My new recipe book: it doesn't contain any recipes yet

For the past month or so, I've been working on putting together a recipe book. A book that contains only the recipes that I use and love on a regular basis. The recipes that I love because either, I make them all the time, or because they were special recipes from my childhood.



I know that both my mother and my grandmother have their own personal recipe books that they turn to for those basic favorites that they would be lost without and I recently realized that I really needed to start the process of creating my own personal recipe book. My binder o' magazine clippings and mysterious ingredient lists written on sticky notes* was just getting to be more of a nuisance than a useful resource for cooking. I also came to the conclusion that I need to start weeding through all the information that I've saved; I need to throw out the recipes that either I or Matthew wouldn't even touch with a ten foot pole and then attempt to make the ones that I still think sound appetizing.



So, after almost two months, off and on with this project and one full week of weird dinners (Matthew only protested mildly), I desperately need to put pen to paper and write the first recipe in my new, precious book. The problem is that so far I haven't written a single recipe in this book. Now that I've finally started to compile the recipes that I want to include in the book, I'm second and triple guessing each recipe and whether or not it is actually worthy of inclusion. Is it truly important to me? Is it something that I'll regret putting in later? Would it be better to just keep the fragile little magazine clipping that I've kept for years at this point?



Now, I have a personal recipe book that's full of blank pages. Not a thing written in it yet and the longer I wait the harder it is to start. I suppose that one of these days I'll just give in and put the first recipe into my book but until then I just keep sifting through my pile of clippings and half written recipes on sticky notes and sighing because, as usual, I can't make up my mind.



* Many of these mystery sticky notes had to be tossed due to the fact that I wrote the ingredients down and assumed I'd somehow remember the name of the recipe, the type of recipe and the process for turning those ingredients into something meaningful. Rather silly of me!

The perfect baby rye loaf

I finally did it! I made the most ideal looking little loaf of bread. He's perfect.

I actually baked this little loaf a couple days ago to pair with a tasty lentil soup that I'd made. It was a wonderful pairing, fresh, hot rye bread with sausage and lentil soup. Matthew really enjoys rye bread and was very excited at the possibility of eating it straight from the oven. I also promised him ham and swiss sandwiches on rye for this week's little batch of lunches to which he gleefully replied, "yum!" We'll see if I'm actually able to keep up the bread production over the course of the entire week; it seems doubtful.

This evening we were planning to finish up the left-over lentil soup but, naturally, the bread had gone a bit stale so I turned to a very tasty, if rather unhealthy, opportunity to make welsh rarebit. I used a different recipe than I usually do, simply because I can't remember what or where my usual recipe is; I suppose that means that my "usual" recipe isn't really all that usual. I've made a sauce in the past but this welsh rarebit recipe from "Angela Ewing's Pub Grub and Posh British Fare " is much easier.

Welsh Rarebit
3 cups grated cheddar cheese
1/4 cup butter
1 egg
2 tablespoons beer or milk
1 tablespoon dijon mustard (or grainy mustard, is what I prefer)
4 slices bread
oven on broil

Blend cheese with mustard, egg, beer(or milk) and half of butter (I admit, I added a sprinkling of paprika and a dash of cayenne to the mixture). Toast the bread and spread with the remaining butter and cheese mixture. Place on a cookie sheet and broil for 4 min (I could only broil for 3 before the tops got really dark).

We ate these along-side lentil soup, but they are yummery on their own for snacks.

a funny little loaf of bread

Today, I finally managed to bake a darling little loaf of bread from my new bread book - my first loaf out of this book and, without a doubt, my most successful loaf of bread ever baked. I've made various breads before but this one was really, truly worth all the effort or, to be honest, lack of effort. It was so very easy.



I did take a few before-baking pictures, just in case the bread didn't turn out or was simply unphotogenic. (Turns out, my fears were a touch silly, but it's always best to be prepared.)



Fortunately, the lil' guy turned out all right, if a bit lopsided. But lopsidedness never changes the fabulous flavor. This freshly baked bread really did taste delicious with our borscht.



And, because the photos on this particular blog post are fairly dull and colorless, I'll include some extremely bright and cheerful Bonus photos of my green papaya salad from the Vietnamese Tet festival, which Matthew and I attended a couple weeks ago.



What a tasty and pretty little treat! yum!

The new year

Now that January is almost over, I guess I'll take the time to post about my new year's eve. It's kind of a now or never kind of thing. If I don't post this before the end of January then it will seem a little silly (never mind the fact that it's already a teensy bit late already).

This year, we made tamales; this was my very first time to help make tamales and I really enjoyed the process. Despite the fact that I constantly stomp around declaring that I hate fussy cooking projects and only like to make easy dishes that don't require complex measuring and such (my baking often doesn't turn out very well due to lazy measuring), the truth is, I adore such things, when I have the time, inclination and participation of various favorite persons.

So, here are some photos of the process; I can promise you that these show just a sampling of the many steps required for this project:


I started cooking the chicken at 9:00 am after waking up to a list of instructions and a packet of semi frozen chicken that my mother left on the counter for me, while she went off gallivanting around the countryside.


We cut the chiles, zucchini and potatoes into strips, crumbled the queso, mixed the masa by hand and soaked the husks.


