The Most Perfect Chicken Breast Of All Time.

Google has shined upon me and the produce of my search bar must be shared. I have found the secret to pan-sauteeing chicken boneless skinless chicken breast into tender, juicy deliciousness. No more rubbery, dry, frustrating cuts....and yes, I know that using thigh meat is a good alternative. Still.  Sometimes, nothing beats the price or the hefty simplicity or light flavor of breast meat. This approach is really brilliant. Nothing is added to it, not even water and no sauce to dress it up or crazy equipment....just perfect, perfect directions. Its never tough, never dry and never pink in the middle.

I have made it four times now with effortless reproductibility. Easy, clear and perfect for so many uses. It makes the best salad topping meat, taco filling, or addition to spaghetti sauce. I can batch cook several this way and then we're good for finger food for picnics or freezer meals for a while.

You must try this.

The kitchen gods will sing arias over your stove too!!!

Faith Durand over at The Kitchn is a brilliant, brilliant genius...and is the mastermind behind these very direct and foolproof directions. There are pictures and numbered steps and its all on one page. I'm not sure how she could make it better.

Check it out. Perfect Chicken Breast.

That Glorious First Snow

One week ago we had our first snowfall. Last year was a very light winter, but we did get one big "winter" storm at Halloween...the year before that was of course a real doozy for us New Englanders with record amounts of snowfall. All of us out here are oh, so curious about what in the world this winter holds for us. I enjoy the light snow version for ease of use but I do appreciate a hard killing cold for the sake of bugs and the fluffy downpour for the sake of my house full of snow bunnies.

The boys were out of their skins over the snow last week. I basically gave up any hope of structured lesson time and let them have free-reign outdoors. They played outside until their fingers were numb and then came sobbing indoors just like I used to as a little girl...shaking all their fuchsia appendages while I rubbed them warm again by the radiator.....then back out again with soaking wet mittens before I could stop them. They made a giant snowball together, pulled out the sleds for a test run and threw snowballs at each other until they were all exhausted.

I know the snow will be back again and winter will come for real eventually whether real accumulation comes with it or not but there is something special about that first snowfall, isn't there? I love when it happens in daylight and we can all rush to the windows and shout and holler while we watch the flakes start falling and I also love it when it happens overnight and we wake up to a world newly sparkly and white like there were visits from snow fairies while we slept.

When I was a girl we often made snow ice cream with one of the first snow falls. I totally forgot this time around but I am all ready for next time with this childhood experiment. I think the boys will flip. I've never made anything with snow before and I have a feeling they'll be begging for it every time there's any white stuff on the ground. Ice cream is well-loved at our house. Traditionally snow ice cream is made with sugar and milk but I think this year I'll try a version sweetened with maple syrup and mixed with heavy cream for the real deal experience.

 For those new to this dish, go see Angela's wonderful recipe and directions over at her really great blog Salt of the Earth Urban Farm. I super-dig this blog about urban/farming living and homeschooling in the delightful city of Portland. Inspiration by the bucketful!

Pie Secrets

 Just making and eating pie again, as is my usual custom this time of year. It seems like pie would be a great thing to make in winter when it is cold (and it is, if you freeze or can some of the summer fruit!) but I seem to mostly make it in warm weather when the bushes and trees are dripping with fruit and all hands are stained with juice. I love pie. Passionately. You can keep your cake...I'll stick with pie.

 I was busily making pies this week and then eating pies and think to myself about a small correction or two that I owe the pie making section of my blog audience. A while back I shared my favorite pie making cookbook and typed up the recipe I always use for blueberry pie.

 Well, a good friend used that recipe to make a pie and was much disgruntled to find that it sank down a very slumped in, and pale version of itself and came marching back to me to ask exactly why her pie didn't look anything like mine even though she'd used my recipe.

 I am my mother's daughter. I use recipes but I am also not afraid to experiment, and sometimes do so without my conscious or deliberate thought, even habitually. Can you believe that of me?

The hitch with my pie making is that I discovered in my newlywed pie making days that any standard recipe seems to yield those sort of sunken results and so requires tweaking. I follow the recipe's suggestions for sugar and thickening agent (usually cornstarch) but I pour in far more fruit than anyone would advise. They say, for instance, to add 3 1/2 cups of blueberries? I put in 6-8 cups. Pies should be teeteringly piled with fruit, so much so that the crust is required to hold it all in, because during the baking everything will shrink and compact and a bit of evaporation will occur. Always add more fruit. Add as much fruit as you can practically manage to squeeze in. Truly.

