Sweet Yet Sour

My Best Vacation Ever

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 | Blog Circle, The Daily Special | 3 Comments

First, as a matter of explanation, some friends and I have started a sort of “blog circle”.  We all decided we needed to blog more, are sometimes bereft of blog topics, and could use a little help from our friends thinking of things to blog about.  For me, I could, much to the joy of both my own and my husband’s family, blog non-stop about Anna, but for me it’s not enough.  I am trying desperately not to lose my own identity – to not become simply “Anna’s mom”.  So every once in a while my friends and I will be spending some time tackling blog topics that we all come up with for a little blogging fun.

Today I will tackle the topic “Describe the best vacation you’ve ever taken.”

Mike and I were married in mid-November of 2004, but at the time, due to school and work schedules, we weren’t able to go on our honeymoon until Christmas.  A few days before Christmas we fled Colorado to Victoria, British Columbia.  I have been blessed with close relatives who have a vacation home outside of Victoria on the south side of Vancouver Island.  It is a beautiful home, where Mike and I took our first vacation together before we were married, that looks out from a high cliff over the ocean and across to Washington.

We were picked up at the airport and driven to Sooke, the closest town to the house.  We stopped on the way at the best meat shop in town, where we picked up steaks, sausage, and other things for our time at the house.  When we arrived at the house it had already been stocked with sandwich makings and some basic food – we were so well taken care of that visit!

One of the best things about the house is that there is a long stairway from the top of the cliff where the house is located down to a small private beach.  When we arrived Mike and I dropped our bags and climbed down the stairway to the little rocky beach.  When the waves crash upon the shore the sound of the rocks rolling up on the beach is almost like the sound of thousands of little hands clapping.  It’s a calming, wonderful place to spend time.

Close to the house there are many beautiful trails to hike on, through tall redwood forests that end up on the beautiful beaches of Vancouver Island, some rocky and some sandy.  For the next few days Mike and I spent time sleeping late, reading, watching the sights from the huge windows in the house and hiking the trails.  Mike spent a lot of time taking some of the most beautiful pictures he’s taken of the forest, the beaches, and the ocean.  It was quiet and calming and just what we wanted in a vacation.

Before Christmas we drove into Victoria where we stayed one night at a hotel that overlooked the harbor.  We had a fancy dinner at the restaurant on the top floor, shopped for each other’s Christmas presents and walked around downtown Victoria enjoying the Christmas lights.

We had a quiet Christmas eve and Christmas watching movies, reading our new books (we love giving books to each other) and enjoying our first Christmas as married people.

During our stay we mostly ate at home, but we did visit our favorite pub in Sooke, whose garlic mayo topped burgers are truly awesome, and a beautiful restaurant on a cliff point that overlooks the ocean.  Basically, we hiked, we read, we ate out a little, Mike took lots of pictures and we enjoyed the beauty of our surroundings.  It was the perfect “down time” vacation.

Don’t get me wrong, it was not a flawless vacation.  The car that belongs to my relatives broke down the day of our arrival and we had to deal with that mess and driving around a stranger’s car (we were loaned the car of someone who lives down the road). And the refrigerator stopped working, but we didn’t notice for a few days until there was a smell.  When we discovered that it had stopped working we moved as much as possible to the small wine refrigerator, but we lost most of the meat that we had purchased.  When we couldn’t have the roast or Scotch baked eggs we had planned on for Christmas we resorted to some steaks from the freezer, only to have the grill run out of gas just after we put the steaks on to cook.  But these were minor things, and could not compare with our lovely vacation.

Since then I have been back to the house once, with Mike and our friend Jen, and Mike has been back several times since to go salmon fishing with my father, uncle and my grandfather, before he died.  I miss the house, the ocean and the green of the Northwest greatly, especially these days with the sights of British Columbia on t.v. so much.  With the kids we won’t have that kind of vacation again for a long time, so I’m glad we had that time to really be together, relaxing and doing the things we love – it was by far my best vacation ever.

The Birthday Boy’s Cake

Monday, February 15th, 2010 | Cooking | 2 Comments

First, a side note – I write this as I sit in a local independent bookstore (Free Wi-Fi!) with a Steamer on my right, a book and my iPod on my left.  Despite my husband’s many attempts to get me out of the house, it’s rare for me to spend even a few moments alone – and really, these days, I am never alone, there is always someone kicking me from the inside… Anyway, I am thoroughly enjoying my sugar-free Irish Creme Steamer, Joni Mitchell and even the uncomfortable chair (for the moment).

