Fire Hot Pepper Sauce

Methinks I may have become a little obsessed with removing myself from consumer culture.  Anybody could have seen this coming, I suppose, with my recent adventures in making hot sauce and homemade baking powder and blackberry jam and, um, homeschooling my kids, but lately I've gone a bit cuckoo with it all.

I quit using commercial shampoo, conditioner and styling products about a month ago, and have mostly loved the results.  This is not a new concept, mind you, and there is ample anecdotal evidence to be found on using baking soda, vinegar & coconut oil for hair care, but I suspected I would be falling down the rabbit hole if I got started on this myself.

And I did.  Fall down the rabbit hole, that is.  It turns out that the avoidance of commercial products can become a bit addictive.  In a good way, of course, because, as it turns out, my decidedly not-a-hippie hairstylist is so excited about the state of my hair now that she wants to help me spread the word about avoiding sulfates and silicone-derivates.  And, bless her pretty little heart, she even barters with me so that money rarely changes hands between us.  

I consider it a good week indeed when I can bathe using all homemade products, trade out some financial services for a haircut & highlights, buy milk & cheese from a nearby farm, help my mother preserve 300 ears of corn and get sent home with ample amounts to last my family through the next winter, pick blueberries for free on a neighbor's property, wear clothing passed down from friends or purchased at a consignment shop, educate my children using books purchased for next-to-nothing at yard sales, and construct dinner almost entirely out of ingredients from my garden and my mother's and grandmother's gardens as well.

It all sounds a bit cult-like, doesn't it?  I would be urging everyone else to drink the Kool-Aid, too, except that none of this is anything new.  American life existed much this way until the pseudo-modern age of the past 50 years, and I am certainly not a pioneer in the movement to recapture some of that way of life.  But it is fun nonetheless, and I do love that self-satisfying, sock-it-to-the-man feeling of finding ways to live outside of corporate culture.

That, and I'm reading Radical Homemakers right now, which is only encouraging my Laura Ingalls Wilder behaviors.  Now if only I could wean myself off central air conditioning and cable television...

I blame my mother for much of this.  She was a child of the sixties, and was rather young when she had me, so some of these hippie-ish tendencies just came pre-installed on my model, if you know what I mean.  And since I have spent the past thirty-something years following her around her gardens and giving her shopping lists for her yard-sale forays, I benefit from her self-sufficiency largesse.  

Yes, there is such a thing.

Last week, when her hot peppers started coming in, and she made her first batch of Fire Hot Pepper Sauce of the season, she sent me home with a quart-full just in time to placate The Carnivore's urgent request for hot sauce (it has, after all, been entirely too long since I whipped up a batch of my Burn Sauce).  Big Mama's Fire Hot Pepper Sauce is a true hot sauce, and is not vinegar-based like Tabasco or the other commercial bottled brands.  She makes hers almost entirely from jalapeno peppers, though a few Anaheims made their way into this last batch, and she and her kids go through gallons of the stuff every year.  

Note: it is called 'Fire Hot' for a reason.  This isn't the kind of thing a normal person might douse their eggs with, and caution is in order.  Depending on rainfall, heat, and other factors, hot peppers vary in intensity, and every batch of this sauce is ever-so-slightly different.  I don't think I have ever dumped a spoonful of pepper sauce on a taco without first dipping a finger in to test for palate-burning capacity.  A little can go a long way.

I finally slowed Mom down yesterday, and got her to focus on one task (and one task only) for a couple minutes so I could write down her formula for making this sauce.  Enough of her readers have requested it now that it would only be fair to share, after all.  You can thank me later, if you haven't burned a hole in your tongue, that is.

*****

FIRE HOT PEPPER SAUCE, from Big Mama (makes about 1 quart)

Disclaimer: a mixture of peppers could be used, and vinegar could be added (1 Tbs at a time) to add tanginess if so desired, but then it would not be Big Mama's recipe any longer, and she would disapprove, and she would not be afraid to express said disapproval, even in public.

• 4 cups whole jalapeno peppers
• salt

1. In a medium saucepan, add the peppers and enough water to cover.
2. Bring to a boil, and continue boiling for about 5 minutes, until peppers can be easily pierced with a fork.
3. Drain peppers, reserving the cooking water.
4. Remove and discard the stems, leaving the seeds and ribs intact.
5. Place stemmed peppers in a food processor or blender, and add about 1 cup of the cooking water along with a generous pinch of salt.
6. Pulse mixture until peppers are minced or fully pulverized, depending on how you prefer, adding more water if needed to achieve desired consistency.  
7. Taste and adjust salt if needed.

Wild Blackberry Jam

One of the great joys of our property has been the blackberry vines that grow alongside our long driveway.  The Carnivore and The Boy Wonder pick a few giant bowlfuls each year, generally providing enough for a cobbler or two, along with a plentiful supply for snacking out of hand.  The nasty drought that we suffered through over the past few summers was tough on these old berries though, and it has been years since the vines have been full with the kind of plump, sweet blackberries that we most adore.

