second hand stores

A person can go to the fancy/glitzy kitchen gadget stores and they have sooooooo many cool toys there...and I want/need absolutely all of them [drool, drool, drool]...well, most of the toys anyway-just because they are so cool. I can imagine all of the new things I can do, stuff that I can make, hours of labor that I will save myself...

me: "Wow! They carry the Technivorm Coffee maker! That would make the morning coffee absolutely perfect wouldn't it, especially if I had the Jura cup warmer to go with it."
reality: " You don't drink coffee." (However, I am absolutely ensnared by the aroma, it intoxicates my senses. If I could afford to, I would buy bags of coffee beans just to use as potpourri.)

me: "Look at these gorgeous pastel toned, accordian shape decorating bottles for frosting and decorating cakes-I think I need 10 of them."
reality:"Pain to clean and you simply don't doooo pastel colors."

me: "Wait, how about that Dualit toaster, it's on Special for only $300, imagine how good the toast would be..."
Actually, I can't imagine what a $300 toaster would do differently from my $15 toaster...maybe it also procures fresh artisanal butter from the Rogue Creamery, spreads on "Apricot with Attitude" jam on from Rose City Pepperheads (most excellent jam by the way), and then serves it to you whilst you lounge on your day bed?

Those places are nice to visit but some of my favorite places to shop are Second hand stores. Seriously. For home and especially the bakery.
If a person pays attention and is careful about what is being purchased, there are some really good deals at those places. There are all sorts of treasures just waiting to be discovered, and that's actually a good way to think about it-as a treasure hunt because you never know what you will come across.

A few years ago, we were again making huge batches of one of our seasonal bundt cakes and the standard day would go something akin to this.

Get the Bundt pans ready, make the batter, bake off 8 Bundts, after a few minutes cooling, pull the cakes out, run the pans through the dishwasher again so we could get the next batch into the ovens-several times a day.

It was driving our bakers crazy but heavy cast aluminum Bundt pans are expensive in the retail stores, $40 to $60, ouch! Then one day my business partner and I were wandering through a Goodwill just for the heck of it and lo and behold! On the shelf, a lonely heavy cast aluminum Bundt pan just pleading to be put to good use and for only $2.99. The Elation! The Thrill! The game was afoot, the hunt was on.
I now have picked up enough of those Bundt pans at local second hand shops that the bakery could actually use an extra oven -also, I've discovered that it's hard to stop buying them once you find them because it is such a good deal. All for around $2 to $5. Score! Besides you never know when you might just need that one extra one...

I have since done the same with mini muffin tins, mixing bowls, and measuring cups amongst other things. Sure, sometimes the things need a little extra cleaning and rarely would they be found on a retail display shelf due to a dent or two but everything is of good quality and they are getting used for the purpose they were designed for rather than just gathering dust.

It's reminds me of going to Garage sales but then not having to travel to them all day long which can get rather wearisome sometimes. One stop treasure hunting is more my speed.

Fermenting

I used to work at F.H. Steinbart Co. (hi everyone!), which sells home brewing and wine making equipment and ingredients. Wine, beer, vinegar, cider, kombucha, sake, mead-so much fermentation, so many different ingredients to play with and with a little forethought soooooooo easy to do. I should know, I have over 6 cases of Hard Cider alone that I've made and we won't even start on how many cases of wine I have. Sigh, so easy to make-not nearly enough people to drink it.

The most important factor whether you are brewing, baking, or cooking something is
*drum roll*-SANITIZATION!!!SANITIZATION!!!SANITIZATION!!!
If you want something you make to turn out somewhat tasty then you had darn well better pay attention to the sanitation side of things otherwise it could all be for naught.

To me-making wine and beer go hand in hand with baking, making your own preserves, pickling (my mouth waters at the thought of homemade sauerkraut-so good), making bread, pretty much any home cooking in general.
For one, you get a real sense of the ingredients that you are working with; how ripe they are, the aroma and colour of them, the weight of them in your hand. Secondly, you're more careful about those ingredients. A lot of home winemakers I know source their own grapes from some of the regional wineries when they can buy it or they grow some of their own. It's a little harder to grown the amount of grain you need for home brewing (just due to lack of space for most people) but I have met some people who have just because they could, though the specialty grains available for home brewing are generally of a pretty high quality.
Tip for home brewers: Growing your own hops can be really nice or if you want some special variety, check for fresh loose leaf hops at your local home brew shop. They also work well as potpourri (at least I think so).

Most of the work in home brewing and wine making is cleaning and waiting. Once everything is combined, you let it sit and do it's thing (fermenting that is), then your work boils down to waiting to let things clarify (settle down), racking (transferring from one container to another SANITIZED!!! container), and waiting patiently for your brew to be done-NOTE: This is the hardest part by far; think of all of the people from whom you've heard stories of bottles blowing up or corks/caps popping off when the weather warms up just a little. That means that whatever you were making hadn't fermented out enough before you caught the "I must bottle everything in sight" bug. Many times you can leave whatever you are making in bulk after a few rackings and with proper airlock attention just let it hang out until you are in the mood to deal with it. Really, you can.

