When things get dicey…

Ahh, Thanksgiving. The turkey. The pies. The family. The small kids. Their germs. The cold, three days later.

If you check out Mr. Pea’s blog, you’ll get the details: our little niece, Lucy, thinks of Ben as her personal playground. She climbs all over him, sits on him, throws herself over his legs as a weight for leglifts. This was certainly the case at Thanksgiving, when she was leaking grossly from her nose. Three days later, here we are, Mr. Pea decamped on the couch and me making soup. As he points out, being child-free, we lack the antibodies to fight these things off.

This soup was a recipe I found when googling cold-healing soups. It isn’t the most flavorful soup I’ve ever had, but it’s pretty decent and full of vitamins. First you begin by doing a lot of dicing. Chop into relatively uniform bits:
1 parsnip
1 carrot
1 potato
1 leek, white parts only

and then mince four cloves of garlic.

Add 1 1/2 T of olive oil to a soup pot. Add the diced veggies and, over medium heat, cook about five minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add 5 c of broth–we used chicken for its miraculous healing properties–scrape up the bits of stuck veggie from the bottom of the pan, and bring to a simmer, adding some salt to taste. Simmer 5 minutes.

Add 4 oz of chopped spinach–a good-sized handful–to the pot, and simmer away another five minutes.

Here it is, in its finished glory:

We needed to add more salt and some pepper, as the flavor was a bit flat without them, but overall it’s a good, hearty broth-based soup and delicious with some toasted cheddar bread leftover from dinner the other night (I didn’t make it, so I can’t share the recipe with you). After a week of eating out and eating insane amounts of turkey and pie, it was nice to have something light and not poultry-based. Hopefully it’ll help you if you happen to come down with a dreaded cold this winter.

Gift crafting

This was my project last weekend: a needle roll for a friend of mine. As I made it I wasn’t sure if she knitted, so I’m only hoping she does at this point. Maybe she crochets. I know she rug-hooks. She’s a hooker. But in a worst-case scenario she could always just use it for pencils.

I made the roll out of my own imagination, not following any pattern.

I cut an 18.5 x 14.5 inch rectangle out of the printed fabric (like the measuring tapes?), an orange corduroy in my scrap bin, and a thick piece of felt to give it strength and structure. Then I cut a smaller rectangle, I think it was 11 inches or so, out of the print and out of muslin, to make the pockets.

My seam allowance was about half an inch.

First I sewed the print to the muslin right sides together, along the long top seam, then pressed the seam and turned it over. I pinned the felt to the corduroy, then pinned the pocket to that, and also pinned in a long piece of folded ribbon; I probably should have basted there, but I went for broke and pinned the large piece of print to the pile, facing the pocket. I sewed along the edges, leaving about 4 inches open on the far right edge in order to turn it out. When done sewing, I clipped around the corners in order for them to turn out well, and turned the whole thing out, using a crochet hook to poke the corners until they were sharper.

I pressed the whole piece together at that point, and began to make the little pockets. These I made by topstitching, carefully, at one inch intervals. I measured the inch and would mark it with pins and carefully sew. When I was done (this part took forever), I nipped any loose threads, cut the ribbon at the fold and melted the edges so they wouldn’t fray, and there it was–needle case! It only took an afternoon, and I’d say a beginning sewer who’s pretty confident could handle it.

Pumpkin Pasta with Sausage

This weekend I was a recluse. Mr. Pea, having observed me avoiding Mt. Grading for several days and watching me progress into a basket case, gave me stern orders to sit and grade while he went out for a few hours. I spent much of the weekend on the couch, under a quilt, grading papers on the cross-country trek of some folks in the 19th century to California. So I didn’t post anything, and didn’t cook terribly much, though I did finish my flock of birds I showed you last week. I have a new project, too, that I hope to share with you tomorrow.

At any rate, we ate in on Saturday night before we went to a little party, and I made this pasta dish. I saw it first at Posie Gets Cozy, and thought it might be tasty. And it was! The photo just kind of looks like sunny goodness and doesn’t quite do the dish justice. I tweaked the recipe just a little and was pleased with the results, though it doesn’t reheat all that well (it dries out), so you might want to try it on a night when you know it will all get eaten.

