We're Off to See the . . . Family

We are leaving Friday for a little vacation and I think my brain has gone ahead without me.  We are headed to that famous tropical vacation paradise, Oklahoma City, for a family reunion.  (I'm trying to psych myself into believing it's not just going to be plain ol' HOT.)  We'll spend two days swimming, playing games, eating and talking with family we only get to see at these biennial events.  

All three of our children, both grandsons, plus son's girlfriend will all be joining us.  I'm so excited!  Son and GF have to return to real life on Sunday, but we get to keep the daughters and grandsons for a few more days at Grand Lake, in Northeast Oklahoma.  

I have the usual prep work to do getting ready for any trip - laundry, food, money, boarding the dogs, more money... plus hair and manicure appointments.  Nothing out of the ordinary, but my brain has clocked out early.  I can't focus long enough to write anything worthwhile, so I'm shutting down the blog a few days early.   I'll be back late next week with a two-hour slide show containing nothing but pictures of people you've never met, with an accompanying dialog of stories you don't care about relating to the people you've never met.  Don't miss it!

That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles

Last week I posted about my baking woes since moving.   My time-tested, go-to cookie recipes were producing inedible lumps rather than soft, chewy circles of deliciousness.  Our new home is over two-thousand feet closer to sea-level and averages three times the humidity as our former home. Some online research and info gleaned from my favorite celebrity chef, Alton Brown, revealed a list of variables that could be affecting my cookie catastrophies:

• elevation
• bread flour vs. all-purpose flour
• acidity
• white sugar vs. brown sugar
• choice of fats 
• drying properties of egg whites
• size of cookie
• dough temperature

Heather @ Books and Quilts recalled that higher elevations require higher cooking temperatures, so perhaps I needed to lower my oven temp.  More Googling revealed that the higher the altitude, the lower the boiling point of water.  In southwest Kansas, water boils at about 206 degrees, while in southeast Nebraska, it boils at 210.  Somehow, this small variation explains why I got better results baking cookies at 375 at the old house, but needed to dial it back here.  

In preparation for an upcoming family reunion, I tried baking cookies again this week.  (Seriously, what kind of grandma shows up for a reunion without goodies that the grandkids aren't allowed at home?)  The first step was to verify the oven temperature on my new oven.  It was accurate within a degree or two. 

Then, I tried Alton's chewy chocolate chip recipe from Good Eats, The Early Years.  I followed the recipe with only two minor variations - I didn't have bread flour and didn't want to drive to town.  And I didn't refrigerate the dough for an hour before baking.  Who can wait that long for warm chocolate chips?  Guess I should have. The nine mounds of dough on the cookie sheet became one large, paper-thin cookie when baked.  That pan went in the trash and I added a smidge of flour to the remaining dough and chilled it for about 20 minutes.  Much better results.  This recipe calls for melting the butter in order to let the water in the butter create more gluten from the flour and make a chewier cookie.  This also made a thinner dough which most likely contributed to the spread, so I probably won't bother with that again.

Next, I tried two of my old-faithful recipes.  Here are the original recipes and the adjustments I made:

Oatmeal Cookies

1 c. shortening                                1 t. baking powder

1 c. brown sugar                             1/2 t. salt

1 c. white sugar                              1/2 t. cinnamon

2 eggs                                            3 c. oatmeal

1 1/4 c. flour                                  1/2 c. nuts

1/2 t. vanilla

Cream shortening and sugars.  Add eggs and vanilla, then dry ingredients.  Bake at 350 for 10-11 minutes.

I used butter (softened, but not melted) and all-purpose flour (still hadn't been to town). I replaced the equal parts white and brown sugar with 1 c. dark brown, 1/2 c. light brown and 1/2 c. white.  (Remember, the molasses in the brown sugars holds moisture.)  I replaced the two eggs with one whole egg, one egg yolk and a tablespoon of milk (again, for more moisture - egg whites act as drying agents).  Not too thick, not to thin, chewy - delicious!

