Goal Roundup: September

I think we're getting good at this!

• House: Made an offer on a place (didn't get it). A
• Clutter: Trip to dump, got rid of old junk. A
• Financial: Met goal! A
• Health: I can run a 10-minute mile again. A
• Food: Got my game back on with new recipes and blogging, and even some pictures, then seem to have lost steam toward the end of the month. B
• Writing: Making headway through Book 2, new scenes coming together. A
• Reading: Listened to "Gilgamesh" in the car. Good stuff. Also rereading Tolkien, slowly. A

Best grades ever. Holidays will be coming up soon, so that will probably take a major toll on... everything, but right now we're in a very good place.

Iced Mini Pumpkin Loaves with Molasses

Found this recipe on Cookie Madness, and I guess I was in the mood to make something with pumpkin. So I did. Mine were not as pretty as these, but the office maw devoured them in no time flat. They are very moist, scrumptious, and make your kitchen smell like Christmas.

Yum.

Challah

Well, I've learned something this week: don't start a bunch of posts and assume that you'll have time/brainspace to come back and fill in the important details later.

Um... here's a picture of some bread! From a week ago. Bad blogger, bad!

I first tried my hand at challah a few years back, and once I did, I wanted to know where it had been all my life? I think that if you make it, you will also fall in love. I was told that the recipe comes from Beth Hensperger's book Bread. It has come to me through a chain of at least two other people, and I hope you will pass it to others.

I don't bother with the egg glaze. This bread makes the best French toast you will ever have.

2 packages (2 Tbsp) active dry yeast

1/2 C sugar or honey

1 Tbsp salt

5 1/2 to 6 C unbleached all-purpose or bread flour

1 3/4 C hot water (120 deg)

4 eggs, slightly beaten

1/2 C (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

Rich Egg glaze

Poppy or sesame seeds (optional)

1 Place yeast, sugar, salt, and 2 C flour in a large bowl. Add water, eggs, and butter. Beat hard with a whisk until smooth, about 3 min. Scrape sides of bowl occasionally.

2. Add remaining flour 1/2 C at a time with a wooden spoon. Continue beating until dough is too stiff to stir. Turn the shaggy mass out onto a lightly floured board. Adding flour 1 Tbsp at a time as necessary, knead until dough is smooth and elastic and a layer of blisters shows under skin. The dough needs to be a bit firm for free-form loaves.

3. Place dough in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 to 1 1/2 hrs.

4. Gently deflate dough, turn out onto a lightly floured surface, and divide into equal portions. Roll each section into a strip and lay 3 strips side by side. Braid, pinch ends, and tuck them under. Place on a greased or parchment-lined sheet (Braids can also be placed in loaf pans). Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise until almost doubled, 30-40 min. Because of the eggs, this loaf doesn not need to completely double. It will rise a lot in the oven.

5. Brush the dough with glaze and sprinkle with seeds. Bake in a preheated 350 deg oven for 40-45 min, or until a deep golden brown. Carefully lift braids off of sheet with a spatula to cool completely before slicing.

Yield: 2 large braided breads

Rich Egg Glaze

1 yolk or 1 whole egg

1 Tbsp water, milk, or cream

Whisk together until combined

Also, I did my first two "crits" for critters.org this week. Off to a good start, I hope.

Critters

First of all, we didn't get the house. Kind of bummed even though we expected it; the place really was just about perfect for us.

Second, I've joined critters.org, a web site that organizes online critiques of SF/F/Horror writing. While a part of me is sneering at this--Are you out of your mind? You need another obligation like a hole in your head. It'll never go anywhere--another part of me is aware that I am unlikely to improve as a writer if I don't get some feedback on what I'm producing--something more detailed than a form rejection, that is. I have also been struggling lately with a sense of being out of the loop. Twitter is helping, surprisingly enough, as I find my way to more writers' and agents' blogs, but it would be nice to feel more plugged-in to what's going on in the genre. I get the impression that everyone out there is writing YA/MG urban fantasies and "paranormal romance," but surely there's other things going on.

So, I will give it a try. I ought to be able to manage to read one short story a week, right?

Finally, this morning I got an idea for a not-entirely-serious project to add to my list of Things to Write Someday. It might be good to work on something light-hearted for a while. I'll make some notes and put it on the compost pile.

