The classic, the not so troublesome, tasty French onion soup.

I was going to make baked potato soup last night when I got home – ambitious of me, to bake 2 pounds of potatoes, then dice and mash them and cook them down into a soup. All this after a good, solid martial arts workout? I don’t think so, scooter. But I told 354 that I would cook supper for him, and like a good, trusting man, he didn’t eat anything so he could have supper when I got home (around 2100 zulu). What’s a girl to do? I suggested French onion soup, his eyes lit up and the deal was done.

Had I ever made French onion soup before? No. (Had I ever eaten it? No.) Was I scared? No! I had recipes galore – Julia, BHG, Cooking, the entirety of the Internet at my fingertips! What was to be scared of?

After two to three hours looking through recipes online and in-hand, I decided. Enough was enough. Enough of the recipes said onions, beef stock, butter, flour and a very, very small amount of sugar, and generally some dry white wine, so I figured it couldn’t be that hard to replicate. And on the whole, it wasn’t. There were pieces and parts of things that I will definitely do differently next time, but the soup itself, like soups should be, was simple.

(Remainder, including pictures, under the cut.)

Oikos Greek yogurt… oh, Lordie.

I bought two little tubs of Oikos Greek yogurt a week or so back so I could make my own yogurt at home. I intended to use it as starter, but when I got to Kroger and saw both vanilla and honey (apparently a new product), I decided I’d get both. If nothing else, I’d eat one and use the other for starter. I’d never eaten Greek yogurt (to my knowledge, though there’s no telling what Mom fed me as a child), and I was curious about this stuff that people were suddenly so excited about.

It sat in the fridge for a while. A week, probably. I never got around to making yogurt (maybe this weekend, I hope), but I did take the honey yogurt with me to work one day so I could have a snack before martial arts. I finally ate it this afternoon, since I had a relatively small lunch.

Oh my other side, this stuff is so good!

I’ll admit, I was not initially encouraged. ‘Fat-free’ and ‘plain’ are not yogurt buzz words that ordinarily lift my spirits. The packaging was really cute, of course, and different from most yogurt packs, so marketing bonus for them. But still… the healthy buzz words were my buzz kill.

When I peeled away the foil, it looked like the yogurt had seperated. It did not appetizing in the least – kind of runny, clumpy in places… I dove in anyway, and I was so glad I did. The first spoonful took me by surprise – smooth-textured and a little tangy, with the sweetness of the mild honey in the background. It coated my tongue and my pallete. It was rich and delicious. I ate the whole thing without pause. It was a revelation and I’m so glad I had it.

As with many things labeled ‘organic,’ it can be a little pricey, but there’s a bonus side for it. Stonyfield is partnered with Euphrates Inc. to make Oikos; if you go to the Oikos website, there’s a section for coupons in the header. Click on that, enter your email address and print coupons (good for ten days after printing) for quite a few of their products. Try it – you won’t be disappointed.

My first award!

It’s 0800 on a Thursday. I don’t have to leave for another two hours to go to work. I haven’t done any of my homework and I need to, and I didn’t bake any cupcakes for the dojo family last night. But I’m okay with being a slacker – I needed the sleep. I’m about to attempt vanilla and devil’s food cupcakes in a moment but first – Cat at The Cat’s Pajamas awarded me with the Kreativ Blogger award and tagged me in the meme. It’s my first award (thank you, Cat!) and my first meme in the foodie world. Let’s see what I can come up with, eh?

7 Things I’ve Done Before

1. Caught cattle from 0400 one morning until 0200 the next. They were boogers, too.
2. Been mother to a baby that wasn’t mine (my little sister, Grace, who will be four in December).
3. Raised colts from foals to yearlings and worked them into decent broke horses.
4. Been the only female on the skeet range, and consistently outshot every man there (good thing we were all friends!)
5. Learned Spanish as a first language, before I learned English – and I was living in the hills of Kentucky in the 80’s, not a particularly Spanish-speaking mecca (we could barely speak decent English).
6. Scared the living tar out of my mother when I was about 3 when I walked out of the side porch to one of the barn lots where we had one of our pulling horse pairs. She walked outside and found me standing under Toby (literally – my head didn’t touch his chest), petting his leg. Toby and Momma were both scared still; I just wanted to pet Toby.
7. Hunted deer, pheasant, quail, turkey, dove and chuckar – and they were all tasty.

