Archive for the 'Food and Drink' Category

November 4, 2006 @ 8:33 am | Filed under: Food and Drink

November 2, 2006 @ 6:06 am | Filed under: Food and Drink, Geography

Ria is a homeschooled ninth-grader who loves Chesterton, Tolkien, Irish dance, and chocolate cake—proving her to be a girl of excellent taste. On her charming blog, Liber Parma, she has issued a challenge: find a place where you could have a chocolate cake farm. That is, where on earth could you grow or produce all the ingredients necessary to make chocolate cake without buying anything? Ria writes:

Cocoa beans and sugar cane grow in similar climates, wheat can grow in
many places. We are not sure where you can get baking powder and baking
soda but if anyone else knows please let me know. Salt you can get from
the sea, for eggs you need a chicken and for milk a cow is necessary.
You need a vegetable and a press for vegetable oil, vanilla beans grow
in warm climates just like cocoa beans and sugar cane, and water is
likely to be in any place where people live.

Okay so you have
the background, now I have a challenge for you. Find a place, or several
places where you could have a farm that produces all of these things.
Use books, internet, whatever and have fun. Please comment back and
tell me what you found.

There is already some very interesting information in the comments. Related posts can be found at my favorite geography blog, The Map Guys, and at Studeo.

Ria, I’m afraid I must add a critical ingredient to your list: pecans. You can’t make my mom’s now-famous Rocky Road Sheet Cake without them!

November 1, 2006 @ 11:03 am | Filed under: Food and Drink

I knew I could count on you guys! The comments section of yesterday’s post is filling up with wonderful bread recipes, and a few of you have emailed me recipes as well. Thank you!

Now, let’s talk equipment. Not mixers with dough hooks— although, what the heck, go ahead and recommend your favorites while you’re at it, and then I just might know what hints to drop my husband for Christmas. But right now I want to know about loaf pans and kneading surfaces. We have one battered old nonstick loaf pan I use for meatloaf and packaged quickbreads. (It works just fine for that yummy beer bread my friend Lisa mentioned in the comments. I do love that stuff! And no, I don’t make any money off my frequent Tastefully Simple endorsements—I am just a big fan.)

My friend Joann recommended this pan de mie, which bakes loaves shaped like storebought sandwich bread. Very cool. Sounds like something else to hint for come Christmastime…

But I have learned that I should not invest money in supplies for any hobby or endeavor TOO SOON. I have to try this out for a while to see if we (all right, Jane) are going to stick with it. So will my one old loaf pan serve us all right? For now? And when/if we do decide to invest in more pans (since Becky points out that you never want to make just one loaf at a time), which ones do you like, O wise and experienced bakers of bread?

Also, will a big wooden cutting board work as a kneading surface? My kitchen table is kind of rickety (it is a treasured hand-me-down from my dear Aunt Genia—given to me when I was in college, yikes!) and I can’t imagine it standing up to much pounding and pushing. The countertops in my kitchen here are some kind of tile—beautiful but bumpy. I use a plastic cutting board for chopping veggies, but I found a nice wooden 10×16" one during the unpacking. Would that work? Wow, am I clueless. I told you so. Go ahead, someone ask me a question about Charlotte Mason or, say, the domestic practices of late 18th-century Scotland, quick!

October 31, 2006 @ 11:27 am | Filed under: Family, Food and Drink, Rule of Six

Musing about the "meaningful work" part of my Rule of Six, Jove writes:

By observing how [my daughter] has been participating in household work over the
past little while, I have come to see that when there is no list of
"chores", the work itself can become meaningful. It produces something
that the worker desires — tasty bread, a tidy environment, etc. It
also produces a feeling of fully belonging to the household. That pride
that she can empty the dishwasher is at least partly about
recognizing an additional way that she is able to contribute, even if
she doesn’t empty the dishwasher every time. And household tasks do not
just produce goods (bread, dinner, clean laundry) and services (dinner
served to the table, maid service), they also produce relationships.
Doing these things for others as a member of a household is a way of
tangibly caring for people.

(Emphasis mine.)

Jove, that is so beautifully put. Yes, yes, yes: household work cheerfully and reverently done builds warmth and cameraderie within the family. I use the word "reverently" deliberately; I really do mean it. If we approach tedious domestic tasks—or any task—with an attitude of reverence, a sense that this work, however mean, however mundane, can bless our loved ones (or even perfect strangers), the work itself is changed. Cleaning toilets need not be drudgery; it can be as loving an act as buying a gift for your spouse or reading a special book to a child.

There’s a lovely passage in Thyra Ferre Bjorn’s book, Papa’s Wife, in which Mama sits down to her favorite task of the week: polishing the shoes of her seven children. Seven pairs of shoes! Imagine! She spent all day each Saturday cleaning and scrubbing and baking and preparing her home for the Sabbath—"Papa" was a pastor—and at the end of that long, hard day, she had to face that pile of shoes. Except there was no "having to face" the task in her attitude. She took joy in the job. Each shoe called forth the image of the child who wore it, and as she worked, Mama would smile over the thought of a funny or endearing thing the child had done that week. (Last year, when I re-read this book for the dozenth time, I thought of Alice during the shoe-polishing scene—and months later, when I read her "Spring Soup" post, I thought of the warm-hearted Swedish mama.)

Jove’s post also describes her recent decision to begin baking bread with her daughter. She links to a recipe Wisteria uses daily. This is perfect timing for me. I’ve been hankering to bring breadmaking into our lives ever since Elizabeth shared her enthusiasm for the task on the CCM list years ago. All these years, I’ve been biding my time, which is to say, waiting for Jane to be old enough to be in charge of the job. And she IS old enough now. I have already promised her we’ll work more baking into our lives now that we’re sort of overhauling our daily rhythm.

I’d love your input on recipes for beginners, dear readers. I have to admit Wisteria’s recipe (which sounds wonderful) intimidated me a little with its use of the words "adjust accordingly." Jove DID adjust accordingly, and I’m mighty impressed. I can "adjust accordingly" with the best of them when it comes to, say, educational method and materials, but with baking? Not so much. I need the Baking for Dummies version.

And we can make do without a mixer and dough hook, right? For now? Since this is likely to be a once-a-week endeavor at best?