Back to our regularly scheduled programming

It’s officially winter. The holidays have come and gone. Now we’re left with extra padding around the middle, an icy chill in the air, and short, dark days. When I was younger I would have loved the snow that we’ve been having here in Philadelphia, but it just seems to inhibit me from doing what I need to get done. Plans get canceled, appointments are re-scheduled, traffic is brutal. Everything feels as if it’s moving in slow motion.

I think that I would likely loathe January if it weren’t my birthday month. It’s always an excuse to get together with friends and have a celebration during that post-holiday slump when the new year seems overwhelming. 26 this year! It’s funny to think of myself as 26 because when I was a child and imagined my future, I don’t think I ever went past age 21. What could there possibly be after 21? It was difficult to fathom myself as an adult with a career and actual independence when I was 10. I know that everyone who is 30 and up is probably rolling their eyes. I don’t feel old, but I do feel more cognizant of how quickly time moves and how fleeting life’s wonderful moments can be. When pediatric patients ask me how old I am, they are amazed that I was born in 1985 – “wow, THAT was a long time ago!” Ah, how I love the concrete honesty of school-aged children. Then there are the elderly patients who think that I look far too young to be competent enough to care for them. “Honey, are you sure you know what you’re doing?” And, somewhere in the middle, are the post-partum mothers I care for who are the same age as me, but on their second or third child. “Could you help me with breastfeeding? I’m sure you know what you’re doing.”

As the economy shudders back to life and jobs slowly become available, those of us who are twenty-somethings will move out of our parents’ homes and move more fully into adulthood. The 20′s are kind of an odd decade, in my opinion. It’s like a certain kind of limbo where you are both autonomous but also probably still tethered in some way to your parents. You have decision-making capacity, but very little life experience off of which to base those decisions. You have very little money. Your college degree may have been rendered useless with the shift in the economy. Few people seem to take you seriously as much of your peer group still spends 3 nights per week at various bars.

I feel particularly anxious in this liminal state as I wait to take the nursing boards and begin my first real nursing job – hourly wage, vacation time, benefits and all. It will still be another year before I consider moving to a place all of my own, but I will feel much more self-sufficient with a bi-weekly paycheck. In the meantime, I’m enjoying doing the things I’ve wanted to do for months, but couldn’t because of school: quilting, knitting, baking, going to the gym…

This weekend I made these little almond-flavor cookies that I saw featured in this PurlBee post. They adapted the recipe from one in the Gourmet Cookie Book. The cookies are light and almost melt in your mouth thanks to all the cornstarch. I made my dough balls a little too big which meant that people had to pull the two halves apart to eat the cookie, but they were a hit nonetheless at our neighborhood winter gathering. Next time, I might try using vanilla or a little peppermint as the flavoring. Williams-Sonoma’s sanding sugars lend a lovely sparkly quality to the cookies as well.

Almond Sandwich Cookies

Glittery goodness!

Reverb 10 for December 26 – SOUL FOOD

December 26 – Soul food. What did you eat this year that you will never forget? What went into your mouth & touched your soul?

I have a hard time remembering what I had for breakfast on a given day, let alone what I ate throughout an entire year! Technically, this year could be considered rather disappointing in terms of what I ate given that I didn’t really try anything new or spectacular, I didn’t sample any cuisine in a foreign country, and I certainly didn’t attempt to cook my way through anything like Julia Child’s life work.

Bread cooling from the oven.

I did learn to bake my own bread and continued to make my own jam. These experiences were particularly significant because making things from scratch allows me to connect with food on a level that transcends basic preparation or tearing through a package. Since I’ve tended towards always having a rather unhealthy relationship with food, gathering the ingredients (I pick my own fruit) and then creating something from those separate ingredients makes me feel that I really am nourishing myself as opposed to just feeding myself. I’m amazed at how a gelatinous mound of dough can transform into a crispy, chewy slice of bread after a little bit of time in the oven. When I know where my food comes from, when I participate in the harvest, when I create meals from foods created by nature, there’s a comfort I get that doesn’t come from preservatives or carbohydrates or sugars, it’s the the comfort of knowing that I’ve given myself exactly what I needed, no guilt added.

Rhubarb pocket pie!

Easy Bake Oven

It has become really important to me to feed myself with good, natural, wholesome foods that contain ingredients you could readily find in nature. I am a happier, healthier person when I do my own cooking and baking. I’m not one to cut out entire food groups and I find that I feel better about eating sugar or carbohydrates or meat if I know where the product came from and that I prepared the meal in which it is featured.

Today I gave my new bread cookbook a test drive. I love bread – good, crusty-on-the-outside but soft inside bread. I’ve tried a few recipes this year, but nothing came out of the oven as I intended. Not to mention the time spent waiting for the recipe to ferment, rise, bake, etc. Baking bread was becoming a two-day project. Who has time for that!? Luckily, I got a little help from the proprietress of LuSa Organics who recommended Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day. Ok, so it takes a bit more than 5 minutes, but much much less than two days. I made my dough last night before dinner and had a freshly baked loaf by 1pm this afternoon (had I not slept until 11am, I might have had it earlier). The crust was crisp and concealed the most lovely dough beneath – chewy and rich in flavor. This recipe is the best thing since…well, sliced bread! The best part? You can make enough dough for 6 or more loaves, store it in a big tub in the fridge and just pull out a small batch to bake when you need it. This book is perfect for anyone who wants to bake their own bread regularly, but in a timely fashion.

Resting before going into the oven.

The finished product!

I followed the bread baking with some miniature rhubarb pies. Rhubarb is my favorite pie filling of all time. Personally, I prefer it without the addition of strawberries. Rhubarb is in season usually from April through May. It is very much a spring crop and often featured in pies made for Mother’s Day. Hothouse rhubarb, grown in greenhouses year round, can be purchased out of season, but rarely has the same tart taste as its naturally growing cousin. Naturally growing rhubarb will usually have dark pink stalks as opposed to the light pink/green stalks of the hothouse variety. And remember, rhubarb leaves are mildly poisonous, so keep those out of the kitchen. I like to peel my rhubarb stalks with a vegetable peeler to remove the strings which are not pleasant to pull out of a freshly baked piece of pie. For my mini pies I made a crust from the recipe my mother and I use for everything – your basic combination of flour, cold water, cold butter, a bit of salt. Use whatever you are familiar with, even if it’s the Pillsbury pre-made crusts.

For the rhubarb mixture:

Peel and cut rhubarb into 1/4 – 1/2 in sections (yield should be 5 cups)

Add 1 1/4 cup sugar

Add 1/4 tsp cinnamon

Add 5 Tbsp flour

For a regular pie, 1/2 inch sections are great, but I found that mini pies require smaller chunks, so dicing the stalks works best. At first try, I used the mini apple pie press from Williams Sonoma but found it to be a bit of a pain. I’m going to experiment a bit tomorrow with my empanada press or simply using circles of dough that I’ll pinch together to get a better pocket-pie. Bake at 400 for 15-20 minutes and you’ve got a portable treat!

Readying the rhubarb.

Tiny treats.