Another thing I always change in my pie recipes is the amount of water in the crust. Invariably recipes suggest far too little water for me to be able to get it to work. I just add water in tiny amounts...say a tablespoon or two at a time until I am able to get a dough to form. It is easy to go to far so go slow, and try to stir briskly and minimally in order to avoid making your dough tough, but I often end up adding as much as a half a cup of water. I just keep dribbling it in until the dough behaves.

So, there are my secret pie confessions....go forth and make pastry!

Muffin Love

I love muffins. I am not sure why they are such comfort food for me but they are. I know everything will be alright if I have a muffin. They can be sweet or savory, pretty much any flavor, homemade or bakery purchased, there's just something cozy and reassuring about them to me. I also love making muffins. Blueberry (wild if possible please!) and lemon poppyseed are my two deep favorites.

A thinks muffins are silly. A bizzare idea, little psuedo-cakes wrapped in annoying paper that you eat at breakfast and call appropriate. Such a waste of calories.

And yet I persist. Never one for rampant sensibility, I am not to be daunted by such views.(Doesn't this recipe look amazing?) Nothing makes me feel more surely that all is well with the world than a sizable pat of butter melting into the open halves of a warm muffin.

Dee has recently started telling me how much he loves muffins and begun not only asking for them to eat but me to make them for him from scratch. Makes a muffin loving mommy's heart bubble right over. Last night A took Ru for a Big Boys Only Outing to the local skateboard park and left me with the smallest littles. I asked Dee what he thought we should do while they were gone and his answer was, "Make muffins mommy!!!! Blueberry muffins, because those are my favorite!" And so I promptly kissed him.

Related articles

• Breakfast Muffins: The Classic and the Unusual (blogher.com)
• Muffins! (bigideaslittleblog.wordpress.com)

Happy Un-Veguary!

Image via Wikipedia

Happy March...and happy end to Veguary! Heh. Tonight for dinner there was a juicy, crisp, roast chicken with all the drippings to dribble over our baked potatoes. I am not a vegetarian. I don't like legumes enough. I enjoy meat too much and I know too much about how to responsibly obtain good meat. Hard to sell me on the lifestyle. That said, it was an enlightening experiment and I think I'd do it again if I was faced with the choice all over again.

For those who wondered...we didn't really save anything on food bills this past month. Turns out buying meat isn't breaking the bank. We tried beans four million different ways, ate a lot of quinoa, had tofu and seitan and tried not to miss eating bacon with our pancakes on Saturday mornings. And we ate a lot of cheese for fun because we like cheese and cheese has protein and cheese, cheese is not meat.  (unless you're doing Veganuary....I totally just made that up)

I thought I'd pass on the two recipes I liked most from this month of meat-free living. These will join our canon because they were so good that they made A stop mid-chew and say, "Um. Wow. This is good." Ironically, they are both soups. Soup used to be my deep nemesis. We're friends now.

Soup #1 is a Tuscan White Bean that one of my painting mentors recommended to me. It's filling and wholesome and cheap and simple and feels so happy satisfying. I will turn to it for cold weather pleasure food in the future for sure. I kinda want a bowl now, just writing about it and remembering its fabulousness.

Soup#2 is a fabulous rendition of Vegetarian Chili. I made this dish with great skepticism. I'm really not big on dishes that are faux versions of something. I like chili. Real, regular chili with meat in it that you can serve to men who have just come in from splitting wood in the bitter cold. (Not that men around here split wood....) Even though I like real chili. I like this chili too. No tofu crumbles to resemble meat, no substitutionary  tricks of the eye...just a multi-bean mix with a good broth and a little chocolate for a spoon licking depth of flavor. And anything with chocolate in it is good. Why didn't I think I was going to like this?

So, yes, all you real vegetarians are made of sterner stuff than I am. I confess I am a wimp...but boy, that roast chicken sure made me happy.

Related articles

• Springtime Ayurvedic Shopping List (realyoganyc.wordpress.com)
• Protein Foods List (mademan.com)
• Top 5 Healthy Meat Substitutes for Vegetarian Diets (brighthub.com)
• The Art (And Science) of Being Meatless (friendseat.com)
• Eat less meat in Veguary (healthzone.ca)
• Try It: Eat Less Meat (shutupandtryit.wordpress.com)
• Martha Stewart Living: Roast Chicken Tips & Recipes (huffingtonpost.com)

Virtual Cooking Lessons: Eggplant Curry

Image via Wikipedia

Cooked quinoa

Thought I would share today a recipe from another blogger that I think is terribly delicious. Since we're vegetarian this month (reference this post for the details) the recipe I am featuring is obviously meatless.








