So long Aunt Jemima

daphne on January 26, 2009

Under threat of exposure and public humiliation I agreed that it was time to try that whole pancake thing once again.  Perhaps you’ve caught a whiff of my irritating greener-than-thou attitude? That grating pride I send out over the airwaves for each non-exploding loaf of bread baked and each precious raspberry harvested from the garden?

How dare I brag about a batch of brownies? The audacity is despicable.  Why? Because I make, I mean, I used to make pancakes from the box.

It was first brought to my attention that this was pathetic about a year ago.  And by pathetic I mean I was told in no uncertain terms by my pal Peggy that using pancake mix was akin to spreading butter on a twinkie and calling it homemade.  It worked. She successfully guilted me into trying pancakes from scratch.  The results tasted like cardboard, if that cardboard had been dragged behind a car and then slathered in syrup. Not good.

But recently I was encouraged to get back up on that horse.  I started out on Saturday morning with some hungry children and the proven recipe of my friend Kelly’s mother.  Determined, I grabbed the flour and set out to honor Eileen’s memory, and kick the Jemima habit to boot.

Eileen would have been proud.

The pancakes were beautiful. And tasty.  Light and fluffy, and when I added a swirl of strawberry puree, yeah, well, that didn’t turn out quite as well.  But didn’t they look pretty before the berries charred black and sent billows of smoke into the kitchen?

For the next batch I added some puree to the batter, and that was a delicious success.

In the interest of fair reporting, I scanned the ingredients list on the pancake mix.  A lengthy list, which is never a good sign, but it was not altogether terrible. So why shun America’s favorite Auntie?  Well, for one, homemade really does taste better.  And another thing?  The packaging.  If you don’t know the evils of yet another extra box, swing by Sustainable Dave’s site, he’ll fill you in.

Thanks to those who insisted I keep my nose to the pancake griddle, I am ready to say farewell to this old Aunt Jemima–

I don’t need her anymore.  I’ve got some pancake confidence, a good recipe, and a mini-Jemima of my own.

I’ve got it all under control

daphne on January 21, 2009

Step right up.   Watch the incredible multi-tasking mommy juggle alligators using only the illusion of control…That’s right ladies and gentlemen, the ILLUSION OF CONTROL.

Ha! What a joke.

I may be the ringleader here, but there is nary a lion, nor a clown, not even a box of crackerjacks willing to bow down before my power.  In this suburban circus of life, illusion is all I’ve got.  Sure, I have the power to sign permissions slips, but I’m no fool.  I have no real control.  Once upon a time I imagined that I would be the master when I became the mommy, but now that the kids have arrived I’m pretty much skipping down delusion street with a tattered tinfoil badge that says MOM.

Don’t get me wrong, I am the boss.  I get to say when it’s time to brush teeth and what we’re having for dinner.   But you know, in the face of fevers that attack unannounced and children determined to wear bikinis in the snow, that seems a tad limited.

Which brings me to this whole food, au-natural, organic drum I’ve been beating lately.  I need to come clean:  Sure, it’s the healthy way to go, and yes, I do want what’s best for my kids.  But here’s the clincher — hovering over the morsels that enter those precious tummies does even more for me than it does for them:  it gives me a nice comfy sense (read: illusion) of control.

Because they will eat candy; and they do order mickey mouse pancakes for lunch; and there are birthday parties and Halloween bags and trips to the ice cream store and well, come on, what fun would life be if we all didn’t indulge every now and then?

But here’s my secret:  I can make some of this stuff at home. Voila! Look at me!  I am the great and powerful wizard (of snacks.)

And, giddy with this power, did I sneak a handful of flax seed into the muffins?  I don’t know, maybe.  Are those beloved candy-striped french fries really beets in disguise? Perhaps.  Those funky green stripes in the chocolate chip cookies? I neither confirm nor deny the rumor that zucchini is hiding behind the chips.

I know, I know.  It’s controversial, this whole idea of sneaking in the good stuff.  But hey, I’m in charge here, remember?

