Thanks for the Cobbler, Zoomer

Zoomer phoned Friday afternoon.  Lately, we don't talk or email as often as we once and long did, because we each and both have been especially busied on the homefront.  So this was a nice, long catch-up call, and near the end she mentioned again her blueberry cobbler, which was now out of the oven.  "I think I'll taste this and see how it turned out."  I was treated to the interminable sounds of ruminating and mmms, followed by, "It's really good."  You don't say.

"Well, you better check it again, like every ten minutes or so, to make sure it's not deteriorating before dinnertime."

She said she better let me go now, since the dinner hour was more quickly approaching in flyover country, where I needed to get something slammed lovingly prepared and set onto the table.  "Yeah, I'm about to grill pork chops."

"Hey," she said.  "Remember that time I called, and you had to call me back, because your hands were covered with the meatloaf you were mixing?"

"Oh yeah.  I remember that."

"Well, just hearing that made me want meatloaf, so I had to scurry around and fix meatloaf that evening."

"You gotta be kidding.  Ever since you first mentioned your blueberry cobbler, I've had fleeting thoughts of the blueberries in my freezer, then I had to listen to you eating it, and I'm probably going to have to make a cobbler now."

I chose a combo of blueberries and strawberries.  I should have called Zoomer, whose dinner postdates ours by two hours, and made her listen to me eating it, while she was waiting to bury herself in her own.  In fact, we loved it so much that I made another yesterday.


Thanks, Zoomer.  ºÜº

Grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father: To whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.  ~Galatians 1:3-5

Have You Seen the Avocados?

They were on the kitchen counter.


More photo upload surprises for Mom.  Thanks, fellas.

Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.  And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.  ~Matthew 11:4-6

What's for Dinner?

Oh calm down.
We bought 'em at the grocery store.
I just thought they looked like they needed names.

Be thou exalted, Lord, in thine own strength: so will we sing and praise thy power.  ~Psalm 21:13

Somebody Had to Do It

SugarPlum was up for the task.

And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; that ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ; being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God.  ~Philippians 1:9-11

Best Dorky Pizza Film

Our (headless) son-in-law and his wife developed and perfected a pizza and were asked by a few people to share their recipe.  The wife, Little Loo, thought since there were so many little bits and tidbits to explain via text, it might be easier — even fun — to film the process and load it to YouTube...which they did.

Last evening she was putting up quite the whine over the two of them having embarrassed themselves, for what they expected was a lot of hoots and hollers over how dorky, ridiculous, cheesy, and (choose any dumb word and insert here) their little pizza-making film was.  Instead, everyone was nice to them about it, offering flowery raves.

So help me out here.  Help my headless son-in-law and his wife regain their dignity by fully expressing how dorky their little pizza-tutorial is.  You'll make them feel a whole lot better.  It's your assignment.  It's your duty.





Okay, Peeps,...let the insults rip!

And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.  ~II Thessalonians 3:5

Airplane Crashes in Kitchen

He keepeth the paths of judgment, and preserveth the way of his saints.  ~Proverbs 2:8

New Kitchen Floor Covering

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.  ~II Corinthians 5:17

Two Sizes Too Small

or
It's All Zoomer's Fault
She kindly didn't ask, so I rudely never mentioned that I couldn't answer the phone, because I was up to my elbows in wet, brined roosters chicken pieces.  I knew as soon as I got some of that into the crockpot and the rest into the freezer, I had to get the dough made for rolls, or our dinner wouldn't be complete.  On this frosty, windy day, I rigged a lofty stand atop the woodstove and set the dough to rise, before I returned Zoomer's call.

Well, we hadn't talked voice-to-voice in a long while, and I've been largely email-absent in recent weeks, so we had some catching up to do.  Even so, while we talked, I thought to check on my dough, which had risen posthaste, and I'd nearly baked the stuff in the bowl, because it was entirely too hot on its makeshift perch.  In fact, some of it was baked to the side of the bowl, but I never uttered a peep about that and just punched the stuff down, turned it out and smashed it flat, then used the only cutter I could quickly find, as I rummaged through the little drawer with my one free hand.  Abused dough and phone call or no, we were going to have rolls for dinner.

Same free hand reached into the bakeware cabinet above my head and pulled out what I thought was the new cookie sheet — you know the one I bought, not when my tape measure failed me, but when I should have been paying attention to interior dimensions as well as exterior, as I chose a replacement for my croaked oven.  Who knew some manufacturers make really thick oven walls, and a girl won't have a roaster, cookie sheet, or cake pan that fits in her new oven?  Really big oopsie.  I also didn't know someone had put that huge cookie sheet back in the bakeware cabinet, after I'd assigned it a new home with the grillware.

