Warning: calories ahead.

When my husband and I were young newlyweds, his mother’s mother sat me down one long, boring day with her recipe file, and with her great enthusiasm and my attempting to look enthused, she had me copy down (by hand, kids, this was in the Olden Days) all her decades-long favorites.  She wanted to pass down the wisdom of her kitchen.  I chaffed in silence; I wasn’t about to tell her how much all of this represented to me what I so much didn’t want to be.  I had no intention of being a stay-at-home mom. Roasted Potatoes was just not what I aspired to.

Yeah well.  Live and learn.  One of the hardest things I ever did was decide to stay home with my children after all.  For the first few months of motherhood, I was able to work where I could take my baby with me; she wasn’t mobile yet, she slept a lot, nobody minded.  But then two things happened: she started exploring the world on her hands and knees–and we moved 2000 miles and that job was over.  I found, though it would have surprised me just a couple of years earlier, that I utterly could not bear to leave her, even if it meant living on my husband’s grad-student fellowship.  He very much supported my decision either way, but confessed later he was relieved I’d chosen to make motherhood a do-it-yourself project. He didn’t think anyone else could do as good a job as me.

And over all these years now, one of the things I’ve learned is how much memories attach themselves, over time, to–you guessed it–various foods.  Write down those recipes, give’em to your college kids so they can re-create home.

And yet.  GrandmaM would totally get where I’d been coming from back in the day.  She was the first woman in her small (and I do mean small) town to have a college degree.  She was a teacher who married a dairy farmer who was also the town’s high school principal, and the moment she was married she was of course out of a job; the idea of a married teacher back then was unthinkable, and a teacher married to the principal! Well now!

My older daughter, who is finishing up her PhD, asked for these, and I thought, as long as I’m typing them up, might as well put them up here.

From our family to yours.

There was a recipe making the rounds years ago with a story disclaimed by Snopes, supposedly stolen from Mrs Fields by a disgruntled ex-employee; whatever, someone did a good job of reverse engineering.  These make five pounds of dough–and I once had a batch at the top of the freezer, reached down later for something in the bottom of the freezer, and… Clonk.

Not-Mrs. Field’s Cookies (Clonk Cookies, perhaps?)

Cream: 2 c butter, 2c sugar, 2c brown sugar.

Add 4 eggs, 2tsp vanilla.

Mix: 5c oats that have been ground into flour, 4c flour, 1 tsp salt, 2tsp each baking powder and baking soda.  (I have been known to skip the baking soda.)

Mix all together and fold in 24 oz chocolate chips and 3 c chopped nuts.

350 degrees, 8-10 minutes for medium-sized cookies.

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Recipe the second: this one originated from, of all things, a 1992 Mazola no-stick-spray ad. (Why, yes, I write notes with dates in my cookbooks; do you?)

Cranberry Bars

Cookie crust: set oven at 350. Grease 15×10 pan. Cut 1 c of cold butter–do not substitute, and needs to be cold–into 2 1/2 c flour.  Add 1/2 c sugar and 1/2 tsp salt, by hand, not by machine. It’s more work that way, but the difference in crunch in the crust is huge. Press firmly in pan, bake 20-23 minutes or till golden. Top with filling quickly and bake again.

Filling:  Beat 4 eggs, 1c corn syrup, 1 c sugar, and 3 tbl melted butter (do not substitute!) Stir in 2 c coarsely chopped fresh cranberries and 1 c coarsely chopped pecans.  Pour quickly over hot crust, spreading it out.

Bake 25-30 minutes or until set. Cool completely. Refrigerate it for it to cut cleanly, if you can wait that long.

Pecan Pie variation: for filling, use 4 eggs, 1 1/2 c corn syrup, 1 1/2 c sugar, 3 tbl butter, 1 1/2 tsp vanilla, and 2 1/2 c pecans.  I find it curious that it uses so much more sweetener when it doesn’t have the tartness of the cranberries in this version, but if you want a pecan pie as a cookie finger food, this is definitely the way to get it.

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I brought the cranberry bars to a get-together once and watched my friend Jim take his first bite, close his eyes in appreciation, and pronounce how if you want dessert done right you ask Alison to bring it.

I’ll share the recipe with GrandmaM when I get up there.  She will laugh.

Looking down, Monday.

Looking across, today.

Looking up, after that; what a difference a rinsing and blocking make. (It’s just a bit greener than this in real life.)

