Role reversal

It's been a topsy-turvey winter, and it's a traditional topsy-turvey month, what with it having too few, but still too many days in it and all.

February 29 is even rarer than a blue moon, so on that day, the girl gets to ask the boy out, which is probably why it got the honor. Well, as far as every Sadie Hawkins Dance I've ever heard of, anyway.

Originally, Sadie Hawkins Day was in November, having debuted on November 15. All the sources tell you that Sadie Hawkins Day is NOT February 29, that this is a "common misperception," but it seems to me to be one of those "common misperceptions" that everyone holds, except scholars, your annoying cousin who has to be right about everything, and Sheldon from Big Bang Theory (just speculating). Reading about it has kind of been one of those "I hate Google" experiences.

The Wikipedia article doesn't even acknowledge the concept that it might be associated with Feb. 29, so apparently your  cousin edits the Sadie Hawkins wikipedia page.

So, with all due respect to the mavens, your cousin, and Al Capp:

Sadie Hawkins cookies
Use original recipe for toll house cookies, but cut flour to 2 cups, substituing 2/3 cup cocoa powder; substitute white chocolate chips for semi-sweet.

Ladies, use them to invite your sweetheart up to see your etchings (of L'il Abner).

A sure sign of the season

I'm not someone who keeps, or collects, stuff.  In fact, I hate acquiring things, and I especially hate acquiring things I don't need.  I have pots that I have had, quite literally, all my life. Yes, folks, 50+ year old pots.

I don't buy appliances. I don't buy clothes. I use things I don't really like because I've already got them and they're good enough.

And then there's coffee mugs. Coffee mugs bring out the fussy old lady that lives in all of us.  I love coffee mugs. You know that aunt with all the ridiculous ceramic figurines?

That's me and my mugs.

This isn't all of them. Sigh.

I strong armed my family into buying me a holiday mug every year for Christmas. For a while they would just drop into Starbuck's and get the mug-of-the-year, but nuh-uh. It's got to be a mug that other people don't have. You need to work a little harder (or not really; these things form the backbone of most resale shops).Of course, when you get a mug every year for 25 years (or more, as other people started learning about this weakness of mine), you accumulate too many mugs.

So a few years ago I decided to start switching them out, not just for Christmas, but seasonally. I now have garden season mugs, autumn mugs, summer mugs. My daughter threatened to disown me if I started up a collection of Valentine's mugs.

After Thanksgiving every year, out come the Christmas mugs. Make yourself some snickerdoodles and hot chocolate and enjoy!

Cocoa, the real way
2 T cocoa powder
1 T sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup water

Combine in a saucepan and heat to boiling until a smooth consistency, stirring constantly. I mean it. CONSTANTLY.  Reduce heat, add milk, bring to a scald (just short of boiling--don't boil it).

Serve it in your silly mug, and no snickering.

October Unprocessed: snacks

Can't get away from the topic, seemingly. I wrote about an unprocessed treat on Friday, and here we are two days later, snacking again.

Here's what I "snacked" on today:

Fresh-squeezed orange juice
A 6-oz glass of locally pressed apple cider
A pear
A donut from the farmers' market, freshly made on Saturday
Some dried cranberries (from Mick Klug Farm, bought through the CSA, so not commercially processed)
Popcorn, the old fashioned kind

In other words, to snack "unprocessed," just eat food. Snacking isn't about the type of food you're eating, it's about timing, convenience and quantity. If it's 3:00 in the afternoon and you're eating an apple, that's a snack. If it's noon and you're eating it with a sandwich, that's lunch. If it's 7:30 and you've put it in a pie, that's dessert (the pie also counts as a snack in the middle of the afternoon, but mother says you may only have a small piece).

The problem is we've let the industrialized food system and Madison Avenue tell us what a "snack" is, and have swallowed wholesale, if I may, the idea that "snack food" is somehow different from "food."

Unprocessed snacks can include nuts, raw fruit, dried fruit (but read the label, the grocery store ones contain a lot of preservatives, artificial colors and even sweeteners), potato chips are easy to make if a little tedious, popcorn–the old fashioned kind, you pop it in the microwave just like “microwave” popcorn. Just stick it in a paper bag and hit the “popcorn” preset, bread and butter, jam or nut butters, hot cocoa or a hard boiled egg.