Still talking and listening, I managed to prepare a sheet and a pan of rolls and set them, this time, beside the woodstove to (hopefully) rise again.  Hey, I'm pretty good.  I got all this done, and Zoomer never even knew I was on my feet, much less being QueenKitchen, as we talked.

Off the phone and with the passing of more time, I checked on my rolls, and as I lifted the previously damp towel, I realized I hadn't thought to brush the tops with butter before I tucked the phone beneath my chin and shrouded the pans.  Now I had cotton toweling stuck to my dinner rolls.  Only two collapsed as I gingerly coaxed the cloth from the dough, and even they perked up a bit while waiting for the oven to heat.

I was on the march to the kitchen with my sheet of rolls when I finally noticed what pan was in my hands.  No.  Uh-uh.  This didn't happen.  And I held the pan before the oven, hoping I was imagining things.

Not.

Well, it'll either work or it won't, and there's no turning back now.


Know what?  It worked.  But if it hadn't, it would have been all Zoomer's fault!


When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom.  ~Proverbs 11:2

PaganNot Chili

Ew, it looks like an ankh, I thought, when I saw the thumbnails of the downloaded photos. Ankh. Ankh. That's not right. Whaddo you call that thing? Oh yeah, yin yan. Yen yan? People say yingyang. I'm just not up-to-speed on the pagan symbols, and I apparently don't even care whether or not I'm spelling or naming or pronouncing them correctly. Just be assured this is not pagan chili.

This is the correct way to serve and eat chili, and it's my duty to instruct: 66% chili, 34% small curd cottage cheese; the largest spoon which will fit in one's (big) mouth.


It's a slow week in blogworld.


But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.
~I Peter 1:15-16

Povitica and My Scary Little Secret

As a young bride living on Strawberry Hill, my mother-in-law was the recipient of a little Croatian lady's recipe for povitica — the best povitica in the universe. I chose in the universe for a reason, but we'll get to that in a minute.

I wanted to make the sugar cookies yesterday, but I knew if I kept postponing the povitica, it would fall off the list, as it has the past two Thanksgivings, so I convinced myself to make the povitica dough and set it to rise, before starting on the cookies. Noting the kitchen seemed particularly cool, I set the bowl of povitica dough by the woodstove in the living room and began making cookies, not thinking at the time about my scary little secret and how long it was going to take me to get those cookies baked.

As soon as the cookies were whisked off the table, I retrieved the povitica dough, which was taunting, "I'm workin' on triple here. I'm about to triple," and was threatening to climb out of the bowl.

Making povitica requires the whole of our large kitchen table and a draping of said table with a sheet. When Purrle's not guarding the bathtub during the day, he's sleeping on the lowest shelf inside the linen cabinet, and don't even think that's not scary: hanging around in that room, thinking you're all by yourself — as naturally you should be — when the linen tower door suddenly pops open, and a groggy cat walks into your presence. So when I raced to the bathroom for a clean sheet, you can be sure I chose the uppermost shelf of sheets, and for insurance purposes, I reached far into the back for my cloth.

With said pristine sheet on the table, I began flipping flour with abandon...and experienced a momentary disorder of attention: *gasp* "Son4, c'mere! You gotta see this! It's a galaxy! Get the camera!"


Best povitica recipe in the universe.
Back on task and having obliterated my universe, the dough was snaked down the length of the table, and the pulling began.


All hands on board ('ceptin' the photographer, of course,
who did soon set the camera aside and do his share of tugging):


You have to pull and stretch, top and bottom:

The dough didn't want to fit neatly onto the table this time, so I began dissecting it and fitting the pieces to available openings. The dissection wasn't such a big deal, for I knew the povitica was going to take a different, final form this year because of my scary little secret: when I ran the self-cleaning feature of my oven about three weeks ago, I croaked the whole thing. Yes, indeed, a mere 19 days before Thanksgiving, my oven bit the dust. Within an hour, I'd ordered a new one, but delivery is scheduled for the 24th, and boy howdy, they better be meaning what they say. In the meantime, all baking is done in the microwave-convection oven combo, and just not so very much can at once be poked into that little box to twirl in the heat. With table-sized povitica staring us in the face, the search was on for suitably sized receptacles.


Then came the cooked glop:


Next, the rolling and cutting:


The glop was moving faster than I was:


But I finally fitted the last piece of povitica into a pan:

It took 5 hours to bake 5 pans of povitica in a little box, but it will have been worth every hour...especially since I fell fast asleep in the living room during the last five minutes of pan #3, and my darling husband dutifully tended the two remaining pans, including basting each with the cocoa-sugar-butter bath at minute number-40 and returning each to the oven for another 10-minute spin.