Generally, I am striving for a main dish with substantive protein content (hello quinoa!). If you're doing the same (as I know many of you out there are joining me in my Veguary adventure) then you might consider serving this curry over quinoa or adding chickpeas for a little dose of protein-ating fuel.

Eggplants are scary to me. I didn't grow up eating them, and intimidated, yea even a little worried about the whole idea of experimenting with them. I had no idea how to cook with them until about a six months ago. I am still very much in the learning stage, trying to figure out what in the world to do with them and how they are prepared. This is a great step on the road.

Curry, however, is my friend. A recent friend but, one I now feel quite cozy with and part of my go-to repetoire for recipes. They are easy to throw together and like stir fry, are elastic in their ability to encompass any number of ingredients. Usually the curries I make have either a yogurt base (Indian) or a coconut milk one (Thai). This curry has Indian flavors and spices but, is dairy-free...a boon to those of you who are lactose intolerant. At first the idea of a curry with no creamy base sounded off-putting but, I got over it as soon as the onions were browning away in the small mountains of fragrant spices. Curry is fantastically easy, very forgiving and just the thing to add a little zip to your winter menu.

It feels like stew, from the tropics!

Eggplant Curry
Like most curries this recipe keeps well, and actually improves with time. If you have leftovers simply reheat the next day, re-check seasoning, adding more salt if needed and serve on freshly steamed rice. I like to use ghee (see recipe below) in curries for the authentic flavour it gives. It is lactose-free, but if you avoid dairy altogether simply use a neutral oil. I like to use whole cumin seeds, but by all means use ground cumin if that's what you have. Make sure you use regular brown onions in this recipe, red onions have a higher sugar content and tend to burn too easily in curries like this, where long, slow cooking is required.  Serves 4-6

2 medium eggplants 
3 Tbsp ghee/olive oil
1 medium onion, finely diced
2.5cm (1 inch) piece of fresh ginger, grated (I keep a jar of ginger puree in my fridge...look in your produce department near the jarred garlic or else over near the veggie trays.)
6 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds/ground cumin
1 Tbsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1/2 tsp cayenne or a small pinch of chilli powder
1 tsp sea salt
 1 14oz can chopped tomatoes
a small handful of fresh cilantro leaves to garnish (optional)

Wash eggplants and dice into 1 inch cubes.

Heat ghee/oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring carefully for about 10 minutes until a deep golden brown colour. (Be patient and don't be tempted to rush this stage).

Add the ginger, crushed garlic, fennel and cumin seeds. Cook for about 2 minutes until garlic and ginger are fragrant. Add ground coriander, turmeric, cayenne/chilli powder and salt. Cook for 30 seconds. Add the diced eggplant and stir well to coat evenly with spices. Pour in the can of chopped tomatoes, give it a big stir, then place the lid on and continue to cook over low-medium heat for about 10-15 minutes. Check and stir a few times to ensure it's not catching on the bottom. Turn temperature down a little if need be.

When the sauce has thickened and the eggplant is meltingly soft, check the seasoning once more. Serve sprinkled with coriander/cilantro leaves over rice. Enjoy!

(this recipe is lifted almost exactly from the beautiful blog, my darling lemon thyme...a dizzyingly delicious place to visit if you have a moment)

Related articles

• 5 High Protein Vegetarian Recipes For Christmas (mademan.com)
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Freeze The Good Stuff

 The nights are getting pretty chilly now, we're breaking out the footie pajamas on a regular basis. Ru asks every single morning now, "And Mommy, is it going to be cold today?" because he is hopeful that we will have a warm day which means that he can wear short sleeves and sandals, and that there will be snow, which is his fondest dream at the moment. I kinda think this cold weather business is here to stay for a while.

And we have a new family dessert, ice cream is passe, cocoa is in. A has been pioneering a new family tradition of after dinner homemade cocoa...and we're drinking them topped with whipped cream and sprinkles, in little espresso mugs. So much fun! I am hoping the trend continues long enough to extend beyond the classic rendition to: warm eggnoggy white cocoa, minty cocoa, nutmeg dusted mugs, and maybe a white chocolate variation? Its a great way to get a little, warm shot of dairy in at the end of the day. What flavor dreams am I missing?

