Thing a day - Handwarmers

Had a clothing swap a couple weeks ago, and I was left with the hundreds of unclaimed items. Found an xs wool sweater that had been felted by accident, so it was now an extra extra small. Cut the sleeves off, snipped thumb holes, and blanket stitched the edges. They go all the way to my elbows, they are now the longest pair I have, perfect for computer work during days like today, when it's just a bit overcast, but not cold enough to warrant a sweater.

Thing a day - Vietnamese Ribs again

Same recipe from Chubby Hubby with same modifications. I was planning to tweak the recipe further, but they were so good I stuck with what I did the first time around.

Food and Wine Recipe - Horribly Wrong

In the 'Last Bite' section of Feb 2008 Food & Wine is what I thought was a lovely little recipe for 'Chocolate-Caramel Sandwich Cookies'. I've made a lot of recipes from my 3 year subscription of Food&Wine, and they have consistently needed tweaking. Not enough salt, leavening, flavor, they all seem to be not tested well, or just some misc. recipe that some chichi restaurant handed them and they went with it w/out even inspecting it for errors.

This has got to be the worst offender yet. I will not print the recipe as it needs too many fixes to warrant a rewrite. But I will list what went wrong.

They were suppose to be a 'reimagined oreo cookie' by Rachel Thebault, with a caramel filling instead of whipped lard. What it Was, was a mess.

The cookie dough-
- was so soft and gooey that it had to be frozen on the plastic wrap (that you had to roll it on to keep it from sticking to everything) every few minutes in order to peel off the cut out cookies.

- recipe called for 20 minute bake at 350. Any more than 12 and they burned.

- even baked properly, they were greasy and pretty flavorless. The entire batch of cookie dough had only 1/2 c. of cocoa powder, and you could barely taste it. They were visually deceptive, because they looked richly dark brown, but had little flavor.

The caramel
- a 9" square pan is too small to cut out enough caramel to fill the cookies. It had to be a much larger pan. The caramel came out very thick.

- evil evil recipe writers. You said to oil the pan, put wax paper in it, then pour the caramel in to cool. Didn't say to oil the proper side of the wax paper, and I trusted you. From previous shoddy recipes I should have known not to. I now have a big chunk of pretty flavorless oily caramel (there was absolutely no salt in the recipe) with wax paper glued to one side. I tried freezing it, reheating it, cutting out shapes and peeling it off, all to no avail. If only I had a horrible evil neighbor I could pawn these off on, and pretend I was an incompetent cook as I smiled while they ate the cookies with a delicate slice of wax paper sandwiched between flavorless caramel and bland cookie.

I'm canceling my subscription. I'm tired of tempting looking recipes that are flops over and over again. I paid a lot of money for those stupid magazines, and I've never once cut out a recipe and added it to my book of favorites.

Sure there are ideas in there that I use as a base, but I am not going to continue buying the magazine knowing that all the recipes are in need of tweaking and research. I have plenty of great books I can use for that purpose.

Thing a day - Vietnamese

Well, you ask a cook to do a Thing a Day, and most of the time you'll get food.

Originally seen on the David Lebovitz blog, the recipe is braised pork ribs done in a Vietnamese style. As per David's recommendations, I added fresh ginger, and some red pepper flakes. Oh man these are good. Rich color, slip right off the bone, and even better the next day. Plenty of goopy sauce to add to brown rice.

Best to chill the whole batch to skim off some of the fat. I picked my ribs up at Smart n' Final. An inexpensive way to get a whole slab.

The slowest part of the recipe is waiting for the sugar to caramelize to just the right color.

And boy did the house smell of fish sauce, even when I closed the kitchen door and opened the windows. Not a bad smell, just pungent. Easy cleanup too, since all the cooking was done in 1 pot, from the caramelizing, to the braising. I used one of my Grandmothers huge old enameled cast iron pots.









Ribs just added Ribs almost done

Thing a day 3 - Created knitters

To sequester myself from the super bowl insanity, I did a knitting workshop for 12 women. A couple were there for review, but most were new knitters. I think creating 12 new knitters in the world definitely counts toward Thing a Day. It's always interesting that some people catch on in 2 minutes and can get the movements down right away (even w/ no previous needlework experience). Then others can go for weeks or months and never pick it up. Some were so excited they stayed up late into the evening knitting their new scarf, and raved about it at work the next day. With such a positive response, I think I'll host it again. I liked even though everyone was excited to learn, it was a low key and relaxed event.

Also baked 3 batches of scones. My classic buttermilk recipe in blueberry lemon and cranberry orange. I love that recipe, and they only take 10 min to bake, so I can whip them out in no time.

Tangerines are peak season right now, so I had a 5lb bowl of of them on the table. The scones were snatched up quickly, but only 1 tangerine was eaten the entire day. Now what am I gonna do w/ 5lbs of fresh tangerines? The skins are too soft and rumply to zest. Guess I could juice them if I can't find takers in the next day or so.

Thing a day

On the 21st, sign up opens for http://www.thing-a-day.com/

For 29 days starting on February 1st, participants are invited to create one thing every day and post it on the thing-a-day.com blog.

I think I can do that. It will certainly be good momentus to get my creativity going again. Since there is no way I can just cook every day. And all the knitting projects I have will take more than a day to complete.

Now they need to come up with a 'Thin a day'. Maybe I'll do that in March.