September is for Birthdays

So I have been jonesing to make a birthday cake. Seriously. There was an article in the New York Times Magazine last March which went through a number of different birthday cake recipes, and since then I have been dying to make a classic yellow cake with chocolate icing. Christmas 2004 I celebrated Christmas, with the then beau's family and he felt we should bring a homemade cake. Of course his feeling translated to me baking a cake. A Jewess backing a Christmas cake. I had no idea what to do. So I made my idea of a Christmas cake: red velvet with a green cream cheese icing and red hot decorations. How did I make the cream cheese icing green? With almost a bottle of food coloring. Can you guess what happened to beau's family's tongues? The cake was delicious, but I was a bit horrified (why did he ask his Jewish girlfriend to make a Christmas cake? of course she went kitsch to somewhat disasterous results).

Not to say that kitsch is bad. Back to my classic birthday cake. I thought I might make one in May but it didn't happen . . . and then I had to wait until September for the next rush of birthdays. Since Tara and Geordie both celebrated on the 1st I decided they wpuld be my victims. I made a yellow cake with sour cream chocolate icing from the better homes cook book. I thought the cake was dry (my cooking buddy said that it wasn't that it was dry but rather my use of that all purpose flour that gave it too large a "crumb" he suggested cake flour). Icing I will make again and again, pretty simple and delicious . . . stick and a little bit of butter, 12 ounces of bittersweet chocolate, mixed over heat. Then cooled. 8 ounces of sour cream added, and a pound of sifted powdered sugar combined in. It was so yummy. Next time I might use higher quality choclate. But I will definately still let Geordie decorate his cake.

August Snapshots

Things in Maine get serious.

See Bridal Party in its natural habitat.


Matt and Megan: cute couple.

Megan coolest Bride ever, recovers from having red wine spilled all over her dress and shows up at the after party for a beer.
I would like to say I remember a lot of wonderful cooking opportunities in August, but instead I traveled quite a bit--three weddings in four weeks--goodness me. So here I display some of the lovely snapshots of August.

The One Pot Problem

The other day I receiveded a tortured email from a very close fried, subject "GROSS." It was addressed to her sister and me, and essentially detailed a tale of woe in which she tried to throw a bunch of ingredients from her fridge together in one pot in order to create one delicious dish. In her case the ingrediants were beets, heirloom tomatoes, baby spinach, and wild rice. In her sad sad emailed she told a story abouthow she had been gaining confidence inthe kitchen and assumed this meal would be a great success, because this methodology of throwing delicious ingredients together had worked so well in the past. In the email she described how she tried to rescue her meal using salt and taragon and how it just kept getting worse.

I tell this story not to call out my friend, not because I think she is a mediocre chef, but rather because I think she is a better chef than she gives herself credit for, and because I have suffered from the same type of kitchen disaster. There I am, on a Tuesday night, with the fridge door open, one hand on the door, one hand on the oposite thigh, head in the fridge, upper lip scrunched into my nose, trying to figure out what to do with the delicious ingrediants I have purchased earlier in the week. Lindsay noted that all of her ingrediants were delicious on their own so she just assumed (based on her past experience of mixing together what was in the fridge) that they would be good mixed together.

The other night I was dangerously close to mixing smoked salmon, avocado, and horse radish cream cheese over pasta. Luckily my work/cooking friend suggested this was a very bad idea. I ended up buying a nice multigrain crusty bread and making toasts with horse radish cream cheese and salmon, and horse radish cream cheese and avocado ( figuring out how to incorporate the ingredients I had into separate dishes that worked together as opposed to just one dish using all of the ingrediants). The toasts were delicious. And I was glad to be warned off mixing all my ingredients together. And I think I learned a cooking lesson. The first sign of your confidence as a cook could be that you are able to create something lovely out of whatever you happen to have in the kitchen. The second sign of your confidence might be the knowlege that when throwing together a dish off the cuff, you don't have to add every special ingredient you have to make a delicious dish. Sometimes a chef can demonstrate his or her confidence and skill based on what he or she chooses not to add.