Depression cooking & other stuff

Uh - not THAT kind of depression. The kind we're having that they call a "recession." I don't know about you, but it has brought out my culinary creativity; reminds me of when I was married to my first husband and I made a lot of tuna casseroles with canned mushroom soup. He loved it - I hated it. Have never made it since.

But lucky me, I own a first edition of MFK Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf. She was arguably the best food writer ever and this is an absolutely delightful book on the subject. She wrote it during the WAR, when butter, sugar, eggs, coffee, meat, and who-knows-what else were rationed. Originally published in 1942 - hardcover, $2.50. I found it at a used book store in the early 1960's and it is a fabulous read!

Of course, I have never been motivated to make Rabbit in Casserole, Roast Pigeon, Kidneys in Sherry, or Calves Brains. But her basic minestrone recipe looks divine and she has a couple of cake recipes I have made that are really good and don't require eggs. War Cake is a winner (but I wouldn't advise using bacon fat as your shortening). Tomato Soup Cake is my favorite and 25 years later, I sent for a Campbell's Soup cookbook that had almost the identical recipe in it. Try it - it is really good - esp. with a bit of icing made with cream cheese or butter, powdered sugar and a little rum. Of course, MFK Fisher's recipe is a little lacking in details, such as how long you bake it - but those were the days when people KNEW how to cook and bake and could figure it out. It makes a really good cake. If I had a can of tomato soup in the house, I'd make it right now. TOMATO SOUP CAKE 3 Tablespoons butter or shortening 1 cup sugar 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 can tomato soup 2 cups flour 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon nutmeg, ginger, cloves - mixed 1-1/2 cups raisins, nuts, chopped figs or other dried fruit, what you will. Cream butter, add sugar, blend thoroughly. Add baking soda to soup, stirring well & add ths alternately to first mixture with flour & spices sifted together. Stir well & bake in a pan or loaf tin at 325. Notice that the Campbell's version looks more glamourous. Trust me, it's just as good in a loaf pan. I worked most of the afternoon stitching on the invitational piece I am donating to Virginia Spiegel's Fiber Art for a Cause Reverse Auction 2009. Then, I finally went for my long-overdue pedicure. A luxury but also a necessity, since I go around in sandals all year and other people have to look at my feet . Despite this downturn, I feel the need to take care of myself in ways I have never really done. And I am not feeling the least bit guilty about it. Too little, too late...but that is another story. I will spare you a picture of my toes, lovely as they are. Yesterday I spent some time at the studio and while I was ironing, I was throwing fabric at the wall. Here's how it looked at some point in the afternoon. I love auditioning the pieces I'm ironing -- most of which never turn into anything, but evoke possibilities. That's what life is all about: possibilities. And here is a fragment of what's on my wall at home. I had forgotten I even had this fabric, printed several years ago and buried in the pile. Don't you just love when that happens? It's like finding money in the pocket of jeans you hadn't worn in ages.

cocoa

Karoda commented that ever since my post on cocoa, she's been having some every day. I, of course, ran out of milk right after that cocoa post and was too lazy all week to stop just for milk. But then I was down to two eggs and I have to bake for Monday's crit group -- so Whole Foods on the way home. I picked up a few items, including my organic lactose-free 1% milk, and as I was leaving the dairy case, the chocolate display blocked my way to the check-out. There was nothing to do but stop and look. But wait!! What did they have but Valharona cocoa imported from France! It was fated. Here it is, side by side with the Hershey's cocoa in my pantry. They not only look different, the Valharona actually smells like chocolate. At $8.99 a pound, it should.So I had my cocoa tonight - and I feel so warm and comfy that I just know I'll sleep like a baby.

