Land’s end

And the land ends
at the tip of my finger
The cowboys and indians have fallen from the face of the earth
And we are left with nothing but the arms and legs of chairs
to protect us from the harshness of reality
Come sit on the floor with me
Let your skin mingle with dust
Your breath couple with my breath
Our bodies will form a new beast
whose growl will beckon the void
Pull it to me
Pull it to us
Welcome the engulfing emptiness of beyond

Beyond thought there is still experience
She feels without comprehending
She accepts and moves on
Goes through the motions
Swims through this sea
And flounders upon the shore of a new world

Wishing you an Impish Imbolc!

Just because I totally want an iPad doesn’t mean I can’t laugh my ass off at this. Francesco is delightfully twisted sometimes.

But even with the winter weather (which was not even half as cold as what we had left behind here in the Twin Cities), we had a ton of fun walking all over the city. Next time we’ll have to see more of our Chicago friends and get outside of the Loop to see more sites. Recommendations welcome.

Enjoy!

This afternoon we made tomorrow’s breakfast… apple cider doughnuts, from this recipe at Smitten Kitchen. Oh my goodness, they are divine!

We made just a couple of minor tweaks to her directions, by adding a teeny bit more cider (but still reducing it to a quarter cup), using a little more cinnamon, adding a little allspice, and frying in canola instead of shortning. But that’s just because I can’t leave a recipe completely alone. You know me…

We now have 18 doughnuts and 16 doughnut holes. Well, we had 18 originally, but we couldn’t very well not test them when they were still warm, could we? This gets to be breakfast tomorrow, and the rest get frozen for the winter. Yippee!

I have finally managed to make a perfect soft, chewy ginger cookie. Don’t get me wrong. Ginger snaps can be quite tasty. They definitely have their place. But when I want a ginger cookie, I want soft and chewy, with the deep earthiness of molasses and just the right amount of ginger bite.

Thus was born the Triple Ginger Cookie (inspired by a recipe from Alton Brown). And here I’ll make a small detour to chat a bit about my cooking philosophy and recipes in general. If you’ve seen any of my other recipes you may note that I play a bit fast and loose with quantities and that sometimes my recipes are more like vague guidelines. That’s because that’s how I view most recipes. They are a basic framework, a technique to start me on my path towards what I might be making. I freely change ingredients, sometimes for the good and sometimes… not so much. This recipe was one such rambling tour through one of Alton Brown’s techniques. Feel free to use what I’ve written exactly as I’ve written it. If you do I’m pretty sure you’ll end up with some mighty tasty cookies. But please feel equally free to change things up as much as you please. Add more ginger, use a different flour, or a different kind of sugar/molasses, or add some extra ingredients to make something uniquely your own. That’s my kind of kitchen magic.

Triple Ginger Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 stick softened unsalted butter
• 1 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 tbsp and 1tsp blackstrap molasses
• 2 tsp grated fresh ginger
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tbsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger

Preheat oven to 375 F.

In large bowl, mix together flours, baking powder, baking soda, ground ginger, and salt. Set aside.

In bowl of stand mixer using paddle (preferred) or in another large mixing bowl using a hand mixer, cream butter with sugar, molasses, and grated ginger.

Reduce speed to stir/low and add the egg, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Mix until fully incorporated.

Add the flour mixture in three installments, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary.

Stir in the chopped crystallized ginger.

Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Portion cookies using your favorite method. I use two spoons to form a little cookie dough blob, then flatten it slightly on the cookie sheet.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until the cookies have soft-set (so that the centers have set, but the cookies are still soft), rotating your pans after 4 minutes.

Once done, let cool on a rack and enjoy!

If you make your cookies between 3/4 and 1 oz you’ll get about 3 dozen 2″ cookies from this batch. They’re really nice sized, not too small that eating one feels unsatisfying, but not so big that eating two feels like too many. But it is a big batch. If you don’t want to bake quite so many many cookies at a time, you can always freeze your cookie dough blobs on a cookie sheet until solid, then bag them up and bake them later. That’s what I did!

Well, just a few weeks ago, they put out a call for Halloween themed fabric designs for their weekly design contest. I’ve never entered one of their themed contests before, but I figured who better to enter a Halloween design contest than a witch!

