Aggressive Baking: Coping with Hip Surgery

6 Months

2010-10-27T17:56:00.003-06:00

Wow, so I totally stopped blogging as soon as I was able to ski in March. I probably should have stuck it out a little longer since I'm now seeing all these people posing hip questions in the comments. I feel like it's pretty fortuitous that I'm coming upon this now, since a lot has changed since my last post and today is kind of a significant day.

I skied for most of March. I wasn't great, but I did alright. I think my longest ski day was 3 hours, but I went for quality, not quantity. After the first couple days, I got super-bored lapping the slow chairs Gold Link, Painter Boy, and Prospector, so I made the transition to Paradise and East River, and then quickly to lapping off the North Face T-bar on the double black terrain. Unfortunately, that all caused a massive trigger point to build up in my right thigh, leading to referred pain in my right knee. After about a month of pain, I mentioned it at PT. I guess after 8 years of constant pain, I didn't realize I needed to tell people when things started to hurt. After lots of deep tissue massage, foam rolling, and trigger point dry needling, it's mostly gone at this point, and so is the pain in my knee.

When the resort closed, I started to weigh my options. Should I have a third surgery then, or wait until September/October to get it in before the upcoming ski season. At that point, Tom and I had scheduled our wedding for September 4th, so it just made sense to take care of the surgery as soon as possible so I would be able to wear jeans again and not have to hurry back from our honeymoon to get cut open again.

The third surgery was so minor compared to the other ones. It was a huge incision (most of my six-inch scar from the Ganz), so I went under general anesthesia again. I also walked into a hospital only to wake up from a procedure unable to walk out for the third time in less than a year. But the recovery was smooth and quick. I had all six screws taken out and was walking four days later. The biggest shock to me was that the morphine they gave me in the recovery room actually took the pain away completely, rather than taking level 8-9 pain down to level 6-7 like after the first two surgeries. It took place on April 27th, exactly six months ago.

I then proceeded to crash my bike hard in the beginning of June, necessitating a trip to the ER and pretty much knocking me out for the whole summer. I was busy with working two jobs and planning a wedding, so not a lot of baking happened.

After a fabulous wedding and a great trip to Hawaii, I feel like I'm really fully on the road to recovery now. I just did squat jumps and some other jumping exercises at PT for the first time today and wow did it feel weird to jump. My entire body is exhausted, but it's certainly a good feeling. So, today is huge because it has been 6 months since my last surgery and I'm finally doing dynamic exercises for the first time in a year and a half. We're also hoping to get out and go find some backcountry pow this weekend since it has been snowing in Crested Butte for days. Hopefully my legs will have stopped shaking from this morning's workout by then!

Extreme Cold Homes

2010-01-21T11:19:00.003-07:00

So as I'm sitting in our fifty degree condo debating whether to build a fire (since I'm getting over a cold and I'd rather spend my calories fighting the virus rather than trying to stay warm) my sister sends me this article.

Now I definitely no longer feel like we're crazy for setting our thermostats at 50. Our life seems pretty cushy. Between our southern exposure, our electric blanket (that's right, we never have to get in a cold bed... ever), our wood stove, and my constant bread baking obsession, it's rare that our living space is actually only 50 degrees, let alone colder like the temperatures described in the article.

We do make an effort to warm up the upstairs when people come over for dinner, starting the fire early enough to get the stove to re-burning stage by the time our guests arrive. We also give overnight guests free reign with the thermostat in the guest room, as long as they leave the doors closed so their heat doesn't escape to the rest of the house. We have added extra insulation to all of our windows that open as well, unlike that crazy lady in Ridgway, CO who is fine with all her wood stove heat escaping through the slats in her roof.

All that being said, I'm wondering how many steps it takes for someone to go from our level of not minding living in a cold home to being comfortable enough to turn the heat off entirely. How far are we from the land of wearing long underwear and fingerless gloves in the house? Of course the odds of that actually happening are quite slim since the extreme cold would definitely interfere with the rising of my dough.

Bagels at 9200 Feet

2010-01-14T14:00:00.004-07:00

I'm back from hiatus. We had Tom's family here for the holidays and then I started PT and have been pretty much exhausted from that. I sleep a ton and spend a lot of time with either heat or ice on. When I'm not doing that, however, I am baking bread from Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Bread Bible. Tom gave it to me for Christmas in the hopes that I would take to it and start baking massive amounts of bread. Of course his plan worked and I've been baking a ton, which leaves little time for blogging about baking.

The Bread Bible is the real deal. I have learned about starters and pre-fermentation. I have baked ricotta loaf and beer bread. It is truly the epitome of aggressive bread baking. It has outstanding photos and, thus far, has led to great results. After doing a little experimentation, I decided it was time to try the bagels.

Now, I was thoroughly intimidated by the bagel recipe. She has it broken down into a half recipe and a full recipe because she says it's stiff enough that she prefers using the mixer to kneading. I still don't have a mixer, so I would be stuck kneading by hand. The recipe is also literally 10 pages long. I decided to make my first batch on a day Tom was taking off from skiing. There was no way I was going to attempt it on my own. So Tom got dressed up for some aggressive baking in his body armor (he's sponsored by 661) and we got to work.

The first part of the recipe required making a dough starter, or sponge. We mixed 1 teaspoon of instant yeast with 2 1/4 cups of water and 468 grams of flour (our Hungarian High Altitude Unbleached All-Purpose Flour in spite of the high-gluten flour called for in the recipe). We whisked like mad to incorporate some air bubbles. Later, during the fermentation process the yeast produces gases which make the air bubbles larger and more flavorful. We covered the dough with plastic wrap and moved on to what Beranbaum calls the flour mixture or blanket.

In this case, the flour blanket was a mixture of 320g of flour, another teaspoon of instant yeast, 1 tablespoon of malt powder (we didn't do this since we don't have any), 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 tablespoon of salt, and 1 teaspoon of black pepper. We sprinkled it on top of our sponge and covered the sponge plus blanket with plastic wrap.

Then it was time to wait, with the sponge in a warm place (by our south facing windows). She recommends leaving it for 1 to 4 hours, or for a fuller flavor, leaving it in warm room temperature for an hour before putting the bowl in the fridge for up to 24. This process is super cool because the yeast starts to work with the flour in the sponge and it ends up bubbling up through the blanket on the top. It also starts to smell of fermentation.

After giving the sponge its four hours of pre-fermentation, we mixed the blanket into the sponge with a wooden spoon. Once the dough came together, I kneaded it for about 5 minutes then left it to rest with the bowl over it for 20 minutes. Another thing I learned from the book was that flour absorbs water fairly slowly. If you allow a sticky dough to rest for about 20 minutes, it will absorb a lot more moisture and become much more manageable. I then kneaded the dough for a further 15 minutes to develop a strong gluten structure. That's what makes bagels so chewy and delicious and I felt like I couldn't skimp since we used a lower gluten flour than what the recipe recommended.

The dough went into a bowl to rise until doubled and then I deflated it, folded it into a tight little package, and then set it in the fridge to develop some more flavor. The cool environment of the fridge allows the yeast to work slowly, developing better flavors in the dough. According to the recipe, the dough must sit in the fridge for 4 hours and it can be left, tightly wrapped, for up to 2 days. So yes, the bagels take a long time to do their thing, but if you plan ahead, you can spread the process out over several days and not ever have to do too much at once.

We took the dough out and gave it some time to come up to temperature before forming our dough into 10 bagels. We used the snake method, which can be viewed here. It mostly worked, and then we let them rise for a bit while we got the water bath ready and preheated the oven to 500F.