This Spring has brought on the best crop since we moved here in the summer of 2003, and the blackberry season has gloriously stretched out longer than I generally remember it lasting.  Best of all though, we discovered that those thorns we had been trying to eradicate from our front yard were actually more wild blackberry vines, and, after neglecting the yardwork for, oh let's just say a very long time,  we suddenly found ourselves overrun with the sweetest, fattest, most beautiful berries I have seen since the days of my childhood spent foraging in the woods with my mom.

Note: I should take this opportunity to assert my superiority in the field of deferred gratification.  My mother, no matter how many empty bowls she brought with her, has always been incapable of bringing berries home from a picking expedition.   I, on the other hand, have long enjoyed a particular neurosis that allows me to plan ahead, and countless times was able to buy myself out of restrictions by bartering portions of my saved berries to a desperate mother.  Children should take heed.  I know of what I speak.

Here in present times, however, where I am finally able to make the rules, saved berries have little value and are eaten with impunity.  My little family made it through the first week of blackberry season by gorging ourselves on the berries as fast as The Carnivore could pick them.  Little Miss Hazelnut, a clear descendent of that aforementioned mother of mine, would plant her diaper-clad bottom in the middle of the blackberry patch and eat until her entire body was stained with the juice.  It was cute.  At first.

More than one cobbler was made and devoured, and then, two or three weeks into this madness, I returned home from yard sales on a Saturday morning to find another 16 cups of berries sitting in containers on the kitchen counter.

Something had to be done.  And as much as we love and adore and pledge allegiance to our favorite cobbler recipe, I was just itching to try something new, and (wahoo!) there I was with a yard-sale canner and a giant box of small jars on hand .  It was high time to dig through the beloved Southern Living cookbook collection.

I had a mind to try my hand at a jelly or jam or preserves kind of recipe, but was an utter neophyte and really had no idea what to expect, other than a vague tickle that I was going to have to get some pectin or some other such thing.

Really, I was clueless, so you can imagine my utter delight and excitement when I saw a recipe in the 1982 Southern Living for blackberry jam that had only two ingredients: berries and sugar.  The instructions were simple, the time commitment was small, and God help us all, our personal berry supply was neverending.

I had no idea what to expect, and was more than a little nervous about how sweet the end product might be, but oh my stars, we ended up with manna from heaven.  The jam was so good we were licking it off the wooden spoon and burning our tongue in the process.  The texture was old-fashioned, with seeds and unevenly crushed berries, and the level of sweetness was spot on, more tart than sweet, really.  Literally.  Spot.  On.  And it tasted fresh and familiar, like the kind of thing you might have enjoyed at your grandmother's house in the middle of summer back when you were a kid, back before silly little things like seedless jam and citric acid became part of the vocabulary.

We were a little afraid that we had made too much at first, and since I wasn't really feeling up to driving to the store to pick up lids for the new-used jars, I chose to freeze some of the jam, keep some out to enjoy right away, and share the rest of the batch with my mother (as a proactive measure in case she threatens to ground me anytime soon), my grandparents, and my friend that had an upcoming birthday.

I shouldn't have worried, of course.  I made slightly-burned, brick-like whole wheat biscuits the next morning, and our little family went through the first jar of jam in one sitting, ending with Little Miss Hazelnut sticking her entire hand in the jar to scrape out the remainder.  Most surprisingly though, was that the portion that had been frozen and subsequently thawed still retained the fabulous texture of the original batch.

We are a little bit in love with this jam, and I went out today to purchase jar lids for the sole purpose of making a few more pints to put up before the season ends.  Because as quickly as it begins, the abrupt end of blackberry season is always a bit of a shock, though we can always take heart that blueberry season comes right on it's heels...

*****

BLACKBERRY JAM (adapted from Southern Living, makes about 3 pints)

• 9 cups (about 4 lbs) crushed blackberries
• 6 cups sugar

1. Combine berries and sugar in a large, heavy pot, such as a Dutch oven.
2. Slowly bring the mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally until sugar dissolves.
3. Boil at a medium heat for 30 minutes to an hour, stirring frequently, until jam reaches desired consistency, taking care to avoid splatters (man, they hurt).  
4. Freeze, can, or share as you see fit.

Fennel & Tart Apple Salad

Summer snuck up on me this year, and it took a little longer than usual to decompress from the rush of The Boy Wonder's daily lessons and busy activity schedule.  But this week, all of a moment really, I slowed down a bit and stopped pushing so hard at life.

It is June now, after all.  Time for afternoons at the pool, Saturday mornings at the farmer's market, stolen moments in the garden, less complicated meals, and most of all, time for a little breather from our homeschool curriculum.

