If you had asked me 5 years ago if I’d ever consider baking my own bread, I would have laughed at you.  I would have laughed at you hard.  Like, milk coming out of my nose hard, if I wasn’t lactose intolerant and liked drinking milk.

There is a reason I would have found your question so ridiculous.  See, it’s not the concept of baking bread that would have been funny.  It’s not even the concept of ME baking bread that would have been funny.  It’s what I would have associated with making bread that would have been the source of my amusement… or rather, WHO I associated with it.

While I was a junior in undergrad, me and a few of my friends decided it was time to move off-campus and be grown-ups.  At first there were 3 of us in an apartment together, and then Whitney moved in, too.  We were a happy little family of friends – at first.  Then one of the roommates went a little… crazy.  She fancied herself Martha Stewart, and started buying all sorts of kitchen gadgets most normal college students have never even heard of.  Things like Crock Pots and bread machines started appearing in our small college apartment kitchen.  None of the rest of us could touch these things, because GOD FORBID we got them dirty.  (For that matter, it also would have been forbidden to eat pizza over the box, or sit on the armrest of the couch, or leave coffee cup rings on the counter… but that’s really a separate post.)  Our poor, crazy roommate made valiant attempts at cooking… attempts that usually left the rest of us running for Taco Bell after dinner, and eating the better-than-what-we-just-were-served-for-dinner tacos in the car in Taco Bell’s parking lot, so the crazy chick at home wouldn’t know we found her chicken and biscuits from a box gross.  So for years, all I ever associated with baking your own bread was a giant bread machine that never got used, taking up room in the kitchen, and Taco Bell.

So, 5 years ago I really wouldn’t have been likely to think bread-baking was a good idea.

Flash forward to present day, though, and I clearly have had a change of heart.

It started with me finding out about a bunch of food bloggers participating in this thing called the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge, or BBA.  One blogger in particular writes especially inspiring posts on her bread-baking adventures, and the more I read, the more I got itchy to try it myself.  I had mental debates with myself over the idea.  Baking is not one of my favorite things.  It’s too exact.  I don’t like having to put EXACTLY any amount of anything into my cooking – I’m more of an “eyeball it” kind of cook.  But baking is also a lot like following a lab protocol… which is my in-real-life job, so I’m pretty good at it.  And it would be nice to know my bread has no preservatives, etc., too.  Then I read this post on making light wheat bread, and I decided I was going to try this whole bread-making thing and see what happened.

I bought the book that goes with the BBA, since that was the impetus for this undertaking: The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread.  I went to the grocery store and bought bread flour and yeast.  And then I did something dumb.  I decided to start with a recipe I had never read about, because it was one of the only recipes that wouldn’t take 2 days to complete.  My first foray into bread-making was English muffins.  I have no pictures to share, but I will tell you they tasted good!  The problem was that my yeast was dead, and me being a total novice didn’t think that was necessarily a problem.  So I proceeded with the recipe anyway.  Bottom line: use dead yeast only if you desire English muffin hockey pucks, because that’s about how heavy they were.

My second try was better, though.  I made bagels… again, I have no idea why I didn’t just go for the recipe that drove me to try bread-making in the first place.  Sometimes it’s better not to pull at the threads behind my decision making processes.

Here are some shots from my bagel-making experience:

Look! No dead yeast here!

Bagels awaiting the boiling process.

The finished product

This was easier than I thought it was going to be, although admittedly more time-consuming.  Am I likely to continue trying out the recipes in this book?  You bet!  How about any of you?

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

A few readers have noticed my blogging drought of late, so I figured it was time to write about where I’ve been these last couple weeks!

Other than working on the new house, I’ve picked up a couple of new interests… new time-consuming interests, I should say.  So the posting has taken a hit.  I will try to do better from now on, though.

