ladies night

Ladies night! And just the kind of ladies night I prefer. Ladies in the kitchen, sipping homemade cocktails. Ladies rolling up their sleeves to knead and flatten out dough for pizzas. Ladies sitting around a big dining room table until nearly midnight, buzzing in conversation about the men in our lives. Ladies, ladies, ladies...how entertaining.

Ben and I spent some time with our growth group (bible study) men and women separately last night and aside from missing Ben, I fully enjoyed it. I am really starting to love these people (amazing what a little investment in relationships can afford!) and I could not have been happier in my spot at the table last night, sipping and snacking with these great souls!

In anticipation of our separate dates, Ben and I had a sushi date the night before and I made him a special dessert for a little extra indulgence (my love language is food). These fancy puddings are so easy and you probably have everything your pantry already, so get crackin!

Bourbon chocolate puddings with sea salt and pistachios

150 grams dark chocolate (El Rey)

1.5 oz hot coffee

1 tbsp Bourbon

4.25 ml heavy cream (or milk)

scant 1/2 tsp sea salt + a touch more for garnish

chopped pistachios

chop the chocolate and add to small bowl with coffee and bourbon and stir together until smooth. Bring cream/milk to boil (or just heat it up in your microwave until bubbling) and pour straight into chocolate mixture. Add in the sea salt and stir until smooth. Pour ingredients into 2 small coffee cups (I used 2 demitasse cups so had quite a bit of the chocolate mixture leftover…so I spooned it all into my mouth). Refrigerate the puddings for a few hours til they are set. When ready to serve, top with chopped pistachios and just a few flakes of sea salt for garnish. Share with someone you like. 

defining passions

To what are you devoted? Towards what do you make quixotic efforts?

I recently picked up the bound and dusty copy of my college thesis off the top of our bookshelf in efforts to recall the essence of the word “quixotic.” Once upon a time, in the surreal promised land called Baylor, I scribbled and searched, read and conversed, and after months of grand efforts eventually came up with a thesis on Don Quixote/the artistry of becoming/man’s search for meaning/Holy Folly. Yes, in my mind, my thesis taught me all of these things…yet now I feel as if all I am left with is a convicting attachment to the adjective “quixotic.”

Let me explain. Don Quixote, a simple farmer, adopted a passion so strange to his culture (chivalry, knighthood) that he transformed himself into something of a mad man. But extraordinary adherence to just any passion does not necessarily merit one the honor implied in true zeal or Holly Folly. The madness must be indicative of obedience to a higher truth, a manifestation of pure motive, and a willingness to sacrifice quotidian comforts. This devotion helps to explain why Don Quixote does not tire in his knight errantry: believing in his identity as a knight, Alonso Quixano (Don Quixote’s name prior to his transformation) views it completely rational to abandon his mundane life and pursue grander ideals. After all, grander ideals demand such sacrifice from us, do they not?

When confronted with this question of devotion within the first five minutes of church today, I had to wonder to myself: to what are you so whole heartedly devoted that others might view it as your passion? God? husBen? School? I suppose we could all stand to make more of an effort to live outwardly what we view ourselves to prioritize inwardly (or at least I could).

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The grand trek to The Burger Guys

On a lighter note, our last quixotic effort in the food realm was a 30 minute drive out to the suburbs for what was touted as the best burger around these parts. Oh. My. It was the best burger around these parts!! I can only begin by saying that the menu offered one $35 burger, complete with onion bacon jam, gastrique, foie gras, and toasted garlic aioli and another burger offered on two Shipley’s donuts as the buns. Below were our picks. Queue the mouth watering.

Callie and Ben got the Houston: onion bacon 

jam, lawnmower ale mustard, bread & butter 

jalapeno, and cheddar

I got the Buffalo: blue cheese aioli, onion 

strings, celery, and blue cheese crumbles

The kind man who ordered the burger on
Shipley's donuts was happy to let me snap a pic!

Duck fat fries. Wow.

eggs baked in tomato sauce

When we first got married, we didn’t have a microwave. We were really just nesting that summer so I had time to do things like heat up the milk for our coffee on the stovetop to bubbling perfection and make things like Eggs Benedict for breakfast (okay I only did that once…and that was enough). Now I do things like make the dish below and feign intentionality by declaring it “meatless Monday.” But sometimes it is Wednesday, and honestly I just did not have to the time to run to the store.

This can suffice for dinner: poor man’s protein (the almighty egg) and nutritional vegetables (tomatoes). But most importantly, it tastes great!