Here's the homemade hot chocolate my mother used to make for us when we were little (I never had commercial hot cocoa til I got to college; didn't know what it was, despite watching Bosco ads all my life). I remember traveling with some friends, they asked me to make hot cocoa and handed me little bags filled with brown powder. I knew what it was, but had never seen it, let alone made it. I did it wrong. They were really mad, and I was really embarrassed, but in retrospect, I'm very glad I did not know that dirt-colored powder was considered an acceptable drink.

Homemade hot cocoa
from the Woman's Home Companion Cook Book

2½ oz unsweetend chocolate (2½ squares)
⅓ cup sugar
pinch of salt (just a few grains)
½ cup boiling water
4 cups milk

Melt chocolate in the top of a double boiler, add sugar and salt; add boiling water, stirring until well-blended. Place pan back over heat and boil about 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Gradually add milk, heat just short of scalding, again, stirring constantly. Beat until frothy. Pour into mugs and top with whipped cream or a marshmallow.

Here's a recipe for a homemade chocolate syrup that can be used in milk, or on ice cream.

Growing project updates

Im participating in three growing projects this year:

• I'm saving 3 kinds of tomato seeds for the Populuxe seed bank- Bramki (a paste? hard to find info), Ferris Wheel (slicers) and Blondkopfchen (a golden cherry)
• I'm growing chard with One Seed Chicago
• I'm growing German Pink tomatoes for the One Heirloom Project
  

Bramki

Lovely plant. Very sturdy; they've doubled in size since I planted them less than a month ago. Bramkis also went to my homeschooling project, a rainbow tomato patch for a friend (a red, a black, a gold, and a green), and the plant sale at Peterson Garden. This and the Ferris have some flowers started, which I've bagged.

Ferris

Again, going strong, nice big sturdy plants. I had only 30% germination on these, so all three that survived went into my garden. Unfortunately, managed to break the central stem on this bagging the first set of flowers. This will weaken the plant, but I guess it just becomes another part of the experiment. There are two additional plants as well.

Blondkopfchen

I have a possibly-bk plant, plus one that I picked up from The Yarden. Per Kelly, I'll save seeds from the Yarden plant for her.

German Pink (One Heirloom)

Planted out the Pink about a week ago, just before the insane heat. It's doubled in size, but unfortunately was not a strong enough, large enough start to really be proof against slugs. Working on some slug barriers for it until it can get bigger. If these folks do this challenge again, I hope they either just distribute seeds, or get it together to have much better or much earlier starts.

Swiss chard

These got a bit drowned by the 6 inches of rain we had in May and none of them came up, along with the other seeds I had in this bed. Think I'm going to need to build a raised bed for this spot next year.

Walnut ginger blondies with chocolate chips

2/3 cup ww pastry flour
2/3 cup finely ground walnuts
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 egg
3/4 honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup finely chopped candied ginger
1/2 cup chocolate chips

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 325°.
Mix dry ingredients, including ground walnuts and ginger pieces. In a mixing bowl with hand-held electric mixer on high, beat egg until foamy. Add honey and vanilla; beat well. Stir in flour mixture, then add the chips. Grease an 8x16" pan, spread batter with a spatula. Bake 25 to 30 minutes, or until deep golden brown. Cut into 2-inch bars; cool in pan. Makes 32 walnut bars.

Ordinary

One of the things that the online gardening community did for me, or really for my long-suffering plants, was to save my potted plants. Every year I would watch with resignation and rue as my houseplants slowly died each winter, and the idea of plants in containers outdoors just stumped me.

But with the internet looking over my shoulder I felt both encouraged, and slightly embarrassed at accepting my incompetence in this area. It’s kind of like not minding that you’re a bad housewife until guests are coming over.

Of course, the only thing that houseplants and other potted plants need is care and attention, so once I started paying attention the attrition rate plummeted. I’ve got most of the “houseplants” staged around the pond for the summer, and this year I’ve put 90 petunias in pots on the porch.

