Christmas Candy

Over the past few years, it has become tradition for my wife and I to bake cookies and make candy for Christmas. We tend to make three types of cookies, plus toffee and send it off to the various members of our families. The cookies vary, but the toffee tends to remain the same. My family in particular is fond of it, and I enjoy making it. It's very science-y.



The mise en place. This candy is awesome, because it's really just a few simple things converted by science into pure deliciousness. It's basically just a cup of sugar and a cup of butter, with a little water and corn syrup added to prevent bad crystalization. The almonds will come in at the end.

Note that we've gone with the double Skinny Elvis/Fat Elvis CD here, but you could probably get by with one of the single albums without loosing too much flavor.


Here the butter has just melted. Not much is going on yet, and at this point it seems that the ingredients are not going to come together. The sugar lies lifeless on the bottom, while the melted butter hangs out. This is soon to change though.


The candy has started to boil and has combined. It's still very light in color, and smells very much like sweetened melted butter.

This is the begining of the confectionary magma stage, so watch those splashes.


As the candy cooks it darkens and begins to smell more and more of caramel.


And here it is just before it hits it's temperature. You have to work pretty quickly at this point. Since the temperature determines the hardness of the candy you don't want to overshoot, and you need to stir pretty much constantly to avoid scorching the sugar.


Once you hit temperature, you pour the molten candy over half of the toasted almonds, which have been coarsely chopped. It's pretty hard to get it to spread evenly, but I've found that not pouring it all in the center helps. I sort of pour in an S curve around the pan, going back to spots that aren't getting filled by the spreading candy.

Note that the candy cooking pot cleans much easier if you fill it with boiling water. I usually do it at this point, but it can actually happen at any point. The hardened mess will disolve pretty easily.


What kind of candy doesn't have any chocolate? Not this kind, that's for sure. Once the candy has set, but not cooled all the way, you sprinkle chocolate chips on the surface and let the residual heat melt them.

Once that is spread, you sprinkle with some remaining almonds which have been finely chopped. I used the food processor for almond chopping for the first time this year, and while it was easier, my topping was practically ground. I'll need to practice a bit more with that, I think.


The finished product. Once it has chilled to solidify, you break it into pieces and enjoy the result. It has a rich, toffee flavor with a lot of toasted nuttiness. Since the breaking up of the candy happens on a second day (or much later on the same day) I completely neglected to get photos of the pieces of candy. Still, it basically looks like this only with jagged edges. Also, the only folks who actually read this have seen it in person, so...yeah.

Hope you all had a good christmas, and have a great new year.

CSA Week 10

Ah, blogs. They all last to about post 10 and then disappear. I have had these pictures sitting around (along with some from when I made chicken broth) just waiting for me to get inspired enough to put them online. Finally, a day off has given me the gumption to at least post the CSA and a bit of a wrap up.

The last share got used, with the exception of the peppers, which we managed to completely forget about. The potatoes went into a few different dishes including our favorite side dish Sweet Potato Samosas, which we had with a roast for thanksgiving. The celery got eaten raw and put into stock. The only real bust of the share was the spaghetti squash. We tried a recipe where it was roasted, then tossed with some herbs and butter. It...was not good. I think the squash itself was undercooked, despite us having put it in for way longer than suggested. This fella may get share boxed next year.

And now, on to share 10!

More Apples.

Carrots including one luridly large one, proudly displayed on top of the pile.

Potatoes are something that we like, but never really keep around. We have definitely had a lot more of them on the side than usual during this process.

Lettuce

Parsnips smell an aweful lot like carrots when you peel them. We made mashed potatoes and root vegetables with them, and it was pretty good. The parsnips added a nice sweetness to the potatoes.

One enormous Butternut squash. Going straight into the risotto. We love that stuff.

Cabbage

Broccoli

Brusellini are the greens from a brussel sprout plant. Despite our best intentions, we ended up dumpstering this one.

Radish Sprouts are quite delicious on salads.

Overall, I think the CSA was a good experience. We tried new veggies, mostly kept up, and had a lot of fun with it. So much so that we are considering a full share next year. And a fruit share. We were a bit let down by how little fruit we got this time around, so we're looking at another area CSA that has a separate fruit share. I know, having followed Sheri's experience with her full share and fruit share that us considering one is madness, and yet...we are. We may become accidental vegitarians yet.

Nah.