Our water bath contained about 3 1/2 quarts of water with 2 tablespoons molasses and 1 teaspoon of baking soda. According to the recipe, baking soda helps to make the crust golden and molasses makes it shiny. After we boiled the bagels (about 1 minutes per side), they went onto a towel before going on the sheet pan. At that point they looked pretty sad and pathetic, but we had high hopes. They were starting to come apart at the seam. We were nervous about what would happen when we baked them so I tried to squeeze them back together a little bit. We glazed them with a beaten egg (the recipe calls for 2 egg whites and some cold water beaten and run through a sieve, I had no patience for that after working on the bagels for 9+ hours).

The bagels baked for 5 minutes at 500 on the stone, then 20 minutes at 450. Then the instructions said to turn the oven off and let the bagels sit in there for 5 minutes followed by 5 more minutes with the oven off and the door open.

In spite of their pathetic looks before going into the oven, they actually turned out quite well. They tasted nicely of pepper and the texture was pretty much dead on. We split one that night (we finished them just after 10 pm) with butter. They were great with cream cheese and an outstanding vehicle for sandwiches of all types also (after the first day we stored the leftovers in the freezer and defrosted then lightly toasted them). Next time I will definitely start them a couple days in an advance and see if I can spread the process out a little bit. I will also probably incorporate the optional 3 tablespoons of unsalted butter. Beranbaum allows this for a softer and lighter crumb in your bagels (but doesn't recommend it because it's not traditional), and Tom has requested it.

Calabresi: Italian Almond and Lemon Cookies

2009-12-20T14:58:00.004-07:00

In an effort to broaden my horizons beyond Scandinavian and American cookies, I thought I would attempt an Italian cookie this year. I checked into my Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking and only found two recipes. Since one called for whipped egg whites, and I have zero desire to do that by hand, I decided to make the Calabresi instead. Besides, I absolutely love almonds and lemon and it was another food processor recipe.

I started out by blanching 4 ounces of almonds in boiling water for two minutes then peeling then by putting the hot boiled almonds in a damp kitchen towel and rolling them around. Eventually, all the skins popped off and I had beautifully skinned almonds. Here's the recipe taken from Marcella Hazan's book.

Ingredients:

4 ounces almonds, blanched and skinned
1/2 C granulated sugar
2 egg yolks (that's right faithful readers, I successfully separated eggs for the first time ever for this recipe)
2 heaping C flour (I actually did 2 scant ones to try to compensate for our dry flour)
salt
zest of one lemon
1/4 C fresh squeezed lemon juice
Butter for smearing the cookie sheet or pan
1 egg beaten lightly with 1 T water

Method:

1. At least 30 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 400F.

2. Pulverize the almonds together with the sugar in a food processor. Pulse until they are a fine powder.

3. Add the 2 egg yolks, the flour, a pinch of salt, the grated lemon zest, and the lemon juice. Run the blade until the batter forms a smooth lump. Mine didn't so I added the slightest little bit of water and ran the processor for a minute, then slightly more. I was determined to not mess these ones up after the checkerboard debacle.

4. Lightly flour a work surface, a rolling pin, and your hands. Pull a piece the size of a large apple from the dough and roll it out to a thickness of 1/4 inch. Use a 2-inch cookie cutter (I used an old jelly jar instead since I sorely lack cookie cutters) to cut the dough into disks and place them edge to edge on a cookie sheet or pan that you have smeared with butter. Add another ball of dough to the scraps and roll and cut again.

5. Once you have a full pan to go into the oven, egg wash the top of your cookies. Bake for about 10 minutes and pull out lemony almondy goodness. I found the glass pan I used required 11 minutes to get even a hint of brown in 11 minutes, but the dark metal cookie sheet burned in 10, so keep that in mind.

They're delicious and easy to make and they keep for weeks. They're also interesting in that all the fat in them comes from the egg yolks and the almonds. This was the first time I ever made a cookie without butter or shortening in them.

Peanut Butter Blossoms

2009-12-20T14:30:00.003-07:00

In the interest of me getting recipes to you before the holidays are completely over, I'm going to attempt to control my wordiness and from here on out only give you the recipes, some images, and any crucial commentary. We had some visitors last week and Tom's family arrives tomorrow so I've been trying to keep our cookie tins fairly well stocked. I'm also planning on using the cookies to bribe my PT guy to let me use his exercise bike even though I don't officially have a prescription yet. Since I've already done checkerboards, peanut butter blossoms were the next on the list. They are a fairly straightforward peanut butter cookie and you just push a hershey's kiss into the center of each cookie as it comes out of the oven. Who doesn't love the combination of peanut butter and chocolate? The dough is also the easiest cookie dough I've made to date at altitude without a mixer (I'm aggressive!).

Recipe:
1/2 C shortening
3/4 C creamy PB (I have yet to attempt it with "natural" PB, but I might give it a go and I'll let you know how much extra sugar is needed)
1/3 C granulated sugar
1/3 C packed light brown sugar
1 egg
2 T milk
1 t vanilla extract
1 1/2 C flour
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
extra granulated sugar for rolling
enough hershey's kisses so you have one for each cookie (I used the dark chocolate ones as per my grandmother's suggestion...)

Method:

1. Heat oven to 375°F. Remove wrappers from chocolates.

2. Beat shortening and peanut butter in large bowl until well blended. Add 1/3 cup granulated sugar and brown sugar; beat until fluffy. Add egg, milk and vanilla; beat well.

3. Stir together flour, baking soda and salt; gradually beat into peanut butter mixture.

4. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in granulated sugar and place on ungreased cookie sheet. They won't grow a huge amount in the oven, so leave some space but don't worry too much about it.

5. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Immedi ately press a chocolate into center of each cookie; cookie will crack around edges. Do not attempt to eat a cookie at this point. The chocolate will get very hot and you will burn your mouth. Badly. I speak from experience. Remove them from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool for approximately ten minutes and then enjoy. They will not last long. Do make sure the chocolate has hardened completely before you try to store them. It usually takes several hours.

To get you into the holiday spirit, here's a photo of Tom decorating the tree. He had just come home from skiing to hang out with me and we figured it was as good a time as any to get the ornaments and lights up. Does anyone have a good idea for a tree topper besides our string of dried chiles?

Swedish Refrigerator Cookies

2009-12-11T13:39:00.005-07:00

This post is a little delayed for a couple of reasons. First, I spent yesterday afternoon in Gunnison shopping for food and a Christmas tree (after it's decorated I will provide pictures). Second, and more importantly, I managed to pretty much screw up a family recipe. Tom thinks the cookies taste amazing, but I'm still horribly embarrassed that my Mom might see this and see the amount of effort it took me to fix a recipe that wouldn't have been a problem if I had just done it correctly in the first place. It's especially embarrassing because these have been my favorite cookies since I was about 10!

I dug through her recipe file when I was home over Thanksgiving and found this recipe for "Swedish Refrigerator Cookies," which I've always called checkerboards. They're essentially shortbread cookies that looks somewhat fancy due to the coloration of half the dough with cocoa powder and a little clever shaping. Martha Stewart's recipe advises the use of a ruler to get perfectly square checkerboards, but that seems a little ridiculous to me.

To being with, I creamed a full cup of butter and 3/4 cup of sugar in my food processor (another reason this recipe rocks my mixer-free world). Once they were well combined and looking somewhat sandy, I added 2 1/4 cups of flour as well as 2 teaspoons vanilla. That's when I made my first mistake. I neglected to take into consideration that Chicago, Buffalo, and Cazenovia (and probably Sweden, for that matter) all have significantly more moisture in the air than the alpine desert that is Crested Butte. As a result of this substantially lower humidity than any other place where anyone in my family has attempted these cookies, my flour was too dry and 2 1/4 cups ended up being too much. The dough is supposed to be crumbly, the only true liquid is the mere 2 teaspoons of vanilla, but mine was like a fine powder and didn't stick at all.

