But now, thanks to an accident while on vacation, I’m being forced to rest, stay off my feet, and go very slowly. I’m able to work, but even that is much slower than usual.

I broke my right 5th metatarsal and it required surgery.

I’m hoping to find the head space to do some writing while I’m recuperating, but not while I’m still needing large amounts of painkillers.

C’est la vie.

- Happens here and there.

Cooking, not writing, but taking notes.  Busy being busy, stay tuned, the search for balance continues….

Every now and then even the most experienced cooks and bakers fail.

This was one of those times.

“What the hell is THAT!?” you say…
That was a cheesecake failure, and while there was no dessert that day, the occasional failure keeps me humble.  This cheesecake has been dubbed “The Turd Cheesecake”  it wasn’t supposed to come out like that, I assure you.  So what happened?  Well, I was experimenting with flavors, and wanted to make a passion fruit cheesecake with some blackcurrant swirls, for the base I was going to use Stella D’oro ‘Margarite’ cookies, but the store was out of them, in their place I opted for some lady fingers that I’d not used before, these ones had a fine sugar coating on them, and that’s what caused the problem.  During baking the cookies should have absorbed some of the batter and made a nice base, not too hard, not too soft.  The sugar coating prevented that absorption, and during the course of baking they floated to the top, where they caramelized, thus giving us the look of floating turds on top of a cheesecake.    I learned to a) not use strange cookies and go to another store. b) sugar coated cookies don’t work.

There you have it, the epic baking fail.

Absentia, Memoria, Florida Part Two: Memoria/Birthday

I’m going to start by saying very few people knew it was my birthday, and I kinda wanted it to stay that way, but word got out.  When you have the same birthday as the Guru you get overshadowed, and that’s okay. Add memorial service for the Guru, on the mutual birthday and I wasn’t expecting anyone to have anything else on their minds, but people went out of their way to make sure my birthday was noted with some happiness, and while I generally prefer not getting public attention, it made the day easier for me emotionally.  I was actually doing really well until I met up with Kristen (aka LA Laxsmi); we hugged and I lost it entirely.  A good decade of emotion came over me and I was a blubbering mess.

Then there was the memorial…

I could….

•  talk about the 700-900 people who came from all over to be there
•  type out the list of people who spoke
•  try to convey some of what they said about Ma Jaya
•  tell you it was beautiful and gorgeous and everything she would have wanted
•  talk about how beautiful the kirtan wallas were, or the featured singers who sang so beautifully for their Ma.

I can never convey what it meant to actually be there with so many people I love, celebrating the life of a woman who changed every one of our lives and thousands of others.  So I’m not going to try.  It was beautiful and deeply moving and we all walked away in tears with a renewed commitment to carrying on her works.

At the end of the ceremony her ashes were poured into the pond, the Ganga.  Kashi Ashram’s place where our dead our placed and mourned and celebrated.  The next morning, many of us went swimming in that pond, life goes on….

As there are more and more nut allergies (or perceived to be) these days, I decided to play with a classic peanut butter cookie recipe and swap the peanut for sunflower, and then add a little something in the form of ground cranberries.  They add a subtle note to the cookie.  The recipe requires a food processor to grind the cranberries with the flour, if you don’t have a food processor, you could use chopped or whole cranberries, they just won’t be as subtle.

Sunflower Butter Cookies with Cranberries

Time: 2 hours 40 minutes, (40 Active)         Yield Approx. 8 dozen (96)

1 1/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour (AP is okay)
1 1/4 cup  unbleached pastry flour (AP is okay)
8 ounces dried cranberries
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
8 ounces (2 sticks) of butter, softened
1 cup sugar (cane, palm, or raw)
1 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1 cup creamy sunflower butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup sunflower seeds

Method:
Place the flours and cranberries in a food processor and process for about 2 minutes, until the cranberries are in very small pieces and the flour resembles a pink crumble. Add the salt, baking powder  and soda, then pulse a few times to combine, set aside.

Cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy, add the sunflower butter, vanilla, and beaten eggs and mix until fully incorporated.  Add flour mixture and mix until combined.  Cover with plastic film and chill for at least 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 375F  Line half sheet pans with parchment paper or a silpat. Roll pieces of cookie dough into 1 inch balls (or thereabouts) dip into sunflower seeds and place on sheet pan, when you have a pan done use a fork to flatten them, a bit.  Bake for 8-10 minutes until set and light to medium brown.

Slide parchment onto a cookie rack and allow to cool completely to set. (They’re awesome while warm, but soft and often fall apart).

Note: If you’re baking the cookies in batches keep the dough chilled in-between.

Starting with silliness and at the end of the story, my flight home departs from Orlando, thanks to my friend’s elite status I got priority boarding which meant having time to sit and watch everyone else board, and I’ve realized that there is a whole subset of the “Bear” community, that are seriously into Disney if they don’t already have a name I’m proposing we call them “Disney Bears” older, fat, hairy, gay dudes into Disney, hardcore.  It’s as bizarre looking as it sounds. The Disney Bear, it’s a strange, (gay) thing.

So, now that we’ve dispensed with some silliness let’s get down to what this post is all about, which is a whole lot of me and not much in the way of food.

Absentia, Memoria, Florida Part One: Absentia/Vacation

Things got quiet here, suddenly. I got busy in the run up to an unexpected trip and also had to cut back on recipe research/development to have the funds to pull it off.  In order to take the time off for the trip I also ended up doing all the cooking for the time I was missing at the school, I was running around a lot and not getting any writing done.

As I’ve previously shared, my teacher, Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati passed away from pancreatic cancer last month; it’s been an incredibly painful time for all of her students, chelas, swamis, and most of all her family.  Thanks to the kindness and generosity of a friend who gave me a plane ticket, I was able to be there for Ma Jaya’s memorial service which was held on her birthday, May 26th. Coincidentally, yes, that is indeed — also my birthday.^{1, 2}

With that, and a day on either side of the memorial, I treated most of my free time like a vacation, spent a couple hours in a hammock along the Indian River reading “The End of Marking Time” treated myself to good food and eating out, not at expensive places, but higher than I can usually afford, which isn’t much.  I wandered around a bit, walking as much as I could, which due to the heat and humidity wasn’t near my usual sightseeing walks, but I saw some lovely sites along the Indian River Lagoon, mostly I saw things from car windows or while wandering the 80 acres of Kashi Ashram, more on that later.

The day after the memorial I spent with friends from Los Angeles, that were also there for the memorial and reconnected with a lot of people, it was absolutely a good birthday vacation, even the memorial on the birthday…

To Be Continued.
<sub>1: It’s considered a gift to have the same birthday as your Guru.
2. And yes, it’s weird and hard to explain an atheist with a guru, the world is strange, get used to it.</sub>

(Yes I know the post title is complete nonsense and ‘faux latin’)

So I made these fabulous gluten-free cheese shortbread crackers to write about today and I’ve misplaced my notes on the procedure, so I have to go make them again before I can share it.  (Or find my notes).

C

This is the bread that the kids (and adults) at school love the most. It’s dense and moist with a seriously crunchy crust. The recipe makes two family sized loaves of bread. Goes great with a soup or stew, or spread with sunflower butter and jam, or just a smear of butter and a sprinkle of salt.