You’ll need:
2-3 links of sweet Italian sausage
1/2 c pumpkin puree
1 c half-and-half
salt and pepper
2 good pinches dried sage
1/4 c grated parmesan
12 oz pasta such as cavatappi or rigatoni

Start by crumbling your sausage out of the casing and frying it up in a wide, deep saute pan over medium heat in a tablespoon or so of olive oil. At the same time, get your water started for the pasta. When it boils, add the pasta and cook until al dente or firm to the bite.

In the meantime, once your sausage is cooked through, add the pumpkin, half-and-half, and spices to the pan, stirring to scrape up bits of sausagey goodness off the bottom of the pan. Keep at a gentle simmer while pasta cooks, and add the cheese, stirring occasionally. When pasta is done, strain and add to the sauce. Toss to coat.

This would be great with a spinach salad but for whatever reason making two separate components for dinner was waaaaay beyond me on Saturday. It must be the mind-numbing goodness of reading the same thing, essentially, over 30 times!

How’s it Wednesday already? and almost Thanksgiving?

I bet most of you, fair readers, thought I’d never return. That the post about venison was about as weird as it could get, and that I’d finally lost my mind and run away. Ha! I’m back. And today I’m going to ramble about both crafting and baking, so it’s a real banner day.

The last few days have been more than enough activity for little old me. Not only am I ridiculously behind in my own work (no one is getting papers back anytime soon), but Mr. Pea came down with some kind of awful migraine/sinus headache/thing that was intense and mean and pretty much absorbed most of our weekend attention. I tend to be a bit of an over-the-top caregiver and am not good at turning that instinct off. When I cooked I cooked some standards–chicken soup, for example–that are reportedly able to cure a host of illnesses. I also made some brussell sprout risotto, which, while it combined two of my favorite things, really wasn’t that great, so I didn’t bother to tell you about it. But now it’s Wednesday, a startling week from Thanksgiving (how’d that happen?), and dangerously close to Christmas. Actually, I love Christmas. I love the season, the music, the lights. Bring it on. Once Halloween is over, I don’t mind Christmas peeking out from around the corners.

Before things got nutty on Saturday, I ventured to a local fabric shop which sells a lot of nice designer quilting cotton, the kind of stuff I used to buy for Sweet Pea Handcrafts. I was so excited to just mill around and look at it all, but limited myself to fabric for projects I had planned. The above photo is an example: this tiny bird ornament (it’s maybe 3 or so inches long) is from Last-Minute Patchwork Gifts, and I’m working on a flock of ten of them. I’ve got four done, and they’ll be part of gifts for folks for the holiday. They’re made on the machine, which took a little finagling at first since they’re so little. The book has all kinds of cool projects, many of which can be made in just a couple hours. I took it out of the library last weekend and hope to make at least a few things from it before I send it back.


I got around to baking a new round of cookies over the last 24 hours I thought I’d share with you. The pictures I saw of these (in Gourmet) don’t look much like mine turned out. Mine are ok, theirs are gorgeous. The cookies are essentially a buttery shortbread with pistachios and dried cranberries. You make the dough, roll it into a log, and pop it into the fridge to firm up. Then you slice the log and bake. The problem for me was that as I sliced the 1/4″ squares, the cookies would start to break when I hit a stubborn pistachio. The more pressure it took to cut the pistachio, the greater the likelihood that the cookie would bust up. This was frustrating and I’m glad I only made a half-batch. They are tasty at any rate, but I’m not sure I’ll try them again. I think I’ll find a drop cookie recipe instead. At any rate, you can visit epicurious for the recipe.

Venison? or, why I won’t be crafting today

My big plan for today was to get a real jump on both my holiday crafting and odds-and-ends projects that are in the pipeline–fixing a loose button, sewing up draft-blocking tube for the windows, hemming some pants. But late last night (ok, 10:30, but that’s late for me), after Mr. Pea had made me a stunning dinner of pork chops from the local butcher with an orange glaze and broccoli rabe with lemon, and after I’d taught my 2-hour evening class, I got a message on my phone. Our friend, whom I shall call Mr. Shoe, had hit a deer. With his car. On the turnpike. Whoops.

