I made baby food today because we keep running out of fruit jars. Gavin eats fruit with cereal for breakfast, then again after finishing his veggies and meat during other meals. It seems so silly to buy a jar of mashed bananas for .69 cents when I can get three pounds of fresh bananas for .39 cents at Costco.

The jars, even the stage three foods, are a little runny for a tiny guy who is having a lot of fun copying everyone's chewing motions. He's now able to feed himself little bits of cereal like Cheerios or Chex, so a glob of textureless peach puree isn't that challenging for him.

So I googled around and found a few interesting recipes for baby food. The first was a squash and apple bake with cinnamon. It smelled amazing while cooking, but needed double the listed time for the squash to get soft. I also added a splash of organic carrot juice to keep the whole thing from being too pasty.

It was ready just in time for Gavin's lunch, and though I thought it tasted great, I wondered what he would think of this chunky mash. After three bowls, it was clear that he gave it a thumbs-up. He ate so much that when dinnertime rolled around, he only ate about half a bowl -- he was still full from lunch. (Crossing fingers that a full belly means fewer wake-ups during the night.)


Even after so much eating (I'll admit, I had a forkful or two), there's a full mason jar of food left for the rest of the week and it's a pretty orange color that makes you imagine there are tons of vitamins in there.

Emboldened by my first success, I made a second batch of food right after. This time, it was Honest Fare's Baked Cinnamon Apple and Prune baby food. After three steaming apples filled with prunes and dotted with cinnamon came out of the oven, there was no chance they were even making it into the jars. Trevor and I ate all three. (I consider it a personal triumph that I ate a baked apple without a lick of butter on it.)

Rest assured, I will make Gavin another batch tomorrow. With an apple orchard just a few houses away, we're never wanting for fresh apples. I'm thinking we'll try something with broccoli to add some green to that orange. Mmmmm.

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We had friends over for dinner and board games on Friday night and dinner was King Arthur Flour's Italian Wedding Soup recipe. Trevor loves the cans of Campbell's Italian Wedding Soup that I buy in bulk at Costco, but I was nervous about trying to make this complex soup at home. (I also get a little freaked out by cooking raw meat directly in boiling soup.)

It turned out great, with a different flavor than the usual veggie soups and beef stews I make during the winter. I substituted fresh spinach for the frozen boxed that the recipe calls for, and swapped turkey in for their ground beef. No reason, just what I happened to have on hand.

Cooking the meatballs in the boiling broth made them tender and flavorful. I was tempted to brown them in a skillet beforehand, but I'm glad I resisted. They probably would have been tougher.

If you make the recipe, just keep in mind that the soup is very thick and hearty with all of the veggies, meatballs, and pasta -- and it gets even thicker as it stands and the pasta absorbs more of the broth. If you like a more liquid soup, plan to add a lot more stock.

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The second batch of 64th birthday cookies came out more pastel than the other recipe. Royal icing is great for gingerbread houses, but doesn't flood properly for cookies. Next time, I'll try the icing from last time with less milk to make it thicker.

Here's a comparison of flowers from the two batches.


Both butterflies:


And this time, the peace signs are not Mercedes logos. Hah.

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Dave's family serves celery salad on most holidays and special occasions. I was having an intense salty craving the other day and I tried finding the recipe online. Turns out, it doesn't exist anywhere in the form I'm used to.

Sure there's something called Italian Green Olive Salad, but it's a much grander affair, with anchovies and capers. This is a simple thing, with just olives and celery. I'm suspecting ours is the "home" version that evolved in Italian homes on a budget.



It's very simple, diced celery with olives in their brine. You can also dice the olives if you like, but I think gathering a spoonful of celery with a big burst of olive flavor is part of the fun.

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There's a moment while you're making apple butter when you hit the applesauce stage and you have a choice to make. Will you take the easy road, stop here, and make a batch of applesauce, or will you continue along that hard road of six more hours in front of the stove and make the apple butter?

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I ended up winning the Seven Days photo contest with 37.8% of the popular vote for my sliced carrot picture -- thanks to everyone who voted!

First prize was a gift certificate to a New England Culinary Institute cooking class. These are hands-on classes for members of the public, taught by chefs from The Inn at Essex, where classes are held.

On the day I received the gift certificate, I popped over to the "Chef Inn Training" class schedule and found a breadmaking class for the following week that wasn't going to be offered for the next few months. I called for a reservation and there was room in the class (I didn't think to ask how many people had registered).