Foolishly, I tried to fix it in the food processor. I figured that, like the pie crusts we make up here, I could fix it by adding a bit of ice water. This was the most significant mistake. The water sunk to the bottom of the dough (go figure) and the top still felt dry enough that I added far more water than I ever should have. Looking back, step one would have been to decrease the flour for the altitude and dryness. Step two would have been to knead in sprinkles of water, so that I could make sure I had my hands on the dough when it transitioned from unworkable to workable. As a result, I overwatered the dough and ended up with a sticky mess.

I still managed to work the dough into nearly equal balls and color half of it with the cocoa (1 T). Then I stuck it in the fridge as is in the hopes that the drying effect of the fridge would suck some of the extra moisture out of my cookies.

After being in the fridge overnight, the dough was workable, if not quite right. I divided each color into fourths and set out with my rolling. The basic premise of the checkerboard cookie is that you roll each piece of dough into a long snake, with the goal of getting 2 cocoa ropes and 2 vanilla ropes of approximately the same length. Then they get stacked next to each other and on top of each other to form a nice cookie "log" that will produce checkerboard slices after it chills. I hope the images below give you some idea because I know my description is rather confusing.

Once I had my logs made, I wrapped them in saran wrap and popped them in the freezer to set up some more. When I was ready to bake, I preheated the oven to 350 and started to slice my cookies. The dough was still a little funky, so I ended up having to cut the cookies a little thicker than is ideal (~3/8 inch) and so they took around 12 minutes to bake instead of the recommended 8. They came out okay, but not great. The texture is a little funky and they're not quite the right size. I'm sure the next time I'll nail them.

Still to come: Butternut Squash and Bacon Risotto and Peanut Butter Blossoms. Let me know if you want any of these recipes as ingredients and directions rather than narrative.

And So It Begins: Dark Chocolate Balsamic Truffles

2009-12-09T11:39:00.009-07:00

As I said in my last post, I'm getting more mobile, but I'm still not quite walking. As a result, the boredom is setting in even more. Especially since I spent Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday watching copious amounts of snow fall on Crested Butte. It never seemed like it was snowing particularly hard, but it also didn't stop for 3 days. We now have several feet of the fluffy white stuff and we're back to being in the negatives every morning.

Anyways, I spent Sunday and Monday making delicious confections and, as promised, I'm sharing photos and recipes. The first thing I made was something entirely different from anything I've ever made, but they sounded too good to pass up. I came across the recipe (from Giada De Laurentiis) on Sunday morning while I was looking for a good entree idea for Christmas and knew I had to make the truffles immediately.

It was super easy, I just melted 2 1/2 bars of Newman's Organic Dark Chocolate with 1/4 cup of heavy cream in my improvised double boiler. After it was all melted and smooth, I stirred in 2 teaspoons of balsamic vinegar and then popped the whole bowl in the fridge for a little over an hour. Of course then I did my part to clean up/ensure quality by licking the spoon.

After the ganache set up, I pulled it out to warm up for about an hour. I scooped out hunks of chocolate with a small spoon and rolled them into balls and then dropped them in a bowl of cocoa powder. I would usually go for about 6-8 truffles before my hands were too covered in chocolate and the ganache was too sticky. At that point, I'd pop the bowl back in the fridge, pluck the truffles out of the cocoa powder, put them in my airtight container, and give my hands a wash. After 5-10 minutes of chilling, the ganache was ready to go again and I could do another 8 truffles. It's definitely a messy process, and I would recommend wearing rubber gloves if you have warm hands.

The results are more than worth it. Bitter cocoa on the outside gives way to dark, rich, intense chocolate on the inside. They do not taste at all of vinegar, more a subtle grape flavor that really compliments the darkness of the chocolate. The only change I'll make before my next batch is adding salt in in some way. I absolutely love the combination of chocolate and salt. I haven't decided yet whether to incorporate the salt in with the balsamic, or later when I roll them in cocoa. I highly recommend this recipe to anyone. It is way easy and the results are tremendous.

Next: Swedish Refrigerator Cookies and Butternut Squash and Bacon Risotto

Aggressive Pot Roast

2009-12-05T10:53:00.004-07:00

Sorry, no pictures this time. Instead I just have the recipe for the best pot roast I've made to date. We got back from a Thanksgiving in the Northeast to find it freezing cold in Colorado. Well below freezing, actually, which is to be expected in Crested Butte in December. I had forgotten how cold it is here this time of year. Below 0F almost every day when we get up and if it's not sunny we don't get our lovely passive solar heat and it's undeniably cold, inside and out.

Anyways, with the weather being what it is and both of us wanting a break from poultry following Thanksgiving, we decided to do a pot roast in our slow cooker. On our way back from the airport, we stopped at the store and picked up the following ingredients:

1 large yellow onion
3 parsnips
2 carrots
1/2 pound of baby red potatoes
2 1/4 pound angus chuck roast with lovely marbling

Thursday morning, we got up early and peeled and chopped all the veggies (except the potatoes which we scrubbed and threw in the crock whole). A sprinkling of salt and pepper and we had our veggies to sit under our roast ready to go.

Step two involved searing the meat. We got out our cast-iron skillet and started to crank the heat under it. I melted 1 T of butter in with 1 T of olive oil. Tom took over the salting (salt makes everything taste good) and peppering of the meat. We probably should have dried it off as per Julia Child's instructions, but were in a hurry to get it done. When the skillet started to smoke lightly, we seared the beef on all sides. With the heat cranked up, it sizzled like none other and soon turned into a deliciously caramelized hunk of beef, leaving behind delicious fond in the pan.

We plopped the roast on top of the veggies and then deglazed the hot pan with some Pinot Evil. Don't ever buy it! It's a terribly sweet, watery excuse for a pinot that's really only barely good enough for cooking. After deglazing the pan, I dumped in about a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar and about 1 to 1 1/2 cups of water. We mixed in a scant teaspoon of better than bouillon chicken base, stirred it all up and brought it to a simmer. Over the top of the roast it went and then we cooked it on low for 10 hours.

There is something absolutely fantastic about having a home-cooked meal ready for you at the end of a long day. The veggies were really flavorful and the potatoes were creamy on the inside. The meat was tender and perfectly cooked. We have the stoneware sitting in the fridge right now with over half of it left and it will go back in the slow-cooker on low at around 4 for 2 1/2 hours and we'll have dinner ready again. This will definitely be a staple for the entire winter (with some variations, I'm sure), so all visitors can look forward to some amazing pot roast.

Just as a warning, my great holiday confection-making is about to ensue. I have recipes for cookies and candies galore and now that I'm almost walking (celebration!) I'm going to undertake them in earnest very soon. I promise to take photos and provide all the recipes on here.

Experiments in Alternative Home Heating

2009-11-15T15:31:00.003-07:00

So I've been silent for far too long. Being on crutches for 7 1/2 weeks has not been conducive to me doing a lot of baking. I made some delicious focaccia a week ago, but it hardly seemed worth writing about since all the information is already on here.

A couple of recent developments have inspired this entry. Number one, I've gotten to the point where my "good leg" is so strong that I can practically do one-legged squats to the floor. This makes hopping around the kitchen with things in my hands a daily occurrence so I figured why not see how much I could do. Secondly, we've been getting a lot of snow lately here in Crested Butte which means that I'm sitting around inside without the benefit of passive solar radiation through my big south-facing windows. Due to my surgery, I still have really poor circulation in my right leg (more often than not my feet are two completely different colors and temperatures). The 50 degrees we set our thermostat at to cut down on heating costs just isn't keeping my right leg warm enough. We decided that using our oven to make delicious comestibles would be advantageous in helping heat the condo as well.