On to the cake… When asked what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday, Mike responded “Either a carrot cake or a bundt cake with pudding in the center.”  Now I grew up in the 80’s when bundt cakes with pudding centers could be easily made from a mix you could buy at any grocery store – but alas this is no longer the case.  Now, you’re on your own with this baking masterpiece, and I decided not shy away from the challenge, even though I awoke the morning of Mike’s birthday with a sore throat and some sniffles…

After hunting around on the internet I decided to go the route of making a cake batter, throwing half the batter in the pan, adding my own pudding, and then topping that with the rest of the cake batter.  Most of the recipes I found for the search terms “pudding bundt cake” were simply really moist cakes with no pudding center, so onward ho! to baking experimentation!

For the cake I decided to make my mother’s chocolate sourdough cake recipe, since I needed to use the sourdough anyway and it’s a wonderfully moist chocolate cake.  Sourdough, as I may have mentioned before, is like a refrigerator pet; it requires that you use it and “feed it” at least ten days, or you will ruin it.  I’ve let it go way past ten days and had it survive, but when I open my sourdough crock my punishment is a stinky mess with brownish liquid on the top – essentially the sourdough gets really bad gas…

So, early on the morning of Mike’s birthday, still in her sleepy suit, Anna helped me stir up the beginnings of the cake batter: sourdough start, water, powdered milk and flour.

Anna stirring sourdough

This mixture must sit and “ferment” for at least four hours – you know when it’s done when there are visible bubbles in the batter.

Later in the day I made the pudding portion of my project, planning on letting it sit in the refrigerator for 1/2 hour before I added it to the cake batter.  For the pudding recipe I used my tried and true “Double Chocolate Pudding” recipe from “Short and Sweet”, by Melanie Barnard.  I love this book by the way – I haven’t made a lot from it, only the pudding, the No-Bake Ginger Cheesecakes, Butter-Pecan Bread Pudding, and the Chocolate Hazelnut Truffles, but all of them have been good, take barely any time at all, needed very little tweaking, and have been made and re-made…

Melanie Barnard’s Double Chocolate Pudding

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa

3 Tablespoons cornstarch

1/4 tsp salt

2 cups light cream (after never finding light cream I have used either half-and-half or 1 cup of heavy cream and 1 cup of whole milk with great success)

3 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

In a medium saucepan, whisk together the sugar, cocoa, cornstarch and salt.  Gradually whisk in 1 cup of the cream until smooth, and then add in the remaining cream.  (Once I made the mistake of not reading the recipe and doing this over heat on the stove – DON’T DO THAT – bad pudding happens).  Once the mixture is well mixed put the pan over medium heat and cook, whisking constantly until the mixture thickens and comes to a boil.  Continue to whisk and boil for 1 minute.  (Now here’s the kicker – Barnard’s recipe says it should take “about 5 minutes” for the pudding to thicken and come to a boil.  I myself have not ever had mine thicken until at least 10 minutes have passed – so be patient.)

Remove the pan from the heat and add the chocolate and vanilla (there are no instructions after this, but I don’t stir it in – I just leave the chocolate and vanilla on the top).  Let stand for 5 minutes until the chocolate is melted, then stir gently until the pudding is smooth.  If you stir too much though, the pudding will thin.  Mine generally looks like this after I’ve stirred in the chocolate and vanilla:

Pudding

If you’re not throwing this in a cake the pudding can be easily divided into 6 small desert bowls and refrigerated.  It can be served in as little as 20 minutes, or kept for up to 8 hours before serving.  Honestly, I still have some in the fridge 4 days later and it’s still yummy!  I threw all but two small desert bowls worth into the fridge to use for the cake and then proceeded with the rest of sourdough cake.

Once the sourdough cake batter had bubbles in it I added baking soda, sugar, salt, cinnamon, eggs, vegetable oil and melted chocolate chunks to complete the batter.  I greased and then floured the bundt cake pan and poured most of the batter into the pan.  Then I put a “tunnel” of pudding in the batter, as shown here:

Cake with pudding

I then put the rest of the cake batter on top and put the cake in a 350 degree oven for 55 minutes. I couldn’t use the “clean toothpick” rule with the pudding, so instead I looked for the other sign that the cake was done, which is to look for the cake pulling away from the edge of pan.

