As usual, we’re spending Thanksgiving with some of our Friday Night crew. Our host is doing the turkey and some of the trimmings. I offered to make the traditional cranberry-orange relish, plus some bread for the festivities. After some research in the collection, I settled on a challah recipe that had onion rolls as a variation.
The recipe was straightforward. I put the dough in the refrigerator to rise overnight. It’s a good thing I woke up around 6 this morning – the dough was beginning to crest over the top of the mixing bowl. Had I slept late, I would have had a glutenous mess to clean up. I punched the dough down and let it come to room temperature for a couple of hours. Meanwhile, I had breakfast and made the cranberry-orange relish once the caffeine kicked in.
I divided the dough in half. One portion went to onion rolls, the other was shaped into a traditional challah braid. The latter was sprinkled with sesame and poppy seeds. I was impressed with the “oven spring” of this recipe. The rolls are larger than standard dinner rolls. (Leftover turkey sliders, anyone?) Happy Thanksgiving!
Challah and onion rolls.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/11/23/this-years-thanksgiving-contributions/
I’ve posted several times about the assorted food allergies and intolerances in our regular Friday night crew. By now making adjustments to accommodate our friends has become second nature. However, sometimes a recipe can’t be jiggled for everyone. Then we improvise.
The Friday night crew convened last night. Julian offered to make a Peruvian chicken recipe that we’d tried earlier and loved. Try as we might, we couldn’t adapt the recipe for the sauce for our vegetarian friend who also has a pepper intolerance. Julian found a fried tofu with ginger-sesame sauce recipe that showed promise. Rather than frying the tofu myself, I took the easy way out and bought some pre-fried tofu from a local firm. I made the sauce at home with gluten-free soy sauce and assembled the dish at the host house. I warmed up the tofu in a dry skillet; just before serving, I stirred in the sauce. Vegetarians and omnivores alike were pleased with the tofu. Julian made a chicken thigh and a little bit of the cilantro sauce without garlic for our friend, the allium-phobe. (I think the sauce could make shoe leather palatable.) As usual, nobody left hungry.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/11/18/more-feeding-between-the-lines/
Last June the Bothell City Council approved negotiations to purchase the Wayne Golf Course from Forterra, a land conservancy. On November 14 the Council was scheduled to vote on the final purchase agreement for the front 9. The back 9 purchase vote will be held on December 12.
The City Council chamber was packed. Before the festivities began, the Council went into closed session for labor negotiations. After about 20 minutes, they returned for the open forum section of the agenda. Surprisingly, most of the speakers were not there for the golf course issue; rather, they spoke against putting a safe drug injection site in Bothell. Many of the speakers on this topic didn’t live in Bothell, which made us wonder whether this was a planned distraction for the Golf Course vote. As it happens, the former mayor (and retiring Council member) is spearheading the drive against the injection site. All of the injection site foes left after the open forum, which increased my suspicion about the timing of this “spontaneous” outpouring of opposition.
After a break and a couple of votes on other issues, the Council finally got around to the motion to buy the front 9. Again we had distraction. A retiring Council member added an amendment that could have been a poison pill, but the Council voted it down. Another retiring Council member prefaced his vote against the purchase by expressing concern for the merchants who have lost business due to last year’s fire and the closure of Main Street while it’s being rebuilt. He thought the city should bail out those merchants, even though such payments are illegal under Washington law. Finally the votes were cast: 5-2 in favor of the purchase. The former mayor and the retiring member who wanted to bail out Main Street merchants were the no votes. Once the tally was announced, the audience erupted in cheers. Let’s hope the back 9 purchase goes a bit more smoothly.
Council members and supporters of the Wayne Golf Course purchase after the vote. Photo courtesy of Julian. The golf course abuts the Sammamish River, which is why the salmon cutouts were used to advocate for the purchase.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/11/18/nearing-the-finish/
I’m not much for baking cookies. If I do bake cookies, it’s brownies or some other bars. I don’t remember the last time I made drop or shaped cookies – until today.
I found a recipe for double ginger crackles in my file from Fine Cooking magazine and decided it was time to bake some cookies. The recipe was pretty standard; however, the sources of ginger were dried and crystallized. (Luckily, we got fresh supplies of both at Penzey’s yesterday.) I didn’t leave enough space between the cookies on one sheet, so they oozed together. However, they came out to my liking. I’ll see what my coworkers think of them.