I like it. Hey Mikey. Weekend, here we come!

Meantime, in family news, Michelle arrived home this afternoon after a week gallivanting in England. I, unfortunately, did not fit in her suitcase on the way out, but that’s okay, I had this project to get done.  She came home going, Mom! Green and Black’s chocolate! They had it, like, everywhere, like Hershey’s here! (As in, how would it be?!)

(Ed. to add picture of newly-glazed torte. The shine dulls once they’ve been refrigerated.)

Happy birthday, John!!! Our youngest is now identical-twin terrible-twos, the big 22.

Around here, when it’s a family member’s birthday and they are not in town, we bake a cake in their honor anyway.

And it’s also a tradition that when I bake a chocolate torte, I always bake two.

Okay, so, one went to Sam yesterday, the second one,  someone else has dibs on.  Meaning a little bit of baking, a lot of chocolate smells, but then no torte for me. Hey, we can fix that.

On a side note, the specialty place where I’ve always bought the manufacturing cream stopped selling it in small quantities, rumor being that they got told that pouring it off into quarts and pints in-store was not kosher.  But who would want an entire half-gallon of the stuff? So they discontinued it entirely.

When you have been making your signature dessert for 20 years and an essential ingredient suddenly disappears from the market, you have to do something.  I sent off an email to the owner of the Milk Pail Market; I had to at least try to talk them into reconsidering.

I gather I’m not the only one who spoke up.  I imagine the fact that I actually gave the man one of my chocolate tortes once didn’t hurt, and nudging his attention to the extinction of that cake, ditto. (I know, breaking my arm patting myself on the back and all that.)

Because:  around Christmas there was a small handwritten sign on one of their refrigerator doors saying that due to popular demand, manufacturing cream was now back.  Woohooo!

And so.  I bought a half gallon (again) a few days ago.  Heavy whipping cream is 32% butterfat, manufacturing cream, depending on the cow and the season, 40-42%.

‘Scuse me, the oven’s beeping…  The third torte might go to the church dinner Tuesday night (renegade that I am–they said they wanted cupcakes) but that fourth one stays right here.  John, we will eat a torte in your honor.  Maybe not all at once.   Happy Birthday!!

For those who missed it the first time, here’s the recipe with a few extra notes thrown in.  If you have to use ordinary heavy cream, avoid the ones with any kind of preservatives, additives, or sugar in them.

If you have any cream left over after all this, melt more chocolate into it and, warm, it’s the best chocolate sauce, refrigerated, a ganache.

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Alison Hyde’s chocolate torte–makes two

Snap out the bottoms of two 8″ springform pans (flat bottomed preferred). Cover bottoms with foil, snap them back in, butter the sides and the foil-covered bottoms.

CAKE:

Melt 1 lb. butter, beat with 3 c. sugar, 1/4 tsp salt and 2 tsp bourbon vanilla
Add in 1/2 c. manufacturing cream, 6 egg yolks, beat till fairly light.

Add in: 1 1/3 c. cocoa that has been mixed with 1 c. flour till any lumps are smoothed out. Dutch process cocoa will give you a different flavor from that of Hershey cocoa; my favorite is Bergenfield’s Colonial Rosewood cocoa. The non-dutched cocoas are healthier and I think taste better; dutching is usually done on lower-quality cacao beans.

Beat separately till stiff: 6 egg whites and 1/4 tsp. cream of tartar. Underbeating is better than overbeating.

Fold egg whites into chocolate mixture. Put in the two pans and bake at 350 for 42-45 minutes. Center will not be solid and cracking should appear. Run a knife carefully around outer edges; cake will fall, and the top will be more even if  it falls in one piece. (On the other hand, since it will become the bottom of the torte, this step is not exactly essential.)

Cool at least an hour. Loosen springform sides and remove. Put a plate on bottom of each cake and flip over. Peel off pan bottoms, then the foil. Glaze when cool.

GLAZE for two cakes:

Chop one Trader Joe’s Pound Plus Belgian bittersweet chocolate bar (500 g) and melt with 1 1/3 to 1 1/2 c. manufacturing cream. The tradeoff in the amount of cream is whether you want to sculpt it to hold deeper J-strokes (use lesser amount) or thinner, with a slightly lighter texture (use greater amount, and is as is shown in the picture.)  Use a double boiler or microwave. Try not to incorporate extra air in as you stir. Also, it is important that every edge of every piece of chocolate be fully dunked down in the cream before heating or that piece of chocolate could possibly seize into a hardened, unmeltable lump with the combination of liquid and heat. You heard it here first: chocolate is very wool-like–it can, in effect, felt from that same combination of factors as wool. Unless you dunk it first.