CSA Week 9

This past two weeks has been a bit odd, with the Film Fest taking our time and me traveling a bit for work. Still, we've done a pretty good job with the share. The squash and pumpkins are still sitting in our pantry, but we've used the Radicchio, roasted the cauliflower (which was startlingly delicious,) and even made a potato and celeriac cake which was quite good. The pears went into an oddly dry but still good crisp.

Spaghetti Squash will get added to the squash stash in our pantry.

Celery is another thing that's always in season, I guess. This is pretty leafy with a lot of slender stems, but I think it'll still work. I plan on trying my hand at making stock this weekend, so I can use a lot of the leafiness for that.

Cubannelle Peppers

Sweet Potatoes will probably end up in a ravioli recipe we have.

Two small heads of Broccoli which we'll steam.


Sunflower Sprouts again.

Carrots again. Some more. Some also destined for stock.

Yellow Onions

French Breakfast Radishes

Acorn Squash

Apples which we'll use for apple cake. We have a few leftover pears from last week too, so we'll probably toss those in.

CSA Week 8

The last few weeks were pretty good for the CSA. We roasted the beets with some salt and pepper. I found them quite tasty, but Mary would have prefered them with some more, non-beet stuff mixed in. The Frisee got used a bit in salad, though we've been doing other vegetables so we didn't manage to use it all.

I had every intention of making Kohlrabi with Honey Butter sauce -- How can anything with Honey Butter sauce be bad -- but we managed to have the head of kohlrabi go soft before we got around to doing it. Oh well, there's always next year.




Butternut Squash and Delicata Squash will likely get prepared in similar ways. Roasted, probably.

Wee Bee Little Pumpkins are too cute to eat! I lie, we're eating em -- Eff cute. We're thinking pumpkin muffins made from real pumpkin rather than the can. Weird!

Radicchio is another of Mary's nemesis, again for it's bitterness. It's actually quite nice mixed in with salads, since it's not the dominant flavor there.

Another vegetable we have dreaded is Cauliflower. Mary and cauliflower have a dark history, but she's managed to find a recipe for roasting it that will at least allow us to get through the small head we have.

A few different varieties of Hot Peppers which will likely get used in pasta sauce and or chopped and mixed into corn muffins for a side to Chili.

A Shallot and a few of what appears to be Oddly Shaped Red Onions.

Mushrooms

Lucious Dessert Pears

Parsley is apparently always in season.

Celeriac The only time I have ever seen this used was once on Iron Chef. If Dr. Hatori can't beat Morimoto with it, what chance do I have? Mary foud a recipe for a potato and celeriac cake that sounds pretty good, so we'll probably do that. We already used the celerey part in the cavity of a roasted chicken.

CSA Week 7

We didn't do anything too terribly fascinating with most of last week's share, though we did manage to use most of it. The apples and rhubarb went into a crisp (different one from last time, but still quite good) which actually got crispy. Having an oven that keeps it's temp has been making a huge difference.

We also managed to use all the peppers, in various places. We made a chiliquile (I am sure that's spelled wrong) recipe with one of the anaheim peppers and a tomato sauce with the other one. The banana peppers were quite mild and we chopped them onto salads and our NFL opening night nachos. Best tradition ever.

Everything else was fairly standard. Still grilling our potatoes, even though the oven is an option. This time around it was the celery that went unused. Who the heck uses that much celery?

Three little heads of Garlic Beets again. I am hell bent on actually trying these this time. Last time they went all squishy before we could do anything with em. The current plan is to roast them. Plums which are also quite small. They are an odd variety, with softer flesh but less juicy. Very hard to explain texture. Green and Red Peppers Greens like Frisee are Mary's nemeses. She doesn't care for the bitterness of them, and so I was surprised that when I offered to have it left in the trade box, she invoked the "no tossing out without trying" rule. Even yet still more potatoes Onions More Celerey. I need to figure out how to make this stuff last, because we really don't use much. We tend to buy stalks from salad bars when we need it in recipes. I guess we could snack on it, but I never think of that. Kohlrabi which is Sheri's nemesis. The one vegetable my almost vegetarian friend can't find a way to like. What chance do we stand? As of yet, we have no idea what we're doing with this sucker.

