Batter-Splattered

Query

Is there anything more delicious than spending a quiet evening packing for a vacation you've been looking forward to for many long months? (glass of red wine in hand, of course)

I don't think so.

But to my surprise, it just got a little sweeter. After months of scouring the internet for things to do and see and eat during my trip to Portland with a friend, I just checked the events calendar at Powell's Books and discovered to my delight that Clothilde of Chocolate and Zucchini will be signing her new book on Friday, May 2 at Powell's on Burnside.

As if I weren't excited before! I will most certainly be in line to buy a book and have it signed.

Here's our list of things to do in Portland. Email me or leave a comment with more suggestions if you have them.

Download portland_list.doc

Genius that I am... (zucchini with everything bread)

Genius that I am, it just wouldn't sink in that my oven was broken. Kaput. What's a girl with a food blog to do with a rotten piece of luck like that? And to add insult to injury, it broke the day of the Great Alaskan Clean-Out-Your-Freezer Potluck.

It's a gas oven and there was no spark and there was no gas. Everyone at the potluck who knew the slightest thing about ovens gladly got down on their hands and knees to take the oven's bits apart piece by piece, blow on them, shake them around a little, poke here, poke there, there was even some clunk clunk clunking, before saying definitively, "HUH!"

Very disappointing. And because tax time is fast approaching (wait, what's the date today?) as well as a weeklong vacation to Portland, I was very reluctant to call a repairman. I know how much Uncle Same wants, the bastard, but who knows how much money a freaking appliance repairman would take me for.

Luckily, the husband recently bought a camper to take overnight fishing (more on that later) and he was more than happy to fire up its little oven, running back and forth, baking things left and right. It seemed to make him feel downright useful and so smart for buying that camper when he did for such a scream of a deal.

But like I said, it just wouldn't sink in that the oven was broken. I'd be sitting at work dreaming up what we would have for dinner that night... roast vegetables, roasted fish, maybe a cake... oh wait a minute, the oven's broken! Scratch all that.

I'd do the same thing at the market. Hungering for a pizza, I'd remember the oven was broken and the very next moment, I'd be gathering the goods to make a calzone.

Not until I got home and reached to fire up the oven would I remember... DAMN IT.

It's like during a power outage when it just doesn't click that there is no light, anywhere, and no you can't open the refrigerator door and read by that light either.

This went on for a week or so. I even hauled the crockpot out and dusted it off and told it to get ready to work. Then on Sunday I was firing up the stovetop (thank god that still worked) and I decided just for the hell of it to turn the oven on too. I promptly forgot I'd done so. Then a few minutes later the little beep went off, signaling the oven was all preheated for me.

Yeah right, I thought. Oh oven, don't be cruel.

But then I opened the door and what do you think happened? A blast of very hot air came rushing out. It even blew my hair back a little, that gush of heat.

It fixed itself!

It's unprecedented.

You can bet I raised both arms in the air and shook my V for Victory fingers. And spun around a few times. Oh yes, there was spinning. Lots of spinning.

Which brings me to last night's dinner.  Some nights you want an honest-to-god dinner with all four food groups represented. But other nights, all you want is a little something un-dinner-like. Scrambled eggs maybe. Ice cream perhaps.

I rummaged around in the fridge and came out with two zucchinis and a lemon, remnants from a CSA box. I leafed through a few cookbooks until I found a recipe that was just right.

I have this cookbook I bought years ago in the bargain books section at Borders. Mary Englebreit's Queen of the Kitchen Cookbook. I don't turn to it all that often (my cookbooks are sadly neglected because I get most of my recipes from my best friend, the Interweb) but everything I've made from it is really top-notch. The index lists things like Best-Ever Devil's Food Cake, Diner-Style Meatloaf, Filet MIgnon with Wild Mushrooms, Lemon and Chive Salmon Cakes, Farmhouse Walnut Pie, the list goes on and on. Pretty pictures. Good recipes. Mm. Mm. Mm.

Mary calls this zucchini-lemon quick bread. I decided to call it zucchini with everything bread because it really does have a little something for everyone -- lemon zest and juice, craisins, almonds (although I used walnuts), and of course, zucchini. The top of the bread turns out crunchy and candy-like. Inside, it's all soft and moist and bursting with flavor.

For dinner that night, I had a couple of slices of this and a couple of shots of good whiskey. I had the house to myself and could indulge myself with this rather unorthodox but totally delicious dinner.

I'll be making this again real soon.

Zucchini with Everything Bread

Makes one loaf

1 1/2 c flour

2 t baking powder

1/2 t baking soda

1 t cinnamon

1/4 t allspice

1/4 t nutmeg

1/4 t salt

3/4 c sugar

6 T unsalted butter, melted and cooled

2 large eggs

2 T grated lemon zest

1/4 c fresh lemon juice (about 1 large lemon)

1 t vanilla

2 c grated zucchini

1 cup chopped nut -- walnuts, blanched almonds, etc.

1/2 c dried cranberries or golden raisins

Melt your 6 T of butter and set aside to cool. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and salt.

In a large bowl, beat sugar, melted butter, eggs, lemon zest and juice, and vanilla with an electric mixer until well blended. With a rubber spatula or a wooden spoon, stir in the zucchini. Add the flour mixture and stir until blended. Fold in the nuts and cranberries. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing the top with a rubber spatula.

Bake for about 1 hour, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let bread cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and let cool completely. Cut into 1/2-inch thick slices and serve.

What donut are you?

Take the what-kind-of-donut-are-you quiz. It's fun. I am:

You Are a Powdered Devil's Food Donut

A total sweetheart on the outside, you love to fool people with your innocent image. On the inside you're a little darker, richer, and more complex. You're a hedonist who demands more than one pleasure at a time. Decadent and daring, you test the limits of human indulgence.

