Mighty Salads! and a bit of re-entry burrs-in-butt

We got home around 10pm last night, after leaving Lake Charles just before 2. The children were, shall we say, rambunctious, and I have not, in a long while, been so glad to insert my ear plugs and call it a day as I was last night when everyone was tucked in.

Our trip home was wonderful, and I admit to crying on and off all day yesterday. I'm sure I was primed for tears not only because of a happy week in the sun with my parents but also because just before leaving for the airport, we all went to visit the graveyard in which Nanny is buried.

I miss her always, but rarely do I get to sit atop her grave, rearranging the pebbles into an obvious heart and talking with her. 

This morning I began the pleasurable task of sorting through a week's worth of mail. In it I found my new Maxine Waters "Shade" shirt, which delights me to no end, as well as two new books: Down and Out in Paris and London (Orwell) and 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do: A Memoir (Kim Stafford). 

Additionally, the new Food52 cookbook, Mighty Salads was just released, and I am very excited to have a recipe featured in it: my Farro and Golden Beet Salad with Chive-Sage Oil. 

The book has so many delicious dishes in it- salad for dinner without going hungry is the mantra. Woot!

Although some cooler temps remain in our forecast, today was beautiful, sunny and hovering around 60 degrees. I got a burr in my butt to not only plant everything Mom sent home with me (amaryllis and calla lily bulbs, indigo, lemon grass, and something that now escapes me) but also to remove two Nandina bushes that irritate me and whose absence would make room for something wonderful. I got it all done. So therapeutic and fun.

In the meantime, the boys, tired as all get out from the trip home yesterday, played and bickered, bickered and rested. This evening, after getting them to bed, I found this note from Ol to Jack. I'm going to be honest- it cracked me up. Just what I needed.

A) Jack kind of was an ass today. But so was Ol.

B) I love the "Dear" leading into the "you suck."

C) Who is Carrot?

Happy Mardi Gras

Tomorrow (or today, depending on when you're reading this) is Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday. As you may know, I make king cakes every year for the kids to bring into their classrooms. Often I'll go too, bringing beads, masks, and music, and sharing some of the history and tradition of Mardi Gras. I find the holiday to be such a fine way to keep my kids aware of and tethered to their Louisiana roots, for Mardi Gras isn't religious (although it has some religious roots) and it epitomizes joie de vivre and celebration, two characteristics of Louisianians that I have always adored.

As the kids have grown, a single king cake has ceased being enough to feed their classmates. This year I doubled the recipes and made two much larger cakes and then a third one to split between us, Jack's math teacher (a Louisiana native), and a few other special teachers and friends. Doing so added a great deal to the cook time, but I'm pretty confident no one will go hungry tomorrow. That said, I expect not a crumb to return home. And that is how it should be.

For the first time, I've added a plastic baby to each cake, comfortable that all the kids are old enough now not to freak out if they cut or bite into a naked infant. Louisiana folks take such knowledge for granted, but I have long wondered if a child who's unfamiliar with the king cake tradition might be traumatized with such a surprise in his or her cake. 

As I usually do, this year I used Southern Living's classic, unfilled king cake recipe. I also made their glaze but omitted the lemon juice as I find it terribly distracting and unwelcome on a cinnamon sugar treat. 

So here you have it, six hours later, much in the way of celebratory cake. Laissez les bons temps rouler!!

after the very successful rising (see top pics), I rolled out subdivided balls of dough, slathered with butter, and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.

king cakes that have risen and are ready for the oven

Post-Valentine's rose petal jam

Each year, my sweet T brings me red roses for Valentine's Day. As our years together have grown in number, so too has the size of the bouquet; somewhere around a decade, it went from 12 to 24 stems. 

I always feel a bit sad when the heads start to droop and the petals begin to brown and wither. Part of me wants to toss them at the first sign of decline, while at other times I'm prone toward resuscitative efforts or preservation. 

Five years ago, unwilling to part with my roses but unable to store more dried petals without starting to feel like Miss Havisham, I wondered what it would be like to make jelly with them. What resulted, after not a short and sweet process, was lovely. A transparent, cardinal red jewel with a distinctly herbal tang and elements of sweet and tart, thanks to the addition of sugar, apple, Meyer lemon, and red currants.

I'm a good jam maker, but jelly is tough. I don't like the taste of synthetic pectins but you need to add some in this case. I try to take a light hand with liquid pectin which has less of an aftertaste but often results in a jelly with inconsistent wobble. It's weird, but I'd rather my jelly be too loose than too stiff. I'd rather spoon than grate, you know?

It's been a long while since I've made rose petal jelly, but this year's bouquet was so beautiful, and our first V-day of ordering take-out and watching a movie in pjs so just-what-we-needed, that I decided to make some Love Letter Jelly (that sounds awfully X-rated in some respects; sorry, but jelly is more accurate than jam).

I doubled the recipe since I received 24 stems this year but came to find that I only had one envelope of liquid pectin. Alas, I now have loose jelly. But it still sings with the unique taste of rose, a taste that becomes really magical atop lemon curd and warm bread; that is my favorite way to eat this jelly. 

The process is a long, involved one, but I can manage that once every five years or so. 

rose petal trimmings; you want just the velvety red parts!

the red leaches from the petals into the water...

fading further

ethereal petals in rose red water

rose syrup