Marsbarn Designs...

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day!

With giant pancakes and farm fresh bacon, we salute you!

 

soup's on

I made some chicken stock this morning just so I could smell it.  

Making soup this morning was one of those cathartic acts.

There was the chopping and sauteing, followed by simmering. And then the smell of the onions and carrots breaking down, and the ginger giving up it's bit of heat.  I can't imagine it will taste as good as it smells right now.  But maybe, that's not the point.

carmel corn

When I was a little girl, my Auntie H had a friend who made the best carmel corn.  When I was old enough (boiling sugar is not for the wee folk),  I was allowed to copy the recipe.  That original copy is still the one I use.  (I was in a total panic when I misplaced the recipe last year.)

This recipe makes an insane amount of carmel corn, but it can be halved.

Carmel Corn

2 cups popping corn
2 cups brown sugar
1 cup of butter (or 2 sticks)
1 tsp of salt
1/2 cup karo syrup
1/2 tsp baking soda

(You will need a sunny day and two large roasting pans or four 9x13" pans to bake the carmel corn in.)

Pop the popcorn.  Keep in mind that this is a lot of popcorn, and you will need to be able to fit it all in the oven.  Arrange popcorn in heatproof pans.

Pre-heat oven to 250 degrees.  

Combine the brown sugar, butter, salt, and karo syrup in a medium saucepan.  Bring to a boil.  Boil for 5 minutes.  Removed from stove and stir in baking soda until dissolved.  Be very careful!  The syrup will foam up and is very, very hot.

Pour sugar syrup over popped corn, and stir. Bake carmel corn at 250 degrees for one hour,  stirring the corn every fifteen minutes.   (At first the carmel will clump, and not cover all of the popcorn, but as you stir during the baking process the carmel will slowly spread to more of the corn. Be sure to scrape the bottom of the pan as you stir to get as much goodness on the popcorn as possible.)

Cool carmel corn completely before packaging in airtight containers. 

what a sunny day is good for

Yesterday, it was sunny.
We have had a freakishly wet spring
(not that I'm complaining)
but there are somethings you need dry weather for.

 

Carmel corn, for example, needs dry weather.

So on the first totally dry day in months,
(seriously, it has even rained on the sunny days)
I made a huge batch of carmel corn to share with a friend who can't eat wheat.
I also cleaned the back porch, culled and reordered my cooking magazines, and supervised the reorganization of entry and the bathroom.  
It was a busy day.

Yes, I probably should have worked the yard, but really?  
All of those other places in the house have been driving me nuts, and had to be tackled.

If today was sunny (it's pouring down rain),
I'd work in the yard.
Honest.  (Oh, crap.. is the rain letting up now?)

But the best part of yesterday?

(What could possibly be better than carmel corn, right?)

 

The absolutely best part of the sunny day 
was watching Sweetheart G ride her bike.
It was her first time on her new bike,
and her first time riding a two wheeler unassisted,
but you never would have known it.
She rode with her dad and her sister for miles.

It's like the riddle of the Sphinx, but with calories.

The riddle of excercise.  
The more I exercise, the hungrier I get,
and the more I feel entitled to eat.

If the equation reads like this:
cardio=hunger+license to eat
why can't there be mathematical reciprocity?
Why can't the equation be read backward like this:
hunger+license to eat=cardio.
So totally unfair.

 

The March Everyday Food has this section on sweet baked goods make with pizza dough. This is the reason my family has had pizza for dinner 2 out of the past 3 nights. 
I had to give it a try, right? It was research.  

I make up the dough, divide it in half, be virtuous with the first bit (pizzas and then calzones the second night), and then add goodies to the second half.  The Everyday Food people have you add simply obscene amounts of butter and sugar, and I did reel that back quite a bit on the first night. And then to the second night's sweet dough, after decreasing the butter again by half, I added some chocolate chips.  It was an excellent trade.

To add a bit more good to the virtuous side, I did sub whole wheat flour for a quarter of the white flour in the dough.  Yes, it is a bit like holding my thumb down on the scale to tip the balance, but it must count for something, right?

 

The photos.. not a one of food.

