Of loaves and birdses

There was a failure in the commercial kitchen used by Stephane of All You Need is Loaf last night so I was forced to bake a few loaves myself in my less commercial, but seemingly more reliable oven:

Banana bread (using the Christmas stocking bananas) and an English muffin loaf (already cut into--hungry!)

 Making bread means you're in the kitchen but with  plenty of time to look out the back door, and today has been very birdy in the back yard indeed. Listed in no particular order:

Steller's jay
Scrub jay*
Dark-eyed juncos (so many!)
Gold-crowned sparrows
Black-capped chickadees
Chestnut-capped chickadee
Thumbprints (aka bushtits, and also oh so many!)
Varied thrush
American robin
Starlings
Crow
Townsend's warbler
Yellow-rumped warbler
Northern flickers
Red-breasted nuthatch
Spotted towhee
House finches
American goldfinch

 And out the kitchen window so technically a side-yard bird:

Anna's hummingbirds

*California? Western? I'm hazy on their current designation

New Christmas Tradition?

 

Satsumas filling the space where two rolls were removed to be eaten while still warm

 I decided that this year it would be nice to have fresh cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning. Steps were taken, and some of those steps were photographed which means another recipe post. 

 While I have a recipe for cinnamon rolls that I suspect I started using more than forty years ago, I felt that a new recipe was required this year though I can't say why. I've been feeling a bit hazy about a lot of things lately. T'is the season, perhaps.

Kitchen on Christmas Eve around midnight

 

  Regardless, I settled on "overnight cinnamon rolls 1" from the allrecipes.com site, though I made a few adaptations as I went. The "milk" I used was a combination of 1% and half-and-half since that's what we had, and I beat the eggs a little before adding them to the other ingredients. Flour was added until it seemed about right for kneading and then, of course, more flour was added while kneading.

The dough really did feel utterly lovely after it had risen (which took more like two hours than one; see later notes about coldness of kitchen). It rolled out nicely and I brushed it with a bit of melted butter rather than wetting the edges with water. I also brushed the pan with the remains of the melted butter in lieu of using shortening or oil.

Rather than refrigerating the rolls for the second rising I left them sitting on the kitchen table; as Scott pointed out, it's plenty cool near those windows. That approach seemed to work well enough and when I finally got up the next morning I could jump right to the preheating the oven stage. I also sprinkled a little more brown sugar / cinnamon mix on the top of the rolls since I hadn't included all of it earlier. This likely resulted in darker tops. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

What appeared to my wondering eyes Christmas morning (aka rolls post-overnight rising)

And only now do I remember the true impetus for making cinnamon rolls; I had icing left from decorating the army of darkness cookies* and I didn't want it to go to waste.

*Regiment of Army of Darkness

I used that rather than the corn syrup horror included in the allrecipes recipe. It melted a bit when added too soon to the two we ate with our tea while opening stockings, but was quite perfect for the survivors featured in the first photo of the post.

A properly civilized start to the day

Somewhat less tidy a little while later**

**Yes, Scott was the happy recipient of some used doorknob plates from Earthwise Salvage; we know how to celebrate the birth of our Savior around here.

 

Cookies, continued

These neighbors are having a bare-bones Christmas

Some sort of 36-hour bug delayed the continuation of the cookie project for a few more days, and even once recovered I still somehow lacked enthusiasm. But "Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without any cookies," as an early (as-yet undiscovered) draft of Little Women started so on Friday I gathered all the necessary goods and got to work mixing up dough. 

The means of production, day 1

I started with the kitchen sink cookies (note hammer in above photo) and methodically worked my way through, cursing the new jar of Field Day peanut butter (for the Mongol Hordes) that was remarkably difficult to stir though I guess the positive way to look at that is that the cutting board received an unplanned oiling in the process. There was, fortunately, a decent amount of still-green fronds on the fennel (for fennel cookies--recipe from The Front Yard Forager) while I had just barely enough molasses for the windowseat cookies. I wisely took a break for a bike ride (see first photo above) which probably saved my sanity, but I was definitely losing steam by the time I got to making dough for pillowcase cookies, and I didn't mind at all that I had to wait a bit for yet more butter to soften before I could finally mix up the aggression cookies.

My favorite element here is the kitchen sink cookie rolls wrapped in old tortilla chip bag packaging.

This year's innovation was to then put all the dough, in its various forms, into the refrigerator and move on to cocktails. The downside of this brilliant plan was, of course, that it all had to be dealt with today. But Scott kindly took part, cutting out the armies of darkness and light, unwrapping Hershey's kisses (some shrinkage there . . .), slicing up the rolls of kitchen sink cookie dough, pulling cookies off cookie sheets, reminding me to use potholders, finding some Christmas music playlists, and generally making it all much more pleasant and efficient. 

Final production round

 A mere three-ish hours after putting in the first cookie sheet, the final sheet came out and the paragon of Virgos washed up the remaining dishes and I swept the floor. We then wisely took to our bikes to ride to Paseo in Sodo for some less sugar-based nourishment. The plantains (tostones) were a little disappointing, but otherwise it was just what we needed. After getting home I eventually worked up the motivation to make some fresh icing and finish the work on the army of darkness (aka windowseat cookies aka molasses cookies). I'm quite pleased with the final results:

I call it the Year of the Dot

My one concern is that the aggression cookies are extra fragile this year and I just don't know why. I worry about whether they'll hold up to shipping.

