A Pretty Cookbook

I heard the Kinfolk Cookbook mentioned briefly on a blog and was fascinated.  Wonder of wonders, our public library actually had it on the new book shelf, so I snapped it up and read it aloud on the way home from the library.  I am familiar with Kinfolk and I think we even got a few issues of the magazine.  It is, essentially, a hipster lifestyle magazine.  Actually, I think it's food and entertaining specifically, but really, it's pictures of pretty stuff and then short essays and recipes, most of which are about food.  The pictures are absolutely gorgeous and make me want to find a rough wooden table and mismatched, chipped china (it sounds weird, I know...you just need to see these pictures).  The magazine fascinates me because it's so different from the 90s ideal.  It's still very much this idyllic perfection just like Martha Stewart's magazines, but what you're supposed to be trying to attain is radically different.

So when I found out about this, I was looking forward to a good cookbook read.  Like I said earlier, some of the pictures are absolutely gorgeous and make me want to spend hours with my camera.  However, the writing is...meh.  I think that the writers could do with a little lesson on sparse use of adjectives and avoiding flowery language.  The run-on sentences abound, filled with an adverb or an adjective every 5th word.  It makes for funny, but slightly tiring reading.

However, in spite of the writing, the overall tone of the book is inspiring in that they're encouraging people to get back into the home and cook and entertain.  All of the recipes look delicious.  The format of the book is a short bio about one of the Kinfolk editor's friends, and then recipes that the friends shared.  I wanted to warn you about the writing, but the overall message of the book, the photography, and the recipes make up for it.

What the World Eats

I took a little break from my usual reads, cozy pre-1980 novels, to pick up a very inspiring and fascinating book called What the World Eats.  This was a much-talked-about book (I think it was originally meant for children, but you can't tell in the least) when it came out in 2008 and I just never bothered to pick it up.  Then several weeks ago, I was reading a blog post that mentioned this book and warmly recommended it.  So I headed off to the library and picked this up and read it right away.  I was writing a post in my head while picking strawberries and now I've come in to write it.  Be prepared for a (minor) rant, everybody.

What the World Eats covers families in different countries, describing their daily work and what they eat in a week.  The family poses next to their table (or the ground) covered with all of the food they eat in one week.  All different people are mentioned in this book, from the French family with two college-aged daughters to the large, multi-generational Bhutanese family.  

That's probably the worst picture I've ever taken.  But you get the gist- those
people don't have enough food.

As would be expected, there is a heartbreaking difference in the amounts of food.  The poor family in Chad with 16 people in their family have about 1/4 of the food of the American family of 4.  The disparity in quantity was so strikingly unfair.  

...Aaaand the American family.  Sigh.

The other thing that struck me was the *ahem* crap (for lack of a nicer word) that so many people in the western world are eating.  Now I'm not just talking about the occasional box of Oreos as a little treat or the gorgeous green bottles of seltzer water (which I do adore) or perhaps some boxed cereal.  Oh my, no.  We're talking the whole table covered with boxes and plastic bags of stuff and then one sad, measly head of broccoli (I kid you not).  And please remember that this was the food in a week, not a month.  Oh dear, and the McDonalds.  It was everywhere, from the Chinese family to the Mexican family.  In this book, the Mexican family has 6 gallons of Coca-Cola a week.  I'm sure they're thanking America for handing them a nice helping of diabetes.  

Beautiful, beautiful green kale growing in a flower bed.

So now that I've gotten my rant out, I'll give some practical thoughts.  First, let's look at some of the families in the book who had enough (that's key) and were eating fairly responsibly.  The Mongolian family had eggs grown by a neighbor, fresh meat from the market, some oil, rice, salt, and soy sauce from a store.  Added to this was lots of produce, most of it grown locally or preserved (fermented, I think).  The large Turkish family had great food on their table.  The only prepared thing that was bought was some sesame seed paste cookies from the market.  There were eggs, fish, beef, potatoes, yogurt, pasta, feta, and milk.  And there was a nice long list of vegetables, some of them grown locally. Well, there was the pack of cigarettes, but aside from that, they had good choices.  I think it's important to look at the people that are making better decisions for inspiration.

The strawberries are starting to come on fast.  6 quarts
in one morning!  Yippee! 

Second, I think it takes baby steps (and the authors of this book back me up in the introduction).  For instance, in my part of the world right now, everything is flooded with beautiful, local produce.  We happen to have a large garden, but there are markets in pretty much every city nowadays.  It would be ridiculous to be buying Central American strawberries right now.  If we just got rid of, say, 3/4s of the packaged stuff just from March to October, we would make such a difference.  And as if cutting out all that nasty stuff wasn't enough of a reward, we'll be stealing less from people like the family from Chad because we won't be shipping unneeded resources from halfway around the world to ourselves.  

This book is fantastic and if you are the least bit skeptical after reading this post, go read this book and you won't be. Oh, and I'd love to hear what you think about this.