I usually have a more exotic mix for my porch; somehow simple flowers in containers seems a waste of resources. But I decided to go for metaphor again with the porch pots. Last year I left them empty so they would “fill with possibilities” and they really did, in the form of clients, the Peterson Garden Project, and lots of new students. However, because I really have enough possibilities for now, I decided I needed to go entirely the opposite direction and do something simple and obvious.

So I planted a crayola box of petunias. Simple, obvious, instantly recognizable with color and bloom that will hit you over the head. There are about 80 on the porch, and the remaining ones tucked into various other pots staged around the garden, including a white one in the dragon’s mouth.

I generally avoid such obvious flowers; I like a subtler ratio of bloom to foliage. But the petunias on the the porch make a joyous statement that sometimes life is good without that much effort and that sometimes the obvious is the thing to do.

Chocolate cream cheese cookies
5 oz semi sweet chocolate, chopped (or 2/3 cups semi sweet chocolate chips)
2 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch processed)
1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup cream cheese
2/3 cup honey
2 large eggs
1 1/4 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
optional: 1/4 teaspoon mint, orange, or raspberry extract

optional: 1 cup walnuts or pecans, chopped

Preheat oven to 350F/177C . Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Melt the chocolate in a stainless steel bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water. Remove from heat and set aside to cool to room temperature.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.

Beat the butter, cream cheese and honey until light and fluffy (2-3 minutes). Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the melted chocolate and beat until well incorporated. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Then beat in the vanilla extract. Add the flour in stages, mixing until incorporated. Fold in the the nuts.

Drop in teaspoonfuls onto baking sheet 2" apart (these will spread quite a bit). The cookies are done when they are just barely set in the center. They should still be soft. Remove from oven and let the cookies cool a few minutes on the baking sheet before transferring them to a wire rack to cool.

Makes about 30 large or 40 small cookies.

Baking for a friend

I love doing things for people. This is one of the things that continues to annoy me about my son, who resists having things done for him. My daughter is not so reticent, and is perfectly willing to accept help in cash or in kind.

I started doing things for my young friend Kristen, and lo and behold, she started doing things back (really, I wasn't expecting anything, but in case you need to know, I wear a large and I like the color pink). I've been promising her these brownies for a couple of weeks.

Apricot cornmeal brownies
1/2 cup butter
4 oz unsweetened chocolate
3 eggs at room temp
2-3 T honey
1/2 cup apricot (or other fruit) compote

1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup white flour
1/2 cup stone-ground cornmeal

Glaze:
1/2 cup apricot compote
1 teaspoon corn syrup
1/2 cup crushed nuts

Melt chocolate with butter with a double boiler or microwave oven, combine with honey and compote and allow to cool. Beat eggs till foamy, then add to chocolate mixture by hand. Sift flour with cornmeal, salt, and baking powder and fold into the chocolate mixture. Before completely mixed, add nuts if wanted. Turn into a greased cake pan.

Heat the compote and corn syrup for the glaze until pourable, then spread over top of brownies. Cover with the the crushed nuts. Bake 20-25 minutes at 350F, until an inserted knife pulls out clean. Cool completely before cutting.

Valentine's Day

My husband and I have never really "done" Valentine's Day. Sometimes he brings flowers, and occasionally we've gone out for dinner. When I was a working artist I made him a little sculpture or paper piece for Valentine's Day, but I have no idea if he still has them. I don't mind. Neither of us is particularly romantic, although he can be rather sentimental sometimes. And by February 14 we're just on holiday overload because of family circumstances-- Christmas, the New Year, then our anniversary, then my birthday, then Chinese New Year, then HIS birthday, then Valentine's Day, all separated by no more than 10 days at a time. I'm done. But in the spirit of don't buy anything, I felt like I had to create something this year, so I made these chocolate cookies. (He brought the Junior Mints, my favorite candy.) Not that he really eats chocolate all that much. Oh, well. Happy Valentine's Day anyhow, sweetheart (our 36th, which I suppose is the best Valentine's Day gift of all).  

EDIT: two years to the day after I wrote this, he left me for another woman. I just thought it was important to note that. I didn't have a clue.

