The only crisp thing about Fall around here

It's midnight, and the temperature in my kitchen right now is 82 degrees.  Yes, that is correct. The absolute coolest it has been today is 82 degrees, and I had to stay awake until now to experience it.



I've been "glistening" for weeks, along with the rest of LA, as Fall has apparently been kicked to the curb so that summer can just hang out here for a bit while the rest of the country gets to have soup and break out the flattering knitwear.

Not that I'm bitter or anything.  I just want to want to get under the covers sometime soon, that's all.

In lieu of the elusive crisp autumn days, I had to settle for these crisp shortbread bars. Mind you, my idea of settling involves brown sugar, pecans, and chocolate.



Glistening burns a ton of calories.

Sowing my wild Irish oats

As a middle aged suburban parent, my wild oat sowing days are (mostly) over*, so I am forced to live vicariously through the shenanigans** of others.

Like, say, Olivia Pope on Thursday nights***.  

 

Mortifyingly hysterical.  And I'm still going to tune in this week.  Evil mom is back!

Here's a way to sow oats that is significantly less mockable, just as addictive, and much more nourishing.



It won't make you laugh so hard that you begin wheezing and snorting****, but it should put a big smile on the face of anyone who loves a bowl of creamy hot cereal for breakfast.

Especially when they find out it gets made overnight by magical leprechauns.*****

I had the extra hour, so...

I went to the farmers' market and got a pile of organic fruit and vegetables.

And, then I made fruit-flavored candy.

Look, the time changed. I didn't.

Apple Cider Caramels
The basic idea here: Concentrate fresh cider into the most flavorful sweet-tart-apple-y syrup stuff you can imagine.  OMG already, right?  Then, add butter and sugar and cream.  And, because it's exactly what these need to be perfect, just top that off with a little cinnamon and flaky sea salt.  These chewy, intense little bites of Fall are rich and tangy and sweet and salty all at the same time and I loved them.

I'm not going to post the recipe, because I simply followed the original, from Deb of SmittenKitchen, to a tee without adapting a thing.  It is available online here and also in her wonderful cookbook*.  The most important two things about making these are to let the apple cider really boil down (mine took nearly an hour), and to let the caramel cook to the firm ball stage  (about 250 degrees) so the candy will have that perfect soft caramel texture.

* The reminder to give these a try came from a lovely recent post over on Annie's Eats. (I used a few of my extra minutes to browse the web, too.)  She actually baked her version of Deb's caramels into brown butter sugar cookies.  Damn.  If only I had another 30 minutes....

Koyaanisqatsi incarnate

In the Hopi language, the word Koyaanisqatsi means "unbalanced life"*.

I'm pretty sure some time-travelling Hopi shaman followed me around for the month of September, went back home, gathered the village up to tell them of his terrible visions, and, after the children stopped crying, decided to pray.

Shaman: "Oh, Spirit of the Sun!  Let us never, ever, work so damn much that we cannot type up a recipe and put it on the Internet!"

Sun Spirit: "For sure, my son. That existence doth suck** and shall make you fat and grumpy.  Here is a word with a lot of vowels and a Q with no U.  Say it in pity for that poor woman, six times slowly and portentously, in a really deep voice.  I'm talking rumbling, auto-tune deep here, understand? Now go in peace, with my blessing."

Then all was right again with the great Hopi nation.

If it worked for them, it can work for me. I am going to grab a kachina doll***, rumble a little, and try to get my life back into balance.

Starting with this recipe I typed up to put on the Internet.

Pulled pork: The opposite of being made to look like an idiot in 19th century Scotland

Per my two minutes of online research, this is the origin of the phrase "Pull One's Leg":

"When you pull a person's leg you are spoofing or making fun of him, usually in a good-humored way. But that wasn't always the meaning of the expression. When the expression first turned up in Scotland about a hundred years ago, it was lacking the lighthearted touch it has today. In those days 'pull one's leg' meant to make of fool of him, often by outright cheating. The best theory of the origin of the phrase is that by tripping a person -- pulling his leg -- you can throw him into a state of confusion and make him look very foolish indeed." From "Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins" by William and Mary Morris (HarperCollinsPublishers)." - phrases.org.UK

Fortunately, when you have pulled pork instead of a pulled leg, something very different happens. You look very wise indeed, and people are way too busy eating to even think about laughing at you.  Lightheartedly or not.

Big Easy Balls*

Thinking of having some souvenir t-shirts made up.  Let me know what size you want.

