Books and Baking

 

Hello dear friends and family! This blog post was meant for early March when hyacinths were in bloom in our garden but March slipped by and then I hoped to publish it near Easter.

Then my old Mac aged out and I've been fumbling around on the new one. Finally my priorities changed when we expected a visit from our two charming granddaughters and their parents. The girls took this selfie on my phone when they were here and left it to surprise me--see why my priorities changed! Can you blame me?

 But waste not, want not, so here goes with one book and the other two will be covered at Across the Way. I'll try linking to it, here. If it doesn't work I'll try to correct it after both posts publish.

 Confessions of a Closet Master Baker, One Woman's Sweet Journey from Unhappy Hollywood Executive to Contented Country Baker is by Gesine Bullock-Prado. And yes, she is the sister of Sandra Bullock.

 I enjoyed this account of how Gesine went from being a lawyer to Hollywood executive to owner/baker of Gesine's Confectionary in Montpelier, Vermont. 

It was interesting learning a little background of the sisters' family life with their father and opera singer mother.

I enjoyed learning about the life she shares with her husband who illustrated her book. 

 

Since our grandson Drake and his wife Emily have been  sharing eggs with us from their olive egger hens this spring, it was the perfect time to try Gesine's recipe for Golden Eggs. One morning I set out the eggs and gathered my ingredients. 

 

By mid-morning the scent of freshly grated nutmeg and vanilla was in the air. That's the last little bit of vanilla I made in a bottle of cognac last spring so I hope it lasts until the new bottle ages for six weeks.

What makes the cupcakes extra special is that you dip them in melted butter and then roll them in cinnamon-sugar. So scrumptious and they make a nice Easter treat.

Here's a link to Gesine showing how to make her Golden Eggs on YouTube.  Gesine's are prettier than mine but I don't believe hers could taste any better than these. 

I sent this dozen to son Zack's crew at the job, froze 4, gave 2 more away, and that left 6 for RH and me. 

Thank you to Drake and Emily for being so generous with these eggs. Here's a picture of them and our two precious great-grandchildren!

 

I also made a huge bowl of potato salad with a dozen of these eggs and it was a beautiful color with all of those orange yolks. I shared big jars of that with family too. 

Thank you for reading. Please hug your children or grandchildren tight and tell your loved ones you love them every chance you get. If you're from the Nashville area you're even more aware of the importance of that ever since the morning of March 27, 2023. 

I listen to the Sunday services from the Covenant Presbyterian Church have felt so heartbroken for the tragedy and loss affecting the church and school family as well as all of Nashville. 

I admit I've felt hopeless about anything ever changing to prevent more children from being slaughtered in mass school shootings in the United States of America. But with thousands of students here in Nashville and across the states protesting--future voters--some day this may stop. 

I pray so.
 

Playing poker with PawPaw and making sure he doesn't cheat.

Capirotada for Dessert and The 27 Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders

Capirotada is Mexican Bread Pudding and traditionally eaten during the Lenten season but I learned about it in The 27 Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders. While it officially was written by mystery writer Nancy Pickard, the book was based on the notes of Virginia Rich who passed away after writing three of my favorite mystery books.

Virginia Rich's sleuth was Mrs. Potter, Genia to her friends, and Genia was older than me when I first began reading the culinary mysteries in 1982, The Cooking School Murders, and now I am older than she was in the books. That's how long I've been reading these culinary mysteries!

Rich, a chef and newspaper food writer, is credited with writing the first mystery book in the culinary genre unless we count Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe back in the early 1930s. When she passed away her family found folders of notes for future books, including for The 27 Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders. Nancy Pickard was asked to continue this one and went on to write two more Mrs. Potter mysteries. 

I tried the recipe for chili but honestly like my own better. This has been such a cold winter that chili has been almost a weekly staple here.

  But for the night I tried this fabulous bread pudding recipe I made my vegetarian tortilla soup.

 

That's basically where I chop onion, bell pepper, red bell pepper and garlic and saute before stirring in Rancho Gordo chili powder (absolutely fabulous chili powder), cumin, paprika (also Rancho Gordo and so pungent), and oregano (you guessed it, their Mexican oregano, excellent since I used all of the truly superb oregano from Crete that Poppy sent me). I add a box of low sodium vegetable stock, fill it again with water and add, canned tomatoes, some Bob's Red Mill pearl barley, rice, and frozen organic corn and green beans, and sliced frozen okra (that adds such a great consistency to vegetable soups), jar of Trader Joe's Salsa Verde, and as little salt as I can get by with, plus freshly ground pepper, naturally. 

