Raccoon and Lobster

Alan: How did you get Rocky to do downward-facing dog?

It’s been almost a month but the tomatoes are finally ripening. Soon the first harvest will come. Although, sadly, I am not as skilled at being the third in a tomato blossom ménage as I thought and about 1/4 of them were left unfertilized and will not come to fruit. Hopefully the long California growing season will give me a chance to practice my skills.

Someone requested the cake balls make a reappearance, and I strive to please. Plus it offered me a chance to try out tempering chocolate correctly.

It turns out I still suck at working with chocolate.

The chocolate set properly this time but it was so much harder to work with that the cake balls came out lumpy and extra ugly. It didn’t help that I used more frosting in the cake ball mixture this time and so the balls themselves are softer and squishier, and thus more likely to fall apart when being dipped in warm chocolate.

Good thing ugly cake balls are still delicious.

Does day to day life have you stressed out? Is your chi imbalanced?

You should take a yoga class.

Let’s start in child’s pose. Kneel on the floor and sit back on you heels. Exhale and lay your torso on the mat with your head down between your arms.

From there, move to adho mukha svanasana, downward facing dog. Firm your shoulder blades and draw them back and down. Keep your head between your arms and firm the hands and press them deep into your mat.

Draw your hips up and back, feeling the stretch in your spine. Really lengthen that torso.

Let’s move from there to mountain pose. Firm your thighs and stand tall. Lift your head and neck and drop your shoulders back and down.

From there, put your weight into your heels, bend your legs 90 degrees  and sit back into chair pose, utkatasana. Think cobra with your spine and lift your chest up and out.

Good work! Now it’s time for savasana, corpse pose. Rest. Let your troubles and anxieties float away.

There. Don’t you feel more tranquil and at peace?

Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center found that when they injected the compound Brilliant Blue G (BBG) into rats suffering spinal cord injuries, the rodents were able to walk again, albeit with a limp. The only side effect was that the treated mice temporarily turned blue.

On the one hand, yay Science! On the other hand, jumping Jesus H. Christ, there are some crazy ass dyes being used in our food products. On the gripping hand, blue rats!

This tug toy has survived two years of abuse, making it one of the most enduring puppy toys we own. With a little encouragement, the dogs will tug with each other without the need for human intervention. Even now, Arthur is not the greatest at tug, although he has overcome his initial reluctance. When he gets excited, he prefers to just wrestle, opening his mouth and dropping the prize in the process.

Because it is so rare that he wins a game, he never actually gets the tug, and it has become the most elusive puppy plaything. Sometimes we give him unfettered access to it and the sheer delight he has in finally getting his teeth and paws on it is downright adorable.

Sometimes a well intentioned blog post goes awry when the outcome is so delicious that it gets devoured before you can take a proper photo. There were only 9 misshapen cookies left when I took this picture, and I chose to snap two pictures and stuff them in my mouth instead of spending more time making them look more photogenic.

Cocoa Shortbread

1 cup AP flour
1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup cold unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 300°F. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Cut in butter with pastry cutter. Add vanilla and shape into a ball. Roll out dough to 1/4 inch and cut with cookie cutter. Bake on parchment paper lined sheets for 20-25 minutes, until firm. Let cool.

Chocolate Mousse
1 1/2 cup Heavy Cream
8 oz Semisweet Chocolate Chips

Heat 1/2 cup of the cream until almost to a boil and pour into a bowl over the chocolate chips. Stir until smooth. Whip remainder of the cream and gently fold in chocolate mixture. Refrigerate until ready to use.

When cookies are cool, smear mousse on cookies to make sandwiches. Alternately, for maximum gluttony points, serve mousse in tiny Le Creuset cocottes and use cookies as spoons.

I got this “request” two days ago from a glutton friend

less computer, more kitchen!

and indeed, I had been slacking off of late. So much so that the boyfriend, starved for pastries, was forced to make his own sweet dough. Quelle horreur!

After making a few buns and rolls, he was finished and there was still a sizable quantity of sweet dough left. Two days later it was still there, so I did what any rational person would do and made it into cinnamon rolls.

This sweet dough is much easier to work with than the Rich Man’s Brioche because it has a much more reasonable flour:butter ratio. Sadly, this also makes it less fingerlicking rich.

Sweet Dough

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons whole milk, warm
1/2 oz fresh (cake) yeast or 1 (1/4-oz) package active dry yeast
1 lb 2 oz bread flour (about 3 3/4 cups)
1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened
3 tablespoons superfine granulated sugar
2 teaspoons salt
2 large eggs

Combine ingredients and work into a smooth, shiny dough ball using the french fold as shown in the video. Shape into a boule and let rest until doubled, about 1 hour.

Form into rolls or buns with desired fillings. A combination of cheese and deli meat makes a fantastic savory bun. I recommend salami and fourme d’Ambert.

Cinnamon Rolls

Roll dough into a flat sheet, approx 3/8″ thick. Pour on top and then dust very generously with sugar and cinnamon. Roll up into a tube and slice. Let rest 20 minutes and bake at 400°F until edges are golden but dough is still soft, about 10-12 minutes.

Cream Cheese Frosting

4 oz cream cheese, softened
1/2 stick butter, softened
sugar and vanilla to taste, I used about 4 heaping teaspons of sugar and just splashed in some vanilla.

