I Never Promised You an Organic Garden

A while back I started a baking adventure. My plan was to pick one recipe from Cooks Illustrated, test it out, and blog about the results each week.  I really enjoy desserts and wanted to learn to make my own.  I’ve been doing it since August, and I have made a LOT of baked goods.  Some of them have turned out amazingly well, and some of them have turned out quite poorly, but it has been fun along the way.  I have learned a lot and gotten to the point where I look forward to baking each week.

Unfortunately, I have gotten really behind on the blogging portion of my challenge, so I have made a number of yummy items that no one ever got to see.  So I thought it would be fun to go through and list those items. (more…)

I am finding that I am not having any trouble keeping up with my weekly baking adventure, but I am having a hard time getting a blog post written each week.  I will try to do better, but no promises.  I finally felt up to taking on advanced recipes and went straight for homemade eclairs followed by chocolate cream pie with oreo cookies crust.  I love eclairs, and chocolate cream pie is a favorite Thanksgiving dessert, so I was very hopeful that they would turn out well.  And I am pleased to announce that, a little under-baking on the eclairs aside, they were AMAZING! (more…)

It is official, I made the best brownies ever this week.  That includes boxed brownies and restaurant brownies.  I tried the Cooks Illustrated brownies earlier this year and was not impressed with how they turned out, so I turned to Alton Brown for a recipe.  And let me tell you, I hit the jackpot.  These brownies are relatively easy to make, taste very chocolaty, and have a nice fudgey texture.

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Buoyed by my baking success earlier this week, I decided to make chocolate chocolate chip bread for the potluck at church. I have made this recipe before in muffin form, so I didn’t expect any problems.  Unfortunately, I underestimated my mess making abilities.

The recipe calls for 1 stick of butter melted, so I popped it in the microwave, like I have done 100 times, to melt the butter.  About 30 seconds in, I heard a bang and turned to see that the unmelted half of the butter had exploded all over the inside of the microwave.

And, in this case exploded is not too strong of a word.  There was literally butter all over the inside of the microwave including under the rotating tray. It was quite impressive.  It took me 15 minutes to clean out the inside of the microwave so I could complete the melting process.

I did, however, learn a valuable lesson for future butter melting: Do not melt a whole stick of butter all at once on high in the microwave.  From now on, I will use short burst at about half power.  On the bright side, our microwave is now quite clean.

This week’s baking went really well.  I made Quick Cinnamon Buns with Buttermilk Icing from Cooks Illustrated and they were delicious!!  They were biscuit style buns, so they didn’t have to rise like traditional cinnamon buns.  Hence, the “quick” in the name.

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I have been riding a new bike for the past few weeks, and I have fallen in love!  It is a beautiful blue Concord Pacer mixte likely from the 70’s.  If you are uncertain of what makes a bike a mixte, here is a quick primer:  A mixte is a particular type of step-through frame where the top bar runs from the bottom of the handlebars all the way to the rear axle.  This style bike is very popular in Europe and is ridden by both men and women. (more…)

I just realized the week is almost over, and I never blogged about my baking adventure this week.  I did, however, remember to bake so the important bases are covered.  Since Matt is out of town this week, and I wanted to try and use ingredients we had on hand, I decided to go the easy route and make Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookie Bars.  They are very similar in prep to chocolate chip cookies, but require a few extra ingredients and turned out much thicker and cakier than my cookies ever do.  With Matt being gone, I am also missing our normal camera so, I had to use our old point and shoot.  Please forgive the subpar photos of my food. (more…)

September 22 is World Carfree Day:

• A day to celebrate the fact that we don’t all have to own cars to live a “normal” life.
• A day to get out of your car and walk, take a bus, or ride your bike.
• A day to experiment with alternative forms of transportation as a part of your everyday life.
• A day to ask your local government to do more to make your city bike and pedestrian friendly.

World Carfee Day is sponsored by the World Carfree Network and is marked by celebrations and events around the world.  There aren’t any events going on locally, but I will be celebrating by riding my bike to work and encouraging others to do the same.

Richmond is a surprisingly bikeable city, and with the addition of some bike racks downtown it will be even more so.  There is definitely a lot of room to grow, but I am inspired by the small but growing bike community that is already a part of the city and the work that is being done to improve our local transportation plan to include bikes and pedestrians. We have a long way to go before we are a Portland, Or or Boulder, Co, but there is hope.

If you are local and would like to participate in making Richmond a more bike and pedestrian friendly community, attend the transportation meeting tonight at 7pm at the City Building.  The Planning department will be presenting the proposed long-term transportation plan to the Planning Commission.

What are ways you have found that your local community is friendly for getting around without a car?

What are ways you have found that your local community is NOT friendly for getting around without a car?

This week’s baking adventure went a lot better than the brownies from last week.  I made Cook’s Illustrated’s Perfect Pound Cake, and it really did turn out nearly perfect.  The flavor, crumb, and crust all turned out as they should.  Needless to say I was very excited.  I’ve never made pound cake before, so I don’t know how it typically rates on the difficulty scale, but I thought it was pretty easy.  I took the finished cake to Loops of Love on Tuesday, and everyone seemed to really enjoy it.  It was a lot of fun to be able to share something I made with all my friends.

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Last night, I finished a knitting project I have been working on since April, and I am really please with how it turned out.  It is a gorgeous purple shrug that fits quite nicely. I got the yarn and pattern from a shop in Baltimore on my 30th Birthday trip, and I have been working on it between other projects ever since.  The pattern itself wasn’t hard to follow; however, I was totally confused when it came time to sew things together.  Luckily Vicki and Julie from Unwind Yarn Shop (in Richmond, In) understood the pattern and helped me get it together.

I was so excited to be finished, I wore it to work today.  It feels so good to have a project finished, and it’s a project for myself none the less.