Monday, January 4, 2010

Alles Gute im Neuen Jahr!

That's "Happy New Year" for all of you non-Germans out there!

It's been a great two weeks. With the snow storm on the 21st, my self-imposed day off on the 22nd, then our trip to North Carolina for Christmas followed by me being sick (boooo!) and then New Year's, there has been minimal work occurring and lots of relaxation - just how I like it!

There has also been a lot of cooking, naturally.

I had been putting off making bread because the recipes in the book I had purchased off of their discount rack at Barnes & Noble (the first book I've purchased in AGES thanks to our town's awesome library) always seemed to call for white bread flour, which is different from all-purpose. (If you care to know what the difference is, read here.) So in the spirit of utilizing the local town's independent businesses, I called up the local natural foods store that I've been meaning to visit but never have.

It was 5 pm on New Year's Eve and I asked the woman who answered how late she planned to be open. She replied that she was just trying to figure out that out; they'd been slow all day. I asked if she had the bread flour and she checked. She did. I told her that if she could wait 5 minutes, I'd be there to buy it from her.

I threw on some shoes and drove right over. The owner had a customer at that point, but had left my flour on the counter. Once she was free to chat with me, she informed me that they don't usually sell that flour to the public but they use it in all of the baked goods that they sell. As I gazed around the store to see what else they sold, she brought me a ginger cookie that they'd made with this flour and said it was on the house. They'd been slow that day and it would go bad otherwise.

I finished my walk around the small store and ended up picking out a few other items to keep my new organic bread flour company: some fantastic organic pumpkin hand cream that smells so good that it makes me want to start licking my own hands, plus a dozen white eggs from an Amish farm up in Pennsylvania that set me back a whopping $1.89. After chatting with the owner for a few minutes about natural foods and how 2010 is looking like a good year for real food to return to the American diet, I practically skipped out of there. Why can't every shopping experience be so fulfilling?

On New Year's Day, I made crêpes - although (I'm ashamed to say) from a box. When I'd seen the mix in the German store, it was just after having had one of the AMAZING crêpes from our farmer's market and I guess it had impaired my brain. (Damn Nutella!) So I paid close to $4 for the mix, only to realize when I pulled it out of the cupboard on Friday morning to see that it only contained flour, salt and...sugar? I can't remember. But let's just say that it was something ridiculously basic and I felt like an idiot.

Nonetheless, I proceeded to add egg and water to the mix and voilà!...a too-thick crêpe that more closely resembled a pancake than the thin slices of heaven that are served at the market. Grrrrr.

Try #2 was a bit more successful but still not quite right. I think I need one of those fancy little crêpe batter spreaders that the girl at the market uses...

We spread some sugar-free blackberry "jam" (which I put in quotation marks because there was not one chunk of fruit in this "jam" so I'm pretty sure that it should've been called "jelly") on the crêpes and sprinkled them with powdered sugar. Not perfect...but pretty tasty. I still have one more packet of crêpe mix to use up so we'll see if those turn out better. From then on, though, I'm making it from scratch.


To redeem myself, that afternoon I took my first shot at making bread from scratch. With my 100 Great Bread recipe book in one hand and my new bread flour in the other, I set out to make Potato Focaccia Pugliese. I ended up over-baking it because I got distracted while it was baking and let it bake the entire 30 minutes, but despite the fact that we had to use a saw to cut through it, it was pretty good! I mean, at least it resembled bread!

A big thanks to our neighbor for letting us cut a branch off of her rosemary bush any time we need one. Couldn't be any fresher!

Okay, this is getting a bit long. I'll write more soon about all of the beautiful vegetables we picked up at the farmer's market on Saturday...

1 comment:

Manina said...

Looks just like the crepes from the Farmer's Market! I think you need to add some Nutella to that jam....yummm!