The Table

Anastasia and I were given money to go get a dining room table. We bought the table below. It was a great deal: on clearance, with both leaves in you could fit 10 people around it, without the leaves six. Anastasia liked the oak....


Then we got home and started measuring again. I had measured a day or two before we left and thought- that will be easy to remember. We realized that our not that large dining room now was going to have a huge oak slab dominating it and that walking sideways would soon become a matter of instinct. We called the furniture store back and they were nice enough to cancel the order for us since we had just placed it and nothing had been done to the table yet. We then started looking through digital pictures of the other tables we had seen and decided to go with this rather different one:

It seats 4-6 people and it actually fits quite nicely in our dining room- 6 inches narrower and three feet shorter. The lessons are- if you make a mistake, admit it right away and don't assume you will remember what seems easy to remember at the time.

Yellow cake--not as successful

This is what happens when you skip the step of lining your pans with parchment paper (I've heard b/w newsprint works too). I had even greased and floured them, to no avail. Maybe if I'd let them cool longer?

Anyway, this is the recipe I was making--the yellow cake recipe out of Pam Anderson's book The Perfect Recipes for Entertaining (I would highly recommend this book--available at your local library). I was drawn it by its promise of ease and versatility: fill it with raspberry and top with cream cheese frosting or fill with marmalade and glaze with chocolate, or simply top with fruit topping.

The first attempt, as shown above, resulted in a bunch of tasty crumbs and tidbits, so I whipped up some chocolate frosting and used my Pampered Chef decorator to put rosettes on them and everyone thought I did it on purpose. The second time I made it went much better, and I topped it with applesauce (see last week's post) and ice cream. I put the other layer in the freezer, and I'll be trying the raspberry version for Mom's birthday this weekend. I think it broke in transit to the freezer, but it will still taste good!

So the jury's still out on this recipe--it's relatively easy, but I still get hung up on exactly how long to beat at various steps in the recipe, and it's quite dense, but definitely buttery and tasty. I don't think it will be the only cake I will make for the rest of my life.

The one I really have my sights set on is this one, but just reading the recipe tires me out!

Red Velvet Birthday Cake

Recently a friend of mine celebrated a birthday, and I took the occasion as a chance to try out one of the many fabulous celebration cakes smitten kitchen has posted on her blog. (If you're wondering where I am when not posting on my blog, there's a good chance I'm reading hers.)

I chose to try my hand at Red Velvet Cake, as it seemed to have the best balance between being fun and birthday-like, while still being classy. The bottom line on this recipe: it was somewhat time-consuming, but a huge hit and it made my friend feel very special, so it was a good choice.

Now for the blow-by-blow. The recipe is a 3-layer cake, so I borrowed my mom's cake pans and was glad I did, because they have this little thing you run around the rim of the pan to get the layers out. I also lined the pans with parchment, per directions. (Post to follow where I did not follow these directions.) Getting ingredients was also interesting--cake flour was hard to find at Fareway, but the butcher was able to find it for me. I ended up going to Hyvee for the red food coloring, because it called for 3 oz (one of the largish bottles is 1 oz), and all you get at Fareway were those multipacks. I figured I'd have to buy like 20 multipacks to get enough. I did cut it down to 2 oz, and was satisfied with the result.

To explain the pictures, from top left, clockwise: The frosting is cream cheese frosting, and I made a double batch so as to be able to do a crumb coat, as seen here and explained here (you need to read this post if you want to do layer cakes!)--especially important with white frosting and red crumbs. The final coat was not perfect, but pretty close, as you can see in the third picture. The 2nd--well, my fingers got really red, as did pretty much everything in the kitchen. I was thankful for bleach for my towels, and I used paper towels to immediately wipe up the counter.

Decorating: I put a cookie cutter in the middle and sprinkled red sprinkles in the middle, spreading it around with a pastry brush. Then I tinted a bit of frosting and put dots all around the edge. Dots and circles are all the rage these days, for reasons I don't entirely understand.

The last two pictures are just to show how messy my counter got, and how I cleaned it all up in a matter of minutes thanks to my fabulous dishwasher. I love my new kitchen and its appliances!

Preserving fall's bounty

As we continue to live through the seasons' change, I continue to try to live out principles I was motivated by from reading Animal Vegetable Miracle this spring. I did some preserving of berries, zucchinni, tomatoes, and green beans this summer.

This fall I decided to concentrate on butternut squash and apples. When we were in MI for a cousin's wedding, we ran across some beautiful butternut squash for 18 cents a pound. Crazy, eh? I got 11 pounds for $2. That's about as cheap as food gets, and this food is good!

Easy squash recipe: Wash it. Prick it. Put it in a slow cooker whole (as seen in picture) with 1/2 inch of water. Cook on low until soft when pierced (4-7 hours). Remove; quarter lengthwise to cool. Scoop out flesh. Mash--add butter, ginger, salt, pepper, whatever--eat and then freeze the rest in freezer bags.

The applesauce is a little more time-consuming, but this is the easiest way I've found. Peel, core, and quarter the apples (I like to use my Pampered Chef cook's corer). Put in slow cooker. Shake cinnamon and sugar over them (I just guess on this, sorry!). Pour 1 cup or so apple juice or water over them. Cook on high until they're soft, about 2 hours. Mash, add sugar if needed.

I had visions of freezing a whole lot of applesauce too, but so far we've mostly fed it to guests. It goes great with ice cream (see picture) and/or yellow cake. I guess if we are using seasonal bounty to feed our guests that's a good thing too--it doesn't all have to be about preserving!

Purchasing notes: Fareway has 1/2 peck white tote bags of cooking and eating apples from Deals Orchard in Jefferson for 89 cents a pound, so that's a great convenient way to eat local and in-season! We've enjoyed the Fujis (may be done now), Red Delicious, and Jonathans.