Fish & Chips & Chips

There was definitely a randy Irish slave owner somewhere in my family tree*, and my husband's pale-faced lineage has many an O'Brien in the not so distant past.   My kids have a disturbing overabundance of the Gift of the Blarney**, and my son did leave his recent SAT test with just one reward in mind:  A large Shamrock Shake.

The three of us that were old enough to see it thought The Guard was pure genius.

In other words, we may not have greeted the day with green bagels and beer, but there was no reason for everyone to be such a hater when I brought up the idea of making a traditional Irish dinner yesterday.

My husband:  What?  Like corned beef?  No.  No way. I draw the line at corned beef.
Me;  You draw the line at corned beef?  Since when?
My husband:  Everyone should draw the line at corned beef.  It's a given.

My son:  Hold on. What would be for dinner?
Me:  I was thinking about a nice Guiness Beef Stew.  I saw few recipes online the other day and...
My son:  Well that's just a terrible idea.  I hate stew, and you know it. Let's just go out for fish and chips.  Man, I could totally go for some fish and chips right now. That sounds amazing. And super Irish.  If you want, we could even go to a pub with Irish people in it, and get fish and chips there.  Problem solved.

In the end, I compromised***.  No corned beef. No stew.
Fish.
Chips.
And chips on top of the fish.
Because it's super Irish to go heavy on the potatoes.
Problem solved.

Breaking up

It's hard when you've been married for so long to remember how hard it is to break up with someone.

Especially your first real someone.

But I know it doesn't help when, the night before a certain over-hyped day in February, your younger sister says:

"Hashtag Valentine's fail, dude."

Then puts on her headphones and walks away.

Ouch*.

Last Cappuccino Cupcake before the 101

For those who want their cappuccino in a cup*:

For those who want their cappuccino in a cupcake:

Do as I say, not as I do

In May, I'm going to be co-hosting a cooking class called "The DIY Dinner Party"*. In the school auction brochure, the tagline for the event is, "Impress without Stress!"**

During the class, I plan to give the attendees some helpful tips for making that simple but compelling statement a reality:

1. Don't use a dinner party as a place to experiment with a new recipe.  Go with something tried and true, so you have confidence in your food.
2. Keep the guest list manageable for your menu.  If you are planning a series of plated courses, for example, make sure you have elbow room and comfortable seating for the group around a dining table.  For larger groups, go with a buffet and allow the guests to spread out among several tables.
3. Expect people to offer to help, and have simple jobs ready for them to do.
4. Pour plenty of wine and cocktails for the guests, but keep your own consumption to a minimum until the dinner is firmly under way.
5. Above all, prepare as much as you can ahead of time, so you can enjoy the festivities yourself.  Sitting down and eating with your guests is the most impressive entertaining accomplishment of them all!

I should totally take that class.

On Monday, I sent my husband an email.

To:  myunsuspectinghusband@gmail.com
From:  youroverambitiouswife@gmail.com
Re:  Birthday dinner party

Can I throw you one on Sunday night? Was going to invite [list of six people].
xxoo

From: myunsuspectinghusband@gmail.com
To: youroverambitiouswife@gmail.com
Re: Birthday dinner party

That sounds nice.  Are you cooking or catering?

From: youroverambitiouswife@gmail.com
To: myhusbandwhoasksgoodbutsillyquestions@gmail.com
Re: Birthday dinner party

Cooking!

[Silence]

On Tuesday, I sent out an evite.

I meant to invite those six people, but then I remembered a few more people he really likes and that we hadn't seen in a while and I thought how it was actually really short notice and a holiday weekend so most people would probably say no so it would be better to ask a few too many than not have anyone show up because how sad would THAT be for a birthday party, right?  So I emailed 16 people instead of 6.

On Wednesday, I pulled out a bunch of cookbooks and spent hours drooling over photos and recipes. I literally had stacks of them all over the family room. I jotted down ideas for a multi-course gourmet meal, complete with passed appetizers.  My husband had requested a whole fish be in there somewhere, even though I'd never cooked a whole fish for him in my life.  No problem!  In fact, that could be, like, the theme of the dinner:

On Thursday, I checked on attendance.
10 people had said yes, four had not replied and two said no.  I texted another couple and invited them, too.  Note: our dining table seats 8.

On Friday, I went to the liquor store.
Because of course, the only recipe I bothered to test ahead of time was the cocktail one.

