Julie & Julia Wanna-Be
We've spent enough time talking about travel. Let's get back to the important stuff: food. But first, some background. I have found the greatest book. Probably many of you have heard about it or read it. It's getting a lot of press lately. Julie & Julia is a fabulous example of how one quirky blog can win you a book contract. Moreover, I am especially in love with this book not only because it is incredibly entertaining, but because Julie Powell, the author, is living my pipe dream. Stuck in a dead end job & generally in a rut, she takes on a bizarre year-long project, to cook every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She blogs the whole project, resulting in a small cult following, and eventually landing her a sweet deal to write a book about the whole thing. I am so insanely jealous. Words simply cannot express the pangs of longing I have for a deal like this. But alas, I have no quirky project. I do have a blog, but there are a few problems. Number one, I am not even close to writing daily entries. Who can hope to sustain a loyal blog audience if they have to wait two weeks to read another entry? And number two, I am all over the road when it comes to subject matter.
So, enter my new plan. It is pathetically wimpy when compared to the scope of the MtAoFC project, but for a pathology resident who is supposed to be mastering cytopathology, applying for boards, finishing a research project, and writing a manuscript, this is the best I can do at the moment. Perhaps when I retire from pathology, and take on my fantasized Martha Stewart persona, I will tackle something much more epic. For now, I am content with my cookie plan. It's not even my own original plan, I confess, but who doesn't love cookies? Yeah, I was browsing on the Cooking Light website when I noticed their "25 days of cookies" link. I love Christmas, and I love cookies, so I simply could not resist the 25 days of cookies project. And it started on December 1, yesterday, the day I was browsing the website. Perfect timing. So I printed up the first and second recipes, and made a trip to the grocery store after work.
The first recipe, "Macadamia Butter Cookies with Dried Cranberries," was hilarious because of the reviews on the website. The recipe very clearly states "Place nuts in a food processor, process until smooth.... Combine Macadamia butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar..." Surely any simpleton can deduce that Macadamia nuts processed until smooth equals Macadamia butter, right? But there were about 20 comments on the website saying, in essence, 'where is the butter in the recipe? I can't find the butter!' Ugh. Those who were not fooled by the 'Macadamia butter' instructions declared that the cookies were yummy, sealing my fate that, yes, this was a good idea to dive into the cookie project.
I made the Macadamia butter, I combined it with the granulated sugar, and some very old, very hard chunks of brown sugar. And then I turned the KitchenAid mixer on. One nanosecond later, kachunk. The engine was still desperately grinding, but that blade was locked against one giant rock-hard piece of brown sugar. I shut off the mixer, pulled out the brown sugar, replaced it with some other smaller, but still rock-hard pieces of brown sugar, and turned the mixer back on. Nothing. I had killed it. Crap! How am I going to make 25 days worth of cookies without my mixer? I cannot possibly do this the old fashioned way of stirring the dough with a spoon. I have noodle arms. Well, more like noodle arms in a layer of fat, but noodle arms, nonetheless. Maybe this could double as my new workout.
Before I gave up on the mixer entirely, I removed every screw I could find on it, in the hope that I could just remove the cover, slip some gear back into place, and voila! I'd be back in business. No such luck. No matter how many screws I took out, I could not get the cover off. I put them all back into place, and sulked. I felt like a failure. I couldn't even get the first batch of cookies done. I thought, there has to be some way I can still do this electrically. So I finished the job with the dough attachment on the food processor. That did a mediocre job, and I finished adding the rest of the ingredients with, yes, none other than the wooden spoon and my noodle arms. I do believe I'll be able to enter one of those body building contests by the end of the month. Well, maybe not, but one can always dream.
Another funny thing about my cooking "style", if you could call it that, is that I am really into substituting ingredients for the sake of using up weird leftover foods lying around the house. It must be my frugal Scottish heritage. This recipe calls for dried cranberries, but I decided to use our leftover dried mini blueberries instead. The recipe called for 1/2 cup. This probably would have been the right amount for the cranberries, but with those teeny tiny blueberries, you can pack a lot into that space. By the time I mixed them into the dough, I had more blueberries than dough. Forming them into little balls was an interesting process. I had to squish each individual blueberry into the dough just to get it to stick. The final product was admittedly a bit bizarre. Sweet, but weird. I probably won't make those again, but it has not deterred my will to finish the 25 day cookie project.
As for the mixer, I called KitchenAid, and they informed me that my $250 mixer only has a year warranty. What kind of crap warranty is that for such a pricey item? If you buy a $200 watch, you can get something like a 10-year warranty. But they still wanted me to pay $25 for a "shipping kit" to send it to their factory in Ohio (!) (I live in Albuquerque) where they could fix it in three weeks. What about my cookies?! I asked if they had a loaner mixer program. He said they used to (back in the good old days when people were kind, and did things out of sheer goodwill), but not anymore. So I found some appliance repair places here in town, and I'll take it in tomorrow to see if I can get it fixed a little faster. In the meantime, I'll carry on with my noodle arms.