What Donut Are You?

Thanks to Boston Creme Kelly for the link!

mourn with me now, won't you please?

Last night I got home from work and was positively buoyed by the sun still shining brightly outside. We're just now coming out of what I like to call The Tunnel. December and January are very dark months here. I go to work in the dark. I come home and it's dark. I barely leave work in the afternoon and the blackness makes me feel like it's time to go home and crawl into bed. I don't notice it so much as I'm plodding along. I don't like to whine and I try not to fixate on the negative.

But FEBRUARY! February is like the light at the end of that tunnel.

Last night it was still bright and sunny with blue skies when I got home from work -- and okay it was cold and windy as hell but you take the good with the bad and don't be a baby -- and I got this surge of energy and so I surged my way right into the kitchen and proceeded to prepare in short order: dinner for last night and all the fixin's for tonight's dinner and then I got started on banana crumble muffins... I had the paper cups in the muffin pan when I stopped and took stock of my maniacality (it's a word, no really) and that's when I decided it was time to step away from the recipes before I crashed into a twitching puddle of goo on the kitchen floor.

The sun was setting after all. It was time to ensconce myself on the couch and take the rare opportunity to watch some trashy television, the type of thing my husband would never watch with me. But seen as how he was off playing pool somewhere and eating hamburgers with friends from out of town: E!, here I come.

Fast forward to this evening as I headed home anticipating the sweet sweet smell of a crockpot crocking away on my kitchen counter, full of comfort food that I chopped -- moose and carrots and celery and onions and potatoes, etc -- and combined the night before and stored in the fridge. I hauled it out this morning in a daze and I turned the switch to high for awhile and then to low.

As I pulled into the driveway after work, I could almost smell it.

And then I opened the door and hhhmmmmm. No smell. No comfort.

I forgot to plug the damn thing in.

I commiserated with my husband on the phone just now and asked him when he was coming home from more pool-playing to throw out my uncooked stew of sadness.

"Oh no!" he said. "Just plug it in. It'll be fine."

Huh? It's been sitting there on the counter for 12 hours.

"Not sitting," he countered. "Marinating!"

Huh?

I finally figured: what the hell? I told him he'd have to eat the first bowl while I watched attentively, waiting for him to projectile vomit all over me.

"Yes," he said agreeably. "It'll be like an early Valentine's present." 

I'll let you know how this crockpot tale of woe turns out.

an ode to blackberries

Pop one blackberry in my mouth and I'm eight years old again, pushing my way through bushes as tall as I am to pluck buckets full of hot, juicy blackberries along the railroad tracks that split my little town in two, pluck, pluck, plucking, and watching out for snakes and listening warily for the buzz of beehives suspended in the brush.

You can just barely hear the waves of the Gulf of Mexico washing up on beaches full of sand trucked in from out of state -- a reef along the coast keeps out sand and shells -- so there's nary a shark's tooth to be found which, I'll think you'll agree with me, sort of ruins the appeal of going to the beach.

My elementary school is just off to my right through the trees and just on the other side of the tracks to my left is where my poorer classmates live in tiny houses with real hardwood floors, slamming screen doors, and green lawns towered over by magnolia trees and the looming branches of live oaks dripping with spanish moss.

The heat and humidity is stifling but you can smell honeysuckle and if the breeze is just right you can also catch the salty sea scent of shrimp boats at the piers. Even today, I can't peel a fresh shrimp without wanting to breathe in the aroma of the bowl of shrimp shells I'm about to discard -- others might distastefully sweep those crunchy crustacean leftovers straight into the trash can -- go ahead and wrinkle your nose, but I take a moment to savor the smell of the sea.

Berries, berries, beautiful berries and they're all ripe for the plucking in every direction, every which way, at a price too good to be true, what my friend's friend calls his favorite flavor: FREE. Today I live in a climate not at all suited to growing blackberries, but back then they were so plentiful and hot and ripe they just about fell apart in my fingers, which were so raw from the hairy thorns of the blackberry bushes I never knew if my fingertips were stained with juice or blood or both.

Nowadays, once I start picking berries I don't want to stop but back then it was just a chore, something my mom had to drag me and my brother off to do. I would have rather been off swimming in cool water or sitting on a porch reading a book. But pop one blackberry in my mouth and I'm eight years old again and I can close my eyes and hear the mockingbirds call and the screen doors slam and the breeze ruffle the leaves of oak trees.

And on the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me... viruses!

I took an impromptu blogging break for a few weeks because my computer crashed. Slam, bang, screech, crunch, kaput. I had viruses. Bad ones. I had viruses so bad they shut down the Norton anti-virus program I cough up $50 for each year. Think about that.

And sure, I could have been busy testing new recipes and taking photos for future posts because I did throw some mighty nice get-togethers for Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years (that's right! all three!), but I took those opportunities to make the recipes I've liked best this year, stuff I've already shared with you and wanted to share with family and friends. And then throw in all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. And then throw in the lack of daylight to take smashing photos by... why, did you know we're only getting five and a half hours of daylight each day? That's dark. I leave for work in the morning? It's dark. I leave the office in the evening? It's dark. As soon as I leave the office, I feel like it's bedtime. And my husband wonders why I just sit and stare at the backyard on the weekends when there's actually daylight to see my new trees! My trees! Doesn't that sound awesome? Mine. All mine.

I love this house.

A couple of photos I did take here and there and there and here:

Wooden angel, a gift from Grandma a few years ago, in front of a new painting, a gift I picked out for myself this year on Etsy. My husband asked me what I wanted and I pointed to this painting online and said, "Gimme that!" And he did.

A wad of raffia for wrapping gifts...

I'll be back soon with a recipe!