a random day

Today was one of those days where almost everything that happened was unplanned. After an early appointment, I was going to get a pedicure. But first, the car wash because I couldn't see out of my windows. So even though they were predicting rain (accurately, of course) I simply couldn't put it off any longer. The car wash was conveniently next door to Home Depot, so since I was there, in I went. Bought end caps for two of my shibori pipes. And twine. And a bunch of these gizmos, whatever they are. Washers? Widgets? Having grown up in a hardware store, you'd think I would know the names of everything. But it doesn't matter. Nothing had prices or codes, so the cashier had to take out a laminated sheet with pictures on it and place each gizmo on a picture to see which one it fit so she could tell the size. Then she had to look it up in the computer to see the price of each one. Since I had several dozen assorted sizes, you can imagine how happy the people behind me in line were. Filled the tank - 12 gal. and it only came to just under $20. Keep in mind this is New Jersey and the guy does it for you. On the upside, you don't have to get out of your car in the heat/cold/snow/rain. On the downside, you have to sit and wait till he deals with the other 4 cars that were there filling their tanks ahead of you. $1.71/gal for credit, $1.63 for cash, Shell Oil. It would have been less if I had paid cash, but I had spent it all on gizmos for shibori. Nevertheless, I paid $47 to fill up the same tank a couple of months ago. This is too good to last. I went to see my mother and ended up taking her out to lunch and buying new batteries for her TV zapper so she could get more than one channel. I also stopped at Jerry's and bought printmaking paper for tomorrow and Monday. Tomorrow, I am going over to Susanna Baker's to see her work: she draws, does encaustic, and has a press. Hence, the paper. I am about done ironing for tonight. Tell me why I am doing this - it is a bottomless pit. There is plenty here that belongs in the trash, and I am finding scraps of cloth I printed a decade ago. Dear, dear. It took me several minutes to figure out what I had done to this piece of commercial fabric. Then, the light went on. I will take it with me in April when I go to Golden, CO (April 19) to give a one day workshop at the headquarters of Quilters Newsletter. Maybe I'll give it another layer when I'm there. As I turn out the lights in my sewing room, I realize that I never did get that pedicure today.

Katherine Sands has nominated me for the Kreativ Blogger Award. Of course, Kathy, since you stated that you are nominating people who don't get nominated for very many things, I thank you the much-needed boost. The rules of the award are:

1. The winner may put the logo on her blog. (done)

2. Put a link to the person you got the award from in your blog(done)

3. Nominate 5 blogs. (only five?? waaah - this is tough)

4. Put links to the blogs. (below)

5. Leave a message for your nominees. (will do) In no particular order, I nominate: Del Thomas because I love her gorgeous photos, her travelogues, and a chance to see the artwork in her collection. Jeanne Raffer Beck because I connect with her work and enjoy reading her thoughtful ruminations about the challenges and breakthroughs as she creates. Carol Larson because I find her to be a breath of fresh air. She is quirky, funny, has an edge, and does not mince words. I think she is a hoot and her posts are always interesting. Russ Little because he needs a kick in the butt so he'll post more often. I love reading his posts and looking at his art cloth in process, but cheesh, it's too long a wait between posts! So get with it, Russ! Your life is too interesting not to share it with us. Helen Conway because she's so interesting. Her posts are fun to read and her photos are super! As a bonus, be sure to click on her link to Twelve by Twelve which is just too good - and has links to many other blogs I love to read. Phew! I've earned a cup of coffee or two. Marty is on his way home and I have to drive him to an appointment because by the time he comes home it will be dark and he is not driving at night. I will check back with you later.

first things first

Since you are all clamoring for this recipe, I'll get it out of the way first. When I opened the foil on the pan tonight, 4 of the squares had gone missing. So I figured I would try one. Now another 4 are gone. Oh, dear. And I said they were too sweet. By tonight, the sweetness had mellowed and they were much better. I think the trick is letting them sit for a day. The recipe is below. However, I cut the sugar to 3/4 cup: 1/2 in the meringue and 1/4 in the cookie dough that is the first layer. YMMV. I used dark brown sugar, but I'm sure you can use light brown - or even white sugar if you don't have either of the above. They are very easy. Grammy's recipe for the Meringue Bars is--- 1 1/4 cup flour 1 tsp baking powder 2 eggs, separated 1 to 1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar, divided 1/2 cup chopped nuts 1 tsp vanilla 1/2 cup butter softened Mix flour and baking powder and set aside. In small bowl beat egg whites until frothy. Gradually beat in 1 cup sugar until stiff. Fold in nuts and vanilla and set aside. In large bowl, beat butter, egg yolks and remaining 1/2 cup sugar until fluffy. Stir in flour mixture until well blended. Spread into 9"x9" pan. Spread meringue mixture on top. Bake at 325 for 35 minutes until top is light brown. Cool in pan. Cut when cold. I did not leave the house today. In fact, I barely left my sewing room. Was I sewing? Nope, I was neatening and throwing, with a little ironing thrown in. It was/still is a logistical problem. I need to put a facing on a quilt. I can't do that till I trim the batting. I can't do that till I can use the cutting board. I can't use it till I have room to put it on the cutting table, which is piled up with the fabric I started ironing yesterday.(Does this sound a little like The House that Jack Built?) Of course, I couldn't put the fabric on my shelves because they were cluttered with other things. And I couldn't get near the sewing machine because there was so much STUFF in the way on that side of the room. So I started cleaning off the shelves on one side of the room and reorganizing/throwing the STUFF on the other side of the room. You get the picture. The ends of the room are neat because everything piled in the middle. I just need to get it organized before Monday. Earlier tonight I decided I needed a change of pace. So I started pole wrapping a couple of yards of linen I had dyed that came out ugly. It is an endless process. Here's what it looks like so far, with about 1/4 of it wrapped. When I got tired of doing that, I took a piece of random fabric from the table and decided I should clamp it and throw it in some dye. I finally found a use for those expired Garden State Parkway tokens. Odd how the resist areas didn't come out round, but have little round spots. If you click on the picture, you'll see them on the upper left.That's it for tonight. I have a piece on my wall and if I can only finish clearing off the cutting table tomorrow, I might finish the one that is first in line.