Time to finish up some of the loose ends from kindergarten, to dig around on Ebay for our first grade materials, and time to evaluate my own expectations.  Truly, I think I learned as much from kindergarten as The Boy Wonder did.  I can see the fascination of science through the eyes of a six-year-old now, and I am able to join in the wonder and suspense as a little boy hears The Story of Doctor Dolittle read aloud for the very first time.

It hasn't all been fun and games, of course.  I also joined in the frustration of learning how to sound out words in which letters make different sounds than a young mind might expect, and we both had to dig down deep to come up with the necessary patience to learn how to coordinate pencil and paper to form letters and numbers when little hands would prefer to doodle.

But we did it.  Together we made it here, to the other side of kindergarten, where The Boy Wonder can read, can swim without a life jacket, and can manipulate a fork and a butter knife to cut a pancake into manageable, polite bites.

We feel like superheroes.  Superheroes on vacation, that is.

Like I said, it is summertime now, and we are splitting our time between the garden, the pool, and the craft table at home.  There is much less time for slowly-simmered soups and very little desire for elaborate dinners.  Our menus tend to follow the seasons and our little garden has cooperated nicely, providing beautiful, variegated lettuces for our salads and fresh herbs for our pasta; and as the variety of available produce has grown by leaps and bounds at Athens Locally Grown, we have started reintroducing a few sorely missed vegetables to our table.

God Bless the baby squash.

This year though, with the gaping void left by my ill-conceived decision to not rejoin our beloved CSA, I have been searching for new challenges in the kitchen and while there have been the predictable misses, there have also been a few pleasant surprises.  This fennel and apple salad sits squarely atop our list of recent winners.

Fennel is an odd thing, really, a little too hip for my taste in some ways, and a bit too assertive in the first few recipes that I attempted, but a lovely herb when used properly.  Fennel is often described as tasting of licorice, which can sound a bit off-putting really, but the crunchy texture and refreshing flavor of the bulb is perfect for summer.  Besides, the word 'licorice' doesn't properly capture the flavor.

Of course I cannot describe it any better myself.  The words 'clean' and 'crisp' comes to mind, but that falls a little short when trying to evoke a sense memory of a food.  Suffice to say though, that fennel marries perfectly with tart apples and a simple, well-emulsified vinaigrette.  This salad is really quite beautiful on the plate and pairs well with rich, velvety sauces and, my favorite, cheese plates.

Yesterday, when The Carnivore worked late, my desk was piled with time-sensitive work, it was hot and humid, and the kids and I were in town picking up our food order during the time we normally prepare dinner, this salad came to the rescue.

From the bags of food I brought home, I pulled out a fresh baguette to slice, toast and drizzle with olive oil.  We already had creamy Brie on hand, along with an imposing hunk of strong, stinky blue cheese, and I was lacking only for something light, green, and, yes, crisp to temper the richness of the cheeses.

Voila.  I had picked up a few bulbs of fennel with my order and it only took a couple minutes to slice some apples and the fennel, make the vinaigrette and toss it all together.  We had the perfect summer dinner.  Perfect even for a family of varying tastes, but the biggest surprise was how well The Boy Wonder took to this salad.  He ate two or three servings for dinner, and asked for it again for breakfast.

Maybe I should add that to our list of kindergarten accomplishments:  reading, swimming, and fennel appreciation.

*****

FENNEL AND TART APPLE SALAD, serves 8, adapted from Charlie Trotter Cooks at Home

• 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 Tbs chopped fresh tarragon, or 1 tsp dried tarragon
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• salt & freshly ground black pepper, to taste
• 2 tart green apples (such as Granny Smith), sliced thinly
• 2 bulbs fennel (not the leafy part), sliced thinly

1. In a large bowl, add the lemon juice and tarragon.  Slowly whisk in the olive oil in a steady stream, and add salt & pepper to taste.
2. Add the apple and fennel to the bowl, and toss well.  
3. Best served at room temperature.

Hazelnut Espresso Cookies

I have the most ridiculous confession to make regarding these cookies (and their lack of accompanying photograph).  It should come as no surprise that we love and adore them.  'Espresso' is in the title, after all, which makes it a bit of a given that there is perfection involved.  And really, the first time I read the recipe, I knew they would end up as family favorites.  Truly, when I bit into the first one, I actually began planning their photo shoot.  


Cookies this incredible demand photographic evidence, I would think.


Maybe I would pose them in a clean-lined stack, leaning against a mug of steaming coffee (which is how I imagined I would enjoy them if I had a bit more self-control).  Then, as I bit into the second ninth cookie, I began planning a slightly different angle, something more befitting their classy, adult manner.  I could use the good china, I thought, and take advantage of the next day's morning sunlight, staging the photo on the porch table, as if I were enjoying a coffee and cookie break outside in the quiet while the kids were otherwise occupied.


Well, that was a perfectly sensible idea, of course, so I put away the camera for the moment and, uh, grabbed another cookie on my way to my desk to get some work done.  I would just plan to take the photo the following morning...


