Sooo, new cookbook? New recipes! A particularly good cookbook it is: The Commonsense Kitchen: 500 recipes + Lessons for a Handcrafted Life by Tom Hudgens (Chronicle Books, 2010). A beautifully pictureless thick brick of a cookbook -- I LOVE IT! Bibliophile Friday just turned into Bibliophile-any-day-of-the-week-I-darn-well-please... And my first recipe attempt out of it was a huge success, so I am going to share it with you. !
Apple-Marinated Pork Chops
adapted from The Commonsense Kitchen -- prepare 1 day ahead, serves 3
3 center-cut pork chops, about 1-in thick, a little fat left on
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/2 flavorful apple (I used Gala), unpeeled, thinly sliced
1/4 small red onion (sweet, or go for yellow), thinly sliced
1 cup apple cider
Rub the pork chops with salt and pepper. Place the apple slices over the top and the bottom surfaces of each chop, put the chops in a shallow bowl, and scatter the onion over them. Cover tightly with plastic wrap, pressing the wrap down on the surface of the chops, and refrigerate overnight.
Set them out at room temperature about an hour before cooking. Remove and reserve the apples and onions. Pat the chops dry with a paper towel.
Heat the olive oil in a wide skillet over medium-high heart and brown the chops for about 4 minutes on each side, or just until they feel firm when pressed with a finger (the ones I got were even thicker than an inch, so they took quite a bit longer. Just keep an eye, don't get impatient and turn the heat up). If they don't seem cooked, continue cooking for a few minutes more on lower heat. They are thoroughly cooked, but still juicy, when they have reached an internal temperature of 150 degrees F. Remove the chops to a clean plate.
Get the skillet heated back up on medium-high heat, and pour off any fat left in the skillet. Add the apples and onions and pour in the apple cider. Bring to a boil, scraping the browned, flavorful bits from the bottom of the skillet with a wooden spoon and letting them dissolve in the cider (I used a nonstick skillet and there wasn't much of this to be had). After everything has boiled for about a minute, strain out the apples and onions if desired -- but they're good in too! Boil until the liquid is reduced to a thin syrup, just a few tablespoons. Pour over the warm chops and serve.
I like to use the paper they wrap the meat in at the counter as a work surface. Rub in the salt and pepper; use a chopping board to cut up all the apples and onions.
Layer thin slices of a sweet, crispy apple over the top and bottom surfaces... I chose a Gala apple because it's super sweet.
The Commonsense Kitchen calls for yellow onions, but I'm a through-and-through red onion fan. I love how sweet they are, and I was looking for sweet pork chops. Plus, they're just nice to look at. ;)
Brown the pork chops in a pan -- these chops were really hefty, so they took a bit of time to cook, but the heat was low and they remained juicy inside.
Boiling the apple cider with the apple and onion made a marvelous, thin syrup. I didn't want to throw any of the apple or onions out -- I thought it would be even better to pair with the pork than just the syrup alone. I wasn't disappointed.
Yum-yummy. :D Enjoy!
...I'm off to the midnight showing of the very. last. Harry Potter movie. There are some pretty die-hard fans I'm going with -- Should be a fun (long..) night. Much to report, I'm sure. ;)
This morning's sunrise was lovely. And not that I actually watched the sun, but I witnessed the sky lighten and the cool evening air begin to warm. Sunrise has a magical quality in it that I've never been able to find in sunsets, and though it may be because I see sunrises so much less frequently, they never cease to put me in a place I am happy enough to be.
This morning's was no exception; I wandered around one of my favorite neighborhoods in the area, where I've been known to go on my bike in the past to check out the unassuming yet well-to-do old houses along these narrow, winding streets with their awesomely imperfect landscaping -- so imperfect that it is perfect in every way. Some of the residents use the bit of lawn between the sidewalk and the street curb to plant vegetables -- numerous houses had gigantic tomato plants growing just off the street. Some of the flowers were just astounding in the dewy morning light, and everything felt bright and optimistic today. Some of the houses sported lackluster paint jobs while others were kept up extraordinarily well. Ancient coniferous trees hovered over some of the houses' petite matching garages and narrow driveways, and I wanted to crawl through all of their yards and the ravines behind and see what there was to find.
Alas, that would have been trespassing. ;)
I am sleepy, but today did me good.
I suppose, strictly, a sense of desperation propels us to do a lot of things we'd normally feel too comfortable in our current circumstances to do. I find this to be true of almost all the major decisions I've ever made -- mostly about moving somewhere or deciding what to study in college -- or where to go to college. Or where to work.
We want to do things -- we want to build a house or travel to Spain or take up basket weaving... but we've just got so much other normal, everyday-life stuff going on that it gets pushed further and further down the road, and sometimes we never reach those places since we're too busy thinking that we're too busy to get there.