When glazing a cake, first, I pour it into the center of the two.  I quickly first scoot it towards the edges to make some of it fall down the sides in waves.  Then, I make a backwards J from the center, turn the cake slightly, repeat all the way around.

Enjoy!

You know why it’s so hard to keep those holiday pounds off?

It’s those see stars. One arm breaks off, they just grow another one, appearing time after time.  Whaddyagonnado.

(Michelle volunteers one-on-one as a tutor and the middle schooler brought her holiday cookies as a thank you.  Michelle wasn’t about to tell her she didn’t dare risk eating them; it was a sweet thing for her to have done.  I was glad to help out a little, and besides, I could use nudging the scale up a tad.)

Meantime, this morning, our piano doctor who makes house calls, an old friend after all these years, came by.  The house was, shall we say, unfinished–and I was discouraged at how fast my energy had given out on me.

He smiled a warm smile; “Doesn’t look messy to me.”

And at that suddenly everything was much better.

He glanced out at the birds on the feeder, taking them in for a moment; he has done recordings of the wildlife in his own area.  I’ve heard his frogs.  (If you ever need some theme music while ripping out your knitting…)  I wondered if he could hear my finches through the window.

I’ve heard them I think twice now. Yesterday the feeder swung around so one couldn’t see me coming as I opened the slider as quietly as I could and slipped outside.  The feeder swung back around, and I was close enough to stroke the little bird’s stripey-brown feathers had I moved.  I didn’t dare move.  Or breathe.  It chirped and dove into the seed, again and again, keeping an eye on me–and when I did finally breathe, it was a Mr. Tumnus moment: Oh my goodness! You’re a human, and I’m–I’m a bird!  Fright and flight!

I picked up my needles while Neil tuned my piano.

I don’t usually knit in the mornings; I’m not sure how to describe the weirdness that is the body responding in slow motion before about noon–you tell it to move and it dithers like a 13-year-old told to do the dishes and arguing about it. Knitting at that hour, and particularly on tiny needles?  Slow as doing taxes.

And yet. He played a few snatches of song here and there as he tuned, reminding me why my concert-pianist grandmother had chosen that Kimball in the first place ages ago.  Such a gorgeous depth of sound to it.   Some notes had slipped, but he was pulling them back into where they belonged.

The needles picked up a bit.

He got to the highest notes on the piano.  So many times in the last twenty years I’ve heard only the slight thud thud of the hammers hitting against the strings up there, but with my ears turned up now–thank you John Miles–I caught a few of those actual notes, thin and high and as unstable as a hummingbird’s flight, but briefly actually mystically somehow there.  So that’s what those sound like.  I had long forgotten.  Wow.

That stopped my hands altogether across the room as I felt, Do it again!  Make it play like that again! And he did. I didn’t hear each note every time, but just enough to feel like I was in the presence of a small, rare gift from Life itself.

Don’t forget to breathe! And don’t stop in the middle of a row of laceweight silk or you’ll drop a thousand stitches and he was almost done there. Hurry!

I didn’t finish the row. I didn’t drop the stitches. I did, however, find myself hugely cheered on a morning when I had been needing cheering.

So many grace notes appear when we are in the presence of good people who are our friends.

The kids are coming home soon.  Let the music begin.

Got merry olde England and cheery New Mexico mailed today. Colorado, Qatar (how on earth long does it take a box to get to Qatar?), Utah, Maryland–nope.

Bought a thirty-six ounce can of truffle almonds at Costco the other day, and then realized, wait–that’s not…*chocolate*… truffles…

I’d tasted truffle oil once. It instantly brought me back to being ten years old at Moose Mountain Provincial Park, where we were camping for a lot longer than we had intended to; our pop-up trailer had a broken part that required delivery from the manufacturer.  And so we hiked, we had a volleyball land in the campfire and sizzzzzzzzle slowwwwly flat.  Oops.  Um, let’s go hiking some more!

Deep woods, musty (okay, rotting) leaves… It was all right there in that olive and truffle oil sample that the purveyor was standing there beaming at me over, waiting for my rapturous response.

