some more s’mores

Just in case… s’mores are an “around the campfire” kind of treat here in the U.S. … I’m not sure if they are an international thing or not. I think I had my first experience with s’mores in either Brownies or Girl Scouts.

You roast a marshmallow, preferable on a stick found in the woods, over a campfire. Meanwhile, you take a Hershey’s chocolate bar snapped in half and put that on half of a graham cracker. When your marshmallow is done to your own personal satisfaction (some like them “raw”, some just tan and some of us like a bit of burned), you plop the hot, gooey mess on top of the chocolate and smush the other half of the graham cracker over the top.

I’ve never seen one look that pristine, but the image shows the construction.

At any rate, the flavor combo of graham cracker, milk chocolate and marshmallow is pretty good to most folks.

Last week, Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen posted a recipe for s’mores cupcakes. They were for her son’s school to celebrate his and other September birthday kids, birthdays. They looked like so much fun and I’d been wanting to take a special treat to my neighbor’s children: Carter (5) and Hudson (7). So, I made the recipe.

Deb’s “secret” is crushed graham crackers in the cupcake batter. It works!

Some of the insides are scooped out and filled with a milk chocolate ganache…

Now, Deb left the tops off …wonder what she did with them ? I put the tops back on save for a bit of inside stuff that I lopped off … and ate. Well, wouldn’t you ?

If you clicked over and looked at Deb’s cupcakes and recipe, you would see that she topped the cupcakes with meringue which she then browned with a kitchen torch. I don’t have a kitchen torch, but I figured I could brown the meringue under the broiler. I’m sure that would work, but I had a failure with the meringue. I have some ideas why, but suffice to say that the egg – sugar – cream of tartar mix did not peak…

Fortunately, another commenter before me noted that instead of meringue, she topped the cupcakes with marshmallows and ran those under the broiler. So that’s what I did and it was fine. The kids were thrilled with cupcakes that had marshmallows on them. Win!

Onward.

In response to Deb’s s’mores cupcake post, David Lebovitz posted a recipe for s’mores ice cream. Huh.

Well, I had to try.

The ice cream was as much fun to make as the cupcakes. This was my first summer with an ice cream machine and it was such a hot summer (hot for Montana…) and I made mostly fruit ice creams. The idea of chocolate and marshmallows or other gooey stuff just did not appeal. But now, I was ready to try something different. This recipe is a vanilla custard base with a ripple of chocolate sauce, roasted marshmallows and crushed graham crackers.

It is good. It is very rich and a little goes a long way.

Now… the ice cream took 5 egg yolks, which means I have 5 egg whites left. I’ve been wanting to make marcaron and I’ve read that older egg whites work best.

Here is the recipe that is on tap for macaron: s’mores macaron. Some more s’mores.

Mixed message

The larch pine are starting to turn.

You can see the chartreuse-ish needles against the pine that stay ever green.

A hint of gold to come against a blue, blue sky.

BUT … WAIT ??? 79!! If that is correct, I believe we set a record high for October 10 as the previous record was 75F.

At any rate, it has been warm.

Some would say hot.

The best laid plans of mouse, woman, dog and cat…

Robert Burns is given credit for the first use of the phrase that we often say as “The best laid plans of mice and men, often go awry” – but his 1795 era wording is:

“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley”.

That made me laugh when I looked it up… the “gang aft agley” part. Even if you are not up on 18th Century speak, the picture is quite clear… plans got wobbly, they went sideways…or south… off the rails!

So, following is the story of our Saturday through Sunday morning, when the plans of a mouse, this woman (me!), a dog (Bear) and a cat (Auggie) “gang aft agley”!

I started Saturday with a decision: KNOBS for the cabinet doors!

Next, I went searching for the missing tripod. This is a small house and more to the point, it doesn’t have many closets. I usually put the tripod in a corner of the boy’s room which is the first place I went looking for it. Then, I checked the few closets. I thought maybe it never made it in from the last motorhome trip, so looked there. It was not to be found.

More thinking required…

Next, Bear and I headed to town for supplies. It was mostly sunny, mid-50’s F. The air was that cool, crisp, clear air of Fall and the light was stunning…

…as was the scenery. It is once again very dry, but we got enough moisture two weeks ago to turn things green that ought to be green this time of year.

Between our outing, miscellaneous Saturday chores and generally enjoying the gorgeous weather, we passed the day in peace, harmony and good cheer.

