Batter-Splattered

baby shower bragging

Not too long ago, I threw a baby shower for my brother and sister-in-law. They're expecting their first baby in a month or so and we're all very excited. When I asked to be in charge of the shower and my sister-in-law agreed, I promised her that everything would be totally tasteful except for the cake. The cake would have to be totally trashy and tacky. She whole-heartedly agreed with this plan. And so my search for a bad baby cake began.

I think I came through with flying colors:

More on that cake later...

Confession: I've never been to a baby shower before. I know! How is that even possible? Having no practical experience at such things, I was relieved when they said they didn't want it to be too "baby-shower-y" and so it was co-ed, guys and gals and kids all welcome, come one come all, with beer and burgers on the grill. Excellent. That's my kind of party, no matter what the occasion.

Here are a few of my favorite things that I whipped up for it.

There was a yellow and gray color scheme.

There was the requisite baby shower diaper cake:

It turned out pretty good, yes? Well, honestly, it was kind of a pain in the ass to build. I bought a case of newborn diapers and I am now a total pro at rolling them into somewhat uniform bundles. We set about building the cake and were 99% done when we discovered that we were missing the dozen or so additional diapers we needed to complete the layers. So we took it all apart and re-built it differently. And that time we found we had a dozen or so leftover diapers. We were confounded, but definitely not in the mood to go back to the store for more diapers... so don't tell anyone but inside each layer is a bowl taking up space. We wanted lots of layers to make it especially impressive. Then when I wrapped the ribbon around each layer, I discovered I was a mere inch-and-a-half short on ribbon, so back to the store I went to get another spool.

My mom and I made some great big paper dahlias:

They might not look that big in the photo, but they were the size of family-size pizzas. There's a tutorial here on how to make them. Back when I discovered that tutorial, there weren't many paper dahlias in Google images but they've really gotten popular. There are now photos of dahlias galore. I think I'll make a black one like this one for Halloween this year. Maybe with a spooky skull or something pressed into the center of the flower.

We hung them on their stair railing:

For food, we made a roasted vegetable and goat cheese pasta salad:

And a rainbow Asian slaw:

Some white strawberry sangria (in the punchbowl) and strawberry lemonde (in the big jar):

And there were burgers and beer.

The cake looked even more disturbing after we cut into it. A friend suggested I should have made a red velvet cake to add to the horror when you cut into it.

The red velvet would have been awesome but what I used was this recipe, because it's one of my favorite cakes ever and I'll use any excuse to make it, but also because I needed some solid cake layers that would be strong enough to prop up the baby parts without them slumping. The cake layers in that recipe are more like banana bread than cake, so they're nice and supportive. I attached the doll parts to the cake by inserting wooden chopsticks inside the legs and arms then poked the other end of the sticks into the cake. 

I got the baby doll from the thrift store and managed to scare the crap out of a woman at the store. She glanced over at me and I had the naked baby casually clamped by its neck under one of my forearms. She thought for a moment that it was a real baby dangling there and she let out a shriek. Awesome. If she only knew my plans for it. One of the party guests posted a photo of the cake on her facebook page and her grandmother informed her that she did not like the cake. So be forewarned: this cake is not for everyone. 

When I got home, my dog Sadie took an instant liking to the doll and kept trying to carry it around the house by one of its arms. But that disturbed my husband so he took it away and hid it until I found the time to dismember it and wash the parts in the dishwasher to get rid of all the kid and shopper and chocolate lab germs:

If you look closely at one of the hands though, you'll see that Sadie managed to chew a few fingers off the doll when I wasn't paying attention. At first, I was thinking I'd have to go back to the thrift store and get another doll but then decided to just go with it. 

The cake was a big hit at the party and later on Facebook. So much so that my friend Katie, who now lives in Vermont, asked me for suggestions on how to modify it for her baby's first birthday party. I suggested one of those big "1" wax candles and maybe put a glittery party hat on the doll's head. I mailed her the body parts (I wonder if the post office xrayed the box?) and now they live in Vermont with baby Jaxon:

this moment

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

See more moments here.

march madness

It's snowing up a storm outside, the Facebook is lit up with friends complaining about their sloppy drives to work, the forecast says it's supposed to keep snowing until 5 a.m. tomorrow... but me? I don't care. I have the day off. It's Seward's Day, the day we celebrate the 1867 purchase of Alaska. And what better way to celebrate it than with a late-winter / early-spring snowstorm?