I don’t know.  Maybe I can fool enough of these little people some of the time in my own private queen-dom.  Or maybe I’m fooling no one.  But I will tell you this; I get to decide what goes into the cookies they eat after school.  Which makes me the queen of what they consume.

And it’s good to be the queen.

I want candy

daphne on January 7, 2009

Quote of the day:

When I grow up I want to be a candy shop worker.  I mean, after I win the Olympics.  When I  have to get a real job, I’ll work in a candy factory.  Like those guys…

That’s Kira, watching her new heroes at work.  After seriously considering a future in aeronautics or marine biology she has at long last settled on a lifelong career in the teeth-rotting arts.

Yes, I suppose I am to blame.  En route to the aquarium I surprised the girls with an unscheduled stop at Hammond’s Candies. Yup, a spontaneous, never-saw-it-coming, end-of-winter-break, tour of a candy factory.  That’s just the wild and crazy kind of mama that I am.

It was pretty old school around there.  Reruns of the classic clip from I Love Lucy would have been playing in your head too as you watched these guys kneading the cane sugar and folding it into candy.  I never caught a glimpse of Lucy desperately stuffing chocolates into her mouth, but she would have fit right in with all the retro candy boxes and machines from the 1920s.

It wasn’t in black and white, but they still make candy the old fashioned way: sugar, water, and corn syrup.  Oh man, really?  How old fashioned is corn syrup?  Can I at least call ye olde corn syrup ok and continue to condemn the high fructose corn syrup that lurks in our bread and ketchups?

Seriously, can sweets that look this quaint threaten our well-being as much as the well-documented evils of a bag of skittles?

I spent some precious, sugar-crash-induced nap-time trying to find out.  Here’s what I learned. There are many sites that discuss the chemical composition of high fructose corn syrup (hfcs) in scientific terms.  They all sounded serious, complex, and well, science-y.  None of them mentioned plain old corn syrup, but they discussed hfcs in terms that were sufficient to keep it black-listed from my grocery list.  Still, I wanted to know the difference.  I persevered.  I called Hammond’s.

According to the lady who answered the phone and went to ask someone, Hammond’s uses corn syrup, (but never the high fructose stuff;) specifically they use 42 DE corn syrup, which is all natural and has a lower dextrose equivalent.  In contrast, hfcs is highly refined through chemical processing and has an increased level of (fake) sweetener added.

Complicated stuff, but here’s the gist, based on what I learned from the call and from what Michael Pollan, the food guru and author of In Defense of Food and Omnivores Dilemma (both are on my must-read list,) has said:

We should eat food that is closest to being food.  The more refined it is, the more processed it is, the worse it becomes for our bodies. As Pollan put it, if our grandmothers would not recognize something as food, then we should give serious pause before putting it in our mouths.

That’s food for thought.  For me, it means that I will continue to eat my sweets in this form–

And heed the warnings that advise me when it is hiding this form–

Happy Birthday to you

daphne on January 4, 2009

Happy Birthday baby girl.

No, wait, that’s not right.  This is not you anymore, lounging around under the table with the balloon, waiting to blow out the candles on your 3rd birthday cake.

This is you now.  Independent.  Determined.  Generous.  Empathetic.  And unbelievably eight years old. When did you make the leap from being my little baby to winning jump-rope medals?

And swim team ribbons?

I blinked, and the wrinkly newborn days are long gone.  Despite the bumbles and struggles and my blatant lack of experience going in, we made it this far.  I could have asked for no better initiation into motherhood than your patient, wise self.  Thank you for your willful insistence, for it is you who remembers the canvas bags, you who composts the carrot peels, and you who asks to take the bikes instead.

Happy Birthday dear Kira.  My funny, caring, loving, smart, incredible baby.  You are, perhaps, the Greenest Biener.

Some like it hot, and I’m starting to see why

daphne on December 29, 2008

Some do like it hot. Like my friend Kelcey over at Mama Bird Diaries, who shivers her way through the snow by dreaming of sweltering Augusts and painting her toenails, hailstorms be damned.