I was getting ready for bed when I heard Bear jump off his chair and both Bear and Auggie scrabbling on the living room floor. This normally means a small rodent has invaded. The small rodent was a mouse. It ran from the living room into the bedroom, took a right through the bathroom and ended up in the “boy’s room”.

I followed Bear and Auggie and thought that between the three of us, we could catch and/or dispatch the mouse and thus have a restful night. This is the “gang aft agley” part. In Bear and Auggie’s defense, the wood floors do NOT work in their favor. I think mice have stickum on their feet and so they do not slide. For my part, on two legs, I am rather high up and on four …just forget about any speed whatsoever. At any rate, I left Bear and Auggie to it. Shortly after, Bear decided he was done with the slipping and sliding and Auggie was left on his own.

The mouse was quite vocal – it was a squeaker. I think Auggie had it cornered several times, hence the squeaking, but either Auggie was playing with it (I HATE that cats do this) or did not have opportunity for the kill. I closed doors to my bedroom, stuffed towels underneath and went to bed.

About 3:00 a.m., I woke to Auggie meowing to come in the bedroom. I got up, checked for a dead mouse, but didn’t find one anywhere. Auggie tends toward trophy hunting and what I was trying to avoid was being gifted with a dead mouse in my bed. Auggie came to bed and snuggled in next to me.

The next time I woke up, Auggie was gone. I ran to the “boy’s room” and more squeaking, so the mouse wasn’t dead or gone. I guess Auggie just needed a nap.

When I got up, with Auggie still keeping watch in corners of the boy’s room, I got the crinkly cat tunnel and set it in the doorway between there and the kitchen. My thought was that it would be enough of an obstacle to slow the mouse and allow Auggie to catch it versus it getting to another part of the house. That theory was never tested.

But the reaction of Bear and Auggie to the tunnel in the doorway had me laughing.

“Huh … I wonder what this is doing here?”

“It’s your tunnel, you tell me!”

“Ok, here I go!”.

Yes, Auggie, who is more than capable of leaping over the tunnel, used the tunnel as it was intended and exited that way.

Bear finally decided that he could jump it.

If I was better at taking video, it would have made a great little movie…

After I recovered from my giggles and snorts, it was time for a walk. I left the front door open and told the mouse that now was his chance.

Sunday was as pleasant as Saturday.

We dawdled and meandered and I very much hoped that the mouse ran outside to freedom while we were in the woods..

But, on returning to the house, with Bear and Auggie still outside, I started moving things to see …

Oh. There is the tripod – sitting quietly under the table that hold’s Auggie’s food. Now, I remember. I was tired of seeing it in the corner of the room.

I kept looking around and also found the mouse, alive, behind Auggie’s litter box. I don’t know if it was exhausted or what. It did not have obvious injuries, but it just huddled in the corner. I scooped it up in a dog poop pickup bag and tossed it outside. This is “gang aft agley” part 2. The mouse ran out of the bag, around the side of the house and back under the house via the mouse hole.

Ah, well. Maybe it went back to evacuate its family, or warn whatever community lives under the house. But, just in case, I set up the mouse zappers in the closets.

Meanwhile on the kitchen cupboard hardware front…

Yes, again with the dithering. I now have both knobs and pulls on their way and hopefully can decide when they get here.

*sigh*

Kitchen cabinet hardware, part 1

Over the course of September, I participated in The Kitchn Cure on The Kitchn website. It is an annual thing on The Kitchn and this year’s billing was:

“a 20-day journey of cleaning, organizing, and sitting with your kitchen, creating a more restful and mindful place to cook and eat.”

This year’s cure was led by Dana Velden**, a Zen priest, hence the “restful and mindful” verbage. Zen draws me and after reading the first day’s instruction to “sit and list”, I was in.

The “sit and list” was to be a quiet time in the kitchen and then a list of likes and dislikes … without overthinking. I love my kitchen and over the nine years I’ve been in this house, I have added the island, moved the comfy chair into that dark corner, edited counter top stuff and generally weeded out extraneous tools and dishes, appliances, spices and pantry goods. It is a pretty lean, mean kitchen geared to how and what I like to cook. My likes column was long and my dislikes was very short: cabinet hardware and light fixtures. And the funny thing was – sitting there doing that, after going back and forth about hardware off and on over the past several years, I suddenly had a picture in my mind’s eye of exactly what I wanted. I went to Home Depot online, found what I was thinking of and ordered it!

