Blue Moon Beer Bread: A year at home

The last time that I drank beer regularly was for a quarter a cup in frat basements. Cold, damp and often leaving the white laces of my shoes tea-stained in spilled Natty Light. I drank from a red plastic cup that my boyfriend had been ashing his Pall Mall in; I didn't drink beer for three years after that. 

Somewhere down the line of being back in Pennsylvania, I began to drink a beer with my father. Once by the pool deck on the Fourth of July, then weekly at a local restaurant. For years, we didn't talk much; we racked it up to not a lot in common. But slowly I opened up to him and slowly he listened more than I thought he would. He likes Coors Light. I buy him two and I stuck with Blue Moon, which runs about $2 during Happy Hour in my hometown.

My mother started coming out with us. She always had a story to tell about a relative I thought had died a long time ago. If you stop talking about people in my family, it's because they either wronged you in some arbitrary way or they died a few years ago, going unnoticed by my adolescent caprice. We liked to order spaghetti with extra garlic. I always bought the drinks. She had what I was having and one summer my father had to drive us home, we were both so drunk from Happy Hour and hearing the news of my brother's wife's pregnancy.

I moved back out of my parents' place after a year there and I miss those weekly traditions. They had to cancel their trip out next Tuesday, afraid of a snowstorm and my dad can't see very well at night. I planned on making this bread for them, but I'll hold off a week until I know they're coming, to surprise them and let them know that I wasn't unhappy the year I spent with them, I just readjusted myself a little harder to the world I grew up in.

Blue Moon Beer Bread

Recipe adapted from here, though the ratios are similar to many others out there. I think this is possibly the easiest quick bread in the world. Make sure to try out other beers as well, but I would omit the orange, cinnamon, and use white instead of brown sugar. 

Ingredients:

• 3 cups flour
• 3 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• A pinch of cinnamon
• 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed
• 1 bottle Blue Moon
• 8 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
• Orange or clementine, sliced for garnish

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375*F and prepare a loaf pan with butter and parchment
2. Sift together flour, soda, cornstarch, cinnamon, and sugar
3. Create a well in the center of the dry ingredients with a wooden spoon
4. Pour your beer into the center of the well and stir
5. Add butter
6. Mix well and pour into your loaf pan
7. Top with slices of orange and bake for 1 hour
8. Remove and allow to cool before eating (you don't have to eat the oranges--they're just garnish!)

Laura Calder's Pommes Anna

I've written before that baking brought me a sense of accomplishment when I felt I was losing any grip on my own life. In California, I lived in a house where I wasn't paying rent. I didn't love my boyfriend. I regretted going to law school. I slept for long hours when I was unemployed. I found no reason to do anything to pass the time. I tried my hand at running with Murphy (we only had Murphy at the time), but the California sun was hot and I was breathless from chainsmoking and skipping breakfast.

So I cooked. I baked. I read cookbooks and dog-eared library books. One influence on me was Laura Calder, who hosted a french cooking show on the Cooking Channel. I went through her whole series in a matter of days, having recorded them to watch later. And a dish that inspired me, to have me realize that French cuisine is more rustic than fussy, was her pommes anna, which I have adapted only slightly below.

Pommes Anna

Ingredients:

• 3 lbs potatoes, cleaned
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 3 TB unsalted butter, melted
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1 teaspoon flaked sea salt
• 2 TB thyme

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400*F
2. Cut out two rounds of parchment paper that fit a 12-inch cast iron skillet
3. Grease skillet and place one round onto the skillet
4. Whisk together heavy cream and butter
5. Thinly slice your potatoes and place into your heavy cream mixture
6. Arrange your potatoes in layers, sprinkling with a bit of salt, pepper, and thyme
7. Keep layering until you're out of potatoes
8. Now, place the second parchment round on top of the potatoes and press down gently
9. Weigh your potatoes down with a heavy pan or dutch oven to press all layers together while baking
10. Bake for 1 and a half hours or until tender in the middle and crisp on the edges
11. Allow to cool before inverting onto a pan
12. Slice and enjoy!

