Food with Friends

Saturday, I had  two couples over.  One couple we have known for many years, the other we have recently met.  The latter has lived in my neighborhood, but not 'near'.  So they are a "nye" neighbor.  There will be six of us, and that makes for a fun and intimate dinner.

My guests wanted to bring something.  I'm not a good appetizer planner, so I suggested appetizers. My menu is as follows:

Wine braised duck legs (with dried fruits)
Butternut squash ravioli with brocoli rabe
Pumpkin spoonbread
Apple/Kale Waldorf Salad, though I might substitute this for roasted pear and blue cheese salad.
Lemon Pie in a shortbread crust.

I think that any dessert with lemon is a nice ending for a rich dinner with duck--though this dessert was plenty rich.   I'm going to try my hand at making the ravioli.  I couldn't find it the last time that I made this dish and substituted cheese ravioli.  It was a sub-par substitute.

As I had to go to the Chinese market to get the duck legs, I found some wonton wrappers.  I roasted the butternut squash and added shallots and cream from an Emeril Lagasse recipe to fill them. It was easy to use the wontons.  I made a egg wash to seal, careful to press out the air.  I elected to freeze them thinking that would make them easier to handle.  I boiled them, but they became what I considered water logged.  I scooped them out and put them in a non-stick pan and dried them.  They were exceptional.

As I had more roasted Butternut squash than needed to process to filling, I substituted the squash for the pumpkin in the shortbread.  It was fantastic.

The Lemon Pie had Chef John Folse's filling from his Lemon Creme Brulee Tart coupled with a shortbread crust  (with ground almonds) v the one for his dessert.  Chef John has many wonderful recipes on his website, and they will be great arrows in your culinary quiver.  Make sure to take a look!  You will not be sorry.  His "Good Lovin'" brownies are stupendous.  One reason to be an intrepid cook is that you quickly learn how you can cobble together different recipes.  Often I'll substitute crusts for different tart/pie fillings.

I skipped the broiling of the top as I was going to served it with fresh raspberries and whipped cream (from my oh-so-handy whip cream dispenser.  I used lemon extract and confectioners sugar to flavor the cream.  It was a lovely and delicious ending to our meal.  I consider a meal like a job interview:  First impressions matter; last impressions linger.  I always like to have a Wow! dessert. Note that Wow desserts do not have to be difficult.  This dessert was easy (with the crust substitution); nevertheless it was elegant and delicious.

We had a great time.  One of my guests commented that he had worked at one of Williamsburg's finest restaurants for a short time, and that our meal rivaled anything that he had been a part of down there.  It was high praise.

Few things are as enjoyable as food with friends, and I'm grateful to have both.

Amazon Reviews Lament

I don't know about you guys, but when I read reviews, I want a review written by someone who purchased the product without concession, used it and comments on it. I am seeing an abundance of reviews, particularly for cheap stuff that has what I would consider an inordinate amount of reviews.  And, the subset of those reviews is a large amount of "I received this product in exchanged for my unbiased review."

I understand a smattering of these.  However, when almost every single review is like this, I don't consider these either valid or helpful.  In fact, it makes me want to move on to another product.  I simply don't trust a product that has to resort to so much 'paid' testimonials.  Further, despite the "unbiased review" proclamations, what you pay cannot help bu influence how you feel about a product--good intentions aside.

Rather, I want to see a review from a verified purchaser who shelled out his/her own money at full tilt, and hear about their buying experience.  Further, for rinky-dink products with tons of reviews with a high percentage of concessioned or free product, I just don't trust them.








DIY Bird Feeder using Rat Wire, Suet and Trees

With the last snow storm, our birds were struggling to find food and compete with the blackbirds (or grackles) that were marauding the feeder.  The marauders have to eat, too.  I wanted to put out a couple of more feeders with homemade suet.  I lacked containers, so I asked husbando if he had an appropriate wire available.

He indicated that he had a piece of rat wire.  After studying many clever ways of making a suet holder for the rat wire.  I wasn't up to making a wood frame.  I toyed with a number of other alternatives.  After brief consideration, and because the wire is pretty darn stiff, I determined that so long as I had a good tree crook, I could use the tree to provide the structure.
Rat wire

 I cut the piece of rat wire that I had in two (it could not have been more than a 9" x 15" piece). on simply cutting the piece that I had in two.  Rat wire is easy relatively easy for a novice to work with.  It is very STIFF!  That stiffness is why it works so well in this application.  Also, the ends, if they protrude as they do on the picture, will scratch you badly.

I had a pair of nippers and wire cutters.  The nippers seem to work more easily for cutting off all of the sharp ends all of the way around on each of my 2 pieces.  That was the most time consuming part of the projet.  .  You could also use Kline's, needle nose or craft wire cutters. 