Ginger Snaps

1 c. sugar                                  1/2 t. salt

3/4 c. shortening                        2 t. baking soda

1/4 c. sorghum (molasses)           1 t. cinnamon

1 egg                                         1 t. ground ginger

2 c. flour                                   1 t. cloves

Cream sugar and shortening.  Add egg, then dry ingredients.  Roll in balls and roll in sugar.  Bake at 350 for 10-11 minutes.

Again, I used butter (non-melted) and all-purpose flour.  Since this recipe has added molasses and only calls for one egg, I stuck with the original as written.   Deliciousness again.  

Further tips: 

• I usually use a small scoop or rounded teaspoon to measure out the dough because that's what my Mom and Grandma did.  i have a suspicion that their motive was to make smaller cookies and fool kids into thinking they were getting an extra treat when they got the second one.  Alton uses a much larger scoop to make a less "puffy" cookie, so I switched to a rounded tablespoon. 
• Somewhere in the past - probably from someone on the cooking channels - I learned that the warm air in the oven must be able to circulate completely around the pan to ensure even baking.  In my previous stove, which I stupidly left in the last house, I could use my large air-bake cookie sheet, no problem.  The oven that came with this house, though the same dimensions on the outside, has a smaller oven area and that cookie sheet touches on both sides.  I switched to a smaller cookie sheet which just meant more batches, but not a major thing.

After all that, the biggest change was the oven temperature,  so a huge thank-you to Heather for pointing it out.  

This post is part of Weekend Cooking, sponsored by Beth Fish Reads.  Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share.

Like Sands Through The Hourglass . . .

In May, ABC announced the cancellation of two long-running soap operas, All My Children and One Life to Live.  They have since thrown complaining viewers a bone by selling the rights to these shows to an on-line media company who will continue to produce the shows and air them on-line and through internet-connected televisions.  I'm not here to debate whether or not original programming in on-line formats is the future of entertainment.  I'm here to berate the decision to cancel these shows in the first place, and possibly to harp about the current state of television in general.  ABC executives said the decision was "guided by extensive research into what today's daytime viewers want and the changing viewing patterns of the audience."  Well, didn't they just KNOW I was gonna go off on that line of bull?

My favorite soap, General Hospital, premiered in 1962, followed by One Life to Live in 1968 and All My Children in 1970.  I began watching all three some time in the late 70's.  There is a brief gap in my viewing between joining the "real" world (going to work full-time) and the invention of the VCR.  During that dark period, I kept up as much as possible on holidays, sick days and through Soap Opera Digest.  When we got our first VCR in 1984, I was once again able to visit Port Charles, Pine Valley and Llanview on a regular basis.  While GH is now the only story* I watch without fail, I have kept up with the others enough to get the gist, and I tune in more regularly now that I'm home more.  I'm about as close to a life-time ABC soap fan as you'll find, which I think qualifies me to express my opinion - known in some circles as clear, rational thinking.

To fully understand the colossal irony of ABC's statement, you first need a brief insight into attitudes about soap operas.  According the the museum of Broadcast Communications, negative attitudes toward soaps have existed since the concept began on radio in the 1930's.  Even when soap fans comprised 90% of the daytime listeners/viewers . . .

...the soap opera has been assumed to be of interest primarily or exclusively to uncultured working-class women with simple tastes and limited capacities. Its presumed audience is most easily stereotyped as the working-class "housewife" who allows the dishes to pile up and the children to run amuck because of her "addiction" to soap operas.

My personal, in-depth research into the opponents of soaps unearthed the following objections:  ludicrous plot devices, overly dramatic, they do not present a realistic picture of life, they present and condone immorality - viewers come to believe that these behaviors and moral standards are socially acceptable.

Now let's revisit ABC's crap about "what today’s daytime viewers want and the changing viewing patterns of the audience".  It doesn't take a marketing study or a psychologist to analyze the changing viewing patterns (although there are plenty of both available).  You need only scroll through the TV guide to know that "reality" is king.