Except then I packed up a few cookies for my mom, and then another little container to take to my girlfriend who loves having cookies with her afternoon coffee.  And then there were only two left on the cookie sheet, since I had chosen to freeze half the dough for a future cookie emergency.


They happen, you know.  Cookie emergencies.  When hormones are zinging around like crazed pinballs, when dinner is disappointing, when work is piled up on the desk, dustbunnies are congregating madly in the corners of every room and homeschooling begins to sound like the most ill-conceived idea I've ever had.


It is moments like that when one is grateful for the cookie dough that was lovingly wrapped in plastic wrap and tucked away in a covered container in the back of the freezer to be brought out for such a time as this.  And it beats trying to talk The Husband into getting dressed and making a late-night run for Coffee Haagen Dazs.


Back to those two cookies on the baking sheet though...  As it would happen, one of them disappeared while I was wrestling a child to sleep, which forced my hand, in a posture of pure self-preservation, so that I had no choice but to snag the last one for myself.


And just like that, all the cookies were gone.  I had a recipe in hand that I just couldn't wait to share, but, alas, I had no photo.  No proof they had ever existed at all.   


So I waited.  I waited for a cookie emergency.  A cookie emergency that would come all too soon, at the end of One of Those Days just a couple weeks later, when I would shoot the stink eye towards my family and stalk to the laundry room, where I would carefully remove the Emergency Dough, divide it neatly in half so as to provide for the next emergency as well, and bake a single pan of cookies after the kids were already asleep so that we would not have to share.


Oh my stars.  They were just as delicious as I remembered.  Buttery and salty, only slightly sweet, with just the barest hint of coffee flavor.  Crispy on the outside, yet as delicate and tender as an old-fashioned Toll House cookie on the inside.  And since I had used whole-wheat pastry flour, they were healthy to boot.  


Well, as healthy as something can be with that much butter involved, but healthier than the average cookie nonetheless.  I would definately need to set aside a few cookies with which to take a photograph once I had natural light to work with...


The Carnivore and I polished off all twelve cookies within an hour.  Still no picture.


Because obviously I needed a picture, I selflessly decided to bake the rest of the cookies just a few days later.  Since the Emergency Dessert Clause had not been invoked on that go-round, we exhibited the kind of self-control that would make a monk proud, each of us devouring only a couple of cookies, and politely setting the rest aside for their next-morning appointment with the camera.


Morning came, a little too early for my taste, bringing with it a dismal gray overcast tint to the supposed-sunlight.  The two-year-old woke up on the wrong side of the bed and endlessly terrorized her older brother, The Annoying Squirrel Pest got himself tangled up in my hair and bit me on the ear, and, as I emptied the last dish from the rack,  I realized the dishwasher had failed to open the soap container and that nothing had gotten very clean.


Belligerently, I turned my back to the chaos and slowly ate the rest of the cookies, savoring each bite and then delicately licking my fingers to enjoy the very last crumb.


And then the heavens shone their light upon me and angels sang in the background.  For real.


Like magic, everything went fine with the rest of the day.  The kids hugged and made up, I threw The Annoying Squirrel Pest into a room and shut the door, and then I poured another cup of coffee and read a few chapters of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to the now perfect children.


Valium would have been less effective.  Not only are these cookies the most elegant and lovely bites of delicousness I have ever encountered in a cookie, but they are mood-altering as well.  And healthy.  Don't forget the whole-wheat flour.  That makes them good for you.


If they were less divine, I might have possessed the wherewithall to have a photo to post with the recipe, but isn't my complete lack of restraint in the face of these cookies an even more compelling endorsement of their ultimate supremacy in the field of desserts?


*****


HAZELNUT ESPRESSO COOKIES (adapted from Leite's Culinaria, makes 36)


Note: this dough freezes well.  Just wrap tightly in plastic wrap and enclose in a plastic container with a tight lid, and freeze.  Thaw to room temperature before baking.

• 2 cups whole-wheat pastry dough (do not use regular whole-wheat flour as it is too dense)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3 Tbs instant espresso powder (like Cafe Bustelo; do not use instant coffee)
• 10 oz shelled hazelnuts, skins mostly removed, coarsely chopped

1. To remove the hazelnut skins: preheat the oven to 250 degrees, and place the shelled hazelnuts in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet.  Bake for about 20 minutes, until the skins crack.  Quickly transfer the nuts to a clean kitchen towel and roll them up.  Let steam in the towel for 5 minutes, and then rub the nuts with the towel until most of the skins have come off.  Not all of the skins will come off, and this is perfectly fine.  No panicking necessary.
2. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt.
4. In an electric mixer at medium-high speed, cream the butter and both sugars together until fluffy.  
5. One at a time, beat the eggs into the butter and sugar mixture.
6. Beat in the espresso powder.
7. Reduce the speed to low, and slowly add the flour mixture, beating just until incorporated.
8. Stir in the hazelnuts.
9. Drop heaping tablespoons of the dough onto baking sheets, about 1 and 1/2 inches apart.
10. Bake at 375 degrees for about 12 minutes, until cookies are golden but not browned around the edges.
11. Cool for two minutes and then loosen the cookies from the pan.