When I was a teenager, I travelled with my dad a lot around the Great Lakes states, and occasionally further -- down to Oklahoma, the west coast -- to help him with art fairs that he used to do regularly in the summer. As a full-time painter, summers were big business for him then. Times have changed a bit and art festivals aren't what they once were, but those formative years of summer travel for me put an indelible mark on me, and how I perceived the world. I may not have jetted off to Europe or Asia as a kid, but I got to road trip around the U.S. and that was pretty awesome.
What it did was give me a sense of space, a sense of distance, and a sense of where I was and what else the world had to offer. Because if San Francisco could be so exciting, then ultimately one could expect New York City, Paris, Moscow, Athens, Tokyo, or Sydney to excite the same sense of wonder and amazement.
Ultimately, what happened, was when I graduated from high school, I applied to one college, and one college only, wayyyyy over on the northern coast of California, practically the western-most tip of the contiguous states. I thought a change of scenery and geography might be the key to erasing my boredom and taking the world by storm. Alas, I lasted one semester. It was far from boring, but for numerous reasons, financial not being the least of them, I was back home in Wisconsin. Aaaand miserable.
So I struck out aaallll the way to Stevens Point, Wisconsin, which is merely an hour+ drive from home. There, I lived on campus for about a year, then studied abroad in London. And that trip changed my life. It changed the way I perceived not only Europe, and the world, but my home itself. And when I returned to Wisconsin, I was saddened to have left such an exciting city, but glad to have a newfound sense of home, and a new understanding of myself and what I was capable of.
I finished up school in Madison, WI with an art history degree, but was embittered with institutionalized education before I even had my degree in hand -- that a bachelors degree in art history was pretty much a pass to nowhere without a concrete career idea or a plan for further schooling -- which I just didn't have. I just wasn't sure. I liked art history, but did I want to invest tens of thousands dollars more in order to, what, be a professor? a curator? a gallery owner? I just didn't -- and still don't -- have the answer to that. I was afraid of getting stuck on one path, and becoming obligated to continue on that path because I had invested such-and-such an amount of money on education. I'm no stranger to the pains of student loans.
So I moved back home. And then lost my job, which at the time was at Starbucks during their company-wide closure of some 600+ shops. There again, I found myself in dire straits, living at my parents' house, a college graduate, without a job... wondering how I'd support myself. Would I move? Could I even afford to move? Where could I work? What could I do? What did I want to do? That has always been a giant decision point -- I'd prefer to make a little less money and do something I actually enjoy vs. the alternative.
Lo! I happened to find out that a used bookstore was opening up in the area and happened to be hiring, and I leapt on that boat so fast, I hardly saw it happen myself. And there I am, at the bookstore. Not necessarily my career of choice, and definitely not a place I ever envisioned working -- but who ever knows these things? It was sheer desperation that led me to it, and in the end, only good things came of it. Turned out that I loved it, and loved the people, and it worked for me.
...for a while. Because my nature is such that after a couple years I get bored. And I get tired. It might be too early to call myself a spinster, but I'm 26 and I live alone in a tiny town in Wisconsin with my cat. And though I've got creative outlets and good friends, I've become too comfortable. Read: stagnant. It's become clear to me that this summer -- or this year at least -- has become the year to make a change. A change that is again my choice, and although I'm not totally certain what it will be, it will occur. And simply making the decision to make a decision has the optimistic, adventurous side of me flaring right up. More than anything, perhaps I think that as the years pass, that side of me starts to quell, and that is the most frightening thing I can imagine.
In the next few months, we'll see what comes about. They don't call this a quarter-life crisis for nothing!
...you still share on it on your blog. Ah, for shame, trying to hastily prepare something that should be put together with the utmost attention. I promise I'll share the recipe (a good one) when I get it down right next time. There are so many little persnickety things that can go wrong with tiramisu -- all those raw egg yolks, cheese, acidic citrus, and so on. Not to mention ladyfingers that either soak too much or not enough coffee and then you've either got mushy or crunchy tiramisu, and nobody wants that. :(
This is what it should look like (mostly successful previous attempt):
...and this is what the latest attempt actually looks like:
BLUH. How does one manage to make a dessert that looks SO TERRIBLE? A curdled, soppy mess. It doesn't taste half bad, but it's nothing to be proud of. And I'm only sharing it because it should be well-known that tiramisu is not a dessert to be trifled with! ;)
So... here's to getting a ton more eggs and mascarpone and hoping attempt number 2 works a little more in my favor. I'll make sure not to walk away from the mixer this time. For any reason whatsoever!
Soundtrack to this dessert-making adventure: I Am Kloot's album Sky at Night.