• The Real Housewives of Orange County 
• The Real Housewives of New Jersey 
• The Real Housewives of Atlanta 
• Jon and Kate Plus 8
• Jersey Shore
• Sister Wives
• Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?
• Temptation Island
• The Bachelor/Bachelorette
• Joe Millionaire
• Average Joe
• Flavor of Love
• Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica
• The Simple Life
• The Girls Next Door
• Being Bobby Brown
• Keeping Up With the Kardashians
• Big Brother

This is a minute portion of the over-two-hundred shows I found listed as "Reality TV" in the U.S. within the past ten years - and that's not counting the self-help or game shows.  Basically, these are the ones I know enough about to be able to ridicule them sufficiently.  To refresh your memory, networks are cancelling soaps because they no longer fit today's viewing patterns.  Since soaps are judged as containing ludicrous plot devices, drama, unrealistic depictions of life, and condoning immorality, I have to assume these are the characteristics they are trying to avoid with quality programs like those listed above.  I'll just let you carry that extrapolation to it's conclusion, but I will point out:

In 2004, VH1 aired a program called "Reality TV Secrets Revealed", which detailed various misleading tricks of reality TV producers.  According to the show, various reality shows combined audio and video from different times, or from different sets of footage, to create an artificial illusion of time chronology that did not occur, and a misportrayal of participant behaviors and actions.

So much for reality!  "Today's audience" is watching thinly disguised Soap Operas with less clothing and even less morality . . . and plot.

As for soaps appealing to "uncultured working-class women with simple tastes and limited capacities", it is true that those women are no longer watching soaps.  They're too busy beating each other up, calling each other [bleeps], and showing their boobs on reality TV.

What about soaps condoning immorality?  I'm not going to take the non-existent high road and defend the content of soap operas except to say that, when taken as a whole, good usually wins eventually and bad is usually punished - and they're not presented to impressionable teens (or adults) as "reality".   I can sum up the morality issue by noting that I never found it necessary to prohibit our daughter from watching soaps.  However, the reason I am vaguely familiar with most of the shows listed above is because they were banned in our house at some point.  

To address the multitudes of you reading this post (and yes, I still believe in Santa Claus) who are saying, "But the replacement shows aren't trashy reality shows."  I agree - one is a "lifestyle show" called The Chew (with Mario Batali) and the other is a weight loss/makeover series, The Revolution, led by fashion icon (and my personal life guru) Tim Gunn.  I think The Chew sounds wonderful - put it on a cooking channel where it belongs.  As for The Revolution, I may even tune in just to see what amazing wisdom Tim shares, but   can't it replace the hour of Judge Judy re-runs our local ABC affiliate shows each afternoon?

A final word on "reality" TV - schadenfreude.  Schadenfreude [shahd-n-froi-duh] is satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune.  Schadenfreude is the entire basis for Dave's favorite channel, TruTV, also known as Stupid People TV.  To quote Entertainment Weekly,  "Do we watch reality television for precious insight into the human condition?  Please! We watch for those awkward scenes that make us feel a smidge better about our own little unfilmed lives."  I'll admit that the commentary added to the "World's Dumbest..." series by a cast of celebrity screw-ups and repeat offenders can be funny, but the clips themselves just make me sad.  Sad that this is what now passes for  acceptable behavior; sad that we find pleasure in watching other's pain and tribulation; sad that these morons are contributing to the potential gene pool for my future grandchildren!

I'm even sadder to see one more piece of my youth vanish.  Sad to lose one of the constants in my life.

*Bonus points if you're old enough to remember when ladies referred to their "stories".

Paris in July: Musique de France

It's July, and time to head to Paris.  Paris in July is a month-long event sponsored by Tamara @ Thyme for Tea and Karen @ BookBath.  During July, participants will be learning and sharing about all things French.  For my part, since I know very little about anything French or Parisian, I will be dedicating each of the four weeks of July to learning about one area: French music, France through Movies, France through Literature and, of course, French Food.  First up is music.