 The boys are enjoying the leaf fall and the fact that at the moment there are giant piles to jump in, on every single curb. There are detours to be made between the car and any door....wander this direction to kick leaves....wander that direction to jump in a heap....wander over there to throw some in the air like confetti....  Such fun. Strange to see the naked trees reaching up over the horizon now though...

 Been having lots of fun in the kitchen lately. Made the first batch of Christmas cookies and packed them away in the frozen zone. I baked up some simple, no fuss chocolate spice cookies, Midnight Cracklers from Dorie Greenspan's classic baking tome. Pretty dead easy and dark, rich, chocolatey flavor...mmm...I'm not even that wild a fan of the whole chocolate chocolate chocolate thing but, yeah...these are good. They remind me of Mexican hot chocolate with the rich chocolate, hint of spice business. We're off to a good start.

 Oh...and warning. The dough is almost better than the finished cookies. So delicious. Like moist grown-up brownies in a chewy, wad-able, hold-a-chunk-in-your-hand form. Dangerous stuff folks. I bagged those suckers up for the freezer at lightening speed!

 I also baked up this pound cake a while ago and remembered, (per the recipe's instruction) that I'd frozen one for later and we broke one out to celebrate an autumn picnic in our yard after church on Sunday. This pound cake rocks and it freezes astoundingly. Its almost better out of the freezer...I'm not sure how that's possible, but there it is.

 See, aren't the colors an amazing whirl of light? Most of these leaves are down already. That's why we're glad we are lucky enough to own a camera. Nice to freeze more than just cake and cookies for later.

Happy last moments of Autumn everyone!

Old Fashioned Pie

I made a blueberry pie recently, after we got home with a lug full of fresh berries from our u-pick excursion. Yum! And then I froze it because we had ice cream we were trying to eat up and we were also about to take off for parts further West to visit family.

Now that we're back home and then fierce heat has abated for a day to drench us with torrential showers, I decided it was time to QUICK bake that pie! It is browning in the oven as we speak and starting to smell as delicious as only homemade pastry can. I am a pie addict. Is it showing?

Someone asked, after I posted about my pie making before I put it in the chill to keep while we traveled, if I would be kind enough to post my blueberry pie recipe. And I will!

While I'm at it folks, I have a source you all need to know about. I made pies from all sorts of places: family recipes, Joy of Cooking, magazine clippings and all kinds of baking and dessert cookbooks, hoping to find just the right pie recipe with various varieties of fruit. And then one day I was browsing my way through a little family owned shop that sold farm fresh, local milk and butter and I happened on a little bookshelf with cookbooks for sale...and in the mix was a liberal sprinkling of these funny almost pamphlety little old fashioned recipe books, obviously newly printed but of clearly ancient sourcing by a company called Bear Wallow Books. I bought the one on pies. Today, I'm sharing with you their pie dough recipe (which I always use now) and the recipe for blueberry pie but, there's gobs more in the book. I love it because every single pie I make from the little booklet turns out beautifully and also because any kind of pie I want to make, they've got: strawberry rhubarb, sweet potato, elderberry, gooseberry, grape...etc. etc. None of the stand-by favorites has been forgotten. These are the pies of our grandmothers made from berry and fruit gathered in the orchard or the roadside ditch. I sure am thrilled that I found this obscure little company and hoping that I never, ever lose my pie book because its gold and I've never seen them anywhere else!

Go check out Bear Wallow Books and see the other enticing options that they sell, or snap up your own pie book.

Now that the pie is out of the oven, I'll give you a peek at its rich, golden brown finish and then leave you with directions to replicate this fabulous blueberry smell in your own house.

Blueberry Pie

1 9 inch pie shell (I used two as I like a double crust for blueberry)
3 1/2 cups of fresh blueberries
1 cup of sugar
1 T lemon juice
2 T cornstarch
1 T butter
Dash of nutmeg
Dash of cinnamon

In a mixing bowl combine berries, sugar, lemon juice and cornstarch. Toss the berries lightly to coat and let stand 20 minutes. Pour into pie shell. Dot with butter and sprinkle with dash of nutmeg and cinnamon (and then if you're me, cover with the top crust, and crimp the edge to seal). Bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes, reduce to 325 and bake for 30 minutes longer.


