The best things I cooked recently

I set a more manageable goal of 52 new recipes year, and hit that number around Thanksgiving. Quite a lot of them were really good - maybe I'm getting better at reading recipes and picking out the ones my family will enjoy? Here are some of the best:

Apple Cranberry Tart (with almond paste) from Viking River Cruises: sweet, almond-y, delicious... I would use a better choice of apple than MacIntosh, but otherwise wouldn't change a thing.

Cranberry Brie Bites (on crescent roll dough) from Delish.com: these were a bit fiddly to assemble, and they made a huge mess of my mini-muffin tin... BUT they were amazingly tasty, and even the picky eaters in the family really liked them.

Bourbon Snickerdoodle Blondies from Broma Bakery: these were disappointingly dull on the first day, but got better with age.

Sourdough No Knead Dutch Oven Bread (with yogurt) from Tidy Mom: this is like cheater's sourdough bread and everyone loves it. I did a variation with 1 cup whole wheat flour replacing 1 cup white flour, and molasses replacing the honey, and it's our new family standard.

Easy One Bowl Oatmeal Cookies from Serious Eats: follow the directions exactly, and you'll get perfect oatmeal cookies.

Chocolate Chunk Orange Scones from Cookies and Cups: very good scones; made them without the glaze because they're already quite sweet.

Green Bean Casserole with Crispy Onions from Smitten Kitchen: very good, even though I cheated and used Trader Joe's crispy onions instead of making my own

Teddie's Apple Cake from Food52: easy and delicious. My students loved it.

Pumpkin Bread from Smitten Kitchen: so, so good and much in demand since I first made it this fall.

Momofuku's Soy Sauce Eggs from Food52: use low-sodium soy sauce or they turn out WICKED salty... but still delicious. These are great to keep in the fridge as a high-protein snack.

Hobo Bibimbap from Food and Wine: not quick to make, but most of it can be prepped ahead of time. This was a HUGE hit at my cousin's birthday party, and even the picky eaters in the family enjoy it.

Shrimp Cocktail from Serious Eats: a lot of work, but absolutely worth it

Apple Weekend Cake by Dorie Greenspan (via David Lebovitz): easy and delicious.

Apple Ricotta Cake (AKA Lousia's Cake) from Food52: slightly sticky, but otherwise excellent. This is a great way to use up leftover ricotta...

I also made two great recipes that don't have online links: Copycat Panera Turkey Chili from a website that seems to have gone defunct... fortunately I wrote it down while making it, so I still have the original. It was delicious and made enough food to be lunch all week. Also the Raspberry Rhubarb Muffins from Flour by Joanne Chang. I found many of her other recipes to be frustratingly imprecise, but this worked perfectly except for making 20 muffins instead of jus 12.

What I Read this Summer

I read a lot, like 75 books or so, depending on whether you count "summer" as being the period between the end of school and the start of school, or June 21 - September 21. The best ones I read were

Miss Buncle’s Book by D E Stephenson

Knit One, Girl Two by Shira Glassman

The Moth Catcher by Ann Cleeves

The Stone Sky by N K Jemisin

The Course of Honor by Avoliot

Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn

The Vintner’s Luck by Elizabeth Knox

The Ruin of a Rake by Cat Sebastian

A Queen from the North by Erin McRae and Racheline Maltese

Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee

Edited to add: somehow, this didn't post back when I wrote it in September, and I've been busy enough that I didn't notice. So here it is, almost 3 months late... 

Sunken Cherry Lemon Cake, with dog

I'm participating in the Food52 Baking Project. This month, the featured cookbook is Baking Chez Moi by Dorie Greenspan and my copy still hasn't arrived, so I'm limited to what's available online. Thus far, I've only made the Custardy Apple Squares and they were delicious!

