Whats the Story Morning Glory

A few years ago my sister Anna started having issues with gluten.

She wasn't allergic, but the doctors agreed there was some sort of intolerance. She cut it all out cold turkey, she was sick of feeling hungover after eating a piece of bread. Amazingly many skin issues, and joint issue she had had since adolescence started to clear up. The most difficult part of going gluten free was discovering how to recreate favorite baked goods which were not gluten full. She and I are firm believers that sometimes you need a trusty piece of cake in your purse. And who doesn't enjoy a nice muffin with coffee in the morning. 

Her husband Rod has been a rock star at embracing their gluten free life. 

So when Anna and I decided to do a simultaneous baking challenge in our respective kitchens Rod was more than ready to taste test.  We thought we would try one of my muffin recipes gluten free and gluten full. 

The results are pictured here. 

Rod had two. Anna had plenty for her purse this week. Noah who will only eating peanut butter and jelly these days had two mini's and Ella who has an eagle eye for pieces of nuts gobbled her's up. Michael and I had a few left to freeze for the week. 

Success all around.

Morning Glory Muffins

 

1 cup unbleached flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

¼ cup oats (quick or whole)

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ cup nuts chopped and toasted (pecans, walnuts or almonds)

grate of nutmeg

2/3 cup of brown sugar

1 cup of milk (or unsweetened almond milk)

½ cup pumpkin puree or applesauce

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 eggs

½ cup oil, or butter melted

2 skinny carrots or 1 large carrot grated (or half a zucchini)

1 small apple or ½ large apple chopped

 sugar or demerara sugar for sprinkling on top

Optional: ½ raisins, or dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 400.

Combine dry ingredients including nuts and set aside. Combine wet ingredients including fruit and veg. Combine wet and dry until just incorporated. Bake in prepared (meaning they need to be buttered or sprayed with cooking spray) muffin tins for 17 min. If you are making mini muffins bake for approximately 12-13 min.

NOTE: Demerara sugar is a crunchy brown sugar that is wonderful for sprinkling on top of muffins, cookies etc. Takes muffins to another level.

Morning Glory Gluten Free Substitutions

 

In place of flours:

1 cup ground gluten free whole oats

1 cup King Arthur all purpose gluten free flour

½ tsp xantham gum

Everything else stays the same. Bake at 400 for 17-20 min. Sometimes GF takes a bit longer. Use your nose and a toothpick for ultimate doneness.

Cooking With Carmen: Breakfast Cookies

I love cookies.

I love to eat them, bake them, give them away.

Recently I have been searching the blogosphere for a yummy breakfast cookie, because as a "mom on the go" I sometimes have to have something I can just grab. Or something I can shove at the kids to have on the Subway as a snack or whatever. They seem to be hungry all the time. Or hungry at the most inconvenient times. Am I right mom's out there!? As much as I feel doughnuts, cereal bars, and the ever present goldfish are "grab and go" foods.... I would like for what I shove in my mouth to occasionally have some nutritional value.
Well. Most of the time anyway. Some days only a doughnut will do.

Whatever it is that I'm eating it's gotta taste good. Not like a mouthful of sand. I'll warn you now. I am not taking the butter out of the recipe. #Ibelieveinbutter. With cookies it's very difficult to find a butter replacement, and after some research I have concluded that it's the best fat to use for the job.

Disclaimer. These cookies are not:

Gluten free. 

Egg free.

Vegan.

Sugar free, or

Paleo.
Oh Please Paleo. I'm not going to down to China Town to get crickets for m'cookies. 

I suppose you could try and make them any of those things above, but there are plenty of recipes on Pinterest to satisfy your (god forbid) paleo needs. What I found difficult to fufill was just a regular hearty breakfast type cookie. No tricks. Something that will stick with you through the morning.

Lower sugar is FINE. These don't have tons of sugar. You are welcome to try and cut it more, but be warned that sugar is important to the chemistry of a cookie.You have to be careful. Be wary of sugar free. It makes me skeptical of what actually is replacing the sugar. With these it's not really something to get hung up on however. I find with these I don't need a second breakfast when I get to work!!

