'Cuz I'm a woman -- W-O-M-A-N!"

What is 2” high, thick with personal history, has bullet points, and bragging rights?

It is a stack of my resumes I have sent out in the last 6 months for employment. It’s tough out there looking for a job!

Knowing that, I don’t take it personal that I haven’t landed the big one yet. If truth be told, I couldn’t be prouder of what I have accomplished in owning my own restaurant. And I can tell you, I’m a far better woman than I was 5 years ago.

Remember that song, “I bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan. And never let you forget you're a man. Cuz I'm a woman -- W-O-M-A-N!

I’ll be belting out that tune very soon. It’ll just takes time.

The recession isn’t going to take me out. I’ll just catch the economy on the up take.

Testing, Testing, Testing

I was wondering if anyone was really out there looking at my blog. You might think it was a clever ploy to publish my best recipe, leave out an ingredient, and see if anyone noticed. First of all…

1) I’m not that smart
2) I’m not that calculating
3) I don’t have test kitchen chefs to catch my errors

My friend Lindy caught the error in the Leek & Potato Soup. I forgot to list potatoes on the ingredients. What a ditz! So here is the revised recipe….and it’s still my best of my best recipes.

Leek & Potato Soup

½ cup butter
4 large leeks, thinly sliced
2 potatoes, diced into bite-size pieces
3 stalks celery, thinly sliced
2 carrots, thinly sliced
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
4 cups hot chicken broth
2 cups shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
3 cups whipping cream or half-and-half
2 teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
4 tablespoons chopped chives

Melt butter. Add vegetables; cook until brown. Blend in flour gradually. Stir in hot broth and bring to a boil. Simmer until vegetables are tender. Add cheese; stir until melted. Scald cream (or half-and-half) and add to mixture. Season with salt and pepper. Simmer 20 minutes.

Here’s where your preference comes in. Serve as a rustic, hardy main dish soup or strain.

Serve garnished with chives.

Yield: 4 to 5 main dish servings or
8 to 10 starter servings

Leek & Potato Soup

Because I’m of a giving spirit, I am giving you my best of my best recipes:

Leek & Potato Soup

½ cup butter
4 large leeks, thinly sliced
3 stalks celery, thinly sliced
2 carrots, thinly sliced
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
4 cups hot chicken broth
2 cups shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
3 cups whipping cream or half-and-half
2 teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
4 tablespoons chopped chives

Melt butter. Add vegetables; cook until brown. Blend in flour gradually. Stir in hot broth and bring to a boil. Add cheese; stir until melted. Scald cream (or half-and-half) and add to mixture. Season with salt and pepper. Simmer 20 minutes.

Here’s where your preference comes in. Serve as a rustic, hardy dish soup with the vegetables left in their chopped form or you can choose to strain the soup to a puree.

Serve garnished with chives.

Yield: 4 to 5 main dish servings or
8 to 10 starter servings

I can’t control my :)

I thrive on moments of well-being. I hoard them and memorize them.

If I can capture it in a photo, I paste it on my desktop so I can stare and absorb that moment over and over again.


Photo credits: LYFE Photography, Portland, Oregon
http://www.lyfephotography.net/

If I can capture that good feeling in a journal, I put pen to paper.

If it is a taste, I run the flavors over my tongue so I can remember and capture them again in my kitchen.

A reassuring touch…how is it to be chronicled or captured? Only by quickly sharing that confirming touch to someone else.

Mom's Yum Yum Baked Beans

We’ve been invited to Chef Gabriel and Chef Jeneca Glasier’s Super Bowl XLIV party next Sunday.

If you had the opportunity to taste Gabe’s ribs, you’d know that watching the Saints vs. Colts game is secondary to the chance to enjoy his savory ribs.

So my side dish to the Super Bowl food frenzy is my Mom’s Yum Yum Baked Beans. Whenever I serve them I get a lot of Oohs! and Aahs! Anything with a pound of bacon in it can’t be without merits. Enjoy!