7 Things I Do Now

1. Care for 26 boarded horses at the barn where I live – feed, water, blanket, turn in, turn out and generally watch out for.
2. Raise and school two young dogs, my precious boys, daily.
3. Pray daily that I will finally graduate in December, and thus, learn enough managerial accounting to pass my final before semester’s end.
4. Keep an eye on local, national and world events, even though I’m frightened of the way things appear to be going in our nation and our world.
5. Try desperately (sometimes in vain) to keep my apartment squared away. I’m not a tidy person to begin with, but when you generally only get spare time to sleep and do homework… it doesn’t lend well to housekeeping.
6. Read all the updated blogs on my Reader as soon as I can get to them. There are a LOT. But those blogs are what keep me down on the ground most days.
7. Practice martial arts whenever I can. I love it!

7 Things I Want to Do

1. Relearn Mandarin, bone up on my Spanish and learn German and/or Portuguese.
2. Get my black belt in Goshin karate, then move on to jiujitsu and krav maga.
3. Learn to be organized, so I’m not always searching in a mess of mildly controlled chaos for things I need.
4. Be a good Marine wife, when I get to that point, and have a happy, comfortable home – with a well-stocked kitchen.
5. Train K9s and police horses at some point in my life.
6. Get back home and have a small homestead, complete with chickenhouse, Jersey milk cow, a few feeder steers, a couple of horses and a garden or two. Maybe I’ll get to do it before I get too old to remember how to do it all.
7. Write a book.

7 Things That Attract Me About the Opposite Sex

1. Good hands and strong arms.
2. Well-rounded intelligence.
3. Eyes – pretty eyes get me every time.
4. Can’t be afraid to get dirty now and then – a rural background helps.
5. Flexibility – I want to be able to do anything with him around.
6. A willingness to learn and adapt.
7. Security in all senses – financial, marital, whatever, but most of all, for me.

7 Favorite Foods

1. A good filet, spiced properly and medium-rare. Oh, my other side.
2. Cottage cheese and pears.
3. Ancestral pound cake.
4. Turkey sandwich with provolone on Italian or foccacia.
5. Beer cheese.
6. Fettucine alla carbonara.
7. My stepmother’s fruit salad.

7 Things I Say Most Often

1. Dude.
2. Son of a…!
3. Oorah!
4. Goosfraba/Woosah…
5. Oh, my other side!
6. Ooh-wee!
7. Hey – they can’t eat me.

And now, to spread the love!

1. Kim at A Yankee in a Southern Kitchen – Kim has always been kind to me, and her recipes are to die for. Check her out!
2. Susan at She’s Becoming DoughMessTic – Susan began Operation Baking GALS, so she has a special place in my heart for that, but also because she has food that makes my mouth water.
3. Jayne at The Barefoot Kitchen Witch – The pictures of her kids and kittens make me giggle every single day.
4. Drew at How to Cook Like Your Grandmother – His writing style tickles me, but I also like the way he sets up his entries and makes every recipe easy to follow.
5. Julie at Peanut Butter and Julie – Julie is probably the reason I got into food blogging in the first place. I don’t remember how, but it has something to do with her granola. Everything else I’ve ever seen in her blog has been delicious, too.

A weekend in Augusta, and Round Four OBG Ship!

