life of seven

Every once in a while...

Every once in a while, particularly after watching "Cutthroat Kitchen," with Alton Brown the evening before, this is what school lunch looks like. Each child tries to outdo the others by stylizing their plats, finding just the right dish, asking if there's anything green to sprinkle on top. On these days, paper plates just won't do. Then we give our best Judge Simon Majumdar imitation as we critique the to-mah-to soup with grilled cheese. Then I take a picture and then we dig in.

And then I take another picture because it's just too cute.

***I made up the recipe, sautéing onion, garlic, and fresh tomatoes, adding them to chicken broth and a can of tomato puree, then finishing with the immersion blender to get it all smooth***

Food Shopping in Denmark

The last few days have been a whirlwind of back to school organization and delegation. Oh, my. I've hardly been able to sit for a moment between 8 in the morning until around 6 in the evening. The unfair part about being a homeschooling mom is that you are still obligated to cook meals for everyone to eat. If our homeschool included a school cafeteria, with a chef and a clean up crew, I think my day would go much easier. As it is, we've sort of been just grabbing a piece of toast, or a couple of fried eggs, or something in that vein to eat during the day. Then sometime during the day, I sort of try to cook dinner. For one thing, it's hard to find the time to cook. In the middle of giving Evie a spelling test, I'll suddenly remember and think, "Seriously? We need to eat dinner again, tonight?"

To add to the difficulty, I have very interesting ingredients to cook with. Danish grocery stores are quite different from American ones. They are much smaller, and yet despite their small size the selection of items they carry is a little amazing, because not only can I buy food there, I can also pick up a swim suit, towels, slippers, sandals, candles, and yarn. Yes, yarn. The little grocery store by us has a yarn aisle. People after my own heart.

I tell people that I love European food, and I mean that- fresh ingredients, lack of artificial flavoring and preservatives, a bakery on every corner with the best tasting baked goods ever, amazing cheese, smoked salmon...I love all those things. But I sort of don't know what to cook my family for dinner. On the other hand, do you ever have that feeling when planning meals, and wonder, what do we ever eat? And the only answer that comes back is, "Well, I guess chicken." So far out here, I have made chicken, and spaghetti. And hamburgers. And now I'm stuck and I don't really know what else to make. Surely I need more than three meals before I go through the cycle again, and repeat? I know what else I make at home, and if you asked my kids, I make it about every other day: tacos. But I think I need to be much more familiar with Danish ingredients before I attempt tacos over here. At home, I make what my husband says is, "Swedish girl attempting Tex-mex tacos" and among the necessary ingredients are King Sooper's brand garden salsa, sour cream, corn tortillas,  cilantro, and grated cheddar (the cheese here labeled "cheddar" was what we would call back home, "American cheese slices"). I haven't spied any of those things here yet, so I will have to get creative before I attempt Mexican food. With tacos out of my meal rotation, I'm down to, what did I say? 3 meals. If it were left solely up to me, I'd just eat a slice of the best bread on the planet, spread with amazing butter, for dinner every night. And for a side, a chocolate croissant. Dessert would be an amazing strawberry tart. Okay, I guess that's a little extreme, even for me...

 These photos are really unrelated to what I just wrote about. I guess I went off on a tangent. The pictures were taken over the weekend, mostly. We are very close to the North Sea, which you can see in the beach pictures, and we also managed to visit Copenhagen on Sunday. The last photo is a finished Japan Sleeves. Oh, how I love it. I highly recommend the pattern.

Another milk post

I'm drinking milk again, without it hurting my baby girl, and it makes me so happy. Raw milk was the trick. 

Ben did a little research when I told him about the issue and he couldn't understand, when I described it to him, why I assumed lactose was the issue. 

"From everything I'm reading online it seems more like a milk protein sensitivity rather than a lactose one," he said to me.

I admit I got a little offended that he seemed to think he knew more about the milk problem than I did, since I was the one avoiding milk products, and specifically lactose, since last August.

Oh boy, just when we think we are SO SMART, and let others know it, truth does what it so often has a way of doing: it comes in and we discover that we weren't quite so smart after all. "Pride goeth before a fall," is a saying we use frequently around here, and this time I'm the one who took the fall.