This was truly starting from zero - I couldn't name a single French composer or singer, so  I began with current music.  Did you know that France has it's own version of American Idol called Nouvelle Star?   I listened to a few videos there and was surprised that many of the songs were American/English rock/pop songs -  sung in English.  I'm not sure why this surprised me - guess it was just something I had never thought about, even though I know that many American artists are popular in other countries and make world tours.  Since my curiosity was up, I Googled the current French music charts and discovered some familiar names like Snoop Dog and Black Eyed Peas.   I listened to the non-English entries in the Top 5 for the week, and discovered that French pop music sounds much like American pop music, except I couldn't understand the words.  Oh, wait - I can't understand most of the words in English either - so make that "exactly like American pop music".  Moving on...

... I found that the music exchange goes both ways.  Les Feuilles Mortes (music by Joseph Kosma, lyrics by Jacques Prevert) was written in 1945 and introduced in the 1946 French film Les Portes de la Nuit.  In 1947, American songwriter Johnny Mercer wrote English lyrics and it became the pop standard "Autumn Leaves".  The film by the same name (1956) starred Joan Crawford and featured the song as sung by Nat King Cole.  Here is the French version, performed by Andrea Bocelli:



Another French song, Comme D'habitude, became an American classic when Paul Anka, after hearing the song while traveling in Paris, acquired the rights for free and wrote English lyrics, unrelated to the previous French lyrics.  Frank Sinatra recorded it in 1969 under the title, My Way.

Petit Papa Noel is a Christmas song written in 1946 by Raymond Vincy and Henri Martinet, and popularized in the film Destins.  It is currently the best-selling single of all time in France, with over 5 million sold (according to InfoDisc).  I became familiar with this song as performed by Josh Groban on his 2007 album Noel.



Moving farther back, I listened to some French folk music and read a bit about French opera.  I won't pretend to teach you anything about either one, but I have to share that I fell in love with the music of Claude Debussy, quite by accident.  In my quest for information about French classical composers, I found Wikipedia's simple alphabetical list of French composers.  I skimmed through, clicking here and there for more information, but Debussy was by far the most familiar name on the list to me.  His name was followed by "He wrote 'Clair de Lune' from Suite Bergamasque".   Clair de Lune?  I've heard of that.  No one who has taken more than two years of piano lessons hasn't heard of Clair de Lune!  A quick search on Grooveshark revealed that I did NOT know Clair de Lune.  At least not as performed by a classical pianist rather than a 10-year-old.  And I was instantly head over heels in love with this music!

Clair de Lune is probably best recognized from the Bellagio fountain scene at the end of Ocean's Eleven. 



That is the full orchestra version, but, in my opinion, you have to hear it in it's purest form - piano only - to fully appreciate.  Listen again!  


In the spirit of using Paris in July to learn something new, I found the piano sheet music to Clair de Lune and am challenging myself to play it.  No amount of practice, practice, practice will ever get me near Carnegie Hall, (or near to Mr. Malinowski's performance in the YouTube clip) but I hope to eventually be able to at least make myself smile.

A Cookie Dilemma

 Help, my cookies have fallen and they can't get up!  Actually, the problem is that my cookies won't fall, but no one made a clever commercial saying "Help, my cookies are too dry."  Here's the issue:  When we lived in Southwest Kansas I made massive numbers of cookies each summer for the employees and customers at the elevator during harvest.  I have five or six basic recipes that I have tweeked so they work every time.  That is, until March 16, 2011.  That would be when we moved to Southeast Nebraska.  Now my cookies are inedible disasters. They don't spread at all and they're dry.  Help!

Here are the facts as I know them.  Our average humidity went from about 20-30% to nearer 65%-75%.  You would think this would make for moister cookies, but not so's you'd notice.  Our elevation dropped over 2300 feet (from 3322 to 968).  I'm sure this makes a difference, but what?

