February 27, 2017

Happy Mardi Gras

February 27, 2017/ Em-i-lis

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

February 25, 2017

In the news and why we MUST resist

February 25, 2017/ Em-i-lis

I am not feeling hopeful about America right now, and frankly, I don't think you should be either. The news from the Evil Yam's dictatorly abode is getting worse and worse. Some recent developments:

Assaults on the media and freedom of the press:
CNN, The New York Times, The LA Times, and Politico, among others, were blocked from the White House press meeting. BLOCKED. This is unprecedented behavior from an American presidential administration. Indeed, just this past December (yes, the one just three months ago), Sean Spicer, WH Press Secretary said, "open access for the media is 'what makes a democracy a democracy versus a dictatorship.'" It seems the latter shoe is starting to fit quite comfortably.
-Meanwhile, a Chicago affiliate of ABC suspended an anchor for tweeting several anti-Trump sentiments. Speech seems to be becoming less free, eh?

Hate crimes and bigotry:
On Friday, two Indian-American men were shot, one of them killed, in Kansas by a white American who had been kicked out of the bar in which they all relaxed for such egregious racial slurs that other patrons complained. After leaving, he returned and fired on the men. It is being investigated as a premeditated hate crime. You think? Trump has made no statement about this event.
You probably also saw the horrific vandalization of a Jewish cemetery, Chesed Shel Emeth, in St. Louis, MO. Trump only made a statement denouncing this heinous act when asked directly about it by a journalist.
Trump is also still working on instating a travel ban despite not one reliable news or security source suggesting that such a ban is reasonable or is called for in any way. Homeland Security issued the article I link to.
Hate is becoming policy.

The roundups and threats of and actual deportations continue. Interestingly and concurrently, Trump rescinded "an Obama admin directive that would have ended the government's association with private prisons." As do many who have studied the systemically racist, enormously overpopulated, failing criminal justice system, Obama believed private prisons were "neither safe nor cost effective." But with Trump's deportation plans "comes the possibility of millions of illegal immigrants who will need to be detained somewhere" prior to their ouster. And it turns out according to USA TODAY, the private prison industry has already said thank you to Donald Trump.

After tweeting a promise to the LGBTQ community in June of 2016 to fight for them and their rights, Trump last week, with the support of newly installed Attorney General Jeff Sessions, rescinded an Obama directive aimed at protecting LGBTQ students in schools by tossing the decision to do so back to the states. As do I, many LGBTQ advocates believe desperately that federal protections are critically important to supersede the possible (likely; see North Carolina, for example) bigotry of state governments.

Who's really running the show?:
Scary white supremacist WH Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon, emerged from the shadows of evil last week to deliver a forceful speech on plans to "deconstruct the administrative state" and "upend the world order." This included massive, sustained attacks on the media (see point 1, above). “Every day, it is going to be a fight.” Bannon remains on the National Security Council, also unprecedented.

Trump's lies:
On February 21, Washington Post reporter, Chris Cilizza, published a well-documented piece showing that not once for the 33 days since his inauguration has Trump gone a day without lying. Some days those lies number one or two while other days the fib tally climbs to 7 or more.

Russia:
And meanwhile, Trump's (and his team's) relationships and involvement with Russia prior to the election and since remains exceptionally murky and unknown. Now, the Trump administration "has enlisted senior members of the intelligence community and Congress in efforts to counter news stories about Trump associates’ ties to Russia, a politically charged issue that has been under investigation by the FBI as well as lawmakers now defending the White House."

February 24, 2017

Post-Valentine's rose petal jam

February 24, 2017/ Em-i-lis

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.