CSA Week 6

We have a working oven and range again! To celebrate, we used almost all of our CSA share (for some reason the beans keep getting forgotten.) We made baba-ganouj with the eggplant which was good, but a bit lemony. We got the recipe from cooking light, and they sometimes overdo the lemon to bring flavor to lower fat dishes. In the future I will look for a higher fat version, or just up the tahini and lower the lemon juice. The carrots and leek went into a tasty vegetable soup and we had the peppers in salads and stuffed with a jasmine rice stuffing.

Man it is nice to do something other than grill. Maybe one day we'll have a kitchen sink again and won't have to clean veggies in the bathroom.

On to this week's share!

More Potatoes We don't usually keep a lot around, but we've managed to keep up with the last three potato deliveries pretty well. These'll likely end up grilled -- though more options are now available, the grilled potatoes are good enough to do even with the stove installed.

Carrots I have never seen white carrots before, but we got a mix of orange (aka carrot colored) and white. We'll see if the taste differs.

Bottle Onions

Summer Apples Is fall really this close?
Basil

Heirloom Tomatoes

Celery This bunch of celerey is pretty divorced from the huge heads we are used to seeing at the grocery. That's probably just as well, since 50% of the household doesn't care for it.

Kale

Rhubarb I was all excited to make the crisp I made with the first batch of this we got way back in week 1, but the newsletter included a recipe for an apple and rhubarb crisp which I think we'll try. It has crystalized ginger in it, so it has to be good.

Banana and Anaheim Peppers We like spicy food, but don't have a lot of recipes that call for hot peppers. We may roast em? Time to hit the web for recipes...

CSA Week 5

We are offically at the midpoint of the CSA, and overall we are very pleased with how it's gone. We did passably well with the last share, and considering we had no kitchen I think that's pretty awesome. I did try the grilled potato recipe, and we've been very happy with it. It's pretty easy (cut, oil, season the potatoes; direct grill em sixish minutes a cut side and then indirect grill em on the skin side for six more) and makes a pretty good fry. We also grilled all that glorious corn. Everything else was either eaten in salads or is still sitting in our fridge.

After this weekend, we should have most of a kitchen again, so things'll be basically back to normal, cooking-wise.

Carrots

Parsley Yay. It's more parsley. We currently have two bunches in the fridge (this one and last share's more dapper curly leaf one) so I may have to look up a recipe for chimichurri (I think that's the name) which is a parsley puree one puts on meats.

Romano Beans

Orange and Yellow Slicing Tomatoes In the past when I have had non-red tomatoes, they have always tasted a little stale or underripe to me. Turns out, they were stale or underripe because these suckers taste great. Not the same as a red tomato, but definitely full of flavor.

A huge whopping Leek Which I guess we'll put in soup, maybe?

Globe Eggplant which is destined for becoming dip (in the form of Baba Ganouj).

Muskmellon I am a recent convert to mellons other than water, and this was my first time trying the musk. It's mellony, but less so than a cantelope. It's a gateway mellon -- You start with this and next thing you know you're robbing liquor stores to cover your honeydew habit.

Green Peppers are soon to be stuffed with jasmine rice and other goodies.

Button Mushrooms

Red Onions

Progress!

Amazing what difference a week and a half makes. My parents have been in all week helping out with installation, and we have some very photogenic progress to report.

We had finished the floor scraping (soooo muuuuuch floor scraping) and had patched and primed the walls before my folks got into town. Mary and mom painted the room (Informal Ivory, probably the mildest color in our place) while dad and I...did something very important, I am sure.

Ah, lights! We prepped and hung new lights. We never really used the old overhead light in the kitchen, because the switch is in a dumb place and the light gives off very little, well, light. For the new ones, we ran two spurs off of the original junction box (which we also moved to the center of the kitchen where it should have been all along) and then we hung the three new pendants. So nice! So bright! I think we'll be making the trip to the switch a lot more often now. Those CSA pictures are gonna sparkle.

Then came the cabinets -- Base then upper, though when we started the uppers we found instructions telling us to start with them. Dad said it's a whole mac/PC, emacs/vi thing. Folks do it both ways. We got all bases and most uppers in on Sunday, then finished up the uppers and trim peices early Monday.

I was going to hang the hood microwave Monday as well, but we discovered that not only did our oven come with the bits for a different model, we also got a damaged microwave. Thanks for nothing, ABT! We got a replacement ordered, and that went in with fairly little drama. I spent a lot of time double checking my measurements, only to find out they were all wrong anyway. Oh well. Nobody can see into that upper cabinet anyway.