Oatmeal Breakfast Cookies

1 cup whole wheat flour

½ cup unbleached AP flour

3 cups whole oats (or quick oats)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 ½ tablespoon flax meal

1 ½ tablespoon wheat germ

½ cup flaked coconut (I like sweetened, but you can use unsweetened)

½ cup chopped and toasted almonds

½ cup chopped and toasted pecans or walnuts

¾ cup chocolate chips (if you don’t need a cocoa kick in the morning leave them out)

½ cup plus 6 tablespoons unsalted butter (softened)

2 eggs

¼ honey or agave

¾ cup packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Heat oven to 350.

In a large bowl, beat butter and sugars on medium speed of an electric mixer until creamy.

Add eggs and sugars. Beat well.

Combine flours, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in a separate bowl.

Add flours to mixing bowl. Mix well.

Add oats, nuts, and coconut mix well.

Add by hand chocolate chips or dried fruit.

Using a medium or large scoop drop dough and flatten slightly onto ungreased cookie sheets.

Bake 12 to 15 min. till golden brown. Cool on cookie sheets; remove to wire rack to cool completely. Store tightly covered.

Optional: ½ cup raisins, dried cherries chopped, or dried cranberries in place of chocolate chips.

Wholesomely Retro

Retro.
Vintage.
You can choose you're own terminology.
I like the retro term myself.
Wholesome Retro was how a friend described the environment Michael and I are raising our children in. I never thought about it that way, that we were somehow retro? I just know when I was a kid, my mom made cookies and bread on the regular, and we always had dinner together. My dad worked nights for most of my childhood, so usually it was just me, my mom, brother and sister at the table, but it was at a table and not in front of the TV.
And she cooked the dinner.
From scratch.
Those cookies and bread were from scratch too.
No Uncle Ben's (too expensive.)
No Pillsbury slice and bake (too expensive, and not really tasty.)
The only take out we had was an occasional bucket of chicken, and Rubino's pizza on Friday nights.
So.
That's what I do too. Maybe more intensely than my mom, because I am me. But from scratch is my way to go. I have tricks and short cuts of course, and it's taken me years to figure out the best way to make a tiny New York kitchen work to my advantage. It was only a year ago that we renovated and made our kitchen the Shangri-La it is today. A dishwasher, a full sized stove, a big fridge with a bottom freezer, and CABINETS! My point is, is that it has always felt important to cook for myself, my husband and now my children. I figured out how to cook for one, then added on.

When I moved to New York it was out of necessity to figure out the mysteries of the kitchen once and for all, I was poor and it was cheeper and better for me than eating take out. I had spent years bopping around the country working at theaters, and not having my own kitchen, before that in an unhappy marriage where I was berated about my cooking because it wasn't as good as my mothers.

At least I tried. The only way to become good at something is to practice. So once I was in a place long enough to really really practice that's what I did. What I do.

A year ago I gave myself a cooking challenge. Maybe it was part of the nesting that occurs when you are waiting for the birth of a child. I decided a month before our son Noah was born that we were going to stop buying bread and I was going to bake bread for us. I wasn't sure how I was going to do it. We're busy. Sometimes we're really really busy.  What about the summer? When it's 90 degrees. What then.
Well. It's a little over a year later, and I did it.
There were a few times over the summer where we bought bakery bread, and we also buy the occasional hamburger potato bun. The toast and sandwiches we have consumed over the last year have primarily been bread that I have made. I have to thank the woman who writes the blog www.butterpies.com because that blog got me started. She had a recipe for a fast crusty loaf that helped me get over the hump, and the recipe through all of my revisions and add ons still is one that I use primarily.  I found the blog one night when Michael and I were having soup for dinner and craving some fresh bread. An hour later we had what we wanted.

Yesterday I used a new recipe. I happened to look at the back of the Gold Metal Flour bag and it had a recipe for honey whole wheat bread. That's basically what I make anyway, but this had a few extra steps, a longer rise and looked interesting. It was spectacular. The extra steps were worth it, and developed the gluten in a way that made a nice tall loaf that didn't collapse when I put it in the oven. I tweeted about it, and it tickled me that Gold Metal Flour retweeted my picture, and tweeted me back saying I was on the right track with my dough.

This year my next cooking adventure is launching Harlem Souper Heroes
http://www.souperheroes.org/category/blog/
But I'm going to continue to bake our bread. My experiment has become our life style and has changed us for the better.