Multi-grain Cranberry Sunflower Bread with Flax

Time: 2 days, about 1 hour active.  Yield: 2 family sized loaves

Ingredients:
3 1/4 Cups warm water divided
1 Tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons dry active yeast (not ‘fast acting’), Divided
1 Tablespoon salt
1 Tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon maple syrup, divided (you can sub honey, or the sugar of your choice but do not leave out, it feeds the yeast)
1 Cup whole rolled oats
1 Cup oat flour
1 Cup flax meal (ground flax seed)
1/2 Cup rice flour (white or brown, but not sweet)
1/2 Cup corn flour
1 1/2 Tablespoons buttermilk powder
1 1/2 teaspoons flaked dulse (a type of seaweed)
3 Eggs
5 Cups whole wheat flour pastry flour, divided
8 Ounces sweetened dried cranberries
3 cups unbleached pastry flour, divided
Cornmeal, enough to sprinkle on baking sheet)
1 mug (12oz) ice cold water (for making steam)

Day One:
In the bowl of a stand mixer combine 3 cups of water, 1 tablespoon of yeast, and the salt, stir once, set aside for 10 minutes for the yeast to proof, meanwhile in a separate bowl combine the oats, oat flour, flax meal, rice flour, corn flour, buttermilk powder, and flaked dulse. Whisk well to combine.  When the yeast has proofed add the dry ingredients to the yeast and mix well.  Cover with a towel and leave out at room temperature overnight.

Day Two:
Preheat the oven to 375F

Uncover the bread dough, stir it a few times.  Combine the 1/4 cup of warm water with the remaining 2 teaspoons of yeast and the remaining maple syrup, mix well and add to the bread dough.   In a food processor put 2 cups of the whole wheat flour and all of the cranberries. Process for 1-2 minute until all the cranberries are in very small pieces, add the sunflower seeds to the food processor and pulse a few more times to break the seeds up.

Add the flour/cranberry/sunflower mix to the bread dough along with the remaining 3 cups of whole wheat flour, and start the mixer on the lowest setting when the flour has been incorporated add two cups of the white flour, knead in the mixer for 5-7 minutes.  If the bread dough looks to wet slowly add the remaining cup of flour until the dough looks like you can handle it.

Remove the bowl from the mixer and place in a warm location for 45-60 minutes to rise. I sit mine on top of the stove in the back where it can get warmth from the oven.

After the dough has rested and risen, spread a little flour on your work surface, take the dough and knead it by hand for a minute or two, get a feel for it, if it needs a bit more flour add some by dusting it over the dough and kneading.  When it feels more smooth and elastic than sticky-stretchy, it’s ready.  Split the dough in two (I weigh mine and split it evenly), shape each into a batard (flat (American) football shaped).

Sprinkle the cornmeal onto two baking sheets place the loaves on the sheets, then score the dough with a sharp knife in a diamond pattern and allow to rise in a warm place for 45 minutes.

The bread will double in size but not in height, after the 45 minutes place them in the oven on separate shelves, close the oven door quickly to not lose heat.  Now, take the mug of ice cold water and working quickly but very carefully, open the oven door aim for the middle to rear of the floor of your oven and throw the water onto it and shut the door.  This will create a big blast of steam in the oven which will make the crust of the bread nice and crunchy.  DO NOT DO THIS IF YOU HAVE AN ELECTRIC OVEN where the element is exposed just above the oven floor. For electric ovens, or if you’re not comfortable throwing water into a hot oven, you can use ice cubes instead.  Use a dozen or so ice cubes and toss them onto the bottom of the oven.

Bake for 25-35 minutes until done. You can use a thermometer and pull the bread out when it’s between 180-190F in the middle, or you can take it out and thump the bottom to test for doneness.   If you have a convection option in your oven, turn the fan on towards the end to increase browning.

Allow bread to cool for at least a half hour before cutting it open, your patience will be rewarded.

Enjoy!

These are damn tasty crackers! Crunchy, flavorful, healthy and awesome!  I’d been wanting to experiment with crackers for the kids at school, but wanted them to be really healthy, I remembered a recipe we made in culinary school for some “Oatmeal Dulse Crackers” I used that as a jumping off point and adapted it to be gluten free, multi-grain, and changed the flavors to be kid friendly.  It worked, the kids love these crackers!