Mom’s Yum Yum Baked Beans

6 -15 ½ oz cans precooked beans. Select from a combination of butter, great northern, kidney, lima, or red beans. (I use 2 cans each of butter, great northern and red beans)
1 # bacon
2 cups brown sugar

1 cup dark Karo syrup
Dash of pepper
2 tsp. dry mustard
1 cup ketchup
1 cup reserved bean liquid

Drain beans (reserve 1 cup liquid for later). Put beans in large kettle. Dice bacon and mix with beans. Put rest of ingredients (including reserved bean liquid) in medium-size saucepan. Boil 10 minutes. Pour over beans and bacon. Stir. Cook 3-4 hours at 250°-300° stirring every ½ hour.

I have cooked this recipe in a crock pot but haven’t achieved as much carmelization as when cooked slowly in the oven.

A $12 Mood Adjustment

I think the rain is getting to me. Nearly 2 weeks straight without sunlight puts me in a temporary funk.

Instead of a Starbucks pick-me-up, I went for an herbaceous lift and purchased 2 bouquets of the most cheery flowers.

Bring it on rain, I feel fine now!

Pep Art: A pepper shaker with a twist

Happy Christmas to me! I was delighted when I opened the most unique and fun present from our son and his wife: A whimsical pepper mill and salt shaker. The pair is made of high-quality birch wood and painted in bright colors, spots and stripes. I’ve learned that the curvy 1 ½ ft. pepper mill has a patented ceramic milling mechanism that crushes peppercorns or sea salt producing consistent results to maximum flavor release. The more petite salt shaker is a perfect compliment to the pepper mill and I proudly display them on my kitchen counter for ready use.





These pieces are made by Pep Art and were found at the Fire and Rain Gallery in El Dorado Hills. To see their collection, you will find them at:


4359 TOWN CENTER BLVD , El Dorado Hills, CA, 95762
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/El-Dorado-Hills-CA/FIRE-AND-RAIN-GALLERY/181442139085?ref=nf

Temptation: Pix Patisserie

Sorry in advance, but I’m going to put some visual temptation right in front of you.

This delightful array of indulgence is from a little original establishment in Portland called Pix Patisserie. Now if you are going to cave to temptation, this is the way to go.

Pix Patisserie was opened by pastry chef Cheryl Wakerhauser who was trained at the pâtisserie of MOF Philippe Urraca in Southern France. In 2001 she moved to Portland and established a cute and intimate shoulder-to-shoulder little shop serving her eccentric and distinctive style pastries and handmade chocolates.



The pastry (center back) is called Amélie and winner of the Patis France Chocolate Competition! This is an amazing accomplishment for such a young pastry chef as Cheryl (early 30's) and the fact that she is from the United States and not French born. Amélie is orange vanilla crème brûlée which sits atop a glazed chocolate mousse with caramelized hazelnuts, praline crisp, and Cointreau génoise.

Pix Patisserie
3402 SE Division St.
Portland, Oregon
503.232.4407
http://www.pixpatisserie.com

Albóndigas Soup (Meatball Soup)

Recipe From - http://ediblescoop.blogspot.com/
Serves: 6
Prep & Cooking Time: 35-40 min.


1 onion (1/2 #) peeled & chopped
1 carrot (1/4 #) peeled & diced
1 can (14-15 oz) chopped tomatoes
6 cups beef broth
1# ground lean beef
¼ cup rice
¼ cup flour
1 large egg
1 cup chopped cilantro
2 tsp. cumin to taste
2 tsp. mild chili powder to taste
2 tsp. Worcheshire sauce to taste
About ¼ tsp. salt

Serve with: shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream, and diced green onion.


1. In a 4- to 5-quart pan, combine onion, carrot, tomatoes (and juices),
5 ½ cups broth, and ½ cup water. Set pan over high heat and cover.