After too much protesting on my part, I agreed to try to discover exactly what Clementine's tummy was having trouble digesting. Milk protein? Lactose? Both? Could she do goat's milk, buffalo milk, yogurt, what? I systematically eliminated products and introduced them back one at a time and that led me to where we are today, with a baby who happily tolerates my drinking raw milk with the protein structure unaltered so that it is digestible for her, and who has even had a few sips herself with no adverse affects. I don't give my babies cow's milk before they turn one, usually, but I was curious to see if she could handle drinking a little bit straight. It seems she can.

Now my morning coffee is so delicious, if not even more delicious than it was with regular milk, because the raw milk really does have such a fresh flavor. I'm not really a farm gal, and fresh eggs and milk and cream are mentally a little bit challenging for me, I admit. It's a matter of getting past what to me is "the gross factor" but once I get past the idea of it I agree that the flavors are so much better than what can be purchased at a store. It's funny how the things we get used to growing up become sort of ingrained and we have to tell ourselves that really, homemade mac and cheese is so much better than powdery boxed Kraft (that is an easy one for me) or that real cheese is a good sight better than American or Velveta (another easy one for me, less so for my husband) or fresh, unprocessed, non-homegenized raw milk from a cow is superior to milk that has been cooked and cooled and set on a store shelf.

Okay. Wow. I've written how many blog posts now about milk? I'm sorry. I'm really really sorry. Cate just came in and read over my shoulder and commented, "You're writing about milk, again?"

Yeah, kids. I'm just trying to prove what I've always said to you, that you can write about anything, absolutely anything, and make it interesting. Well, I guess leave off the interesting part, and that statement is 100% true.

Cream Puff Fail

See those popovers in the top picture? I've made several patches lately, like, every weekend for breakfast, and they've come out perfectly. Each time, I've worried and fretted upon placing them in the oven, certain they weren't going to puff this time, and then upon gazing into the oven through the little window, discovered, to my utter joy, that no, they actually did puff!

Last week I got the notion to make cream puffs, glorious delicious cream puffs. I found a random recipe online and while I nervously watched them the same way I did the popovers, they puffed perfectly and I began to grow confident.

I checked out Comfort Foods by Jamie Oliver at the library. Remember my reading goals? Well if there's one thing I enjoy reading, it's a well written cookbook. Nigella Lawson's are my favorites. She can make anything sound delicious, even beets and carrot salads. She makes me wish I liked raisins. And, she's British. What's not to love? Jamie Oliver is fun too, though his foods are often a little strange sounding to me. Come to think of it, before this week, I don't know that I've ever cooked any of his recipes, though I've read several of his cookbooks I've gotten at the library. Comfort foods, that sounds great. British comfort foods: yes, just labeling them "British" automatically elevates the comfort level a notch.

So, I tried out his recipe for cream puffs. I made a double recipe because I was planning to print them to little afternoon tea party we were having with some friends. I pulled the batch out of the oven, and sadly, they had.not.puffed. My confidence in my ability to make puffy egg pastries waned a bit and I grew suspicious, but didn't know what to be suspicious of yet. Obviously, I had made a perfect batch last week, so what could have gone wrong this time? Maybe it was the double batch I had made. Maybe I had added an extra cup of flour in when doubling. Maybe it was the recipe...Unfortunately I hadn't followed the recipe to the letter- that could have been my problem. I have trouble following recipes to the letter. I had used water instead of the called for milk, because I had never seen a recipe for choux pastry dough before that called for milk. Well, I decided to give it another try, this time a single batch, and obey Jamie Oliver: just make a single recipe, use milk, and bake it at the suggested oven temperature, even though other recipes I'd looked at suggested a higher temp.

This time the little pastries began to puff a bit, though not as high as I would have liked, and then, when I took them out of the oven, they deflated depressingly within a minute. I tried to fill the little puffs with whipped cream still, but they would have none of it. There was nowhere for the whipped cream to go because they didn't have a big air filled cavity. Dejectedly, I realized I would have no beautiful cream puffs to take to the tea. And I still don't know what/who to blame. I'm sure another minute or two in the oven would have helped, or should I have gone with the higher temperature I've seen other chefs recommend, Alton Brown being one of them? Is it the mile above sea level that wreaked havoc on my recipe?

Instead of a photo of beautiful cream puffs, I'll leave you a picture of Pepper, instead. If ever it were possible for a dog to absorb and learn to appreciate classical music, it is she. I'm curious what it sounds like to her ears. Random noises? Is she as relieved as the rest of us when Gideon begins to learns something new on the piano?