Mr. Shoe was understandably shaken up, and today we’re going to go pick him up, help arrange his rental car, and get some lunch. So there isn’t actually venison to be had (though Mr. Pea can tell you all about the time his family hit a deer and the cop who stopped to help asked them if they wanted the meat, eewww), but there won’t be much crafting or cooking, either. I’ll have to give you guys an awesome weekend post to make up for my slackness….perhaps by then I can share both a recipe and a completed project. But I think we all know me well enough to guess that it’ll be one or the other, or maybe just another post about the fantasticness of Nigella Lawson…

In Praise of the Humble Sprout

Ah, the brussels sprout. It is finally in season, and costs only $1.99 at Whole Foods today. For many years I assumed I did not like brussels sprouts. Tiny cabbages! I thought. Eww! But lo! Last year I cooked them for the very first time, and proclaimed them good.

I never thought much about how sprouts were grown as I don’t think we ever ate them when I was a kid. My dad probably disliked them. Nor have I ever seen a brussels sprout farm. But check this out:

What *is* that? A sprout vine? That just makes these little guys all that much more awesome. Not only do they look like adorable little cabbages, they grow in a weird and interesting way. Thank you, Wikipedia, for filling me in.

Brussels sprouts have a nutty richness to them that comes out when you roast them in particular. I had visions of sprouts being boiled to death into mushy little knobs of grossness. When I started investigating, I learned there was a real variety in sprout prep, and that roasting them serves them best. First, peel off the outer layers and cut off the little stem on a dozen sprouts. Then slice them in half. Toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and put in a roasting dish. Put dish in a 400 degree oven and keep an eye on them, tossing occasionally, until a little bit browned and tender. This takes somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes, depending on sprout size. This past weekend, I peeled and sliced sprouts and then put them face-down in a skillet with olive oil over medium-high heat; once browned, I added a few tablespoons of water and covered to steam five minutes until tender. You do lose some crispness, but they’re still pretty darn good.

I pine for enamelware

Over the years, many very kind people have given me a range of remarkable kitchen gadgets. I am a known kitchen gadget afficianado. I have two drawers and two jars full of such things, so I have a lot more stuff than I can ever possible use or need. I also have a decent collection of pans, including a poor old cast iron pan that needs some serious re-seasoning. One piece of kitchenware I’d love to get my hands on is a cast iron enamel-coated pot. I have a dutch oven–a solid piece of revere wear–but the enamels pots are so….pretty. Le Creuset makes the standard of enamel pots, pots you can buy when you’re 20 (or 30, but who’s counting?) and keep until you’re 85. And then pass it down. But they are very, very expensive. A year or two ago Martha Stewart began a line of kitchen stuff at Macy’s, and among the insane number of pieces were a couple of enamel pots. The bigger one was a 6 quart, ideal for pots of stew, or the original no-knead bread, except that the pesky handle on the lid can’t go in a 500 degree oven without melting. I like the aqua blue color it comes in, too. As much as I can envision one lazily stewing on my stovetop, it’s probably going to have to remain a vision for a while….at least until I can get my hands on a Le Creuset!

Nostalgic food: DIY Rice-a-Roni

When I was a kid we ate essentially the same rotation of meals every week. Chicken, pasta, pork chops, steak, and a few other things made up the bulk of our dinners every 7 days. My dad–though he’ll deny it forever–is insanely fussy, and so life was just easier for my mom if she gave him what she knew he liked in a never-ending rotation. She likes to visit me, incidentally, because I make all kinds of different things and will drag her to places like Vietnamese restaurants. A childhood of pork chops and (gag) tuna noodle casserole does not beg repeating in my adult years.

