Unique strengths

I almost don't even know where to start. I get so annoyed with blogs when the bloggers don't post. And it's not like I have a lack of things to post about. I think it was that whole I got so far behind and then I felt like I should have some big interesting post and well, my life is not that exciting. I mean it's exciting to me but not to the general public. I've been doing some farming (i.e., container gardening) which is awesomely awesome. Except for the cilantro plant that is taking over my life and killed my basil. I mean I love cilantro but it's up past my waist at this point and I just can't make that much salsa. My tomato plant is similarly OOC except apparently they can't be harvested for like another 2 months. I'm pretty sure at some point I'm going to wake up and my whole condo is going to be filled with cilantro and baby tomatoes. But I digress. What I really meant to make this post about was my shocking lack of planning, spatial organization, and general engineering skill. I have mentioned before that I really like iced coffee. And this is a pretty good recipe for homemade iced coffee (which is good because my local coffee shop charges $4 for iced coffee and psychology just doesn't pay that well. Plus I don't have a lot of flex time in my morning routine). So anyway, I've been making 1/4 of this recipe for a while (1 1/4 cups of ground coffee to 8 cups of water) and it's dandy. But it's kind of a pain in the bum to filter the coffee and it takes an annoyingly long time. So I decided to make a bigger batch, per the original instructions. So I bought one of those water dispenser thingies at the grocery store. My thought process was: I'll make a hole in the top, dump the coffee in, let it brew, pour the coffee out of the container into a filter sitting in a pitcher, rinse out the water dispenser, and put the brewed iced coffee back in and then it will be like I have my own personal coffee dispenser. You will notice a measuring cup, my coffee maker carafe, two bowls, my mesh strainer, my permanent coffee filter, about 15 paper filters, a pitcher, and a glass bowl are in use. Yeah, so... anyway, planning, volume estimation, spatial stuff = not my strong suit. Clearly. Here's hoping the coffee tastes good.

So much ice cream, so little time to blog in March

I have a sneaking suspicion although I believed I had an ice cream making obsession this winter, I have only just begun... The deliciousness of strawberry buttermilk ice cream as we move from an unseasonably hot spring to what I believe will be a swelteringly hot summer may have just tipped the scales from obsessed to obsessed-er. (I always like to completely ignore the fact that the kids with autism and I are the only ones who make up words). I have tried to write an ice cream-related post a few times and haven't figured out what to write. In fact I am just noticing I went on a blogging hiatus for a month. Oops. I'm not good with schedules. So, back to the ice cream. I typically am stricken with severe decision making problems upon walking into an ice cream store - this started early on when we lived around the corner from a Baskin Robbins and I would go there and the flavors would always be the same (the 80s were not a time filled with gourmet ice cream flavors that varied with the seasons) and I would walk back and forth along the freezer case trying to decide which flavor I wanted and I ALWAYS got mint chocolate chip. Every time. Except for the occasional bubble gum which was always kind of gross and I remember regretting as soon as I took the first sugary bite. It turns out that I still to do the same thing now - I peruse ice cream cases for long drawn out minutes and typically get mint chocolate chip. The one ice cream store in which this is not the case is Capogiro in Philadelphia because they don't have mint chocolate chip. So it is interesting to me that the one flavor I have not made yet is mint chocolate chip. I've done salted caramel, chocolate coconut curry, bourbon butter pecan, chocolate cinnamon cayenne, dark chocolate peppermint, pistachio chip, honey peanut butter chocolate chip, toasted rice pudding with black tea, and today, strawberry buttermilk. Whoa momma. Each one has been completely delicious and unique and surprising in its own way. Except the rice pudding, which was weird, but that might be because I don't actually like rice pudding. The Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home cookbook makes me want to be a more adventurous ice cream eater. And go to the gym more often. Her ice cream flavors are just dreamy. End of the story. Buy an ice cream maker and this cookbook. Or move to Columbus or Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Or come over to my house all summer. Whichever option suits you the best.

My journey toward locavore-ness

I did it! I bought a half-share (evidently equal to a half-bushel, whatever that means) of a CSA through Bergefurd Farms. I can't wait for June. I'm totally going to blog about it every week, perhaps with a picture of me and my farm share. I had a nice chat with the owner of the farm about how joining a CSA would broaden the variety of vegetables in my diet. Bring on the kale!