The Seven Wonders of the Week

Spring arrived with a grand entrance this year, leaping out loudly from behind Winter's lingering back, and this year, she brought all her friends with her: singing birds, hilarious swirling clouds of pollen, fragrant and thick blooms of wisteria, warm breezes, and the usual sense of wonder.

All too often, moments of pure beauty pass by fleetingly, lost amidst busy schedules and children's bedtimes and desks piled with work.

This week, we reveled in the springtime bliss, breathing deeply, moving slowly, and living fully.

•••••

On Sunday afternoon, we opened all the doors and windows and did our best to blur the lines between inside and outside.

•••••

On Monday, we frolicked in the big creek.

•••••

In the glorious and welcome high heat of Tuesday afternoon, I weeded the salad garden while The Boy Wonder took care of the watering, Little Miss Hazelnut stripped off her clothes and ran amidst the wisteria, and Elvis the Bloodhound lolled about in the shade of the pear tree.

•••••

Wednesday brought a lunch date with my former housemate and his wife who were in town for a mere 24 hours. There was laughter, catching up, and a brief, but wondrous, sense of connection between the past and the present. Later in the day, while The Boy Wonder learned about pollination with his fellow homeschool Garden Earth Naturalists at The Botanical Gardens, Little Miss Hazelnut followed the yellow brick road to a surprise cup of lemonade at the cafe.

•••••

Thursday began with an excited search under the pillow to see what The Tooth Fairy brought on her magical first visit to our home.

•••••

On Friday afternoon, in the sun-dappled shade of the large tree in front of my mother's house, while the older kids played in the meadow, and the adults pulled chairs around to sit together in the warm sunlight, generations jumped boisterously on the trampoline amidst laughter and squabbling. It was childhood in action.

•••••

Saturday began peacefully, the air cool, the quiet morning softly decorated with the sound of birds, cartoons, and the click-clacking of my knitting needles; the little pond filling with the falling lavender petals of the wisteria as its blooming season draws all-too-quickly to a close.

•••••

I can't wait to see what next week brings...

A Mouthful of Candy

There is a time for everything. A time to eat healthy, and a time to gorge on Easter candy. A time to avoid high-fructose corn syrup and artificial colors, and a time to throw out all the rules. A time to spend a day having a free-for-all with the candy proudly brought home from the hunt, and, later, a time to take Communion. A time to think about the Easter bunny, and a time to focus on The Cross.

Hoping your family enjoys the holiday weekend, in all of its silly excesses and its quiet, splendid glory. Happy Easter, friends.

Blueberry-Pecan Whole Grain Pancakes

There once was a time, in a galaxy far, far away, when I slept late on Saturday mornings and then lounged around drinking coffee and reading the newspaper for, oh, hours if I felt like it.

Those days are over.

Saturdays begin a wee bit earlier now, and though the quiet and calm has been replaced with the sound of cartoons and squabbling children, my aim is still for a slow start to the busy that overtakes so much of our time these days.

Too much busy isn't good for anyone, and luckily, my little family seems to agree with me on this one small point. Yesterday, after three straight days of non-stop running around, the children and I had nowhere to be, nothing that had to get done, and no reason to look presentable to the rest of the world.

The Boy Wonder, usually game for any adventure, said wearily, "Mom, do we have to go anywhere today?" I shook my head and he brightened up instantly, saying, "Yay. Can I wear my pajamas all day?"

That's my boy.

And so it goes that there are mornings when we don't have to rush, when the cereal boxes get left on top of the refrigerator, and when we can all gather around the table and enjoy a leisurely homemade breakfast. In our pajamas, of course.

Pancakes are always a hit around here, and it is the breakfast I have the most fond childhood memories of myself. We have always been a whole-grain family. My mother raised me on oatmeal pancakes that, if followed with a glass of water, would swell in one's stomach and negate the need for another meal for the rest of the day (and sometimes the day after). These weren't the kind of thing that came from a box, but rather from the dog-eared, cover-held-on-with-a-rubber-band copy of Recipes for a Small Planet that lived on our kitchen counter through my entire childhood.

I love that cookbook. I do not cook from it these days (I am the only vegetarian, child-raised-by-a-hippie in the house, after all), and it has been out of print for many years, but the cover art is enough to send me back 30 years every time I see it.

The title of this silly blog is, naturally, a play on the title of that beloved old cookbook.

I have made variations on whole-wheat pancakes for some time now, tinkering here and there, and sometimes (shocker alert) going so far as to use a whole-wheat baking mix (!) in order to achieve the texture I was aiming for: something a little lighter than the usual brick-like substance that results when using 100% whole-wheat flour.