Top with chopped cilantro, scallions, jalapeños, and lime juice. I don't even miss the meat but RH prefers meat in his so when I make chili I put plenty of beef or chicken in it.

I made this meal in January while our Christmas trees were still up. I didn't quite make it to February 2nd this year but took the trees down on January 25th. 

And of course the poinsettia was fitting with the dessert of Mexican Bread Pudding where I used my two favorite plates for Mexican food of any kind.

 

I've had this small tablecloth for decades and remembered to pull it out of my tablecloth closet--yes, I have one where they all hang.

And here is the scrumptious Mexican Bread Pudding that was in the book, where people seemed to eat it even as an entree.
 

I found other recipes for Capirotada online but the one in this book was the only one I found that used a loaf of raisin bread in the recipe. 

I'll type out Nancy Pickard/Virginia Rich's recipe as it is in the book. I'll be making this again and by the way, the book that takes place in Arizona near the border on Mrs. Potter's cattle ranch is full of interesting characters and I felt that Pickard did a nice job of carrying on Mrs. Potter even though I'm partial to Rich's first three, Nantucket Diet Murders being my favorite.

If you have a favorite culinary mystery author please tell me her or his name!

Capirotada;

To one quart boiling water add 2 cups brown sugar, 1 whole clove, 1 stick of cinnamon, and 1/4 cup butter. Simmer until a light syrup forms, then remove the clove and cinnamon.  Cut one loaf of raisin bread into cubes and dry in 250 F. oven until crusty. Rinse one cup of raisins in hot water, then drain. In a large buttered baking dish, continuously layer the bread cubes, raisins, 1 cup chopped walnuts, 1/4 pound grated Monterey Jack cheese and 1/4 cup grated longhorn cheese until all ingredients are used. Spoon the hot syrup evenly over the bread mixture. Bake in a preheated 350 F. for 30 minutes. Serve either hot or cold.

From The 27 Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders by Nancy Pickard:

Juanita's capirotada could pass for either a dessert or a full meal, depending on one's appetite. Made with half a pound of cheese (a quarter pound each of longhorn and Jack), one whole loaf of raisin bread and a full cup of chopped walnuts, it boasted everything from calcium to fiber, especially when made with multigrain raisin bread instead of ordinary raisin bread. Some people ate it straight, Ricardo liked it with real whipped cream, Lew Porter had preferred ice cream, but Mrs. Potter was always happy to slosh it around in plain old milk.

The recipes in Virginia Rich's Mrs. Potter mystery books always work and I make some from each of them often. I still want to try another one from this book, the Chili Rellenos, because it calls for using a can of condensed milk. I'm trying to picture how that would taste.

What do you think?

Did You Know About the Secret Lives of Cardinals?

 

February, the month of love, brought us a few surprises this year, one of which was a new visitor to our bird feeder.

This pale female cardinal has graced us with her presence daily and RH has caught her in his phone lens many times, rarely catching her completely still.

 And never with a good closeup of her eyes, the telling attribute to determine whether she is an Albino cardinal or a Leucistic cardinal, Albino having pink eyes or Leucistic with black eyes. 

However, when I look at the videos of both kinds of cardinals her coloring looks like the Albino cardinal. 

Here's her mate, or at least we think so...

 

I had always been told that cardinals mate for life and I remember crying the time I saw a handsome male cardinal fly into the window and fall to the ground with a broken neck. Something like that always breaks my heart, doesn't it yours? Because I also hurt for the bird who has lost their mate. 

I mean, I have been known to bawl when reading an old recipe for how to cook swans! How could anyone?

This month I've googled Albino and Leucistic cardinals, of course, here, and here for whether cardinals do truly mate for life. 

Turns out I probably shouldn't have worried so much about female cardinals. First of all, it is the female who chooses her mate, based on two things mind you, his bright red color and his ability to give her lots of baby birds. 

Yes, cardinals do basically mate for life...but young females have been known to ditch a mate who fails to give her a full nest and they very quickly choose another mate when widowed.

AND the little stinkers have been know to cheat on the males. 

Who knew??

All this reminds me of the old tear-jerker movie with Meryl Streep/Jack Nicholson, Heartburn, where she goes home to her father and crying, tells him her husband is in love with another woman. What is she going to do, she asks him.

"You want monagamy, marry a swan," he tells her.