Tom, meanwhile, spent the day skiing backcountry in Crested Butte, a zone called the "Purple Palace" that we hit up last year (hot pictures of me skiing pow). He came back absolutely ravenous and with an idea to make high-altitude brownies. Unfortunately for him, I had already determined that our one 8x8 pan would be used for making Dinosaur cornbread to go with the Chilli Verde I had planned for last night. We decided to take a chance and doubled the recipe on the brownies so we could use a 9x13 pan. I know you're never ever supposed to double a recipe when baking, but we like to live dangerously.

Our first project was the brownies. He actually picked out this recipe. Although it was designed for Denver, a mere mile high, it still more or less works up here at our 9,200 feet. I have to mention that this is our second attempt at high-altitude brownies. He tried on his own once before I was strong enough to help and forgot to include the eggs so we ended up with hard, grainy, cocoa and flour bites. This time we included all the ingredients and ended up with a pan full of deep-dish chocolate goodness. Of course we had to test them shortly after they came out of the oven and they were gooey and delicious.

After making the brownies, we turned off the oven and opened the door to let it cool a bit by dispersing some much-needed heat in our upstairs. Then we used the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que recipe for Honey Hush Cornbread. This stuff is like candy-goodness. We went to the Dinosaur when we were in Cazenovia following my surgery and man that stuff was good. I would go back just for the cornbread, not to mention all the other amazing food they have there. Since I knew I wanted chilli, I figured there was no better match for it than this cornbread.

The methodology in making this cornbread seems like overkill unless you've had the goods before. Definitely follow the recipe exactly. First of all, preheating the pan simultaneously with the oven is super-important (don't forget to grease it first). That way you get a loud sizzle when you pour in the batter and it holds together really well because it forms a bit of a crust. The next thing I did was make some buttermilk. I don't typically keep buttermilk around and I always end up needing it when I don't have any. The solution is to put a tablespoon of acid (either lemon juice or white vinegar) in a measuring cup and then fill up the rest of the volume to one cup with milk. It needs to sit for 5 minutes and will become thick and somewhat curdled. That's how you know it's ready. The most important part of the cornbread is having your two tablespoons of honey ready for when it comes out of the oven. While the bread is still nice and hot, pour the honey on and spread it out. It penetrates the top half-inch or so of the cornbread with sweet honey flavor as well as giving it a shiny top. It was delicious.

It was a perfect accompaniment for our Chilli Verde made with ground turkey and a ton of vegetables. I'm not going to include the recipe for that one but I'll throw in a picture.

I'm still going to be on crutches for another 5ish weeks, but I managed to make an original recipe crockpot dinner all by myself this morning (Tom left before 5 to go ski Wolf Creek). If it ends up tasting as good as it smells I'll write up my recipe sometime early this week. I'm also teaching Tom how to make challah so he can impress his family over Thanksgiving, so I'll let you know how that goes.

Brioche!

2009-09-17T14:53:00.002-06:00

I absolutely love making bread these days. I love the process of kneading because I feel in control. I know that I can do it and I know that the results will be good. I've done it enough times this summer to be fairly confident that I can make yeast breads work.

I loved my challah a few weeks ago, but it's honestly not the most practical bread for sandwich making. It makes pretty freaking amazing french toast and Tom can put it down like (almost) none other. However, I just got back from a second trip to New York (yes, my arms are covered in needle holes, no I was not participating in anything illegal) and we were running low on sandwich bread. Tom used to get made fun of by his co-workers for taking PB&J on "wonderbread" (it was actually generic kroger wonderbread). As a result, I make an effort to make sure there's always bread on which he can construct his elaborate sandwiches.

I decided to make the Silver Palate (seriously, buy the cookbook, it rocks) version of brioche. They have a picture of a lovely brioche in a fancy brioche mold, but also claim it can be baked in standard loaf pans to make a lovely loaf. They were not kidding.

It's basically just like challah, except twice as much butter, a little less sugar, and two extra cups of flour. I boiled my two cups of milk with 2 sticks of butter and 1/4 cup of sugar this time, but the method is the same as I described in my challah post.

The dough will be sticky when you start kneading brioche, which actually led to a huge breakthrough for me. Normally when I'm kneading and the dough gets too sticky, I dump some flour on top and continue kneading until it incorporates. I felt like a genius on Monday when I realized that it makes way more sense to put the flour under the dough instead of on top. That way the dough gradually picks up more flour as you fold it in half to knead it. If you put it on top it just ends up in the middle and you don't really fix the sticky problem.

This brioche method actually calls for 3 rises, rather than the standard 2 in bread making. I've found the first rise takes a full 2 hours for the dough to triple in size. After kneading the ball for a further two minutes, I put it back in the bowl and let it double, which only took about 20 minutes.

Then the dough gets put back on the pastry frame and divided in half. Each half will go in a 9x5 loaf pan, but first it needs to be formed. The cookbook was very vague on how to form the loaves, so I used the method I had already used before. This involves rolling it out into a rectangle of about 8 by 4. Then you roll up the rectangle from the short side and squish it together to seal the seam somewhat. Put the loaf seam side down in a butter-greased loaf pan and repeat for the second brioche. Let the loaves rise to double again (under your rising towel, of course), and then pop them in the oven at 375F for about 35 minutes, until golden and enormous.

Even though brioche rises three times before going in the oven, it will amaze you. Make sure you leave enough space above your loaf pans for the bread to double in height again. I'm not kidding, they're enormous. For those of you who went to Dartmouth, think homeplate sandwich bread, except it's way better. It's so moist from the milk and eggs. The crust is lovely and pretty thin.

Not only is brioche fantastic as sandwich bread, it's great to dip into soup or to make into toast. It makes amazing cinnamon toast. It's also really good in a more savory version, like the one pictured below with artisan olive oil and grated parmesan. That was mostly Tom's idea and it was killer. In all its forms it is guaranteed to make your house smell amazing.

Off the Chain Carrot Cake

2009-09-16T15:28:00.005-06:00

So, as a child I loved carrot cake. It was definitely one of my favorites. I think I mostly liked it for the cream cheese frosting, but I was also a huge fan of the raisins in my Mom's carrot cake recipe. They would soak up all the delicious juices in the batter and swell up in the oven (that looks weird when I type that.) For Tom's birthday this year we were in Vermont and his Mom wanted to make him a carrot cake, but didn't have her old recipe. We convinced her to find one online, and, although it was good, it wasn't everything carrot cake can and should be. I set out to find a good one.

Being resourceful, the first person I asked was my Mom. She sent me two recipes, one from the famous Peter Christian's Tavern, formerly in Hanover, NH. Unfortunately, she sent them by email and we didn't have internet access yet in our new place and I really wanted to make a cake. So I turned to The Silver Palate, of course. In their massive cake section, I found the most over the top carrot cake recipe ever. Do not make this cake if you're choosing carrot cake because it has vegetables in it and therefore must be healthy compared to chocolate cake. Do not make this carrot cake if you have anything else that you have to do that day. Do not make this carrot cake if you have a weak stomach. Do, however, make this carrot cake if you want a delicious, rich gut bomb that will feed a crowd.

The first trick in this carrot cake is that it does not have shredded carrots like your standard recipe might. Instead, it calls for 1 1/3 cups pureed cooked carrots. It doesn't give you instructions for making your pureed cooked carrots, so I just simmered them until fork tender and then put them in the food processor with the tiniest little bit of the cooking water. I ended up with a little bit more fabulous orange goo than I needed, so I saved the extra and stirred it into the Butternut Squash Soup I made later in the week.

