elkit in wonderland

I Can Walk Under Ladders

You know what? I am lucky. Last Saturday I went for a long run with my friend and trainer Carol, to prep for an upcoming race. Came back home afterward, dawdled around the house for a while. Finally took a shower before heading out shopping, and as I splashed water my face and tasted salt from being all sweaty before, I thought again of how lucky I am.

I *like* that salty taste. I *like* working out hard and getting all sweaty. I *enjoy* eating all those vegetables I eat. The things I am doing for staying healthy are work, but they are not hardship and drudgery.

I'm lucky.

I Like Big Bundts, And I Cannot Lie ...

Bacon cookies and Lemon Bundt Cakes, originally uploaded by elkit.

... but the mini-Bundts turned out really nice too. The recipe is from Busy Cooks at about.com, although I've altered it slightly (adding zest, and using butter instead of oil):

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2-1/2 cups flour
• 1-1/2 cups sugar
• 2-1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• zest from one lemon and one orange (if the fruit is untreated)
• 3/4 cup butter
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 4 eggs
• 1-3/4 cups powdered sugar (for the glaze)
• 1/2 cup lemon juice (for the glaze)

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease/butter 12 cup bundt pan. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder and soda, salt, orange juice, 1/4 cup lemon juice, zest, butter, vanilla, and eggs. Beat well until combined.

Pour batter into prepared pan and bake at 325 degrees F for 40-50 minutes until dark golden brown. While cake is in oven, combine powdered sugar and 1/2 cup lemon juice and whisk to blend.

Remove cake from oven, beat powdered sugar mixture again, and carefully spoon 1/2 of the lemon and powdered sugar mixture over cake. Loosen edges of cake and turn out onto serving plate. Slowly drizzle remaining lemon mixture over cake. Let cool.

(Yes, those are bacon cookies next to the Bundts. The recipe for those is here.)

Never a Frown with Golden Brown

Golden Brown, originally uploaded by elkit.

I love the rhythm of that song. And the aroma of these bacon cookies. The recipe is here.

Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'

Assembly, originally uploaded by elkit.

It's Rouladenfest at my house today! "Roulade" is really just the French word for "roll", and that's exactly what they are: beef rolls. In today's parlance, you might call them wraps. Beef wraps.

This is a traditional German dish, and I am lucky enough to live near a German butcher store. (If you live in the South Bay or Peninsula, I recommend them highly: Dittmer's in Mountain View.)

So I don't have to worry about the cut or quality of the meat - I just waltz into Dittmer's and tell them how many rouladen I want. (I usually go for 2 per person, because my friends all tend to be good little eaters, like myself. And if you have leftovers - score! These taste even better the next day.)

Go home, set up like in the picture, and start prepping:

- unroll the slices of beef
- salt and pepper them
- spread mustard on them (I used Dijon; pick whatever you like that will go well with beef
- add a slice of bacon on top
- then sliced onion
- then sliced pickles

As you add stuff on top, keep in mind how you will roll them back up. I rolled them from the bottom to the top, so I placed the filling lower, and left room at the top. I also made sure not to overstuff them - they'll fall apart or jettison bits out the sides if you do that. 

Anyway, now you roll the beef back up, and secure each roulade with a toothpick, so it'll look like this. 

Heat your favorite oil or butter in a heavy saucepan (I like my Dutch oven for this task), and brown the rouladen from all sides. Put the lid on and cook on medium heat for about two hours. 

I serve these with dumplings (bread dumplings and/or potato dumplings), red cabbage and/or sauerkraut, and gravy. (I can buy all of these at Dittmer's, but isn't it great that amazon.com also has all of these? I do love my interwebs!)

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Our Office Tree, originally uploaded by elkit.

We had a Secret Santa gift exchange at work, which was a lot of fun. Several of my coworkers said, "Well, you know what YOU're gonna get, right?" not even bothering to point out explicitly how my constant talk of bacon would pay off.

Do you see that big huge green bag? That was for me! I exclaimed all morning that OHMIGAWD, Santa was getting me a whole big bag of BACON!!! Then someone asked me if I'd checked on it, or picked it up, which I hadn't. So I picked up the bag, which was wayyy too light to contain bacon. :-(

But then it was time for the actual gift-picking and unpacking, and OHMIGAWD, do you know what was in the bag?