One thing we used to eat all the time was Rice-a-Roni—we’d have either it or a box of Near East pilaf with the roast chicken and/or steak during the week. When I first moved in with Mr. Pea and was learning to cook, we also ate a lot of those things. But we don’t buy the Rice-a-Roni anymore, as it’s reallllllly salty and you don’t get a lot of bang for your buck. Some time ago I found a recipe for making a homemade version of the childhood classic, and last night, I made it again.

Now proper Rice-a-Roni features rice and vermicelli broken into tiny pieces. As breaking pasta into uniform pieces sounds really unappealing to me, I use a combination of long-grain rice and orzo. It’s really very easy. If you were to really do it properly, you’d get some broth (or you’d have it in your freezer, you overachiever, you), but wanting to keep this dish true to its initial form, I used bullion cubes.

So start by melting 1 T of butter and a 1/2 T of olive oil over medium-high heat. Add 1 c rice and 1/2 c orzo and toast until lightly browned, 3 or 4 minutes. Add 2 cups of water (you’ll likely have to add more) and 2 cubes of bullion, either chicken or beef (just like the boxes of r-n-r!). Bring to a simmer, cover, reduce heat to low, and cook, stirring occasionally, until tender. Again, you might need to add a little more water to this. You might also want more seasoning, but I can’t add more than two cubes to something in good conscience, since they’re pretty much just salt.

You’ll end up with an enormous quantity of the stuff. We each ate a good-size portion and then ate more, since there was so much of it. I then crammed at least two servings into a pyrex fridge dish, and wound up tossing a little more away for lack of storage. You can feed, oh, six people, I’d say, which is a heck of a lot more than you’ll get out of the box.

It’s Sunday, and time for pie!

There’s nothing like a lazy Sunday as a chance to make pie. This was indeed a lazy pie. I committed something virtually unheard of in our house–I bought the crust. I rarely do that, though this is the second time this fall, so maybe I’m turning a corner. You see, I am an insistent do-it-yourselfer, and I have a long vendetta with pie crust. Many years ago in our first apartment, I was assigned my first pie to make for Thanksgiving. I was very excited. I carefully cut shortening into flour, added a little salt, added ice water, made a ball, and put it on my floured table. Problem was, the table was covered with a sort of laminate, and regardless of how much flour I added, the crust stuck. Then there was suddenly too much flour so the crust began to dry out and crack. Things went from ugly to much uglier and ended up–I’m not kidding–with my hollering several four-letter words and throwing the dough against the wall. I’ve come a long way since then, but mostly because I’m not going to let crust get the better of me. Armed with a food processor and a granite island, things come together much more smoothly than they once did.

That said, sometimes a girl just doesn’t feel like exerting the effort. So she drives to Stop and Shop.

The custard for this pie is a pretty standard kind of recipe, one my mom made for years and which I made for years as a kid before leaving the nest.

You’ll need:
1 can pumpkin puree (NOT pumpkin pie filling)
1 1/2 c milk
1 1/2 T melted butter
2 eggs, beaten
2 T molasses
1/2-3/4 c sugar
1 T cornstarch
1/2 t cinnamon
1/2 t ginger
1/2 t nutmeg
1/2 t salt

Preheat oven to 450. Place your crust in your pie dish and set aside. Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl, and then add wet, mixing well. Pour into shell, cover edge with foil to prevent burning, and pop into oven. After 15 minutes, turn the oven down to 350. Bake for another 50 minutes, removing foil during the last 15 minutes.

Since we’re still a few weeks away from any major holiday, this means Mr. Pea and I get half a pie apiece. Sweet, but probably more than we can handle!

Feeding the cookie monster

When I’m not baking cookies (and I do bake 90% of the cookies we eat here) I like to get them from the store. But I don’t care too much for oreos, or for chips ahoy. Oh no. I head to the Asian market and delicious Japanese cookies.

We discovered an Asian supermarket in our new town recently and finally got out there last night. Know what they have in mass quantities?

Hello Panda! Pocky! Hooray! Tiny cookies filled or covered with chocolate are a-ok in my book, especially when stamped with adorable pictures of little happy pandas. So even if everyone here for whatever reason is driving like a jerk today, AND someone at said market rolled their cart into our purty new car (double jerk), at least I have chocolate as solace.