Eggs in baked tomato sauce with toasted ciabatta

1 can crushed tomatoes

½ teaspoon dried basil

1 teaspoon dried oregano

½ teaspoon garlic salt (+ more to taste)

6 cloves of garlic (roasted beforehand in olive oil)

6 eggs, room temperature

parmesan cheese, grated (not that powdery stuff)

ciabatta bread, buttered and toasted

Drizzle garlic cloves with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. roast your oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Dump into a cast iron skillet and smash up with the back of a spoon. Pour in your can of crushed tomatoes, basil, oregano, and salt. Bring to a bubble on your stovetop and stir together well (just for a minute or two). Make 5 little wells around the outside of your skillet and 1 in the middle and crack an egg into each well.  sprinkle the grated parmesan over the skillet and stick the whole skillet in the oven (still at 400 degrees) for 13-15 minutes (just until the whites are set). Serve up the whole skillet with plenty of crusty buttered ciabatta to scoop up all the sauce and eggs!

moist.

A friend and I made the recipe below because my seester (Ben’s oldest sister, therefore mine!) came to visit on Sunday with her husband and three kids in tow. Anytime I am going to be around Naomi, I want to have something rich and chocolately on hand because I know it will put a smile on her face (or make her perpetually present smile just a little brighter for the moment anyway). You see, when I married into the Smith family, I knew I would be comfortable at their table because of the precedent of “sharing” Naomi had already set (I just love eating off other people’s plates…and I knew this would fly after Ben told me that Naomi had once received an extendable fork as a gift). I count myself one blessed gal to have married into relationship with such a taster!

can you see the gooey?

Molten Dark Chocolate Brownie Cake

Makes 6-8 servings

3 oz bittersweet chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa) [El Rey discos preferably :) ]

½ cup all-purpose flour

¼ cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder

¼ cup butter, at room temperature

¾ cup granulated sugar

¼ cup packed dark brown sugar

¾ tsp salt

3 large eggs, at room temperature

1 ½ tsp pure vanilla extract

2 tbsp full fat greek yogurt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line the bottom of an 8-inch round springform pan with parchment paper and butter the sides.

Melt chocolate in your microwave—only about 20 seconds at a time, then stir, repeat—until smooth (or use a double broiler if you prefer grand efforts). Stir and set aside.

In a small bowl, add flour and cocoa powder and blend with a whisk (in place of sifting these two ingredients together).

In a large bowl, beat butter until creamy using an electric mixer on medium speed. Add sugars and salt and cream together with butter on medium-high speed until crumbly and fluffy, about 1 minute. Beat in eggs, one at a time, beating until just blended after each addition. Beat in vanilla and yogurt until smooth. Add slightly cooled melted chocolate and beat on medium-low speed until well combined, scraping down sides of bowl as necessary. Add dry ingredients to chocolate mixture and beat on low speed until just incorporated and smooth, no more than 30 seconds.

Pour batter into prepared springform and spread it out evenly with your spatula (which you can now lick). Bake 20 minutes. Transfer cake to wire rack and let cool in pan 5 minutes. Run a knife around the edges of cake and remove sides of pan. Let cool completely, about 30 hour, before slicing. Or you can just cut into it, but it may ooze a bit...which sounds like a good thing to me.

Adapted only slightly from Scientifically Sweet by Christina Marsigliese

yeah, try to eat just one slice

devils on horseback

Did you know there was such a sport as mutton busting? I certainly did not, prior to my first trip to Houston Rodeo. Ben and I went with a big group of our friends to see some country artist that neither of us had ever heard of (Jason Aldean) but just the ticket through the gate was well worth the trip. Immediately I could smell all sorts of things being fried—cheesecakes, snickers, oreos, cookie dough—and although my iPhone camera failed to capture the glory of any of these, I did snag a bite of Melanie’s fried cookie dough on a stick so I feel I got a full enough experience of the south’s obsession with frying things.

Undeniably, the highlight of my evening at the rodeo was watching the mutton busting and cheering on the contestants alongside all my fellow Texans with their rhinestone button downs and snazzy boots, all belt buckled up in their tight jeans. Let me please clarify that the contestants in this "sport" are 5 year olds and a mutton is a fluffy sheep. The children latch on to this wild beast of an animal with all their adrenalined might and try not to fall off as the mutton busts out of the gate, speeding across the dirt arena trying to shake off its cute little country-fied miniature parasite. Sometimes the mutton did not care so much that it had a rider though, and would just kind of look around like it was hungry and would rather be chewing on some grass somewhere in the real outdoors. I had to wonder how these kids practice for this terrifying ride; I mean, my dog is large enough that I could strap a kid to it and see how long it could hold on, but not everyone has such a valuable coach as Quimby in their home.

I made a little snack when I got home from school the day after the rodeo traditionally called Devils on Horseback. In considering the components of this appetizer, however, I am not sure why it acquired that name in the first place so I decided to rename it “Cowboys on Mutton-back.” Enjoy!

