Tag Archives: food

Ladies Who Laugh ~ part one

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And laugh and laugh we did! I lost count of how many times I was doubled over with tears streaming down my face, trying to catch my breath and not pee my pants.

Nancy, Marisa, Kayla, Despina, Katie, Jennifer

Marisa and I were the first to arrive even though my GPS, also known as Bossy Bitch, tried her best to send us to Falmouth instead of Eastham. Bob, the cottage’s owner, met us there and showed us everything we needed to know about the place. Which was even more wonderful in person.

Seriously. The rooms were exactly as pictured on the rental site. Exactly. No surprises at all, which I guess was the surprise! The cottage has just enough original details, (built in 1913), while still providing all modern necessities. Which, let’s face it, for me, is all about the kitchen.

I joked about the kitchen when I found the cottage online with it’s blush pink counters and while I still wouldn’t choose them for a kitchen, they fit the cottage perfectly. The range was propane- hurrah! – a full size fridge, which was empty when we arrived and soon overflowing with everyone’s groceries.

I really should have taken a picture of the fridge when it was loaded up, it was full of fresh fruits and vegetables, just gorgeous.

Note : Next time, and there is going to be a next time in the autumn, maybe we should bring along a stills photographer as we were all too busy laughing, talking and catching up to remember to take pics.

But back to the kitchen. I planned the menu, made up the shopping list and then divided the shopping list between us all. There was no discussion about this, these ladies know me. (The good, the bad and the ugly me.) I would be head chef and they would be my back up dancers. And yes, you read that right.

Friday night we had a dinner of :

After we ate, laughed and chattered our way through the meal, the table was cleared and dishes were washed, (by my back up dancers).

We reassembled around the table and the merriment continued, music playing in the background, until, at nearly 3 AM, the last of us, (Despina, Katie & I), wandered off to bed.

Tired but happy. Very, very happy.

To be continued…

 

 

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Breakfast/Brunch Pizza

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Face Book Pulse Group

Foodie Group

I had watched the posts of a couple members in a foodie group I belong to on Face Book, Pulse, who had a go at making pizzas with eggs cracked over them. It was all so intriguing…a bit of runny yolk, the tomato & the crunchy crust… so, of course, I had to give it a go.

Having a window into Tom & Andy’s eggy pizzas gave me insight as well as the courage to give it a try. Why not? Even a slightly failed eggy, breakfast pizza with fresh ingredients is still better than a drive through breakfast sandwich anywhere!

Boy Wonder was here for Easter weekend and the first eggy pizza was made that Saturday morning. I choose the savory brioche dough recipe from, Pizza & Flatbreads in 5 Minutes a Day, and added a base of thinly sliced tomatoes, red onions, fresh mozzarella and fresh thyme, sage and rosemary.

I put the pizza in a 525 degree oven on top of a stone and then played it by ear as to when to crack the eggs over top.

When the pizza crust was beginning to brown around the edges, I cracked the eggs and then sprinkled the leftover crumbled, applewood bacon I had leftover from the night before’s wedge salads, over the top of it all.

I then stood by and monitored the eggs progress. And by stood by, I mean I never left the oven’s side.

After much opening of the oven and wiggling of the pizza to judge the doneness of the eggs… I finally pulled out the pizza just as the white over the yolk became opaque.

I let the pizza rest for a couple minutes on a rack before slicing into it. It’s is important to note that I used scissors to cut the pizza. I thought slicing into it with a knife would force any yolky goodness to pass quickly down and away.

Breakfast Pizza!

Other than making a note to pull the pizza out of the oven just a touch sooner for more yolky goodness, the first eggy pizza was deemed a yummy success by all of us.

The eggy, savory brioche dough was a great pairing for this type of pizza. It held up perfectly to the yolky goodness and while it was crispy and a thicker dough than I make my other pizzas on, it was still light feeling.

I made our second eggy pizza this Sunday. Same dough but was out of fresh herbs and tomatoes. So I smeared the rolled dough with pesto & added chopped sun dried tomatoes that were packed in olive oil. I took the pizza out a touch earlier and we were in yolky pizza heaven!

While cold, leftover pizza still for breakfast still has a place in my heart — this warm, yolky breakfast pizza is a proven new winner here at Chez Kelly.

 

 

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Sit Down, Candle-lit, Family Dinners

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In the midst of all the dysfunction of my family’s life while growing up we did have some, set in stone, rituals.

One of them was sit down dinners. Those dinners included the whole family and the time was set according to my father getting home from work.

It’s something that also had it’s share of dysfunctional madness; staying at the table until your plate was clean, backhanded swipes from dad and the humiliation of spilling my milk. Again.

Something about it worked though and I continued the tradition into my own family. The single parent time of my life saw a flex in that. But more often than not, Boy Wonder and I sat down and had family dinner.

After we moved to New York and Boy Wonder flew the nest, I began lighting candles at our evening meal. Just one more step to the ritual of coming together at the end of our busy days and signaling us that it’s time to slow down and reconnect.

Especially needed because Hubster and I run our own business and the line between business and downtime gets very blurred.

Normally, I stock up on basic white candles at Ikea a couple times a year. Tapers, tea lights, votives and assorted pillar candles. Ikea’s candles are very affordable and far superior to the basic candles I’ve tried from Target & The Christmas Tree Shop.

I had been thinking of making my own candles for some time and finally went for it after stumbling across a how to on Pinterest.

