Interlude, with carbohydrates

I interrupt my freezer-and-pantry-and-bookshelf clearing routine for a little interlude featuring everyone's favorite food group, carbohydrates.

Last night I made the oven-fried chicken I mentioned yesterday and greens, cheese grits for me and for the gluten eaters, I made these biscuits:

They are Kenji Lopez-Alt's Buttermilk Biscuits from Serious Eats and are super easy and hard to screw up. The only changes I made to his recipe was to use soured milk (1/2 C milk and 2 t vinegar mixed together and left to sit for 10 minutes) for the buttermilk and I cut them in squares rather than using a biscuit cutter to make circles because then there's no waste and no need to re-roll scraps of dough. The recipe made nine sizable square biscuits and since there are only three left, I think that means that the three humans I made them for approved of the recipe.

This morning I decided to continue the carb celebration and made my new favorite thing, buckwheat pancakes.

These babies (recipe below) are gluten-free using half buckwheat flour and half Namaste gluten free flour blend. I chucked in a few shriveled blueberries I found in the fridge that no one is likely to eat fresh then topped them with a little Irish butter and a drizzle of maple syrup.

Which leads me to a little discussion about GF flours; while most grocery stores are out of wheat flour, there are likely still GF flours on the shelf. Yesterday I went to Arbor Farms to get groceries for me and for my parents. I hadn't been to a store in a week and I was curious and nervous about what I'd find out there. The place was not ravaged and didn't look like a scene from the apocalypse.* They were, however, out of wheat flour. But there were plenty of gluten-free flours on the shelf and since I have time on my hands to experiment and bake right now, I stocked up on some. If you want to bake and don't have any wheat flour and can't buy any until the supply chain balances out again, give some of these a try. (Avoid King Arthur's gluten free flour mix, though. That stuff is gritty!)

Buckwheat Pancakes

1 and 1/4 C milk
1 T vinegar
1 egg
1 t vanilla extract
1/2 C buckwheat flour
1/2 C other flour: if you aren't GF, then use all purpose. I used Namaste GF perfect flour blend.
2 t sugar
1/4 t salt
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
canola oil for the pan

Start by souring your milk: stir the vinegar into the milk and set aside for 10 minutes to get it to sour (if you have buttermilk in the house, use that instead of the milk and vinegar).
In a medium bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients.
Combine the soured milk, egg and vanilla and use a whisk or fork to get the egg distributed well. Dump the wet stuff into the dry stuff and mix until there aren't any more dry bits. Then walk away for 10 minutes (that'll give the acid from the sour milk and the leavening ingredients time to react and thicken your batter. If you make the pancakes right after combining the wet and dry ingredients they'll be much thinner. Ask me how I know...)
Heat up your pan, add a little canola oil and then drop 1/4 C sized blobs in and cook as usual (look for bubbles to form on the surface, then flip.)
Serve with butter and whatever you like on your pancakes: maple syrup that has been warmed up with some frozen blueberries is lovely, but I also like these with just a slice of sharp cheddar cheese on top.

I got 8 hearty pancakes out of this recipe. If you don't have an audience to eat them all at once, then refrigerate the leftovers and they can be reheated in a toaster oven or microwave in the coming days. Waking up to pre-made pancakes is a really nice way to start the day.


*A big plug for shopping at Arbor Farms (probably also holds true for other small markets, but I haven't visited any): the cashier changed gloves between each order, the place was pretty empty so no standing in line with tons of other people and they had a pretty decent supply of foods that I hear are running low elsewhere. I saw sliced bread from Avalon bakery, plenty of olive oil on the shelves and it looked like the De Cecco brand dried pasta had just been restocked because the shelves were full. There were a few things that you could tell had been impacted: the canned soup section was decimated and there wasn't the normal selection in the chicken section (I usually make the oven-fried chicken with all thighs but they were out of those so we did it with a cut up whole chicken and it still worked great.) There was plenty of good stuff in stock if you are able to be flexible. Best of all I didn't feel like a massive ball of stress from the experience of shopping there.