A few days later, I was on my way to Essex for my bread class. As you know, I'm bread-challenged, and I've managed to bungle every loaf of yeast bread I've ever made. Well, do you think Chef Kerry cured my bread deficiency? Judge for yourself:


Clockwise from top left: hazelnut-raisin dinner roll, everything bagel, grey salt bagel, plain pretzel, black salt pretzel

It didn't hurt that I was the only registered participant, and I had the kitchen to myself. I asked a boatload of questions and I specifically checked on what I might be doing wrong with my yeast. Chef Kerry had many helpful tips, and she encouraged me to do most of the steps in the recipes myself after a quick demonstration.

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When the garden decides to throw a metric ton of cucumbers at you, there isn't much you can do other than make pickles. A few years ago, we made a couple of jars of fridge pickles -- but they need to be kept cold and they take up a fair bit of room. This year, we tried cooked pickles.



I didn't have one perfect recipe, so I mixed a few lists together. I didn't realize it was critical to have alum stored in the spice cabinet, so the pickles weren't as crunchy as they could have been, but they were garlicky and briny and good.

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I went hunting in the garden in the rain and managed to find a few edible items, even though we've seen mostly cloudy days (if not hurricanes). Everything was from our garden, except for a couple of items.

Roasted CSA potatoes with chives.



Squash blossoms stuffed with ricotta and parmesean.



Balsamic salad with lettuce, tomatoes, CSA peppers and baby onions.



Sauteed baby carrots and baby leeks. (Hooray for thinning!)



Cupcakes with strawberry-cream cheese icing (strawberries from our neighbor's garden) and iced tea with mint.

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Trevor and I have been learning about medieval times this summer. Last week, he and a friend prepared a feast for their parents at our house with authentic medieval dishes.

There were a lot of things to be cooked, so I prepped anything that needed chopping, boiling, or other prep work before the kids arrived. Each plate held the ingredients for one recipe. It's amazing how similar a glass of honey (right) looks to a glass of beef stock (left).

Clockwise from the top left:
Tart of Ryce (rice pudding) - orange juice, butter, egg yolks, sugar, rice, cinnamon, ginger
Meat Pyes (meat hand pies) - raisins, dates, prunes, vinegar, salt, pepper
Pyneade (pine nut candy) - honey, pine nuts, spices
Ember Day Tart (quiche) - grated mozarella, sage leaves, onion, raisins, eggs, spices
Almondegas (meatballs in soup) - beef broth, butter, spices, egg yolk, wheat flour, green onions



It took two hours for me to prep everything and the kids and I finished cooking 30 minutes before the parents were due. All in all, the decision to do a little mise en place was a good one.



The Ember Day Tart was good, a sweet and savory mix of raisins and onions. The pyneade, though it reached hard crack stage, didn't stay solid at room temperature. The meatballs in sauce were good, but most other things were overcooked, even though we followed the directions to a tee. And the kids had fun making fruits and vegetables out of marzipan.

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Trev and I found a few batido recipes in his Delicious Drinks cookbook the other day. Batidos are sweet, cold Cuban milkshakes made with condensed milk -- which keeps indefinitely in a can in hot weather.

We tried mango and coconut -- the latter was the favorite. By the way, canned mangoes are quickly surpassing their fresh counterparts in my estimation. They're guaranteed ripe, they taste identical to fresh, and they keep for months on the shelf. Any time you want a mango, pop open a can and fish out a half. Not fresh or local, but so gratifying when you need an instant hit of the tropics in a recipe.

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Remember my post in April expressing inappropriate love for my mandoline? Now I think I love it even more.

I entered the photo above in the 7 Nights foodie photo contest -- and I'm one of the finalists! Go vote:

http://www.7dvt.com/hotshots-finalists

You know which photo is mine...

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A friend recently gave me her collection of PTO, 4-H, and community group cookbooks. There are some neat books in the box (the Good Morning America recipe newsletter) and they span a few decades. I flipped through the 75th Anniversary Oklahoma 4H'ers Favorite Recipes book (1984) this morning and found this puzzing recipe.



At the title, I thought it was going to be some kind of nuts and lettuce salad, but the first ingredient is a tub of Cool Whip. All right, I said to myself, it's a dessert salad. And I went with that theory until I hit the last ingredient: 1 cup of grated cheddar cheese. Pineapple, marshmallows, pecans... and cheddar? For real real? I have half a mind to try it this weekend to see if it really works.

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I thought I had rhubarb in my garden, but I have nothing compared to our neighbor Neil.