Wegetables

I've been pondering over having a lot of contests for myself recently. One was blogging once a week. Epic fail, as the kids say. One was making a yeast-based recipe each weekend to make use of the 2 pounds of yeast (that's 128 packets in case you're curious) that I bought at Costco in January. That's currently going okay; I made lemon pull apart bread last weekend and this weekend isn't over yet. The other thing I'm thinking about that is not so much of a contest but along the same lines, is joining a CSA. I love the idea of a CSA; supporting local farms, enjoying fresh produce, being challenged by making something delicious using two pounds of kale and six beets, etc. I also kind of feel like joining a CSA will balance out my earth-killing love of Costco in a super hipster earth-loving kind of a way. I found one that allows pick up at the Hyde Park Farmers Market, which is close by and would not require gas usage that would poison the environment. Plus I'm not organized enough to remember to budget out an hour or more every weekend to drive out to a farm and pick up produce, quite frankly. Imagine how fun it will be for me to blog about my weekly farm share/take pictures of me being overwhelmed by kale (I don't like kale, it's my greatest fear that the farm share will only include kale), thereby solving the problem of failed contest idea number one for the bargain price of approximately 300 dollars. Genius!

I'm just going to give myself a 5 star awesome rating for today

Wrapping things in plastic makes me feel like Dexter. I spent a lot of time wrapping and re-wrapping the pain au chocolat dough this weekend. As per usual, a multi-day baking adventure, with a totally delightful and oh-so-pretty result.

But will they transport me back to breakfast in Santorini?

I tried to do my taxes yesterday. I have to file in 3 states. I don't know what crazy person invented the tax code, but it is mind boggling to me that I owe Delaware $100 but get money back from Ohio. Pennsylvania and I are apparently square. But this post is not about taxes. It is about temperature measuring. I finally buckled under pressure and bought a Thermapen. These things are like the fanciest pants thermometer in the world; foodies love them, nuclear physicists love them (I assume they have to measure reactors and things), sides of beef love them. They also cost $89. They don't go on sale. So it came in the mail on Thursday, from England via the distributor in Utah. I have been trying to decide what it's maiden voyage will be, after measuring the ambient temperature in my apartment and the temperature of my fingertips; both hovered at 68 degrees. I may or may not have mentioned that I recently bought two pounds of yeast at Costco because (a) it seemed like a good value and (b) one of my goals for 2012 is to increase the amount of baking I do with yeast. It is always important to measure the temperature of water used to proof yeast so I decided I would kill two birds with one stone and make a yeast bread recipe this morning. I am carefully ignoring the voice in my head that is reminding me that I have never measured the temperature of the liquid used to proof yeast in my life, other than by sticking my finger in and seeing if it felt lukewarm. This method, although inexact, has largely been successful. So I decided to make pain au chocolat. I've been on a French bread making kick recently and made brioche a few weekends ago (without the thermometer, the horror)! I did some googling and the Jacques Torres recipe seems to be popular. The best part? His recipe calls for cold water to proof the yeast. No thermometer required. Of course. I'm going to do it anyway. I might even take some pictures.

The Container Store: Love it or Hate it?

I believe it is possible people at the Container Store can be divided into two distinct groups; those whose anxiety is reduced by the storage options, or those whose anxiety is increased by the storage options. I fall into the latter category. There are things in there that I cannot even conceive of what their purpose is. Do I really need boot fillers to keep my boots in shape? Really? Or things to hold my flip flops together? The food storage container section sent me into a panic attack, literally floor to ceiling tupperware. You might ask yourself, Self, why is Nicole in the Container Store if it causes so much distress? And I would say, well, there are certain weird things I like to be hyper-organized about. When I bake cookies, I like for them to be evenly placed in rows on the cooling racks, and when I put them away, I store them in pairs back to back. So they don't feel lonely. I also have been dreaming of reorganizing my spices into those cute little stainless steel containers. Plus all my spices are in a drawer because my cabinets are too tall for me to see the spices on the shelves, and I was forced to use a sharpie marker to write the type of each spice on its lid. So messy.

I spent a productive day at work today making some labels, and then I drove to the Container Store in our BIG SNOWSTORM and picked up my spice canisters. The guy asked if I was using them for "clips." As though I need 36 small containers for paper clips? I threw away some spices that were perhaps from Stah Mahket in Boston (which marks them as no newer than oh, 2001 or so, because it turned into a Shaw's before 2003). I found some weird crystals in my coriander, and discovered I had no less than three jars of allspice. So yeah, now everything's all pretty and nice and four canisters fit across in the drawer perfectly like my drawers had just been waiting for me to turn all obsessive and tidy up the spices.

The best part about this? Now I won't know when my spices expire, so I can feel free to keep the Chinese 5 Spice Powder that I never use for another 10 years, and not feel like I'm ruining my (something you might use Chinese 5 Spice Powder in).