Instead of the microwave installation, we pressed on with the tile. Despite a little rain, we managed to get it all installed before 7 pm when the pizza came. Wow does it look good. We used a limestone tile that we loved and it looked even better in place.





Did I say we finished the trim peices? There are always more trim pieces. Looking at the underside of the cabinet (which is over a snack bar area) you see various panels, scribe moldings, facers, and tracks for lighting. Under that is a whole 'nother set of bits and pieces to keep it all up (or give it something to attatch to.) It's amazing how quickly the huge changes occur, but now slowly the little finishing details do. Still, despite spending days doing the small stuff, we're very pleased with how this looks. Don't forget to compliment us if you ever sit on a stool here!

The folks have headed off now, and Mary and I are busy getting the grout in. We weren't 100% sure on the color, but after a grout intervention from the nice man at Home Carpet One (they're awesome! go there!) we went ahead with our original color. Once that is in and cured, the appliances go in and the long wait for counters begins.

CSA Week 4 - Vegetables in a time of madness

I am coming to the conclusion that travel is the enemy of the CSA. For more than half of the past two weeks, one or both of us was traveling. Sadly, this meant that some lovely produce (alas, poor beets, I hardly knew ye) passed on to a better place before we could roast them alive.

I did manage to make and freeze some pesto, with the help of some grocery store basil. We also made chocolate chip zucchini bread with some of the squash, which was quite tasty.

Week four is the first of two deliveries that will come during the renovation of our kitchen. Thankfully, most of this week's haul appears to be grillable or edible raw.

Cornsplosion! We love corn, and more specificially love it grilled. It is unlikely that we will get sick of it before we run out, even though we have 14 or so ears.

Potatoes can be grilled. Who knew? I have a recipe for roasted potatoes that use a mix of direct and indirect grilling. I'll report back on how that one goes.

Beans Hrm. We actually still have beans from last time around, so...more beans. We have a burner on our grill, so I sense that we'll boil some water and have some beans.

Mixed Salad Greens Prewashed! The closest the CSA gets to a Rachel Ray episode.

Cucumbers

Radish Sprouts taste like mild radishes and are destined for salads.

Broccoli The world's smallest head of broccoli, which is probably good since I don't think we can grill it. I guess we'll cut it small and have it in salads.

Curly Leaf Parseley Perhaps we'll toss some in with the beans? Maybe we'll just garnish the hell out of our burgers.

Red Garlic

Various Detritus from our Coffee Table I can't even claim that our coffee table looks cluttered thanks to the remodel. It always looks that way.

What troubles you, John Spartan?

It has begun! The great kitchen remodel of aught seven is officially underway.

First, as with all good makeovers, some before shots. Not much to comment on here, really. We don't hate our kitchen as such, it's just a little dated. The building was converted from a factory in the 80s, and those white laminate cabinets have seen better days.

Also, the oven you can see here can not hold a temperature to save it's life (or the life of a baked good) and we have to regularly set the temperature twenty five degrees higher than we want to get it to come all the way to temperature.




More lovely laminate cabinets, and our inexplicably white sink. The new one will be stainless steel and undermounted. Fancy!

Our faucet drives us bonkers. It has a built in sprayer thingy, but it never actually stays on sprayer as it should, except when we want it to go back to being a stream.

Finally, you may notice the darkness of the pictures. That is due in large part to the darkness of the room (and in small part to the lack of ability of the photographer.) We have three new lovely pendant lights that we hope will alleviate this issue.





Cabinets, gone!

Fridge gone! (But in our living room, in working order thank goodness.) Refridgerators are really heavy. I mean, really heavy. Moving the fridge took way more time and effort than we expected.

The hood microwave also was more work than expected, being more firmly attatched than we realized. Thankfully, after a little fiddling I was able to get it down.

We also managed to disconnect the gas line from the stove with a minimum of drama and no action movie explosions.





More cabinets gone!

Sink gone! And heavy!

All in all, the cabinet removal went much easier than we expected. Having never done it before, we really didn't know how it would go. It ended up really just being a case of taking out some screws and pulling out the cabinets.

The tile removal was fun as always, and Mary discovered a new favorite tool. It's basically a heavy chisel on a sturdy broom handle that used to break up tile (you can see it in the background here next to a floor scraper.) I still prefer the tried and true concrete chisel and sledge approach, but to each his own.