Jumping in a pile of autumn leaves, okay, throwing them at my siblings when they’re not looking, just watch me, I might still.

But eating them?

So you know what we had to do.  Open that can and sample the things.

They have butter. That leaves Richard and me. We tried them.  Make that me. Rather garlic-ish, hold the essence of bark of maple or worse, it ain’t there.  Huh.

Richard thinks he’ll leaf it all to me.

Break out the Cuisinart.  Bring on the Yuletide guests.  Truffle pate’, anyone? C’mon, you know you want some!

(Don’t even SAY “nuts to the squirrels” yet, okay?)

The spiced pecans (hey, wait, I made more than that you guys!) and two batches of cranberry sauce filled the house with Thanksgivingness and good smells yesterday after I posted, telling us, don’t quit your dye job.

The chocolate torte’s about to be taken out of the freezer.

The silk is staying blue.

Yes, Carol, the stole is finally finished. (Quick, grab some new yarn! I can’t go without a project!)

Over the river and through the redwoods, to auntie’s house we go.  Have a blessed, wonderful Thanksgiving day, everyone.

I like to bake, but frankly, Trader Joe’s makes a better pecan pie than I do.  A quick trip to the store…

I like to grin and tell my friends that I’m going to be a terror to my kids when I’m 90.

My kids tell me I don’t have to wait that long.

But it was a complete innocent today who was horrified.   Some large and tall hunter-gatherer, oblivious as he focused on his prey, collided with me on his way by. I don’t weigh much. He never noticed.

My sense of balance is visual and tactile only, and if you throw one of those off, you get to see me do my rendition of Olympic figure skating.

Kinda like the time I fell down the carpeted steps at my aunt-in-law’s house during her daughter’s wedding reception. There was a young couple coming up behind me, gasping in horror. I managed to stop finally about 2/3 of the way down while thinking, great, I hope nobody saw THAT little act of gracefulness, turned back, saw them, and got this big cheesy grin on my face as I threw my hands up from where I sat and proclaimed, TaaDAAAH!

They cracked up, mostly out of relief.  Phew!

So this guy goes past me and it all went past him.  But a woman standing on the other side thought somehow she’d done that to me, and was not reassured by my attempt to brush her fears off. It bothered her enough that she got behind us in the check-out line so that she could apologize again.

I’d had no idea, or I’d have been more particular in what I’d said–to me, going flying occasionally is simply how things are, and I do use that cane.  I guess sometimes a person needs to be told more of the story.  Not just, no, you didn’t do that, not even just no, that other guy bumped into me, but also that, really, the only person who needs to apologize is the guy who creamed my car nine years ago.

But it was the strength and warmth of the smile on my face towards her as I said that, not so much the words, that finally made her feel better about the whole thing.

It’s okay. This is my normal now.  Burns extra calories. Keeps me thin. (Hey, look–it works!)

…I solemnly promise my family not to fall down those stairs again come Thursday. Here, you hold the pie.

“Oh, Mom, I haven’t had caramel sauce in six years!”

Not since her serious dairy allergy had surfaced. About time, then!  Okay, so this is what I did: for normal caramel sauce you mix one cup sugar with a half cup water. Stir on stove till it starts to boil; immediately stop stirring or you risk granules in your sauce.  Some will probably form on the sides of your pan; ignore them.  Watch carefully on medium or lower for, oh, five, maybe ten minutes-ish, depending on your temp and pot thickness, till the syrup starts to change color from clear to beginning to be golden.  If your stove is like mine, it’ll turn slightly on one side first, in which case, pick the pot just slightly up and swish it gently around. (No spoons in there yet!)

It will turn darker fairly quickly, again depending on the temperature, and how dark you let it get determines how intense a flavor you’ll get.  Do *not* let yourself be distracted at all during the turning, or I will have to tell you of a notable burning-pot episode that–well, maybe I won’t.

So then you turn off the stove and–wait, read this whole paragraph first!–pour in 8 oz of heavy cream, and if you use nonfat milk instead I promise not to tell but I guarantee nothing; stir fast with a long wooden spoon while angling your hand away so it’s not right above the hot steam erupting in there. Trust me on that one.

Thickens when cooled. Unless you go all non-fat on us like that.

I did two batches. One with the last of the manufacturing cream. The second, I poured in a 6-and-something-oz container of coconut cream from Whole Foods to find out if both that ingredient and the size it came in would work.

