Creme Brulee Fiasco

After reading about creme brulee on the Pioneer Woman's blog at http://thepioneerwoman.com/ , my little sis and I decided to make some. It didn't look so hard, after all. We were sure we could do it!


This is me and my little sis. She always stays behing me in pictures, making it look like she's tiny, and consequently I'm BIG! It's a conspiracy! Never mind that in reality I weigh 15 lbs. more than her. Any way, that's muscle! ;)
OK, so we decided that we had to get pretty before we made creme brulee.


Only being "prettied up" is very different for each of us. She was already beautifully dressed with her hair all coifed and wearing accessories. She needed make-up to feel beautiful. I, on the other hand, wanted to put on a clean shirt that didn't clash too horribly with my scarf that hides my messy hair. And brush my teeth. Clean teeth mean I'm set for the day, regardless of anything else.
It's funny about that. A friend recently commented that there's no way we both grew up in _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . But we did, really!


So, the creme brulee was a fiasco! It was my fault, really. I was in controll of the mixer. I mixed WAY TOO MUCH air into the custard. If you've never made it before, please remember NOT to do this. The custard was supposed to fill 6 ramekins. It filled at least double that. We had to find something else to put the rest in. This happened because I was so nervous about tempering the eggs. Next time, it will be much better. I won't make that mistake again.


Because it was so light and fluffy, the custard began to brown right away. It's NOT supposed to brown, just set nicely. It was also not very dense. It should be a lovely dense custard. It also fell after baking so there was yucky custard on the sides of each ramekin. That burnded dirung the sugar torching process (that we did with a propane torch of my husbands).


However, it was incredibly delish even after all the mistakes. I can hardly wait to do it again! Oh my, it will be heaven next time, I'm sure!

Fresh Bread and Goodbye Snow Peas

Yesterday I finally baked bread. I made 6 loaves. The first 4 were pilgrim's bread, and two of them I made into cinnamon swirl bread. The last 2 were brown bread. My brown bread recipe is one of Dan's favorites. It's good with jam, especially raspberry.



I'm really not sure what happened to the 2 loaves on the right. They're the same dough as on the left. The only difference is that the ones on the left are the ones I made into cinnamon swirl. I'm sure the taste and texture when baked will be fine, but I like it pretty.



The finished pilgrim's bread loaves.



All the finished bread. One of the loaves of cinnamon swirl lasted a whole 10 minutes. I guess this won't last a week!



And, I pulled the snow pea vines today. There were a lot of little green worms in them. I'm going to try to find out what they are, since I'm pretty sure they've eaten holes in all of my plants.

We ended our day yesterday with a trip to town for groceries. I found some heirloom and open pollinated seeds to plant in the empty spaces. It looks like if these grow we'll be ending our gardening season with some nice green salads! I decided on:
-white icicle radish
-broccoli raab
-chioggia beet (mostly for the greens, but perhaps we'll get some small beets before the cold weather)
-arugula
-chard

I'm going to weed and plant!

Happy Sunday, everyone! God's peace to you!

Carrob (or chocolate) Chip Cookies

I made these cookies a few days ago. The word cookie, some may find misleading. They're not a typical desert. They're more of a breakfast bar, or a filling snack. They're lower in fat and sugar than most cookies. They're soft and dense rather than chewy or crispy. Dan and I really enjoy things like this, and I feel good about offering them to the kids when they're hungry between meals.

Here's the recipe:

mix well

1/2 c. oil*

1/2 c. honey

2 eggs

1 t. vanilla

mix in a separate bowl

2 1/3 c. whole wheat flour**

2 t. baking powder

1 t. salt

1 c. chopped nuts

3/4 c. carob chips or chocolate chips

***

Bake @ 350 for about 10 minutes

* When I made these last time, I doubled the batch and used 1/2 c. oil and 1 banana. You can use all or part pumpkin or apple sauce in place of the oil as well. They all work out very well to cut back on fats, and they taste great.

** You can use part white if you want to, or part oat flour, or measure scantly and add wheat germ or flax seed meal, almost anything works.

*** I added raw sunflower seeds to the mix as well.

By the way, if anyone has any good suggestions on how to use up raw sunflower seeds (or roasted, for that matter, since I can do that too) please let me know. I bought 50 lbs. of them about a year ago, shared with friends, and still have a 2/3 full five gallon bucket in the freezer (as well as a bucket of wheat germ). I admit I went a bit over board. Now I put them in and on everything! I'll show you the freezer, since I just cleaned and organized it.

Ummm...yep, "BAD" turkey waiting at the bottom. Since I watched Food, Inc, it may be waiting a L-O-N-G time. And ace hardware buckets...really food safe there...but any way, there ya have it!