Now comes the long and boring processes of scraping the tile adhesive off the floor and patching and priming the walls. Someone needs to invent a painting method that involves the sledge hammer. I'll call Galager.

CSA Week 3

Our second CSA delivery went pretty well. Again we had an ingredient go to waste (we traveled the first weekend and by our return the Chard was hopelessly wilted) but overall kept up well.

We made an asian slaw with the cabbage that even my lovely wife had to admit was delicious. The spinach and feta (and kale) pie we made this time was more involved (we made our own yeast dough) but I still think I preferred it. I am such a sucker for bread products, and the real dough versus prepackaged made a huge difference to me.

The only other interesting thing we did was to make a garlic scape paste for marinating chicken. It was good, but I really should have added more oil and perhaps some lemon juice. The paste we ended up with was pretty much a bunch of minced scapes, and I think it would have been a better flavor with additional oil. Live and learn.

This week's delivery is the last one we will receive before we start our kitchen remodel. Hopefully the next two will be contain mostly grillable veggies, or those that can be eaten raw.

Beets I guess we'll...roast them? New one to us.

Scallions

Basil Was going to become pesto until I discovered how little we got.

Carrots

Summer Squash which will be eaten both as is and in zucchini bread. Yum.

Cucumbers I'm not entirely sure what we are going to do with this many. We'll have to search for some recipes.

Romaine Lettuce

Snap Peas

Roma Tomatoes Ahhhh....these are so sweet and delicious. One of our favorite things to eat when they are in season.

Cucumber Strayed into this shot because I unpacked the bags one at a time.

CSA Week 2

Our second share. We did pretty good with the first, using all of the lettuce and arugula in salads, along with the sprouts. The spinach and kale pies were good, though they ended up having way more kale than spinach. Oddly, it was the most common ingredient (for us) that ended up going to waste -- we never found a use for the green onions.

It's still the season for leafy, green stuff, and here's a bunch of it.

Lettuce: Red Leaf and Little Gem. It's truly outrageous.

Cabbage: The first time we had to resist tossing something in the share bin before tasting it. Not something we traditionaly would seek out, but that's the point, right? We will probably try some form of slaw.

Kale: Destined for another spinach, kale, and feta pie.

Rainbow Chard: I think you need more than two colors to be considered "rainbow", but nobody asked me. Another one we're not sure what to do with, but we'll probably try subbing it for spinach a few places. Had some in an omelette (with mushrooms, CSA onions, and cheese) and it was pretty tasty.

We're also moving into the non-leafy green stuff season, which is good because a man can only eat so much salad.


New Red Potatoes: Well you wouldn't want old ones, would you?

Broccoli

Mini Red Onions: We'll probably just sub these for normal onions, and use them on salads.

Garlic Scapes

Parsley

Black Raspberries

Tart Up The Produce

...said my wife when I told her I had promised to take some glamor shots of our unripe but promising looking tomatoes for Sheri. Joke she may, but both of us love the tomatoes of summer. Even just the smell of the plants when you brush against them reminds us of the delights to come.

Well I didn't tart them up at all, though I will admit to only taking pictures of the most photogenic. Still, four of the five plants have little green darlings on them, so even if our plants do look like the before shot for a plant kingdom revival of Revenge of the Nerds, we still should have a fairly decent harvest.

CSA Week 1

Cooking! It's fun and delicious. And what can be more fun than cooking with fresh, mystery ingredients? It's like every day is Iron Chef at our house. What am I talking about? Well, we joined a CSA, where 'local' (read that, not Chicago but not halfway across the country) farms contract with individuals to provide weekly (or in our case bi-weekly) deliveries of fresh produce.

Sheri at http://www.orangeparade.com/ has inspired me with her lovely food porn of her CSA deliveries to try the same myself. These shots are a little small, but I'm learning.

Colorful stuff:

Green onions

Baby Arugula, which used in salads and to justify my claim to eat babies.

Rhubarb, which I basically turned into candy in the form of Rhubarb Crisp.

Strawberries, which we just plain enjoyed.

Green leafy stuff:
Spinach and Kale, which we used in turnover thingies with feta and onions.

Lettuce

Chives, which I've snipped into salads and garnished pretty much everything with.

Sunflower Sprouts, which augmented the salads.

Huh

So I guess I blog now.