Sour Cream Chocolate Cookies 1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened 3/4 cup honey 1 egg 1/2 cup sour cream 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 2 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 1/2 cups dried cranberries, plumped Preheat oven to 350 degree F. Cream butter and honey. Beat in egg, sour cream and vanilla. Combine dry ingredients; gradually add to the creamed mixture. Stir in cranberries. Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls 2 in. apart onto greased baking sheets. Bake at 350° for 12 minutes or until set – do not overbake. They should still look kind of moist on top when you take them out. They will set as they cool. Cool for 2 minutes before removing to wire racks to cool completely. Makes about 3 dozen

February 5 is World Nutella Day

This week I bought a grilled cheese sandwich and a drink (on existing credit) at the rink, and a candy bar. As I was eating the candy bar, I thought, well, crap, I just bought something I don't need.

Which is what this is about--I just never thought about it. It was only a buck, I was bored, and I didn't even think. I knew that I would have to eat dinner at the rink; I could easily have packed a dinner here. I just never thought of it.

A bigger dilemma came from my husband, who wants to buy a jacket that's on sale right now. Nope, I told him, you agreed to do this with me. He argued that it's the perfect jacket, and it's on sale. It won't be on sale in March. I don't know if he bought it or not; I guess I'll find out when the credit card bill comes.

This is how we talk ourselves into things we don't need--it's just a dollar, it's on sale, I didn't know about this perfect jacket when I agreed to do this. Our culture is relentless in its quest to get us to acquire things.

Not buying things, oddly takes more forethought--make the nutella, plan the purchase, use what you have. Joe Salatin and others call our economy and culture "extractive"-- we take things out of it without putting anything in. It's very easy to acquire in our culture, much harder to create, harder still to forego.

Oh, and in case you don't believe me: World Nutella Day.

Nutella-Filled Sandwich Cookie Recipe
Adapated from 101 Cookbooks

2 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
scant 1 teaspoon salt
6 ounces (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
2/3 cup natural cane sugar
2 large egg yolks + 1/2 the egg white
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2-3 tablespoons milk or cream

Homemade nutella

Preheat oven to 350 - racks in the top 1/3 of the oven. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and set aside. In a separate bowl, beat the butter until it is fluffy and creamy. Add the sugar and mix some more, scraping the sides of the bowl once along the way. Mix in the egg yolks and vanilla extract, scraping the sides again if needed. Add the flour mixture a little at a time. The original recipe said do this by hand, but I used the hand mixer and it was fine. The dough will be dry, so add the egg white and dribble the milk in alternately with the flour.If the dough is on the dry side stir in the milk as well. With your hands, form the dough into a large ball , then divide it into four equal pieces. Chill for about 10 minutes (again, original said 30 minutes, but this made the dough too stiff to roll).

Flatten each ball and roll out the dough wafer thin, about 1/8-inc. Stamp out using the cookie cutter into bite-size or larger cookies, depending on the size of your cookie cutter (I used a donut cutter, so mine are a little big). Arrange cookies 1-inch apart on prepared baking sheets before sprinkling with a small pinch of salt and sugar.

Bake for about seven minutes or until the cookie edges are golden brown. Remove from oven and cool completely on a rack.

Smear about a 1/2 teaspoonful of the nutella on a cookie, then sandwich it with another. Don't use more chocolate than that, it overwhelms the cookie flavor.

Making mocha coffee on a snowy morning

Who's recipe this is I think I know
They posted it on the internet though
They will not see me copying here
To watch my stats just grow and grow

My grown up children think it queer
to see Mom on the internet here
Between the bytes and frozen ethics
The darkest evening of the year

They give my Facebook page a shake
To ask if there is some mistake
The only other sound's the beep
Of yet another old lady tweep

This coffee's yummy- dark and deep
But I have promises to tweet
And more recipes to "borrow" before I sleep
And more recipes to borrow before I sleep.


Mocha Coffee
1 T chocolate powder
1 T powdered sugar
2-3 T boiling water
2 cups strong brewed coffee
a 2 1/2-inch cinnamon stick, broken into pieces
> 1/4 cup heavy cream

Mix the sugar, chocolate & water in a coffee mug until smooth. Add the cream, then the coffee and stir. Garnish with cinnamon sticks


(Original chilled mocha recipe at Epicurious)

Barter

I tried to hire a graphic designer friend recently to design a new logo for my fundraising consulting business. She designed the logo all right, but she wouldn't let me pay her. Her exact words were "I'll work for fresh-picked corn."