Oh jeez, not this again....

We found another house we like, so are getting all the usual crap sorted out to put in an offer. This one is a total long shot, not expecting anything at all, but what the heck. It doesn't hurt to put in an offer.

Brazilian Fish Stew

I can hear the jokes now--"wow, that's a lot of fish!"

This recipe comes from an odd little specialty cookbook I picked up, oh, ages and ages ago, called On Rice. It's short, and one of the most heavily used books I have. I do an awful lot of one-dish cooking, as you may have noticed, and there was a time when I did even more, because we had this teeny tiny apartment stove on which it was difficult to place more than two pans at one time. (This may be where my side dish blindness set in.) Last week I had the book out on the counter for some reason, D* flipped through it a bit and said, "Maybe we could have this sometime?" Always on the lookout for ideas that will fill the latter half of the week, when both my inspiration and my energy tend to be running low, I was happy to put it on the menu.

2 lb cod, scrod, or haddock fillets, cut into 2-inch pieces
3 Tbsp fresh lime juice
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
2 large garlic cloves, minced
1 lb ripe plum tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped, or 1 16-oz can Italian plum tomatoes, drained and chopped
1 c homemade fish stock or bottled clam juice
2/3 c canned unsweetened coconut milk
1/4 c chopped cilantro
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground red pepper

1. In a medium bowl, toss the fish and the lime juice. Set aside to marinate while preparing the sauce.
2. In a 12-inch nonstick skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion, bell pepper, and garlic. Cook, stirring often, until the onion softens, about five minutes.
3. Add the tomatoes, stock, coconut milk, and cilantro. Bring to a simmer and reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer, partially covered, for 10 minutes.
4. Add the fish and marinating juices. Cook, uncovered, until fish is opaque and firm, 4-5 minutes. Season with salt and ground red pepper. 
5. Serve over rice. (They recommend coconut rice or steamed medium-grain rice.)

This dish felt unbalanced; even the pound and a half of fish that I bought turned out to be more than I think was really needed. If I make this again, I will cut the fish down to 1 pound and perhaps add some more vegetables.

I quite liked the ground red pepper, which worked with the coconut milk to give a relatively subtle heat. The recipe makes 4-6 servings, depending on appetites and what else you're serving with it. We had challah, which is entirely outside the cuisine, obviously, but also always good, and which will be the subject of another post I hope. On the whole, this didn't blow me away, but it's something I would be happy to make again should a space labeled "fish" come up on the menu.

Swiss Chard with Cannellini Beans and Tomatoes

I hardly ever blog side dishes. This is because I hardly ever make side dishes; throw some vegetables in the steamer and make some rice, is my idea of a "goes-with." But every once in a while I have no choice, because I have chard in the refrigerator and nowhere for it to go, and I do hate throwing away market vegetables just because I was too lazy to do anything useful with them.

Much as I love my cookbook collection, the internet is really useful in these situations. No one book has more than a handful of chard recipes--fun if you have time to browse through a dozen or more books, not so good if you really need to figure out a menu now--while a quick search puts hundreds of them in reach. Like this one, for instance.

With this sort of cooking (unlike with Indian food), I view the recipe as a sort of vague guideline. I didn't have two pounds of chard, so I halved the entire recipe from the start. There was no way I was going to get out another whole pot, and there is no way chard takes fifteen minutes to cook, unless you have some kind of mutant chard from hell that is trying to climb out of that pot. I threw it in a braising pan with some olive oil and let it soften there, added the garlic, beans, and most of a can of diced tomatoes since I didn't have any fresh ones.

The results were perfectly fine. I am not sure I'll make this again, but it was quick and effortless and reasonably tasty.

This should be a good week for cooking, so I hope to continue with more regular blogging. Our supper club will be meeting this weekend for the first time ages, the forecast continues relatively cool and fall-ish, and other parts of my life are pretty quiet for a change. I am in major pantry-stocking mode, and my shelves overflow with pasta, beans, and broths.

In sad news, the end of farmer's market season is in sight. The Kendall Square market, which has livened up my Thursdays at the office for the past few months, officially lasts through October, but yesterday only one farm showed up.