 Basic Flour Pie Crust

2 cups of flour
3/4 t of salt
1/2 c of shortening (I use lard or butter)
1/3 c of cold water

Sift flour and salt into mixing bowl. Cut in shortening with pastry blender or two knives scissors style. Shape dough into two balls (and here I chill the dough for about 20-30 minutes too). Roll out to size and place in pie pan.


Happy baking!

Foraging is Contagious

Gosh, it sure feels great to look at this picture of my clan...foraging madly for a snack, without my even coaxing them to. Wild food is the best and eating it together, at peak ripeness is its own brand of joy. For those who wonder, in this picture we're eating Juneberries (if you're in my family) and Sugarplums (if you're in A's)...common names are like this. Lots of people also call them Serviceberry, Saskatoon Berry or Shadberry. Take your pick. Whatever you call them, they're tasty and the trees were loaded this year! The robins and the Armstrongs were very happy.

All of our berries went straight into our mouths because we were in a hurry to make it to an appointment with a realtor to see a house but, if we'd have had time or the trees hadn't been handily stripped clean by the birds when I made it back a couple of days later...I'd have tried making this tart. Doesn't that look delicious?

Sharing The Consolation

Its a crazy little cloudburst kind of day. My first day flying alone with all three of the boys...and you know what? I made it. There were no tear-type cloudbursts...just dramatic thunderclaps and lightening zaps and driving force rain outside our window. Am very pleased to be feeling as buoyant and I am actually making this three kid thing work. True, I didn't give the boys their regularly scheduled bath, true, we never made it outdoors for playtime and true, true, true...I didn't get up fast enough and get boys clothed fast enough to make a real breakfast or take A to work so I could have the car to go to my painting group. BUT....I managed all the snacks, had the handyman in to do odd jobs around the place, made lunch and everyone took a sound nap. And as I mentioned....I haven't cried once.

In honor of doing well and feeling good and not needing a lot of consolation myself at the moment...I'm passing on "my" (read Julia Child's) recipe for Chocolate Consolation Cake that buoyed me  as I waited in that nasty in-between place for little Reid to arrive. Maybe somebody else out there needs a little lift today, have some chocolate cake, chocolate can sometimes make everything better! So, here it is...for those of you who made requests...heat up those ovens...here's the recipe!

Le Glorieux (The Glorious...if my French detective work serves me well....what a great name!)

7 oz. semisweet baking chocolate
2 oz. unsweetened baking chocolate
1/4 c. of orange liqueur (I omitted it as I hadn't any)
the grated rind of one orange (ahem...I omitted this too)
2 sticks of butter
5 large eggs
1 c. sugar
1 t. vanilla
1 c. cornstarch



Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Break up the chocolate and melt it with the liqueur (if desired) and orange rind in microwave 30 seconds at a time with a stir each time the microwave beeps. Continue until perfectly smooth and creamy. Cut butter up into small chunks and stir the bits into the melted chocolate until perfectly smooth. Then set mixture aside.

Beat the eggs and sugar for a moment at low speed to blend. Increase speed to high and add the vanilla. Continue to beat for 7-8 minutes, until pale and fluffy, doubled in volume and holding soft peaks. (This part is so lovely and pretty to watch)

At slow mixing speed, sprinkle the cornstarch into the egg mixture and incorporate slowly. Don't try for a perfect blend, just a mostly perfect one, you wanna make sure to mix it briskly so that you don't deflate the eggs completely. The take a spatula and use it to fold a large gob of the egg mixture into the chocolate butter to lighten it. Then fold the chocolate butter into the eggs, one large glop at a time until completely incorporated. Make sure you smooth your spatula down the sides of the bowl to ensure thorough mixing.

Pour batter into two prepared 8 inch cake pans and bang lightly on a table to evenly distribute the batter in the pans. Bake for 25-30 minutes. The cake should be slightly moist when done in the "French manner" (so says Julia!) and the top of the cake will crackle and flake a little which is normal.

Cool cakes after removal from oven and while they sit you can:

Melt 3 oz. of semisweet chocolate, 1/2 an oz. of unsweetened chocolate, 4-5 T of butter and 3 T of orange liqueur together until perfectly creamy. When the cakes have cooled, pour the new chocolate mixture between the layers and sandwich the cake together....I served it just like that, with spoonfuls of whipped cream on the side but, of course you could also frost it if you need deep consolation.

There you have it.