Not me.  Maybe it’s my Minnesota roots, but I like it when a blast of brisk air demands I throw on an extra sweater.  I even get kind of whiny when the summer heat hits sweltering.  But lately frigid temperatures are making it hard to remember just what was so bad about those toasty warm days after all. With temps plummeting below zero parenting gems come pouring out of me.  I’m saying things like “human-beings cannot function this far below freezing,” and “Danger! Your skin will crack away from your skull if you dare take that hat off again.”  I do think the children are enjoying my take on this big chill.

Though I have been transformed into the abominable grinch, there remain two types able to smile despite the precipitous drops in mercury.  Brave children that have been promised a hot cocoa in lieu of lunch,

…and my brother, the sherpa, whom said children conned into dragging them back up the sledding hill during the five minutes I relented and allowed exposure to the harsh elements.

Last winter I had it all going on.  The garden put out enough squash to keep me in butternut squash soup through the first 10 snows, even though those 2007 snows arrived well before December.  For cold to the bone, there is nothing better than this bright orange steaming soup, heaped high with cheese and apples so the focus is hearty, not healthy. (Ok, it does get a low-fat, healthy kiss if you just say no to the cheese.)

Without the squash around to keep me cozy, I give thanks for the gift I gave myself, the amazing cookbook Artisan Bread in Five.  Confident now with cookbook in hand, I’m not letting a little thing like a magnificent failure in the bread baking department keep me away from a hot oven.  The first few loaves were more lumpy than lovely, but tasty all the same.   We made this one…

And this one too…

But these whole wheat loaves only call for a 350° oven, and I was looking for a little more heat in the kitchen, if you know what I mean, wink-wink.  (Ok, no, I’m kidding. Not that kind of heat. This was a family-friendly baking project.)

So we cranked that puppy up to 450° and look!

Gorgeous baguettes hot from the oven.  Crusty.  And hot.  And ooo-la-la, look at me!  I’m sipping cafe au lait in gay Paris.  I’m dipping my toes in the aqua waters of the French Riviera.

Or maybe I’m shmearing a warm piece of homemade bread with peanut butter and jelly.  But my toes, oui, they are starting to defrost.

The Mighty Mushroom

daphne on December 16, 2008

It was bound to happen.  Word gets out that you plant a couple of vegetables and before you know it the postman arrives bearing mushroom logs and shitake spawn.   Think that sounds scary? It looks even worse–

This organically zany gift arrived from my sister via this gourmet mushroom site.  The gourmet mushroom site offers interesting products, like mushroom plug spawn and log inoculation.  It does not offer anywhere near the number of references to poison that I happened upon while researching mushrooms this past summer.

And what had me rushing to google for mushroom facts this summer?  Grandpa Mikey.  Grandpa Mikey was playing with the children in the backyard when he discovered a plethora of wild mushrooms.  Yummy!  Never mind that until this day we referred to those vegetative gems as Toadstools of Doom.  Forget too that I had convinced the girls they’d be turned into warty newts if they dared touch the forbidden fungi.

All was well with the princesses. Harmony ruled the land with the division between poison and not poison firmly drawn in the dirt.  And then along comes Grandpa claiming that yes, perhaps they were poisonous.  But maybe, just maybe, they weren’t.  It had all the ingredients for a fun little homespun experiment: nature, science, plus the very real possibility of death.  Thunderbolts clapped and lightening shattered the peaceful little village…

Ok, the sun stayed put and the girls got down to experimenting with their beloved Professor Grandpa. First up, harvest the tasty treats. Next gill-print the ‘shrooms.  I was away from the lab when Grandpa said what came next, but I think once you’ve got the prints you just cross-reference them in the fungal offenders’ data base, then book ’em.

Assistant Mushroom-ologist Grandma snapped these shots for posterity (or maybe for poison-control? That Grandma is always prepared.)