The other day I was watering my tomatoes, which are just ridiculously hard to please now that they're massive, and realized there are so. many. tomatoes!!! I realized that now that we're coming up on mid-July, my deck garden has really changed shape -- and size -- with all my work keeping everything healthy. The geraniums are full-bloom (I let them hibernate over the winter, and in the summer they get tall and lean, which is the way I like them -- wild-looking), the hosta just blossomed, and the tomatoes, like I mentioned, are well on their way to giving me too many tomatoes to know what to do with. So I decided to snap just a couple photos of le jardin. Just to feel happy about it. :D
Look at this monster!! One of the Black Pineapple variety -- the kind of tomato that I always think of when I think of the word 'heirloom.'
Dr. Wyche's Yellow... this is the plant that is going to give the most, I can tell. The third, Thai Pink Egg, has not produced anything yet. It was the weakest plant from the start, so we'll see if it's late, or if nothing will happen at all.
The hosta blossom just sprang up the other day -- hosta flowers are never my favorite, but it's still gratifying to see them. This one is pretty healthy, although some of the leaves on the plant were a little burnt in the sun this summer. Otherwise, the plant likes it there, so I'll have to give it a little bit of shade for next year.
And my very favorite mini success: the colander with a menagerie of succulents. Succulents are perfect for a container that is, by its very nature, filled with holes. Succulents in general are really hardy; they can stand not being watered, or even being in dirt, for a long time, and take root practically anywhere. The colander I filled with sandy dirt, and I wondered for a little while if these little guys were going to like it there, but they appear to be happy as can be. I've started a couple of others now, even one commissioned from my grandmother who liked the idea so much! I'm beginning to amass such a collection of unidentified succulents that I'm going to have to start doing some research. Regardless, hens and chicks remain one of my favorite kinds. ;)
...and I'm on my way to the store this afternoon to pick up ingredients for one of my favorite desserts eveerrrrrrrrr... ;D
Summerfest, Wisconsin's major music festival in mid-summer, annually draws some of the best artists to its -- 12? -- stages. Every night for 11 days, a major headliner plays at Marcus Amphitheater and other artists are on other stages throughout the night, so one only hopes there aren't two bands playing at once that you'd like to see. In all the years it's been on, I've never once gone. Honestly, the crazy festival atmosphere always makes me a little tense. Crowds -- especially tightly packed ones -- are not generally my thing. But last night my sister and I made an exception to go see Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros (their most popular song, "Home," here although my favorites on their album Up from Below are "Desert Song" and "Kisses Over Babylon"). There's a good story about how this band came about.
But first! --I worked until 4pm, so as soon as I could afterward, I picked Ali up and we drove the two hours to Milwaukee, getting pseudo-lost as usually happens when we try to navigate that city, and finally making it to my other sister Maddy's new apartment. It was a perfect evening... 67 degrees, clear and dry, and driving around the east side of town around dinner time was wonderful because everyone was sitting outside, enjoying the sunshine and all their company.
We were looking for dinner before heading over to the Summerfest grounds, so we walked to Alterra, the local Milwaukee coffee shop of choice, but they were out of many of their daily food items, so we decided to go around the block to Ma Fischer's, one of those 24-hour fam-resties that serves the most food for your buck. I had a Super Duper Family Restaurant Moment when I decided to order one of the most heartily American things on the menu: chicken strips -- with ranch sauce, french fries, the biggest dinner roll I've ever seen, cheese tortellini soup, a side of veggies, and rice pudding for dessert. And a gigantic chocolate milk. All for about $12. Seriously. This might have been the most astounding part of the whole evening:
Anyway. We got to the festival a little later than we maybe would have liked. Typical hipster-kid kind of show. Everyone was in their early twenties and dressed to impress, or at least look like they didn't care, but really did. The sound quality left a little to be a desired, and we had to stand quite uncomfortably packed like sardines on bleacher seats (bleacher seats, really?)... I love Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. LOVE THEM. Their one album is one of my all-time favorite albums. It's amazing. But the show was a typical festival show, and it was a little uncomfortable and not exactly super.
I would love to see them again, but maybe after another album is released... ;)
Regardless, we had a great time in MKE, and now that Maddy lives there, I look forward to more frequent trips to visit and check out the restaurants and such nearby. She keeps reminding me that there's a fab sushi place I've got to check out. ;D
Not very often, but occasionally, I like to go to antique malls and just wander. Never with the intention of finding anything specific -- how can one expect that in those places, really? There's always so much stuff, ranging from what is essentially junk to high-end furniture and jewelry. It's cathartic in a way, and if you go in without any expectations, anything you find can feel like a treasure.
The other day I went out to a couple local antique places with mom, and I managed to find a few things, among them being simply the most gorgeous periwinkle glass teacup and saucer. It's square! It's such an amazing color, and the glass is so milky, that when it sits on my window sill, it nearly glows.
I love it. It was $4. I'm sure I've never loved a teacup so much in my life. ;)