Call me a throw back, call me retro, but the food revolution is just beginning, and it's bringing us back to a time where people knew where their food was grown, harvested, or cared for. For me food is about balance. If our diet is balanced we will maintain a healthy weight, and feel good. It's not about fat or skinny, it's about healthy and feeling good and what that means for you and your body. I want my children to grow up with a healthy relationship with food. I want them to enjoy what they eat, and know how to feed themselves what's good for them.
So we are a wholesomely retro household. Where there will be cookies in the cookie jar, pizza on Friday nights, and fresh bread every week.

The Great Drama of the Kitchen

A few years ago I took a pastry class.

Not like pie crust.
Like Pastry Pastry.
Chou, Puffed, and Croissant. 
I even blogged about it. 
I had always planned to try out what I learned that day, but until the other day never had the courage. I was filled with excuses as to why I didn't.
Our apartment was too hot to make the dough.
I would never have the time.
I thought it would take at least two days to complete all of the turns and keep everything chilled.
We would have to open windows in the winter. 
Our crazy chaotic hole of a kitchen.
That was all SO 2012.
We've since renovated the hole.
And after my year long bread project I feel more comfortable with yeast.
So. Instead of unearthing my photo copies of recipes from the Sur La Table cooking class. I turned to my old reliable cookbook for all things bread.
The Joy of Cooking.
I used to use my mothers edition which was given to my parents as a wedding gift in 1970.
Then Michael bought me my own. I have notes in the margins.We use it for muffins, pancakes, biscuits, scones, cornbread, duch babies, the list goes on.
Last night I decided after reading through the entire bread section that I would make danishes for breakfast. Somehow looking at the croissant recipe made me quake in my slippers. As it turns out, the danish recipe is almost identical, the shapes are different, croissant dough has a extra stick of butter, and more flour, and a bit less sugar, but the process is the same.

 After incorporating my butter square and doing at least four turns. I rolled out half of the dough and decided that strawberry filled pinwheels would be what I would try first. I cut and pinched and left them in the fridge over night.
Noah woke up at 5:30am and I pulled them out of the fridge and set them out on the counter to proof.
At 7am I ran out to the corner deli for a box of eggs for the egg wash.We ran out last night.
Argh it's cold. Thank goodness for Bodegas.

At 7:30 they were ready to go into the oven.
So far everything looked right...Sort of. I wasn't sure if I would get the flaky layers, maybe I pressed to hard with the rolling pin, and maybe I didn't do enough turns. It was late last night, and I forgot to keep track.
Twenty minutes I pulled them out of the oven, and eureka! I had done it. It worked! They had the layers, I realized I had pinched the pinwheels backwards, but who cares about that. The LAYERS WERE THERE!!!!


I was so excited that something that scared me to do on my own for so long really was a success.
This year of making bread every week has really make me understand the dramatics of it all. That's how the Joy of Cooking describes yeast bread.
The great drama of the kitchen.
Irma Rombauer talks about bread being one of the oldest and most fundamental foods. She says the satisfaction of transforming flour water into bread is like shaking hands with our history. But as every baker discovers, a return to real flavor, a fulfilling joy. Amazing words from a Missouri house wife. Her cookbook is in millions of households, and probably just as many commercial kitchens. Calling yeast bread the great drama of the kitchen is so spot on and eloquently said.
How can such a simple few ingredients inspire so much fear!?Yeast (it's alive! yikes!)
Flour
Water or milk (must be warm but not too warm and not always)
Eggs (Maybe)
Salt, and sugar
So simple yet so many possibilities. I'd better get back in the kitchen and finish up the other half. I'm thinking.... Apple cinnamon filling.

Cooking with Carmen: White Bean and Bacon Soup and TheKitchn.com

 A few things were tweeked for the article. Here is the link.
I would serve this soup with a lovely corn bread. The Joy of Cooking recipe is our go too.
Check out the link!

http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-white-bean-amp-bacon-soup-recipes-from-the-kitchn-214866

 White Bean and Bacon Soup

1 lb bag dried white beans (Navy or Great Northern)

1 ham hock

2 cartons of low sodium chicken stock or broth

1 medium onion small dice

3 or 4 cloves of garlic minced or crushed

1 red pepper small dice

2 carrots small dice

2 ribs of celery small dice

¼ cup thick cut maple bacon small dice and rendered (about 4 or 5 slices)

