Brown’s Good Eats cookbooks and several others he authored—it just happened that Good Eats 4: The Final Years (2022) came up first in my random draw. When I saw it included a recipe for buttermilk biscuits, I knew I had to try it. I’ve tried to make homemade biscuits multiple times, all of which were failures that I deemed a dishonor to my Southern heritage. And since I was already set up for breakfast for dinner, I picked scrambled eggs for my second recipe.
Both turned out well. The biscuits weren’t perfect—I think despite my best efforts not to I still overmixed the dough a bit—but they’re definitely the best I’ve ever made. For the eggs, I’m not sure I’ll use the harissa paste again, but I do like the technique of heating the pan in the stove first, since it took all of 30 seconds or so to cook and plate the eggs.
Buttermilk Biscuits: Reloaded
Software
340 g (2 cups + 6 T) all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
20 g (4 1/2 tsp) baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp kosher salt
60 g (1/4 c) leaf lard, chilled
30 g (2 T) unsalted butter, sliced into 1/8-inch thick pats and chilled
1 c low-fat buttermilk, chilled
Tactical Hardware (i.e. tools you might not have on your shelf already)
A biscuit cutter in the 2 1/2-inch range
Heat the oven to 450 F.
In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
Working quickly (so the fats don’t melt) use your fingertips to rub the lard and butter into the dry mixture until it resembles small, coarse chunks—not quite crumbs. (I cheated and used a pastry cutter, since one came with the biscuit cutter set I bought and I remembered that’s how my mom used to do it.)
Make a well in the center and pour in the buttermilk. Stir until the dough just begins to come together. It will be very sticky. While it’s still in the bowl, fold the dough over itself two times so that it takes up any remaining flour, then turn it out onto a lightly floured work surface.
Dust the top of the dough with flour and, with floured hands, gently fold the dough over itself eight more times, turning one quarter turn before each folding motion. Press the dough into a 1-inch thick round, then cut out biscuits with a floured 2 1/2 inch cutter, being sure to press straight down without twisting until the cutter reaches the board. You’ll need to flour the cutter between cuts.
Center the biscuits on a baking sheet, shoulder to shoulder, so that they just touch. Re-form the scrap dough, working it as little as possible, and continue cutting until the dough is used up. You should have about 8 biscuits.
Bake in the center of the oven for 10 minutes. Rotate the pan 180 degrees in the oven and continue baking until the biscuits are tall and light gold on top, 8-12 more minutes depending on your oven and the temperature of the dough.
Remove to a clean kitchen towel set in a bowl and fold the towel over to preserve warmth and steam the biscuits. Serve with butter and jam, or mustard and thin-cut ham, or sausage patties…or just eat them.
A Scary Good Scramble: Reloaded
Software
1 tsp unsalted butter, softened at room temperature for 10 minutes
2 tsp mayonnaise
1 tsp water
1 tsp harissa, optional but highly recommended
1/4 tsp kosher salt
3 large eggs
freshly ground black pepper (optional)
Tactical hardware
A 10-inch carbon-steel skillet
A rubber or silicone spatula
Park the skillet in the middle of the oven and crank the heat to 350 F. When the oven says it has arrived at that thermal destination, let it heat for another 30 minutes.
While the oven and the pan heat, measure the butter out and let sit at room temperature. The butter should be soft but not melted.
When the oven and pan are good and hot, whisk the mayonnaise, water, harissa, and salt together in a medium bowl. Whisk in the eggs one at a time until light and smooth.
Remove the pan from the oven and place over medium heat. Add the butter to the pan and swirl to coat. Pour in the egg mixture and count to 10. Stir twice with a rubber spatula and count to 10 again. Stir two more times and count to 5. Stir 3 final times, making sure any liquid egg makes contact with the pan, and count to 5. Transfer immediately to a plate or platter and serve.
Cookbook Challenge # 7 - Around My French Table
Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan (2010) is a lovely cookbook I’m sure I’ll revisit in the future, since I was too frazzled and tired to attempt anything particularly challenging from it this weekend. But the Sweet and Spicy Cocktail Nuts I found time to make were tasty indeed, and I’m likely to make them again.
Sweet and Spicy Cocktail Nuts
1/2 c. sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
pinch of cayenne
1 large egg white
2 cups nuts (whole or halves, but not small pieces) - I used pecan halves
Center a rack in the oven and preheat to 300 F. Spray a nonstick baking sheet with cooking spray or line a baking sheet with a silicon baking mat or parchment paper.