Also, my all-time favorite cooking guru, Alton Brown did an episode of Good Eats entitled Chips for Sister Marsha, in which he explained how to adjust cookie ingredients to make your choice of thin, puffy or chewy cookies.  Here is a summary of what I learned:

• High-protein bread flour (made from hard wheat) produces more gluten than other types of flour and therefore can give you a chewier cookie.
• Low-protein cake flour (made from soft wheat) ties up less moisture, thus making it available for steam production.  Steam will lift the batter in the oven producing a fluffy, cake-like batter. 
• All-purpose flour is a mixture of hard and soft wheats and is best for thin cookies.
• If you like cookies that stay flat and spread out on the pan, up the baking soda a bit.  Reducing acidity will slightly increase the setting temperature, allowing for more spread.
• A higher ratio of white to brown sugar will give you a crisper cookie.
• A higher ratio of brown to white sugar will give you a more tender cookie.
• Egg whites act as drying ingredients.  Using more yolks than whites will make for a moister cookie.  Since eggs tend to puff rather than spread, replacing egg with milk makes a chewier cookie with more spread.
• Nothing affects a cookie's texture more than the melting characteristics of its fat. Butter has a sharp melting point meaning there is just a few degrees difference between  solid and liquid states.  Since conversion occurs at a relatively low temperature, the resulting batter spreads prior to setting.
• Shortening melts at a higher temperature than butter so it remains solid longer giving the batter time to rise and set before it spreads.
• Cold dough spreads slowly giving the cookie time to climb before setting.
• The smaller the scoop the more puff the cookie will have.
• For chewy cookies, melt butter before creaming.  The water from the melted butter will combine during agitation with the higher protein of the bread flour therefore producing gluten ... which is chewy. Also, since bread flour can absorb much more liquid than all purpose flour, more moisture will stay in the cookie.
• The darker the sugar, the chewier the cookies are going to be.  Brown sugar is coated in molasses.  Molasses loves moisture. By increasing the amount of brown sugar the finished cookies are guaranteed to attract H₂O from the air keeping them moist and chewy.

And if that's not confusing enough, throw in oven temperature.  My mother and grandmother always bake their cookies at 350 degrees - and they make wonderful cookies.  I have found that I have better luck at 375 and all of Alton's recipes call for 375.  

To summarize, for the chewy cookies I prefer, I need more gluten, melted butter, a higher brown to white sugar ratio, and more egg yolks than egg whites.  But where does the elevation and humidity fit in?   Any helpful hints would be more than welcome.  I'm tired of wasting time and ingredients to create inedible,dry, clumps of dough.

All of the above information is available in Alton Brown's cookbook, Good Eats: The Early Years, or at www.foodnetwork.com.  I highly recommend this cookbook, as well as volume 2 - Good Eats: The Middle Years.

This post is part of Weekend Cooking, sponsored by Beth Fish Reads.  Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs.

Danger, Will Robinson . . . Danger, Will Robinson . . .

Ok, this has got to stop!  I'm mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!  I laid out the rules.  They were concise.  They were straightforward.  There was no room for misinterpretation.  Absolutely no snakes of any size, shape, color or creed on the two acres of land I have claimed as my own.  None!  How hard is that to get?  If you are a snake and you come onto Green Acres, you die - no pleading for leniency, no three-strike policy, no pardon from the Governor.  You die and your slimy, disgusting remains are fed to a buzzard.  Please do not give me your sob story about being helpful because you eat mice and rats.  Whoop-di-do for you!  You may patrol a perimeter outside my space and eat every last damn varmint that comes near.  If you are doing your job correctly, we will never meet and we'll both be happy.  Well, I'll be happy - you'll just be not dead.  So, here it is, one more time.  Listen up:

You have the right to remain the hell away from my house.  Anything you hiss or do can and will be considered cause for your immediate death and dismemberment.  You don't have the right to speak to an attorney.  In fact, you have no rights whatsover.  Do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?  Good!

And most importantly - - the No. 1 inviolable rule - - Up to this point you have been fortunate to be rooted out by the dogs BEFORE  I saw you.  If you disregard this warning and venture into my space, be warned!!!  If you startle me and make me wet my pants I will invent new ways for you to die slowly and painfully.  (Of course, Dave will have to be the one doing the killing.  I'll be the one screaming, crying, and running/climbing things.)