Check. It. OUT!!!

Closest Thing to Heaven

At The French Laundry, originally uploaded by elkit.

My best friend Holly and I took Friday off and drove up to Yountville in Napa Valley, for a lunch at the famed French Laundry, considered by many to be the finest restaurant in the country. I tried very hard not to expect the best meal of my life - just a good meal well worth the experience. And I figured that if anything would turn out less than wonderful, at least I would be able to say I'd been there, and now I knew what it was like.

But you know what? It really WAS the best meal I have ever had, and I have a hard time trying to tell you what the best thing was, or which course I liked best.

It was the most expensive meal I have ever had (it's a ten-course prix fixe meal, and costs $240 per person), but it was honestly worth every penny. The service was impeccable. Classy and not snooty at all. Everybody made us feel welcome, and the staff took such excellent care of us that I wanted to marry at least three of the gentlemen on the spot. We showed up at 11am, were led gently and professionally without a rush through all the courses, and left full (but not overstuffed) and happy around 2:30.

The dish in this picture is well worth mentioning: Santa Barbara sea urchin with black truffle "pain perdu", tokyo turnips, granny smith apple (those pale green pearls), mizuna, and sauce périgourdine. I keep thinking of how this tasted. I've never had fresh sea urchin before, which was one of the reasons I picked this course over the other fish option, the bass. The orange bits are the urchin, and oh wow, it was like a mouthful of ocean become flesh. It was wondrously delicious, and this alone was worth the drive.

What a meal!

*sigh*

I'm still swooning. [Oh, and here's more pornographic pictures and details for all you foodies.]

Building A Mystery

The headline says, "Sweden returns skulls to Hawaii". I am going to enjoy wondering what it all means, and not knowing, rather than reading the article. 

One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven Day Weekend

Mine is not seven days long. But four ain't bad at all. I took today and Monday off, so I could bracket my weekend retreat nicely and stress-free. I'm cleaning up around the house and in the yard, and after lunch time, I'll take off for Santa Cruz, where I will spend the weekend a half dozen intrepid NaNoWriMo veterans. Rob found us a great house on Black's Beach, and we'll write and write and eat and drink and have a good time. 

Don't let me forget to pack my Bundt pan, the flour sifter, and the zester. The Food Librarian declared Sunday Bundt Cake Day, and who am I to protest? There were several votes for the Cream Cheese Pound Cake with Lime Glaze, so that's what it'll be. It also meant that I could snatch limes from my neighbors' tree as I dropped off the winter seedlings on their patio table: purple kohlrabi, shelling peas, broccolini, and a cluster of spindly leeks that were tested and declared edible my Ms. Maia. Her thinking seemed to be that it looked close enough to cat grass. I may plant more leeks for her. Good on her for eating her veggies.

Random trivia tidbit: a Bundt cake in German is called a Guglhupf [Google-hoopf]. 

Ell Oh Ell Oh Lola

I attended two Yale literature lectures today. They're from the course "The American Novel since 1945", and I watched two of them on the internet, thanks to Academic Earth. 

I think I'll try to finish this course, and definitely check out the lectures about Cormac McCarthy (whom I still haven't read). Of all the novels the course covers, I have only read one. Hrmpf.

And It Feels Like Rain

It's raining really hard here today. Everybody is talking about the first storm of the season. I kinda like it. The only thing that could make it better would be if I could stay at home, throw a couple of logs in the fireplace, bake something, and settle down on the sofa in my designer snuggie with a book and a couple of cookies and three cats.

But there's work to be done, so I'm at the office, listening to rainy music. Here are a few of the songs in my playlist today:

• The Cure, Prayers for Rain
• Marc Cohn, Rainy Season
• The Doors, Riders on the Storm
• Elvis Presley, Kentucky Rain
• Paul Weller, Early Morning Rain
• Eurythmics, Here Comes The Rain Again
• Grace Jones, Walking In The Rain
• Creedence Clearwater Revival, Who'll Stop The Rain
• Creedence Clearwater Revival, Have You Ever Seen The Rain
• Stevie Ray Vaughan, Couldn't Stand The Weather
• Heather Nova, London Rain
• Joe Cocker, I Can Stand A Little Rain
• John Hiatt, Feels Like Rain
• Tom Verlaine, Storm