Reading | Delancey & A Homemade Life

I think my favorite new genre is the cookbook as memoir. I've been reading, simultaneously, Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life and Delancey. The other afternoon at the library, while picking up a book I'd put on reserve, I grabbed one of the cookbooks from the metal cart right next to the checkout desk, as has become my tradition. In weeks past, it was The Vegan Scoop and Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream at Home. This week it was Dinner: A Love Story. I haven't made anything from these cookbooks yet, but I've found myself wanting to spend more time in the kitchen. Rather than poring over Pinterest to find a new recipe, I've been using tried-and-true base recipes as jumping off points and getting creative.

I suspect I like these kinds of books for the same reasons I enjoy blogs (in fact, I'm reading Molly Wizenberg's books as a result of being a long-time reader of her blog, Orangette). They delve into the daily and the mundane in a way that makes it seem less humdrum and more of an art. In the way that Martha Stewart made meticulous planning seem necessary to entertain, this genre and its authors are stripping those airs away.

It's strange for me to read about people who come to cooking later in life. Growing up it felt like we were always cooking, always preparing for the next meal. Now that she's older, my mom is a fan of cooking all day so we can have food for the days that follow, but when we were younger, I remember her most clearly in front of the stove, all of us kids fluttering around her asking to help. So many of our pictures include my sister and I, elbows deep in flour and sugar, standing on our dining room chairs cutting out sugar cookies. One of our favorites is of me standing and staring in awe while my sister Bea operates the Easy Bake Oven, my NKOTB t-shirt reaching my knees. I'm grateful to be able to say that as far back as I can remember, there have always been home cooked meals, big messes, and piles of dishes.

These days, my mom and I spend the majority of our phone calls recounting our meals to one another, planning menus for my next visit home. These aren't fancy meals. Often, we're talking about how we buy bananas just so they can rot and we can make banana bread—the same recipe she's been making for us since I was a toddler. I bought two single slice packs of Spam on sale at Target the other day, and I can't wait to call and tell her about the musubi we plan to make with it. For Mother's Day, Bea and I went in on a charcoal grill and all the accoutrements so she could make her famous ribs and marinated chicken. She cried when they unveiled it to her.

When I read the first 20 or so pages of Dinner: A Love Story, I started to see these early days of Mike and me living together as I might 10 years from now—the start of tradition, of ritual. Our weekly meal planning and grocery trips, our monthly BJs hauls, our sporadic and often fruitless attempts at couponing, our little green card catalog on top of the fridge that holds our favorite recipes scribbled on index cards. These are the beginnings of what will be the backdrop of our family's daily lives; no matter where we live or work, these are the things we will always do, a sense of routine we can rely on no matter what life throws at us.

I'm so happy to see a celebration of the power of food. There have been a lot of books and documentaries about the harmful and destructive aspects of the food industry, and I think these stories—Molly's and otherwise—are a way to reclaim the nourishing and positive powers of gathering some friends, fresh ingredients, and eating.

Not Intent On Arriving's Writer Wednesday

Many months ago, I received a very sweet email from Kristin of Not Intent on Arriving, a blog about travel and daily life. That was some time in November, and she wanted to do an interview with me for her Writer Wednesday. Of course, I immediately said yes and after several weeks (months?) of it slipping my mind, I finally got back to her! In April, she posted the interview, and I'm just now seeing it because there are over 300 unread blog posts in my Bloglovin' (at what point should I just mark all as read and start over?) That said, you can see it here! Thanks again, Kristin!

Made | Breakfast ice cream

If you know anything about me, know this: ice cream is my favorite food. Unfortunately, in my journey to becoming healthier (i.e., eating more whole foods and less refined sugar), I've had to cut back significantly on my ice cream intake. Don't worry about me, though: I got an ice cream maker last month, so I've been perfecting my coconut milk ice cream recipe using natural sweeteners like honey or pure maple syrup. This is all very necessary science in the face of a rapidly approaching summer.

Summers before, I've survived on frozen grapes, popsicles, iced coffee, and ice cream. Two summers ago I bought my first popsicle molds and proceeded to experiment with freezing Greek yogurt with berries stuffed in it. "We can eat these for breakfast!" I exclaimed to my sweaty roommates.