Actually, it isn't only pancakes that have given me a bit of trouble texture-wise. Bread, pizza dough, pasta, pancakes - anything made with 100% whole-wheat flour has been a bit too heavy for our taste, so I have tended to go with a mix of whole-wheat and unbleached all purpose flour when making any of these items.

It pained me to do so, to use all-purpose flour, and to have store-bought whole-wheat items surpass what I could make at home. A friend told me about vital wheat gluten, and said that it would help lighten the finished product, but I found that to be a rather intimidating prospect, though I cannot explain why.

It was only recently, when consulting Alice Water's The Art of Simple Food for something or another that I came across her recipe for pancakes. The answer to most of my problems was right there, and I felt a bit daft for not having thought of it myself: use 1/2 whole-wheat pastry flour and 1/2 regular whole-wheat flour in order to keep them light.

Whole-wheat pastry flour is ground very, very finely, and is quite lovely to use, as it turns out. I had a bag in the fridge already from a long-forgotten cookie recipe, but was, for some unexplainable reason, storing it for a special occasion I suppose. After reading the tip in The Art of Simple Food though, I pulled out the bag and went straight to work on it. Over the course of a few days, I have now elevated it to the same status as olive oil and kosher salt for items I would take to a desert island. It is crucial stuff, you see, and works magic on whole-grain foods. My pizza dough is now perfect (thin, crispy, and yet 100% whole-wheat) and the pancakes I made using this technique are, in my only slightly humble opinion, the best ones I have yet to eat.

And I've eaten a lot of pancakes.

Texture is key with pancakes, and not just in finding the middle ground between leaden hippie whole wheat pancakes and that spongy, tasteless fluff from a white flour baking mix. Something must break up the monotony of a single-texture meal, and in this case I use both fruit,frozen so it stays whole while mixing, and nuts.

I was a little late coming to the table where putting nuts in pancakes is concerned. As a matter of fact, and this pains me greatly to admit, it was at IHOP of all places that I first had a pancake with nuts. It was a revelation, I tell you, and it took me some experimentation at home, but when at last I got these pancakes right, I felt like I had reached the other side of my vision quest.

Everyone takes pancakes this seriously, right?

*****

BLUEBERRY-PECAN WHOLE GRAIN PANCAKES (serves 4, adapted from The Art of Simple Food)

• 3/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
• 3/4 cup whole-grain flour (any mixture or single choice of: whole wheat, spelt, cornmeal, rye or buckwheat)
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped pecans
• 1 tsp baking powder (see recipe for homemade baking powder)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 eggs, separated
• 1 3/4 cups buttermilk
• 6 Tbs butter, melted
• 1 cup blueberries, frozen

1. In a large bowl, mix together both flours, nuts, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt.
2. In a small bowl or large measuring cup, whisk the egg yolks into the buttermilk.
3. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients, pour in the buttermilk mixture, and stir until just mixed.
4. Stir in the melted butter.
5. In a separate small bowl, beat the egg whites until the form soft peaks (this can be done by hand or in a mixer), then fold them into the batter.
6. Fold the blueberries into the batter.
7. On a preheated, lightly greased griddle (or skillet) over medium heat, drop 1/4-cup of batter and cook until lightly browned, about 1 to 2 minutes. Flip, and cook until the other side is lightly browned as well.
8. Keep warm on a cookie sheet in a 200 degree oven until all pancakes are cooked.
9. Serve with butter and pure maple syrup.

Life is Short, and the Winter was Long

Life is too short to do formal lessons on a beautiful day when the sun is shining, the breeze is warm, the birds are singing, and the daffodils are blooming. The phonics can wait. So can the dishes, the laundry, and the paperwork.

Life is too short to worry about what people will think if I post pictures of my shirtless children playing outside. We live in the country, and they were too full of joy to care about clothes or to even notice where they dropped their shirts.

It should be noted that life is not so short that I did not make absolute certain that I collected all the discarded clothing and put it in the laundry room before Elvis the bloodhound could run off with them.

Life is too short to toss the dirty shirts into the washing machine on a day like this. Like I said, the laundry can wait.

Pasta with Clam Sauce

There are days when so many things go wrong, when every well-laid plan is thwarted, when time spins out of control, when everything I touch seems to suffer the anti-Midas touch.

Yesterday was not one of those days.

Oh, things went wonky, of course. Things are always a little bit off around here (there is a two-year-old in the mix, after all), and every day seems to have its own detours and moments of hilarity, but serendipity herself came to visit yesterday, bringing little silver linings to each of the day's oddities.

After all was said and done for the long, rainy, chilly day, when all the members of our family had gathered back home for the short dinnertime respite between afternoon and evening activities, when it was time to breathe and to laugh and share time together, I surveyed our options for dinner and realized that my initial plan was never going to work in the time we had remaining. I scrambled around, a little unnerved at first, searching the pantry and the fridge for last-minute ideas, and that is when our old friend serendipity showed up.