And that classic Nora Ephron line brings back another memory, visiting in the home of a school friend while growing up and her mother, when we told her of exciting news in our young lives, would look amazed and say, "Well, I'll swan!"

Now, how do I end a weird post? 

Did you have pancakes yesterday morning for Shrove Tuesday breakfast? We enjoyed ours with the first vase of daffodils from the wild garden behind the barn.

 I'm a winter girl and still hold out hope for a true gorgeous deep snowfall for Middle Tennessee but I have to admit that I'm appreciating the signs of Spring around me. We're even supposed to have record-breaking high temperatures this week that will bring on more buds and blooms. And that also means that our one lilac will get freezer burn again this year. 

And all around us soon will be the whimsical sight of male birds courting females. If they only knew!

 

 

A post in January, by the skin of my teeth.

 

Faith Baldwin, pictured in the header of Dewena's Window all these years, writes of wanting to express her thoughts but not always being able to:

...to pin the butterfly wing of the valid emotion to paper with the key of a typewriter is usually to destroy it.

If talented Faith Baldwin felt this way can you imagine how often I doubt my ability to put into words my thoughts here? Today as I try to get in one January post after one of my frequent absences from my blog, it seems even more difficult for me. 

And so, I'm starting back with another picture of the current year's beautiful Karen Adams calendar that my sweet daughter has given me each Christmas for a decade. 

 It is always a pleasure to open my new calendar because I know that Christy is opening hers too. You can bet we're thinking of each other every first day of the new month. Both Christy and I love pretty packaging too and Karen Adams' packaging is always a delight. Here's a link to this year's just in case anyone is interested.

Here I'm packing last year's calendar away where it went in the cabinet of my bed table along with those from years past.

I wonder how long it would be before they would fall on the same day and I could reuse them? Probably not in my lifetime?

And to add another picture to this post, here are RH and I at the family Christmas party at a son and daughter-in-law's house.

I hope that all of you had a beautiful Christmas and a happy and blessed New Year's Day. So many friends of mine have gone through another bout with Covid or have had their first bout of it recently. Take care!

I won't go so far as to wish you all the bliss of winter days because I don't think there are many who love January and February as much as I do, but spring really will be here before we know it. So I'll just end with wishing you daily comforts and joy until she arrives.

Here's a picture of our darling daughter taken one Christmas morning that seems like only yesterday:

See you soon! (That's one of my resolutions for 2023!)

 

Calling Gladys Taber Fans (A book by her daughter and some Christmas at my house)

 

There was another side to our dear Connecticut countrywoman. For a time she lived in the biggest city of all, New York City where she taught at Columbia University. Oh, to have been a student of Creative Writing with Gladys Taber for a teacher!

Her only child, daughter Constance Taber Colby, despite growing up in Southbury, Connecticut, raised her two daughters in Manhattan.

 The View from Morningside, One Family's New York, published in 1978, is the story of the riches that the City That Never Sleeps offers for children. For Constance's girls, who early on fell in love with the subject of Tudor England the way some children fall in love with a sport, New York was rich with resources for their passion. 

 Interested in the Tudor period? For Colby's daughters there was the Metropolitan Museum, the Morgan Library, the New York Public Library, the Cloisters, Renaissance concerts all over town, Renaissance dance at Lincoln Center, Elizabethan cookery at Riverside Church, and the New York City Ballet.

 

As Colby's daughter Anne says in the book, "living in New York was the next best thing to living in London."
 

 

For fans of Gladys Taber, her daughter's book is not to be missed. For those who love New York this book should be fascinating, including those who like me have never been there. 

I'm definitely more of a Country Mouse than a City Mouse. I live in a 1935 cottage in what was once farmland outside of Nashville, Tennessee.

Before that I lived for twenty-six years in a 1920 farmhouse where sausage once hung in the smokehouse. I love the country!

In this house I'm enveloped by old board paneling that calls for country style.

But the older I get the more I lean toward what goes with the first true antique RH and I purchased as newlyweds.

 An 1800s Staffordshire Blue Willow ironstone platter.

 

 

There's not anything more country than Blue Willow and it's just as comfortable in a humble cottage as in a Georgetown townhome dressed to the nines with Chinoiserie.

Speaking of Chinoiserie, I think a touch of it looks well on our eighteen year old Ethan Allen red leather sofa. So does BreeBree, don't you think?

 

Here is a Christmas pillow I found on Etsy with a red amaryllis in a blue and white cachepot. The front is like a hooked wool rug, the back a velvety fabric, with zipper and quality insert. 