¼ cup ham small dice

4 or 5 stems fresh thyme

½ lemon (zest)

½ lemon (juice)

olive oil

Fresh parsley chopped

salt and pepper to taste

In a large stockpot or Dutch oven soak beans just covered in water over night. Drain the water; add ham bone, and two cartons of chicken stock. Cook over medium to low heat until tender. While the beans cook render bacon. Drain fat and set aside. Sauté aromatics and in olive oil (adding garlic towards end to prevent burning.) Add aromatics to soup pot. Add thyme. Dice ham, and add ham and rendered bacon to soup pot.  Remove two cups of tender beans and mash beans with a potato masher and add them back to the pot. They will make the soup feel creamy and thick without cream or butter!

If you have time to cook this all day, do so, or make it in your crock-pot over 8 hours or so. It gets better over time. The next day it’s even tastier. At the end of cooking add Lemon zest, juice, and parsley. Of course season with salt and pepper as you go, with the amount of ham it can get salty, so be careful not to over salt.

This recipe can be made with canned beans, and without the ham bone (but it wont be as tasty.) Make sure you don’t skimp on the bacon, and really it’s worth the extra trip to the butcher though for that bone. The lemon juice, zest and parsley are not to be missed they give the soup wonderful brightness.

Closet Whipped Cream

I got my first "teaching" job in 1999.
It was just for the afternoon.
With Mrs. Stephanie.
At BUMP Bexely United Methodist Preschool.
As it turned out I unknowingly had many connections with the school. Old childhood friends who had attended and even that annoying kid who came to the specialty toy store (my job before working at BUMP) every week showed up in my group of afternoon students.
Who knew!
It's been years since I've walked through the doors, I left in 2002 or so. It is the preschool in which I measure all preschools. I have a million stories and a million memories. I became a real grown up there. We laughed, we cried, it was better than Cats.
This year one of my former co-teachers is retiring. Cheri Crawford. After 24 years! I only wish I could spend that long teaching in such a wonderful place. She and I had some big fun teaching together. See, I was just an extra, a sub, the afternoon teacher. Then Cheri broke her ankle. A broken ankle and three year old children is a recipe for disaster. So, along with Susan, Cheri's regular co-teacher I was added to the mix. We had quite a ride that year. Fifteen kids and three teachers is a great ratio, but we had some live ones, who kept us on our toes. They are all graduating from High School this year. Yikes!
Anyway. 
When we were in the thick of it, we always had a retreat we could rely on. You see. Cheri and Susan, had a walk in closet. None of the other classrooms had them. The closet was full of art supplies, our purses and coats, and a mini fridge. That closet was the safety spot to take a breather when that gross kid handed you his poop. Off limits to the kids we could duck inside one at a time, and take a moment.
Take a moment with the mini fridge.
What we kept inside the fridge, became a long running joke and permanent fixture that year even though it started just because of someones birthday party leftovers. A beautiful creamy oasis to help us through the morning. Just a shot was all we needed, the kids never knew.
That magical elixir was a can of whipped cream. Sometimes chocolate, but usually just regular. We would duck in the closet, hold the can upside down, throw our heads back, and filler up.

BUMP will never be the same without you Cheri. I was happy to hear that you are going to continue doing music with the BUMP kids, but hopefully you will have time to travel, spend time with your grand-kids, and Denver. Happy Trails my friend. I have such happy memories of the time I spent with you in your classroom. I will continue to tell people all about the year I used whipped cream as an excuse to collect construction paper and markers.

Save a Spot for the Eggs

I'm going to take a pause from my usual cooking posts to write a few remembrances of my Great Uncle Christopher Thompson.
Uncle Sammy.

This summer will mark ten years that I've lived in New York City. I owe much of my life here to Uncle Sammy. He gave me a place to live at a time when I had no money, barely a job, and no idea how a move to New York would impact my life. I just needed to do it, and he was there to maybe lend a hand. 
I remember very clearly that day in June. I went to him, and said. "Okay. I can pay you 200 dollars a month, until I get a better job, what do you say?" He was not thrilled about the 200 dollars, but as I pointed out at the time he was only paying 475 in maintenance it seemed like a fair deal to me. I would also be there when he wasn't so I'd be looking after the place. He agreed to let me move in, and so August 16th 2004 I loaded up a U haul, and headed east.

