Midwinter Musings: food

I don't really like baking, that's what I claim. But the amount of baking I've done since the beginning of quarantine tells a different story. Some of it was about finding things to celebrate. Some of it was about lack of bread at the store. Some was because I wanted to minimize trips to the grocery store or bakery. Book food spurred me on once or twice. Birthdays were a good excuse. But no one held a gun to my head and told me I had to bake a buche de Noel. I must like baking, at least a little bit.

Here are a few highlights, starting with the buche de Noel above. The buche de Noel was inspired by one that I had a slice of last Christmas. It was from La Farine bakery in Oakland, and it was delicious!

Little did I know this was the year of buche de Noels! I saw LOTS on social media. I used this recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction, mainly because it used frangelico, which I know was an ingredient in the one from La Farine. For decoration we made our own marzipan (because I was unable to find any to purchase and I just happened to have some almond flour). Marzipan made up the cranberries as well as the core of the almond pinecones. The mushrooms are meringue. Even though we didn't have very three dimensional stems (because our meringue wasn't stiff enough) they still turned our incredibly well. They were also tasty. Next time I will use more frangelico in the filling and sprinkle some on the sponge cake before rolling too.

The first quarantine bake was for Pi Day. I took some shortcuts. The pie crust was a frozen one I rerolled and shaped. The interior was savory--potatoes, onions, and palak paneer (also purchased frozen from the grocery store).

Next up was a cabbage galette to use up leftovers from St Patrick's day. I found the recipe here. I subbed in oat milk for regular milk because at this point of the pandemic, you just used what you had (not to mention, that's a pretty good strategy in general).

Ariadne had wanted to go with a practical joke theme when it came to food for her birthday party. The plan was a burger cake, and a cake made of sandwiches, all at the beach with friends. The beach part was replaced with a zoom party where the kids played with legos, chatted, and watched Frozen 2. But we still made the burger cake! Ariadne helped. The 'burger' was a brownie mix and the buns were yellow cake. Marshmallow fondant made the cheese and lettuce, as well as the sesame seeds for the bun. The brown of the bun and the red of the ketchup were a challenge. I used many colors from our 16 color gel food coloring set.

Like everyone else, we got in on the sourdough craze. A friend knew a friend with a starter. Pretty soon my entire group of friends from park day had sourdough starter. At this point in the pandemic, no one could get bread at the store, and yeast was sold out too.

We tried plain, olive and rosemary, and cinnamon and raisin. Olive and rosemary (above) was my favorite. At times the starter was quite explosive!

A local restaurant was experimenting with meal kits, often paired with staples like toilet paper or bread and eggs. One of their kits was for homemade pop tarts. They came out pretty well, and were a good activity for the kids (and we got TP! Yay!). Strawberry, PB&J, and cinnamon and sugar, if I remember correctly.

For Easter, I decided to make a layered carrot cake from one of my favorite cookbook authors, Abigail Johnson Dodge. Here's the inside.

Book food! I have the most ridiculous hobby. I make food from books and other fiction. These cookies were from The Testaments, Margret Atwood's sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. They are basically modified oatmeal raisin cookies. Maple syrup is used in place of sugar, and they also include sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds. The book references childhood memories of eating cookies with raisin eyes pumpkin seed smiles.

Random pancakes.

Cherry pie was part of our AP Week/ Hike Week. The older two kids had a full week of AP tests between them. All administered at home. In order to give them a quiet work environment, I took the younger two kids out for a hike everyday (as homeschoolers, we had the flexibility to do this). On the last day we went cherry picking! When we got home, I just had to make a pie.

Random popovers (my favorite) and GG Lois's scones--a blueberry version.

Alright, I didn't bake this one, but I need to throw it in for posterity. A tres leches cake from Safeway's bakery for Solomon's high school graduation. I will likely have a full post on this up sooner or later, but just in case I don't here is most of the spread. Caprese salad is just out of the frame. Until ordering this cake, I had not set foot in a store for months! As we hit high school graduation, I realized that I probably needed to be able to shop at least some, since instacart was frequently down and was really hit or miss for our family of six. (Often they substituted with wildly less than I'd ordered, or left out all the main courses for our meals).

A friend posted about making chocolate beet cupcakes. I needed to try it. We liked it so well, chocolate beet cake has shown up in several iterations since.

Fourth of July flag desserts! In an attempt to eat a little healthier, these have a wasa bread base, slightly sweet cream cheese, strawberry stripes and blueberry stars. Not quite baking, but they are pretty.

We did a LOT of baking leading up to Ariadne's book one violin recital, which was August 1st. The first batch were sugar cookies decorated with royal icing and stars. They needed to be sturdy to withstand shipping to friends and family in Minnesota. Treble clefs and stars were fitting for a Suzuki violin recital. And Aria's favorite color is pink.

Our second batch was for in-town guests. We made eighth note jam-jams (jam-jams of any shape are a favorite on Charles's side of the family). Nutella Cellos also made an appearance. These are the cookies we invented for Charlotte's book one cello recital several years ago. Delivering cookies, programs and coloring pages to our local friends was a surprise highlight. Aria and I got in several impromptu conversations with friends we hadn't seen in person since March.

All for one and one for all! This is not a sanctioned way to use bows, but fun nonetheless!