The rest of the ingredients are also pretty special (the whole recipe can be found here: http://www.relishmag.com/recipes/view/31242/the-silver-palates-carrot.html). The most important ingredients, in my opinion, are the walnuts, crushed pineapple, and shredded coconut. It creates a chunky, lumpy, orangey-brown batter that looks so delicious, kinda like baby vomit. At that point in the experience, I was just hoping it would taste alright.

The recipe calls for baking it in 2 8-inch springform pans. I greased my 8-inch and 9-inch pans with some butter, as instructed, and then attempted to get the same depth of batter in each pan. I popped them into the oven for just under the recommended 50 minute time since I figured my slightly thinner cakes would cook a little faster. The smells seeping out of our oven were pretty fantastic.

Unfortunately, like everything at altitude, they came out of the oven a little sunken. Like I said in the last recipe, I'm going to attribute it to baking soda's diminished leavening abilities at altitude. Even though Julia Child would say, "no explanations," I think it's good to think about what went wrong. I figured frosting would cover up the worst of it.

Me, being smart like I am, kept the frosting at room temperature. It made it pretty easy to frost the cake. If I was really smart, I would have then popped it back into the fridge so that everything could set up. I failed to do that, which resulted in a cake that was pretty much guaranteed to fall apart when we sliced it. Either way, we still managed to feed 13 people with it (that's right, we entertained 13 people at our new place, double the number we ever had at the old home, except when the Maplers were here in February). The best part: the following picture shows how much was left.

In summary, yes, I do have blue counters in my new kitchen (I know you've been thinking it since you saw the first photo). No, I did not choose them, in spite of my perfectly matching giant mixing bowl. Yes, cakes made at altitude will be ugly and yes, you can cover it up if you have enough frosting. Will I completely abandon my Mom's carrot cake recipes in favor of Silver Palate? Hell no! If you were paying attention, this recipe didn't have any raisins, important criteria for an excellent carrot cake. Will I make this again? Definitely, maybe even for Vinotok this weekend.

Completely unrelated: Tom and I built shelves for our new kitchen. They are beautiful and they now hold most of my baking stuff. They also hold my penguin pot, thanks Heather!

Closing note, one of our guests that night told me he doesn't really like carrot cake but he would try mine since I worked so hard on it. Guess who was still talking about how good it was when they all went on a bike ride the next day? That's right, I made a convert.

This Day is Bananas!

2009-09-14T17:19:00.005-06:00

So it has been forever since I updated and in the next couple days I'm going to attempt to catch up. After I got back from New York, I had a bunch of stuff going on, most importantly, we moved! I was not much help since I can't really lift anything more than 10 pounds or so, so Tom was a champ and took over. Due to the move, we ended up not having internet access for a while, so I'm behind. I've made some incredible things in the time since, so it's nice to be able to document them.

Right after I got back from New York, I made some banana bread. Normally I use a recipe that ends up producing a banana "bread" that's really much more of a pound cake with bananas in it. I thought I would change it up a bit and, of course, reached for the Silver Palate Cookbook to see what Julee and Sheila recommend. Their recipe looked really good and different, since it has half whole wheat flour and half all-purpose flour. What a perfect opportunity to use my High Altitude Flour!

Like all quick breads, this one takes very little time to prepare. The biggest thing for me is, since I don't have a mixer, I like to get the butter out a while (we're talking hours, not minutes) before I start mixing. In this case, the recipe calls for one stick of butter to cream with 3/4 cup of sugar and 2 eggs. It all goes together much easier if the butter is super soft. Then all the dry ingredients get combined (1 cup all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1 cup whole wheat flour). I incorporated the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, at which point the mixture was looking awfully dry and I was pretty nervous. The 3 mashed bananas and teaspoon vanilla extract fixed that problem and it was ready to go into the pan. I didn't include the walnuts, for some reason I prefer my banana bread without nuts.

I baked it for 55 minutes at 350F and pulled out my most successful high altitude banana bread yet. Normally there is a shallow trench in the top of the bread when I pull it out. My theory is that baking soda becomes a less effective leavening agent at altitude. I don't know if the high altitude flour is what made the difference, but this is going to become my go-to banana bread recipe. Not only did it look better, but the whole wheat flour added a nice nuttiness and rustic flavor to the finished product. Tom tasted it and approved, so there's no danger of me being forced to eat the whole loaf by myself, the horror.

Still to come: I made a fantastically rich carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and I will definitely take pictures of the brioche that is working on its first of three rises right now. One week (and two days) until surgery and I'm trying to get the house ready as much as possible, which means making, and freezing, food made with our influx of veggies from the farm. I'll try to write about some of that stuff as well.

Post NYC Trip Update

2009-08-20T13:08:00.001-06:00

Unfortunately, this post will deal mostly with the medical stuff and not at all with food. Last week, I went to Denver to see one surgeon and then flew to New York to see the second surgeon. It was eventful to say the least. I’m definitely feeling a little bit overwhelmed with everything that I have to do in the next five weeks, but somehow everything will get done.

The trip to the surgeon in Denver ended up being pretty good. He took more x-rays to check on my femur and confirm that it was all healing nicely. It is, in fact, still round. Dr. White also checked my range of motion and he was thrilled with it, as it is noticeably better now than it was before my surgery. All the time I spend stretching on a daily basis is helping with that. Overall, it was pretty good news for the most part, except that I am not cleared for any activities for which I was hoping to get the okay. He doesn’t want me doing anything that will put me at risk of re-damaging my labrum or cartilage going into the second surgery. I left his office with instructions to re-define mountain living and I’m still trying to come to terms with that. I thought I would get to at least do something outside in the brief window I’ve got between surgeries.

On Wednesday morning I flew from Denver to New York and after my Mom’s flight was delayed we eventually made it to our hotel at around 11:30. We hung out with the bartender for a bit and got to bed a little later than I had anticipated, given the 6:30 wake-up call coming the next morning. We stayed at the Park South Hotel and it was honestly the most comfortable hotel bed I’ve ever slept in and I wanted to smuggle the pillows out in my suitcase. On the tourist standpoint, we had some great meals and went to go see Hair.

Anyways, my appointment with the surgeon in New York, Dr. David Feldman, was definitely a lot to take in. On the positive side, he could identify exactly what is wrong with the orientation of my hip socket. Not only is it too small, but the socket itself is actually rotated backwards a little bit, meaning that the front of my socket obstructs the motion of my femur causing a pinching of my labrum. Kicking a soccer ball for years must not have been all that great for it. He also knew immediately what he has to do to fix it and is confident that the work Dr. White already did will make this second surgery significantly easier.

There was a lot of not so great news as well. The surgery requires a 5 ½ inch incision along my bikini line, which will cause me to bleed a lot. In order to prepare for that, I’m already on an iron supplement and I also have to go back to New York to bank two units of my own blood at NYU so they can replace what I lose during surgery without having to give me donor blood. That definitely freaks me out a little bit since a lot of the time nurses can’t stick my veins just for blood tests without using a pedi needle. I’ll probably lose some feeling on the outside of my thigh from this second surgery, and there is a slight chance of him nicking some major blood vessels or nerves, but he’s never done it in the hundreds of procedures he’s done. All of that stuff terrifies me every time I think about it.