2. Meanwhile, in a bowl, mix ½ cup broth, beef, rice, flour, egg, ¼ tsp. salt,
and ½ cup cilantro.

3. Uncover pan with vegetables and drop meat in 1-tablespoon portions
into broth. When soup boils, reduce heat to simmering, cover, and
cook 20 minutes.

4. I added the cumin, chili powder and Worcheshire sauce to add flavor.
(Adjust to your taste…)

5. Stir in remaining cilantro and ladle into bowls. Add salt to taste and
garnish with cheddar cheese, sour cream, and diced green onion.

Thump, Thump In The Night

January 20, 2010

2:30 a.m. - Man, the wind is a howling tonight! Other-worldly sounds of wind gusts outside my bedroom window and shivering oak trees making aching cries.

5:00 a.m. – Not yet light outside. Buddy, my new boxer, has to be let outside to do his business. Why won’t he come in from the backyard when I call? I throw my husband’s jacket over my p.j.’s, slip on cold boots over naked feet, and grab the leash.

I’m outside in the rain, flashlight in hand, “Here Buddy, here Buddy”. Another giant wind gust rattles through the darkness, and like a rocket, Buddy skedaddles back to the safety of our warm house.

8:30 a.m. – Further investigation into the havoc of last night’s storm: Two segments of fence down and muddy streams making paths in the yard.

Our Latin Holiday Meal

Our family experiments with food from all over the world. This last holiday our family Christmas meal had a Latin influence.

Now this meal was truly a joint effort by everyone. Jeneca’s mom, Donna, is a superb home chef and the preparation for our dinner party started a week in advance when she hosted a Tamale Party. Tamales take time to prepare and many hands are needed to create these savory cornmeal pockets filled with pork or chicken. The finishing touch on these pockets is the corn husk wrappers that seal in the goodness. If you ever make them yourself, prepare at least 4 – 5 dozen. They freeze well and can make a improptu dinner some time down the road.

The entertainment for the evening was hanging out in the kitchen with every guest involved in the cooking. See that big martini glass with the plump olives? That kept the party rolling!


One martini for you, One martini for me

My son-in-law put his muscles to the tortilla press and started the production of perfect 8” homemade corn and flour tortillas. Jeneca was at the stove, cooking them and keeping up with Eddie as he flattened the tortillas.

Perfect 8" round homemade tortillas

The empanadas were constructed by everyone. Delicate pastry dough, finely rolled out and cut to turnover size and stuffed with yummy beef and ground pork, almonds, raisins, Sherry, and cinnamon and cloves. The edges were pinched together and plop, plop they went into the hot oil till golden brown.

To master the Empanada

I could rely on our son, the chef, to come up with some great sauces for the tamales from ingredients I had on hand. He made a Mole Rojo (Ancho chilis, toasted cumin, toasted coriander, and much more) made into a puree that was smooth and bright. Another tamale sauce option was a fruity Pineapple Cilantro salsa with a sweeter taste.

We started dinner off with a small bowl of robust Albondigas Soup garnished with cilantro, a dab of sour cream, and diced green onions.

The Main Course:

Chiles Rellenos
Fresh Fruit Salad with oranges, pineapple, apples, and grapes
Homemade Tortillas
Tamales: Carnitas and Chicken
Empanadas de Picadillo (translation: pie/turnover of minced meat/hash)
Guacamole

The dessert finale was a tangy Lime Tart and petite Pumpkin-Raisin Empanadas.

Bravo! What an evening. Great food, fantastic company, and holiday cheer all around.

Cowgirl Creamery Artisan Cheese Shop

December 2009

You might see a common destination for our family outings. Take for instance our most recent trip to the Ferry Building in San Francisco. For our holiday entertaining we love to include a must have appetizer: a beautifully prepared cheese plate.