So, alas, it is day number two and I have not made cookie number two. It is Friday and I am tired. I just want to curl up on the couch and watch the movie that we rented. My plan is to make two batches tomorrow, after I take the mixer to the repair place. After all, Saturday is a great day for two batches of cookies, don't you think? At this point, you're probably thinking that the 25 day cookie project is not going to fly. Have a little faith! Cookie number two is called, "raspberry strippers"!! I just cannot pass up a cookie with a name like that. I will prevail!
So, enter my new plan. It is pathetically wimpy when compared to the scope of the MtAoFC project, but for a pathology resident who is supposed to be mastering cytopathology, applying for boards, finishing a research project, and writing a manuscript, this is the best I can do at the moment. Perhaps when I retire from pathology, and take on my fantasized Martha Stewart persona, I will tackle something much more epic. For now, I am content with my cookie plan. It's not even my own original plan, I confess, but who doesn't love cookies? Yeah, I was browsing on the Cooking Light website when I noticed their "25 days of cookies" link. I love Christmas, and I love cookies, so I simply could not resist the 25 days of cookies project. And it started on December 1, yesterday, the day I was browsing the website. Perfect timing. So I printed up the first and second recipes, and made a trip to the grocery store after work.
The first recipe, "Macadamia Butter Cookies with Dried Cranberries," was hilarious because of the reviews on the website. The recipe very clearly states "Place nuts in a food processor, process until smooth.... Combine Macadamia butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar..." Surely any simpleton can deduce that Macadamia nuts processed until smooth equals Macadamia butter, right? But there were about 20 comments on the website saying, in essence, 'where is the butter in the recipe? I can't find the butter!' Ugh. Those who were not fooled by the 'Macadamia butter' instructions declared that the cookies were yummy, sealing my fate that, yes, this was a good idea to dive into the cookie project.
I made the Macadamia butter, I combined it with the granulated sugar, and some very old, very hard chunks of brown sugar. And then I turned the KitchenAid mixer on. One nanosecond later, kachunk. The engine was still desperately grinding, but that blade was locked against one giant rock-hard piece of brown sugar. I shut off the mixer, pulled out the brown sugar, replaced it with some other smaller, but still rock-hard pieces of brown sugar, and turned the mixer back on. Nothing. I had killed it. Crap! How am I going to make 25 days worth of cookies without my mixer? I cannot possibly do this the old fashioned way of stirring the dough with a spoon. I have noodle arms. Well, more like noodle arms in a layer of fat, but noodle arms, nonetheless. Maybe this could double as my new workout.
Before I gave up on the mixer entirely, I removed every screw I could find on it, in the hope that I could just remove the cover, slip some gear back into place, and voila! I'd be back in business. No such luck. No matter how many screws I took out, I could not get the cover off. I put them all back into place, and sulked. I felt like a failure. I couldn't even get the first batch of cookies done. I thought, there has to be some way I can still do this electrically. So I finished the job with the dough attachment on the food processor. That did a mediocre job, and I finished adding the rest of the ingredients with, yes, none other than the wooden spoon and my noodle arms. I do believe I'll be able to enter one of those body building contests by the end of the month. Well, maybe not, but one can always dream.
Another funny thing about my cooking "style", if you could call it that, is that I am really into substituting ingredients for the sake of using up weird leftover foods lying around the house. It must be my frugal Scottish heritage. This recipe calls for dried cranberries, but I decided to use our leftover dried mini blueberries instead. The recipe called for 1/2 cup. This probably would have been the right amount for the cranberries, but with those teeny tiny blueberries, you can pack a lot into that space. By the time I mixed them into the dough, I had more blueberries than dough. Forming them into little balls was an interesting process. I had to squish each individual blueberry into the dough just to get it to stick. The final product was admittedly a bit bizarre. Sweet, but weird. I probably won't make those again, but it has not deterred my will to finish the 25 day cookie project.
As for the mixer, I called KitchenAid, and they informed me that my $250 mixer only has a year warranty. What kind of crap warranty is that for such a pricey item? If you buy a $200 watch, you can get something like a 10-year warranty. But they still wanted me to pay $25 for a "shipping kit" to send it to their factory in Ohio (!) (I live in Albuquerque) where they could fix it in three weeks. What about my cookies?! I asked if they had a loaner mixer program. He said they used to (back in the good old days when people were kind, and did things out of sheer goodwill), but not anymore. So I found some appliance repair places here in town, and I'll take it in tomorrow to see if I can get it fixed a little faster. In the meantime, I'll carry on with my noodle arms.
So, alas, it is day number two and I have not made cookie number two. It is Friday and I am tired. I just want to curl up on the couch and watch the movie that we rented. My plan is to make two batches tomorrow, after I take the mixer to the repair place. After all, Saturday is a great day for two batches of cookies, don't you think? At this point, you're probably thinking that the 25 day cookie project is not going to fly. Have a little faith! Cookie number two is called, "raspberry strippers"!! I just cannot pass up a cookie with a name like that. I will prevail!
posted by K. Murphey at 6:54 PM
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