Beat until smooth. Slather copiously over warm buns and serve immediately.

subbmitted to Yeastspotting

(14:25) Stacy: ronnie the breadtective
(14:26) Stacy: with your sidekicks, max and minnie
(14:26) Stacy: i hope you’re wearing a fedora
(14:26) Stacy: or other suitable breadtective hat

Three months ago, the boyfriend and I went to a fancy restaurant for my birthday dinner, a restaurant we had first patronized last Thanksgiving. The food at Jiraffe is amazing, so it comes as some surprise that one of the revelations of the evening was a solitary slice of black bread that came in the bread basket. Despite being vigorously anti-black bread AND anti-anise as a rule, we both loved this bread, which the waiter told us was pumpernickel. He brought us 3 more slices with a wink and told us that it was frequently devoured by the wait staff before most of it has a chance to get to the guests. I am not unfamiliar with pumpernickel bread, and this sweet fluffy loaf was nothing like any pumpernickel I had ever had before (this, by the way, is what those hoity toity literature folk call foreshadowing) and I had to know more. Further prompting at the end of the evening revealed that while Jiraffe bakes some of their own bread for the basket, the “pumpernickel” was ordered fresh from La Brea Bakery daily.

That weekend found us at La Brea Bakery, giddy with anticipation of an entire loaf of this wondrous bread. Alas, the pumpernickel was a seasonal bread and was not in stock. However, a special order could be arranged given 48 hours notice…so obviously we ordered 3 loaves. Meanwhile, Nancy Silverton’s bread book was enthusiastically ordered as it contained the coveted recipe for Pumpernickel bread. Soon we would be inundated in delicious, delicious bread! Two days later, I am carrying 3 loaves of suspiciously dense bread home, still cautiously optimistic until the first slice reveals a disappointingly heavy brick of a loaf that was completely unlike the now-mythical black bread from Jiraffe.

I spent the afternoon on the phone with various customer service lines at La Brea Bakery, being shuttled from polite agent to agent, until someone was able to look up the order sheet for Jiraffe and establish the name of the bread: Sweet Anise. Further muddling the waters was the existence of two pumpernickel breads and some discrepancy in item numbering. The Sweet Anise, I was told, is 424, and the pumpernickel on my special order sheet said 475, but the bakery storefront told me that 424 was pumpernickel and sweet anise was 242. It took 3 more calls after that to pin down an educated guess (there is also, apparently, a 573 pumpernickel floating around) and another 2 day wait for it to be specially made.

This time, we did get the correct loaf and it was devoured in a single day. Oh glorious day! Soon the joy of discovery turned dismay as the 2 day wait time and $8/loaf charge began to add up. This recipe, of course, did not appear in the La Brea Bakery recipe book. The sole anise based recipe in the book was a Fig-Anise bread that used white flour, but my bread was a rye*. A dead end. However, in the introduction, Nancy wrote that she would freely offer recipes and even starter to patrons who asked politely, so my next step was obvious.

I phoned La Brea Bakery customer service once again, and overwhelmed them with effusive praise and begged for a recipe and possibly some starter. The woman I spoke with was initially cautious, but she appeared to be won over by my cajolery and by the end of the call had all but promised me the recipe. She would email the line director herself and contact me. One week passed, then two. I called back. She was on vacation and would contact me when she got back. On the appointed day, I called again only to receive disheartening news. Nancy Silverton was no longer the owner of La Brea Bakery, and recipes were now jealously guarded.

Depression set in. The secret to Sweet Anise bread would be lost to me forever. Weeks passed in a dark haze. Then, one day, a group trip was organized to Pizzeria Mozza, the pizzeria co-owned by Mario Batali and…Nancy Silverton. While Nancy apparently works the cheese counter at Osteria Mozza occasionally, she does not appear in the pizzeria. But this set another plan into motion. The Mozza press kit included the email address for Mario Batali’s assistant. I sent her my plea and she agreed to pass it on to Nancy’s assistant. Hope dawned.

One week later, she replied asking for more details on the bread I was looking for. I replied. A month passed. I wrote again. Despite the fact that she was still at La Brea Bakery and the bread is still being produced, the recipe could not be found. Once again I had been thwarted.

But no more! A recent revamp of the La Brea website included a listing of all of the bread they carried and the ingredients and nutritional information. Last night, I emailed La Brea Bakery one last time requesting the same information for the Sweet Anise bread. I frequently buy this bread for dinner parties, you see, and some of my guests have extensive allergies. For safety’s sake, it was crucial that I know what this beloved bread was comprised of. I received a reply this afternoon. Comparison has already begun between it and the ingredients lists of other breads whose recipes do appear in the book.  Fundamentally, it seems to be a molasses bread that substitutes anise instead of the typical ginger. The great experiment begins.

As an aside, I would normally be too big of a person to point this out**, but I was amused to read that the ingredients list contains caramel color, which Nancy derides in her recipe book as a crutch other bakers use. J’accuse!

*Or was it??

**No, not really, but let’s pretend, shall we?

In the neverending quest to instill confidence and develop coping mechanisms for stress and anxiety (AKA Operation Scare the Crap Outta Them), two unsuspecting canines were subjected to The Vacuum.

Rocky is not amused by the vacuum

Arthur attempts to smash it with his paw

"You go first." "No, you!"

Get the kibble and gtfo!

While no amount of kibble could transform The Vacuum into a beloved member of the household, a reluctant peace can be brokered that offers some a temporary ceasefire in the ongoing war between the Pawsmashers and the Sockeater.