As a sidenote, I’ve recently been having difficultly with what I should be posting here, because I seem to be throwing in a little of everything and I’m told that is BAD when it comes to blogging.  Perhaps not all my readers want to hear about family life, or about cooking, or about home improvement and maintenance.  But I can’t seem to commit to just one topic, so I’ve been stalling on writing until I could decide what to do.  My conclusion has been, though, that I’m a better writer when I’m writing about what’s on my mind than when I’m forcing myself to write about something I don’t care about at the moment.  So it seems this blog is destined to remain a hodge-podge of my thoughts.

Glad I got that off my chest!

My friend Tiffany is a very cool chick.  She taught me to knit last year, basically over the internet, with decent success.  And now this year she has managed to give me all the information I needed to start canning.

Canning = preserving food.  I didn’t really know that until I started looking into the concept more deeply.  It totally sounds like something your grandma might know about, but not something you, yourself, would actually take an interest in, right?  That’s what I thought anyway!  But then I started hearing Tiffany talk about making her own jams, and pie fillings, and canning them for use at times of the year when good-quality fruits aren’t as plentiful.  So I got curious.  Then I stumbled on this great blog called Food In Jars, and I was officially bit by the canning bug: I had to learn how to do this.

First I went out and purchase all the necessary canning equipment:

1 Water-Bath Canner with Rack

1 Home Canning Set

Ball Deluxe Quilted Jelly Canning Jars

1 Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving

I thought about cheaping out and not getting the canning kit, but that would have been a stupid move and I’m really glad Tiffany talked me out of being a dumb cheapskate.  My experience has been that you really do need every single thing in that kit.

Then I found out about this great pick-your-own farm near our town, and I dragged my family to stock up on things like peaches and raspberries and other good stuff I thought I might want to preserve.  Truth be told: we ate a lot of the stuff before I could think up a way to can it.  However, I did manage to make 1 large jar of peach jam and 3 small jars of bumbleberry preserves (raspberry and blueberry mixed together) in the last 2 weeks!  I haven’t tasted the finished products yet, so I’m not going to share the recipes or how-to’s right now.  This weekend I’m thinking about trying my hand at blueberry butter, and if that comes out well I will probably start sharing recipes.

I’ve also started to bake my own bread… yeast and all… which I will save for an upcoming post because I had a bumpy start to this new hobby. 

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

Not too long ago, I asked my readers to help me out with a relationship dilemma of sorts: do I cede territory in the kitchen to Alex from time to time, or don’t I?  The verdict was a resounding “let the man cook,” so last Thursday night I turned over my chef’s knife, in spite of my apprehensions.

Let me just tell you all… it was HARD.  Really hard.  It took every ounce of my self-control to not hover, or supervise, or check on him when I heard banging that made me cringe (banging that turned out to be Alex pounding the chicken tenders).  I squirmed in my chair in the living room.  I tried to distract myself by doing laundry.  When that didn’t work I decided perhaps we ought to open a bottle of wine with dinner.  IT WAS REALLY, REALLY HARD TO STAY OUT OF THAT KITCHEN.

But, it was also important that I let Alex do his own thing, and make what he wanted to make for me, without giving the impression that I had my doubts.  And after the fifth time I reminded myself of this, a miraculous thing happened: I started to smell what he was cooking.  It smelled good!

Alex, as it turns out, was making chicken stir fry with rice and salad, a meal I would be perfectly happy for him to make again from time to time.  Here are a few pictures of the finished product:

Thanks for all your input – you all really helped on this issue!

© 2010, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

Over the last week or so, I have been posting detailed accounts of some of the things Alex and I did while we were in Italy last month.  This is the last post in the series; you can read the first one here and the second one here.

As I have mentioned previously, I scoured my fair share of travel guides before we headed out on our trip to Florence.  Beside the sights we wanted to make sure we saw, I also had a list of potential restaurants/cafes we might try.  You can never research too much!  But once we arrived in Italy, all the careful studying of books flew out the window when it came to food.  We did not set foot in a single restaurant I had read about in a book.  Instead, we relied heavily on word of mouth, from both locals and fellow tourists.