Cowboys on Mutton-back

(Devils on Horseback)

Dried Medjool dates

Quality blue cheese

Bacon

Preheat oven to 375. Use a paring knife to remove the seed from the inside of ach date. Stuff each date with as much blue cheese as possible, without any spilling out and squeeze the date shut (kind of pinch together the slit/hole you made you take the seed out/stuff in the blue cheese). Wrap each stuffed date in bacon (I used 1 piece of bacon per 2-3 dates). Place wrapped stuffed dates on a cookie sheet, seam side down. Bake for 20 minutes, then flip each date over and bake another 5-10 minutes (just until bacon is cooked through). Allow to cool before serving. Note: you can make as many or few of these as you want; if using as an appetizer, assume each guest will eat two or three.

pizza, of course

HusBen left me for South by Southwest in Austin (okay, just for one night), so I decided to do what most wives do in their husbands' absence…eat whatever I wanted.

well lookey there, i just happened to have all the ingredients
for a pizza in my fridge: dough recipe from the latest Bon Apetit,
baby bella mushrooms, spinach from mom's garden in
lamar, homemade pesto, sauteed garlic, and feta

 In case you have not yet noticed my affinity for pizza, I will proudly attest to you that it is most certainly my favorite food. This love only developed since I got married and has since escalated. In college, the only pizza I would dream of eating was from Mellow Mushroom and that was only on the special occasion that Ben and I drove to Austin for a play day. The Magical Mystery Tour there (pesto based crust, button and portabella mushrooms, mozzarella, spinach, and feta) still stands as my most favorite pizza (although the mushroom, melted leeks, taleggio, and oregano pizza from Coppa here in Houston is currently vying for the top spot).  I sure hope that Ben does not show back up here tomorrow empty handed (who wouldn’t want such a souvenir as the perfect pizza?). No, no I do not care that I had pizza for dinner tonight…I would gladly have it every night!

nutella stuffed peanut butter cookies

I cannot believe it is Monday. Wait, I cannot believe it is the Monday following Spring Break. As in Spring Break is over. Over! I just looked forward to it for so long. Even things most highly anticipated and appreciated cannot be held onto I suppose. So time goes.

On Friday night, Ben finally arrived at the bay house to break up my solitude; I had quite enjoyed the silence and rest, but I honestly did miss my other half. A dear friend reminded me of the analogy made in Plato’s Symposium that humans used to be squat balls with four limbs, happily rolling around. They were then were split by gods with their faces turned outward, and forever missed their other half (until they finally found it and once again felt complete).

As my love language towards others is food, I naturally made husBen and the parents some cookies to show my excitement at their arrival. Ben ate 6 the next day…I guess he liked them.

Nutella stuffed peanut butter cookies

just full of oozy nutella

            ½ cup butter, softened

            ½ cup brown sugar, packed

            2/3 cup sugar

            1 egg

            1 cup peanut butter

            1 tbs milk

            1 tsp vanilla

            1 ¼ cup flour

            ¾ tsp baking soda

            ½ tsp baking powder

            ½ tsp salt

           

            Nutella for stuffing…liberally

           

            Preheat oven to 350. Prep baking sheets with parchment paper or cooking spray. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter and sugar. Add egg and beat until smooth. Incorporate peanut butter, milk, and vanilla.

Add in dry ingredients and mix until completely combined. Refrigerate dough 45 minutes.

Using a medium cookie scoop, roll dough into about 2” balls (I fit about 8 per cookie sheet). Also form 8 flat tops for each cookie (use way less dough). Place a forcefull thumbprint in the center of each cookie. Using a spoon, scoop as much Nutella as can fit into each cookie, using your finger to scrape it carefully into the indentation.

Cover the Nutella filled cookie with the flat pieces of dough like a blanket, and lightly flatten each cookie with your palm (careful not to squish out the Nutella). Bake 12-14 minutes until cookies began to turn golden on the edges, but still look slightly unset in the middle. Allow cookies to cool 10 minutes before removing from tray. Eat ‘em up!

Adapted only slightly from alaskafromscratch blog

one of my parents standard poodles- lola

the prized endangered whooping cranes of Rockport, through binoculars

need. sweets.

Sometimes I want just one cookie… but if I am going to make just one cookie, better make it a big one.

bigger than my whole face

buttery, chocolately, sweet

One giant cookie (single serving...kind of)

2 tablespoons butter, softened

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons packed brown sugar

2 tablespoons beaten egg (beat an egg with a fork then just use 2 tbs)

½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

6 tablespoons all purpose flour

½  teaspoon baking soda

¼ heaping teaspoon kosher salt

¼ heaping cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Place butter and sugars into a medium mixing bowl, beat with spoon until well combined. Add beaten egg and vanilla, mixing to combine. Add flour, baking soda and salt. Stir a couple times, then add chocolate chips, stirring to combine. Scoop dough into the middle of your prepared baking sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until baked through. Let cool for on baking sheet for 5-10 minutes before removing.

peace and quiet

Once I thought it very idyllic to spend time in solitude. I dreamt of going out to a monastery in the desert for a week or two. I valued silence, true peaceful noiselessness. But now I am out in Lamar (Rockport). The secluded monastery of the bay. And I miss noise. But only a little bit.

