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Before and After

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I like baking because I can make a few tablespoons of butter and a cup of flour turn into golden cookies. I can transform mushy peaches into tart jam filled pastries. The before and after of baking is beautiful.

I like that contrast in clothing too. The pieces you wear to work and then you can flip around and wear out to a party without going back home. I like finding things that no one else wants – and then voila… it’s mine and it’s beautiful.

A week ago, my mother received this dress as a gift. And no offense to the gift giver, but the dress is just really ugly. It’s made of this stretchy crepe and it is this weird shade of gray that isn’t quite twilight blue or just slate gray. It has this unfortunate length sleeves and it has this amazing ability to make a size 2 look like a size 10. See?

And just imagine… this dress hits 3 inches above the ankle. Such a weird length.

Well, my mother was intent of sticking it in the back of a drawer and never looking at it again… but curiosity got the better of me and I put it on. And then looked in the mirror. And, as always I had to fidget with it. So I grabbed a few pins and a silk triple wrap belt and voila!

The skirt is folded under and pinned in a bubbly skirt. The belt is wrapped around to give definition. And those sleeves! They were pinned just so to give interesting folds and texture. So… it’s not so bad.

Summer Love.

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I am officially done with my first year of law school. Not without the requisite tears and scars, but it’s over! So the minute my exams were over, I spent 2 weeks crazily writing for law journal, and then I worked for 2 weeks before I discovered that I needed to travel for some family stuff. So I promptly had to quit my job, and then traveled. I have a few more days before I’m back on the road. Because the summer has been so hectic, I have resorted to making larger batches of food – the kind you can throw into a container and it still tastes great cold.

Last week I made a fragrant soup and filled it with hearty grains so I could have a meal in a single bowl. I was home with my mother and sister, so we ate the soup for dinner and the single cup left at the end of dinner was devoured the next morning with egg and toast.

This is not the prettiest soup. In fact, I took 50 photos of the final soup and it still looked terrible. So, I’ll show you the ingredients I used and leave those pictures out, lest you change your mind about this phenomenal soup.

Green Lentil Soup (a Kaprise original)

  • 1 cup of French Green Lentils – picked through and rinsed
  • 1 cup of White Wheat Berries – rinsed
  • chopped steamed fingerling potatoes,
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 2 tablespoons of butter
  • 1 cup of dried mushrooms, soaked in cold water (about 1 hour) and rinsed 3 times (or 2 cups of fresh mushrooms)
  • Herbs – basil, oregano, lavender, rosemary, grated lemon zest, salt and pepper (I like to make my own blends of herbs, this one is Provencal)
  • 1/2 cup of red wine
  • 5-6 cups of filtered water
  1. In a large pot, melt the butter. Saute the chopped onion lightly.
  2. Drain and coarsely chop the mushrooms. Add to the onions.
  3. Sprinkle 2 teaspoons of your herb mixture over the mushrooms and continue to saute the onions and mushrooms.
  4. Add the red wine and stir to distribute evenly.
  5. Add 4 cups of water
  6. Add the wheat berries and bring the soup to a simmer.
  7. Add the French Green Lentils and chopped potatoes 15 minutes after the wheat berries.
  8. Add more water as necessary. The lentils and wheat berries will soak up some of the water, so adjust accordingly.
  9. Simmer for 40-50 minutes until the wheat berries are tender but retain a good bite.
  10. Adjust seasoning accordingly. A few extra cracks of black pepper and a dash of vinegar rounded out my pot, but a little kick from some red pepper flakes or extra rosemary might entice you more.

Notes:

  • Use a sturdy onion, or it’ll mush apart in your soup. I used a sweet Vidalia onion.
  • The mushroom blend that I used was supposedly preservative and additive free – however I thought it smelled like something was added. I soaked the mushrooms and rinsed them several times to make sure I got a true mushroom flavor.
  • The wheat berries, unless they are the “soft white” variety need to be pre-cooked and used. The soft white variety cooks within an hour, but regular red wheat berries take about 3 hours.
  • French Green Lentils are sturdy and provide a good bite to the soup. I prefer these over other lentils. They are exponentially more expensive but worth every single penny.
  • I steamed the potatoes before added them to the soup because I did not want to impart the starch into the soup.

Procrastination

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It is the end of the semester, and I should be frantically reading and studying for my exams. I have 4 of them. One of them is a 4 hour written exam… 4 hours. Thank you Professor B for keeping it old school and making it a written exam.

Instead of doing anything law school related, I took one look at the bright blue sky, jumped into my running gear and bopped my way through an easy 3 mile run. I had every intention of showering and walking to the library when I got back, instead I opened my refrigerator and saw the chocolate and cream cheese I had stashed. Two hours later? I was easing a pan filled with gooey whole wheat chocolate chip cookies out of the oven and easing a pan of cheesecake swirled brownies in. And the minute the brownies were out of the oven, I pretended not to be a bad law student, loaded my bag up. Then I hurried a plate of brownies and cookies to my concierge before guiltily walking to the library.