I found some spindly little red stalks with broad leaves poking out of a woodpile last year and determined (via Google) that they were rhubarb (which I love). I harvested just enough to make a pie and I rearranged the wood pile to give them more room to grow. This year, the stalks are more robust and I might be able to get two pies from them. I was so excited... then I stopped by Neil's garden.

He asked if I wanted some rhubarb and I agreed, thinking I'd accept a couple of stalks to add to other fruit so I wouldn't make a dent in his harvest. Oh, how wrong I was. I got out to the garden to find that Neil has a fifty-foot row of waist-high rhubarb plants packed tightly together. Enough to seriously feed the entire island with some left over.



I took a hefty bunch, then Neil came over and asked what I was making with them. When I replied, he said I surely didn't have enough and handed me a bunch more. They're gorgeous stalks, and they made a lovely rhubarb crisp that afternoon. There's still some in the fridge. Be right back.

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Cherries were on sale this week, and that's as good a reason as any to stay up until midnight pitting tiny fruits that stain your hands brown and waiting for rounds of dough to chill.



I've never made a cherry pie from scratch -- usually the canned cherries and Pillsbury pre-rolled crust is sufficient. But after pitting all of those cherries, it just didn't seem right putting them into a store-bought crust that's been in the freezer for a month.

I attempted a real cut-cold-butter-pieces-into-flour pastry crust. A real feat considering my fear of all flour-based foodstuffs that aren't cakes. It smells good. We'll tell you how it tastes after supper tonight.



In other news, Trevor was up sick every two hours last night. So I was also up every two hours last night. And though I thought I'd recovered with a little extra sleep this morning, I just realized I've been walking around for the last few hours with my button-down shirt on inside-out and thinking to myself, I thought this shirt had buttons...

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I have found cookie heaven. By following my sister-in-law's mother-in-law's recipe, I finally ended up with buttery, tender cookies with shiny, solid icing on top. They look like something you'd buy shink-wrapped at Easter. Hooray!

Trevor wandered over while he was supposed to be doing homework to see what I was up to. He glazed a couple himself, then manned the sanding sugar. He added a dollop of blue food coloring to some of the pink to make his own indigo cookie. (The spot on his chin is blue food coloring.)



When in doubt, ask someone's Italian mother. Grazie, Maria!

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I've given up on bread for the moment and focused back on what works well for me -- desserts. I asked my sister-in-law's mother-in-law (figure that one out) to send me her recipe for sugar cookies. Hers are crumbly and soft, not like my crisp version.



After trying her instructions, I think my three previous mistakes were rolling the dough too thin, cooking it for too long, and using butter that was too cold and stiff. These came out much more chewy and tender.

Next... on to the icing.

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Michelle, in an attempt to rescue me from another bread-baking disaster, emailed me a link to this fine recipe. It's called No-Knead Bread, from the New York Times. And, indeed, I did not knead it at all.



It was working swimmingly well, right up until the baking part. I had bubbly, soft dough that rose the way it was supposed to and promised to be a fluffy, tall loaf. Thirty minutes into baking, the bread changed it's mind and reverted back to a flat, pouty little foccacia-like crispbread. I can only imagine there's something wrong with my oven calibration or my yeast activity. Or my DNA.

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When a bell rings, an angel gets his wings. And when a gentile burns her latkes, somewhere a Bubbe cries, "Oy vey!"



Clearly, I did not do this right... unless latkes are supposed to be an unpalatable war between charred grated turnips and raw grated potatoes.



I turned down the heat, squeezed out more liquid and tried again with smaller handfuls. The second batch came out much better, but they still sponged up olive oil at an alarming rate and never quite seemed to cook in the center. Oy Gevalt.

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These are the sourdough loaves which reminded me of why I dislike baking bread. Cakes are cheerful and eager to please, while breads sit dully on the kneading board and pout, "What do you want?"



These were supposed to be fluffy white loaves of sourdough, but they refused to rise any measurable amount, even with both bubbling starter and fresh yeast in the dough. I baked them anyway and they came out dense, but chewy inside. Good for one day, but hard as a rock after that. Even as bread pudding, the centers of the tiny bread cubes refused to soak up the custard.

Why does bread fight you every step of the way?

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I secretly love it when at least two bananas get overripe in the fruit bowl.

This particular recipe calls for a sour cream/baking soda mixture that fizzes up and gives the bread some lift. I like to sprinkle some brown sugar over the top before baking to give it a sweet, golden crust.

There's nothing better than a slice of this with some butter and a cup of tea.

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