On top of my trips back and forth to New York to deal with the blood and pre-op testing, I also am required to see an asthma specialist in Colorado as well. My anesthesia from the last surgery gave me an asthma attack, so I will not be allowed to have my surgery at the end of next month unless I see an asthma specialist and get cleared. Living in Crested Butte, we have a lot of knee specialists, but not much beyond that. It’s just too small of a town to have a market for a lot of specialists, so I have to find one who is in-network for me so that I can get looked at, hopefully without having to go back to Denver.

On top of all this stuff, we also have to move this next week and Tom might be going to Vegas to do some work for his old company. The stress level is kicking up a little bit, but we went to our new townhouse and drank a beer on the deck on Tuesday night and that really was very relaxing. We have nice views of Axtel, Red Lady, and Whetstone, and a decent view of Mount Crested Butte. Seeing as this post is getting a little long, I’ll let it go at that, without describing the equally dismal rehab road following my surgery.

Challah Back!

2009-08-06T11:14:00.004-06:00

So after a bit of a hiatus from trying new things, I'm back! On Sunday I walked a whole mile, and I've pretty much been paying the price ever since then with a lot of muscle cramps and pain all over my leg. Spending most of my day either on the couch or stretching allows for a lot of time to read cookbooks. After rereading a lot of Jamie at Home, which always makes me want to have a garden and chickens, I decided to tap into something else.

I pulled out the copy of The Silver Palate Cookbook that Tom got from his Mom a couple years ago and started to dig in. When we lived in Vegas, I thought a lot of the recipes were a bit too involved for our busy lifestyle, but now that cooking is pretty much what I do, I figured it was time to revisit the tome. Lo and behold, there was an entire chapter on breads. I was torn. Part of me really wanted to make "Grandma Clark's Soda Bread," which tends to be one of the best contributions of Irish cooking. Then I saw the recipe for Challah. Perfect, an opportunity to knead (something I've found very relaxing when I'm having a difficult time coping with my annoying injury), and it also would allow me to continue experimenting with bread making at 9200 feet.

I've always been a little intimidated by a bread that would require braiding to form the loaves, but I dug into the recipe. In comparison to both focaccia and whey bread, challah is intense. I started making it at around 3:20 and I didn't pull the finished loaves out until about 7. I find it hilarious that I went from making the easiest, least time-intensive bread ever, to making one of the most involved breads.

It takes so long because the first step requires the boiling of two cups of milk, 1/3 of a cup of sugar, and 6 T of butter. Then you have to let it come down to 110F before adding the yeast (2 envelopes or 1 1/2 T), or else the temperature will kill the yeast. That took about 30 minutes. Then the yeast proofed for 10 before I added 3 room-temperature, beaten eggs to the mix. After incorporating about 5 cups of flour in the bowl, I turned it out onto the pastry frame (get one, they're awesome!) and started kneading away. It was pretty sticky, so I ended up adding another cup to cup and a half of flour during the kneading process until I ended up with a beautifully smooth dough.

Another thing that just makes challah more involved is the detail inherent in the recipe. After kneading, I had to wash and dry the bowl and then smear the inside with the remaining two tablespoons of butter. In went the challah for a predicted 1 1/2 to 2 hours rising time. Just after an hour, I called it because the dough was lifting the towel up off the bowl. I don't know if it's the elevation, but for some reason my rising times tend to be much quicker here than they are listed in the recipes.

After rise number 1, I divided the dough into six equal pieces and braided it into two loaves. Despite my trepidations, the braiding wasn't all that difficult, and they actually looked legit when I finished. Then I made my mistakes. I didn't grease the sheet pan at all (as per instructions in the recipe) and I thought they would both fit on the same pan. I only expected the loaves to double in the second rise, but they tripled and so I had to move one before the egg wash and baking. It collapsed a little, but after putting it under the towel while I waited for the oven to preheat (once again, the dough rose much faster than I had anticipated), it bounced back. They got an egg wash and then baked for about 33 minutes. It was a perfect time to enjoy a glass of some good box (gasp!) wine. We recently found 3 liter boxes of Herding Cats at the liquor store in Gunnison. They last for a month once opened, and end up costing a little over $5 a bottle.

I pulled out two beautiful golden brown braids and couldn't wait to chow down. Unfortunately, they stuck to the pans a little bit due to my lack of greasing. I lost a little of the bottom crust on the loaves, but it was only minor. It's definitely sweeter than any of the bread I've made, and I also think it's more photogenic. Tom was high on life coming back from a bike ride to find still-warm bread waiting. After trying all last evening and again this morning (we had challah french toast with fresh raspberries and homemade Vermont maple syrup for breakfast) to define the texture, we decided it was somewhere between a croissant and cotton candy. It definitely seems like there's a lot more than 6 tablespoons of butter between the two loaves, and when you pull it apart it gets all wispy and airy like a handful of cotton candy. Ultimately, it is now one of my favorite breads to make because it is so rewarding as a finished product. Definitely don't try it unless you have a lot of time to sit and wait though.

Focaccia

2009-07-29T14:28:00.002-06:00

So for those of you who are unaware, Crested Butte has a really great farmers market, and Tom and I thought we'd check it out this Sunday since the weather was looking not great for biking. While wandering around the various stalls set up, we were incredibly tempted by the delicious breads for sale. However, I reminded him that I could make bread at home for a fraction of the cost and it would be just as good. He didn't really believe me, so I decided to view that as a challenge.

Being inspired by the focaccia at the market, I immediately started searching for good focaccia recipes when we got home. Of course I didn't think to look in our Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking that we got for Christmas (Thanks Julia!), and after much deliberation we settled on this recipe. It appealed to me because it looked quick and fairly simple to make. I also had most of the ingredients on hand. I omitted the olives and parsley in the recipe since I didn't have any in the fridge, but used some delicious thyme from our farm. Within about an hour, I was shaping the dough into my 9 x 13 pan and preheating the oven. Thirty minutes after that, I dumped my olive oil, garlic, and thyme mixture on top and slipped the bread into the oven.

About thirty minutes later, we pulled out the bread pictured at the beginning of the entry and immediately started eating it. Focaccia is so incredible because it's crispy and oily on the outside, but at the same time spongy, without being gooey, on the inside. It's literally the cake of breads. We took it to our friends' place that night for dinner and the four of us beasted most of the pan with some good olive oil (as if there wasn't enough already) and fancy balsamic. At the time, I couldn't help but contemplate how good a sandwich would be on a roll with the same properties as that focaccia.

Being that my job doesn't begin until Friday, and I'm moving around a lot better now, I decided there was no time like the present to continue my quest for the perfect sandwich rolls. I used the exact same recipe as before, except this time I substituted about a cup of my high altitude whole wheat flour for the same amount of white flour. The focaccia was great before, but I wanted to see how using some less processed flour would affect the final taste. The dough went together about as easily as before, but took a little longer to rise. It could have been the temperature in the condo, or it could have been the flour substitution. Either way, I had to wait, at most, about 10 extra minutes.

I split the dough into 8 rolls and set them up to rise on 2 sheet pans coated in a mixture of olive oil and corn meal. One hung out near our slow cooker full of soon to be Carolina-Style Barbecue Beef, and the other on top of our preheating oven. After letting them rise, I put dimples in the middles of them and then coated them with a mixture of olive oil, thyme, and garlic like last time before sprinkling them with some salt. They came out of the oven looking fantastic and I did a happy dance before eating half of the smallest one. And then five minutes later I finished it off. Whoops!

Ultimately, I was right. I could make focaccia so delicious we wouldn't ever want or need to buy it at the farmer's market. It was great the first night, and it didn't suffer when I substituted a little bit of wheat flour the second go round. The rolls made (and continue to make) a great pairing with our barbecue beef. I will give you more details on how we did that, along with some excellent photos from a guest photog, next time I stop cooking long enough to write. Tonight we're having roast chicken and vegetables version 2.0 with collard greens and then hopefully peach pie for dessert.

