Measure Twice….

I’ve not much to say today, having been out to the church bazaars, craft fairs and book sale; shopping plumb wears me out. But I thought I would show off the results of a little of my earlier shopping.

My old red plastic measuring cups were becoming less and less useful, so for my birthday in July I requested a set of stainless steel measures. We started looking for them and I could not find what I wanted although I searched a couple of specialty cooking stores as well as various other places. Finally a month or so ago I decided I’d have to go online, and I found what I wanted but couldn’t quite make up my mind to spend the money. A couple of weeks ago we had occasion to go to City by the Sea and its suburbs, and I did some shopping at the Christmas Tree Shops. There I found the black measuring cups in the photo – made by Farberware and on sale for under $2.00. Too good to pass up! Only a few days later, though, I was notified by Amazon.com that the price of the stainless steel set had gone down, so I ordered them and they swiftly arrived at my door. You can probably see what’s special about this set: it has not only the standard measures of 1 cup, 1/2 cup, 1/3 cup and 1/4 cup, but also measures for 2/3 cup, 3/4 cup, and (the one I can’t do without) 1/8 cup.

1/8 cup, as Miss Furlong taught us in eighth grade home ec class, is the same as 2 tablespoons. I strongly suspect that knowing that, and that there are three teaspoons to a tablespoon, are some of the most useful facts I learned all that year. There are several recipes I make that call for either white sauce or a roux, and usually that 1/8 cup of flour is the right amount for something that feeds two people.

The first general purpose cookbook I bought for myself was a paperback edition of The Fannie Farmer Boston Cooking School Cookbook. (It was probably the 1959 edition.) Miss Farmer was known as the Goddess of Level Measurements. She may not have been the first to dispense with “butter the size of a walnut” but she certainly popularized the system most American recipes use to this day. I bought the book in a little drugstore in Waltham, Mass. during the summer after my freshman year in college, when I was sharing an apartment with two SDS members. The apartment was on a one-way street leading to the local hospital, and across the street from a body shop and a moving van company; even without a radio we were not deprived of Sergeant Pepper, because the downstairs neighbors played WBZ’s Top 40 well into the night. I know we must have cooked things from that book, but I can’t remember what; the constant noise of sirens, hammers, moving vans and rock’n’roll must have driven them all from my head. But I still remain loyal to the concept of measurement for baking and some cooking, and I wouldn’t think of measuring dry ingredients in a liquid measuring cup or vice versa.

Friday Five: Mix and Stir Edition

Oh dear! Over at RevGalBlogPals, Songbird tells us:

In a minor domestic crisis, my food processor, or more precisely the part you use for almost everything for which I use a food processor, picked the eve of the festive season of the year to give up the ghost. A crack in the lid expanded such that a batch of squash soup had to be liberated via that column shaped thing that sticks up on top.

Can you tell this is not my area of strength?

Next week, I'm hosting Thanksgiving. I need your help. Please answer the following kitchen-related questions:

1) Do you have a food processor? Can you recommend it? Which is to say, do you actually use it?
Oh yes. In fact we have two! The big one now lives in the pantry much of the time, but it's invaluable when I do get it down. It's an 11-cup Cuisinart that we bought not long after the Great Big Mall opened near City of Lakes. I use it especially for making piecrust, grating potatoes for latkes and at other times when a recipe says to use one. When we moved here, Onkel Hankie Pants prevailed on me to get a KitchenAid mini-processor which doesn't take up as much room on the counter. I use it very frequently for chopping onions and similar tasks which I wouldn't use the big one for. Both of them work quite well.

Oddly enough, I was making squash soup yesterday too! But the recipe told me to use the blender, so that's what I did, ladlefull by ladlefull. The recipe (from church) also encouraged the use of a handheld stick blender, which would have been nice but I don't have one.

2) And if so, do you use the fancy things on it? (Mine came with a mini-blender (used a lot and long ago broken) and these scary disks you used to julienne things (used once).)

Mine came with three discs for slicing and julienning, plus a plastic blade which I'm not sure I've ever used. I don't do a lot of julienning, but I do use the slicing disk, especially when I maked scalloped potatoes for the shelter -- 24 servings is a lot of slicing but it goes really fast with the processor. I don't know if this makes any sense, but when it comes to electric things I feel the simpler the better, so I prefer to have a mixer, a blender, a processor rather than one item with a lot of attachments.