Easy Cherry Lemon Poppyseed Turnovers!

We finally started to clean out the last room of our house. It's a mess right now, but it's slowly getting there. We went to Target and looked at night lights and zoo animals--for Lana or some other toddler who will run around our feet.

We found all these old documents from California. Pictures and letters and little trinkets we through in a box and called it a memory. I told Nolan it's hard to look at those things, to think that we were so different just a year ago and how we have a farm in the Ligonier Valley now. How we just ate to pass the hours and fought to fill the gaps between work and sleep. We were different then; but it makes me nervous to look at those relics and think maybe we were exactly the same.

I remember the second meal we had in California, in the northernmost part of San Diego county where we were living at the time. It was just Starbucks, nothing fancy. But it was hot out and we never got the hang of just relaxing back then, so we went for somewhere with air conditioning. I got an iced coffee and a turnover. We kept calling it a turn-up and couldn't tell why it didn't sound quite right.

I paid $4 for a pastry I could have made at home. But now, now I am different. I make things myself. I save money where I can. I do it myself and make it at home. I don't want to run away to other places as much anymore.

Cherry Lemon Poppyseed Turnovers!

Ingredients:

• 2 sheets puff pastry (10" x 10"
• 8 oz cherry pie filling
• 1 vanilla bean, scraped (or sub 1 TB pure vanilla extract)
• Zest of 2 lemons, separated
• Juice of 2 lemons, separated
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 TB melted butter
• 1 TB heavy cream
• 2 cup confectioners sugar
• 1 TB poppyseeds

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400*F and prepare 2 half sheets with parchment paper
2. Cut puff pastry into 8 equal squares (4 per sheet at 2.5")
3. Mix cherry pie filling, zest, vanilla, juice of one lemon, white sugar, and salt together and mix with a wooden spoon
4. Equally arrange your 8 squares on your prepared sheets
5. Spoon about 2 tablespoons of filling into the center of each square
6. Brush all edges with butter and turn each pastry on a diagonal
7. Crimp edges with a fork to seal (obviously, I did not do this step too well as mine opened up...but it was prettier this way!)
8. Repeat with remaining
9. Brush all with butter on top as well
10. Pierce with a fork to vent out a bit of air
11. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown and puffed
12. Allow to cool. While cooling, mix together remaining lemon juice and zest, cream, and confectioners sugar to create a thin icing
13. Pour over your turnovers and sprinkle with poppyseeds and enjoy!

Blood Orange and Peach Fruit Roll-ups

I was a junk food prince as a kid, wrappers strewn across my room. I ate aimlessly and without purpose. I ate to make my teeth sore and to turn my tongue the unnatural shade of "blue raspberry". I ate because my father ate the same way. I ate because it was the only food in the house. 

My sister's birthday is the day after Halloween; we'd always go to the dollar store to buy the discounted candy on our way to her birthday party. For Christmas, I would remind my parents every year that I wasn't partial to chocolate, but loved fruit snacks and gummies. When Nolan and I lived in California, I would make a stop to the 7-Eleven for Mike and Ikes when I was stressed from school or work. And when I was in kindergarten, I got an ulcer from stress, too, and my father brought me a candy bar when I wouldn't stop crying because I wasn't a very good reader at the time.

I'm a snacker, a grazer. I munch absentmindedly to pass the time between loads of laundry and replies to my emails. But I'm 25 now and my metabolism is changing and I change with it. I was nervous to reinvent anything from my childhood, but I was excited to use these blood oranges I bought on a whim. And so I made fruit leather, but they'll always be fruit roll-ups to me.