Right there in the back corner of the fridge, was a giant batch of fresh whole-wheat pasta that I had rolled out and cut into fettuccine just a few days prior, and there is no meal that cannot be salvaged when fresh pasta is at hand. When time is short, dried pasta can almost always come through in a pinch, but fresh pasta? You could drizzle the stuff with olive oil and a sprinkle of grated Parmesan cheese and call it dessert if you wanted; no one would complain.

There are items I always keep around though, because moments like this happen so often, when time races away from me or when, (cough, cough) like today, I forget to soak the beans and have to scrap my original menu plan; items like flat-leaf parsley, lemons, shallots, and cans of chopped clams. Clam sauce is always easy, never fails to make the kids happy, and though it isn't so exquisite that the average person would write home about it, it can be a revelation when trotted out at a time that I might have needed to resort to fried egg sandwiches.

Not that there is anything wrong with fried-egg sandwiches, mind you.

Within 20 minutes, dinner was on the table, and the silky, fresh pasta elevated the clam sauce to its best day yet around here. I use chopped clams, rather than minced ones, for better texture, and use the clam juice as part of the sauce. It is a rare day that I am such a fan of food from a can, but in this case, I stand firmly behind the convenience, low-cost, and briny flavor. The fresh parsley and lemon zest brighten the dish and save it from being a Pantry Emergency Dinner, and a little pat of butter adds richness and heft to the sauce.

A quick, simple dinner can be such a thing of beauty.

*****

PASTA WITH CLAM SAUCE (serves 4)

Brush toasted baguette slices with a little bit of olive oil and lemon juice, and top with a smattering of the chopped parsley for an easy bruschetta to serve with the pasta.

• 1 pound dried spaghetti, linguine or fettuccine (or fresh pasta, if available)
• 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 shallots, finely chopped (or 1/2 an onion if that's all you've got)
• 5 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2 cans chopped clams, juice of one can reserved (discard juice from other can)
• 1/2 cup dry white wine (cheap old cooking wine is adequate)
• 1/2 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley, divided
• 1/2 tsp kosher or sea salt
• 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 2 Tbs unsalted butter
• freshly grated zest of 1 lemon
• freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

1. Cook the pasta in heavily salted, boiling water until al dente. Drain, reserving about 1/2 cup of the pasta water to thin the sauce as needed.
2. While pasta cooks, heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
3. Add the shallots and saute until soft, about 3 minutes.
4. Add the garlic and saute for just a minute, taking care not to burn the garlic (burnt garlic can be unpleasantly bitter).
5. Add clams, reserved clam juice, wine, half the parsley, and the salt and pepper. Cover the pan, and simmer for 5 minutes.
6. Whisk in the butter, remove from heat, and toss the pasta with the sauce, adding the reserved pasta water (little by little) if needed to thin the sauce.
7. Plate the pasta, and sprinkle with remaining parsley, lemon zest, and freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

Irish Soda Bread

Sometimes it is almost hard to admit the reasons behind my recipe choices. Of course, the harder something is to admit, the more likely I am to cough it up here, publicly and without remorse. It isn't the confession itself that embarrasses me so much as the fact that I did something so ridiculous in the first place that it bears confessing.

I should have been Catholic.

Last week for instance, with The Carnivore out of town for four days, and The Boy Wonder's soccer season just beginning, I broke down and bought a Kashi frozen pizza for dinner. The thought of doing The Boy Wonder's lessons all morning, taking him to his homeschool PE class in the afternoon, doing the grocery shopping, picking up new cleats, and still getting to soccer practice and then putting the kids to bed seemed like enough to fill my dance card for the day. So I thought I would cut myself a wee bit of slack and skip the cooking and cleaning for dinner.

The thing was, I was kind of mortified to be buying a frozen pizza. I tried to justify it with it's Kashi name. Minimal packaging was involved, it claimed to be "all natural," and there were whole-grains involved, but it still tasted like a frozen pizza, only slightly better than cardboard, and I felt terrible bringing it to the table. Even The Boy Wonder turned his nose up, complaining that it wasn't a fresh-made crust.

The embarrassment was all in the purchase and the serving though. I went straight to Twitter and owned up to what I had fed my children for dinner.

See? Being Catholic would be so easy...

And so it is that I feel obligated to 'fess up to the story behind this Irish Soda Bread. The recipe turned out well; so deliciously, in fact, that I made two batches last week, eating it for breakfast and dinner on some days (the bread is so filling that it makes lunch a moot point), but even if it had turned out badly, I am sure I would have still brought the whole sordid affair into this little forum just so I could stick a 'Kick Me' sign on my back.

Irish soda bread wasn't even on my radar before a few weeks ago, when the March issue of Bon Appetit landed in my hands and I flipped through the magazine to see what jumped out at me. There towards the end, in an article not even alluded to on the cover, was a giant two-page picture of a piece of brown bread just slathered in butter.