General time line for home brewing activities: Mead and Sake take forever and a day (or sometimes it just feels that way, maybe you could subtract a day if you are feeling wild and crazy).
Wine can take months up to several years depending on what you are making.
Beer generally takes a few months but again it depends on the type you are brewing.
Soda takes a few weeks and you can use real fruit or there a lot of flavour varieties to choose from and you can even combine flavours to make new ones, example: orange extract and cream extract combined give you Orange Cream soda-mmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Though for some reason, it is really hard to get Root beer to carbonate if you use a mix-still haven't quite figured out why.
Anyhow, happy brewing to all.

Our cakes in film

Look whose cakes are in the movies and now they are making appearances on the telly as well. (mild preening)
I decided to double check the definition of whose to make sure that I was using the proper context and ended up more confused than when I started so I am leaving it as it is and if it's wrong then so be it.


Okay, technically this first set of cakes were for an actor's birthday so they didn't actually appear in the movie. The cakes were made for Lou Taylor Pucci, the main actor in "Thumbsucker" which was directed by Mike Mills.
Sooooooo, again they weren't actually in the movie, but they were eaten by people who were so it sort of semi counts doesn't it?


This next cake actually did make it into a movie. It appeared in the birthday scene from "Into the Wild" which was directed by Sean Penn and partly filmed in Beaverton. It played the part of the strong, silent, sweet type.















Earlier this year, my pastry chef was asked to make a cake for the tv show "Leverage". The cake was a representation of a mythical African nation for the episode titled "The Scheherazade Job" which just recently aired. The cake appears in the opening scene, and wow, did they cut huge chunks of cake to eat. I swear each slice was about four standard servings (unless one is talking about college age boys and then maybe it was a half serving). Anyhow, we now can say that we know movie and television stars-granted they were all cake but still... ;)

I've been commenting about this last one on on our facebook page a bit but here is the more in depth version-sort of, hmmm, not really that much depth to go into I suppose but here I go anyway.

The chap from "Leverage" contacted us again last week and needed a Gingerbread house by Monday, not Martha Stewart level but not Cake Wrecks level either, I think it turned out just right and I had an absolute blast making it. (more preening)

I now have a hankering to make more, I know it's July but I could make one to cover every holiday, month, day of the week...And now I've realized that really, all things considered, this is the best time of year to make them anyway; there's plenty of time, no last minute mad dash, they have plenty of time to dry, and you can always quickly work up another if something happens to go horribly wrong with the first one. If you think about it for a minute, it's a brilliant idea right? right? hello? Well, I think it has some merit at any rate.

Oh, and then what about making a life size one? Can you imagine how huge the gumdrops would have to be? Would you use real christmas trees? The amount of royal icing to make would be insane. Would one have people dress up as Gingerbread people or make cutouts like they did for "Blazing Saddles"? (love Gene Wilder in that by the way)


Hmmmm...there would be a slight issue if it started to rain or snow though, and you'd have to be on constant lookout for Hansel & Gretel...[slap]...thanks I needed that I think but then think of the possibilities-Frank Lloyd Wright style, ranch and bungalow styles, bird houses, dog houses, Baroque mansions (if it isn't Baroque, don't fix it-hehehehehehehehehehe).


Ahem,... at any rate look for G.house to show up around xmas. To finish it all off, the Leverage guy called me a couple of days later and wondered if I could make Egg Nog as well,...why...yes, yes I could. Thanks to Alton Brown (my hero) for that excellent recipe, darn tasty it was although I did tweak it a bit-there can be such a thing as too much Nutmeg sometimes.

and to all a good night.

Pie Judge

For a couple of years now, I have been participating as a judge of homemade pies at the DAR booth (Daughters of the American Revolution).
Here are a couple of my fellow cohorts this year, Sue and Rob.













It has been a lot of fun and it is always interesting to see what people decide to make and submit for judging. If I remember correctly, the pies have to be berry based but other than that I think it's open season on how one interprets that.

Here's Jann, she's one of the wonderful ladies of the DAR and the one who asked me to judge in the first place.


Here's the winning pie for this year. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, pie.













It's a tough job really...but someone has to step up and do it.

Farmers Markets

Ringing of the bell, the aroma of coffee combined with the tantalizing whiff of fresh tortillas and vegetables sizzling on a hot griddle. The faint sweet caramelly scent and sound of Kettle corn crackling just past the next booth. Ah, Farmers Markets in the morning.

