added to spice rack

I'm glad we ordered extra spice tins when we did the spice rack project. A couple days ago, I printed new labels for:

celery salt
chervil
chive flowers (really!)

Here we come a wassailing...

OK, so it's not wassailing, but it *is* English-themed, and it's pretty brilliant. I made a double batch for the company potluck and I'm told that it was almost gone within an hour. (Of course, ~700 people attend our potluck, but still....)

This came from Sunset magazine online (I KNOW! I was surprised, too!), but the original format was a train wreck so I've re-written the thing to make quantities and prep easier to follow. Happy Holidays and wishing you opportunities for growth, challenges, and curiosity in the coming year!
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Sticky Toffee Trifle with Cranberries
Yield: Makes 16 to 20 servings

DATE CAKE

• ¾ cup chopped pitted Medjool dates
• ½ c boiling water
• ¾ c butter, room temperature
• 1 c firmly packed brown sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 2 c all purpose flour
• 1 ½ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp baking soda
  

1. Put 3/4 cup chopped pitted Medjool dates in a blender or food processor. Pour in 1/2 cup boiling water and let stand for 5 minutes. Whirl until smooth.


2. In a bowl, with a mixer on medium speed (use paddle attachment with standing mixer), beat butter, brown sugar, and the date purée until well blended and smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.


3. In another bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda; stir into butter mixture until well blended. Scrape batter into a buttered and floured 9-inch square baking pan.


4. Bake in a 350° oven until a wooden skewer inserted into center of cake comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes. Let cake cool in pan on a rack for 10 minutes, then invert onto rack; remove pan and let cake cool completely.


5. Trim off dark edges of cake; reserve for another use or discard. Cut remaining cake into 1-inch cubes.

TOFFEE SAUCE

• 1 ½ c firmly packed dark brown sugar
• ¼ c (1/8 lb.) butter
• 2 tbsp light corn syrup
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 2 tbsp vanilla
• 1 ½ c whipping cream

In a 1- to 2-quart pan over medium heat, stir brown sugar, butter, corn syrup, and lemon juice until sugar is dissolved and mixture is foamy, about 5 minutes. Whisk in vanilla and cook 1 minute longer. Whisk in whipping cream and remove from heat. Makes 2 cups.

[Kim's note: you will have extra and this is a good thing. Drizzle it on ice cream, your waffles, your chicken and waffles...you won't be sorry!]


POACHED CRANBERRIES

• 1 ½ c orange juice
• ¾ c sugar
• ½ tsp vanilla
• 12 oz cranberries, rinsed and sorted, thawed if frozen

In a 3- to 4-quart pan over medium-high heat, stir orange juice, sugar, and vanilla until sugar is dissolved. Add cranberries; simmer gently just until skins begin to split, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and chill until cool, at least 30 minutes.

[Kim's note: skip the cranberries at your peril. The tartness balances the overwhelming sugar and fat of the rest of this dessert and without it, you're much more likely to hurt your sweet tooth. Think I'm kidding? Consume a few spoons of the aforementioned toffee sauce by itself and see if you don't keel over.]


TRIFLE

• 1 quart whipping cream
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup dark rum
• Date cake
• Toffee sauce
• Poached cranberries
• 1/4 cup slivered pitted Medjool dates*

1. In a bowl, with a mixer on high speed, whip 2 cups cream with 2 tablespoons each granulated sugar and rum until soft peaks form.


2. In the bottom of a 4- to 5-quart trifle dish or straight-sided glass bowl, spread a third of the date cake cubes level. Drizzle 1/3 cup toffee sauce evenly over cake. Spoon about 1 cup poached cranberries (including juices) over sauce. Spread about half the whipped cream evenly over cranberries. Repeat with another layer of cake, sauce, cranberries, and whipped cream. Layer remaining third of the cake cubes over the whipped cream, drizzle with 1/3 cup toffee sauce, and spoon remaining cranberries over the top. Cover with plastic wrap and chill at least 8 hours.


3. In a bowl, with a mixer on high speed, whip remaining 2 cups cream with remaining 2 tablespoons each granulated sugar and rum until soft peaks form. Spread over trifle and garnish with slivered dates.*


4. To serve, scoop portions onto plates. Pass remaining toffee sauce to add to taste.

* Kim's note: I prefer 1/2 cup roughly broken Heath or Skor bars. just put them on a wooden cutting board and whack them gently with a large metal spoon (the slotted kind seemed to be better at preventing them from shooting all over the place).

am I done yet? I AM!

Third time's the charm, my Aunt Frances...NaNoWriMo was exceptionally difficult this year, and I'm not thrilled with the result. Maybe I'll change my mind after letting it steep for a week. Right now, I just want to do something else with the hour and a half a day I suddenly got back. Like clean my office. And get crackin' on those Christmas presents. And having dinner with friends I haven't seen in, like, a year.

But after a week off, I'm going to be really brave. For the first time ever, I'm going to take a crack at editing what spewed out of my flying fingers in the last 30 days and determine whether or not it's worth a serious set of of drafts/rewrites.

Right now, it's just an unholy mess.

Special thanks to the Boy Scout for buying me a 2009 NaNoWriMo "writing machine" shirt. I'm wearing it even as I type this. And to the sartorially elegant Vince, who was the only person at my job who wanted to do write-ins with me. Those 30-minutes-once-a-week-instead-of-lunch sessions were godsends. Vince is in the middle of editing his own draft, so we're tag teaming for the next several months and seeing what happens. Wish us luck!

I think my cat is about to become way more famous than I am

All Tech Considered post coming soon and then y'all can stop cussing my mysteriousness.

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the "Clean House!" project

From the time I graduated high school until I moved to DC (again) a few years ago, I moved an average of once a year. When I lived in England during the blazingly glorious sunset of the dotcom boom, I moved my massive suitcases and accoutrement three times in five months, not counting the umpteen hotels my company shuffled me through as they looked for any decent housing at all in Central London (and yes, I know how incredibly lucky I was to have someone else foot the bill and I was downright religious about thanking God every day for the amazing time I was having. Really. I don't even know the last time I prayed that fervently and frequently, and that includes sweating through a few nasty semesters of grad school.)

However, I haven't moved in a couple years and the one plus to shifting your stuff around on a regular basis is knowing how much of it you have -- and getting sick of shifting it and therefore getting RID of some of it. In short, we have too much stuff in our house and I'm going hard-core. Over the next 9-12 months, I'm embarking on a little something I'm calling the "Clean House!" project.

The idea is simple: I'm going to tackle every single room, closet, desk, storage area, bookshelf, cubbyhole, box, chest, drawer, cupboard, and odd corner of our abode and get rid of junk, pass on stuff we don't use, dispose of things that no longer have meaning, sell stuff we no longer want that's valuable, recycle whenever possible. I'm going to follow William Morris' advice, which was to "have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

And yes, I'm keeping that exclamation point in the project name. It's somewhat high-school-girl-who-dots-her-i's-with-circles and smacks a tiny bit of Martha Stewart, but I'm pretty excited about it and I'm going to let that enthusiasm flag fly, baby! Maybe even break out the multiples!!!! WHOO-HOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

*whew* gotta switch that brand of cold medicine soon....

As I go, I'll try to post before and after pics, muse on the outcomes, and offer advice and tips if I have any. I'm trying to do a little bit every week, not kill myself in a massive 3-week blowout session. First up: the linen closet. Find your equivalent and feel free to clean along with me and comment. Go, Clean House!

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tempation

The first gardening catalog of 2010 arrived early last week. I've found at least 15 plants that I really want.

I need more dirt.