Last Friday, I went to Augusta for my last remaining grandparent’s 92nd birthday. We had a lovely ol’ time in Augusta, sampling the buffet at the Partridge Inn (the chicken and the key lime pie was good, but the cheesecake left something to be desired) and taking a family ‘tour,’ with my grandfather as guide, through the parts of Augusta that he grew up in and around. It was a good time to be had, with our dysfunctional convoy of midrange SUVs and towncars, hollering and pointing out windows, stealing handmade bricks from the sidewalk and generally having a good time while onlookers asked themselves ‘what in the world are those crazy-ass white people doing?‘ Ah, family.

Now I’m back in the real world, sadly, and dropped myself unwittingly into the midst of what can only be described as Baking Timecrunch Hellweek. Why, you ask? Well…

1. Thursday, I plan on baking two kinds of cupcakes for my dojo ‘family’ in honor of Halloween: devil’s food with chocolate (whipped cream?) frosting and spiced pumpkin with caramel or dulce de leche frosting, both with appropriate sprinkles/decor. (I may be baking a batch of devil’s food with red and/or white whipped cream frosting for our Halloween tailgate party on Friday afternoon as well – Go Dawgs!)
2. Thursday also marks the beginning of Operation Baking GALS Ship Week, which lasts until November 10. I’m planning on sending a batch of shortbread, some snickerdoodles, puppy chow (a UGA tradition) and maybe tiny pound cakes from my homemade stores, as well as some purchased stuff that I’m sure our men and women overseas would like. (Oorah, Marines!) Honestly I’ve got so many ideas for baked goods that I’d like to send, but I know there’s no way that I’d ever get them all baked.
3. Friday is the Halloween Tailgate event at work (mentioned above). Since we’re playing UF this weekend, and that’s basically the biggest game of the season, especially after UF stomped a couple of mudholes in UK last weekend (63-5? Honestly! C’mon, Wildcats – ‘best defense in the nation,’ my ass!), then this will be a big tailgate day for everyone who is an uberhuge Dawg football fan. That does not include me, but hey, a girl’s gotta fit in.
4. Also, I may be baking for myself and my flatemate, Chels, since the work environment at home is getting increasingly hostile for us (but not the other one). We don’t know why or what’s causing our asses to get chewed so badly, but we are aware that we’re quite stressed out by it. Baking always helps, right? Must be the carbs. Or the sugar. Or both.

So, you see, Baking Timecrunch Hellweek. But it can’t be all bad – at least I’ll have accomplished something by the end of the week. Who needs sleep, anyway?

The power of food.

It’s amazing the therapeutic nature of food and cooking.

I had a good day. I got up on time, I still had a clean puppy crate, I got to work on time, I got to ride a very good horse. Then in two hours, everything came crashing down about my ears and I was straining at the end of my rope. I couldn’t decide whether to fight or cry – but it didn’t matter, because I had work to do.

I came in tonight, later than anticipated because of the impromptu trip to AutoZone for full-strength truck coolant, after chores and mounting fury and indignation. I meant to cook myself supper, sauteed chicken breast and creamed spinach, but by the time I got coolant in my radiator and the dogs let out and a conversation had with one of my flatmates, it was too late to eat. Not too late to cook, just too late to eat, especially by the time I got done cooking it all.

‘By God,’ I thought, ‘one thing’s going to go my way, everything else be damned!’ Stubbornly, I poured myself a glass of wine and went to cooking. PW’s recipe for creamed spinach has been haunting me for some time, and I was going to cook it tonight so I’d have leftovers tomorrow – or, at this point, just plain lunch.

Slowly, without my really noticing, everything else fell away. I diced half a yellow onion and minced garlic, the movement of my knife a careful exultation of pent-up frustration. Tears came to my eyes from the sulfurous emittance of wounded bulbs. Smelling the warming olive oil, and hearing the subsequent sizzle of onion and garlic, soothed something black and sulfurous in me. By the time the spinach was cooked down and the cream added, my brain didn’t feel so swollen and angry.