I obviously am sitting at the law school library and still procrastinating. I might have spent an hour popping the keys of my keyboard to clean the keys, and another 30 minutes posting these recipes…. but no matter. Theses brownies and cookies were well worth it. These cheesecake-marbled brownies were found on the veritable smitten kitchen website. I halved the brownie recipe and kept the cheesecake the same because I like a higher ratio of cheesecake to brownie in mine, however I am sure the chocolate lovers out there will prefer the original recipe. I also left the chocolate chips off the top, and swirled the brownies significantly less (because I was trying to get a heart shape in the pan…. which did not work very well).

Gooey Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies (interpreted from everywhere! everyone has chocolate chip cookie recipes that they swear by, and this is my take on chocolate chip cookies. You’ll notice that this recipe is large. You can easily halve the recipe, but I think that is unnecessary. I bake 12 cookies at a time, and make neat little 1 tablespoon balls of cookie dough and freeze them in 12 cookie containers. When you want cookies, you can just pull a container out and plop them on a sheet before baking. Just add one or two minutes to the overall baking time.)

  • 2 cups of all purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour*
  • 1 1/4 teaspoons of baking soda
  • 1 1/4 teaspoons of baking powder
  • 1  teaspoon of Kosher salt (the flaky kind)
  • 1 1/4 cups of  unsalted butter, softened (2 1/2 sticks of butter)
  • 3/4 cup of brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup of turbinado sugar (sugar in the raw)
  • 1 cup of sugar**
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
  • 10 oz of 60% chocolate chips***
  • 3.5 oz of almond paste, cut into small cubes and tossed in a tablespoon of flour****

* I use Bob’s Red Mill Whole Wheat Flour for this round and the cookies were a pinch tougher than a normal cookie. I have had extremely good results with King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour.

**I used Organic Cane Sugar, but feel free to use regular white granulated sugar

*** I used Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Baking Chips in the dark brown bag. I like the largeness of the chips, but feel free to use anything else you like. I use almost the entire bag, save for a handful of chips that I eat while I’m baking.

**** I used Odense Almond Paste. (This is NOT marzipan). It comes in a 7 oz tube, I cut it in half and throw one side in the freezer to firm up before I cut it. I cut with an extremely thin and sharp knife and put the little cubes in a bowl with a little flour to prevent the little cubes from getting stuck together. Also, though I only use 1/2 of the tube, I think the cookies would benefit from the use of the entire tube. Some of the cookies were lacking the tangy almond paste, which I found disappointing.

  1. Cube almond paste (see ingredient notes)
  2. In a large bowl, whisk the butter, brown sugar, turbindo sugar, and white sugar together until creamy
  3. Add the eggs, one at a time, whisking well after each egg.
  4. Stir in vanilla.
  5. Add 1 cup of all purpose flour and baking soda and baking powder and salt still until evenly incorporated
  6. Add the remaining 1 cup of all purpose flour, 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour, and stir until smooth
  7. Add the chocolate chips and almond paste cubes and stir until just incorporated
  8. Turn the oven to 350 F
  9. Spread parchment paper on a cookie sheet and drop 1 tablespoon rounds of cookie dough on the sheet about 2 inches apart. Flatten a little with the palm of your hand.
  10. Bake at 350 F for 15 minutes until just brown (check your oven to make sure that your cookies don’t need less or more time. My baking sheet is an industrial aluminum pan and so it tends to bake a little faster)

General Notes

  • I used turbinado sugar for the crunch it gives the cookies. Sometimes, to enhance the crunch in the cookies, I’ll increase the volume of this sugar and lower the brown sugar. I also add a drop or two of water in the white sugar to make up for the lack of brown sugar. The water helps achieve a deep molasses flavor in the cookies during baking, just be sure not to go overboard with this step.
  • These cookies bake at a lower temperature for longer, be patient, they are well worth the wait
  • Like most cookies, if you store this dough covered in your refrigerator, the flavors of the vanilla and sugar are enhanced and the cookies taste even better. The gluten in the flour relaxes and you get these amazingly tender and chewy cookies. I’m sure there are better explanations than mine out there, but I imagine it’s some sort of chemical reaction that creates a better cookie after the dough has rested in the refrigerator for a while. In any event, I tend to be on the impatient side, so I always make a pan of cookies before the dough gets anywhere near the refrigerator.
  • If you do store your dough in the refrigerator, make sure it is tightly wrapped and stored away from any smelly foods (like garlic/onions and leftover dinner). I have a sensitive nose, so the minute my cookies smell like dinner, I chuck them. Also, do not leave your dough in the refrigerator for more than a week. I’ve been told they can be left for 2 weeks… but something about eggs in flour for 2 weeks skeeves me out.
  • Do not melt your butter. Something about melted butter absorbs more flour and your dough turns into this weird texture. Do not melt! I’ve been told that softening the butter in 10 second intervals in a microwave is helpful. I didn’t grow up with a microwave, so I tried this and ended up with really hot butter coating the inside of my microwave. I usually take the butter out of the refrigerator, go for a run and take a shower before I start making the cookies. The butter is still firm but creamy at that point. The moment you see transparent yellow, throw it in the refrigerator until it firms up again.
  • Even if you are using parchment paper, make sure your pans are squeaky clean. If you have any residual oil or food on them from another meal, the oven will bake that smell and taste right into your cookies as they bake. Scrub those pans!
  • For non-stick pan users, you might consider lowering the temperature 10-25 degrees. Something about that dark coating makes cookies bake differently.