I bought 10 pounds of soy wax flakes from Amazon which has the best price I have found so far as well as a couple small wicking and anchor packs that will make 12 wicks each. Total investment for this little experiment, $30.

I used recycled candle glass, baby food & mason jars that I already had.

Other tools used; takeout chopsticks and wooden clothespins. (yay for hoarding)

I nested my Classic Batter Bowl in a large pot for a makeshift double boiler and melted down the first batch of soy wax flakes.

While they were melting, I put a small amount of wax in my small pyrex one cup measure and melted them slowly in the microwave, 30 seconds at a time.

I used that wax for anchoring the wicks into the jars and glasses after cutting the wicking a bit longer than needed based on how tall each container was.

I poured the melted wax from the Batter Bowl into my one cup pyrex for pouring into the molds.

Other than a couple wicks that kept popping off the bottom of the containers, it all went smoothly.

 

The wicks that wanted to keep popping I solved the problem by pouring just enough wax in to cover and let that set up before finishing the pour.

It took less that an hour from start to finish and another hour for most but the largest jar, a quart size, to be set solid and ready for burning.

Here’s how they looked Friday night while we ate dinner.

 Beautiful yes?

Conclusion? The candles have such a slow burn rate that even with the small investment in time for making them, they are very cost efficient. I have already begun stalking Ebay for used candle making supplies.

Don’t wait for special occasions to have candlelit dinners.

Everyday at the table with loved ones is special enough for candles!

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Andrew Odom ~ Tiny r(E)volution, on Sustainability

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Today’s Guest Blogger, Andrew Odom, speaks on Sustainability and what it means to him.

Andrew and his family are building a Tiny Home and chronicling their journey on their site, Tiny r(E)volution.

 

I want to be perfectly honest. I don’t get the whole sustainability movement. I don’t understand what it means to have the capacity to endure. What I do understand is stewardship. I understand the idea of being a steward; a person who manages another’s property. More on that later.

The word sustainability is derived from the Latin ‘sustinere’ (tenere, to hold; sus, up). Dictionaries provide more than ten meanings for sustain, the main ones being to “maintain”, “support”, or “endure”. Sounds so sterile doesn’t it? However, since the 1980s sustainability has been used more in the sense of human sustainability on our planet and this has resulted in the most widely quoted definition of sustainability and sustainable development, that of the Brundtland Commission of the United Nations on March 20, 1987: “sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” 1

In the context of my life, my colleagues, my circles, etc, sustainability is more about the destruction of the Earth’s ecosystems. The total environmental impact of a community depends both on population and impact per person, which in turn depends in complex ways on what resources are being used, whether or not those resources are renewable, and the scale of the human activity relative to the carrying capacity of the ecosystems involved. Yet I still don’t quite understand.

Sustainability is the practice of theory we learned as children. If it isn’t yours, don’t touch it. If you don’t touch it, you can’t break it. If you can’t break it, you won’t have to worry about trying to replace it. The same goes for our planet. We are created to be stewards of this planet. We don’t own Earth. It is not ours. We were created to dwell on this planet. The soil the runs between our toes? A gift. The air we breathe? A gift. The beautiful colors that enhance the landscape season after season. You guessed it. A gift! We are but the managers of this ball we call home. It isn’t ours so we shouldn’t touch it in an abusive way. If we don’t touch it abusively then we can’t break it. If we don’t break it we don’t have to worry about replacing it. In essence we maintain the delicate balance of the cosmos.

I know. Sounds a bit crunchy to me too. In fact, it is probably assumed that I am writing this post with my shirt off, paint smeared under my eyes, with the sounds nature gently playing in the background as I quietly hum Kumbaya. Not so. I am a normal guy who types on a computer for a number of hours a day, wears boring Fruit of the Loom t-shirts, and breaks for coffee at random times. But I have come to understand sustainability in a way that I never thought possible. In fact, I have come to live sustainability. For my family it has moved beyond an active choice even. It is part of our life. We have transitioned into taking lighter steps, consuming less energy, recycling and repurposing more, and giving thanks for what we have without coveting what we don’t.

By now our cover may be up. We may be exposed as those Tiny r(E)volution people. And that is okay. We wear our crowns with pride. We are a family of three that lives in less than 250 square feet. We value our relationship with each other and the world around us. We have gardens and we raise our own animals. From them we gain meat, oil, and compost. Our veggies are food and gifts to our neighbors around us. Our chickens give us eggs and meat but also cultivate the ground we walk on making the soil a rich, cool, black. That, my friends, is sustainability. It is a study of harmony between our life and the lives around us be they animal, vegetable, or mineral. We waste little, want nothing. We call our way of life a r(E)volution because it is 1/2 revolution and 1/2 evolution. It is a partnership with our Earth and a promise to be the best stewards we can be.

I implore of you. The next time you are confronted with the word sustainability, don’t be frightened. Don’t let it greenwash your mind and tint your glasses. Confront it head on knowing that it is nothing but a fancy word for the action of give and take; repeated indefinitely.
1 Definition courtesy of Wikipedia

Bigger does not always mean better. Progress does not always mean forgetting our roots in order to forge a new future. Blogger, photojournalist, and hobby farmer Andrew Odom has spent much of the last few years rediscovering the lost art of living, growing, and being truly happy. Visit him online at www.tinyrevolution.us.

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