With my new ice cream maker, I decided to take it one step further: breakfast ice cream. OK, so technically it's breakfast frozen yogurt, but you get the idea. Everything in this recipe—including the name—is aimed at the goal of getting myself out of bed and an air conditioned room to go to work this summer. Don't worry about Mike, he has summers off so he can hide out in our room all day long. But I'm going to need to more desperate measures.

Full disclosure: It's currently in the 60s outside, so this is all just preparation for a sweltering summer that part of me is hoping will come. If it doesn't, then I'll just eat this because it's delicious rather than to keep my insides from catching on fire. Enough chit chat. Let's get to it.

For a simple breakfast ice cream, you'll need Greek yogurt. If you like plain Greek yogurt, then go for it! I opted for Trader Joe's (delicious) honey Greek yogurt. Grab some cheese cloth, a fine strainer, and a bowl.

Dump all that yogurt-y goodness in there. Finally! A use for that cheesecloth I bought a lot of months ago!

You're probably thinking, Isn't Greek yogurt already strained within an inch of its life? Yes, but there's still a lot of liquid left in that inch, so to be safe, let's just exercise our patience and put our yogurt in a strainer in the fridge for a few hours. You know that mysterious clear liquid that appears at the top of your yogurt a few days after you open it? That's what we're getting rid of. The two pound container of yogurt I bought strained out about 2/3 cup of liquid in the fridge over the course of five hours. Less liquid = less icy breakfast ice cream. 

After your yogurt is strained, freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions. It will freeze just like any other ice cream batter, though maybe a little bit faster. Add any mix-ins you want in the last five minutes of freezing. I added peanut butter and granola to mine to complete the breakfast theme. I scooped the frozen yogurt back into its original container and froze it overnight to harden.

When it came time to eat it, I added slivered almonds and sliced bananas with a side of coffee. Add some fresh pineapple, cherries, banana, cacao nibs, and you have yourself a breakfast banana split! The possibilities are endless here, folks. 

Made | Baked churros

One of my favorite things that Massachusetts natives say is "pokey." In the south, my stepmom called it "dawdling" or "lollygagging," and it's one of those terms that lovingly teases the person it describes. I'm not usually a pokey person; in the mornings, I can get ready in less than half an hour—that includes showering, drying my hair, getting dressed, and making a smoothie. It's pretty impressive. But there's something about the weekends that makes me lose all of my ability to efficiently prepare to leave the house. Just ask Mike. 

The Saturday before Cinco de Mayo, Mike and I were planning to head to Western Mass to visit his parents and grandparents then head to Connecticut for a friend's Cinco de Mayo party. I had put off making some sort of dessert to bring to the party until the morning of, and even then, I lay in bed debating whether or not I would make something. After finding this recipe (via Studio DIY), I decided to go for it. 

I like churros as much as the next guy, but I hate frying things. Set aside all of the health concerns, I hate the little dots of sticky oil that gets all over the stove afterward. I hate the smell that lingers long after all of the fried foods have been eaten. I hate the yellowish color that the backsplash behind the stove takes on after a few too many sushi nights (we always make tempura). So this baked churros recipe seemed perfect. The simple choux batter came together quickly and in one pot before I dumped it in a pastry bag like this (I did not use this technique, but I definitely will next time!). 

As the recipe promises, they turn out a little soft and eggy without the broiling step (even covering them in cinnamon sugar didn't really help), but we were transporting these to another state, so I knew they'd just get soft again even after broiling. So I did what any self-respecting baker does when faced with a baked good that could be better: I drizzled chocolate over them. 

It made all the difference. And despite requiring a pastry bag and a double boiler, this recipe cooked up and cleaned up (while they were in the oven and then while the chocolate hardened in the freezer) fairly quickly. We managed to get on the road before we hoped we would be. No pokeys around here.

Made | Croissants!

Ever since I fell in love with baking, I've wanted to learn how to make a croissant. There's always been a reason I couldn't learn yet: I didn't have a stand mixer (turns out you don't need one at all); I didn't have bread flour; I didn't have the time. But like anything else, I just had to dive in and hope for the best. I've been really inspired by Janee's return to school—baking school—so this past weekend, I stopped putting it off and made my first successful batch of croissants.

The entire process takes about 20 hours, though luckily not all of that is hands on. Mike and I had plans to go see a movie on Saturday, but I talked him into getting a couple from Redbox instead so I could babysit my croissant dough. Dreams take sacrifice, right?