Assembling the tamales was very tedious. I actually adore tedious tasks. Filing, gluing small things together, coloring in the lines, all the things I secretly love to do but can't admit to loving because it isn't normal.


The tamales looked quite lovely with all the goodies assembled. The olive and raisins really made these taste exceptional.

We finally had the tamales steamed and ready to eat by 7pm. They were truly amazing and worth the extra effort.

Thank you, Elizabeth for giving me the opportunity to help you make tamales. It was great fun! =)

new things! granola and a camera

I knew it was very, very bad when I signed onto my little blog behind-the-scenes and said "that was my last post? wow, I thought I'd put up at least one post since then." Oh well, I'm finally posting, small and silly though this post will be.

For Christmas, my dear, sweet mother gave me a five minutes a day bread baking book. I know lots of people who love this book and I was delighted to finally have my own copy from which to bake delicious bread, which will, in turn, make me a rather plump little blogger. But, other than making me trade in my size smalls for mediums, this book finally, after years of reading other people's happy success stories, forced me to make my own granola. This is something my mother has always done, from the time I was little but I've always thought it seemed a fairly fussy process for granola that rarely tastes better than what can be purchased out of the bulk bins at the natural foods store.

While skimming the recipes in this book, I came across the recipe that my mother and my brother's girlfriend, Elizabeth, have been raving about for the past year. They love this granola and make and eat it all the time to the point that Elizabeth gave lovely little tins of it to people for Christmas. Luckily for Matthew and I, we were included in the granola crowd and received our very own tin, full to the brim with the luscious stuff. It is really, truly the best granola I've eaten and the only way to have any is to make it. For once, I can't buy a better granola in the store. (And, honestly, I know I'm years behind on "discovering" this book and all of it's much beloved recipes. That's what happens when one lives in a dark, dank little bat cave such as Matthew and I do.)



I will say this for my first batch, I may have over cooked it. In fact, I'm sure I over cooked it; the truth is, I'm forever over cooking things because I often forget that many things are in fact better when slightly undercooked than when over cooked. In addition to over cooking the granola, I, in my usual fashion, forgot what I'd read (I did read the recipe through. twice!), and added the dried fruit at the beginning before cooking everything when in fact I was supposed to add them to the already cooked and cooled granola. The fruit is still edible, but I will say that this was a slight tragedy because some of the fruit I used were incredibly scrumptious, little, tart, dried cherries that my crazy(in the very best of ways), but kind neighbor foisted upon me. It didn't take much cajoling to get me to take as many of the little treasures as he was willing to give me. Fortunately for me, I still have lots of dried cherries left and will make a much better batch of granola in the near future.

By the way, you may notice that the photos of the granola are of a slightly higher quality than I usually post on my blog, or you may not. I, in fact, have a terrible eye for such things and can't tell at all that they are better. But be that as it may, we still purchased a new, fancy-dan camera that takes, supposedly, incredibly better photos for only many hundreds of dollars more than the one I usually use. My main complaint about the new camera(which I secretly love and adore) is that it isn't pink! so sad! pink should be a standard color for all cameras. But this last paragraph just shows what a little philistine I really am.


The front and back. It's rather small for a dslr.

The cutest holiday season of all

Even during the worst Holiday of the year, cuteness rears it's tiny, sweet head. Despite the fact that I spend most of December stomping around scowling at every bit of cheer that comes my way, I did manage to find a bit of cuteness and fun during the holiday madness. As is fairly typical of me and my version of cuteness, all of these cute things happen to be deliciously edible.


My new silver serving spoon - serving up a sweet, juicy, little tangerine.


My extra easy, extra darling appetizers - wantons filled with nummy things. They look so petite and classy.


I bought the chocolate bar for the wrapper, thank goodness I know Theo Chocolate is a good company but honestly, I would have bought it even if it was from Hershey. I just can't resist a picture of a little blond German girl collecting cocoa nibs in Peru with llamas. So cute and fun!


Well, since I was getting one bar I had to get the other bar, besides it has kitties on it.


Well, Since I was getting two bars I had to get a third bar, despite the very strange picture on the third bar. Actually, I liked it once I realized that the picture was of personified Hazelnuts. Now every time I eat a Hazelnut, I'll think "oh no! the poor little things."


My favorite picture of the holiday season is this little Marzipan Snowman sitting atop a salted caramel tart, surrounded by hand-rolled peppermint truffles. I never ever eat Marzipan because it is disgusting but I adore all the cute little creatures that people make out of it. The tart and truffles are not particularly picturesque but they really were stunningly good, probably the best thing I ate the entire Christmas week.

happy treat

There has been an obvious lack of posts about bentos and all things related to bentos in the last few months. Basically, I left most of my supplies with my mother and have yet to replenish, simply because I've truly realized just how much work it is to make them. And, this isn't a bento blog! it's just a cute-stuff-in-Lynnea's-life blog. This isn't to say I'm not still totally enamoured with the little cutie lunches and in fact, I purchased some very cute hole punches while in Tokyo.

This is the result:



Now this was made in just five minutes last night and I know that Mabo-don isn't the most photogenic substance but those cute little faces just make the whole bento so much more appetizing.