Gluten Free, Seeded, Multigrain Crackers with Dulse

Time: 45 minutes (20 active) Yield: 88 crackers (one, half sheet pan)

Ingredients:

Spice Mix (You can make your own mix, just make sure you end up with a bit more than 2 tablespoons total)
1 tablespoon dried rosebuds (whole)
2 teaspoons lavender buds
2 teaspoons flaked dulse (type of seaweed)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon sweet paprika (smoked is fine)
2 points of star anise (break two points with seeds off a whole star anise)

Dough
2 cups gluten free rolled oats
1 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup corn flour
1/4 cup poppy seeds
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/2 teaspoon salt (fine)
6 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
5 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons cold water
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons honey
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon maple syrup (real maple, grade b)
Kosher salt enough to sprinkle over crackers

Preheat oven to 325F

Place all the ingredients for the spice mix into a grinder and grind everything finely,and set aside.  (The dulse tends to not grind too much don’t worry about it.)
Toast the oats in 3 batches: get a large frying pan (NOT non-stick) screaming hot add 1/3 of the oats to the pan and stir continuously until the oats darken slightly and smell of toasty oatmeal, move the oats to a plate to cool and repeat with the rest.  Do this with the sunflower seeds as well.  Allow them to cool completely, meanwhile combine the flours, salt, spice mix, poppy and sesame seeds in a mixing bowl.   When the oats have cooled off, place them in the food processor and grind them finely, add the oats too the mixing bowl, then grind the sunflower seeds in the food processor as well, after they’ve been ground fine, add them to the mixing bowl with the rest.. Add the olive oil, water, honey and maple syrup to the mixing bowl and mix with until a clumpy dough forms.

Here’s what the Oats, Sunflower seeds, and Dough should look like:

Cut a piece of parchment paper the size of your sheet pan (roughly 13×18) transfer the dough to the parchment paper and press it together into a solid disk, then begin rolling it out, you want it to be about an 1/8 to 3/16th of a inch thick, trim the edges and use and scrap to fill in any cracks you get. Carefully move the dough and parchment into the sheet pan, and fix any cracks. This dough doesn’t have any gluten holding it together so it can be a bit crumbly, that’s fine, it will bake solidly and firmly.  Using a ruler to guide you score the dough into squares. I just used the width of the ruler to cut evenly sized strips without needing to measure exactly.  Sprinkle with kosher salt, and gently press the salt into the dough.

Here’s what you want the dough to to look like from rolled out, fit to pan, scored, and baked:

Bake at 325F for 20-25 minutes, until crackers are golden brown, the edges will bake a bit faster and be darker than the middle that’s okay, just be careful not to burn them.  When done allow to cool in pan for a couple of minutes then gently move the crackers on the parchment to a cooling rack.  The crackers will be a little soft until they cool completely and set.

Enjoy!

For years I’ve used the “Julia Child Method” for making hard boiled eggs, and while it works most of the time, the times it fails and I end up with those heinous green rings, gritty texture and sulfurous odors, tended to be the times when I was trying to impress, and presentation matters.

Recently I’ve started making hard boiled eggs more often, the kids at school love them for a snack, but they really dislike it when you get the above mentioned results. So I’ve been thinking about them more and experimenting and have come to what I think is a perfect result.  No smells, No rings, and creamy, just set yolks.  The whites are tender and smooth, not the least bit rubbery, dense or chewy.  Best of all, it’s dead easy and significantly faster.

Gently place your eggs in a heavy bottomed pot, fill with cold water, just enough to completely cover your eggs, place on the stove and bring to a boil  Boil for exactly 6 minutes, remove pot from stove and place in sink, fill the pot with cold water,  dump the water and fill again, repeat until the eggs are no longer heating the water and it remains cool.

Enjoy!

(If you’re wondering why the eggs pictured above are sliced but not peeled, it’s for the kids at school; peeling the eggs themselves builds fine motor skills but the kids will usually only eat half an egg each.