In the end, we weren't able to connect with the fresh corn, but I took her 10 pounds of fresh and home-preserved produce yesterday-- garlic bulbs, herbs, black bell peppers, a huge zucchini, tomatoes, carrots, chard, pickles and peach chutney, all packed in a mini picnic basket. (I'm kicking myself for not taking a picture, because it was gorgeous.)

Using garden produce and home preserves as gifts is an honored tradition of the crunchy set, but bartering for services goes back even farther. Paying the doctor with a chicken is a cliche of American mythology, and of course barter is the basis of the entire concept of commerce. We still barter in everyday life, because of our cultural decision to honor the collective delusion that paper money has value.

Most of my seeds this year were from barter too, otherwise known as seed swapping. It's THE best way to make new friends if you're a gardener. I think pretty much every new gardening friends I've made in the past two years (see my blog list!) I met through seed swapping.

What have you bartered your garden bounty for this year?

Homemade chocolate syrup
originally from The Tightwad Gazette via the blog Small Notebook for a Simple Home. Text is verbatim.

½ cup cocoa powder
1 cup water
2 cups sugar
⅛ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon vanilla

Mix the cocoa powder and the water in a saucepan. Heat and stir to dissolve the cocoa. Add the sugar, and stir to dissolve. Boil for 3 minutes over medium heat. Be careful not to let it get too hot and boil over! Add the salt and the vanilla. Let cool. Pour into a clean glass jar, and store in the refrigerator. Keeps for several months, but trust me it will be gone before then. Yields two cups.

Stop buying appliances!

Last winter I attended the Family Farmed Expo at the UIC Forum. Inspired by the Eat Real Food Challenge, this was the event that got me rolling SLOW*ly into eating real. I attended several of the seminars/lectures on tips for seasonal and local shopping.

They had great ideas for where and what to buy, and recipes, and their enthusiasm was motivating, even inspirational. But they stopped their thinking at the food. One lecturer brought up no fewer than 7 appliances that she used: vacuum packer, pressure canner, dehydrater, extra freezer, food processor, juicer, pasta roller. I assume in addition she also had the typical kitchen appliances of fridge, mixer, oven, stovetop, microwave. Others mentioned bread and pasta "machines," and seemed not to understand the irony of statements that these things were pretty affordable at Target, or that you could buy them on line from this great sustainable merchant in British Columbia. Or the Outer Hebrides for all I know.

There was lots of talk about "food miles" and supporting local farmers, but not a twinkle of consideration about "appliance miles." Local is not just food. Local is buying from the last merchant-owned Rexal drugstore in your neighborhood instead of Osco, or the Centrella Market instead of Safeway, or True Value instead of Lowe's. Sustainable is not just riding a bike instead of a car. It's also using your hands instead of a machine, to do those things that the machine doesn't do any better.

You don't need all those specialized appliances to make canned goods, juice, syrup, jams and preserves, bread or anything else, and you won't lose time or quality just doing it by hand. (You'll save time just because you won't be constantly hauling out appliances. Unless you live at America's Test Kitchen, where they hell are you keeping all that stuff?)

Here are the appliances/utensils you need to preserve an entire year's harvest for your family, and to make all your baked goods at home. Most don't use any electricity, and all are available from locally owned merchants:

Pastry mixer
Egg beater
Several different sizes of whisk
A dinner fork
Potato peeler
Several size knives
Mortar and Pestle
Rolling pin
Oven
Stove top
extremely large pot (for heat canning)
Hand held mixer, (if you make baked goods that use a batter, or lots of whipped cream. Otherwise, not so much. I almost never take mine out)
Okay, extra freezer

Useful, but not necessary (I don't have these, or any of the appliances named in the text):
Stand mixer
Large food processor (I actually need one of these, because I mash a lot of veggies for preserving, like squash, eggplant, and garbanzos.)

Everything on this blog was made with these Xan-powered utensils. Not a pasta roller in sight.