How does that happen?  How do I end up with a bazillion photographs of sewing projects (this is a new prototype for a dice bag), but fail to take a single shot of the chocolate chip sticky buns?  Obviously this is some sort of failure of character.

fiber and some fabric too!

A very quick note to say that this was a much better day.

Big E took me to Staples.

Oh ya.  Office supply excitement!

I now have a rockin' supply of 9x12" manila envelopes and 500 shipping tags (you know you're jealous), and I have had my mind put at ease about my choice of copier for the auction book.

Then the man (ready for this wildness) took me to Fabric Depot.

I know!

I was very well behaved and actually stuck to my list of needed fabrics.  I am happy to say that my stash has now been completely replenished with tone on tone brights, and I have the fabric I needed to finish up Sweetheart G's class Auction project!  

Plus last night I drowned my feelings of anxiety about the fragility of life by baking up a storm of high fiber goodies.  Pumpkin bread, pineapple bran muffins, and the best chewy granola bars ever.  (Honestly the granola bars are the BOMB.  I put dried apricots, golden raisins, wheat bran, flax seeds, unsweetened shredded coconut, maple syrup, cashews, and salted almonds in mine.  

(The muffins were from the latest issue of Everyday Food, and the recipe isn't up on the MS site yet.)

Happy first decade Sweetheart G!

Presenting this year's Mile High, Apple of My Eye, Chocolate Cake. 

Happy Birthday Sweetheart G!

 

You make me so very proud.
It is such a privilege to be your Mom and to have you in my life.

 

Ten years seems like such a long time,
and yet it has passed by so very quickly.
As much as I am looking forward to seeing the person you will grow up to be,  I cannot help but wish I could slow time down a bit.  I know you don't like me to talk about when you were a baby, but you were such a sweet little, little girl.  Just as now, you are such a wonderful, thoughtful, big girl.

Happy tenth birthday Sweetheart!

a bit of fried, sugary goodness to start the year

The donuts were made.

I was adventurous and made two kinds:  
buttermilk with lemon glaze and chocolate with chocolate glaze.

Really, if I'm going to heat up the deep fat fryer, why not make two batches?

They turned out really well, and I really appreciated the method. 
The dough is made up the night before, and fried up fresh in the morning.

 

Both recipes are from The Craft of Baking, 
which seems to be everywhere on the blog-o-sphere right now.

 

Mandarin Kumquats: Jellies (or Gelees)

Oh yes. It is that time of year again where I play with exotic citrus.

This year I decided to do something different with my Mandarin Kumquats. In the past I've candied them, syruped them, and marmaladed them.. but this year I found a recipe for Jellies.

 

I simmered my sliced fruit with some water and then used the resulting juice in the recipe for spiced apple jellies I found in The Craft of Baking by Karen DeMasco.  The recipe was straight forward and easy to make, but it isn't mine so I don't feel I can reprint it.  I do recommend the cookbook (as I would any cookbook that has a section on donuts, but I digress).

 

The jellies were lovely, but due to my own error (I forgot to add the corn syrup) they weep a little.  

 

I do enjoy the tangy, slightly floral taste of the Mandarin Kumquats.  
Next time I would use more fruit (I only used 5 or 6), and I would juice them before I cut up the rinds.  I would also be more aggressive in my simmering.  I was worried about bitterness, but I shouldn't have been.

so much to share... I sum up instead.

Oh my, I am tired.

 

I have so many things to write, share, preserve... but.. oh, the body is tired.

In the past couple days, I've wrapped, decorated, cooked, packaged, mailed, organized, taught, and washed dishes.
I have the first two (of oh so many) Christmas packages ready to mail,
but I wanted to have them all ready to go.
Really, I did.

Yesterday I did the first of my Christmas candy making.
There were marshmallows in flavors of peppermint, cinnamon, and vanilla. I tried Smitten Kitchen's Coffee Toffee (YUM!). 
And, I tackled the first of this year's Mandarin Kumquats.  (The quats will need a post of their own.)

Today, I packaged up yesterday's treats before running off to work on the fourth grade auction project. This, too, will need a post of it's own.  Let me just say that I love this class.  They have such a good energy, and although it was an hour of constant action, with my name as a constant chorus, the time felt good.  At the end of my allotted time, the supplies were packed, with only one child finishing up.