Over the next few years, he was in and out every month or so, I would never know when he would show up, which was always an interesting surprise. It certainly made dating interesting. I mean how do you explain to a date that you live with your great uncle, and if you invite him for dinner he (your uncle) may or may not show up in the middle? It was always startling when I had been working late (1am or later) and come home to find that he had arrived. He would always forget to lock the door. That's how I would know.
I got a roommate to help with the rent, the maintenance went up and I was paying all of it so a roommate was necessary.
Tyler.
He and Uncle Sammy got on well. They would spend the early mornings (6am or earlier) in the kitchen chatting while Tyler ironed his pants for work. They would share stories about the military. Uncle Sammy a WW2 vet and Tyler a former marine turned hedge fund manager had few things in common, but due to circumstance cultivated a kind of interesting relationship over the years.Tyler thought Uncle Sammy was interesting (because he was) And Uncle Sammy thought Tyler was swell.

One thing that was always important to Uncle Sammy was having things the same when he arrived in New York. Since I never knew when he would arrive his room remained untouched. It looked as if Ms. Havisham lived in that room, and it smelled of his cologne. It was yellow (his favorite color) and dark, and full of stuff. It is now Noah's room. All traces of yellow walls are gone, and the only thing that remains as a reminder is his old Westinghouse fan.
It still works.
Since his eye sight was bad, we also would keep things in the same places in the refrigerator. The eggs in particular, were always well stocked and on the second shelf on the right.
They still are.
Just in case he shows up, he can have his egg, toast and tea for breakfast.

His last trip to New York was to attend our wedding. That was five and a half years ago. It wasn't that he was not a welcomed guest after that, it was just he had started to have difficulty with his eyes, and it was increasingly dangerous for him to move about the city. He was in his late 80's at this point.  His usual haunts Macy's and Crate and Barrel were just to difficult for him to manage. After some negotiation he transferred his shares of the co-op to Michael and I. He always had intended for the apartment to be mine I was the one who lived here after all, and now that I was married it made sense. Michael and I planned to build our life in New York. I would call and keep him abreast of the building gossip and let him know that people had asked after him. He was always interested to know what was happening with the co-op.
As far as co-ops go. There is ALWAYS something. It's a hot bed for gossip and craziness. He relished learning of all the crazy goings on.

I have learned over the last few months, that Uncle Sammy hid his contempt well. He hid it with Christmas Cards, and asking "How's the baby?" and feigning interest in my career. He felt bullied into giving up the apartment. That's what he said, but really it was about control and the frustration of getting old. He knew he couldn't have his jet setting life any longer and it pissed him off. So he directed that anger at family. Isn't that always the way? The good thing about family is they will forgive you. Love you regardless. Right?
I knew his eccentricities could go either way. Incredibly kind or incredibly cutting. I mean he did let me move in. I would have moved to New York weather he allowed me to live in the apartment or not, but he made the move easier when I could have ended up living in Far Rockaway or with 8 roommates, because it was all I could afford. Before I moved into the apartment he actually lied to the board of directors telling them that I was a budding opera singer and coming to New York to study at Julliard. Because for him "trying" to make it on Broadway was not enough.  He certainly seemed proud enough when he attended my Broadway debut in 2005 a year after I'd moved to the city.

He was an enigma to everyone, and we'll always wonder who he really was, would the the mid-atlantic accent ever be dropped? Would the man forever fighting against having grown up on a Virginia farm during the depression ever truly be at peace with where he was from and who he was? What he had accomplished in his life was great.  A masters degree was a big deal in those days for a young African American. Some would argue it still is.  He traveled the world, had fought a war, and was an African American man who spoke fluent French, some Turkish, and said that of all the places in the world he had been Singapore was his favorite.

I'm not sad today. I hope that he has found peace. He was 93 and had a full fascinating life. Despite our differences and disagreements I am glad to have had such an adventure with him. It has given me interesting stories to tell for days and days. The tea cozy hat, trekking Central Park to attend our wedding in a seer sucker suit and baret, and him shouting from his bedroom "Don't make me anything, I'll just call the Chinaman." He has enriched my life, and because of that has enriched our children's lives because we are able to have our lives here in the City. Nobody. Including Uncle Sammy can ever say I didn't say thank you that I wasn't grateful. I am everyday.
We'll keep that spot open for the eggs.