Perfectly Disgraceful

Thanksgiving cookies

 

I think it's our new family tradition, spending the day before Thanksgiving baking and icing cut-out cookies. Please note the gay pride turkey in the lower left corner made by our friend Terri. Please also note the bottle of Rowhouse Red in the upper left corner. Beer makes everything, especially cookies, better.

We used my mother's cookie recipe. We made these cookies every Christmas, and many other holidays, throughout my childhood. My mother still makes cut-out cookies with my kids, although, horrors, she now uses a mix, but it was always from scratch when I was a kid. Bowing to tradition, and Rex's baking philosophy, I make them from scratch, but with a few tweaks to the recipe. The original calls for shortening, which is full of trans fats, tasty tasty trans fats. I figured butter has got to be at least as good, if not better, but I can't get the proportions right with butter. I'm thinking of trying canola oil, but I can't imagine it will match my idealized cookies of yore.

Summer Table

For those of you who are sick of the dress dilemma (though really, why would you be?) I present a view of what dinner is like most summer evenings in the Disgraceful house. Nothing on this table requires the use of our oven or stove. Note the glasses with ice in them; they are full of ghetto sangria.  More on that later.

More Pie

My pie-making friend of Robot Pie fame has been at it again.  This time she had a much more organic inspiration.  The raw pie:

The cooked pie:

The inspiration:

Yes, those are corpuscles. Which are a little icky, but hey, it's strawberry pie, how can you say no?

Elmo cake

Rex made this for the younger child's second birthday (which was last year).  It's angel food, from scratch.  Rex is a devotee of beating eggs; we have a large copper bowl solely for that purpose. Years ago the older child decided that angel food cakes are the traditional birthday cake of the Disgraceful children; hers are always iced in a delicate pastel color.  But the younger child wanted Elmo.  So angel food Elmo it was.  The eyes and nose?  Are iced mini-muffins from the Mexican bodega around the corner.

(Notice the semicolons in this post?  I just read this and now I have semicolon anxiety.)

Scapes

Yeah, so I got all excited about scapes.  I read this article in the NYT, and then I read this on Food Boom.  Then the first stall on the left at the Headhouse Market (you know, the one with the cute couple who got married last summer) had a big ole pile of scapes last week.  I bought some.  We sauteed them in olive oil and they were kind of eh.  A little too chewy.  But they were gorgeous.  Perhaps next time they'll just be decorative.

Pie

Inspired by this rustic strawberry tart, that I originally saw on Design Crush in her Daily Eat, I made these tarts with my own personal hands, and a bit of help from the children, for Rex for Father's Day.  Blueberry is his favorite, but I liked the cherry the best.

I had forgotten all about this rare baking effort on my part until I saw pictures of my good friend's much more impressive Robot Pie:

Robots, and anything involving precision, are way beyond me.  But I will make the rustic tarts again, only next time I will add more sugar (they were tart) and be a little more aggressive in crimping the edges together.

I never promised you a food blog

When I contemplated having a blog, I was concerned I would end up with a mommy blog (not that there's anything wrong with that) full of cute stories about the younger child.  Perhaps the younger child is going through a non-cute phase, or, more likely, I am a glutton at heart, but every post I consider lately has to do with food.

When reading reviews of the below-mentioned Osteria, I came across a glowing description of a pasta dish that involved fresh fava beans, fresh mint and lots of pecorino. Still craving their pasta last night, I thought maybe I could throw together a decent approximation.  What was on hand in our still vacation-denuded kitchen?  Not much.  Half a bag of pappardelle noodles, a can of white beans, a little grana padano, but there was fresh mint in the backyard, though I had forgotten how much I harvested for beach mojitos.  I sauteed the white beans with a bit of garlic in some olive oil, threw in the hot noodles, added s&p and a little hot pepper, then took it off the heat and added the mint leaves and grated cheese.  It was...okay.  I want to try something similar with more mint, only chopped next time.  And definitely pecorino.  And fresh pasta.  I did like the white beans, though.

Next up in food blogging, a visit to Tria after a block party that involved me going down a water slide in a crinoline skirt.