Category: baking

Blackberries!

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, baking, tweens

After an exhaustive search of my own backyard for blackberries, my take consisted of a small handful of berries from 

Blackberries picked at Susan's "farm"

 

some low-growing vines that I discovered had wended their way among the blueberry bushes. These I ate before I even made it into the house. 

My friend took pity on me. She invited me over to her house to pick some blackberries, so on Sunday, my daughter and I headed over. Well, I found out pretty quick why I only had a handful at my house…it’s because Susan has them all at her house! It seemed like millions of them. My hour and half (give or take) of picking did not even make a dent in the bounty of the blackberries. 

Now. What the heck does one do with a gallon of blackberries? 

Here’s a dozen ideas, ranging from easier to harder: 

  1. Eat them as is. No washing them off first; that’s for wimps.
  2. Stir them into your yogurt.
  3. Freeze them for use later on. You may have read advice about how you should place them on a cookie sheet in the freezer until they are frozen, the place them in a bag to prevent clumping, etc. I never do that; my freezer will not accommodate that on a good day (like, on the day before the food shopping). I just dump ’em all into a ziploc-type freezer bag and hope for the best. (It’s not ever a problem).
  4. Throw a handful into your (garden) salad. Really.
  5. Add some to pancake batter.
  6. Add some to a smoothie.
  7. Got a favorite blueberry muffin recipe? Try adding blackberries to the batter instead.
  8. Make a cobbler. Cobblers are pretty novice-baker-friendly. The Pioneer Woman Cooks has 2 versions of blackberry cobbler on her website.
  9. Make blackberry sauce for your pancakes, waffles, or other food of choice. This recipe has only 2 ingredients (one of which is the blackberries!).
  10. Blackberry pie would be great. If you use prepackaged pie crust, it’s even easier. Here’s a blackberry pie recipe from Mario Batali.
  11. Make a blackberry quick bread.
  12. Make blackberry ice cream. Okay, this is the most labor intensive, and you need (pricey) special equipment. Feel free to just look at the pictures of this one. 🙂

That’s it. That’s my top 12 list. I have done #1-4 so far (so many blackberries; so little time)…and I still have plenty left for other things on the list. And if I run out? Well, I know where to get more…heh heh heh…

Saying goodbye to a friend

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, baking, fitness, good grief, health, tweens

My daughter’s friend delivered some unexpected news last week. Without preamble, she sent a one line email declaring that she was moving. To California. Like, soon. 

Chocolate chip cookies

 

Well. It’s not the first time that one of her close friends have moved away; it’s the third time, actually. It seems to be hitting her in a different way this time, however, which I imagine is due to her developmental stage. She is feeling it more, so of course, I am feeling it more as well. She was visibly sad, and was telling anyone in the family who would listen about how her friend was moving and how much she was going to miss her. 

Then a funny thing happened: as I was busily trying to think of a way to help her to feel better, she was busily figuring it put for herself. This is what she did: 

  1. She took construction paper and crayons and made a book for her friend. The book’s title? “Things I like about (name of friend)”.
  2. She asked me if we could bake some chocolate chip cookies for her friend, having ascertained beforehand that these were her favorite kind of cookies (note: date stamp on photo is incorrect; it’s a new camera and I’ve yet to set the date!).
  3. She obtained her friend’s new phone number in California, and in addition to placing it in a safe place, she made sure I had saved it in my cell phone as a safety measure.
  4. She hunted down a gift bag (purple! purple is her friend’s favorite color!) that was big enough to hold the construction paper book without folding it, the container of cookies, and an “I’m going to miss you!” greeting card, then assembled the gift.

So, she did all of these things just by instinct. She thought she was putting together a nice present for her friend and making sure they could stay in touch. I realized that she was processing her grief, and doing it by instinct, and in a healthy way. 

Then, she put it all aside and went out in the yard to hula hoop for an hour. 

 

Isn’t it amazing how much our children teach us about life (see note about picture date stamp, #2 above)?

Spelt Right Bagels at Hannaford

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, baking, family, health, italian, tweens
Spelt Right Sesame Seed Bagel

I was shopping at the new Hannaford’s in Kennebunk (at the site of the old Stop’n Shop). There were several of those tables set up throughout the store where a person is handing out samples of food items that are sold there, along with a coupon to further entice you to buy.

I am a fan of “try before you buy” and routinely stop to try what they are offering. On this day a woman at one of the tables looked familiar. Turns out, she was. I had seen her before, but in print and online; this was the first time in person. It was Beth George, the founder of the Spelt Right Baking, which is located nearby in Yarmouth, Maine.

Well, Beth was very generous with samples of her bagels. My 11 year old daughter and I were lucky enough to try the whole grain, the sesame seed, and the multigrain. She cut us a good-sized piece of each (read: 2-3 good-sized bites) and generously spread them with cream cheese. All three types were delicious, with or without the cream cheese. Beth was also very gracious to my daughter (don’t you just love it when people are nice to your kids?).

My daughter, who just that morning would not eat the Italian Bread I had baked because it had “seeds” on it, was enthusiastically munching down Beth’s sesame seed bagel, declaring it “delicious!” and asking for another piece!

Have any of you ever tried the Spelt Right Baking bagels? Please, if you have not, do! They are excellent. You’ll find them in the freezer aisle. Beth also has a pizza dough that you can find (along with the bagels) at Whole Foods, and she runs an online store as well, that includes breads in addition to the bagels and pizza dough.

You can read about Beth’s story on her website, www.speltrightbaking.com. You can follow her blog (where she posts daily!), The Lunchbox Chronicles.

parting is such…(insert oxymoronic phrase)

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, baking, books, good grief, recipes

my best work friend is moving on to greener pastures in the workforce…happy for her, sad for me.  of course,we plan to stay in touch and have even gone so far as to devise ways to accomplish this (we don’t live near each other), but it is still happy/sad. In The Happiness Project (http://www.happiness-project.com/), author Gretchen Rubin talks about this feeling (she calls it ‘happy/unhappy’ in her book), when the thing that makes you happy also makes you unhappy…one of her examples is eating more than one cupcake…i can relate to that.

how to officially say goodbye? usually at my company we offer up a cake of some sort (although more often than not, my departing friend is the cake baker/procurer) and a gift certificate to a local business.

her favorite cake is chocolate cake with chocolate frosting; guess i’d better get a-bakin’~http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Deep-Dark-Chocolate-Cake/Detail.aspx seems like as good a place to start as any.

how do you say goodbye to (favorite) work colleagues?

what are some favorite goodbye gifts that you have given (or received) under similar circumstances?

here is a link to some goodbye poems (may also be useful  in case any of you are cardmakers or scrapbookers ): http://www.poem-poetry.com/goodbye-poems.html

cookie break!

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, baking, recipes

and speaking of cookies…recently my coworker was walking around with a plate of her latest offering: homemade cookies. way to boost morale in the workplace!  one of her favorite websites for recipes is www.kingarthurflour.com.  i tried some of the recipes from this website and had great success with them (the blueberry muffins were a big hit with the kids…but that’s another story; today we are talking about cookies).

these are MY favorite cookies at the moment; either homemade (they sell a cookbook with the recipe) or you can go to the Beach Pea Bakery in Kittery and purchase one (or two or three!) already  made:  http://www.beachpeabaking.com/. if you go, check out the fougasse…

do you prefer to bake your own cookies or to have them handed to you?