Spinach

At Sunflower Market on Monday I bought some different lettuces and spinach, intending to make a great salad for dinner one night. Sadly I didn't get around to it till Thursday, by which time the lettuces were all slimy and gross. So we ate just a spinach salad, but I can't eat just plain spinach salads all that often, so I decided to experiment with making my own spinach dip. Plus I had a bag of Trader Joe's Pita Chips that had outlived the last batch of hummus, and I figured they needed something to be dipped in!

So I wilted the spinach in a large skillet with a little oil, put it in my food processor, and then added bits of this and that till it seemed like a good consistency, and was a lovely verdant shade of green. (Come to think of it--I've made two very green things in my food processor this week, including the asparagus puree from the tart the other night).

I put the mixture in a fondue pot and let it heat up for about an hour. It was tasty, but a little thinner than I would've liked, and maybe a wee bit bland. I think what it needed was maybe some plain yogurt to thicken it, but I didn't have any on hand. I thought about adding a few red pepper flakes to give it a bit more of a kick, but then I was worried that the red bits might look weird in the green creaminess, so I refrained. I'm thinking for dinner tonight it might actually make a really nice pesto-y spread on top of a crusty baguette, with some roasted red and yellow bell pepper strips on top: trop delicieux!

Anyway, here is the recipe as is, although I may tweak it a bit if I try it again:

Spinach Dip

2 tsp oil
8 cups spinach
1/2 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
6 tbsp shredded parmesan cheese
4 tbsp sour cream

Heat the oil in a large skillet, saute eight cups of spinach until slightly wilted. (I had to do this in two batches, because my skillet was not large enough to hold eight cups at once!)

Place spinach in food processor. Add 1/2 cup part-skim ricotta cheese, 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese, six tablespoons shredded parmesan cheese, and 4 tablespoons sour cream. Process until it's a nice thick puree. Scrape down sides, and process again, this time adding salt to taste. (I added 1/4 teaspoon.) Place mixture in a small saucepan over low heat, or in a fondue pot or small crockpot. Cook it on a very low heat for about an hour, stirring occasionally so it doesn't get a crust on the top. It will thin out as it heats. Serve with pita chips, veggies, or other dippable items.

Makes about two cups worth of dip, and according to my calculations a two ounce serving has 86 calories.

Recipes

It occurs to me that I never gave the recipe for my peanutbutter kiss cookies that vanished so quickly at the picnic. It's a really easy recipe, and the cookies come out perfectly pretty much every time, which is always a bonus! Here goes:

Peanut Blossoms

(this is my mom's name for these cookies--whether it's because they vaguely resemble small brown flowers, or because she was trying to avoid the trademarked "kiss" name, I'm not sure)

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 shortening

1/2 cup peanut butter (creamy works best)

1 egg

2 TB milk

1 tsp vanilla

1 3/4 cup flour

40-60 Hershey's Kisses (tm), unwrapped, and set aside.*

Additional granulated sugar, set aside in a small bowl with high sides.

Pre-heat oven to 375F. In a large bowl combine sugars, soda, salt, shortening, peanut butter, egg, milk, and vanilla. Cream well, till there aren't any lumps. You can use a mixer, or bash the lumps with a wooden spoon. Once you don't see any more lumps, start adding the flour in small increments, stirring well to incorporate. Once the mixture is well-combined, begin shaping the dough into small 1/2 inch balls, rolling them between your palms to make them nice and round. Drop several balls at a time into the bowl of reserved sugar, gently shaking the bowl till balls are covered on all sides.

Place the sugared balls at least one inch apart on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake on center rack of pre-heated oven at 375 degrees F, until firm, but not hard, about 10 minutes. Set cookie sheet on a heatproof surface next to your kisses, and immediately top each cookie with a kiss. Press down gently but firmly.

Let them cool on the pan for a minute or two, then remove them to a wire rack to cool all the way. Once cooled carefully place them in a large airtight container, so that the kisses of one cookie don't stick to any other cookies. They keep best in the fridge, up to ten days, but are served best at room temperature, so that the kisses are soft while eating!

*I get about sixty cookies out of this recipe, my mom gets about forty. It all depends on your philosophy of the peanut butter to chocolate ratio. I like them more chocolatey and less peanut buttery, so I make smaller cookies, but you could easily just make fewer, larger cookies, and have a bigger circle of peanut butter around each kiss. If you get sixty cookies, each cookie will have 130 calories.