On Saturday, I was on a roll.  I shopped. I made dip, salad dressing, and Parmesan crisps. I made the vanilla ice cream, the caramel sauce, and the puddings. We had carrot cake and presents and celebrated my husband's birthday as a family until the kids ditched us.

On Sunday, I realized I was about to serve bacon-wrapped fish to an observant Jew and a vegan.

I had another, much larger, test version of the cocktail, opened up some wine, put out the appetizers, answered the door, and hoped for the best.

The Mixed Tuna Carpaccio

The (fortunately) vegan-friendly mixed green salad

The salmon was good, but the mashed potatoes were AMAZING!

They loved it all. My daughter, bribed to be my sous chef, turned out to be a master of carpaccio creation and a plating genius. We squeezed into 15 folding chairs around the dining table, and no one seemed to mind the bumped elbows and interludes between courses.  Food disappeared and glasses were filled, then filled again.  Once the party started, I was too busy to take photos****, but not too busy to catch up with old friends.  We told stories and laughed and mocked my husband a little before wishing him happy birthday with a single red candle in a bowl of hot, molten chocolate decadence.

And somehow, even though I pretty much ignored all my own advice, I did manage to impress.  The stress part still needs some work.

They're probably out of it at the store now

But next year when eggnog is back in stock*?

Make these scones.

Eat my mailbox

What's ten times better than getting cooking magazines in the mail*?
Getting cookies in the mail.

From Amy at This Heart of Mine

From Patricia at Patricia's Patticakes

From Stacy at Baking Bandit

I'm also a fan of sending cookies in the mail.

So long as the recipe makes a lot of extras.

Unlike the seasonal stream of Amazon boxes from my annoyingly on-the-ball sister, which only engender feelings of inadequacy and panic in me, I loved getting these deliveries. The postal-borne bounty was the happy result of The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap**.  To hold up my end of the deal, I turned to my already indispensable copy of Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy by Alice Medrich for inspiration, and was drawn immediately to this cookie recipe for three reasons:

a.  They were supposed to keep and travel well.
b.  I had all the requisite ingredients handy.
c.  The photo in the cookbook made me drool like a St. Bernard on a hot day in July.

Thanksgiving Done Well

We loaded the car for our trip up the coast with all of the road trip essentials:

My son: Kindle Fire filled with episodes of The West Wing; basketball; sweatpants.
My daughter: big bag of chips; The Hunger Games trilogy audiobooks on her iPod; Ugg boots.
My husband: recent issue of The Economist; Lego(R) VW Camper Van kit; running shorts.
Me: roasting pan; chef's knives; hand mixer; kosher salt; serving platter; two nine-inch cake pans; ceramic pie plate; measuring cups and spoons; whisk; spatula; matching square and rectangular enameled baking dishes; pre-measured ingredients in ziplock bags; olive oil; three cookbooks; two cooking magazines; nested set of glass mixing bowls; baking sheet; Silpat; cooling rack; laptop loaded with cooking blogs; stretchy leggings*.
The dog: Stinky breath.

The very fitting Lego project, completed.

Later that day, we arrived at our rental house, pleasantly surprised by the following:

My son: There was a flat panel TV with all the sports channels in HD, and his bed was unbelievably comfortable.
My daughter: She got to sleep up in the loft, with a porch that looked out over the ocean.
My husband: The house was four blocks from the beach, he and the dog could roam anywhere in town, and his dad was happy to come by and just hang out.
Me: The kitchen was beyond fully stocked, with a Viking range, potato peelers, and a turkey baster, and Trader Joe's was less than 15 minutes away.  Plus, there was a brand new bookstore in town to explore.
The dog: Everybody he met wanted to pet him, and he got to roll in the sand.  A lot.

The days were warm and bright, filled with walks by the sea, reunions with friends, cozy breakfasts with Grandpa, feisty multi-player card games, a little too much email, just enough wine, hikes through cypress groves, afternoons at the movies, a few unfortunate stomach pains (mostly mended) and, the highlight for me, family gathered around a table groaning with home cooked food for Thanksgiving dinner.

It wasn't perfect. I had a lot of pangs about Mom. My father-in-law was much frailer than we'd expected.  My brother-in-law's girlfriend spent an afternoon in an ER waiting room, suffering through gall bladder issues.  I let work get in the way, and didn't sleep nearly enough**.

But somehow being together, in that unexpectedly great house, made those things less important and all the good moments matter.  It was the Thanksgiving we needed.

It was Thanksgiving, done well.