It's one of my favorite pastimes, just wandering down the aisles looking at all of the wonderful produce, flowers, and other treasures that I can take home and use to create something wonderous for dinner or breakfast.

Coming from a place that is fairly limited on what's growable (and not too bitter) to someplace that is overflowing with abundance of practically everything, I tend to get overwhelmed and want to buy everything I see: plump sweet blueberries, freshly cut kale and butter lettuce, tender garlic shoots, freshly caught salmon-so many ingredients and not nearly enough imagination to keep up with all the potential combinations at my fingertips.

I have to be very careful when I do go there because it becomes something akin to a gambling addiction...one more bundle of asparagus, two heads of that gorgeous Porcelain garlic...{I'm sure I can use up that half pound of delectable Chantrelle mushrooms by tomorrow}...and suddenly I wind up at home with too much of a good thing and not nearly enough help around to consume it all in time. Cest la vie. I manage somehow and then strictly inform myself to be more judicious next time and only purchase what I really, conceivable will use up in the next two or three days...









Wait a minute, were those fresh Morel mushrooms? Wouldn't that go beautifully, sauteed with the Blue Lake green beans over there? Oh, and those fresh Shuksan strawberries-sooooooo good with just a touch of basalmic vinegar, mmmmmmmmmm.

Darn, I've done it again. ; )

Snobbish Chocoholic

I admit it, isn't that the first step? Admitting that you have a problem? Well, I admit it and I accept myself for who I am, a Chocoholic who's also a Chocolate Snob (I KNOW! the worst kind right?:)

For the past few years now I have been delving into the deeper, the darker, the more cacao the better. Bittersweet? the bitterer the better. Bring it on I say-except for unsweetened-I can't quite go that far down into the darkness, the rich...velvety...darkness...not yet at any rate but 76% or 85%? maybe even 92% on a good day-I am so there.



There are a couple of national brands of chocolate bars that I used to love, used to be the only chocolate that I would eat (okay, not completely true but I am trying to make a point)-now they are almost all too sweet and/or waxy for me. They smell the same, they look the same as they used to (okay, maybe just a bit tinier yet more expensive) and I keep thinking that "Oh, this time will be different, this time this chocolate (fill in the blank) will taste like what I remember"...they don't.

I have gone to the dark side. Do I miss those innocent days when things were simpler, before I knew of the seemingly endless varieties of artisanal chocolate that exists?...No.

Those standard chocolate bars and truffles just won't cut it anymore for me. I need the big fix-fair trade, organic, single source-all made with ingredients that you can pronounce. It's not just the chocolate bars and truffles either (though you really should try the dark spiced chocolates from Euphoria Chocolate Co. in Eugene OR-OMG!),I am hooked on other chocolate delights as well.

What could they possibly be? Well, I am glad you asked ;)
there is the yummy drinking chocolate from Cacao-fair warning the spicy is not for the timid-, Choffy-(crushed roasted cacao nibs that you treat like french press coffee), and my current fave {fanfare erupts} Chocolate Hemp Bliss, it's like soy milk sort of but not-there are a couple of similar brands out there but I like the Bliss.

Anyhoo, here are a few of the items that are currently residing in my cupboard at home just to give you an idea of how far gone I am-but I can quite cold turkey any time man. I could, you know. No problemo. Any time...
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
chocolate.

externs

This is Ross, one of the high school extern students who graced our bakery this year. Hi Ross:) (waving of hand)
He was a lot of fun to have around and always managed to brighten our day.

Anyhow, we have students year round, mostly from the culinary schools in the area but also from a number of high schools. The high school students often job shadow for a day or two but a few, like Ross, have done a "mini" externship with us.

Most of the students, wherever they come from, grasp that baking and cooking aren't the glamorous activities like they see on the telly. Baking on a commercial scale can be fun and exciting however, there are oodles of repetition that aren't shown on the TV programs.
Not every customer that orders wants or needs a 5 tier creation of your "vision"-often, they simply want a half dozen of the chocolate chip or snicker doodle cookies, or maybe a couple slices of the yellow cake.

{Tip for any future bakers and chefs-Consistency is the true hallmark of a quality chef or baker. Anyone can do something well once or twice but to do it 50, 70 times a week and to do it well is not that simple.}

These externships give the students a taste of the "real world" and for most, it seems to be something they enjoy doing. There are always a few who seem to think that they will instantly be the next celebrity or executive chef at the first place they choose to grace with their presence. A few others make you wonder if they've ever heard the words oven or mixer before in their lives and why they seem to think baking would be such an easy thing to pick up "Hello people, we are talking about CHEMISTRY here!" Granted, tasty chemistry but still...

Anyhow, it's always nice to have someone like Ross (high school), Scott (WCI), or Jennifer (Jen) (WCI), who so obviously enjoy and really get what baking is about and that helps keep me enthused and inspired as well.

Now, go forth and BAKE!