Chicken corn chowder ~

~ Mmmm, onions ~

Rough estimates - soup makers understand this.   Additional salt with each added ingredient when sauteing, building layers.  Account for the salt that is in any favorite stock.   There can be a feeling of contentment at what the stockpot will produce before the process is even started...simply with the feeling of knowing it's time to make soup....starting slow...taking time, as I imagine soup lovers do when they enter the kitchen to make such comfort ~~ as I wish for lovers, too.    


Chicken corn chowder ~

Four chicken thighs
Two cobs of corn, kernels removed (of course frozen is fine)
One yellow onion, diced
Three cloves of garlic, minced
Four yukon gold potatoes, large dice
Roasted red peppers, diced, maybe less than 1/4 c.
Chicken stock - 2 quarts - more if you like
Small can of chopped green chilis, drained
Thyme
Touch of cream if desired

• In a stockpot....
• Saute (salt and pepper) chicken thighs in olive oil until done.  Remove, set aside.  Shred when cool.
• Add onion, saute until there is some brown color (add a touch more olive oil if you need it)
• Add garlic and corn, saute until soft  
• Add chicken stock, and potatoes.  Cook until potatoes are almost done.
• Return chicken to the pot.
• Add green chiles and red peppers.
• Add your desired cream, or half and half.  Go light at first.
• Adjust seasoning, more fresh pepper here is good.

Someday ~

Someday.  Someday.  I've used the word and feeling a lot in my life.  Someday.  Saving this, saving that, putting things in the back of my mind that whatever I was thinking of doing/using in the moment didn't fit, but it would someday.  Turns out, every day is someday.

If one can hold affection for an aspen tree trunk, I do.  I have been wanting a slice for some time, they are just gorgeous.  I picked one up a few months ago as there was a tree service cutting down two trees near my children's school.  Two other women were also gathered - I had to smile - creative women appreciating beauty, coveting limbs and trunk slices of that beauty.  

I was very happy to have the opportunity to use it for the first time two days ago, at a cozy wedding in a Sunriver home.  There is something nicely intimate about smaller weddings.  This one felt especially warm, evening vows, natural tones and winter. { Someday.}

I wish the pictures were better - I was on my own again, confused and oddly forlorn, not knowing which setting to use with what lighting with what focus, wishing I had someone to call and ask as this was one of the prettiest table settings I have done to date.   The colors of the table complimented the natural accents that were used surrounding the desserts.

Chocolate stout cake, espresso buttercream, ganache covering

Crisp meringue mushrooms, mini pumpkin cupcakes with caramel buttercream

Oh Sweet Mother Earth - these were omg good, I love myself. Lemon tarts with dark chocolate drizzle.

Desserts for 38

Chocolate ganache, peanut-butter ganache dollop.

Buche de Noel 2010

Chocolate peanut butter ganache ~

12 oz. dark chocolate, chopped - semi-sweet is fine.
1 1/3 c. heaving whipping cream.  I use 40%.
Peanut butter of your choice.  I prefer a natural peanut butter.

•  Place chocolate in a bowl.
• Heat cream to almost boiling, pour over chocolate.
• Let sit covered for five minutes.  Stir to smooth.
• Let sit several hours to thicken.
• Add peanut butter to taste.

This makes a lot for home use.  Truffles, anyone?

~ Someday ~ 

Forget me not ~

I don't take in large cupcake orders, not for weddings or events.  I find them less appealing than a cake, especially keeping qualities.  But I did take in one last week, for a memorial.  300 cupcakes. Though I didn't have as much time to spend on the accuracy of the flowers as I wished due to the other orders I had in place, then to add 300 cupcakes in a day, it was a lot for me.  It was a lot and I felt blessed to have this particular order.  His favorite color was blue, so I made Forget Me Nots - not so accurate, nice nonetheless.  The table was very pretty when all the different cupcakes were plated.
   
Baking that order touched me deeply, as I had someone special pass over recently, on November 17th.  I attended her memorial this past Saturday - someone that knew Karin spoke stories of connectedness with the date of November 17th "being a most auspicious day".  Sitting and listening to the story, I started piecing back to where I was that afternoon.  I'm sure for many people - November 17th was a "most auspicious day".  Love is in everything.  So I hope that this isn't morose in anyway - it is a loving gift to know someone, part of that knowing is their passing.