We had our friends Nina of Ann Arbor Shawl fame and her family over for dinner Friday night.   I have to tell you: more of that caramel coconut got devoured on that ice cream than the regular sauce.  It was good stuff.

The best part of it was seeing something much enjoyed but long denied now given back to my daughter. At last.  And it was so easy to do.

(Note re the picture: the sauce isn’t separated, just eaten.)

I kept it short. I wanted enough yarn left to make a matching pair of socks of the merino Jasmin spun up for me: after I started with one pattern, I realized that at the size it was coming out to, I could switch and do it a la Water Turtles, a very open, stretchy lace, and not have to use up lots of yardage. I think my final stitch count was something like 241/row in the main body, only seven Water Turtle repeats long, and it’s plenty big enough for me. (Pardon me while I go run in those loose ends…)

This is the yarn Karin just surprised me with to replace the shawl I surprised her with to replace the yarn she surprised me with.

This is the baby squirrel near a towhee, to give a sense of scale.  It has already learned it is not to climb the awning support pole so temptingly close to the birdfeeder, not from me but from the other squirrels–and it was highly amusing to watch it and a gray squirrel this morning. They were staring at it longingly, twitching towards it and away and towards it and away in fierce repetitive tiny motions, not daring to but oh it’s fall!and you have to squirrel away food!!andandand!!!

All I did was unlatch the door and the two careened into each other while trying to run for the hills.   Guilty!

The baby squirrel tried to climb the fence yesterday and found itself sliiiiiiiiiiding back down the wood. Oops. Made it on the second try, though; it’s getting better at this quickly.  Yesterday the fence, tomorrow that pole, bwahaahaa. (If that big feederfiller isn’t looking…)

We’ve all had days like that–being new at something, trying again, and the sense of satisfaction at getting it right.

And one more thing.  My usual daily dose of hot cocoa?  Mom, this is for you: today I broke just a small piece off the end of a Valrhona 85% bar and grated it into the mug (and got tired of grating and just broke up the rest of it and threw it in).  Add the milk, nuke the milk (you don’t put solid chocolate into hot milk, they have to warm up together to keep the chocolate from seizing), and then I added the cocoa and sugar.  Skipped the usual dollop of cream.

Wow.  Things will never be the same.

Diana designed a bag to fit my new laptop, and I am ecstatic.  It’s gorgeous and it fits it just so. Thank you, Diana! We are planning a trip to Coupa Cafe with it to celebrate, and anybody who wants the pattern, now you know where to find it. (Coupa Cafe’s hot chocolate: there is nothing anywhere quite like it.)

Speaking of chocolate.  Our local dairy specialty place stopped carrying manufacturing cream a few months ago.  But. But.  How was I supposed to make my signature dessert now?  Nineteen years I’ve been making that, and at church potlucks and on the block party list they always make a point of having the H’s be on the dessert assignment. There was a tradition to be upheld, didn’t they know it?

That lack of that cream is why I didn’t make my chocolate torte for the neighbors for Labor Day–it wouldn’t have been the same without that 40% butterfat, and I didn’t want to bring an inferior version, so I brought those mini cupcakes–here, let the raspberries distract them.

So. Michelle and I went to The Milk Pail today, and lo and behold, there was a sign from the owner saying that serious foodies knew about his manufacturing cream, yadda yadda.  As if it had never (shhh!) been gone.

I guess I’m not the only one who pleaded.

They don’t sell it in small bottles anymore.

My dairy-allergic daughter looked at that half gallon and went, So that means you’re going to make a double batch (ie, four tortes) and put them in the freezer?

Yes, at least that many.

Then you have to make a coconut milk one too. You can’t torture me like that.

Sounds good to me.

So we have some serious bittersweet chocolate buying to do.  And why yes, I was feeling better, can you tell?

(An aside to my old friend Kelly: it was wonderful to run into you there and catch up on your family. It’s hard to believe your toddler is in her senior year of college.

And yes, we had an inquisitive, fearless baby black squirrel exploring the patio today who seemed to be on its first campus tour of the outside world as it checked out everything in sight. It had its big-hair tail fluffed up for the big day as it dined out at the Sunflower Cafe al fresco.

I briefly pictured knitting up a matching big for it to haul its leftovers home in.  But no, squirrels being cheeky little things, it can manage doggybagging it itself.)