Stashbusting

In this time of forced confinement, I'm trying to use what I have and that leads to multi-obsession/genre STASHBUSTING. I'm covering yarn, food and books in this post so if one of my obsessions doesn't interest you, scroll on down to the one that does.

Yarn
I started Ankestrick's Simple Something sweater because it looked like a great stashbuster. Then I realized I don't actually have a huge stash of yarn because I work in a yarn store so have pretty amazing access to whatever yarn I want whenever I want it (living the dream, people!) In my defense, I am using two skeins of legit stashed yarn and one of them was the inspiration for the project: a cream and pink and beige skein of sock yarn that my lovely employer, Spun, commissioned from a dyer based on our pets.

 Here's a photo of the inspiration: Molly, the pink-nosed pitbull, 65 lb lap-dog and major snuggle bug

My Molly skein has been sitting around, waiting for me to do something with it. In my many years of knitting, I've made about five pairs of socks and while I get the appeal--portable, finite, warm feet--I never caught the bug. I really like knitting sweaters (and yes, I now give away sweaters. I don't need any more sweaters. But I still want to knit them.)  The construction of this sweater is very simple: doubled sock yarn makes for a heavy worsted weight sweater with top down/raglan construction. The fun is in deciding which colors to use and when to change one or both of the strands; someone on Ravelry called it "painting with yarn" and that seems an apt description. There are some bold, wild examples of this sweater on Ravelry that I admire, but I decided to stick with a quiet color palette, mostly just riffing off the colors of the original Molly skein and another gray stashed sock yarn (label long gone; I think I bought it in Germany where sock yarn is sold in grocery stores) while bringing in a little purple and light green. There are also lots of little scraps of left-over fingering weight yarn from past projects that I'm using as accents and it's very satisfying to see a stripe of green and remember a shawl I made last year.

I ended up purchasing four skeins of yarn to add to the Molly and the mystery gray stash skein: I bought them at Spun (which is offering free local delivery and free shipping while the store is closed). Two of them are from local dyer Fiberstory and they are her Fave sock yarn in the colors Crocus (cream with purple speckles) and Cake (a very subtle cream/pink/yellow). And there are two grayish based yarns, one is Fig & Posy Fiber Co.'s Simple Sock in Abalone and the other is Neighborhood Fiber Co.'s Studio Sock in Earnest Shaw.


Food
The freezer clean-out continues and is a little terrifying. I found a packet of totally freezer burned sausages and now the dog has a couple of days of really good Kong fillings. She's pretty happy about this process.

I also found some pre-formed turkey burgers that Brian bought during one semester of particularly hectic family schedules during which none of our dinner times lined up and individuals were regularly scrounging for something that resembled real-food. He thought these fit the bill. The fact that they were ignored by everyone and shoved to the back corner of the freezer means that he was wrong.

Last night I took out four of the individual patties (lightly freezer burned at the edges), defrosted them, crumbled them up and made Curried Ground Turkey with Potatoes. I make real Indian food pretty often and I warn you, this dish is not that. But it is kinda nice and comforting on a cold rainy day. I made brown rice and raita to go with it. Brian and I ate it happily and the other two human residents at this fine establishment tolerated it: one picked out the peas and the tomatoes, the other picked out the potatoes. They are weird and a pain-in-the-ass but I love them.

I also found a frozen pack of Trader Joe's puff pastry that was bought for some appetizer idea that never got made (I think it was supposed to be rolled up with brie and cranberries and then the event I was going to bring it to was rescheduled and I never made it.) So I tried making palmiers with it to give the gluten-eaters an afternoon treat and it was a total disaster. I've never used TJ's puff pastry before but wow, that stuff sucks. I've made my own puff pastry (a labor intensive project, but not a bad one if you have time and want to try your hand at laminated dough) and this stuff does not even closely approximate it: puff pastry that doesn't puff is just tough, greasy dough. The younger child ate two of the resulting palmiers (because grease and sugar count as major food groups for this age bracket) and then I threw the rest away. Disappointing, but at least I'm not wasting freezer space on an inferior product.

I started rummaging around in the pantry and I found a whole container of grits hiding behind the sugar containers which were probably purchased after some trip down south and then promptly forgotten. So I made myself cheese grits topped with a good splash of hot sauce:

Ugly, but tasty! And gluten free!