3) Do you use a standing mixer? Or one of the hand-held varieties? Both, actually. The standing mixer lives in the linen closet most of the time (when we got a toaster-oven, it needed to move) but I like it for making big cakes and cheesecake. The hand-held mixer lives in the cupboard by the refrigerator and is used much more frequently. I got the stand mixer from a refurbishing place in Florida over the 'net. I was happy to have it, but soon realized it was not ideal for some of the most common tasks, such as making whipped cream (unless you're having about 40 people for strawberry shortcake!) So, the handmixer, same brand.

(And isn't that color delightfully retro?) Songbird posted a photo of a beautiful aqua KitchenAid, but I am posting a different retro color, which is the one Sisterfilms will be receiving soon. I won it in a sweepstakes drawing at an online cooking store and got to choose the color, so I asked her which she wanted and she chose this. It's been waiting in its box ever since for the kitchen at Chez Landlord to be ready to receive it, and it's going to be wending its way there very soon now!

4) How about a blender? Do you have one? Use it much? Yes, we have one. The first one we bought in 1975 to make baby food for SonShineIn (aka Comrade Landlord) and it lasted until just a few years ago. The base was Harvest Gold! (Another kind of retro, I hope it never comes back!) A couple of years ago I got a new one, same brand, for Christmas because OHP wanted to be able to make smoothies. It came with a mini-processor attachment which I'm not sure we've ever used. I used it for the squash soup pureeing, and I also use it to grind up the crumbs for aeblekage.

5) Finally, what old-fashioned, non-electric kitchen tool do you enjoy using the most? I don't know how old-fashioned it is because it does have silicon-covered wires, but I love this little whisk for making white sauce, gravy, etc.

Bonus: Is there a kitchen appliance or utensil you ONLY use at Thanksgiving or some other holiday? If so, what is it? I was going to say my trussing needle, but actually I do use it sometimes for roast chicken. So I'll have to go with the rosette irons that I've only recently begun using to make these amazing Christmas treats. Well I remember my first sight and taste of one at the Christmas concert at Salem English Lutheran Church in Waseca, MN! It was very un-Minnesotan of me to grab the only one on the plate.

Random Thoughts Walking along Maine St.

With the recent return of snow, enough so that the sidewalk clearers haven't made it to our sidewalks here yet, I've mostly been walking Rusty along Maine St., which is our main street. It doesn't take more than a teaspoonful of brains to walk the dog, so I get to observe and think about things. Some of the things I've seen and thought about:

• This morning I saw my first Maine Agriculture license plate, and then I saw two more! They are a new addition to the (some say too many) charitable-donation license plates here, and are by far the most colorful, as you will see. We have the lobster plate, the extra money from which goes to lobster research, in honor of my lobstering relatives. There are also the loon plate (facing the opposite way from Minnesota's loon plate, but for the same purpose), the Black Bear plate (I think this one's for U. of Maine - Orono alumni) and the rather generic "UMS" plate for the University of Maine System. And, of course, the standard one with our state bird and flower is quite nice as well.

• There are currently a few "For Lease" signs on Maine Street. The camera/digital photography store, one of a chain of three, has closed, and so has one of the three opticians. A natural skin care store/salon is moving into the optician space, leaving an empty space on the second floor of the former department store where the camera store is now also vacant. A chain video store has closed its Maine st. location, to the joy of the independent DVD rental store and also the game rental shop.
  
• A year or so ago, the Goodwill store on Maine St. closed, reopening in a new purpose-built, larger building in the next town, near Target and so on. The site was empty for a while, but now we have two new businesses there -- the wave of the future -- one sells gelato, locally roasted coffee, and Simply Divine brownies, and the other is a cybercafe and gaming venue. (I mean of course, the kind of gaming where you go to play Guitar Hero, not Las Vegas-style gaming.) Both seem to be doing well. Two more new restaurants have opened as well, one on each end of the downtown section of the street. As you can tell, all these businesses are dependent on discretionary spending or "disposable income." So far they seem to be doing well in spite of our national and local economic woes. I wish them luck.
  
• We have an awful lot of banks. Only two of them, as far as I can tell, are out-of-state banks.
• There's not much on the street that was there when I was in high school (business-wise -- most of the buildings are the same, just not their occupants). Off-hand I would say, apart from one of the opticians and the odd dentist, there's an insurance agency and Day's News (where you can get Italian sandwiches and ice cream cones as well as magazines and newspapers).
  