Mix the sugar, salt, and spices together in a small bowl. Beat the egg white lightly with a fork in a larger bowl, just breaking up the white so that it’s runny. Toss in the nuts and stir to coat them with the egg white, then add the sugar and spice mixture and continue to stir so that the nuts are evenly coated.
Using your fingers, lift the nuts one by one from the bowl, letting the excess egg white drip back into the bowl. (The drip back part didn’t work for me because the egg white and spice mixture formed a sort of slurry. I think this is why the nuts turned out almost like crunchy pralines, with a thick, crisp meringue coating, but they tasted fine.) Transfer them to the baking sheet, separating them as best you can.
Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until the nuts are browned and the coating is dry. Cook for 5 minutes, then transfer to another baking sheet, a cutting board, or a piece of parchment paper, breaking them apart as necessary, and let cool completely.
Cookbook Challenge #6 - Taste of Persia
This week I cooked from Taste of Persia: A Cook’s travels Through Armenia, Georgia, Iran, and Kurdistan by Naomi Duguid (2016), which is sort of a cookbook/travelogue hybrid, packed with gorgeous photos of food, people, and sights. It would be just as at home on a coffee table as on a cookbook shelf, but the recipes are mostly straightforward and accessible.
I selected two vegetarian recipes that I could make almost entirely from ingredients already in my pantry: Azeri Mushrooms and Kurdish White Beans. The only things I had to add to my week’s grocery list was fresh mushrooms, scallions, and dill, which makes me feel virtuously frugal.
The results were nothing fancy, but a nice everyday meal with subtly pleasant flavors. I can see myself making the mushrooms again, either as a side dish with meat or, as Duguid suggests in a sidebar, by adding a couple of eggs at the very end of the process for a sort of omelet/scramble.
Azeri Mushrooms
1/2 lb white mushrooms, portobellos, or cremini, cut into bite-size pieces
1 T sunflower or extra virgin olive oil
1/2 c water
1/2 tsp sea salt, or to taste
2 T butter
Generous grinding of black pepper
About 2 T finely chopped fresh dill or scallions (I used both because why not)
Place the mushrooms in a wide heavy skillet or shallow pot over medium heat, add the oil, and shake the pan or stir the mushrooms to spread the oil around. Cook for about a minute, then add the water, raise the heat, and bring the water to a boil. Cover tightly and cook at a strong boil for about 5 minutes. Remove the lid, add the salt, and continue cooking at a medium boil to reduce the liquid. When the bottom of the pain is starting to show, add the butter and stir briefly, then cover and cook over low heat for 5-10 minutes, until the mushrooms are very tender.
Taste for seasoning and adjust if needed. Add the pepper and serve hot or warm, topped with the chopped herbs.
Kurdish White Beans
2 T sunflower or extra virgin olive oil
1/4 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground cumin
3 cups cooked navy beans with their liquid, or about 2 1/2 cups drained and rinsed canned beans plus 1/2 cup water
1 to 1 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup canned crushed tomatoes
1 dried lime (optional) - I had dried lemons on hand from a previous attempt at a Kurdish stew involving beef and quinces, so I substituted it
1 tsp sea salt, or to taste
Place a heavy pot over medium heat, add the oil, and toss in the turmeric and cumin. Cook for a moment, until you see the turmeric fizzing a little in the oil. Add the beans, the water, and the tomatoes. If using the dried lime, prick it several times with the tip of a knife (be careful not to cut yourself, since it can ricochet if it’s very hard) and add it to the pot. Stir to mix, bring to a boil (press on the dried lime so it takes in liquid and starts to sink, rather than floating on the surface) and boil hard for a few minutes.
Add the salt (only 1/2 tsp if the beans are already seasoned), lower the heat to maintain a strong simmer, partially cover, and cook for 30 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.
Cookbook Challenge #5 - Ruhlman’s Twenty
In this week’s episode, Susanna makes mistakes, deals with missing ingredients, and kinda burns both things she cooks…but it tastes pretty good anyway.
When I skimmed through Ruhlman’s Twenty by Michael Ruhlman (2011), it ended up peppered with post-it flags for recipes I’d like to try. It’s in the “real chef educating home cooks” genre, with each of the twenty chapters focused on a key ingredient family or technique. I ultimately chose Snickerdoodles from the Dough chapter and Weekday Coq au Vin from the Water chapter, but I left the other flags in place for possible future delectation.