Our first stop at the Ferry Building was the Cowgirl Creamery Artisan Cheese Shop to hand select several of their delicious cheese offerings. As busy as this little shop can be, be patient, grab a ticket to secure your place in line, and you will get the undivided attention from one of their knowledgeable staff on selecting your cheeses.

We selected 4 different cheeses:

Old Kentucky Tomme… a cheese produced at Capriole Dairy on the lush and rolling hills of southern Indiana from a have a happy herd of four hundred Alpine, Saanen, and Nubian goats. Made with raw milk, Old Kentucky Tomme is a mellow, buttery, and mild semi-hard cheese with elusive white mushroom overtones. 2nd Place Ribbon, American Cheese Society Competition in Burlington, Vermont, 2007.

Bayley Hazen Blue is a buttery, natural-rind cow milk blue cheese that is made with whole raw milk. The milk used is primarily from morning milk, which tends to be lower in fat. The milk is taken from their own herd of Ayrshire cows who graze from late spring to early fall. Bayley Hazen Blue is drier than most blues, and the penicillium roqueforti takes a back seat to an array of flavors that hint at nuts and grasses and sometimes licorice. 2nd Place Ribbon, American Cheese Society Competition in Burlington, Vermont, 2007

Fiore Sardo. With a paste more golden than is usually found in sheep milk cheese, Fiore Sardo is banded by a hard, black, natural rind. This semi-hard cheese is sharp and savory and the slightest shavings of it brings simple, olive oil-dressed pasta alive.

Cave Aged Marisa. Snuggly situated among the softly flowing green hills and fertile pastures of central Wisconsin. Sid Cook, the current and fourth-generation owner, is one of a small group of certified Master Cheesemakers in the United States. This sheep milk cheese is aged for six months in an open-air cave where it is endowed with a complex sweet earthiness. A high butterfat content balances the cheese's inherent saltiness with a rich creaminess that deepens as Cave-Aged Marisa ages. 2nd Place Ribbon, American Cheese Society Competition in Burlington, Vermont, 2007.



Cowgirl Creamery Artisan Cheese Shop
http://www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com/cowgirl_creamery.php

How to create an ideal cheese plate
• Serve at least three kinds of cheese, chosen from different categories.
• Always serve cheese at room temperature. Be sure to take it out of the refrigerator at least one hour before serving.
• Hard cheeses can share a knife, or supply a cheese plane. Supply separate knives for each soft and semisoft cheese.
• For appetizer or after-dinner cheese plates of three to six selections, plan on one to 1-1/2 oz (30 to 50 g) of each type per person.
• Accompany your cheese board with crackers and bread that don't have very strong flavors that would detract from the flavor of the cheeses.
• Apples, pears, grapes, and peaches all go very well with cheese. Nuts are also good accompaniments.

Pairing Cheeses with Wines
• Blue cheeses such as Stilton or Gorgonzola go well with dessert wines like Sauternes and Ports.
• To accompany fresh cheeses like a goat or feta, choose a Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Noir.
• Soft-ripened cheeses like Teleme or Brillat-Savarin go well with Chardonnay.
• For aged cheeses like Cheddars, aged Gruyeres and Parmigiano-Reggiano serve Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel or Burgundy.

Meet my Buddy

January 19, 2010

What has soft brown eyes, is soft as velvet on the outside, warm as an oven, has a wiggly tail that moves faster than the Energizer Bunny, and has sweet kisses?

That’s my Buddy, a Nor Cal Boxer Rescue success story. How did this love match happen? A series of events, some extremely sad and in the end, the sweetness of a new found love:

We lost our beloved 11-year-old boxer at Christmas time. Our other 4-year-old boxer, Winnie, could not be consoled and was depressed, missing her Tigger.

After a couple of weeks, my husband was web searching the photos of dogs that had temporary homes with Nor Cal Boxer Rescue. Could my heart wrap around one of the 2 dozen rescue dogs posted on their site while I was still hurting over the loss of Tiggy? The pictures and the stories of these lovely dogs told us we could.