 

More Bread

If I were a real artist this is the still life I would choose to draw. How beautiful. The asparagus in the jar is wild asparagus, I kid you not, picked in our field out back. I never knew such a thing existed but leave it to my dad who grew up on a farm in the country to tell me about it. How cool is that?

Making bread every couple of days is, in a word, awesome. I'm having so much fun with this. Why did I stop baking bread years ago? I could have been doing this all along. With a family to eat it, two loaves of bread are gone in a flash. Breakfast toast with our eggs and sandwiches for lunch and it's gone. Oh well, guess I'll have to throw together another loaf.

 

Bread Baking

Cinnamon rolls were made over the weekend. Yum, duh.

I use my regular bread dough enriched with eggs and butter. I make the icing with powdered sugar, melted butter, maple flavoring, and strong coffee.

Bread baking- I've been doing it weekly, if not twice weekly. Nothing cozier or homier than freshly baked bread. In fact I have two loaves of Challah (I mean, my attempt at Challah, kind of inventing the recipe as I go) rising right now. I'm sure you'll see a picture of it tomorrow. 

There are so many things I love to do, and try, mainly in the creating category. I haven't even thought about making bread for years and all of a sudden I'm totally into it again.

I'm never, ever bored, I mean never. If I lived to be a million I wouldn't run out of things that interest me. Clearly I was created for immortality. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. I Cor. 15:53 

That's my deep spiritual lesson for today. Now off I go to throw that Challah in the oven.

On making bread

Years and years ago, when Cate was a baby, before I learned about nice yarn to knit with, and when sewing and I didn't get along- oh wait, that's still the case- I had lots of empty hours to fill my days with, and since I have always been a hands on-what can we make today? kind of girl, I decided to try to make bread. Not the typical loaf of homemade bread I had grown up making every week with my mom: the crumbly, dry, poorly textured bread that was only good fresh from the oven or toasted. No, REAL bread, with big holes, a chewy crust, an amazing smell and texture. And crackly crispy sound when taken out of the oven.

I got dozens of library books on it before I finally happened upon Breads from LaBrea Bakery, where Nancy Silverton explained that the key was using a natural sourdough starter, rather than following the common path of dumping all the ingredients in a bowl, kneading them, letting it rise, placing it in a bread pan, letting it rise again, and baking.It's in the slow rise. This set me on the right track and I began to make some semi successful loaves of bread, but ultimately my oven was my main cause of failure. It was just impossible to get it hot enough, and full of steam. This was frustrating, but at least I learned a lot about bread. I think I could give an hour long lecture about it, and I'm pretty rusty on the details right now because somewhere down the road I stopped making bread. Besides the holiday cinnamon rolls, I pretty much quit. Oh, I remember why. I began to knit.

Recently I've begun to dip my toe in the bread-y waters again. The starter idea has served me well, though I don't have an ongoing one in the fridge I replenish. No, the night before, I mix three cups of flour with two cups of water and add 1/8 a teaspoon of yeast. In the morning, it's light and bubbly and then I make up the bread with it. It works a charm every time, and isn't the least bit finicky, which for me, the sourdough starter always was.

Now I'm no longer a purist and add the occasional eggs, or butter, or extra yeast, and bake it in a regular oven in a regular pan so the bread always turns out, rather than trying, and failing, to make a genuine baguette.

I love bread, but more than that, I love real, living, bouncy, bubbly bread dough. I can feel it in my fingertips and see it in the dough when I do it right. It's not an inanimate object; it's full of life.

I'm grateful none of us over here have gluten sensitivities. Because I think I want to go make some more bread.

