Tagged: Artisan Profile, Butter + Love, preview
Posted on January 20th, 2012
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On Monday, I spent three hours in a Sunset Park industrial kitchen with Alison Walla of Butter + Love. Along with her boyfriend Michael Phillips, Alison bakes whimsical shortbread and butter cookies, in many cases using well-loved and tested family recipes.
I’m eager to elaborate about Butter + Love and share my photographs of Alison and Michael prepping and baking their jam sandwich cookies. Please visit next week for the complete article and pictures. For now, I hope this shot of Butter + Love’s blackberry lime cookie gets your mouth watering.
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Tagged: lunch, recipes, salad, weekday lunch, winter
Posted on January 16th, 2012
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This is a punchy winter salad destined to bump you out of any winter doldrums, for a brief moment at least. After a long morning, it was impossible not to feel cheered up by peeling and smelling a perfectly ripe blood orange before compiling a beautiful plate.
Inspired by a recipe from the BiRite Market cookbook, I tossed a thinly sliced fennel bulb with vinegar and honey, before layering the fennel on top of a peeled blood orange and surrounding that with a sliced avocado that had been lightly specked with sea salt.
Unless you’re a light lunch eater, this salad shouldn’t serve as a complete lunch (though you could always double your serving). Instead, pair it with a piece of crusty bread and olive oil or with a bowl of soup–I was lucky enough to have leftover parsnip soup from the night before.
As I ate this, my outlook on the afternoon felt instantly improved. Now if only ripe blood oranges could take away the constant racket of construction outside my office window.
Vibrant Winter Salad
Adapted from the Bi-Rite Market cookbook
Ingredients:
1 blood orange
1 head of fennel, with fronds
Juice from 1 lemon
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1/8 teaspoon honey
salt & pepper
1.5 tablespoons olive oil
1 avocado
Directions:
1) Slice the tops and bottoms off of the blood oranges. Cut the peel and pith off, using a paring knife. Slice the oranges cross wise into 1/4 inch slices. Set aside.
2) Trim off the fennel stalks, reserving the bulb and fronds. Remove the first outer layer of fennel and then rinse the bulb.
3) Chop 1/2 tablespoon of fronds and put them in a small bowl with the lemon juice, vinegar, honey, a pinch of salt, and a grind of pepper. Whisk to blend and then drizzle with olive oil while whisking.
4) Halve the fennel bulb. Use a sharp knife to cut the fennel crosswise into long strips (make these as narrow as possible!). Transfer to a bowl and then drizzle with the dressing. Toss, taste, and adjust.
5) Arrange the blood orange slices on a plate and then pile the fennel in the center of the slices.
6) Lastly, cut the avocado into 1/4 inch slices. Sprinkle them with a touch of salt before adding them to the finished plate. Drizzle the remaining vinaigrette on the salad. Enjoy!
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Tagged: "coffee 2011", cafe grumpy, coffee, Stumptown
Posted on January 12th, 2012
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By the numbers
Total bags ground and prepared: 57
Most caffeinated month: July, with 7 bags
Top Roasters:
Roasters’ Locations: Brooklyn, San Jose, Chicago, Portland, Copenhagen, Durham, Grand Rapids, Upland, San Francisco
Repetitive February: Of the five bags we drank, four of them were Ethiopian.
In fact: Coffee from Ethiopia was our favorite throughout the year–we had a total of 8 Ethiopian coffees, with Guatemalan coffee closely behind with 7 bags. We tended to shy away from coffee from Indonesia.
Best name: Kenya’s Gethumbwini (we had this coffee 3 times)
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Tagged: bran muffins, breakfast, recipes, Super Natural Everyday
Posted on January 9th, 2012
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A quick search for “Super Natural Everyday Bran Muffins” yields multiple results. As someone who never thought I’d be promoting a bran muffin recipe, after eating these muffins, I’m not surprised by their positive internet reception.
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Last weekend I wrote down a number of goals for 2012. It was the first time in awhile that I felt like I was brainstorming without second guessing myself or being hindered by notions like realism or pragmatism. I jotted down goals and ideas as they popped in my head, without rationally thinking about the steps needed to achieve the goal. After 20 minutes, I had 50 flashcards filled out.
One of my easier goals involves breakfast. Justin and I are both big breakfast people and tend to cook large brunches on the weekends–frittatas, pancakes, waffles, french toast. But during the weekdays, our breakfast menu turns staid. Cereal and toast; yogurt and granola. Both are fine, but are they really worth getting up for in the morning?