The photo above is of last night's dinner on the barbecue. Grilling in fresh snow requires many, many shoe changes -- from snowboots for outside to slippers for inside, back and forth, in and out the back door to check on the grill, trying not to trip on the shoelaces I'm too lazy to tie each time. I soldiered through though, managed not to trip down the back steps and do a face-plant in the fresh snow, and the kebabs were totally worth it.

My grilling sidekick Sadie on the back porch, surveying the backyard:

All this snow will be even more fun later this week when the temperatures are supposed to rise. The fluffy white stuff will be puddles, puddles everywhere. Better have my waterproof boots at the ready.

Here's a poem from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow regarding snow. I think it's beautiful. And I love the way he hyphenates the word 'snow-flakes.' And below the poem is the recipe for those kebabs.

Snow-flakes

Out of the bosom of the Air,

 Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,

 Over the woodlands brown and bare,

 Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

 Silent, and soft, and slow

 Descends the snow.

 

Even as our cloudy fancies take

 Suddenly shape in some divine expression,

 Even as the troubled heart doth make

 In the white countenance confession,

 The troubled sky reveals

 The grief it feels.

 

This is the poem of the air,

 Slowly in silent syllables recorded;

 This is the secret of despair,

 Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,

 Now whispered and revealed

 To wood and field.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chicken and Veggie Kebabs

Serves four

Click the link above for the original recipe. It's open to lots of variations. I usually use a dried Italian herb mix for seasoning the marinade but have also used a fresh herb mix and both are good. Sometimes, instead of marinating the chicken and vegetables separately, I get lazy and just toss everything together in the same bag or bowl then marinate. This is good, easy, healthy cooking at its best.

1 pound chicken breast cut into one-inch cubes

1 cup Italian salad dressing, divided

1/4 cup olive oil

1/2 teaspoon dried Italian herb mix

1 medium zucchini, cut into 1/2-inch slices

1 yellow summer squash, cut into 1/2-inch slices

2 medium onions, quartered

1 medium sweet red pepper, cut into 1-inch pieces

2 cups cherry tomatoes

In a small resealable plastic bag, combine chicken and 1/2 cup salad dressing. Seal bag and turn to coat; refrigerate for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, in a large resealable plastic bag, combine the oil, garlic salt and herbs; add vegetables. Seal bag toss to coat. Drain and discard marinades. On eight metal or soaked wooden skewers, alternately thread chicken and vegetables. Grill kabobs, uncovered, over medium-hot heat for 12-15 minutes or until juices run clear, turning and basting occasionally with remaining salad dressing.

the plague and a snowstorm and some chicken noodle soup

It set in on Sunday night. A slightly-dazed feeling, a sore neck, a scratchy throat, and a runny nose. I should have known. My cabin-mates had mocked me for snoring the night before. I thought that was odd because the only time I snore is when I have a sore throat. It was a hint of the illness to come. I'd either caught a cold or I'd caught a case of Scout:

Everyone who lives with him for awhile says they're allergic to him, and seen as how I'd spent a long weekend with him in a small cabin, petting him every chance I got, my friends didn't even have to ask what my symptoms were -- they just rattled them off and said, yep, he'd gotten me too.

Liars. Who could say such things about Scout? Look at that face.

I spent a sleepless Sunday night, tossing and turning, my scratchy throat making me cough every 30 seconds or so, keeping me awake, the scratchy-ness even resisting the advances of soothing cough drops. In the morning when the alarm went off, I felt even worse and after brushing my teeth, I gave up, called in sick to work, and went back to bed.

When I finally woke up, it looked like this outside:

Lots of fresh snow had fallen overnight. Sadie emerged onto the front porch and threw back her head to give the air a good, long sniff...

...then she debated whether or not to bark at the neighbor snowblowing his driveway, but ultimately decided to go back inside to hop up on the couch again for another nap. She has the best ideas (except when it comes to bouncily happily up to a moose to say HELLO, what kind of dog are you?).

Thank goodness for library books and netflix.

(highly recommended: Love Bomb by Lisa Zeidner, the bbc series Call the Midwife, and the Showtime show Shameless -- I loved the first season of Shameless and I'm just starting the second. It's so raunchy and real. I haven't cracked open the cookbook yet but how can you go wrong with David Lebovitz?)

I managed to drag myself off the couch just long enough to go the store to get the stuff to make chicken noodle soup, buy some cold-fighting accoutrements, and take the bored dog for a short walk.