Royal Tea Party

 I'm pleased to say that Saturday's royal tea party was quite the success, even though I do say so myself. It certainly wasn't due to my efforts alone. I had lots of help cleaning, decorating, and baking. As is often the case at these sort of functions, I sadly did not take enough pictures, once all the food was laid out and posters hung. It was  surprisingly easy and cheap to throw together. Amazon, I've discovered, is a great resource for posters, banners, party napkins, and the like. A quick trip to the thrift store in the morning, where we picked up some British themed books and magazine (as well as that granny square quilt you see on the couch!) and we were all set decoration wise. I printed out some quotes about drinking tea and placed one with each tea cup. I made scones and a Victoria Sponge cake as well as tea, of course. The cake has, as you may be able to tell, crystallized rose petals on top. That was a very fun fancy little decoration to throw in, for sure. I set out some chocolates as well that Ben picked up for me when he was at Heathrow Airport for a nine hour layover. Once in a while, having a husband who is away on business trips All. The. Time. can have its advantages. My sister made cream cheese lemon bars and finger sandwiches. I added crackers and cheese and salami so there would be plenty to eat, and to hopefully balance out all the desserts and I think it worked out well, foodwise. I wanted to dress up over the top for the party, but unfortunately ran out of time so it was all I could do to throw on a skirt- my Liberty print one, that I still need to show you!! 

Next tiem I do this- I really do believe there will be a next time- I will invite the boys as well, I think! Gideon looked longingly at the food and tea as he left and I heard some other comments about guys thinking it sounded like fun! The invitation will have to say, "Well behaved gentlemen included." Hee.

 

Tomato-sausage Soup

We have had a few days here recently that hit 90 degrees. Now, let me just say that this has been the nicest and coolest June that I can remember- here it is the beginning of July and I don't feel like I am about to wilt and perish from the heat, and that is definitely saying something. However, after those couple of 90 degree days, when I heard it was suppossed to be cooler today, I thought, perfect! Soup it is! 80 feels like fall now, so I made soup, in anticipation of cooler days. Haha, not sure if that's quite how it works.

Anyway, this is one of our family's favorite soup recipes. Everyone eats it, most of us love it. I also really like to make this soup for company, because it is just so easy to make, and simple to serve to company. I love to have warm bread and butter with it. Pretty simple, pretty perfect.

Two 34 oz. jars of diced fire roasted tomatoes

4 T. tomato paste

12 cups of homemade chicken broth, OR 1 1/2 jars Better than Bouillon + 12 cups water

4 pounds italian sausage (hot, mild, or a combination of both)

8 cloves  garlic, minced

2 T. olive oil

Italian sasoning to taste (I forgot to add it this time and it still came out great)

Saute sausage and garlic in olive oil till garlic is browned and sausage is cooked through. Transfer to a soup pot, add the cans of tomatoes and tomato paste and chicken broth. Add italian seasoning. Heat through, or let simmer a few hours.

That's it. Yep, pretty easy meal there. I think you'll love it. This serves a family my size for at least a couple of meals. It also freezes very well. Hope you like it!

Knitting and mornings

What you see befor you is Quill, a baby blanket/shawl I am knitting for...well, the baby, obviously. I am knitting it out of one of my very most absolute favorite yarns ever, Madeline Tosh Merino Light. It is irresistably soft and squishy and light and is just perfect for this pattern, and a late summer baby. I will use it as a nursing shawl as well, if it comes out big enough, rather than just draping over whatever random blanket/sweater/sweatshirt happens to be lying around. I mean, I'll do that too. I've nursed babies everywhere imaginable over the years.

Anyway, this is a great pattern,  (my project on ravelry here) but I am about to start knitting the border now, and I am slightly concerned about  just how long that border is going to take...13 stitch repeat knit on to about 600 stitches- that's when you are glad you chose a yarn you absolutely love to knit with. I plan to start the border this morning.

I love mornings. I made a vow last year to start setting my alarm for 6 am every day so I could get up and enjoy my favorite time for a bit before all the kids woke up. Well, I have done a pretty good job of keeping my vow, though when I am up very late the night before I do sometimes allow myself to sleep in. 

The very best secret to getting up early each morning is having a Nespresso machine. Oh my word, I do not know what in the world I would do without my Nespressso...I got it for Mother's Day last year and seriously it is about the best thing that happened to me in 2013. I'm kind of exaggerating, but not. Best coffee/espresso I ever drank. And it's so cute. Really, it is. I own the adorably named Pixie in case you are curious. The milk frother is a must, as well. How in the world they were able to make such a little appliance that turns out perfectly frothed milk every time is a wonder. My kids ask for "froth milk" almost every day (the older kids ask for coffee, of course, and once in a while they get it). Then we enjoy our hot cozy drinks together.

Yesterday I woke up at seven but today I am up at five so it works out. I've started taking some pictures of our quiet, sleeping house. Ah, peace and quiet...I wonder what is in store for us today?