My youngest daughter said the following when I was telling my children of the memorial -- The love in someone's heart always goes to a baby when they die.  She's seven ~ children rock!!  :)

Coconut with cream cheese frosting

Pumpkin with cream cheese frosting

Chocolate with cream ganache

A poem from Karin's memorial ~ *love*

A VaIidiction

If we must part,

Then let it be like this;

Not heart on heart,

Nor with the useless anguish of a kiss;

But touch mine hand and say:

"Until tomorrow or some other day,

If we must part.

Words are so weak

When love hath been so strong:

Let silence speak:

 "Life is a little while, and love is long;

A time to sow and reap,

And after harvest a long time to sleep,

But words are weak."

--Ernest Dowson

 

Christmas cookie season ~

Love dangling

More to do

Well worth the price ~ a lovely baking book.  It's not my recipe, I don't feel right posting from a book source.  If anyone loves Scandinavian baking, this book is so nice to have in one's collection.

Lavender on Blue Monday ~

Precious beauty

I cut back my three lavender plants a few weeks ago, saving a handful of stalks to make a bouquet to give.  The plants aren't big at all, only basketball size.  They are precious beauty to me, as their home in the earth surrounding them is the only garden area I've been able to make - a small narrow strip on the street side of our home.  Little as it is, it give me great joy.  I hope the other three small plants I put in this year come back as the other three did about four years ago.  Marking time ~


This is the first and only lavender bouquet I have made so far.  There is one faint blue bud in it, which made me smile - it barely shows up in the pictures, but I will count that as good enough for Blue Monday.  If you click on the horizontal picture, I believe it's visible.  There is a chance that belief is only in my head.  :)

As I was wrapping the ribbon, I wondered what lavender means in flower language.  I already knew the destination of the bouquet, so I was looking forward to looking up the meaning, whatever it would be, it would be telling or appropriate or ironic.  Isn't that the way all messages are?

Lavender meaning.

In a box

Apple scones ~

Flour, a KitchenAid and Thee.


My children love these scones.  I believe these have replaced cinnamon chip or marionberry as their Most Favored Scone.  For me, they are a little soft, muffiny.  Not bad in any way, just not as dry or shortbreadish or less sweet as I care for in a scone.  But I didn't get up from the settee to make them for myself this snowy Saturday morning.  I felt that tug of therapy through baking and blurting out love for them in the form time spent baking for them. 


Apple walnut scones, on the sweet side.

2 c. flour
3/4 c. brown sugar
1 T. baking powder
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
6 T. butter

1 egg
1/2 c. heavy whipping cream
1 tsp. vanilla
1 apple, cored, peeled, in chunk sizes of your desire
1/2 walnuts

• Mix dry ingredients in mixing bowl, using the paddle attachment.
• Add butter, mix to pea size crumbs.
• Combine egg, cream, vanilla.  Add to butter mixture and stop short of fully combined.
• Add apples, walnut.  A few turns and it's ready.
• Move the mixture to a floured surface, patting out to an inch high.
• Cut as desired, I choose eight for this recipe.  You can also half the dough and make two discs of six.
• Brush with cream, add sugar or streusel.
• Bake at 425 - start checking after 15 minutes.  You're on your own after that.  They will spring back to the touch when done.

Flour, a KitchenAid and Thee.  The ability to make items with that paddle attachment is worth the cost of a KitchenAid.  At the very least, the 5qt. size.

I was tired of rounds and wedges

Humma-humma ~ Hummus

 

 

 

Hummus.   Hummus for Annie.

 

With slight adjustments, this is my favorite hummus recipe.  The original recipe is from Epicurious

 

Start with the lesser amounts listed on ingredients with a range.  Adjust to taste.

 

 

29 oz. can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed well
1/3 - 1/2 cup water
1/4 cup organic toasted tahini paste

1-2 T. lemon or lime juice
2 tablespoons olive oil 

1-2 teaspoons chipotles in adobo, either the sauce or a small part of the pepper itself 

2-3 large garlic cloves, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/3-1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Salt to taste 

 

Gotta love a food processor.  Remember when it was such a luxury or indulgence, that first one?   Maybe that was just me. 

 

Making this today yielded me one of those, "I feel special and loved by my mother." smiles from Annabelle.  She is the hummus lover in the family.  I happen to really like that idea, given she is only 11.  Making food as a form of giving love lately.  This felt good.  It's the little things that add up.