Asparagus....and Istanbul

Last night I made a recipe from the April edition of Bon Appetit for an Asparagus Tart. The recipe description said something like the "taste of asparagus is in every bite" and they weren't kidding! It was reeeeally asparagus-y. I'm a fan of asparagus, but this was a bit much even for me.

It was lovely to look at though, a golden brown crust filled with a pale green puree of asparagus and cheese, and then the dark green asparagus tips above that. I really wanted to like it, just because it was so pretty. Sadly my camera was battery-less at that point, so I didn't get any pictures, but this blogger took some beautiful pictures of it. I think I'll give the tart another shot--with a little more cheese and sopressata, and a little less asparagus in the puree. And maybe a hint of spiciness would help. But if you like a lot of asparagus flavor, and a quiche-like consistency, you'll totally love this recipe. And, it looks impressive even though it's easy!

On the book front I'm still not quite sure why I'm reading another Barbara Nadel book. I really didn't like the first one--too much creepy sex for me--and yet for some reason I picked up another one. I like the character of Inspector Ikmen a lot, which I think is why I'm giving it another shot, but something about the way Nadel conjures up a dark and brooding Istanbul gives me the willies. Maybe it's the descriptions of the remnants of the Ottoman empire, the pervasive aura of cigarette smoke and Islam that seem to permeate the pages of the book, or the characters that lack basic human decency, but somehow it's vaguely repugnant and yet irresistible at the same time. I kind of want to stop reading it, and yet, I have a feeling that I'm going to finish it...

Mysteries, Fajitas, and John Adams

I am a bit of a mystery addict, I will gladly admit it. I'm still 'reading' that Ian Rankin audiobook, as well as Harem by Barbara Nadel, and I'm debating between starting another Henning Mankell or a Peter Lovesey next. My problem is that I don't like to carry books around with me....hence the audiobook in the car, the Nadel at work, and the as-yet-to-be-determined at home book.

I just finished yet another book about the American Revolution (by Joseph Ellis). The more I read about the American Revolution, the more I like John Adams. I've realized that I allowed myself to be swayed by Thomas Jefferson's more suave appeal in the past, but I've come to realize what a chameleon he really was, and Adams's blunt convictions have grown on me a lot. I can't wait till the HBO special comes out on dvd, so I can watch it. I hope that Paul Giametti does Adams justice.

Today at Sunflower Market I found some beee-yooo-tiful bell peppers: green, orange, yellow, AND red, for only 77 cents each, which made me extraordinarily happy. That made visions of fajitas dance through my head; so now I'm home, the beef is marinating in the fridge (slathered in garlic and lime juice and cumin), the tortillas are resting on the counter, and all is in order for when Noel gets home. It's going to be a colorful and delicious meal, my favorite kind.

In my last blog I was debating whether to make peanutbutter kiss or chocolate chip cookies--I ended up making the pb ones, since I've had kisses in the freezer since Christmas, and decided it was about time to use them. I was quite happy to see that after only an hour at the picnic, when there were still dozens of brownies and cakes and chocolate chip cookies left, that all 48 of my cookies were gone. :) A small, silly, but satisfactory moment on my part!

Saturday Afternoons

There is nothing better than a lazy Saturday after a looong week. This week we remodeled at work, meaning that everyone was busier than normal and more stressed than normal. Normally on a Friday night after a week like that I probably would've gone to bed early with a good book, but instead I went to church and spent five hours shepherding dozens of shrieking/laughing/crazy(!) children. It was fun, but EXHAUSTING. Completely exhausting.

Then I came home to find my husband (finally!) and had a nice lazy sleeping-in sort of morning with him. I made sausage and cheesy scrambled eggs for breakfast, and then he ran errands while I finished the lesson for church tomorrow morning and balanced the budget, my two small bits of productivity. Now, however, I have successfully wasted at least an hour online. Next on my agenda is playing some more Scrabulous, and then making some oven-roasted kielbasa, potatoes and onions for dinner, yummy! My biggest dilemma is what to make for the picnic tomorrow. I'm torn between my favorite dark chocolate and white chocolate chip cookies, or peanutbutter kiss cookies. Since I will probably single-handedly devour any and all dark chocolate and white chocolate chip cookies tomorrow night, I think I'll make the peanutbutter kiss cookies, since those leftovers might actually last a few days around here.