a bit of housekeeping

Day two of ironing and sorting at the studio. Making some progress in putting into piles by color - sort of - and sometimes by personality. I've moved my dyes into the drawers of a rolling cart and am putting my neat piles of fabric onto one of the shelves. Maybe then I'll know what I have. I have the "if I don't see it, I don't own it" syndrome -- which I suspect you may be familiar with. But boy, this is some undertaking! And I am trying to do the same thing at home. Imagine, if you will, untold numbers of rolling bins and plastic storage boxes with contents that look like this. Then, picture removing the contents, pressing, evaluating, and sorting into piles like the ones above or putting smaller pieces back into the plastic boxes so they look like this. I don't find it boring at all - and as you know, I love to iron. But it is rather time-consuming. So while I was at the studio today, i did some multi-tasking. I overdyed some fabrics and screen printed others with some old thickened dyes, just to use them up. I had no idea what color they were going to turn out, but it did not matter. On one of the other lists I posted about how I hang and dry my fabrics because I have no room to leave them lying around and microwaving is not an option for me. Here is my high tech setup: fabric pinned to pink insulation board covered with plastic. That column thing is a fan which I bought before we had a/c in the studio. It's pretty strong and fabrics dry in short order. And my fancy steamer: hotplate bought for $5 at yard sale, a $12 pot from K-Mart, and inside, a lotus steamer (thank you, Helene) topped by a round cake rack. 20 minutes. I'm always in the bathroom at the utility sink, rinsing out fabric. But since we have no washer and dryer there (and no way to have them) I take my fabrics home to wash, dry, iron, and fold. Tonight, while the stuff was in the wash, I baked. My daughter-in-law Nancy gave me her Grammy's recipe for meringue bars and I made them because the other resident in this household complained there was nothing sweet to eat. Nancy had baked and brought them over here on Sunday. There were delicious. However, although I cut the sugar in half, mine were sweeter than hers - too sweet for me. Can't figure it out. I'll leave them for Marty - he will love them.

cocoa

It's been years since I have drunk a cup of hot cocoa. When I was a teenager and came home from a date, many nights I would sit down with a cup of cocoa & cinnamon toast to chat with my mother about the evening. To this day, the combination spells comfort. Monday night: printmaking class. I left early because I felt a headache coming on, was tired, and hoped to ward off the evil spirits that seem to have given everybody else coughs, fevers, and general malaise. When I got home, I had a sudden urge for cocoa - something I have not had in eons. Eight years ago I became lactose intolerant and stopped drinking milk because I thought Lactaid tasted horrible. Last week, I bought an organic brand of lactose free milk and tonight, for the first time in decades, I made a cup of hot chocolate: a heaping teaspoon of cocoa powder, a dash of vanilla, a scant teaspoon of sugar, and milk. I feel so much better now. What's your ward-off-the-evil spirits/childhood comfort food? What are your memories connected with it? And does it still provide the warm fuzzies it used to? Do tell.

rainy Sunday

Sigh...the last day of a lovely, long weekend. I took my pile of shibori'd fabric with me to the studio so I could trim and throw some at the wall and see what I had done. This color is somewhat inaccurate and this is by no means a composition or a piece -- but rather an inventory of what might work together. Naturally, in the midst of pressing all these pieces, my Black & Decker iron stopped, cold. Grrrr... So I cleaned up (sort of), pole-wrapped some silk and threw it into a dye bucket, along with one of my work shirts that needed a little jazzing up. By that time, it was 5:00 and time to head home. As I left the building, I was dazzled by the reflections of the lights on the wet pavement of the parking lot and despite the rain, took out my camera. These shots have not been manipulated: they are just as they came from the camera.

