A Blithe PALATE

Trains and Monuments

"You don't write anymore."

It's as much a question as an admonishment.  I know.  Not at all since last December.  Which coincided with Hubby's deployment to Afghanistan.  I'm in denial about it all.  I focus on the positive things going on and avoid thinking about those out of my control.  The blog lies more or less dormant because with one quarter of my little family gone, part of the purpose of cooking is gone.  More than nourishment, food is love and comfort for me.  It's hard to throw myself into cooking when I'm distracted; and it's hard baking when I'm not inspired. And  writing sometimes feels burdensome.

But there are some things that must be celebrated; Hoss' first birthday in December, and Puggle's third birthday this past week were two such events for which manic party planning and all-morning cooking and baking were apropos and welcome.  Having two boys, I'm aware that my time for over-the-top parties is finite; and I fully intend to indulge myself.

Pug's first birthday involved block cakes in the spirit of the alphabet blocks cake from my baby shower; his second birthday was all about rockets; and given his obsession with all things train related, we went the choo choo route.  Hoss, who turned one in December, got a circus theme.

I'm still enamored of cupcakes despite recent sentiment that cupcakes are passé.  Pug loves a  moist and rich and not too sweet cupcake.  (He'll hand back overly sweet desserts more often than not.)  My current favorite recipe is a vanilla bean cupcake; and it was a toss up between buttercream and cream cheese frosting.  Ultimately I wasn't in the mood to make a vat of Italian buttercream so the cream cheese won out.  But as it happens, I had a new baking book I've been reading,  The Craft of Baking by Karen DeMasco, the former pastry chef at Craft and its sister operations, which has a lovely recipe for white chocolate cream cheese frosting.

I have a great recipe for sugar cookies but tried her recipe which yielded fantastically buttery cookies that my parent and Pug devoured.  Not having my icing recipe handy, I used hers - and it was a little more sugary than I would have liked; as a result, I ended up icing only the railroad crossing cookies; I outlined the train cookies but left them un-iced (I'm not keen on a too sugary sugar cookie).

Maybe I should have made the effort to properly decorate the train cookies because my sister pinged me a few days later and the following conversation ensued:

Her:  "What were those cookies that you made?"

Me:  "Sugar cookies."

Her:  "No #$%^.  I meant, what were they supposed to be?"

Me:  "Oh.  Trains."

Her:  "They look like Moab Utah Monuments."

Me:  "What?"

Her:  "Yeah.  Those look nothing like trains. I seriously thought you were trying to make a national park landscape birthday theme party. That said, Monument Valley and Moab are my two faves."

Should I be insulted or complimented that she thought I would take on a theme like national parks for a birthday theme?  I mean, I'm nuts but that's certifiable.  Although the idea of a Mount Rushmore cake is interesting.  Hmm....

You decide.  Trains?  Or Monument Valley?

Lemon Thyme Spoonbread

I haven't been stretching myself too much culinary-wise recently.  Cooking, which used to be a happy, lazy indulgence, has become rote.  I  found myself thinking not too long ago that there are a finite number of dishes which could be made.  Almost immediately I realized how idiotic that sentiment is: it's like saying there are only seven notes so there's a finite number of compositions possible. My sentiment was driven more by the fact that I'd been making the same dishes week in and week out than any real truth.  And one truth is:  I've gotten lazy.

Time hasn't been in abundance of late and I wonder if my laziness to try something new, or my reluctance to really put my heart and soul into cooking anymore, is because I'm bored?  Because it's easier to make the same dishes, the ones I know by heart, than to stretch myself with something else?

Oddly enough, where I have derived food joy is in reading cookbooks.  And I'm always itching to try some of the fantastic recipes -- yet I don't.  So this past weekend, I decided to reinvigorate myself and get back into the rhythm of my kitchen.  I inventoried the fridge, the freezer(s) and the pantry, then went and consulted several of m cookbooks. 

Martha Stewart has a new cookbook out. Martha Stewart's Dinner at Home is a collection of 52 complete menus -- appetizer, salad, entree and dessert, and divided by the seasons.  I may have mixed feelings about her, but she has an extraordinary staff -- these are easy and outright tasty recipes. 

Earlier this week we made the Chicken Marsala with Sage Polenta; a winning dish, very flavorful and very easy.  Dinner tonight was Panfried Chicken and Lemon-Thyme Spoonbread (I elected to skip the wilted salad and raspberry dessert that accompanied the menu).  I'm particularly appreciative of the fact that the recipes call for dark meat -- not just cheaper cuts but so much more flavorful!

Pug and Hoss both loved the panfried chicken although Hoss was much keener on the spoonbread than was Pug.  I'm not quite sure how to feel about spoonbread, which is essentially a baked cornbread; it was moist, rich, and as the name suggests, spooned onto our plates.  I loved the flavors but in some ways, the lemon-thyme notes lent more to dessert than to a savory side dish.  I'd be curious to see how the spoonbread works as a dessert. The whole time I was eating, I kept thinking how lovely it'd go with vanilla ice cream.

I think maybe it's time to stop playing the same tune over and over just because I know it; and given the tomes lining the cookbook shelves, maybe it's time to learn an entire new repertoire; and somewhere in there, hopefully get my cooking (and blogging) groove back.