Chocolate-Pear Scones


2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3 1/2 T cocoa powder
½ teaspoon salt
¾ stick (6 tablespoons) cold unsalted butter, cut into bits
2 to 2 1/2 cups diced pears (¼-inch cubes; cut just before you use them)

½ cup honey
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup sour cream + 1/2 cup milk, whisked

Preheat oven to 400F and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Adjust a baking rack to the middle position.

Mix the dry ingredients with a whisk, then cut in the butter with a pastry mixer, knife or your hands until it resembles a coarse meal. Peel (with a potato peeler), dice (with a knife), and then stir the pears into the flour mixture. Lightly beat the honey, egg, yolk, and milk/sourcream together in a bowl (with a fork) , then add this mixture to the flour mixture. Stir until just combined (it will be thick and sticky).

On a well-floured surface with floured hands, pat the dough into a 1-inch-thick round (about 8 inches in diameter). Using a 2-inch round cutter or rim of a glass dipped in flour, cut out as many rounds as possible, rerolling scraps as necessary. Arrange rounds about 1 inch apart on baking sheet and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until pale golden. Transfer the scones to a cooling rack and let them cool slightly before serving.

*SLOW=Seasonal Local Organic Whole, in case you hadn't figured that out (took me a while)

I've made my bed, now I'll grow in it

The end goal, I suppose, is getting rid of the last of the grass, although my husband says it creates "negative space" as well as giving the eye a rest from the relative chaos of the flower and vegetable beds. But pretty much every year I manage to sacrifice another patch of grass.

Last year I added an ornamental bed, ambitiously called the Woodland, which was supposed to be smallish trees, shrubs and an understory. But after I put it in I started realize it would cost me too much sun on the adjacent vegetable beds, so now it's more of a prairie and vegetable overflow patch.

This year, I extended the main vegetable bed, so I would have another sunny patch for tomatoes, and also to aid in crop rotation. My whole yard is only 23 x 60, with about 1/4 of it planted in veggies, maybe a total of 400 square feet of vegetables in all.

Digging through sod is a terrible way to spend a weekend, so I generally kill the grass first. For flower beds I use a thick layer of wood or bark mulch, but the wood takes too long to break down for a vegetable bed, so this year I dragged some old area rugs out of the basement (first picture, left) and put them out in the approximate shape of the bed in March, then left them there for 5 weeks. They killed the grass beautifully (pictured, below right); it took maybe 10 minutes to cut the soil into 1 foot squares, which we then simply turned over. This will compost, mostly, in the 7 or so weeks until I need to plant things in this bed. I'll just need to spade and hoe it.
No clever connection to today's recipe (maybe chocolate cookies same color as healthy dirt?), just some really delicious cookies.

Chocolate cayenne cookies
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne

• 1 cup butter (no substitutes), softened
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 4 (1 ounce) squares unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled/ or ¾ cup cocoa + 4 T butter
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in chocolate and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt and cayenne; gradually add to the creamed mixture. Drop by tablespoonfuls 2 in. apart onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 375 degrees F for 10-12 minutes or until tops are cracked. Remove to wire racks to cool.

These are so delicious with milk that they really should be illegal.

My true love

I met a lot of people my freshman year of college. Some of them I met, forgot, then met again. You have those conversations where you discover that you were in the same room at the same time with someone you later got to know well, yet you have no memory of them there at all.

Everyone who knows me has heard this story a million times, of how I "met" my husband (of either 32 or 27 years, depending on where you start counting), but it's worth repeating here, on our 35th Valentine's Day together.

Thinking that I would be a costume designer, I took theater classes my freshman year. Quickly discovering that I absolutely hated being around actors (so why am I working for a theater now? It's a question I ask myself daily), I switched to the art department the following year. I don't remember anyone from my theater year, except that skinny Chinese fellow with the aviator glasses. Sophomore year, having put theater behind me, I was sitting in the choral rehearsal room, and in that guy walks. Christ, I thought, the theater people are following me.

I never did shake him loose (tried once or twice, but he's a stubborn fellow and I'm no match). So this is for you, my own true love, with a little help from my recent trip down memory lane.