Bread Baking

I'm on a new kick…braiding bread!  A couple months ago, I did some extensive research (thank you, Pinterest), and I have come up with a pretty fail-proof method of bread braiding and shaping.  I thought I would share it and my lovely bread loaves.  The recipe listed here makes 4 loaves, but you can halve or quarter (or double, you crazy person).  The amounts are thanks to the cookbook The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book (I've got the link below).  The actual method of making the bread is an odd mix of my mother's recipe and my own trial-and-error.

The bread dough, before it rose.

1.  Put 4 teaspoons of active dry yeast into 1 cup of lukewarm water into your Kitchen Aid mixer (or a large bowl).  Add enough flour to make a dough that is similar to pancake batter.  Let sit until bubbles form and go about your business (I decided what baking music I wanted to listen to ).  It was such a warm, humid day today that this only took about 5 minutes.  On a windy winter day in January, it's going to take a lot longer.

The loaves, about to be covered before they rise.

2.  Once batter is bubbly, mix in 5 teaspoons of salt, 4 tablespoons of oil (I used coconut), and 4 tablespoons of honey dissolved in 4 1/2 cups of water.  Add flour (I used spelt) until you have a very wet dough (sorry, I can't really be any more specific than that).  Now for the enjoyably messy part.

3.  Sprinkle flour all over fairly large surface (I use the kitchen table) and dump all that sticky dough onto the flour.  Then, keep adding more flour as you vigorously knead until the dough is springy and elastic.  Oil a clean bowl and dump all the dough in and cover with a wet towel to rise until it's doubled in size and when you poke it, the hole doesn't fill in.

…So you can see the braids.

4.  Once this happens, you can do one of two things.  The "real" thing to do next is to punch the dough down and let it rise once more.  However, I was in a slap-dash mood, so I just punched the dough down and shaped it right away.  Divide that dough into four equal sections.  Then, roll each of the sections into an oblong shape and divide into four snake-like pieces (the strips should be about 1" thick).  Pinch the ends of all of the strips together and gently cross the strips over each other (doesn't need to be any particular pattern).  It helps to grease the heck out of your hands.  If your braided dough ended up a lot longer than will fit in your bread pan, just fold the edges under.  Let sit again until the dough has risen up to the edges of the bread pan.  Just chuck the pans in the oven at 350 for about an hour and you're done.  And voila!  You have gorgeous braided bread.   Oh, and then cut yourself a gorgeous, warm slice and spread with butter and honey.  I'm eating a slice right now as I type.

All finished!

Now about this cookbook-it's really great.  It's a really handy book to have on hand and the pretty woodcuts just add to the general loveliness of the book.  The instructions are very extensive and you will have no doubt as to what you are doing when you use a recipe out of this cookbook.  There is everything in here from the classic whole-wheat bread dough recipe that I loosely used to rice-sesame crackers, to spicy currant bread.  I've been inspired by this book to do some more interesting bread baking and braiding!

A Toast Rack

Today was the retirement community sale that happens every spring.  Each year, the people moving to the home donate stuff to the sale.  The stuff tends to be fabulous vintage finds.  I happened to find the most charming little device- a toast rack!  Now you may be asking, "What on earth is the purpose of a toast rack?"  Why to serve your toast on, of course!  Except, that the toast would have the unfortunate propensity to get soggy and cold, which is just plain nasty.

So, I'm going to use this cunning little device as a letter holder.  I have several friends who send me letters and I thought what a fun way to store letters this would be!

Here are several pictures that I took of it.  What do you think?  Won't this be handy?

I'll be back tomorrow with a review of Unpunished.  Yes!  I finally got around to reading the dang thing and it was a wonderful read.

A Cookbook Series

I don't have any book reviews at the moment because I am about 30 pages into three different books.  I hope to get a lot of reading done today.  However, I am still reading, thinking about, and cooking from cookbooks!  I thought I would review one of my favorite cookbook series.  They're not well-known out of my specific culture, but they are worth seeking out.  I am a Mennonite  (a whole other topic for a whole other place and time).  However, among many things, Mennonites value cooking.  Back in the 70s, two Mennonite women decided to write a cookbook about cooking food that was sustainable and was chock-full of recipes submitted by people all over the globe. This cookbook was called More-With-Less.  Several years later, in the 90s, two other women added to the series and wrote Extending the Table- a cookbook about eating world food.  The series was completed in 2005 and was about eating in-season, sustainable food.  I grew up with these cookbooks and they still have a special place on my list of favorite cookbooks.

I think that my favorite is Simply in Season.  More-with-Less's extreme obsession with calories and low-fat seems quite dated and Extending the Table sometimes calls for ingredients that we don't keep on hand all the time.  But Simply in Season, with its contemporary but delicious recipes is pretty much perfect.  I also like occasionally coming across a familiar name in the contributions.  There is a chapter for each season, with recipes like Gazpacho in the Summer and Maple Glazed Parsnips in the Winter.  I turn to this cookbook quite a bit in the summer.  This cookbook also has the added bonus of having an ingredient index.  So, if you're being bombarded with spinach, you can look up spinach recipes in the back.

While I don't use it frequently, Extending the Table has introduced me to some delicious recipes.  The kimchi is one of my favorites and Shanghai Ham is also wonderful.  This cookbook is a great way to learn a little bit about different countries and it's a good place to turn to to replicate restaurant dishes.