Roast Chicken: To Truss or not to Truss

2009-07-27T15:34:00.001-06:00

On Saturday, being near the two week mark since we had last made the trek to the big city of Gunnison to buy groceries, we were at a loss for what to do for dinner. We still had beets and carrots from our farm and a single onion left. I figured the best way to use all of those veggies together (other than a pizza, of course) was to grab a chicken from the store here in Crested Butte and roast it all up together. I bought at great roasting pan with a rack two days after Thanksgiving last year, and any chance I have to use it I'm all over it. Although this wouldn't be the quickest dinner to make, it had the advantage of being pretty low maintenance, so we grabbed a chicken and went to work.

My first step is always veggie prep. In this case, it involved washing and trimming the beets and carrots (I never peel them, it just seems like unnecessary extra work) and peeling the onion then cutting it into wedges. I put it all in the bottom of my roasting pan and threw in a couple of cloves of garlic and then dumped in some olive oil and a bunch of salt before stirring it around to coat the veggies. You can see in the picture below that we had two different varieties of beets. Tom prefers the standard all red ones, but I like the chioggia ones for the novelty. They're more of a radish color on the outside, and then pink and white striped on the inside. They taste pretty much like the other ones, but they just add a little more visual interest. The next time I roast a chicken like this, I'll definitely quarter, rather than halve, the beets as they were still a little firm when they came out of the oven.

After sticking the rack into the pan, I moved onto the chicken. I took it out of its bag and then gave it a good rinse. We ended up buying a chicken without neck or giblets, which made it incredibly easy to prep. While cleaning it, I noticed the skin had come a little loose, so I decided to take advantage of it and loosen it up all the way over the breasts. I shoved some butter up under the skin and definitely wished I had some fresh herbs. Maybe this week I'll use some of the thyme we got in our farmshare. Then the bird went onto the rack and got a clove a garlic and half of a lemon inside. I put some olive oil on top and rubbed it in along with some kosher salt and black pepper. I squeezed the other half of the lemon all over the bird and the veggies and then into the 375F oven for an hour and a half.

We ended up with a cheap dinner without too much work involved. The chicken skin crisped up nicely (especially over the butter) and the thigh and wing bones pulled right out of the bird. They were also the most tender chicken breasts I've ever managed on a roasted chicken, so that was a pleasant surprise. Butter is powerful stuff. Looking at the single chicken and small selection of veggies in the roasting pan always makes me wonder if it's a bit overkill to bust out the big pan. After switching to this pan from roasting a chicken in a 9 by 13 baking pan, I can definitely say the extra room and, more importantly, the rack to elevate the chicken results in a far superior bird. In answer to the trussing question, we tried it the time before this and found it to be a terrible idea. It's a pain to do, especially if you forget to stick the garlic and whatever else inside the chicken before tying the legs together. It also resulted in spots that cooked much quicker than others, leaving us with overdone breasts and uncooked thighs. I don't understand why people go out of their way to make something that should be simple more difficult.

Whey!

2009-07-24T14:18:00.001-06:00

Having made cheese on Sunday, Tom and I had a huge container of leftover whey in the fridge. Due to our New England heritage, neither one of us likes to throw anything away... ever, so we had to figure out a way to use the wonderful pale yellow liquid. Apparently it also has a lot of really good protein and other healthy things in it.

Conveniently, a recipe for "Italian Feather Bread" made with whey was located in the mozzarella kit I ordered from cheesemaking.com. I've made it once before, but it turned out even better this second time. The procedure involved combining the yeast, water, and sugar and letting that proof while I melted some butter in a pot with 3/4 of a cup of the leftover whey. I then combined it all with some flour (around 4 cups) and salt before dumping it onto the pastry cloth and kneading it around. While kneading, I added another cup or so of flour and then let it rest for a bit. It's enough flour to make two loaves, so I rolled out the dough and then rolled it up into beautiful loaves before letting it rise for an hour. This recipe is unusual because typically the longer of the two rising periods is prior to forming the loaves. After applying the egg wash and baking for 35 minutes at 425F, I was rewarded with golden happiness (times two!).

We took the bread and the leftover cheese down to the free concert on Monday night. We also brought some infused olive oil from a fantastic store in Cazenovia (Lavender Blue). Altogether, with some cold beer and good friends, it was a great evening.

On Tuesday, I decided to completely decimate my yeast supply by making more leavened whey products. Tom found this recipe for me on another great food blog (http://garlic-breath.blogspot.com/2008/05/whey-bread.html). He wanted sandwich rolls, and I figured they would be better than the all white flour empty calorie rolls he likes to get from the grocery store in Gunnison. The recipe calls for 2 hours of rising time initially, but after an hour and a half, my dough had tripled, so I punched it down and made it into 4 rolls. Apparently I'm a bad judge of how much they would rise, since I could have easily made 6 rolls out of my dough, but it's okay to cut them in half, right? The pictures are the rolls rising under the cloth, the risen rolls, and then the fantastic, healthier version of sandwich rolls.

On Wednesday, I continued the baking trend by making chocolate chip cookies. Apparently the trick to getting them to stay chewy days later is to chill the dough before baking, and between batches. That keeps the cookies from spreading out as much, so they stay thicker and therefore chewier. I didn't take any pictures and they're not really relevant to the topic of whey, but I thought I'd share anyways.

Pizza Night

2009-07-20T10:56:00.000-06:00

As promised, we finally made pizza. Sunday was a perfect day for it, since I'm finally able to stand up long enough to knead the dough and Tom was around to help me make the mozzarella. We decided to make it as all natural as possible.

The first thing I did was make pizza dough. I used to be lazy and do it in the food processor. Now, I really enjoy the process of kneading the dough. It's pretty crazy how a pile of flour and a couple cups of liquid turn into a fantastic, elastic dough with a little bit of hard work. I used Jamie Oliver's pizza dough recipe from his cookbook Jamie at Home (also here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/jamie-oliver/pizza-dough-recipe/index.html). Since I don't have Tipo 00 flour, I just used 4 cups of all purpose flour and 3 cups of Hungarian High Altitude Stone Ground Whole Wheat Flour. The best part of this dough is that it just rises and rises. I covered it and put in in a bowl by the windows for an hour, then split it into fourths and kneaded it again before wrapping it in plastic and sticking it in the fridge. Then, about an hour later, I had to punch the dough down again. Even in the fridge, it often explodes out of its plastic wrap. I think I punched it down a total of 4 times yesterday afternoon.

After taking a break and resting my hip for a bit, Tom and I decided it was time to make the cheese. After reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, I became obsessed with the idea of making our own cheese. It's cheaper than buying high quality fresh mozzarella at the store, and I thought it would be fun. So I bought the 30 Minute Mozzarella Kit from Ricki the Cheese Queen (kit and recipe/photos of the process are here). Little did I know that we would fail miserably the first couple of times that we attempted it. Apparently it's impossible to get milk in the grocery stores around here that isn't ultra-pasteurized. When milk is ultra-pasteurized, it no longer has the ability to form curds and you end up with a sloppy mess instead of cheese. We discovered that we could use re-hydrated non-fat dry milk with a cup or so of heavy cream and yesterday was our first time successfully making cheese together. We're starting to understand the process better. Even better, we made enough mozzarella for the pizza and to bring down to the free concert in the park tonight, so I'm going to make some Italian bread this afternoon to eat with the cheese (using the leftover whey of course).