While the science was bubbling away, I snuck off to google poisonous mushrooms.  Here are some delightful phrases that I encountered:

  • Wild mushrooms may contain one of the deadliest poisons found in nature;
  • Because (these) mushrooms have definitely caused death, we cannot recommend that you eat them.
  • If you nevertheless choose to do so, they should be thoroughly cooked in a well-ventilated room.

I wish I were so totally cool and open-minded that I could issue a stern warning of death, and then move right on to cooking tips.  Alas, I am dull. Or am I…?  Go ahead and try this recipe for KILLER pumpkin muffins…If. You. Dare.  Insert evil laugh here.)

Note:  A Greener Biener does not release any recipes that may or may not cause sudden death.

In defense of (not eating) food

daphne on December 10, 2008

This is Kira’s plea against eating turkey.  She can offer up a defense for not eating just about anything.  She says she wants to be a vegetarian.  What she means is that she wants to be a pasta-candy-dessert-atarian.  Not that I blame her.  I too am partial to a diet that leans heavily on the most vital layer in the food pyramid: the chocolate one. I don’t know what you’ve heard, but just because I’ve got the computer set up in the kitchen doesn’t mean that I’m to blame for the pan of brownies that mysteriously disappeared this week.

Some of you may recognize the blatant plagiarism creative adapting I’ve done in the title of this piece as coming from Michael Pollan’s book, In Defense of Food.  Like the Kingsolver book I mentioned last week, it’s a must-read.  Food needs defending, Pollan claims, because much of what we eat today is actually not food, but “edible, foodlike substances.”  Real food he defines as something that “our great grandmothers would recognize as food.”  I concur 100%, and not just because both of my grandmothers were big fans of baked goods.  Most food labels these days read like War and Peace, and with a couple of kids in tow that’s just too much literature to consume in the bread aisle.

Yes, another book.  What–you didn’t know this blog came with a required reading list? Oh relax, there’s not going to be a test.  For all I know you’re not even looking for a fearless food defender.  Maybe this guy is already working for you–

It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s….Carrot-Man! He’s the strong, silent, food defending-type. Be warned though; his shtick relies heavily on pushing the veggies.  (Note to self: Consider getting out more.  Or at least getting the camera out of the kitchen.)

Michael Pollan said that after researching and writing his book his point could be boiled down into a few short sentences: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

It’s a worthy philosophy. I’d add only this: Brownies too.

Breaking the rules

daphne on December 7, 2008

Here’s the thing, sometimes a choice can feel so good, so right, and not actually be that good.  Like s’mores.  Yummy hot roasted marshmallows (read: corn syrup globules) melted on chocolate smeared on graham crackers.  Nutritionally they are inexcusable.  But in terms of happy children you’d be hard pressed to get a better bang for your calories.  It’s more than just hopped-up sugar fiends; it’s sitting around a fire, it’s laughing, it’s being together in that sugar-coated moment.  A family that binges on chocolate together, stays together. So says I, anyway.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not shirking from the Herculean task of doing right by my children.  Broccoli and beans are a vital part of healthy development.  I’m just saying that there are defensible reasons for breaking a rule every now and then.  One, I need my treats.  Two, it’s fun to keep the kids guessing.

Our family has packed up campfires, and so go the s’mores for the season.  But as outside fires die down the heat of the oven kicks up.  We haven’t let the spectacular exploding bread caper deter us from throwing things around the kitchen.  This weekend, inspired by the wonderful book I just read, we made brownies.  And when I say brownies I do not mean the same brownie recipe, that dependable and foolproof recipe that I’ve been making since I was 12.  I mean these incredible brownies.  We made them for guests that got sick and canceled.  Our brave family of four heeded the call.  And ate the decadent brownies ourselves.

Sometimes going green means eating your veggies.  And sometimes going green means letting the flour leave poofy trails on the floor and on your cheeks.  It means letting the little ones lick the bowl.  And sometimes success is measured not in grams of fat or molecules of vitamins, but in globs of chocolate shmeared on smiling faces.