Yum, right? Homemade bread topped with nothing but butter does it to me every time, and this photo got me all worked up. The title gave me pause though. 'A Slice of Ireland,' it said, which confounded me. Irish bread? Never even heard of it. I made to flip right on past, but the next few photographs, one of cows and another of a castle, were enough to make me turn right back to the beginning of the article, where I saw this: "In the countryside, there are as many versions of soda bread as there are cooks. Andrew McCarthy goes in search of the ultimate recipe."

Andrew McCarthy?

Like the Andrew McCarthy from Pretty in Pink and St. Elmo's Fire and Less Than Zero? The same one I had a deep, abiding teenage crush on through much of the late eighties?

Well, obviously it wasn't really THAT Andrew McCarthy, though just the memory was enough to make me giggle. I had forgotten all about him, so seeing his name in print (and remembering how badly I had wanted a pink Karmann Ghia for my 16th birthday) was a funny little blast from the past that made me stop right there and read the article anyway. Even though I knew it wasn't THAT Andrew McCarthy.

The article was interesting, of course, like all food/travel articles tend to be for me, but since baking bread isn't high on my list of things to cook, I finished the story and, with nary a glance at the accompanying recipe, flipped back to the front of the mag to commence my cover-to-cover reading. The whole 80's flashback had already slipped my mind when I reached the Letter from the Editor on page 16 and saw, there at the top of the page, "[Y]es, he is that Andrew McCarthy of Brat Pack fame."

Well, I'll be.

The absurdity was almost enough for me to go ahead and try the recipe. I already had all the ingredients on hand, after all, and I do love fresh bread, but, I mean really. Andrew McCarthy?

Maybe if Christian Slater had written the article...

So the bread was forgotten, in favor of Molly Wizenberg's British flapjack recipe (the only recipe that really caught my eye in the whole issue) and I tossed the magazine onto the menu desk, with the page turned down for the flapjacks, where it got pushed aside to make room for the baby squirrel and his shoebox (which is another story altogether).

Life went on, though the Psychedelic Furs stayed in my head on perpetual playback for a few days, as always happens when I come upon mention of a Brat Packer's arrest or addiction recovery or what-have-you.

Then, while skimming Facebook status updates on my phone a few weeks later, bored because everyone was yammering on about the Oscars (which interest me not), I saw more than a couple updates that mentioned The Brat Pack, Molly Ringwald's appearance and the John Hughes tribute.

Hmn.

I mean, I might have actually watched The Oscars had I known Judd Nelson was going to be on.

But, and here is that embarrassing admission that I brought up lo these many paragraphs ago (because, yes, there are more embarrassing things than admitting to crushes on Andrew McCarthy and thinking John Hughes was a directorial genius), the first thing I did was dig for that soda bread recipe, because, suddenly, its tenuous connection to John Hughes was enough to make me want to bake it. Are there support groups for people like me?

Hi, my name is Sarah and I bake bread from recipes that appear in articles written by people who were in movies I was enamored with 25 years ago.

Like I said though (if anyone is still paying attention and is still able to take me at all seriously), this bread was deliciousness-itself and I ended up baking it not once, but twice, within a few days. See, I am no good at bread, so any trained monkey could handle this recipe if I managed to pull it together two times.

It is a quick bread, with none of the fussiness involved with expiration dates on yeast and multiple rising times and dough punching and all of the other nonsense that always trips me up when I try (and usually fail) at making ciabatta; and can be pulled together in less than an hour, including baking time.

The bread is rustic and beautifully dense, with a hint of sweet and a touch of sour, but it's best feature by far is it's craggy, crusty exterior. I could nibble all day on the crumbs that break off the crust when the bread is being sliced, and somehow, even with the density of the loaf and the coarseness of the crust, the bread itself is not dry, not overly heavy. It is perfect on it's own, torn off in chunks and served alongside chowder (as we had it the first night), but is a revelation when sliced, toasted and slathered in butter and FROG jam (as the kids and I ate it every morning for breakfast).

The kids were huge fans, and they virtually begged me to bake it again when the first loaf was finished. As for myself, I'm kind of in love with this bread. I can only hope this crush lasts longer than the one I had on a certain actor.

*****

MRS. O'CALLAGHAN'S SODA BREAD (makes one loaf, adapted from Bon Appetit)

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 cup chilled butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 2 cups buttermilk

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees, and grease heavy baking sheet with nonstick spray.
2. Whisk the flours, sugar and baking soda in a medium bowl.
3. Cut the butter into the flour mixture until the butter is in pea-size pieces.
4. Add buttermilk, and stir until shaggy dough forms.
5. Turn dough out onto lightly floured work surface. Knead until dough comes together, about 10 turns. Dough will still have visible folds and will not be smooth and elastic.
6. Shape dough into imperfect oval, maybe 9-inch-ish by 4-inch-ish. (the "-ish" should be embraced here).
7. Cut large X, 1/2-inch deep, in top of dough.
8. Bake bread for 40 to 50 minutes, until deep brown and bottom sounds hollow when firmly tapped.