After all that, we were finally ready to make pizza. Our standard pizza employs a lot of roasted root veggies as toppings. It being summer, however, I couldn't stand the thought of having the oven on any longer than necessary, instead, I busted out the cast iron skillet. I sauteed a colorful mixture of onion, orange pepper, garlic, zucchini, and rainbow chard in a little olive oil, throwing in some dried oregano and red pepper flakes for additional flavor. It turned into a fantastic pan of pizza topping goodness...

Meanwhile, Tom was spreading out the dough, which he then coated with some balsamic vinegar. We put it in the oven for 3 minutes at 475F then loaded it up with toppings and cheese and popped it back in for about 10 more minutes. Overall, it was one of the best pizzas we've ever made. The toppings were colorful and flavorful, the oregano was a crucial addition, and we actually managed to get bubbles of air in the crust in spite of living at 9,200 feet!

Quick Update

2009-07-17T19:10:00.000-06:00

I'm walking! I'm 3 weeks post-op and I've officially ditched my crutches (except for when I'm fatigued or my hip flexor starts to spasm). Due to the gorgeous weather and our pretty flowers, we've decided to grill with some friends, so the pizza will have to wait for another night...

Empanadas!

2009-07-16T13:18:00.000-06:00

So I have yet to make the brownies. I think I’ll bake them for a barbecue this weekend. But, we did whip up some delicious empanadas last night, so I finally get to make my first post exclusively about food.

I was inspired by the kohlrabi in our farm share (turkey hill CSA), and since I have never cooked with it before, I looked for some recipes online. Most of the ones I initially found had tomatoes, which cause me to break out in horrible hives. Eventually, however, I located one for Kohlrabi and Squash Empanadas (http://straightfromthefarm.net/2007/06/17/something-original/) and decided it would be perfect, with a few substitutions. I added 93/7 ground beef to the filling, doubled the amount of ginger and garlic, and used half an onion instead of scallions since we forgot those the last time we went grocery shopping. The recipe was relatively quick to make (start to finish less than an hour, including making homemade pie dough) and the results were fantastic.

In terms of flavor, these were a really interesting combination. The beef really added to the flavor of the filling quite a bit, without dominating too much. The kohlrabi tasted a lot like broccoli stems. The most surprising thing to me was how subtle the garlic and ginger were, next time I would definitely add even more. The flavor of ginger was minimal, instead, it took on a more aromatic quality. It was pleasant, but I missed the spice of ginger.

We discussed next time and decided that the recipe could be made with just about anything in any season. In the fall when we're getting hit with heads of broccoli to rival the heads of lettuce that we have now, we'll definitely pull this recipe out again. I will add more heat to it next time as well, chili powder or dried chillies would be an excellent addition to the filling. We also talked about making the pie dough with half whole wheat and half white flour to give the empanadas a nuttier flavor.

Friday night, I'm thinking homemade pizza. Homemade dough, homemade mozzarella, and lots of roasted veggies. Hopefully I'll remember to start taking pictures of all these great meals!

Things that go spasm in the night...

2009-07-14T13:22:00.001-06:00

So I've hit my first major setback in the whole post-op recovery thing. I totally intended for this blog to be about food, but for at least a while more, it's going to be mostly about my hip.

On Friday (2 weeks post-op) I got to start re-learning how to walk. Silly me, I thought I would crutch my way in and then be walking out like it was no problem. My PT guy quickly put me straight and explained that for short distances I was allowed to use one crutch, but for any long distances or rough ground, I still needed to be using two. I was allowed to put as much weight on my leg as I could tolerate without causing pain or walking with a limp.

I spent the weekend weaning myself down. Initially I relied heavily on my single crutch, but by Monday, I was pretty much walking normally and just using the one crutch for balance. Every once in a while, I'd get a little tweak on my hip flexor, but it was only a matter of seconds and then it would pass. I thought I was in great shape and it was nice to be a little more self-reliant finally.

Then, last night while I was asleep, I kept getting little tweaks, which started to last longer and eventually longer to the point that they were massive spasms in my hip flexor. For the first time since post-op night 1, I was in serious pain, and this time I didn't have a morphine drip and pump. After a dose of advil, elevation to reduce the stretch on my hip flexor, and an ice pack on my leg, I finally was able to get back to sleep 4 hours before my next PT appointment.

It got even better when I got to PT today. After hearing about my pain, I was told that I pushed it too much and that I needed to really slow it down (which I thought I was doing...). Given my history of 7 years of hip flexor tendonitis and the nature of my last surgery, my hip flexor just freaked out when I started pushing it even a little bit. After a little deep tissue massage (which put me at a 10 on the pain scale for the first time since surgery) for my hip flexor and some stretching, I have new instructions. I'm still on the one crutch at home/two crutches out and about regimen. Now I also have to stretch my hip flexor every hour and do ice massage with dixie cups of ice.

On the food front, we saved 17% on our grocery shopping last night because almost anything that was on sale went in our cart (we saved $11 on blackberries, yum!). Tonight's dinner will be lamb burgers with homemade tzatziki made with dill from our farmshare. I might be able to make one-handed brownies tomorrow courtesy of my generous sister and the betty crocker mix she sent me. Either tomorrow or Thursday, we're planning on tackling kohlrabi and summer squash empanadas, so I'll definitely let you know how they turn out.

Hip Dysplasia, Femoro-acetabular Impingement, Hypermobile Labrum

2009-07-10T15:15:00.000-06:00

The title contains the official medical terms to describe why I will be spending the entirety of my summer and the better part of the fall and winter with restricted activity levels. In layman’s terms, my hip joint is supposed to be like the ball and socket on a trailer hitch. Unfortunately, the ball and the socket that make up my right hip never formed correctly. As a result, I made it through 25 years of moderate to intense athletics before a surgeon correctly identified that my femur was flat on one side (it’s supposed to be the ball) and my hip socket was 27% smaller on my right side than on my left. Hurray congenital problems that go unnoticed!

After I endured hip pain for 7 years, my brilliant Dr. White diagnosed the problems I described above. He proposed a two-part plan to fix the huge problems with my hip joint. The first part happened on June 26th, when he went in arthroscopically and, with only three tiny holes, reattached my labrum (essentially a suction cup/cushion/wonder substance, that just happens to look like mozzarella, lining the hip socket) and ground out my femur so that it actually does look like a ball. The difference between my pre and post Xrays is huge and I’m really excited to have 2/3 of the problems with my hip fixed.

Surgery number two involves breaking my pelvis in three places and rotating the outer piece so that the socket fits around the new and improved ball of my femur. Then they screw it back together with 2-5 screws and close the 5 1/2 inch incision. The procedure is called a Ganz Osteotomy and was invented in Switzerland in 1983. There are only 2 surgeons in the country that Dr. White trusts to do the procedure, so I have to go to NYU to have it done. That surgery will leave me in the hospital for around 5 days and on crutches for six weeks. I’m not ecstatic about it, but the other option is spending the next 20 years waiting for my hip to get so arthritic that it needs to be replaced. Unfortunately the average lifespan of a hip replacement is 12 years, and the more you do, the less time they last. After two replacements, it becomes significantly more challenging to replace the hip. Also, my dysplasia would put me at risk for continuing to detach/tear/grind up up my labrum, and after Dr. White spent 4 hours repairing it once I would hate to put him through that again.

So here I am in beautiful Colorado lacking the opportunity to partake in any of the glorious outdoor activities I moved here to enjoy. When thinking about what I could possibly do with myself this summer, I realized that the only realistic options were reading, blogging, and aggressive baking. So as soon as I’m off crutches, I’m going to be making bread, pies, empanadas, and any other delicious items I can make with my farm share and the 15 pounds of flour I currently have in my condo.