• License plates again -- Maine doesn't charge as much for vanity plates as some states, so they are quite common. Outside a church once I saw one that said XEGSIS. Last night, by the organic food store, was one that read PRSNKT. But most people, like LEONA B, BABETTE and DE BOYS, are not as creative.
• Rusty has once or twice found a discarded doughnut on Maine Street. He now believes that every municipal trashcan might just hold a doughnut, so he has to investigate each one. Fortunately they are sturdy and he has yet to knock one over.
• Now it's just about time to go for another walk down (or up) Maine Street. And by the way, I did make the biscuits, and they were good!
  

Woeful Wednesday, sort of

Well, I've already broken my New Year's Resolution about blogging, but my excuse is that yesterday was Sisterknits' last full day with us before she headed back to City of Lakes today. We had a nice brunch with Brother #3 and The Photographer, and in the evening Shrimp Fettuccine Alfredo and then the laundry, packing, scurrying about the house looking for stuff, and sadness at our impending separation from our youngest. Rusty knew something was up, but not quite what, and stayed up past his bedtime with some misbehavior as consequence.

So far today, all her travel has gone smoothly, knock on wood! As she headed off in the taxi to the Clipper Mart (where the bus to Portland and then Boston takes off), Rusty jumped and barked rather angrily at the very nice taxi driver who had been his new friend only a few minutes earlier. He would really like to have someone in permanent residence who would run with him and have snowball "fights" (throwing snowballs that he catches in his mouth.) But, Winifred the cat is getting lonely back there with only visits from SonShineIn to break the monotony; Up the Hill UMC and House of Large Sizes for Small People miss Sisterknits' hard work; and classes in her filmmaking and child development programs start in a couple of weeks. So, our house is emptier now.

There's lots of snow outside and I'm going to make tourtiere for supper -- French-Canadian pork pie with potato, onion and allspice.

Unless I neglected to add one to my list, I read exactly 200 books in 2007. That was 6 fewer than 2006, but one of the books was David Halberstam's THE COLDEST WINTER, which was quite long. I'm embarking on a month or so of reading only books I already own, some of which will be "deaccessioned" as we used to say in the library biz, when I am done with them. Last book read in '07 was a Christmas gift, ROUGH CIDER by Peter Lovesey; first of '08 was THE DELICATE STORM by Giles Blunt. The former was set in England, partly in the 60's and partly in WWII; the latter was set in Ontario. Both were extremely good mysteries.

Random thoughts

• The RevGalBlogPals Friday Five was about Christmas things they disliked. (I couldn't think of enough grumps to play this one). Pretty uniform distaste was shown for inflatable lawn figures. I must confess -- we had one for a few years. It was a snowman bought at a going-out-of-business sale, an ironic welcome home display the year both daughters were at school on the Right Coast. We got it because we knew it would embarrass them (a homemade sign was added.) When we moved, we left it with The Traveller for the cabin in America's Dairyland, where she will put it up for a day or two at most. I hope I won't be shunned for this confession!
  
• I made turkey soup on Thursday with the remnants of the Thanksgiving turkey. It was good. But, it took most of the day and dirtied a lot of dishware. OHP and Rusty had a slight altercation Friday morning when the trash bag containing the turkey bones was being removed. Nothing serious, but some growling was heard. Rusty doesn't understand the concept of "not good for dogs."
• My throat has been sore all week with almost no sign of a head cold. I have a little sniffle, but nothing like some family members have been struggling with. I don't know whether to be pleased or otherwise. What if it's sore for two weeks? Or three?
• They're expecting snow in City of Lakes today. A "heavy wintry mix" is forecast here for Monday. It would be nice to see snow, but not so nice for walking the dog.
• We'd like to go to the Methodist Church public breakfast this morning, but last month there was some doubt whether it might be postponed to next Sunday. They aren't listed in any of our three phone books (and don't get me started on that!) and the number listed in the local paper was wrong. It's a long way to go with nothing at the end, although we'd be able to find a restaurant fairly close by. Decisions, decisions! And doesn't the Book of Discipline say you have to have a website, or is it just email, or just in Minnesota?
• If you're wondering how we're doing here with heating oil so high -- not too badly, as long as the sun shines a little. We keep the thermostat at 58-60 degrees overnight (otherwise I get a headache, who knows why). But in the morning, if it's clear, I don't turn it up -- just raise the blinds on our south- and east-facing picture windows. I usually don't touch the thermostat till the sun goes down. Bless Mr. Bernier, who built this house in 1951, and let perpetual light shine upon him!