It's fancy but is perfect with an old wool tartan throw from Canada.

I will keep it out through winter and must get a picture of it with our Black Pearl amaryllis from White Flower Farm, which won't bloom until after Christmas anyway, as it did last year when I could not get the lighting in this picture to accurately show the rich dark red. 

If you're interested in Constance Taber Colby's book on raising a family in Manhattan, you can find copies of The View from Morningside, One Family's New York for under $10 online, unless you'd rather pay $43 for it on Amazon. I wouldn't!

Any thoughts on whether you would be up for raising a family in a big city? Cons and pros?

Are you ready for Christmas? I need at least another month!

[I do appreciate every comment you leave! For some reason I can no longer publish comments from my phone even though I've signed in and out from Google over and over trying to. I have to go to my laptop in order to publish them so sometime I'm delayed in getting to it. And emails about new posts from me are no longer being sent out and sometime after Christmas I will try to figure out what to do instead. Thanks for your patience!] 

 

Coconut Cake, Top of the List, Almost

 

No, we haven't had snow yet. I made this coconut cake when we had a beautiful snowfall on January 3, 2022 because it just didn't get made before Christmas of 2021.

But I'm thinking back to November of 2020--you remember that year, don't you? The year the world shut down and many of us had Thanksgiving in our house, alone?

That November I started watching every new Hallmark Christmas movie premier. Religiously. It had been that kind of a year.

 

I even kept a pen and notebook nearby and titled a list--"What Hallmark Movies Taught Me About Christmas."

Top of the list was...Baking is good!

Fruitcake is top of my baking list (my White Fruitcake with no citron posted here "Stir Up Sunday") 

Coconut Cake is not far behind. 

 One of my favorite childhood Christmas memories is of Mama making her Coconut Cake with lemon filling on Christmas Eve and it being refrigerated overnight and eaten cold on Christmas Day.

It was a serious project requiring Daddy's help in poking an ice pick into the eyes of the fresh coconut to save the coconut water to pour over the warm cake layers, tediously removing the shell from the meat, and finally grating the coconut meat, sometimes resulting in scraped knuckles. 

 

It was a cake straight from heaven!

Foolishly neglecting to secure Mama's recipe before she left us for her heavenly home, I've tried several recipes. One was very good and also very time consuming:

See my post Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal here!

I finally found a recipe that was very close to Mama's in Eugene Walters, American Cooking: Southern Style, a Time Life book and a fascinating history of Southern cooking.

I have four cookbooks from the Alabama author, who I "met" through Pat Conroy's cookbook. He taught me never to use the black dust that you put in salt and pepper shakers, that the essential oils in peppercorns help with digestion when freshly ground. Although RH still demands his black dust.

I wish I could link to Mr. Walter's recipe for Coconut Cake with Lemon Filling but it's not online. I will link to a recipe I substituted for his frosting recipe that required me to boil to 239 degrees. I found one at addapinch.com. It was delicious even though not like Mama's. Maybe hers was whipped cream based?  But I did make Eugene's recipe for cake instead of the one at add a pinch--those 8 eggs separated won me over--and I am going to put his recipe for lemon filling at the bottom of the post because it's become my foolproof go-to recipe for that. 

 

Full Disclaimer: I did not buy a fresh coconut and poke out his eyes! Despite using Baker's coconut flakes the frosting was excellent. It was one of those times when we didn't see any family to share my baking with so eventually the remains went to the birds. 

 

Take my word for it, RH had hardly turned around and all our resident crows and bluejays were fighting over their dessert of the day. 

Eugene Walters Lemon Filling:

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/4 cup cornstarch

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 eggs, lightly beaten

2 tablespoons butter, cut into 1/4 inch bits

2 tablespoons finely grated fresh lemon peel

2/3 cup strained fresh lemon juice [I did not strain it]

1 cup water

Combine the sugar, cornstarch, salt and 2 beaten eggs in a heavy 2 quart saucepan and mix well with a wire whisk or wooden spoon. Stir in the butter bits, lemon peel, lemon juice, and water. When all ingredients are well blended, set pan over high heat.

Stirring the filling mixture constantly, bring to a boil over high heat. Immediately reduce heat to low and continue to stir until the filling is smooth and thick enough to coat the spoon heavily. Scrape the filling into a bowl with a spatula, and let it cool to room temperature.

What's top of your baking list for Christmas?