The bright upstairs window is the hallway where the light is on 24/7.

The parking lot view from the passenger's side of my car.There is a concrete plant across the street - you can see the wall.

A better view. This gritty, industrial scene is so beautiful at night.

Life is full of surprises - my cheapo camera with the bad focus has just given me some gifts, which are going into my "inspiration" file.

This charming painting arrived a few days ago from Regina Dwarkasing who lives in St.Maarten, along with some actual PODS. Wow, Regina - thanks!! I will be so happy when I can get back to my print studio and get busy with them. I love what you did with them here. Regina had read my post about the pods on the trees at Rutgers last month and generously sent me some from the tree in the only park on the island. I am truly honored and I promise to post what I do with them. I already have a couple of ideas. In the meantime, today I was back to the shibori buckets. This process is not for the faint of heart (or weak of muscle) -nor is it for people who are - ahem - impatient. I was dyeing in the kitchen, which is not my preference - but the 5 gal buckets are too heavy to be anywhere but in the sink, where I can dump them out without having to carry them anywhere. It seems that if I am going to do this in my studio, where the sink is down the hall, I will have to figure out a lwi process for it. Today,everything I dyed seemed to come out purple. Actually, I was overdyeing some things I wasn't happy with - and some of them have a long way to go. (what else is new?). Both of these were more blah before I reworked them. They were, as you can tell, one piece. I tore them in two and shibori'd them differently. The one on the right is more interesting but they might just work well together somewhere. This piece started with white and I think I threw it into some black dye. It is a lovely shade of green. Don't ask me what I did with the fabric - I have no idea. I guess I should be writing down what I do with each piece - but I'm in too much of a rush. This was an overdye of a white fabric that had bits of orange on it. Better than all that white.The dilemma is how to use them, but I guess that's the same dilemma we all have with fabrics we've printed. Shibori is ofen so strong that it can overwhelm something else -and it's a matter of using it so it works with your other fabrics and with your own style. Putting beautiful fabrics together does not necessarily become a piece of art just because. I figure this is a good opp for me to work on composition - but to me, the work still has to say something or it is just an exercise. Of course, that's ME. Not everybody feels that way - and I think it would be easier if I didn't. Oh,dear-myspacebarhasstoppedworking-so-I-will-say-goodnight.I-think-it-is-time-to-contemplate-buying-a-new-laptop.AARRGH.

I was too busy cooking and baking to post yesterday and I am happy to have two days during which to recover from all the festivities (and accompanying gluttony). I baked two of these pecan pies - one to take with us to our hostess and the other to remain here. I barely had a sliver of the one we took with us and haven't had any of this one (although the other household member has already had two pieces, starting last night when we got home from a non-stop banquet - go figure). Pecan pie is my favorite but I am always disappointed when I order it in a restaurant. Mine is less sweet than all the others in the world and except for Ms. Parrot's pie, it is the best I have ever had. For me, akin to Proust's madeleine; one taste and it brings back memories. Ms. Parrot was a cook and baker who cooked for a doctor. She and her sister (each of whom seemed to be 100 years old in the 1950's and 60's) lived together in a house on Hartley Street, across the street from the parking lot behind my father's store. When Ms. Parrot asked my father whether she could pay to park her car in his lot at night the answer was "of course you can park but I will not accept any money." So, periodically, Ms. Parrot would come to the store bearing gifts of her baked goods, which daddy brought home to us. Brownies. And at Thanksgiving, always a pumpkin chiffon pie and a pecan pie. Her brownies were dark and buttery and not overly sweet. Not fans of pumpkin, we nevertheless loved her chiffon pie because it was light and not overly pumpkin-y. And the pecan pie was to die for, pure and simple. As a professional baker, she refused to divulge her recipes, but I was determined to find their equals and make them myself. I have never been able to duplicate the pumpkin chiffon pie and have given up trying. But I now make brownies that are taste like hers -- and I kept trying pecan pie recipes till I found one that puts me back sitting around the table in my mother' 1950's kitchen. And I see my father's face.

How did it get to be so late? I spent the evening playing with shibori, but the results were not as dramatic or successful as they were in class. I was trying to do too much in too little space/time. A few came out well, the others I need to redo. The linen I wrapped was really too much volume for the size of the pole and while I got a gorgeous pattern, it was only on one end of the fabric. More, tomorrow.