Rousing from my unintended sleep, I raced to the kitchen, demanding, "Where's my timer!? Where's my timer!?"

"Calm down. It's okay. It's still in the living room. I turned it off. And this is the last loaf."

*hugging husband*
*mopping brow*

The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him. ~Nahum 1:7

Soft Crust Quest

A few weeks ago, Little Loo told me she isn't fond of the crust on homemade bread, since it's never soft like store-bought bread, but she'd searched online and found a remedy for that: spray water on the top of the loaf before baking. She'd tried this, with pleasing results. I've never, personally, had an aversion to the crusts on homemade breads, but I thought this was a great tip I'd want to employ.

My own spray bottle had recently dealt me fits, as I was trying to douse the flames devouring the meats I was grilling; the spring kept sticking. In desperation, I'd removed the sprayer and chucked water willynilly on our dinner, lest it be cinderized, then threw the spray bottle in the trash. I bought a new one, so I could mist my bread.

Before I could test this spray-the-bread tip, I got another call from Loo, with further information about misting her homemade bread. It seems she was so taken with her lovely bread that she decided to soon make another loaf, although this time, her husband saw her pick up the spray bottle and walk to the kitchen with it. She was poised to spray, when he called out, "Loo, what are you doing?" She told him she was going to spray the bread dough before she put it in the oven, and he said, "Loo, that's plant food."

Oopsie.

This past week, she's been experiencing some pain which she and her husband agreed seemed to fit the description of growing pains. At nearly 27 years of age, she deemed that ridiculous...until she remembered the bread basted in Miracle-Gro. You don't suppose...? Naw.

I don't want to eat Miracle-Gro. Does anyone make Miracle-Shrink? I can tell you misting with water did my bread crust no good whatsoever, so I opted for the next tip Loo supplied: set a pan of water beneath the bread in the oven.

I took my bread -- potato bread -- out of the oven, and I didn't need to bite those crusts in order to judge their tenderness. One tap on the top told me I could use them as step stools. Sides and bottoms -- tender. Tops -- steely. I've always had a fair measure of success with buttering the tops of loaves when they come out of the oven, and much as it pained me, I buttered the potato bread I'd authentically and artfully dusted with flour before baking, eradicating, of course, my QueenKitchen artwork.

1. Spray with plant fertilizer. (better) NOT
2. Spray with water. NOT
3. Bake with a pan of water beneath. NOT
4. ________ (fill in the blank) (PLEASE!)



And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. ~John 6:35

My Life Is Peachy

Seventy-five peaches became:

Pie

Cobbler

Sorry. It was lookin' kinda dull and ugly to me.

A dozen half-pints of peach preserves.

Another fifty or so peaches are staring me in the face. Rude. I wish they'd mind their own business.

Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. ~Galatians 6:2

Meal Planning

Do we have anything for me to grill today?

Umm, I dunno. I kinda think maybe not.

Charles lifts the freezer lid.

Why are you talking about grilling something, when I made enough English toffee yesterday to get us through today?

I dunno. Have you looked at it though? I think there's barely a plateful left:



Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. ~Matthew 5:6

O Honey

Farmer John has the tastiest bee squeezin's in the country. We first bought his 2-pound jar. The next few orders were for 4-pounders. We finally realized all the squeezin's slurping we were doing warranted a full-blown gallon of the deep amber delight, and he delivered yesterday.

This morning I said to Charles, "Doesn't that honey look wonderful? I'm thinking about just leaving it on the table, so we can enjoy looking at it."

"Ohhh no. That's not going to become another Stephenson's apple butter!"

"Why not? Wouldn't you pay $XX for a fine painting?"

"No. And we're going to eat it."

Well, actually, I was merely thinking of not poking it into the pantry right away. Man-oh, get a grip. I guess I've scarred him with aging apples.

Two Thanksgivings ago, Mrs. Piecrust brought me apple butter and pie filling from Stephenson's Apple Orchard. Most people who grew up where she and I did know the orchard and have a fondness for it. When Mrs. Piecrust and her husband traveled from their western home in '06, to visit family and friends, they brought me a painting from an artist in our little hometown and tasty delights from the renowned orchard in a nearby city. All have been gracing my kitchen...and driving my menfolk crazy. Not the painting -- no cuckoo noises over the chicken painting -- just the food I refuse to serve them and which taunts them daily from a lofty shelf.

