Distractions

So I haven't posted in almost 9 months.  There is no excuse for leaving this for that long, except to say that what I've been doing with my spare bits involves 3 children and a man.

They leave little to be spared, as anyone with children probably knows.

The children are his and his oh-so-bitter ex-wife's.  I suppose I would be bitter too if I had 3 kids and a failed marriage.

My opinion on marriage is that it only fails for lack of trying, lack of communication and general exhaustion from lying to ourselves about who that person really is.  Not necessarily who they were when you met them but who they are now.

Things happen in life that change you and the reality with marriage is you're contractually bound to this person for their mistakes as well as their successes.  I suppose that means you ought to choose wisely or at least play wait-and-see until you further attach yourself by spawning.

Just my opinion.  This is also why at 27 I have no children and have not been married.  In my idyllic minds eye I plan on at least making babies with someone reasonable.  Sadly, reasonable seems to be harder to find than I anticipated.

But in the meantime, I am playing part-time adult figure and rather enjoying it.  It's the most awkward, and a non-committal way of trying out parenting.

Hostel Lentil Soup

Backpacking has its benefits.  I came back with mean calves and a pedometer that on one day read over 33 THOUSAND.  I think that pedometer is nuts.

Does it look nuts? I'm pretty sure it malfunctioned.

One of the things about Europe that surprised me was the lack of fresh food.  When you're not preparing your own food you have little control over ingredients.  This is exacerbated by all of the menus and explanations happening in a language that I don't know.  I'd call myself barely conversational.

So, croissant con jamon, queso y tomate.  Doesn't equal ham and cheese and tomato slices.  Oh no.  Tomate is a tomato spread, think tomato the texture of marmalade.  Okay but when you're expecting tomato slices it's disappointing.

That said, I didn't eat a fresh vegetable until day 10 of the trip.  By day 5 James was in dire need of fiber.  So we went on a quest to find a fiber supplement.  The only thing we could find in the number of small Farmacias were fiber cookies.  They weren't awful.  Think animal crackers from the small Circus train box with fiber in them.

After we went on our quest to find the fiber cookies I left James to the rooftop to hang out with the party people and I went on an adventure to a small neighborhood market in search of soup.  There was no canned soup.  No bean soup, no lentil soup, no chicken noodle soup.  Nothing.

So I decided I was going to use the hostel kitchen and cook soup.  Without spending 25 euros on spices and food that the two of us couldn't eat, I came up with a tasty compromise.

Just to clarify.  The hostel in Granada, Hostel One, had no spices in the kitchen.  This was the smallest hostel we stayed in and it was a converted private residence.  I was expecting a working kitchen.  The utter lack of spice was pretty much devastating to culinary creativity.

I armed myself with a stock pot, water, lentils, onions, olive oil and what I thought was chicken broth.

Quick soak the lentils.

Chop and slightly brown the onions.

NOT chicken broth.  Don't be fooled.

So this chicken Caldo is kind of a milky soup on its own.  It's not similar to American stock or broth or bouillon.  It smells slightly strange but cooked down quite nicely.  All in all, not a horrible addition.

Add broth to onion and boil with lentils.  Ta-da!  Soup.

Hostel Lentil Soup

(there are parts that give hints for cooking in your own kitchen, with spices and utensils and a familiar market nearby)

Step 1. chop and brown onion in stockpot with olive oil  (add scallion or garlic if not in a hostel)
Step 2. quick soak lentils by boiling for 10 mins, rinse lentils, set aside
Step 3. add chicken stock to onions (add finely diced spinach or carrots)
Step 4. add lentils, boil until lentils are soft about 1.5 hours (add flat leaf parsley, thyme, pepper and salt to taste)

Enjoy.  Yay for fiber!

Spain and Portugal

Hello.

After 16 days of Spain and Portugal I'm back home all safe and sound and no worse for the wear.  I did manage to get a very nice Andalusian tan as well - I'm looking golden for April.

Very happy to report my grandmother's strict warnings involving all Europeans wanting to take my money were, as I had hoped, completely unfounded.

My only experience with being overcharged as a tourist happened with me as a willing participant.  I'm not really much of a haggler.  My thoughts are, if I'm willing to pay what you're charging then I'll pay it, if not I won't.  Most of the time I pay.

I stumbled upon some fantastic people and some even greater shops that sold amazing things.  (One small shop in Lisboa, Portugal had 5 x 7 framed needlepoints with sayings like, "Shut up and kiss me" and "F@#$ You" with a precious little flowery design.)  Wallets made out of milk cartons.  Old photographs of people I don't know.  I found these shops to be very Etsy, very hipster chic.  I LOVED THEM.  They were of course all in Lisbon.