Now to find more permanent homes for all of them!

 

Of cookies, mostly

Santa looking for one honest man on this year's Christmas tree

It's a dark, dark, dark world which I'm trying to ignore by doing the usual Christmas business of trees and modge podge and making cookies. I've misplaced my kitchen sink cookie recipe so I had to find an old email in which I'd sent a link to an article containing the recipe. I was intrigued to see that the piece (by Margaret Button in the Brattleboro Reformer) starts with:

I recently read an article on The New York Times wire service about procrastibaking — the practice of baking something completely unnecessary, with the intention of avoiding "real" work. Reporter Julia Moskin claimed it is a common habit of almost anyone who works at home and has a cookie sheet in the cupboard

 because I've had a hard time getting motivated to bake. I'd assumed it was my "dark, dark, dark" state of mind, but now I'm wondering if it's that I'm not working so I don't feel a need to avoid (or recover from) "real" work (to quote the excerpt). This relaxation business may be harder than I expected! Bravely, I soldier on.

This year's bits and bobs wreath (Yes, I'm quite taken with it.)

 PS. Looking for something else, I stumbled across this post from a few years ago in which kitchen sink cookies are discussed at length. How helpful blahdeblahblah will be if only I give it a chance!

 

More quotes from "Moby-Dick"

There are also some whale-specific scenes that I'm swiping direct from Project Gutenberg here:

But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and still stranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side. For, suspended in those watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the whales, and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to become mothers. The lake, as I have hinted, was to a considerable depth exceedingly transparent; and as human infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze away from the breast, as if leading two different lives at the time; and while yet drawing mortal nourishment, be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence;—even so did the young of these whales seem looking up towards us, but not at us, as if we were but a bit of Gulfweed in their new-born sight. Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. One of these little infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a day old, might have measured some fourteen feet in length, and some six feet in girth. He was a little frisky; though as yet his body seemed scarce yet recovered from that irksome position it had so lately occupied in the maternal reticule; where, tail to head, and all ready for the final spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar’s bow. The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshly retained the plaited crumpled appearance of a baby’s ears newly arrived from foreign parts. 

-from Chapter 84, "The Grand Armada"

Moby Dick bodily burst into view! For not by any calm and indolent spoutings; not by the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his head, did the White Whale now reveal his vicinity; but by the far more wondrous phenomenon of breaching. Rising with his utmost velocity from the furthest depths, the Sperm Whale thus booms his entire bulk into the pure element of air, and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam, shows his place to the distance of seven miles and more. In those moments, the torn, enraged waves he shakes off, seem his mane; in some cases, this breaching is his act of defiance. 

-from Chapter 134, "The Chase--Second Day"

Hast read the white whale? (Avast! Spoilers ahead!)

 

I finished Moby-Dick about an hour and a half ago and after sitting somewhat stunned for a few minutes I went in to interrupt Scott (who was trying to accomplish something himself) to say things like, "My goodness! I didn't see that coming! The Pequod! And, and, and . . .  " Which is a little absurd since I did see the movie with Gregory Peck as Ahab not that very long ago so you'd think I'd have remembered--plus, of course, it's sort of a book that one knows the ending of. But still. 

 It's a pretty amazing book with, admittedly, some pretty saggy middle. Oh, I was actually fascinated by some of the technical details about whale skeletons and the like, and truly intrigued by all the "pre-adamite fossil" discussion because I tend to think of the 1850s as a time when the Bible was still taken as literal truth and, clearly, Mr Melville well understands--and expects his readers to accept--that all manner of stuff was going on on Earth before humans showed up so that was somehow quite encouraging in some way. But I did sort of long to know what was happening to Queequeg who disappointingly pretty much disappears for very long stretches even when the focus is back on the Pequod. 

But Ahab's weird soliloquies and Stubb's hysterical ones and the sort of doomed MacBethesque prophecies and the so sad Pip and Starbuck's rigid yet sympathetic morality and the unexpected little playlets and the fact that Moby-Dick himself does not appear until the final thirty pages--it was all so much better and more than I expected. (The detailed descriptions of whale slaughter and the rendering down of whales were also even more disturbing than I'd envisioned.) 

Early on I was making note of some of my favorite quotes but then I dropped that so I offer only a few quotes from early on and then one very brief bit from the final chapters:

Scott points out that Melville had an office job:

"Huge hills and mountains of casks on casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the world-wandering whale ships lay silent and safely moored at last; while from others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises of fires and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new cruises were on the start; that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort." 

--from page 51 of the Wordsworth Classics edition of Moby-Dick by Herman Melville (red letter edition aspect added)

 This bit also seems timely:

"I say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these things, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals, pagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these subjects. There was Queequeg, now, certainly entertaining the most absurd notions about Yojo and his Ramadan;—but what of that? Queequeg thought he knew what he was about, I suppose; he seemed to be content; and there let him rest. All our arguing with him would not avail; let him be, I say: and Heaven have mercy on us all—Presbyterians and Pagans alike—for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending."

 --from page 70, ditto 

And then the long gap until I marked:

"In this attitude the white whale now shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse."

--from page 449, ibid. (It's the "mildly cruel" that sells this one for me.)

 (And a few additional quotes, added later, are here)

I feel a bit sorry for Jonathan Evison's Again and Again; it's going to be pretty impossible for any book, I think, to compete with Moby-Dick.

It is done