After clipping, bent it gently rolled it lengthwise so that I could place suet in it and shove into a crook of the tree.  Because the wire is so stiff, once shoved into a sturdy enough croor, it is unbelievably secure.  The wire (and the tree) give the birds lots of purchase for perching and eating.   You could also shove pencils or a wooden dowels through to provide additional places for perching.


I took a picture.  My bird friends have been enjoying it from all angles--perched on any of the edges.

In fact, as I was taking this picture, the birds were scolding me to go away so that they could eat.  This feeder is in the crook of a Japanese maple tree in front of my house.  I can look out my office window and seeThe juncos and the downey wood pecker have been particularly frequenting it.  As I write a pair of blue jays have found it.  The finches don't eat from it, but they hog almost every perch on the regular feeder.  Luckily they shove their bill in like a shovel and spill seed for the ground feeders.

For the mix, I simply melted down lard, crunchy natural peanut butter (which I found at my salvage store) with corn meal and then mixed in a millet seed mix.  As the oils are room temperature hard, once it sets, it is sturdy.  Accordingly the rat wire structure simply needs to provide an extended support beyond the tree crook.   A 2' x 5' piece of rat wire is $8.77 at Home Depot.  You can make a lot of inexpensive bird feeders using this inexpensive wire.  If you don't have wire cutters, they are inexpensive. 

After you make your mix and let it set up, set your wire on some wax paper.  Glop your hardened mix on top the wire and compress it (use another piece of wax paper for the top side).  You now have a solid piece of food that your feathered friends will delight in.

If you like to feed birds, this is a skill-friendly (e.g. novice), budget-friendly way to help your feathered friends out during the winter and early spring. If you don't have wire cutters, consider getting some so that you can complete easy projects such as this.   Suet and summer are not compatible.  You can take your wire down, clean it and be ready for the next season!

Intrepid Soapmaking - | Batch 3, 4, 5

After two successful batches of soap, Batch 3, a hot process soap, proved disastrous.  I did not heed the admonitions to watch the crockpot (it was big, batch was small, and I figured the risk was negligible).  Wrong, in a big way.  The soap bubbled out in a big gooey mess.  I was not able to get the batch to non-zap stage after 3 hours.   Either I measured something wrong (I'm thinking that I must have left out some oil inadvertently (best not to be distracted in any way!) or the overflow caused an imbalance among the remainder ingredients.  As everything was mixed thoroughly, I would have expected homogeneity among all of the ingredients, as you would a cake. I threw it out. 

As I have some homemade soap,my knickers were not in a bind to have instant gratification.  Accordingly, I elected to try my hand at cold process soaps.  To be sure, cold process is where all of the too-good-you-could-almost-eat-it soaps come into play.  I decided to be simple.

Batch 4 which was my first cold process was one in which I incorporated kaolin clay and activated charcoal. It made very pretty bars of soap, though I'm ill-practiced at making design in soap.   However, I'm pleased with how pretty the soap came out (below).
Kaolin and activated charcoal

Coconut milk soap

Batch 5 was an attempt to make soap with coconut milk.  Picture above.  I've seen quite a few videos about freezing milk etc.  to prevent scorching.  However I stumbled upon a North Carolina Soapers page, and several folks noted that the substituted part of the water for milk (butter, coconut, etc), and added that at the thin trace stage. (Though one commenter mentioned she had problems with this, and did not illuminate more).  Adding at trace bypassed the cooking of the milk in the lye.  The soap above is  3 days.  It appears to be crumbling around the inner core.  PFFFFTTT!

I have no experience with any of this, but I elected to give it a try.  My lye solution was very concentrated, and it was not clear. In fact it was grainy.  ( I have since read that no more than 1/2 of the water required should be substituted with milk, and my solution fell within those guidelines).   I'm sure this was due to reduced water at this stage and there simply not being enough liquid to dissolve the lye.  Nevertheless, all appeared to incorporate well.  As warned, once the milk was added it would begin to set up quickly, so moved quickly to mold.

I'm unclear to gel or not to gel for this soap--I'll do some more research.  For this batch, I'll simply choose no gel.  The batch began to heat quickly in the loaf pan. It's freezing cold outside, so rather than put in the freezer, I simply put it on the deck rail.

To determine the quality of my 'recipe', I'll have to wait at least 6 weeks. When I unmolded, there was only a small amount of gelling in the middle.  The soap was brilliantly, beautifully white. (But now crumbly!)

P. S.  Update on my soaps.  Both of these soaps are spectacular.  The lather is rich and creamy, and they are a joy to use.  I've been sharing my soap making bounty with people in my life.  They, too, are enjoying using these luscious soaps.