We filled out the adoption application, were screened, and accepted into the adoption program.

Lou and I had selected a couple of our favorite boxers but the true test would be the compatibility between our Winnie and the rescue boxer. We scheduled our first visit with Howie, a beautiful white male boxer. We could tell immediately the chemistry just wasn’t right - Two alpha pets in one house wasn’t going to work.

We scheduled a visit with another potential adoptee, Buddy. They sniffed each other from head to toe, so far so good. Next we took them on a test walk together, no problems. Winnie established herself in the more dominant alpha role and the younger Buddy was completely content with the arrangement. Bingo! A match! We were taking Buddy home to become the newest member of our household and boy, is he ever a sweet heart!

Our family is now complete and our dogs are inseparable. Our house is filled with cuddles and laughter as we watch the comical antics of our two dogs together. Life is good.


The NorCal Boxer Rescue’s mission statement:

NorCal Boxer Rescue http://www.ncbr.org/ provides a temporary sanctuary for boxers in need throughout Texas and California. Boxers come to NCBR from shelters, as strays, and from owners who need to give up their dogs due to changing life circumstances such as relocation, financial hardship, divorce, illness, or even death.
NCBR provides these animals with veterinary care (often in the hundreds and sometimes into the thousands of dollars), spay/neuter, vaccinations, high quality food, a temporary foster home (not a kennel), lots of love, and placement into a carefully screened home forever.January 19, 2010


Buddy and Winnie: Our first day at home



What a good-looking profile

Goodbye Tiggy

January 6, 2010

While living an ordinary life, occasionally, like a glimpse of God, we encounter the extraordinary. I’m sure you can recall a particular place, a sound, a smell, or a person where you perceived that you encountered something profound which lifted you out of the expected and made your realize that you were in the presence of something very extraordinary.

Our life with Tiggy was extraordinary. The realization that Tiggy, our eleven-year-old boxer, was extraordinary wasn’t an Ah ha! moment. Within her first year I knew that she was put on this earth for a purpose. Tiggy’s soul was very deep and she listened intently to our moods and she was there to comfort as well as make us laugh. At times she would quietly and stoically be at our sides and she was playful and mothering to our other boxer, Winnie.

Though Tiggy wasn’t gifted with an athletic or reliable body, she surely made up for her physical weakness with heart and spirit. In her mid-years, she endured two separate and successful knee surgeries that gave her 5 more years of healthy life.

The last several months, Tiggy was giving me signs that she was becoming weaker and her health wasn’t reliable. I spent more time with her cuddling and telling her about how much I appreciated her love and thanking her for being our steadfast companion. I nuzzled her soft neck and memorized her beautiful smell, knowing this being would not be with us forever.

Christmas holidays brought my daughter, son-in-law, and their boxer, Lucy, from Portland together with our son and his wife. We planned a family outing designed especially as a play day for our 3 dogs at Point Reyes Beach. Playing at the beach was the 3 boxer’s happy place. They filled their afternoon with chasing sticks, playing at the water’s edge, investigating the unusual smells, and racing down the sand . . . An extraordinary day at an extraordinary place.

As the day came to a close, taking some last photos and trooping back to the cars, Tiggy collapsed with a heart attach. We settled her down in the soft sand and reassured her that she was safe, to let her know how much we loved and appreciated her and would miss her. Her job on this earth was done and she accepted our loving touches and our reassurances that she could relax now as we kissed her goodbye.

How do we measure grief? Do we grieve less for our beloved pets than we do of our human friends? I think not. I have learned a lot about grief from Winnie, our younger boxer. She is heartbroken and is left without the leadership of her constant companion Tiggy. She is confused and struggles to find her place in this world where there is now a hole. We can only reassure her and love her. Hopefully time will heal all our sorrow of the loss of Tiggy.

We certainly will never forget her gentle soul.