I have a recipe for chicken noodle soup that I swear by -- this one. It's the recipe that, way-back-when, convinced my future husband that I was a-okay in the cooking department. But a little googling had me convinced that the only right way to make chicken noodle soup was to use water instead of broth and a whole chicken, with skin, instead of my old standby of boneless skinless thighs. I was game to try it. I needed all the help I could get in the cold-fighting department.

Except I kinda waffled right before I added the chicken to the pot and pulled off most of its skin, then felt the need to apologize to it.

And I caved and used chicken broth instead of water. The doubting Thomas in me just didn't believe the water was gonna flavor-up.

I even got a burst of energy and decided to pull out my thrift store score of a bread machine and make a loaf of parmesan pepper bread.

Notice the shot of bourbon lurking there on the counter. It's medicinal.

I got the soup almost done then decided to hold off on finishing it because the bread machine still needed another hour or two to do it's thing. So I set the pot full of soup out on the back porch to cool in the winter chill. So far so good but then oh dear...

When I brought it back inside, I was horrified by what I saw inside the pot. Bubbles all over the surface of the soup. Chicken fat bubbles, not yet congealed into greasy fat that could not be easily scooped off and thrown out. I googled for a quick solution, thinking internet-don't-fail-me-now, but all I found were things that wouldn't work (refrigerate overnight then scoop off the fat - but I need soup NOW not tomorrow) or things I did not have (pour the broth into one of those grease-separating pitchers).

In the end, I scooped off what I could, then cranked up the heat on the stove and simmered it till the bubbles had dispersed into the broth. The soup turned out okay, I guess, but it was a little cringe-inducing to think about all the fat we were sipping.

Next time, it's back to my old favorite of a soup recipe.

a pretty much perfect Saturday: the dog park then pho

My peeps and our pups headed to the dog park on a gloomy Saturday and we all had us a time:

That's Riley on the left, sporting her thrift store fleece coat that was modified just for her -- a weimeraner's coat just doesn't stand a chance against an Alaskan winter. On the right is Sadie, primly pretending she doesn't really want the stick which is why she's barely biting it with her two front teeth.

Baxter Bog, in all its gray-day glory:

I cannot be restrained by instagram's square frames:

Moose nibbles on downed trees:

My parents emerge from the enchanted forest onto the frozen bog:

There's something very Wes Anderson about this:

I have a thing for power lines, especially in the winter time:

A flyer posted on the bulletin board in the parking lot -- poor Elwin:

We returned to the car cold and hungry and made a beeline for my new favorite restaurant, Pho Vietnam on Jewel Lake, a no-frills but inviting and friendly spot that offers absolutely delicious dishes.

I died and went to red curry heaven. I could eat that soup every day and must try to re-create it at home. Now, where's the best place to buy a good curry paste in Anchorage?

healthy - schmealthy clam chowder

This past summer, I went on two wonderful but exhausting (and very cold and muddy) trips down to Ninilchik, Alaska to dig for clams. Both trips were brightened by dashes into the town of Homer to have delicious and warming dinners at Fat Olives.

It's November now and we just ate some of the fruits of our labors in a lightened-up version of clam chowder... keep scrolling on down to hear more about that but for now, please take a stroll down memory lane with me. What follows are photos from our clam-digging expeditions.

A crow on the beach in Homer:

Youths on the beach in Homer - they were running and shrieking because they thought the white truck in the distance was going to mow them down. It was racing up and down the beach and spinning in circles in a most reckless manner, so perhaps they did have a reason to shriek.

Suiting up to dig some clams:

It was much colder down there on the beach than I thought it was going to be so I just piled on every article of clothing I'd brought with me. My god, I was puffy that day.

Clammers united:

Our hunting grounds:

Some of our haul of razor clams from the first trip:

For the uninitiated, to dig razor clams you watch the tidebooks for a very low tide, you wait on the beach until the tide rolls out, and then you wander around the newly-exposed sand with a thousand other people, looking for little dimples in the sand -- the sign that a clam is hidden below. You can either dig them out with a shovel or with a tube called a clam gun. Both are pretty challenging. Those clams do not give up easily and they keep digging deeper and deeper in order to escape you. Usually you give up trying to suck them up with the gun and just reach down into the hole you've dug, all the way up to your shoulder, and fish around in the watery sand until you feel the clam, grab it, and then victory is yours.