More book food! In the last Harry Potter book, Harry has a birthday cake in the shape of a snitch. Charlotte finished the book series this summer and insisted we make the snitch birthday cake. Small wouldn't do, so we used two mixing bows for baking! The cake was chocolate beet cake, and excellent combination. Marshmallow fondant and edible gold dust covered the entire thing, with paper wings to make sure everyone knew it was a snitch. Then we watched the book seven movies after Aria was in bed.

Asana cupcakes. Charles got a new job during the pandemic. I made cupcakes in the shape of their logo.

In fall we tried out a recipe for apple cider caramels my friend Marina made the year before after our field trip to an apple orchard. They were SO GOOD! I made a second batch and we shipped some to family in Minnesota, along with some more of those oatmeal smile cookies I'd make for book club months back. The recipe is from Smitten Kitchen.

Book food strikes again! Conchas from The First Rule of Punk turned out to be one of Charlotte's all time favorites.

The conchas came back at Thanksgiving by special request, along with bao, inspired by the Pixar short. We had a bun brunch on Thanksgiving, with baking headed up by Charles and aided by Ariadne and Charlotte.

December 1st 2020, the universe conspired to give me a cake. This is when I knew I'd been baking too much. Miraculously, I had all the ingredients for a very particular recipe I had never seen before, Bon Appetit's heartbeet cake.

Beets--check

Dutch process cocoa--check

coconut oil--check

everything to make chocolate ganache--check

edible gold dust for decoration--CHECK!

Too. Much. Baking. I made it anyway, it was delicious! I don't think it was as healthy as the recipe made it out to be.

Once we knew we were moving to California, I instantly made a Minnesota Bucket List. Near the top was a trip to Lake Itasca. I had lived in Minnesota my whole life and never been to the source of the Mississippi! I booked a camp site for a few days in mid-summer, not long before our departure for California.

The big draw at Lake Itasca is the source of the Mississippi, and it did not disappoint. The water was clear and beautiful. Rock stepping stones marked the boundary between the calm grassy Lake Itasca and the small stream destined to swell into the mighty Mississippi. We crossed the rocks, back and forth, carefull not to slip. We waded in the stream, and then swam in the deep pool just across the steppingstones on the lake side. Now completely wet, we lay on our backs and floated down the Mississippi, completely at ease. We got out and walked the board walk, got back in and floated some more. I am sure we spent hours, and we were not alone. The source of the Mississippi was a popular spot, full of happy people.

This trip was just me and the kids. Charles flew back home so we could do the road trip west as a family, but at this point he was still in California. The Lake Itasca camping trip was also a dry run for our new camping gear. Our REI Kingdom 8 was quite a spectacle, with the 'garage' attachment and all. But it went up quickly and worked well. We did have a slight condensation problem. In very humid weather, it works better with the rain fly off. I am glad I sprung for the garage. A little vestibule for taking shoes on and off helped keep the inside clean.

A comfortable place to sleep goes a long way with the reluctant camper, and with that in mind I got a super duper full size camping mattress for Charles and myself. (In fact every single person I saw looking at this thing claimed to be getting for their significant other.) A hybrid between a therm-a-rest and a manual pump air mattress, it was absolutely the most comfortable camping pad I have ever slept on. Ariadne eventually migrated over in the middle of the night. She was a fan too.

Back a the camp site Solomon, our fire master, started training in Charlotte and Aria. We made pizza burritos in the camp fire, a favorite of Nova and Charlotte’s 4-H camp, and finished off the meal with s'mores. The girls made friends with the kids at the neighboring camp site and played on a swing set at the end of the campground.

In the afternoons, when the camp site quieted down, the kids practiced their instruments. We intend to bring them along for our 10 day road trip to California and this was a dry run for that too. When Solomon played his viola, the few campers left looked up and took notice, enjoying the music.

A long stairway lead down to Lake Itasca near the entrance of the camp ground. We stared went there to wade and stare at the sunset and listen to the birds.

There were also plenty of opportunities to see wild life. We saw some creature (was it a beaver? A muskrat? a turtle?) Nearby was an old fire tower. We climbed to a dizzying height, and I was glad my youngest kid was six. Honestly, even I was experiencing some muscle fatigue from all the stairs by the time we were coming down. The family behind us had 21 kids (two families of cousins, with 9-10 kids in each family, plus a friend or two in the mix).

We saw the tallest white pine and the tallest red pine in the state, wild daisies, columbine, and lupine. This is the tallest white pine, with the girls included for scale (Nova was around 5'6'' at this point). If I recall correctly, this tree had been taller in the past, but storms had reduced its height. Battle worn, gnarled, but still majestic, it was the tallest tree the kids had ever seen.

On a day that threatened rain, we checked out the visitor's center. The mini-museum had a 3-D topographical map of the area, as well as relics from the past. Going to Lake Itasca was once a much fancier affair. Dishes and a laundry bag from the resort that once operated here were on display.

For some reason I didn't wrap up this blog post, and found it, orphaned in the draft pile over two years later. From here on out, it is mostly a photo album.

This group selfie turned out surprisingly well.

Nova showed me this page of her journal later. Ha!

A playground half way up from the Twin Cities was a welcome pit stop.

Lake Itasca Selfie

We took a ranger-led hike which lead us town to the dock. T this point, I'm pretty sure we're all staring at a turtle. We also saw swans and loons. I think the hike was about wildflowers.