Addendum: They were devoured! I took about 30 into the office, and only two were left at the end of the day.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/11/05/cookies/
Friday morning, a “wintry mix” of rain and snow hit the Seattle area. As the day wore on, it turned into all snow. Luckily, there was no accumulation and the rain resumed in the afternoon. This morning the snow returned and briefly accumulated over the Doug Fir needles on the upper deck. Again, the white stuff stopped falling in the afternoon. As I’ve mentioned before, snowfalls send folks hereabouts into a tizzy. My mother and sister back in the Snow Belt got a kick out of the fact that we got snow before they did.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/11/05/first-snow/
One disadvantage of living in the Evergreen State is the damn evergreen needles. The slightest wind sends a fine flurry of them to the ground. A stiff wind sends a blizzard of needles. The needles get tracked into the house and ground into the carpet, and are a bear to remove. In theory, the only conifer that loses all its needles in the fall is the larch, native to the Cascade Mountains and a punch line in several Monty Python skits. In practice, the other species can give the larch some competition. We have a big honking Douglas fir just off the decks of Casa Sammamish. This is what the upper deck looked like yesterday. Even more came down in the last day.
Julian’s comment was, “At least we don’t live in Arizona, the Nevergreen State.”
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/11/05/the-falling-needles/
Apparently the Teamosa (see prior post, Yet Another Beverage Boondoggle) has met the fate of the Juicero. Who put up the capital for this product? Obviously nobody who drinks tea.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/10/29/another-beverage-boondoggle-bites-the-dust/
Although paella is a party recipe at heart, we have made it for just the two of us. Sometimes it’s just chicken and sausage, other times it’s seafood.
Today we were on our usual caffeine run downtown when the question of dinner came up, as it always does. Julian suggested paella, so I did a quick search on the phone for a recipe. I came up with this one from Food and Wine magazine. Since we needed other groceries, we did our shopping run after we left the coffee shop. Cockles are hard to find, so I just used more clams and mussels. The recipe was pretty straightforward, although the ratio of rice to seafood was lower than what we’re used to. It’s a keeper.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/10/28/paella-para-dos/
What if the constant Twitter wars and kerfuffles are strategic smoke screens to hide what’s really going on in the current administration? Alternately, are policy pronouncements timed to when attention is focused on other headlines (e.g., hurricanes and wildfires)? Diversionary tactics are common in military actions and in dictatorships. Administrations past and present have released unpopular regulations and decrees on Friday evenings after the East Coast broadcast television news deadlines. Even in the current 24-hour news cycle, these announcements tend to evade detection.
The most current example of the smoke screen strategy occurred this month, and was reported in yesterday’s Washington Post. On October 2, when attention was focused on the (non-)response to Hurricane-Maria-ravaged Puerto Rico, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos rescinded 72 guidance documents pertaining to the rights of students with disabilities to access education. The official line was that these documents were rescinded “due to being outdated, unnecessary, or ineffective.” For whom, pray tell? Many of these guidances were to help parents navigate the current laws on getting free public education for children with special needs.
Many of you know that this topic is personal for me. My brother was born with spina bifida and had to be bussed to a neighboring town for junior high and high school because my hometown school at those grade levels was inaccessible to a wheelchair. He was bullied at the junior high school, and his desire to do anything in school dissipated thereafter. More recently, my honorary niece has developmental delays due to prenatal lead exposure. Her mother has had to sue the school board on a yearly basis to make sure her daughter receives a high-quality, appropriate education. What about the parents who aren’t as legal-savvy as my friend and need to know how to advocate for their children? Are their children doomed to a lower-quality education that won’t meet their unique needs?
Perhaps instead of seeing the smoke, we should find the fires that are coming out of the administration that have a direct effect on the public, especially the most vulnerable among us.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/10/22/smoke-screens/
The Italian basil is history. The shiso plants have gone to flower, as has the Thai basil. The padrón pepper plants are soldiering on, but it won’t be long before they need to meet the compost bin. The peppermint plant is thriving, but the spearmint plant is DOA. The survivors are all waterlogged with the rain we’ve had this week. All in all, it was a good year for my humble upper-deck garden. Now I get to daydream about what to include next year.
Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2017/10/21/garden-postmortem/
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