My nerdy self is also debating bringing in the Ian Rankin audio book I've been listening to in the car, and putting a disc in. The downside to listening to audio books in the car is definitely the fact that I don't drive much on the weekends, which is frustrating when I'm listening to a particularly good book. I'm not sure yet if I'd call this a particularly good book, it seems like a pretty standard aging-maverick-cop-and-cute-sidekick-cop-investigate-series-of-bizarre-murders type book, but it has the added bonus of a narrator with a fabulous Scottish burr. (Brogue? No Irish brogue, Scottish burr. I think.) Anyway, after just a few minutes of listening I have to fight down an intense urge to try to imitate the narrator in my own pathetic attempt at sounding Scottish.

Plus there are occasionally words that really don't sound like English at all until I repeat them a couple of times in my head, and then realize that yup, the whole audio book is in English. It makes me think of a few years ago when I was staying at a particularly dreadful hotel in Paris, and there were hordes, literally hordes, of small children wreaking havoc upon the elevators/stairs/lobby/halls/anywhere they possibly could. For about two days we had been griping about the children in the hotel, trying to decide where they were from. Then one day, to my astonishment, when I was trapped in an elevator with 11 or 12 boys, who appeared to range in age from about 8-10, and who were attempting to climb the walls of the elevator while pushing on the little service box in the top, Mission Impossible style, it suddenly dawned on me that I had understood what one little kid just said. Sure enough, they were Scottish, but it had taken me two days to realize that they were actually speaking English! Once I had ascertained that we spoke the same language I informed them that if they didn't get down off the walls of the elevator NOW I was going to find a security card. They retaliated by pushing literally every button, meaning that the elevator made a depressingly slow stop at each floor, but hey, at least we were all speaking the same language.

(And on a total sidenote, I turned on PBS a few minutes ago for background noise since I decided I wasn't quite nerdy enough for audio books indoors, and as I was typing the above paragraph the narrator started talking in a ridiculous burr about the sights of Glasgow. Way to go Scottish synchronicity!)

Genealogy

I love JAG, in all its fantastic, cheesy gloriousness. The dramatic music, the ridiculous plots, the long-lost relatives, the unnecessary shots of Mac in a bikini, it's all so over-the-top and yet irresistible. While Noel is out of town I'm watching episodes of season 3 (back when Mac was clock-psychic) since I know that once he comes back I won't be allowed to watch any more.

While watching JAG I was doing a little work on my family tree. A few days ago I made an alarming genealogical discovery, and yes I realize that the combination of "alarming" and "genealogical" must seem oxymoronic, but it's totally true in this instance. For at least a year, I have thought that one of my great great great great grandmothers was a woman named Mariette Alger. Then, a few days ago, I discovered that in fact she was the first wife of my great great great great grandfather, after Mariette's death he married a woman named Margaret Naylor, and then they had a son named Charles, who is my ancestor. That means that for a whole year I thought I was descended from someone that I'm not. Which I guess, considering how far back it is, wouldn't be such a big deal. Everyone has 64 great great great great grandparents, which means that I was only wrong about 1.57% of my bloodline. And yet...now I'm wondering about the rest...what if I'm wrong about more?!?

So one the one hand, while part of me wants to research Margaret Nayor and learn more about my recently discovered grandmother, the other part of me wants to slow down on the new research and go back and vet what I've already done. I want to know exactly who my ancestors were, not just who they might've been! While this is the first mistake I've found in more than seven years of research, it still alarms me that I took so long to find it. Oh well, in the meantime, I'll have Harm's intense stares, and Clayton Webb's bizarre secrecy tactics to keep me company until my husband comes back to town...oh JAG, beautiful JAG.

Totinos...

Somehow, there's something about Totinos pizzas, as un-pizza-like as they are, that I occasionally cannot resist. I've been trying to eat more healthful food lately (last night I had asparagus AND salad) but tonight I was feeling a little lazy, and the pepperoni Totinos lurking in the back of the freezer sounded perfect. So I went for a walk while the oven was preheating, and then sat on the kitchen counter and ate a salad while the "pizza" was baking. It emerged from the oven, the usual shade of orangey-yellow, with the prerequisite crispy crust and soggy middle that seems to happen every time. I happily sliced it up, carried it upstairs, and ate it at the computer, savoring the bits of pepperoni while I read Orangette's blog, and pretended I was eating something much more exotic. Then I decided that maybe I would try a blog of my own, so here goes. I titled it Books and Baking since I couldn't really think of what to call it, and those are two of my favorite things. Maybe I really will post about books and baking. Or maybe I'll post about how I'm avoiding the laundry and eating food that I probably shouldn't. (Note: after Marshall pointed out that there was another blog called Baking and Books, I decided to change the title to The Bibliophile Baker, which pretty much gets the point across, while remaining a bit more unique.)