Nothing fancy – fairly plain, but in keeping with a “country kitchen”, i.e. not modern: black pulls and knobs. Done.

When they arrived, I liked them – a lot. Then, I’m not sure what happened except that I happened to hold one of the pulls vertical on a door and ultimately decided that instead of knobs on the doors I wanted the pulls.

Last weekend, I went off to Home Depot to return the knobs and get more pulls. I arranged all online so I could walk in to returns, then step over to will call and Bob’s your uncle, I’d be out of there. It didn’t work that way. Half an hour, 3 people and 2 phone calls to get the return processed … and THIS was with me bringing all paperwork as instructed. Then, the wrong pulls were in my will call order. When I went to get the pulls myself, the box was overflowing with pulls of all different finishes… Anyway, I came home deciding to install the drawer pulls and order the remaining to be shipped to my front door versus coming completely unglued in Home Depot.

That’s part of the reason why this is Part 1.

Installation!

I should have taken a before photo with absolutely no hardware, but I was so excited to get started this evening (Friday) that I had the first pull on before I took a photo. I was also going to set up the camera and get some action shots but I have no idea where the tripod is ???

Home Depot’s online store has handy videos for installing stuff that needs to be installed. I’d watched the video for the hardware and it showed a template and how easy the installation was with a template. I bought a template for $8.67. The template kit came with a template for drawers and a template for doors AND they also provided the correct drill bit in the package making the entire process very easy.

For drawers, the only measuring is to mark the center of the drawer. Then line up the center mark on the template…

…mark the holes for drilling and away you go!

The provided screws go from inside to outside and they ALL lined up perfectly with the hardware.

All of my kitchen drawers have pulls.

I’m usually pretty decisive, but I’ve dithered over this darn hardware for years and now changed my mind about 100 times over whether to put knobs or pulls on the doors. I looked at a LOT of online photos. It is done both ways. I don’t have a strong preference and I think either will look fine. And I have not yet decided what to order for the doors.

Thus ends, Kitchen Hardware, Part 1.

**Dana Velden is author of Finding Yourself in the Kitchen: Kitchen Meditations and Inspired Recipes from a Mindful Cook . I read the book mornings as I was participating in The Kitchn Cure. It is a wonderful book and not just about the kitchen – much life wisdom for the thoughtful reader.

Got Green Tomatoes?

Tuesday, late morning, I received a text from neighbor Mel that she was going to pick all of the tomatoes and did I want any? YES! And I thought I should volunteer to help, which I did and she accepted. It was nearly lunchtime and a beautiful day and despite the work deadline, I really needed a break outside in the fresh air and a relaxed yack with my good neighbor. So that’s what happened.

It has been close to freezing several nights and was nearly October 1 so it was time to get those ‘maters in. We picked, cut and pulled up the plants. And had a good visit while we worked.

My haul, although some will go back for the chickens. The chickens will apparently eat anything and they especially like stuff that they have to chase. The tomatoes roll around and they scrabble after them. It is great fun. Yep, I am easy – watching chickens chase tomatoes is entertainment!!

So, all of those green tomatoes…

I found a recipe for a green tomato casserole and tried that last night. I made a single serving for testing: layer sliced green tomatoes, onion, bread crumbs, a bit of lemon juice and repeat dotting the top with butter. Then bake at 400 for 1 hour. It was wonderful! I made a small serving of mac ‘n cheese to go along with.

This morning I got to thinking that maybe some bacon and a bit of parmesan cheese would not go amiss … and I had about 1/4 of a potato in the refrigerator.

First, though – Coffee! Today is International Coffee Day. I never knew things like that before the internet. I didn’t do anything to celebrate – coffee as usual!

On to my concoction…

…ready for the oven…

…put an egg on it, add a slice of toast and we have breakfast…with green tomatoes!

My mother tells me that the green tomatoes will ripen fastest in a paper bag. I have some in a bag, some on the window and meanwhile, I have something good to do with the green tomatoes. I might also try green tomato pickles and green tomato chutney. I don’t intend to do fried green tomatoes. I’ve never had much luck with breading and pan frying anything and end up making a huge mess. The casserole is kind of a deconstructed and then baked version of fried green tomatoes and so easy and good that I’ll stick with that!

Happy International Coffee Day!

***Yep, made the project deadline. I have a work meeting in the morning so decided to work half day tomorrow and start late on Monday. It might almost feel like a 4 day weekend!