I let the chicken breast sizzle. I was hungry. I wanted a turkey sandwich, but fate had turned against me again. My lovely multigrained bread had molded. I still had half left. My waning disgruntlement reared its ugly head again, until I remembered – whole grain mini-bagels! I topped two halves of a mini-bagel with towering stacks of pepper-crusted turkey breast, spinach and provolone and let it rest under the broiler. (I almost burned them, in touch with the rest of my day.) When I did finally take them out, the spinach had wilted and the provolone had browned and bubbled. It was heavenly. I sat lounged on my bed and watched No Reservations and ate it slowly, savoring every bite and washing it down with wine.

Truth is, I’ll say it again – I’ll never get tired of being amazed with the therapy that cooking (and food, though not exclusively food) and baking can provide. The simple though sometimes involved act of caramelizing onions, the smell of browning garlic in a touch of fine olive oil, or the way cookies puff and deflate throughout their cooking time. It’s a real glory in the midst of way too much complication.

Mm, rainy morn– er, day.

0831 est

It’s raining outside (thank you, Lord), and all I feel like doing is going back to bed for a little while only to get up later to drink some tea and bake cookies and make some fall-inspired food.

What a shame that I have to go to work instead.

- – - – -

1143 est

Now that it’s later in the day, and I’m sitting in the office during my lunch ‘break,’ I have time to marvel and wonder at my hastily-fixed lunch. I’m fully devoted at this point to fresh spinach; until I can grow it for myself, I’ll gladly pay for the fresh stuff in the store or on the stand. Same goes for avocados.

When I was fixing lunch, I had a strong feeling that today would be a soup kind of day, but I had no soup to bring! (I’ve got my eye on a corn chowder receipe, though, and I’m jonesing for a bowl of tom kha gai right about now), so I made salad instead. Doesn’t sound like a stellar replacement, does it? Cold salad for good, steamy, hot soup?

It was today. No photo, but here you go. Try this, I swear it’s good.

Wash and pat dry a generous handful of spinach leaves; set aside. Julienne about six baby carrots. Dice a whole, lovely, ripe avocado. Shave some relatively thick slices of Parmesan off the block, about an eighth of an inch or smaller, and cut them into tiny strips. Tear or chop a couple slices of deli turkey breast. Get a little bit of fresh parsley, roughly and briefly chop. Combine all ingredients. Dress with lemon juice, a good olive oil, some balsamic vinegar, kosher salt, cracked black pepper and herbs (dried or fresh) to taste. Toss and serve with some thick slices of toasted, multigrain bread. Enjoy at your leisure.

I believe in chunky salads – I want to be able to taste the individual ingredients in my rabbit food before I taste them all together – and the flavors here pop like you wouldn’t believe. Fresh spinach is a perfect, earthy base for crunchy, lovely little carrots; the mildly salty Parm; the creamy smoothness of avocado; the sweet and meaty taste of the turkey breast; and that sudden kick of fresh parsley. I like to use pepper and salt liberally, so there’s an added crunch and kick with those, too. I also added some dried oregano and some rosemary to my dressing, so it all had time to marinate in the fridge while I waited on lunch.

I think the best parts of this salad are that a) half the chunky stuff falls to the bottom and soaks up all the remaining dressing while it’s waiting for you dig through the spinach; and b) the bread tastes really good when you soak up the last little bits of balsamic with it. Mmm, mmm, mmm.

(It’s amazing really – as a kid, I’d never heard of an avocado or balsamic vinegar, and if I had, I wouldn’t have liked either of them. Now? Now I’ll eat an avocado out of the skin with a spoon, with just a dash of kosher salt on each bite. And truth be told, I didn’t believe in salads as a kid, either…)

It’s awesome that even in a university office, I can still amazed by the taste of my food.

Actually, they’re soufflés.

I intended to make pumpkin custards last night when I got home, after martial arts, after picking up my dog, after making a batch of bakery-style chocolate chip cookies for my boss as a belated birthday gift (but I’m not gonna actually bake those until Sunday night). But then, I got home and a wave of weariness hit me and all I wanted to do was take a shower and go to bed. So I did, after putting away my groceries and settling the dog and setting my alarms and getting ready for today.