Lisboa is what it's called locally, regardless of what you call it -- it was hands down my favorite city.  It had its own feel and gave off less of a sense of shaped by big brand name culture.

Sadly, the food we found was not as awe-inspiring as I'd hoped.  Lisbon does house a fantastic, tiny, Italian Restaurant called MOMA located on Rua de Sao Nicolau.  It's right in the heart of a very tourist oriented pedestrian mall leading from Rossio Square down to the ocean.  It was only two doors down from our Hostel but we didn't discover it until our last day.  The food was reasonably priced and delicious.

Salted Butter Caramels

Let's start by getting a little something out of the way.

I'm rarely afraid to mix foods, for texture and flavor and general wonder.

That being said - eating hot wings and oatmeal (plain, of course) for breakfast is not actually bad.  Not together mind you but wings first, then oatmeal... not awful. 

So, it's a natural progression that I don't mind chiles in my chocolate or some sea salt in my Caramels.

I only tried sea salt caramels for the first time in the last year or so.  I bought a small bag of them from EuroPan in Pasadena and if I remember correctly they were about $1 per piece if you wanted to break it down.  Then just recently on HauteLook or Ideeli or Fab - one of those member only flash-sale sites I saw a candy maker selling them for over $1 a piece ON SALE.

That's insane.

So, I was on a mission to find a great recipe for them that I could make myself.

One so happened to be lingering on one of my favorite food blogs, Chez Pim.

 All in all, I think my batch comes out to be $10 for a batch of 40-50.

We had tons of trouble wrapping them once they were done.  I only have parchment paper that it seems isn't built for candy wrapping - thus we resorted to festive plastic wrap and left them in squares. 

Regardless of the wrapping there is little left to be desired from this recipe.

Pim has a modification on the typical recipe - which was a (glorious and genius) mistake.  All the great things come from experimentation and error, it seems.

Salted Butter Caramels - Chez Pim

The website appears to be down currently.


So I'm copy/pasting the recipe and I'll give you a rundown of the steps.

Salted butter and honey caramels

1 cup (2.5dl) heavy cream
1.5 cups or 300g sugar
1/2 cup (2.5dl) very dark, intense honey, if all you have is milder honey I’d use one cup of honey to one cup of sugar
4oz or 110g salted butter, room temperature
more salt to taste

Melt sugar and honey together - caramelize.  You can shake the pot but don't stir.

While the honey and sugar are caramelizing.  Heat the cream to a simmer.

Cut the room temp butter into smallish pieces, these are about 1/2 to 3/4 inch cubes.

When the sugar reaches a deep brown color, whisk in the butter until it's completely incorporated.

Add the cream slowly and whisk until smooth.  At this point you add the additional salt to taste. 

Per the start of this post I'm kind of a flavor fiend so I really wanted the honey/butter flavors to be balanced with a lingering saltiness.  It ended at a perfect amount that has to remain undisclosed because I just can't remember how much was added.  It's definitely a personal preference thing. 

My idea of flawless is when you taste the caramel and have to take a moment to place the deep rich unmistakeable Chestnut honey undertone in the midst of the butter/sugar flavor.  Then after a second or so the salt starts to creep up on the sides of your tongue slowly.  Like I said, utter perfection.

Boil and let the mixture reach 260F.   Pour it out into a cookie sheet that's lined with Parchment paper.  We tried to use a silicone baking liner and discovered later on that it sticks awfully if you don't allow it to cool completely.

I don't have any photos of the wrapped ones.  Unfortunately Christina and I got too excited to take anymore pictures after this point.

Oh and Pim says to use a very dark honey.  She mentions a Chestnut honey she was given and I found one and added it to my Amazon wishlist.  It arrived on my doorstep, all brown-paper-package-tied-up-with-string, courtesy of Jason for Christmas.  (Thank you!)  Unfortunately I failed to Fed Ex any caramels to him.  Next batch, I promise.

Chestnut honey.  This recipe used maybe a third of the jar.  I'd bet on just two batches to be safe.  I haven't tried the recipe with a typical Clover honey like you typically find in the market.  Chances are I probably won't after tasting them with this.

So that was the adventure of caramel making.  The great thing about these is that I babysat my friend's daughter who is 8 and darling, but also a candy vacuum - and she hated them!  So you can make them and they won't be instantly inhaled by children that happen to scrounge for sugar.

Hurrah!