So this week, my design is in the running for votes. If you like the design, below, think about voting. I’m not very good at self-promotion, and I hope that I’m not being completely shameless by asking. But just take a look…

The pears were from our CSA share last week, but they were about the same size as a standard Bartlett from the store. They were still a bit firm, not quite eating ripe unless you like your pears really crisp, but they baked up perfectly because of that. Pears are normally so delicate that they needed that head-start. If they have been perfectly ripe when I sliced into them, they would have turned into mush in the oven (and that’s not good eats ).

The Recipe

• one 9 inch pie crust (again I used a store bought crust, but use whatever feels right to you, be it homemade or no)
• three pears, sliced about 1/8 inch thick
• one tbsp orange juice (you could use lemon juice here if you don’t have orange around the house)
• 1/2 cup turbinado sugar (although you could substitute white sugar, brown sugar, or even splenda, as you please)
• one tbsp cornstarch
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp allspice
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• one tsp butter
• one egg plus one tbsp water to eggwash the crust
• a few pinches of turbinado sugar to dust the crust before baking

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Prepare a baking sheet. This time I baked the galette on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper and had no problems with sticking or anything. It’s what I recommend. But you could butter a baking sheet or butter tin foil if you don’t have parchment paper around.

Put juice in a medium mixing bowl. As you slice the pears, toss them in the juice. This will help prevent browning. Once you have sliced all of the pears, add the sugar, cornstarch, spices, and almond extract to the bowl and mix until combined.

Roll out your crust onto your baking sheet, making sure that it has no weak/thin spots that may break during baking. Place filling in the center of your crust, leaving about 2 inches (maybe a little more) around the edges.If you want to be fancy, you can lay your slices out in circles. But I like the rustic look, so I let it be a little more chaotic.

Starting anywhere you like, fold the edge up and around the filling. As you pull each new bit of edge up, fold it gently over, to make a tucked crust. Once the crust is fully folded over, whisk the one egg with one tbsp of water and brush over the outer crust. Then sprinkle with turbinado sugar.

Right before baking, crumble one tsp of butter over the filling of the galette.

Bake for 25 minutes, or until golden, brown and delicious! Makes eight cute-as-a-button slices of galette, perfect for serving after a full dinner, or perfect with ice cream (maybe next time…).

Enjoy!

Amazingly enough, this is actually the first time we’ve done this since we moved in over two years ago. We’ve always had fires with friends before now. While the fire building was not quite as smooth without our expert friends (thank you, Doc!), I have gotten better enough over the years by watching others that I managed to get a nice little blaze going (thank you again, Doc!), and we have vowed to do this more often. Just the two of us. It was lovely!

A recipe for blueberry galette, from one found on epicurious:

• one refrigerated pie crust (although a homemade pie crust would probably be even better )
• 3 cups of blueberries, rinsed
• one half cup of ginger sugar. We used the sugar left over from dusting the cystallized ginger we made for my birthday party, which made it ever so lightly ginger flavored. Absent such a stash of gingery goodness, normal sugar and a tsp or so of fresh or ground ginger (to taste) would probably approximate what we were after.
• one tbsp cinnamon
• 2 tbsp corn starch
• 2 tbsp orange juice. The recipe called for lemon juice, but we were all out. The orange was delightful.
• one egg to egg wash the crust (see below)
• a small amount of turbinado sugar (sugar-in-the-raw) to sprinkle on the crust

Put the blueberries, sugar, cinnamon, corn starch, and juice in a bowl and mix until just combined. Place the crust on a buttered baking sheet or buttered tin foil on a baking sheet. Put filling in the center of the crust and spread around, leaving about 2 inches (maybe a little more) around the edges.

Starting anywhere you like, fold the edge up and around the filling. As you pull each new bit of edge up, fold it over, to make a pretty tucked crust. Be sure to fold gently to avoid the crust breaking during baking (My galette split right at the bottom edge and spilled a bit of filling out, so I know I wasn’t quite gentle enough.). Once the crust is fully folded over, whisk the one egg with one tbsp of water and brush over the outer crust. Then sprinkle with turbinado sugar.

Bake at 375 degrees F for about 25 minutes or until the crust is golden, brown, and delicious.