Chocolate-Basil Red Velvet Cake

2 1/2 cups (250 grams) sifted cake flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons (15 grams) Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups (300 grams) granulated white sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup packed fresh basil leaves (plus addition leaves for garnish)
3/4 cup sour cream plus 1/2 cup milk whipped to a thick liquid,
• or 1 1/4 cup buttermilk (if you can find it)
2 tablespoons liquid red food coloring
1 teaspoon white distilled vinegar
1 teaspoon baking soda

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) and place rack in center of oven. Butter two - 9 inch (23 cm) round cake pans and line the bottoms of the pans with parchment paper. Set aside.

In a mixing bowl sift together the flour, salt, and cocoa powder. Place the sugar and basil in a food processor. Process until basil is chopped fine and uniformly green in color (it will look slightly wet).Set aside.

In bowl of your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the butter until soft (about 1-2 minutes). Add the sugar/basil mixture and beat until light and fluffy (about 2-3 minutes). Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add the vanilla extract and beat until combined.

In a measuring cup whisk the buttermilk with the red food coloring. With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and sour cream/milk to the butter mixture, in three additions, beginning and ending with the flour. Because of the basil, cakes will be more of an antique red than the deep bright red of a traditional red velvet cake.

In a small cup combine the vinegar and baking soda. Allow the mixture to fizz and then quickly fold into the cake batter.

Working quickly, divide the batter evenly between the two prepared pans and smooth the tops with an offset spatula or the back of a spoon. Bake in the preheated oven for approximately 25 - 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cakes comes out clean. Cool the cakes in their pans on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then invert onto wire racks. Cool to room temp, then glaze with

Light Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting

1 and 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
6 tablespoon reduced fat sour cream
1 1-ounce squares unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a medium bowl whisk the powdered sugar and cocoa powder; set aside. In a separate medium bowl beat the sour cream and melted chocolate with an electric mixer on low speed until blended. Gradually add sugar mixture to sour cream mixture, beating at low speed until well-blended. Add vanilla and beat well for 1 minute until very smooth and creamy.

Icing from Enlightened Cooking blog. I swear I came up with the basil before I started looking for frosting recipes, proving the internet truism that if you can think of it, there's already a website. Cake recipe adapted from Joy of Baking.

Socializing

There is, at last, some glimmer of recognition at my day job that people spend a lot of time at this place called "the internet." So yesterday I got to meet with a consultant who sets up small businesses with social media. We met at a local Wifi cafe where every single table was populated by someone with a lap top, a smart phone, and a (live) friend.

I catch a lot of flack from my uninitiated friends about how "superficial" and "vacuous" and "seventh grade" the web is. On the other hand, the web has made me a better gardener, a more creative and active cook, and a thoughtful coach. And I've met some amazing people, that I have to call friends, although I've never met them and likely never will.

Well, one of the things that Liz the social media expert mentioned is that, apparently, February 5 is World Nutella Day. Who knew. Mark it in your calendars. I was running around all day yesterday and wasn't able to get this post in, so I'm a day late. But here you go. I didn't actually make this yesterday, so no pictures (I'll make some and post them later.) Never be without nutella again:

Chocolate-hazelnut spread (homemade Nutella)
2 cups whole raw hazelnuts
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
up to 1/4 cup vegetable or nut oil
1/2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Place hazelnuts in a single layer on a shallow baking pan. Toast until the skins are almost black and the meat is dark brown, about 15 minutes. Stir the nuts halfway through baking so ensure an even color.

Since the skin is bitter, you'll want to discard them. Wrap the cooled hazelnuts in a clean kitchen towel or paper towel, and rub until most of the skins have come off. Don't fret if you can't get off all the skins.

Process nuts in a food processor, scraping down the sides of the bowl occasionally, until they have liquefied, about 5 minutes. At first, you will get coarsely chopped nuts, and then it will turn into a fine meal. After a little while, the nuts will form a ball around the blade, and it will seem like you only have a solid mass. Keep processing. The heat and friction will extract the natural oils, and you will get hazelnut butter!

When the nuts are liquified, add in the sugar, cocoa and vanilla. Slowly drizzle in enough oil to make a spreadable consistency. Since the mixture is warm, it will be more liquidy now than at room temperature.

Transfer the spread to an airtight container, and store refrigerated for up to 1 month. For best results, stir the chocolate-hazelnut spread before using.