I think that I have the most memories and associations tied to More-With-Less.  There are some basic recipes like mayonnaise and french dressing that are perfect.  And, while low-fat is stressed, there is nothing nasty or flavorless about the food.  Even the recipe for Wheat Germ Balls is delicious!

I was surprised and glad that these cookbooks can be found on amazon.  I recommend them for anybody who likes to cook and wants a little taste of another culture.

Chocolate Eclairs and Mad Hungry

All the ingredients laid out.  This recipe was perfect because it used
14 eggs!  Our hens have gone into laying overdrive.

Today I have a cookbook recommendation and some food pictures for you.

Just a bit of the mess that ensued.

Our church was having a bake sale.  I volunteered to make chocolate eclairs and, boy, were they tedious to make...I mean, good.  First, you make a cream puff dough, made of melted butter, water, flour, and salt.  Then you squeeze the dough through a pastry bag and end up covering every surface and large sections of your hair in dough.  Then you pause, disgusted, and start just spooning the dough onto the cookie sheets.  After the puffs are baked, they are sliced and left to cool while you go make a custard that for some aggravating reason gets filled with little cooked egg lumps.  After straining the custard, you cool it for an hour, while you pull out your double boiler and cook a chocolate ganache.  After the chocolate ganache comes within seconds of burning and sticking because you are too busy reading a hilarious autobiography, you take that off and let it cool.  Now it's time to fill those eclairs.  First you fill one half heaping full with that lovely custard that turned out gorgeously, then put the top cap on and drizzle chocolate ganache over all.

The gorgeous eclairs...all 22 of them.

After I took a bite of that perfectly airy, elegant eclair, it was all worth it and I found myself forgetting all the work and the fact that every single dish in the kitchen was dirty as I smiled and licked my fingers.

Yes, the subtitle is Feeding Men and Boys.
I have no idea why.  However, the recipes are for anybody.

These delicious eclairs came from the fabulous book Mad Hungry.  It's written by Lucinda Scala Quinn and it's a book on cooking hearty family food instead of eating out, but really anybody.  Her recipes are well-written, look delicious, and taste delicious (at least the ones I've had).  The photographs are pretty and aid in making me even hungrier for the delicious recipes.  If you're a voracious cookbook reader, you most definitely need to buy this book.  If you're not, then please just go to the library and check the book out.  You might surprise yourself and end up purchasing a copy...

Yum.

And every. single. chocolate. eclair. sold.  I'm actually a little sad about that.  I was hoping for a little treat this afternoon...

Reading Cookbooks

It's odd, I know.  But it's a whole other kind of reading.  Not the kind of reading with a beginning, middle, and end, with a plot and an overall message, but I still love it.

The 1964 edition.  This book is almost too tome-ish
to read for fun.  But, seriously, it has pretty much any recipe
that you can think of.

It's the kind of reading you do when you're feeling tired or in need of some inspiration.  Reading cookbooks is perfect for those days when you're all out of books, or don't feel up to sitting down and giving your full attention to a story.

A very amusing read.

I particularly like vintage cookbooks.  They all seem to tell a story about what people were doing in a certain era.  It's fascinating how much you can learn about people through their food.  I wonder what people will say in 50 years when they look at cookbooks from our era.

Cookbooks are fun to read on several levels.  First, they can be read in light of a history book, if you're reading a vintage cookbook.  Seriously?  Tuna jelled in a mold with lime jello and cabbage?!  (I am not making that up.)  They can also be read as a sort of current events book, if you're reading a modern cookbook.  For instance, think about reading a paleo cookbook or a celebrity cookbook.  Then of course, there's the inspiration that comes from reading cookbooks.  I love going through the vintage cake sections and reading about new kinds of cooking.

Just a little contrast between the above vintage
cookbooks and a modern cookbook.
The recipes in this cookbook are delicious, by the way.

And finally, I love the thought of people from all different time periods writing cookbooks so that the concept of how we eat food could be changed just a little for the better.

A picture of cookbook from which my pretzel recipe came.

Rye Soft Pretzels and Fresh Stack of Books

Yesterday I got a lovely, huge stack of books.  I was starting to feel slightly panicked at the thought of my dwindling book supply, but managed to get to the library that Monday afternoon.  I got a fantastic stack and, if they are worth it, I'll review some of them in the upcoming weeks.

On the way home, I suddenly got a hankering for doing a little baking.  So, I pulled out some cookbooks and eventually settled on Good the Grain's (a fabulous cookbook, by the way) rye soft pretzels.  They looked so delicious and I could just imagine curling up in the evening with a hot soft pretzel and a little pile of books around me.

The kitchen table, dirty from rolling out pretzels,
that somehow managed to look pretty in the afternoon sunlight.

I think that these were some of the best soft pretzels that I have ever sunk my teeth into.  They were just a little tangy on the outside, from the baking soda bath, perfectly crusty on the outside, and doughy on the inside, with flecks of sea salt on top.

The pretzels.  Just ready to eat.

And so, that evening, I took a still-warm pretzel, gathered up a small handful of books, and retired to the sofa.