So in this final post about our trip, I’m going to tell you about our experiences with several restaurants in Florence.  I’m highlighting the three best places we went to, but please note: we really did not find a BAD place to eat in Florence.  Some of the trattorias in high-traffic areas were a bit lackluster, but nothing was unpalatable.

Our very first night in Florence we wound up going to a vineria only a few feet down the road from our hotel.  The vineria was called Mangiafoco Cafe, located on Lungarno Acciaiuoli, and it was recommended to us by the hotel desk clerk.

We basically stumbled into Mangiafoco, exhausted and starving after our trek across the Atlantic.  There was no one else in the restaurant – just us and the couple of employees.  And while it is a restaurant, it is also a wine bar… which turned out to be a very cool thing for us.  You see, the owner of the vineria struck up a conversation with us while we sat there, barely awake and sipping our very first glasses of wine in Europe, and we got 2 cool bonuses out of the conversation.  The first one was that he decided to make us a special “Tuscany sampler plate” instead of giving us the menu to choose from, because he thought it would be nice for us to try all the local specialties on our first night in Italy.  So he brought us this:

It’s a bunch of prosciutto, salami, pears, and 3 ages of pecorino cheese.  We also got fig jelly, ice wine jelly, and Tuscan bread and olive oil with the platter.  It was delicious!  The second cool thing this guy gave us was information about chianti wines.  In 2003 Tuscany had a lot of rain.  More rain than Tuscany had had in a while, or has had since.  As a result, 2003 chiantis are some of the best you can get.  Of course, this is one man’s opinion.  Alex and I have sought out 2003 chianti since returning home, though, and I’ve got to say there is something different about that year.

We got a bit more adventurous our second night in Florence, buoyed mostly by the advice of a couple we met on our Tuscan countryside tour that afternoon.  They told us 2 things: 1) the Oltrarno/Santo Spirito part of Florence has the best, most authentic restaurants, and 2) if a restaurant in Florence isn’t at least half full, you shouldn’t bother eating there.  That was the criteria we used when we walked into Trattoria Mamma Gina.  This place is on Borgo S. Jacopo in the Oltrarno/Santo Spirito section, and it was reasonably crowded, even at an early dinner hour.

A couple of notes on Mamma Gina’s: the menu is in Italian.  I know that sounds scary, but if you’ve eaten in a reasonable number of upscale Italian restaurants in the US, you will be fine!  Tortellini and Marsala in English are the same when translated into Italian.  Every restaurant in Tuscany expects you to drink chianti, so that is what we did.  I ordered a tortellini dish, which was absolutely delicious, while Alex ordered a chicken dish that basically amounted to the Tuscan version of chicken parmigiana.  (Yes, I teased him about going all the way to Italy to eat chicken parm for a few weeks after we got back.)  We even ordered dessert, a panna cotta-type dish.

This was probably the best meal we had on our trip, and it was also the most entertaining meal we had.  Once we finished eating and our plates were cleared, the waiter tried to serve us more food… twice.  The first time the food belonged to another table, but he was very concerned about the fact that we appeared to have no food as we turned him away.  Alex  tried to explain that we already ate, even told him what we’d had, but something must have gotten lost in translation, because 5 minutes later the guy showed up again… with round two of our dinners!  This misunderstanding got cleared up, but we felt pretty bad for the poor guy!

The other place I’d recommend checking out if you’re ever in Florence is called Goldenview Open Bar Ristorante.  It’s just across Ponte Vecchio, in the Oltrarno/Santo Spirito area.  I had noticed it always looked crowded a couple of times when we were wandering around, so on our last night in Italy we decided to try getting in.  We must have arrived just in time, because not only did they seat us immediately, but they also gave us a sweet table:

You can see the view just past the wine bottle, the restaurant is right on the Arno River!  The sun set as we ate our dinner, which was the best way I could have imagined spending our last night.  After a trip filled with chianti, chianti, and more chianti, I decided I wanted to try a different Italian wine… so I ordered a bottle of Barolo.  Let me just tell you all something… if you go to Tuscany and order anything other than chianti, they will look at you like you have grown two extra heads and a leg out of your belly button… and the new appendages are purple with orange polka dots.  Our waiter was very cool – he was Italian, but had recently spent some time in Queens, where he had learned about The Cheesecake Factory.  It was a bit surreal, actually, to be sitting at a nice restaurant in Italy, speaking with an Italian about an American chain restaurant that had made a huge impression on him.