Some have suggested we eat the contents, and I refill the jars with colored water. While my middle name is MarthaNot, I still cannot swallow the concept of colored water as an apt decorative replacement for fat slices of apples and rich, brown opaque apple butter. 'Xcuuuse me!

Mrs. Piecrust, you now know we haven't eaten your gift; to do so would seem a near-sacrilege. We won't eat it...at least until we can no longer buy and sell.

That honey, though? We've no nostalgic or true decorative affections for it. It's goin' down!

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows. Mark 13:8

CarolineNot Cuisine

I launched a second blog today, CarolineNot Cuisine, and the link will always be present in the Places to Visit section of the sidebar.

The offerings are currently few, and I'm beginning with some of our traditional Thanksgiving feast fare. Since we really pork it up (or would that be turkey it up) at feast time, it may be a while before I've posted all those recipes and can move on to other family favorites.

But you're welcome to visit any time and see what we eat.

For the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof. If any of them that believe not bid you to a feast, and ye be disposed to go; whatsoever is set before you, eat, asking no question for conscience sake. ~I Corinthians 10:26, 27

Groan - A Poem

You don't want to wait for hot water from my kitchen faucet, because you could gather twigs and logs, strike a flint rock 67 times to spark a fire, haul water from the crick (or creek, depending on what part of the country you're in), and set it a-boil quicker than hot water travels from the water heater to my kitchen sink. This means, of course, [any green people close your eyes, grope blindly for your mouse, and scroll past this paragraph] that some gallons of water in goodly (/badly) numbers are soaring down the drain while I wait for warm. I'm not about to wash my hands in a glacial flow mid-February. I won't do it.

If any crows were in the house, they'd fly about 15' from the water heater to the kitchen sink. I can walk it under 18'. I'm convinced that the people who -- over a span of 120+ years -- piggled together this house in bits and lopsided pieces, piped that water up the wall, into the attic, down through the living room, into the crawl space, and back across the house into the kitchen. What a great sense of humor they had! (NOT)

So I was exasperated for the 637^th time last evening, as I waited for some warm water to present itself. As it happens, we also need to replace the faucet, which is taking on air somewhere and invariably sets up quite a squawk when it's turned on. If my mood is grunchy, I grab the spigot in a stranglehold and shake it until it shuts up. This time, though, I decided to leave the sink and tend things elsewhere in the kitchen, while the hot water was running wherever it goes before it appears in the sink. And I growled as I walked away: "*grrrr*"

Suddenly, I realized the faucet's groan had changed. And out of the mouth of the least poetic person walking the face of the earth (*raising hand*) came this utterance:

The groan
Changes tone
When the water is warm!

Does that count? Am I a poet? Like renowned poets of the past, am I inspired by the tragedies of life, as I draw from the innermost, creative parts of my being and utter profound, moving, lyrical statements which will one day be published and read with rapt attention and admiration?

The groan
Changes tone
When the water is warm! ©

And you knew me!

But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. ~John 4:14

Speedy(Not) Dinner Rolls

If you think you're about to get a great recipe, browse through your favorites (IE) or bookmarks (Firefox...or is it Foxfire?) -- see, I know some computer lingo -- and hit another site now. Try allrecipes.com, where good cooks will warn you of all the mistakes not to make. You do not want me explaining to you how to do anything. Trust me. I know these things.

At 8:00 a.m. on Thursday, I'd said, "I can't think this morning." I have to be able to think by 8:00 a.m.every morning, because that's when Bammy is served his breakfast: bowl, plate, glass, fork, spoon, egg, 1 cup cereal, honey drizzles, 8 ozs. milk, 9 units insulin, 7 pills-herbs-vitamins-minerals-animal oils. I have to think. Since I roll out of the sack between 4:00 and 5:30 most mornings, pity those of you who receive my blatherings via email during those earlier hours, and 'xcuse me all over the place, because some mornings I'm still braindead at 8:00 a.m.

So I'd made my confession early in the day. I can't think. And this one stuck, as I repeated it around 10:30 a.m., and you know, that thinker never did sharpen. Around noon:30, I remembered I was supposed to bake bread: specifically, hamburger buns. Too late for lunchtime, but they could be ready by dinnertime, so I set about that task, double-boiling a concoction of cornmeal and other stuff. I have no idea now what the other stuff was. The cornmeal goo was to cool a bit before more stuff was added, so it was cooling when I set my hands to the yeast and water: two packages of yeast; ¼ cup warm water.