Last month's cookbook was Classic German Baking by Luisa Weiss. I've been a fan of her blog for years, so this is actually what convinced me to join the project. For yesterday's Throw Back Thursday, I made a Sunken Cherry Lemon Cake. It needed more lemon, and I lost track of time and slightly over-baked it. However, the whole excuse for this post is that I took a picture of it, and it came out surprisingly well. Here it is:

Please note the small hopeful dog in the bottom left corner. Sorry about the funky shadows...

The plate is by Calamityware; we have almost a whole set.

Rereading Patricia Wentworth's mysteries starring Miss Silver

I had the most awful headache and upset stomach for about three days, so I mostly flopped on the sofa and let the dog flop on me, and read. I have a large stockpile of the Miss Silver mysteries by Patricia Wentworth; they're all out on Kindle now, and a few of them have been on super-sale at various points.

I have a great residual fondness for mysteries from the "Golden Age" of British mystery writing. Agatha Christie is possibly my least-favorite of the women who wrote then, although she's definitely the most famous. I like Ngaio Marsh and Marjory Allingham, and I adore Josephine Tey and Dorothy Sayers. For me, Patricia Wentworth falls somewhere between liking and adoring. I think that her best works are very good, indeed, although not at the level of art described by Gaudy Night or The Daughter of Time.

However, reading all her works at once (a challenge, as she wrote over 60 mysteries) quickly reveals some of her weaknesses. Certain stock characters seem to reappear. Certain motives also get deployed too frequently. Many of the resolutions depend on unbelievable coincidence. The classism, racism, and sexism of the period does not charm me.

To be honest, I did not read all of them. I set out to do so, but realized I would be sick and tired of them long before I finished. (Also, buying almost 50 books at roughly $6 per, would be prohibitively expensive.)

The best two I've read are Through the Wall and The Clock Strikes Twelve.

In which I run a lot of errands

It's always weird, the first two weeks after the school year ends. I always end up running a TON of errands, like all the things that I meant to do in April and May but somehow never quite got to. Thus, I have seen the optometrist and the dentist and will be visiting the podiatrist and the allergist next.

I've gone shopping at a Russian import store I'd heard about (Victory International Market, don't let the sketchy exterior put you off because the food inside is quite delicious and reasonably priced.) Finally went to the nearest L. L. Bean store and got a lovely utility skirt and two gorgeous flannel shirts. Bought food-safe mineral oil to bring all the wooden bowls and cutting boards back up to snuff. Bought stamps, deposited checks, mailed packages, ordered thank-you gifts, and began the long and thankless job of cleaning up my office.

In the next few days, I have to register for the July version of NaNoWriMo, write thank-you notes, do a lot more laundry, and begin seriously cleaning the house (once I finish with my office!)

So that's about it. Nothing really fun to report yet.

Edited to add: Oh, wait. Wonder Woman. That was fun. And so was King Arthur, although they should have just called it something else and stopped pretending it was related to the Arthurian legend at all. Just make it another fantasy about a sword and a couple of mages, already.

Studio Ghibli, on the big screen

So that's another school year in the books (although I'm still writing comments and ordering things for next year) and, as usual, I was terrible about blogging. Part of it is that I haven't been knitting. Part of it is ongoing concerns about the privacy of the people whom I teach. Part of is is that my New Year's resolution turned out to be, "Less time with screens; more time with people" and I've been doing a bang-on job of living up to it.

However, today's exciting news is that Studio Ghibli, makers of such classes as Spirited Away and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, will be the subject of a Fathom Events series, in which six classic movies are once-again shown on the big screen.

Details here.

Three important dates

Presented without explanation (due to my job) but highly significant and I need to write them down somewhere.

Monday, January 9th, 8:24pm (CNTV)

Tuesday, January 30th, about 10:10am (CNTV again)

Thursday, January 26th, 2:15pm (RDK)


Edited to add:

You can put Tuesday, February 28, about 12:30pm on that list, too... (CCG)

And now, you can add Wednesday, May 10th, about 10am (IGK)


Edited to add:

And now, Friday, 27 April, about 12:10pm (SAI)