Only November, so where’d all that food go?

daphne on November 24, 2008

Perhaps you remember our good pal, Squiggy? The famous fiend of the savage sunflower attack of ’08? That notorious backyard napper? Well, let’s just say he’s all caught up on his sleep and not wasting his time batting around flowers anymore.  He’s all business.

And I’m kind of falling in awe with the little guy. Such a busy beaver rodent. Scurrying to and fro gathering apples from the tippy top of our tree and pumpkins from doorstops around the neighborhood, all in a thorough preparation to keep his furry family fed.  I’m passing my parent-of-the-year award over to Squiggy.  Perhaps my children as well, since I totally missed the boat on shoring up my shelves for the long cold winter.

It’s November. Only mid-November, and gone are the pounds of delicious strawberry applesauce. Gone are the hundreds of jars of jam.  Of course you remember the freezer full of squash puree that my dear parents put up in my absence? Gone. Every last ziploc baggie of it, gone.  What’s left? Two jars of tomato sauce.  I’ll consider it serendipitous that the kids prefer pasta and pizza sans sauce while I try to configure a lasagna that’ll take us through Spring.

As I gaze into my bare cupboards I think of Barbara Kingsolver.  She made it seem fun and easy to keep her family fed on homegrown efforts.  I think too of Frontier House, a gem of a reality show on PBS a few years back.  The mission: survive out on the homestead.  Those who failed to put up enough food and firewood by the time the snows came got voted off.  (Disclaimer: no families were left to freeze and/or starve in the making of this show.)

This much I know is true:

  1. I worked hard.  I planted. I picked. I pureed.
  2. The food did not last. My family is doomed to starvation (let’s pretend that old nag Nellie is not well enough to make the trip to SuperTarget.)
  3. I am fiercely competitive.
  4. I will not be voted off this homestead.
  5. Squiggy sure is looking plump these days…
  6. Stuffed full as he is with fresh apples and pumpkin…
  7. I’ll just tell the kids he went away for little awhile,
  8. A vacation, a little squirrel sales trip, that’s all. Nothing to worry about kids,
  9. Now sit down and eat your dinner.

Crusty artisan bread with shards of glass

daphne on November 18, 2008

Mmmm, hot, crusty and fresh from the oven. With just a smattering of shattered glass.  Nothing says homemade like fresh bread.  At least that’s what they all say.  The results of my efforts, however, proved otherwise.

If you are dreaming of fresh loaves that look something like this:

You might want to go and check out Farmhouse Greetings. She makes bread the old fashioned way, without glass fragments.

But if you’re not a sissy, stick with me.

I should make one thing clear: my mother is in no way responsible for the events surrounding the spectacular exploding bread caper of ’08.  Really. It’s just that in sharing the recipe over the phone some things got lost in translation, like the fact that her lasagna pan was made of something other than glass.

The gist of the bread baking is this: you create a huge hunk of the dough, keep it in the fridge, and then tear it off and bake as needed.  What keeps the bread soft and fluffy on the inside yet crusty on the outside?  A steaming pan of water, simmering just beneath the baking bread.

Word to the wise: despite the fact that your inner voice might object using only a nagging whisper, LISTEN WHEN IT TELLS YOU NOT TO ADD WATER TO A HOT GLASS PAN.   I’m not saying that I would do anything that insanely stupid, I’m just saying, if you’ve got a little voice, you might want to listen up.

So how do you encrust a warm loaf of artisan bread with billions of tiny shards of glass?  Easy.  Just heat an empty glass pan to 450°.  Lean your head into the hot oven. Pour lukewarm water into the pan and watch the fireworks.  It’s a spectacular show.

Brave reader, here is what your oven may look like after just one shattered glass, bread-baking bash:

Mom got her recipe from a new book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. She loves it. Having pilfered the recipe over the phone I can say that I am not a huge fan of the million shards of flying glass part of the recipe. But Mom’s breads consistently turn out warm and crusty and, most notably, glass-free.

And she tells me that eating bread without risk of blood is just as enjoyable as my way.  So maybe next time I’ll just buy the book.