After I had put what I thought would be enough pudding into the cake there was plenty left over, so I began pouring it into desert bowls.  Problem was, Anna was “helping” me with this process…  Instead of foolishly trying to get her away from the pudding, I put a little into one of her food bowls and gave her a spoon.  Here she is just starting to eat her share of pudding:

Clean Anna

Note how relatively clean the little cutie is at this point….

And now, for the “after” picture where Anna is, well, NOT clean…

Chocolaty Anna

So, what did I do with her in all her chocolate messiness? I still had to work on the cake and clean the kitchen, so off Anna went to one of her favorite play places:

In the sink

Ah, kitchen sink, you are my savior! I can pop the kid in the sink, get the kitchen cleaned and work on cake at the same time!

After the cake had cooled I made a ganache for the top of it.  Ganache is a lovely simple frosting that makes a shiny chocolate surface and tastes really good at the same time.  Simply put 3/4 cup heavy cream in a saucepan on medium and when it has just started to bubble take it off the heat, add 8 ounces of chocolate and stir until the chocolate is melted. The ganache will be beautifully smooth and shiny.  I just had to take a picture of the Ghiradelli chocolate I used to make the ganache – the gold wrapper reminds me of the “golden ticket” in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory…

Ganache chocolate

After letting the ganache cool briefly I poured it over the cake in what I hoped was an artistic manner that produced a pretty cake.  Here I am with the finished product saying a little “please let there be a nice pudding center” prayer before I cut into it:

Finished cake

Alas, the pudding had sunk to the bottom, or rather the top, of the bundt cake.  The cake was lovely, but the pudding was just under the top surface of the cake. With the ganache as frosting, the top of the cake became a sort of death by chocolate nightmare – but don’t worry – it’s still really good to eat.  Since I have been eating a piece of cake every day since Friday, I have a feeling that at tomorrow’s doctor appointment there will be no weight loss for me!

Another year, another birthday…

Friday, February 12th, 2010 | The Daily Special | 2 Comments

Today is Mike’s birthday.  Happy Birthday Mike! You are a wonderful husband, father, talented developer, loyal friend, wonderful photographer, dedicated athelete, and recently, an accomplished homebrewer.  I love you for many reasons, that you are kind, gentle, funny, smart, passionate, and constantly in a search for new things to learn.  Please know that your wife and daughter love you, admire you and are constantly both amused and amazed by you.  Pretty soon (very soon!) we will welcome our son into the world, and except for the troop of Greyhounds we have always planned on adopting, our family will be complete.  I look forward to many more happy years with you.  Happy Birthday!

Mike and Anna

The White Whale!

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 | The Daily Special | 2 Comments

Oh look, a beached white whale (however did it wrangle the cute kid?):

Preggo 31 weeks

So we all know I was overweight before I got pregnant, but it does really suck to go into the doctor’s office (which is now every two weeks) and get weighed.  Yesterday (when this picture was taken) I opted for contacts instead of my glasses in the tiniest hope that it would shave a few ounces off my weight gain.

But, heck, I had a bad week last week so I turned out to have lost weight instead of gained since my last appointment.  I’m supposed to be gaining weight now for the baby – at any other time in my life weight loss (@5 lbs) would have been just grand.

Pele does seem fine anyway and I am happy to report that there is one nice thing that resulted from all that vomiting I did last week.  At my last appointment the midwife was a little worried that Mr. Pele was still head up, banging his forehead on my rib cage, not where he needed to be in preparation for his impending birth.  But apparently if your mommy/host throws up for 5 hours straight you might become perturbed enough to flip yourself head down to get away from the direction of the chaos…  Let’s just hope he stays there so I don’t have to go out and find another stomach virus to catch.

We are now officially at 31 weeks now, with 9 more weeks to go.  I’m doubtful/praying that we have less than that, since Anna arrived at 37 weeks and if the kid makes it to 40 weeks I will be in the hospital for Anna’s birthday.  Double yuck.

On a lighter note, my midwife (whom I love – she was great for Anna’s birth) told a story that really freaked me out.  We discussed that the second time labor is likely to go faster than the labor with the first kid.  My labor was 18 hours last time, so I’m okay with shaving a few hours off that time anyway.  My midwife told me “my first labor was 12 hours and the second was 37 minutes.”

Hold on there! It takes me 30 minutes to get to the hospital!  Oh, that is just not good… Don’t worry though, I will not be naming my child, “CRV” or “Element” after the car in which he’s born.  That would just be tacky.  Perhaps we should rent a Lexus in a few weeks just in case – that sounds like a nice prep school rich kid name – instead of an “I was born in a car” name!