That is all!

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

This book came out last January and I wrote a passing recommendation and promised a full review later.  I guess it's later.  I picture you all sitting quietly, perhaps sipping a little summer drink with an umbrella in it, with nothing to read because I haven't gotten around to telling you to run as fast as you can to get this book. Shameful!

How can it be anything but love-at-first-page with a book that includes the line:  There is no problem that a library card can't solve.

The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women. When the sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother, but really to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there. "See, we love each other. We just don't happen to like each other very much."  But the sisters soon discover that everything they've been running from - one another, their small hometown, and themselves - might offer more than they ever expected.

This story includes two things that are dear to me - sisters and books.  I am the middle child of three sisters and, even though some days you would be hard put to tell that they are dear to me, there's always a connection down deep (w-a-a-a-a-y down deep) - A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. ( Ecclesiastes 4:12)  In spite of age, arguments or life-events, there is a dynamic between three sisters that never changes.  Parts of the story are written in a rather odd "community voice".  I have no idea what the technical term would be, but some passages are told from the perspective of the sisters as a group - one unit with one emotion, one viewpoint.  It's a bit disconcerting at first, but it also strengthens that sister dynamic.  Ms. Brown obviously has sisters of her own, because she captured it perfectly.  When brought together by a common crises, the Andreas sisters each instinctively returned to her childhood role.  The story is in how they moved beyond them.  

One sure measure of how much I like a book is the number of passages I mark to remember later.  This book had a peacock plume of sticky-notes by the time I finished.  There are lots of wonderful lines about aging, books, and family relationships.  Here are a handful of my favorites:

"We were fairly sure that if anyone made public the various and variegated ways in which being an adult sucked eggs, more people might opt out entirely." (p. 7)

"We were never organized readers who would see a book through to its end in any sort of logical order.  We weave in and out of words like tourists on a hop-on, hop-off bus tour.  Put a book down in the kitchen to go to the bathroom and you might return to find it gone, replaced by another of equal interest...Cordy claims this is the source of her inability to focus on anything for more than a few mintues at a time, but we do not believe her.  It is just our way."  (p. 23)

"How can we explain what books and reading mean to our family, the gift of libraries, of pages?" (p. 70)

"I keep waiting to feel old, to feel like a grown-up, but I don't yet.  Do you think that's the big secret adults keep from you?  That you never really feel grown-up?"  (p. 188)

"She remembered one of her boyfriends asking, offhandedly, how many books she read in a year.
'A few hundred,' she said. 

"How do you have time?' he asked, gobsmacked. 
She narrowed her eyes and considered the array of potential answers in front of her.  Because I don't spend hours flipping through cable complaining there's nothing on?  Because my entire Sunday is not eaten up with pregame, in-game and post-game talking heads?  Because I do not spend every night drinking overpriced beer and engaging in dick-swinging contests with the other financirati?  Because when I am waiting in line, at the gym, on the train, eating lunch, I am not complaining about the wait/staring into space/admiring myself in available reflective surfaces?  I am reading!

'I don't know,' she said, shrugging.

This conversation, you will not be surprised to know, was the impetus for their breakup, given that it caused her to realize the emotion she had thought was her not liking him very much was, in fact, her not liking him at all.  Because despite his money and his looks and all the good-on-paper attributes he possessed, he was not a reader, and, well, let's just say that is the sort of nonsense up with which we will not put."  (p. 71-72)

"Our mother shook her head...'You girls are all the same like that.  I don't know what we did to give you the idea that you had to be some master in your field by the time you were thirty.' ...'
'I don't really want to be a master in my field,' Bean said.  'But I'd like not to be a complete and total f*ckup.'

Here we expected our mother to rebuke Bean for her language, but she didn't.  She just smiled indulgently and said, 'Oh, honey, we're all f*ckups in our own special ways.' " (p. 308)

Oh...ain't it the truth!