I knew this would happen. I knew I would arrive here with my guard dog and Yeti full of food in tow and immediately wonder what I was doing. Leaving husBen all the way back there in the big city?! I must be crazy.

I can admit that I already felt life getting a little simpler on the ride down here. I passed many a home with apocalyptic looking barricades out front (old cars, refrigerators, wood crates, tires, you name it) and I felt pretense melt away. The change of scenery relaxed me. Green fields and expansive gulf. Maybe even a rattlesnake or two and certainly about as many mosquitoes as there are people in Houston. 

It is sunny and breezy and I can already hear the whooping cranes whooping. Spring break 2k12, here we go!

fancy snacks

slice cucumber about 1 cm thick

spread with cream cheese

top with cured salmon (i brought mine from local foods houston, yum!)

garnish with capers and fresh dill 

enjoy!

good read

Did anyone used to read those books as a child that offered you, the reader, the chance to pick the character’s next move at various points throughout the book? For instance, it may read something like “after trekking through the woods for hours, little Johnny comes upon a dark cave. What will he choose to do next? Go to page 72 if he goes into the cave and page 123 if he sneaks past the cave instead.” I never much liked these books, as I always just wanted to know what the RIGHT path was. I didn’t trust myself to arbitrarily choose any which one. I just had to wonder: what choices did the author who penned this story in the first place think would lead to the best outcome for his character?

These books offer the experience of free will, despite the fact that they were written by some omniscient author elsewhere.  Children don’t have to acknowledge the true controller of the outcome, and are able to believe they hold the character’s fate in their own hands. They also gain the satisfaction of finishing such a book, with so many pages, so many twists and turns, while in reality they skipped half the book, half the pain, by having chosen alternate routes for their character.

As of late I consider life such a book. We do not get to see where certain decisions will take us; we only get to choose one path, then follow it wholeheartedly believing all the while that it is the right one. We can be thankful at least that an author brighter than us already wrote the book and that he is watching each page unfold as we live it out. Sometimes the page we are on is painful, sometimes joyful, but the next page follows regardless, moving us right along.

I’m thankful for this chapter of my life with my husBen and my dog, my schoolwork and my kitchen, my good friends and my family. 

Quimby and I are off to Rockport for the week for some sun and good sleep (but don't worry, I will keep blogging!)

weekend

This weekend has been so relaxing at the Smith resort (Ben’s parents house). I got at least 9 hours of sleep each night, intentionally soaked up a sunburn by Saturday afternoon, and spent some quality time with a few family members I have been missing. Ben and I trekked to Waco (our old Baylor stomping ground) for dinner at George’s with my little brother and his new little girlfriend Rachel on Saturday night. While sipping the big-O frozen blue margarita that has been dancing around in my memory since my last day of college, I asked Rachel the usual non-invasive questions, but really I just wanted to be instant friends with her from the moment I met her. To be quite frank, I was nervous about this dinner; I knew Spencer’s girlfriend would be cute (therefore possibly intimidating) and have good hair (because she is a Kappa) and I was tired, pale, and my brain was full of things that are probably of no interest to anyone except my Scantron. I could not help but like her right away however, as Spencer seems to adore her. A tender spot in my heart remembered how much Ben used to adore me when we first met at Baylor.  After dinner, Spencer wanted us to stick around for his frat party (SAE Jungle) but I think we were either too tired or too old (check, both) so we are probably better for having abstained. Sunday was spent bouncing on the trampoline with my second red-headed love (nephew Abram), watching Hugo, and finally making this recipe for pumpkin fritters I have been holding onto since the fall. Enjoy…because I am so enjoying life at this moment.

Pumpkin Fritters

1 cup pumpkin puree


1 egg, lightly beaten


1 ½ tsp vanilla

1 cup all-purpose flour


¼ cup sugar


1 tsp baking powder


1 tsp cinnamon


1 tsp pumpkin spice


1 tsp salt


4 cups canola oil for frying


powdered sugar for topping

Combine the pumpkin, egg, vanilla, flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, pumpkin spice and salt in a bowl. Mix until smooth.

Heat oil in a deep saucepan to 325 degrees. Drop batter by spoonfuls into hot oil. Fry until golden brown, about 2 minutes.  Remove with a slotted spoon, and serve immediately (hot!) with powdered sugar sprinkled on top.