The food at Open Bar was OK.  I ordered a risotto special and Alex decided to brave Florentine steak:

Florentine steak is basically a porterhouse, but it’s a big deal in Florence (and by big, I mean BIG), so he figured one of us better give it a try before we went home.  Neither item was terribly impressive, but the wine was, as were the service and the view.  Oh, and the bathroom!  It was made of marble.  I still can’t get over that.

Perhaps you find it strange that I have yet to mention gelato in any of my posts about the trip.  Some people would tell you that you simply cannot go to Italy without having gelato everyday.  There is a reason for that.  You can get gelato EVERYWHERE, just like coffee and wine.  I tried 4 different flavors, and I loved them all.  But I can’t remember a darn thing about where we were when I got those gelatos, so I can’t recommend any gelaterias!

If I haven’t said it before, I will say it now… Alex and I loved Italy, and we will definitely be heading back as soon as we can swing it!

© 2009, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

Hi, my name is Christina and I am addicted to gourds.

Hmm… it’s true, it does feel good to admit it.

I really am addicted to them, though.  If I stumble across a menu item in any kind of restaurant that involves pumpkin, or butternut squash, or any squash really, it’s a pretty good bet that I will be ordering it.  So, as you can imagine, I adore the fall season.  There is no other time of year where it becomes so easy to obtain gourd-related foods!

In case you don’t believe me, here are some shining examples:

• Starbucks brings back the Pumpkin Spice Latte and Pumpkin Scones (they also used to have these awesome Gingerbread Lattes, but as you can read here and here, they seem to have eliminated those from my area) My good friend Laura and I have a Pumpkin Spice Latte tradition, where we always have to go get at least one together before they leave stores.
• The Cheesecake Factory brings back Pumpkin Cheesecake and Pumpkin Pecan Cheesecake

I’m also a fan of Lean Cuisine’s Butternut Squash Ravioli meal, but that’s not really what this post is about.

On top of pumpkin-related foods being tasty, it turns out they are pretty healthy for you too!  I suppose if you cover the pumpkin with butter and heavy cream it sort-of undoes some of the health benefits, but I still feel warm and fuzzy inside knowing I’m getting beta- AND alpha-carotene, potassium, and fiber, among other things.  Not to mention how cool pumpkin seeds turn out to be!

It goes without saying, then, that my own cooking takes on a bit of a pumpkin-y twist around September and October.  Once I attempted to use a fresh, whole pumpkin to make a soup, but that did not go so well for my left thumb, so now I have to go with pre-cut or canned stuff most of the time (which my thumb, and the rest of my fingers, thank me for).  My two favorite pumpkin recipes are:

• Pumpkin Black Bean Soup
• Pasta with Pumpkin and Sausage

I know these are both Rachael Ray recipes.  And I know I always tell people that I can’t stand the fact that her phrase “EVOO” has made it into the dictionary, because it seems rather ridiculous to me that people can’t just say “extra-virgin olive oil.”  It’s the ultimate in lazy.  But I also have to admit, the woman has some really great ideas!

I never thought too much about the oddness of my love of gourd cooking until I moved in with my fiance.  He was a bit…leery… of the concept of eating savory foods made with pumpkin as a key ingredient.  But after gently explaining that my life depends on eating a lot of pumpkin foods at this time of year, he agreed to try it.  Guess what?  Now he’s a convert.  I actually received a “you can make this anytime you want.”  If any of you know Alex, you’ll know that’s a pretty big deal!

If anyone reading knows of any other delicious gourd-related recipes, I’d love it if you’d share!

© 2009, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.

© 2009, The Table Has Shoes (and Other Ambiguities). All rights reserved.