Two packages. Two packages. I rummaged through my brain. I don't buy my yeast in packages, but in bulk; I'm all about comparing unit pricing, don'tcha know. Okay, one package is 2¼ tablespoons (<----mark that word...and go ahead and laugh at me right now, if you want to). Math is not my forte on a good day, and this was an I-can't-think day, but I managed to multiply 2¼ tablespoons of yeast and added 4 tablespoons of yeast to my empty bowl. Which of those other measuring spoons I then employed to cover the remaining, multiplied fraction, I can't tell you. Even two minutes later, I had no idea whatsoever which one I'd used. But when I added a quarter cup of warm water and observed the hastily formed, sticky mountain of yeastmuck, I rammed the spoon into the top of the mountain (it stood straight up, looking right solidly fixed in that mess), and I stood back to think.

Two packages. One package is 2¼ teaspoons, two packages would...!!! Teaspoons! I just used 12 teaspoons, plus...and see, that's the moment at which I realized I didn't have the vaguest clue what other measurement I'd added. I'd added some other measure. So technically, I didn't really know how much yeast was in the mess I'd made, and I was rather happy about that, because it meant I needn't bother my silly head with reverse mathage. (I think it's a fine word, so go with it -- mathage.)

I hate waste, so I wasn't about to throw away the gloppy mountain of yeast and begin again. I eyeballed the mass, pried out my approximation of 4½ teaspoons of yeastmuck, and proceeded with my bun-making. With that waste-thing hammering in my head, I then flipped back a few pages in the cookbook and hit Speedy Dinner Rolls. I hadn't made them in several years, having switched to Lion House Rolls, but speedy sounded really good to me, so I set about to use some more of the muck.

More eyeballing and scooping. Then the phone rang, and I was holding it with one hand, while I smooshed around yeastguck in milk with the other, coaxing the guck to disperse itself. Eventually, I had a bowl of bun dough and a bowl of roll dough. (Remaining mountain of yeastguck went to the wastebasket, fatigue having overridden abhorrence of wasting.) I'd used over 10 cups of flour, and I was probably going to have, as a result, a hefty sackful of CowNot treats.

Now our house isn't the warmest home this side of the Mason Dixon Line. Where is the Mason Dixon Line? Which side am I on? Well, it's just not all that warm here, wherever I are, so I set the bowls on the floor in front of a space heater. I reckoned that abused yeast needed all the help it could get. And I was right. Hours later, it was still struggling to develop the slightest pouff. Double? Yeah, right. In my dreams! Okay, it probably didn't help any that I'd forgotten the bowls in the floor, slightly transgressing the doorway space, and had given both a good kick as I walked into the room in the early evening. Speedy Dinner Rolls. *harumph*

Then Uncle Kemtrail came to visit, I forgot about my dough, and at midnight:something, I set the bowls on the table and went to bed. Truth be known, the Speedy Dinner Roll dough was beginning to look pretty pouffy, but I wasn't in the mood to form rolls at midnight-something, so I left it overnight.

Friday morning: the speedy dough had obviously maxed, collapsed, and formed a rigid crust. Now you've done it! Well, this is no time to give up. So I punched and kneaded the crust into the dough, formed rolls, and set them on the counter to attempt a second rising. The bun dough was actually standing tall, but that was mostly because I'd also abused it by adding too much flour, and the crust it had formed rivaled a sheet of plywood in strength and rigidity, which couldn't have collapsed if I'd left it another 5 days. So I repeated the punching and kneading process with the bun dough, formed buns and left them to do their thing...if'n' they had a mind to.

By 3:30 (on this, day two), those Speedy rolls had risen. Yeastmucked, kicked, collapsed, crusted, punched, prodded...and they looked like rolls. Could it be? Could they have survived the punishment? I fired up the oven, shoved those puppies in, and warned everyone, "Now don't get too excited. There's no way they can turn out tasty and good."

Well, would you look at that. "Yeah, but no telling what they're going to taste like or what the texture will be," came an unconvinced voice from one of the witnesses to the two-day, Speedy Roll debacle.


I'll tell you what: I've never baked a better tasting, better textured dinner roll in my life.


T.h.e.y - w.e.r.e - m.a.g.i.c.a.l. Fluffy, fine-textured, delicious. Perfect.

Could I ever repeat the performance? 1) No. 2) Do I have stupid stamped on my forehead? 3) No.

But I'm mighty thankful that I didn't waste 10+ cups of flour (and cornmeal and eggs and oil and sugar and salt).

What about the buns, you ask. Well, they sorta look like buns. But given the recipe was supposed to make 18, and I barely prodded 9 out of the abused mass of stiff dough, I suspect they're DENSE. Probably even dry, gaggy, stick-in-the-throat offerings. The CowNots will love me. They'll think I'm wonderful. They'll think I'm runnin' the best bakery this side of the Mason Dixon Line.

And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. John 3:635