I used Julia Child's recipe (who else), as explained by Barbara Bakes. I recommend reading through the steps several times to get familiar with it. For instance, she links to this video in step 44, which told me that I had been folding the dough wrong the whole time. It turned out OK anyway, but it was a great reminder to be thorough in my prep next time.

The dough comes together really easily and almost immediately starts its first rise. I started it around 4 PM on Saturday, which put me through step 32 by midnight. Mike and I fell asleep on the couch and I had to set an alarm so I'd get up and do the last step before putting the dough in the fridge for the night. If you're not crazy for croissants, then this recipe might not be for you. By noon on Sunday, I had hot croissants fresh out of the oven.

It was definitely worth it, and I finally crossed something off my list of baking goals (that's a thing, right?), so I'd say it was a rainy weekend well spent.

Don't get me wrong, I had my share of problems while making these. On Sunday, after they'd been in the oven for 10 minutes (I kept peeking in to make sure I wasn't burning them), our smoke detector went off. We have one of those newer smoke detectors that don't just let off an ear-aching beep, they also speak to you: "Warning, fire." I'm always afraid our landlords (who live upstairs) will think I'm burning the place down, so I press the button until it finally shuts off. I must've pressed it one too many times because next thing I knew, the fire detector lady was saying, "Warning, carbon monoxide." Cue panic.

I'm one of those people who's scared by the labels on a can of spray paint (I once returned a can of spray chalk paint because of the explosion warnings on the bottle), so I threw open all the windows, turned a fan on, turned the oven off (and pulled the croissants out), then proceeded to sit on the back porch in my pajamas while reading the back of the smoke/carbon monoxide detector. After a little research and panicked texts to Mike, I realized that I had put the thing in test mode, and the carbon monoxide warning was a false alarm.

Luckily there were croissants waiting inside to comfort me.

 Look at those layers!

What have you been baking lately?

Around here | Spring edition.

Have I shown you how our camera wall has grown? I first wrote about it when I started this blog, and it was a humble six cameras. Since then, we've kept collecting vintage cameras and interesting frames, and every once in a while when Mike is feeling crafty, he adds to it. We've joked that one day it's going to extend onto the ceiling, but looking at these pictures, that joke may become a reality if we live here much longer.

When we first moved in together, I realized how much stuff Mike has. He's a big collector. The past seven months, he's been actively getting rid of things that he doesn't need or love, making room for the things that he does love. We also have a display wall of his View Masters, but I'll share that another time...

I'm going out for a coworker's birthday tonight, and I decided to give Joy the Baker's latest cookie recipe a try for the celebration. They're pretty incredible (but again, what with "double chocolate" in the title isn't?). 

We've been on a major Spring cleaning tear lately. Just beyond this photograph are bins and boxes that Mike's going to sell at a flea market and put into storage. Our apartment is a good size for us now, but we're making an effort to make it more spacious by parting with things that don't really fit this space. 

These little succulents have been threatening to die for a few months now, but ever since I moved them to the kitchen window and have backed off on watering them, they've slowly been looking better.

And this guy. He doesn't complain much until I forgot to water him for ohhhhh about a month. (What! And people want me to get a dog?!) But after two straight weeks of keeping him watered and in the shifting sunny spots around the house, he's starting to look more like himself again. 

Don't let the sunshine in these pictures fool you—we're back down to the 30s and 40s this week, but I'm thankful for at least some warmth when the wind isn't blowing.

Handlettering 365 | Checking in

It snowed last night. It rained all day and was forecast to rain all night, and this morning we woke up to a light dusting of snow on all the cars. I think I know what theme my hand lettering will take on tonight (hint: spring). I mean, the saying isn't, "April snow showers bring May flowers."

I've been doing just okay with my #handlettering365 project, and I'm here to report on that progress. I don't know if I'm just fooling myself, but I've been embracing how not perfect I am at this. I've never lied and said I was a perfectionist (just ask my boss), but there is something freeing in not holding myself to the standard of artists I admire, instead letting myself make mistakes, learn from them, make them again in a slightly different way, and continue learning. That's all we can do, really.

I posted this first one on Instagram and a friend commented, "Who's Muchelle?" So, you know, lesson learned regarding embellishments.