Blood Orange and Peach Fruit Roll-ups

A true blast from the past, these are my favorite kind of recipes. I love sharing with you what it was like growing up in Kentucky and Pennsylvania and the kind of food I ate there. These are so easily adaptable to any fruit, just replace the whole fruit with another of your choice and adjust the liquids and sugars accordingly. Keep in mind that the oven temperature is long and broad and to check periodically, especially the edges, which may burn a bit.

Ingredients:

2.5 lb peaches, roughly chopped

Juice from 3 blood oranges, strained

1/2 cup white sugar

1/4 cup water

1/4 teaspoon salt

Juice of 1 lemon

Directions:

Preheat oven to 200*F and prepare a half sheet with parchment paper

Combine peaches, orange juice, white sugar, water, and salt in a large pot and heat to boil

Reduce heat to a simmer and let simmer for 15 minutes or until peaches are tender

Puree in a blender or food processor until smooth

Strain into a large mixing bowl

Add lemon juice

Pour pureed mixture onto your parchment paper smooth out evenly with a rubber spatula

Bake for 4-6 hours or until it is not sticky to the touch

Peel and check the backs--if still sticky, flip over and bake an additional hour

Place on parchment paper, roll up, cut into segments and tie with string

Can be kept for up to a week in an airtight container, but may get a little stickier in high humidity

Kale and Eggs! A breakfast (or lunch!) of champions!

Kale was the first thing we bought in our new house. It was the first thing I made that was from instinct of taste rather than a recipe in a long time. The bag, split down the middle because I tore it too fast, rustled against my hand when I would reach for a yogurt, half and half for my coffee, or a stray piece of fruit that rolled away from me earlier. It was something I wanted to try. It was on sale that week. I wanted to impress Nolan when he came home, and so I started to cook.

I am no cook by trade, or even by accident. I did not come about cooking the way I did about baking. It was not by need or necessity or for pleasure. It was, and sometimes still is, a means to an end. I did not always enjoy the cleanup; and I very much less enjoy the lack of control and tactility involved versus when I make a cake. But I work from home and I have free time and so I cook for the boy I love.

I make simple dishes. Things I like. Nothing too complicated and a varietal of five rotating flavors that work in an interchanging meander on my otherwise underdeveloped savory palate. Starting out, I never want to get too complicated. The whole chickens are still in the freezer for another day. For now, I want declaratives and not interrogatives.

“This is good.”

“Make this again.”

“I’m getting seconds.”

Because dishes like the below are so simple, I need to make sure my utensils are the best I can have for starting out. American Kitchen Cookware is perfect for me. Made in West Bend, Wisconsin, each piece is durable, unforgiving in its exactness of preparation, and carefully constructed to last. A company that is over 100 years old must be doing something right, and I believe that using this pan was the reason this dish has come out so successfully the last few weeks.

American Kitchen Cookware is also part of my Instagram giveaway for this week! Head on over to Instagram for more details, where you and a friend could win either of the pans featured in this post (the 10-inch stainless steel casserole pan or the 10-inch stainless steel skillet) for you and a friend!

Kale and Eggs

Ingredients:

• 2 TB olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and diced
• 6 cup kale
• ½ teaspoon flaked sea salt, or more if desired
• ½ teaspoon black pepper, or more if desired
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

Directions:

1. In your casserole pan (I used the 10-inch stainless steel casserole pan) or covered skillet, heat your oil on medium-high
2. Add garlic and allow to cook for a minute or until it becomes fragrant
3. Add your kale, salt, and pepper. Stir with a wooden spoon to coat the leaves with oil and garlic
4. Allow to cook on medium-high until kale begins to get tender
5. Crack your eggs evenly on top of the kale and cover your dish
6. Turn heat to low and let cool for 6 minutes
7. Uncover and check your eggs. This dish is really dependent on the natural liquid from the kale escaping and making steam, so it is, in turn, dependent on your kale and the oven temperature. If eggs are have not set to your desire, replace lid and continue cooking for a minute or two
8. Remove from heat, sprinkle with red pepper flakes and serve immediately