The Seattle area has had record rainfalls in the last week, courtesy of a climate phenomenon known here as the Pineapple Express. This weather system originates near Hawaii and barrels to the Pacific Northwest. Sometimes the rain is accompanied by high winds. This visit of the Pineapple Express was just rain, rain, and more rain. Skiers are happy, because the rain turns to snow in the Cascades.
As one can imagine, the Sammamish River behind our condo is quite swollen. The sandbar on the other side of the river is completely submerged. There have also been some mudslides here and there. On my way to church I saw a collapsed hillside. Said hillside is adjacent to a recently-built house perched precariously above the street. I daresay the owners are having second thoughts about the integrity of their home.
The big buzz in the apple world these days is the Cosmic Crisp, a variety developed by Washington State University. This is its debut season in grocery stores. It’s a daughter to the ubiquitous Honeycrisp variety.
We were shopping yesterday when we saw a display of Cosmic Crisps. Julian said, “Why don’t you try one and give me a report?” I picked up a single apple. At lunch today, I cut up the apple and gave it a try. Here’s my assessment:
Appearance: It’s a pretty apple, suitable for a fruit bowl. When I cut into it, Julian said that it looked almost brown. That may be due to the high sugar content.
Texture: It’s definitely crisp and juicy. It’s even juicier than Honeycrisps. Julian tried a small bite: “Too crisp for me.”
Taste: As I said in a previous post, I’m not a big fan of super-sweet apples. I’m more fond of old school East Coast varieties. Give me a McIntosh, Cortland, or Empire any day. Julian has an aversion to some of these varieties due to some chemical, probably the one that makes them attractive to me. His favorite apple: Red Delicious, which is my least favorite.
Enzymatic browning: It took me a while to finish the apple. The flesh didn’t get brown as fast as other varieties do.
Overall verdict: Okay if you like sweet apples. If you like apple-tasting apples, go for another variety.
One of the first cookbooks I bought in college was Joy of Cooking. Although I grew up cooking out of my mother’s 1950’s-era Betty Crocker Cookbook, Joy seemed to be a bit more cosmopolitan to this farm girl. I liked the chapter on ingredients. I also liked the conversational tone of the recipes. Even though I’ve got many more cookbooks from which to choose, Joy of Cooking is still a go-to volume in our home. When we’ve had a dispute about something, Julian will often say, “Let’s consult Irma on this.”
All my Joys.
Over the years I’ve added three more editions to the collection. I bought the “cast of thousands” edition (edited by Maria Guarnaschelli) in the late 90’s. Last month I bought the latest edition, edited by Irma Rombauer’s great-grandson, John Becker, and his wife, Megan Scott. The new edition is a keeper. Becker and Scott have added hundreds of new recipes and updated many older ones. The new recipes include gluten-free breads and items from all over the world. I daresay Irma would look askance at the inclusion of kimchi jigae (Korean kimchi soup) in the latest edition of Joy.
The edition on the left (copyright 1943) is a treasure. I picked it up at my church’s used book sale about 15 years ago for $1. It had belonged to the mother-in-law of a church member. I didn’t realize it when I picked it up, but it was AUTOGRAPHED by Irma. In addition, the original owner had notations and other recipe clippings stashed in the book. Definitely a find.
Julian’s knock against the various editions of Joy is the recipe format. Rather than having all of the ingredients listed at the start of the recipe, the ingredients are listed at the step where they’re added. My response to this: Read the *&^%$#@! recipe!
I’m always amazed at the diversity of avian life at Casa Sammamish. This afternoon I saw one of our neighborhood bald eagles on the sand bar across the river looking for lunch. Needless to say, the ducks kept their distance while said eagle was hanging out.
Friday morning we got the news that our former next door neighbor’s mother had died, two months shy of her 97th birthday. She’d been transitioned to hospice care earlier in the week. The cause of death was heart and respiratory failure. I took over half a batch of Miami onion rolls for condolence food.
Next month we will have a potluck to honor this amazing woman’s memory.
I’ve spent the last week in my hometown catching up with my family and checking in on my mother at the nursing home. My grand-niece and nephew are growing up quickly. I also have a grand-nephew-to-be who’s set to make his debut in late February. Mom’s doing well.
The downtown areas of small cities like Fulton and Oswego continue to be hollowed out, while the peripheries hold every big-box store and fast food joint imaginable. Dollar stores are also breeding like rabbits. I counted three different dollar stores on a two-mile stretch of street in Fulton. As a strike against this ugly trend, I try to frequent downtown businesses. Today I bought a couple of items at the River’s End Bookstore in Oswego. This store has a lot of titles I wouldn’t expect to see in upstate New York. I got several ideas for children’s books to order for the church bookstore. I also had lunch twice at Canale’s Italian restaurant. (Sometimes you just have to feed your red sauce need.)
The same plague of dollar stores was evident on the way to the Rochester airport today. I lost count of the number I saw on route 104. Downtown Rochester is also hollowed out, courtesy of Kodak’s successive cutbacks over the years. At least the universities and medical center seem to be thriving.
Our friend Michael wanted to celebrate his birthday. He chose a potluck with a twist: A soup competition. The crew came ready to rumble with a variety of options. Michael made two varieties of vegetarian hot and sour soup; one spicy, one suitable for chile wimps. Chicken tortilla, Cuban black bean, African peanut, and sunchoke/cauliflower rounded out the list. Folks who didn’t make soup brought appetizers and desserts.
We made two different soups. Julian made a Spanish garbanzo soup out of Anya Von Bremzen’s The New Spanish Table. I made a cold sour cherry soup with fennel that Julian downloaded from Food and Wine magazine. The tricky part of my recipe was finding sour cherries. Luckily, Julian found them frozen at Central Market. The recipe went together very nicely. I cooked the onion, garlic, and fennel the night before so all I had to do was blend everything together when I got home from work.
This was an audience participation contest. Revelers scored soups on aroma, flavor, and texture. There were also three special categories: What to eat after the zombie apocalypse, what would you crave after consuming cannabis (we had some youngsters there), and an all purpose question. And we won! Julian received a Dr. Who mug for winning the craving category, and I won a coveted silver (stainless steel) ladle for second best soup. The golden ladle went to the African peanut soup. A fun competition.
Julian invited our friend Bruce over to pick his brain on another home improvement project. As a reward, Bruce gave me a bit of sourdough starter he got from Sea Wolf Bakers. The starter has bounced to life quite nicely after a feeding or two. Not wanting to throw away perfectly good starter when I fed it, I decided to experiment by making some semolina bread with a portion. I admit that I worked without a net on this. I didn’t add any yeast to the starter. Although I semi-followed a recipe that instructs one to make a sponge with yeast, water, and semolina flour, I mixed the semolina with the starter and water and put it in the refrigerator while I was at church to avoid the sponge oozing out of the bowl and onto the counter. The results were quite good. I took a loaf to work and the cube farm cronies devoured it.
The second experiment involved making a porridge of sorts with oatmeal, then adding the starter to it and incubating in the fridge overnight. I then added a little water, oil, maple syrup, whole wheat and bread flours. The bread was good, but we couldn’t eat through it before it got fuzzy.
The third experiment was a failure. I tried to make a focaccia with some starter that I needed to discard to reseed the rest. I should have added some yeast to oomph the rising. Next time…
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