The photos above were from our Cinco de Mayo trip, back before I had an iphone. And what follows are photos from our Fourth of July trip and by that that time I was well under the sway of my new iphone and was using hipstamatic all the time.

This young eagle was perfectly content to patiently pose for photos for us, much to the delight our out-of-town guest, Iditarod Heidi. That's what I call her because we first met her when she came up from Portland a few years ago to volunteer at the Iditarod and she stayed at my mom's house. She's been a regular visitor ever since.

Dinner at the aforementioned Fat Olives:

Fast-forward to the next day at the beach, mustering to dig some clams:

Sadie looks thrilled to go clam-digging here but that's just because she thinks she gets to go swimming. She did not get to go swimming and her mood quickly darkened when she realized she was just going to stand around in mud.

Here are the clam guns I mentioned before:

xtra tuf boots are essential clam-digging gear. If only they made them for dogs.

After the digging was done, we started a fire and heated up a huge pot of Manhattan Clam Chowder made with some of the clams we dug on our previous trip on Cinco de Mayo:

It was delicious. Our group polished off the whole pot.

There's even more work waiting for you at home because then you have to clean all those clams. The digging part is really addictive. It's hard to walk past a dimple in the sand without chasing down the clam that made it. Luckily, the tide is only out for a couple of hours and then you're forced back to shore. But after an hour hunched over the sink cleaning clams, you begin to wonder what possessed you to dig so many.

Fast-forward to now: 

I have a clam dilemma. I am now the proud owner of loads of razor clams, tucked away in my freezer. Where's the dilemma, you might ask? The thing is my husband won't eat them, in spite of that one time he came home very late at night with a huge bucket of razor clams that he and a friend had dug that day and he told me I'd have to clean them for him because he had to leave for work very early the next morning. I'd never cleaned a clam before in my life. Thank god for Google... While you're cleaning and chopping the clams, they'll suddenly spring to life and clench up like the little muscle that they are. Oh my god, I screamed my way through that entire bucket but I got the job done, and so imagine my chagrin when my husband decided he wasn't a clam-eating kind of a guy.

It's a problem for a gal who has ten pounds (!) worth of razor clams stashed in her freezer. I'm determined to polish them off before we dig for more next year, so lately whenever I plan to go to dinner at my extended family's house, I suggest we have something clammy, because they are a clam-loving bunch.

One of these days, I'll get around to making a classic creamy potato-y clam chowder but thus far, it's seemed far too ho-hum and I've gone in search of racier and more interesting fare. This grilled and garlicky clam pizza, for instance, is very good. Here's a photo I dug up of that pizza:

It was really good. We grilled some more of them up on Halloween night while waiting for trick-or-treaters.

Most clammy recipes I find are for other smaller types of fresh clams that need to be cooked in the shell right in the soup pot, so I always change things up a bit to accomodate for the razor clams, which we remove from the shells right away, then bag them up and freeze them. As they thaw they release this white milky liquid that flavors up a soup broth in a very tasty way.

This chowder that I made recently tastes of the sea in that way that the best seafood dishes do. Or, as my sister-in-law Mariah put it, it tastes even better than the sea. Scroll down for the recipe with my modifications.

There was very low light by the time dinner rolled around and all I had was my iphone but here's what the results looked like, right before they disappeared completely:

Clam Chowder, Lightened-up

Serves 4

1 pound razor clam meat, chopped, don't rinse - keep the liquid they create

2 large red-skinned potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes

2 slices bacon, chopped

1 medium onion, diced

1 stalk celery, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon fresh thyme

2 bay leaves

1/2 teaspoon paprika, plus more for sprinkling

1 cup fat-free half-and-half

Salt and freshly ground pepper

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives or green onions

Crusty bread and a nice salad would be good on the side

Cook the bacon in a skillet over medium heat until crisp, about 5 minutes. Add the onion and celery and cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, thyme, bay leaves, and paprika and cook, stirring, about 3 more minutes. Add broth and potatoes. Cover and simmer until potatoes are soft. Stir the clam meat and half-and-half into the soup; remove from the heat, cover and set aside, letting the heat of the soup cook the clam meat to your desired done-ness. I just let it sit for a few minutes until the clams turn white, much the way you would with shrimp. Season the soup with salt and pepper and reheat. Serve topped with a parsley, chives (or green onions) and and a sprinkle of paprika.