I'll make these again as a side-dish to go along with oven-fried chicken (here's a great recipe) and greens.

Books
I'm really trying to read The Mirror and the Light slowly but oh god it's so good and hard not to gobble it down and I'm going to be really sad when it ends. So I'm queuing up Ocean Voung's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Christmas gift!) for when I finish spending time with the Tudors (they are such a weaselly lot but oh how I love them). I tend to feel panicky if I don't have at least one book lined up to look forward to and no-one needs a panicky Kate right now, or really, let's be honest, ever. 

Since I have time, I also decided to make a little room on my bookshelves for new stuff so in the coming days I will post pictures of books I own that I don't plan to re-read and which will be looking for a new home. I will attempt to get my kids to engage in a similar project which would liberate space on their shelves and provide a broader range of genres/topics/ages. If you are local and want one of them, I can drop one (or more!) off at your house. I love our local bookstores Literati, Bookbound and Nicola's and will try to support them to the best of my budget's ability during this period but I know that isn't an option for everyone so if one of my books would make you happy, please ask for it (while the library is closed another resource is the free ebooks and audiobooks that can be checked out from Overdrive with your library card.) And now I'm actually looking forward to what I would normally describe as a chore: it'll be like visiting with old friends who I haven't seen in a long time. Since I can't sit down with real friends at the moment, my book friends will serve as a nice substitute. 

Waking up! Welcome back!

I'm waking up this long-dormant blog because in this time of COVID-19 intentional social isolating I find (despite my intense introversion) that I still crave conversation. So let's wake up together and keep each other sane! For today, I'd love to hear about:

1. what you are reading
2. what you are cooking

I'll start:
1. It could not have arrived at a better time: Hilary Mantel's final book in the Wolf Hall trilogy, The Mirror and the Light. (The link will take you to one of my local bookstores; support your local folks if you can particularly when their storefronts are closed.) It is 757 pages of intricate Tudor historical fiction requiring me to regularly refresh my memory of who exactly had claims to the throne and looking up family trees from the War of the Roses onward to see how they are leveraging their claims. I am happy as a pig in shit reading this. 

For levity (because I can't spend every moment of my day with murderous Tudors without starting to consider keeping a knife in my doublet/jacket pocket), I'm listening to another Terry Pratchett Discworld audiobook read by the amazing Stephen Briggs. Thud! is the one I'm currently listening to with The Truth waiting in the wings for when I finish. (The link takes you to the digital library download where you can request it. I assume it is probably also available if you have an audible subscription. Unfortunately, with the library closed getting it on CD isn't an option right now, but normally they do have a decent supply of Pratchett books). It is truly a sanity saver to still have more Discworld books to read--there are 47!--even after years of enjoying them.

2. On the cooking front, I'm doing some freezer and pantry clearing-out which, let's face it, really needed to be done. Yesterday I pulled a pound of freezer-burned ground pork out and made some great rice noodles w/pork, tofu, peanuts and cilantro (no one could tell in that format that the meat was less than ideal), served with celery and cucumber salad (chop them up and toss them together with a spoonful of chili crisp, a little tamari, rice vinegar and a pinch of sugar). Tonight, we're having roasted pork loin (because apparently I stash pork in my freezer? I don't even really like pork...) and roasted cauliflower with this coconut tumeric relish and a salad. I haven't tried the relish before but it sounds promising and the picky eaters in my house can skip it and just eat beige food.

And I've been baking. I gave up gluten about 6 weeks ago (and I feel so much better) so I'm experimenting with gluten-free recipes and have come across some really good ones (there is a NYTimes almond-flour chocolate chip cookie recipe that is amazing but sadly is also behind a paywall...) And I'm trying to teach my helpless-in-the-kitchen children to bake their favorites with all the regular wheat flour we still have on hand. So far, my strategy for dealing with grumpy teenagers has been to a) throw a brownie or cookie at them and then b) make them go for a walk with me. It probably won't work for the length of our shelter-in-place behavior, but it's working for now so I'm not going to knock it.

I'd love to hear what you are up to!