As the pictures illustrate very well, neither of my attempts yielded a perfect, photogenic result. I burned the snickerdoodles a bit because the cookies didn’t look cooked through to me when the edges were golden, so I went by the 15 minute cooking time. Also, I completely by accident doubled the butter, because between setting out the butter to come to room temperature and actually using it, I forgot that I was only supposed to use half the stick. However, the recipe notes DO list doubling the butter as an option if you prefer thin cookies, which I do, so it’s all good. They were straight-up delicious, though they ended up strangely hollow in the middle, sort of like a macaron. I don’t know if that was the extra butter, the fact I should’ve pulled them a minute or two earlier, or a feature of the fact the sugar-to-flour ratio is 2:1.
The coq au vin ended up missing the listed carrot. I bought a single carrot on my Saturday grocery run (since none of my other meal plans for the week involve them), and I distinctly remember both selecting a good-sized one and watching the checker ring it up, because it’s not often you buy anything for only $0.30 these days. But when I looked for it in the fridge last night it was nowhere to be found, and my husband and son (who unpacked the bags) didn’t remember seeing it, so the bagger must’ve missed it.
Of course, that’s not the reason it looks so ugly in the image—that’s because I didn’t pull it out of the oven when I should’ve because I was draining the noodles I served it over, and, as I should know by now, the broiler can take food from crispy to blackened while your back is turned. It still tasted good, though. I’ll probably make it again, but maybe use thighs and drumsticks rather than whole leg quarters, and reduce the initial roasting time accordingly.
Snickerdoodles
1/4 c/55 g butter, at room temperature
1/2 c/100 g firmly packed brown sugar
1.5 c/300 g granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 c/140 g all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking power
kosher salt
Cinnamon sugar
1/4 c/50 g granulated sugar
4 tsp ground cinnamon
Preheat the oven to 350 F. In a large bowl, combine the butter and sugars. Using a stiff spatula, stir and paddle the ingredients until uniformly combined. Add the egg and whisk rapidly until it is combined into the butter mixture.
In a small bowl, combine the flour, the baking powder, and a three-finger pinch of salt. Stir to distribute the baking power. Fold the flour mixture, in a few batches, into the butter mixture until completely incorporated.
Scoop out tablespoons of the dough and arrange them about three inches apart on a baking sheet/tray. Cover the top of a glass with a damp towel. Press the covered opening of the glass down onto each cookie.
Make the cinnamon sugar: In a small bowl, stir together the granulated sugar and cinnamon until the cinnamon is uniformly distributed.
Sprinkle the cookies with the cinnamon sugar (save leftovers for cinnamon toast!). Bake until the cookies are cooked through and the edges are golden, about 15 minutes.
Weekday Coq au Vin
4 chicken legs
4 oz bacon strips, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 medium onion, finely diced
4 garlic cloves, smashed with the flat side of a knife
kosher salt
3 T all-purpose flour
1 carrot (AWOL)
8 shallots, peeled
2 bay leaves
1/2 lb white mushrooms, quartered (I accidentally bought sliced)
1.5 c red wine (I used a mid-shelf Washington merlot that was on sale because I’m trying to be frugal but it seemed like blasphemy against France to use super-cheap stuff)
2 T honey
freshly ground black pepper
Preheat the oven to 425 F. Place the chicken legs on a large baking sheet/tray and roast for 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and reduce oven temperature to 325 F.
While the chicken is roasting, put the bacon, onion, and garlic in a large ovenproof frying pan, Dutch oven, or other heavy ovenproof pot. The cooking vessel should be large enough to hold the chicken legs snugly in one layer. Add two three-finger pinches of salt and enough water just to cover the ingredients. Cook over high heat until the water has cooked off, about 5 minutes. (My stovetop took at least 10, dang it.) Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook, stirring, until the onion has begun to caramelize, about 5 minutes more. Sprinkle the flour over the onion and bacon and stir to distribute it.
Nestle the chicken skin-side down into the onion mixture in one layer. Tuck the carrot into the pan (alas for my $0.30 carrot!), followed by the shallots and bay leaves, and then the mushrooms. Add the wine and honey and season with pepper. Add enough water to reach 3/4 of the way up the chicken. Bring to a full simmer over high heat. Slide the pan, uncovered, into the oven.
Cook the chicken for 20 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven, turn the chicken skin-side up, and stir the ingredients to make sure that they cook evenly. Taste the sauce; add salt if it needs more. Continue to cook until the chicken is tender, about 20 minutes longer. Remove the pan from the oven. Just the skin side of the chicken should be above the liquid. Set the oven to broil. Broil until the skin is crisp, 3-4 minutes. Remove and discard the carrot and bay leaves.