After I got horses turned in and fed before dawn, I figured it was a perfect time to bake them, since the BHG recipe I had called for very little hands-on time. It was mostly baking the things that took the time, not the mixing of the ingredients. I figured by the time 0730 rolled around, I could have all my things packed for the trip to the fair tonight, be dressed for my half-day of work, have fed the dog, fixed my hair, fixed my lunch, eaten breakfast, had a cup of coffee and watched some of the TODAY Show (and been subsequently fed up with the media for yet another day).

At least I was dressed by the time 0800 came around and the custards came out of the oven.

Let me backtrack a minute. The whole reason I had to bake them now or never is because at some time between now and two’o'clock this afternoon, I will be packing a small bag, the dog, his kennel and our driver (ha!) in a Ford pickup truck and going to the Georgia National Fair in Perry for the night and most of Saturday. I am quite excited – it’ll be my first time attending without having to work in some capacity. And since the whole point of baking these things is for the October First Thursday Smackdown in all its orange glory, I have to have it baked, photographed and submitted to Michelle by noon Sunday, without baking time or kitchen availability until Sunday morning. So the only time to do this was pretty much 0600 this morning, before work or packing or what all else. I figured they were different enough to get by with, and I would probably enjoy them. After seeing Jayne’s sweet potato brulee for this week’s TWD, I was expected something like that.

I should’ve known better. There’s no yolk or heavy cream in these, no cooking the custard. I was expecting a heavy, eggy, silky custard, such as brulee delivers – instead, I got fluffy, risen pumpkin soufflés. Not what I was expecting, but I’ll go with it. In fact, I’m working myself up to be happy – I’ve never made a soufflé before, intentionally or otherwise, and these were fairly successful – but still, it’s just not what I expected. My plans had to change a little. Originally, I was going to follow the directions to a tee on two of them – dollop some sweetened whipped cream and call it dessert. And then I was going to take the remaining two and brulee them as brulee should be – with a sugar topping. Can you do that with soufflé?

What the hell. I’m all about experiment. Sometimes.

The soufflés as directed were surprisingly good. As one of my flatemates put it, “like pumpkin pie, but not.” And honestly, I shouldn’t have been surprised with that. Of course it was like pumpkin pie – pumpkin, spices, a little big of binder… what else could there be? Airy, not creamy, and not overpoweringly sweet with or without the cream… it was good. I liked it.

I guess I just didn’t expect a pumpkin pie soufflé. I got my hopes up with custard instead. But it was still good.

As for the brulee… well, I only tried it with one. And it didn’t deliver. It just wouldn’t… well, it wouldn’t brulee. The sugar would melt but never caramelize. I ended up with half-melted sugar on pumpkin soufflé – not even worth photographing. But I still have one left, and I’m going to throw that one under the broiler when I get back from the fair this weekend to see if it was user error or the soufflé itself.

In any case, I liked my pumpkin soufflé. It was good – maybe not good enough to make it a go-to recipe, but I’ll recommend it to you. Who knows, you may like it more than I do.

Created for the First Thursdays: October challenge.

First Thursday Smackdown: October!

Over at thursday night smackdown, Michelle does a roundup challenge every First Thursday – of the month, that is. This month’s challenge is orange, “however you choose to interpret that command.”

For some reason, despite my general dislike of blogger challenges and roundups (no offense to you lovely people who participate in Barefoot Blogging or TWD), probably due to my inherent hermit sensibilities, I read Michelle’s announcement of October’s First Thursday on my RSS feed and my brain went, “Ohmigaw, participate!” and proceeded to flood itself with images of pumpkin, butternut squash, ginger and mangoes. (Not necessarily all in combination, of course.)

Entries are due by noon Sunday, October 5 (this Sunday). Smackdown roundup is to be posted at 1000 Monday, October 6. There is a prize – these recipe cards from ScotiaMade on Etsy, which are blatantly adorable (and there are nowhere near enough of them in a pack). Official rules are here. Read them, participate with me, and be merry.