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One of my goals this year is to make our weekday breakfasts as interesting as our weekend breakfasts. I’m not planning on waking up an hour early to get brioche french toast in the oven (though, because we bought brioche this weekend, I think that’s exactly what I’m doing tomorrow morning!). Rather, I’m talking about breaking free of my cereal routine and planning breakfasts like we plan dinners.
Heidi Swanson’s bran muffins seemed like a fitting place to start. Muffins can be baked the night before, stay moist for 4-5 days, and if paired with fruit (or, yes, cereal) can make a filling weekday breakfast. For an added incentive, bran muffins are a nutritional powerhouse, comprised of whole wheat flour, oat bran, and bran cereal.
This all might sound a little dull, but Heidi’s version is surprisingly sweet–especially for people whose brain flashes ‘avoid’ when they hear the word bran. Heidi’s recipe includes 1/4 cup of cane sugar and 1/4 cup of maple syrup, which is just enough to sweeten the muffins without dominating their oaty taste. These are simple muffins, and with the exception of oat bran, I bet that your kitchen already houses most of the necessary ingredients. Don’t just take my word for it–try these for yourself and become a bran muffin convert.
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Bran Muffins
Makes 12 muffins
See Heidi’s original recipe HERE
Current recipe slightly adapted from Super Natural Everyday
Ingredients
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup buttermilk (or plain yogurt)
1/2 cup just melted unsalted butter
1/4 cup maple syrup
1 1/2 cups unprocessed oat bran (we used Bob’s Red Mill)
1/2 cup unsweetened bran cereal (I used the cereal from my raisin bran!)
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 cup cane sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon sea salt
Directions
1) Preheat your oven to 400. Butter a 12-cup muffin tin.
2) In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, buttermilk, melted butter, and maple syrup. Sprinkle the bran and cereal on top of this mixture, stir gently, and then allow everything to sit for 5 minutes.
3) While this is sitting, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Sprinkle the dry ingredients over the top of the wet and stir until just combined.
4) Fill each muffin cup three-quarters full.
5) Bake for 18-20 minutes, until the edges of the muffins begin to brown and the tops are set. Let cool for 5 minutes before turning the muffins out onto a wire rack. Enjoy!
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Tagged: family, personal, photography
Posted on January 6th, 2012
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My dad is a therapist to troubled adolescent boys, and a good one at that. He’s worked at Timber Ridge School for the past 22 years–the only job he’s had since our family moved from South Carolina to Virginia. I can see how impactful his work is when I’m flipping through images on his camera. When a boy is ready to graduate and move away from the confined, structured environment of Timber Ridge and return to the real world, my dad makes sure to take a picture with him before he leaves. Both faces are glowing: my dad’s with pride and the boy’s with hope and gratitude.
This is all to say that I know my dad is an excellent counselor and has positively impacted many troubled boys’ lives. But–if given the opportunity for a parallel life, he’d be a woodworker, a craftsman. When my parents lived in South Carolina, they lovingly restored our family home, transforming it from a scary drug-den to a beautiful southern gem. (I just re-watched a home video house tour while I was home. The house was stunning!). Along with our own home, my parents were landlords of a number of smaller properties. In my rental years, I’ve often wished I had a landlord like Mom and Dad. I vaguely remember hanging out in various yards and climbing trees, while my parents fixed shutters, helped with yard-work, painted, and put in new cabinets.
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And to top it all off, some of my favorite furniture in my parents’ house was made by none other than my dad. As a woodworker, he’s able to to see an image in a catalogue or in person and then say “I can recreate that”. And he does. Because he doesn’t have much free time, his creations can take months. But he’s a perfectionist–and even if he has to spend 15 minute intervals for 5 months on a piece of furniture, he creates a beautiful final product.
I’d love for my dad to build something for our future home–I do have a desk waiting at their house when I’m ready for it. While we were visiting over Christmas, my dad helped me with a very basic task. I wanted new shooting surfaces for various tabletop photography and had asked my parents if we could work on that during my visit. I envisioned going to Home Depot, buying some cheap boards, glueing them together, and then painting them. My dad more than one-upped me by pulling out various pieces of wood he had saved. He then sanded, varnished, and smoothed the boards. For my father, this was as easy a task as possible, but it’s one that I couldn’t have replicated–and it was fun to watch him in his [other] element.
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