her able hands

One of the most magical things about blogging all these years is the amazing people who have come into my life. People I would have not had the opportunity to meet otherwise because they live in other regions of the country and the world. I’ve also made connections with some remarkable folks who live just about right in my own back yard, but just far enough away and traveling in a different enough circle that we likely would not have crossed paths.

Jennifer, The Baklava Queen is one such almost neighbor, and I’ve enjoyed some lovely email exchanges with her about blog posts, local grain mills, baking and gardening. I’m so happy she took time to write a post on her own blog as a contribution to the Able Hands Photo Project.

“…the philosophy behind the project (at least for me) has a connection to how I approach cooking and preserving food and sharing it with others. Work has so often become a nasty four-letter word for many of us, but there is so much that we do with our hands to make life easier for others or to create beauty or simply to do what we each feel is needful in our own lives. Work can and should be a joy and full of meaning, and that’s what I try to practice in my kitchen as well in other aspects of my life.”

I love this. Check out her link in the quote, which is to another of her posts about the time it takes to make and eat local foods and fresh meals daily. Reading that has me thinking about my role as the keeper of the kitchen and how that has changed for me over the years from one of exclusion to inclusion. I used to hate having anyone in the kitchen with me. I couldn’t think straight or focus on my work, so I would shoo everyone out to play while I worked. But then I would get so spiteful and annoyed at the lack of help and at the sound and sight of the rest of my people off having fun while I toiled away in the kitchen.

Gawd, I was so bitter all the time. I still get that way sometimes, because everyone else has something just as pressing to do as getting food on the table. I sometimes resent the fact that I’m the only one who does any planning for meals — something that has to happen daily, and can get a little boring and uninspired. And sometimes, I just don’t feel like it. Sometimes I’d so much rather sit and read blogs or a good book. But those are pizza nights.

I have learned that if anyone’s hanging around in the kitchen while I cook, they’re fair game, but I’m struggling with the dichotomy between my two kids and the way they regard work. Lila is happiest if she’s given a task to help with and gets so frustrated if we forget to include her in our work unless she’s off playing with a friend. If there are mushrooms to chop for dinner, she’s my girl working the paring knife with precision. If Ty’s the only one around? It’s hardly worth the heavy sighs and leaking air. Ty is a teenager and I don’t know if I need say anything else about that. But I see other teenagers with much stronger work ethics and I wonder if I dropped the ball somewhere along the line with him. I think I did. I think we all did, the grown ups in his life. I think we have all handed much too much to him. While we don’t do that anymore, we missed the opportunity big time during his formative years.

I think when he was Lila’s age, I made every effort to distract him with play or entertainment so I could get my work done quickly, efficiently and without having more mess to clean up in the end. I didn’t know how to deal with “mistakes” he might have made. I wanted things to be as close to perfect as possible. I’m pretty sure that the subtext my lovely young man has absorbed is “why bother? It’ll never be good enough anyway.”

If he saw me working, it was seldom joyfully. More than likely he picked up my frustration and my hurriedness. I know we’re supposed to improve with age, maturity and experience, and I have. I have much more patience this time around (not perfect, but greatly improved). These two kids have very different temperaments and proclivities. But they also have had two very different mothers, and obviously two very different fathers.

I try now with Tyler to talk about my work in a meaningful way, as if chasing behind the damage done, trying to gently, inconspicuously show him how good work can be. How important it is to balance the work and play, to not allow the need for entertainment to take us away from caring for and shaping our homes and our world into a better place. I tell him why I cook the way I do, why I grow food and preserve it, why I write. Why I clean the bathrooms and mop the kitchen floor every now and again (so our feet don’t stick to it and hold us in place so we can be devoured by the ants attracted to the sticky film from the constant cupcake baking frenzy). But it’s difficult and I worry he’s not getting it, or that he’s getting it much too late so that it’s just words bouncing off and him seeing me do my thing and he’s thinking, well good, so let her work. I’m going back to my game.

But I keep at it. Remind him to do his chores. Invite him to help me with projects. There’s always work to be done and opportunity to talk about it.

So how do you think about the work you do?

- - - - -

If you’re on flickr, I hope join the Able Hands Photo Project Pool and share your photos of hands at work, rest and play.

Bookmark It

I have no idea why I have been forking over between $5 and $7 for organic, too-sweet, too-many ingredient bags and boxes of granola for so many years—granola that tastes, in a word, meh. I guess I didn’t realize how easy it is to make the perfect blend of just exactly what my family’s palate desires in a granola, which is oats, honey, flax seeds and some kind of ground nuts. We don’t like the dried fruit, big nuts scene, or the giant globs of crunchy, sugar-crusted grains that too closely resemble dried turds for my taste.

Maybe it just seemed like such a fussy DIY thing to do when I have so many other things that I have to try to squeeze into so few hours at home. Maybe it was just laziness? Well, I don’t think I’ll be buying pre-made granola ever again. My homemade is the best tasting topping for yogurt I have ever eaten. Ever.

Oat and Honey Granola

5 cups rolled oats
1 cup almond or walnut or pecan meal
1 cup lightly ground flax seed
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup maple syrup

Preheat oven to 275º

Mix all dry ingredients together in a large bowl.
Mix wet ingredients together and pour over dry ingredients. Mix well to coat all of the oats. Pour into two greased 13 x 9 glass baking dishes. Bake until golden, for about an hour and a half, stirring the oats every 20 minutes or so.

Chris asked if it was okay for him to eat some in the mornings, he knew I was so excited about the flavor and thought maybe it was all just for me. Yes. I get like that sometimes. Usually with things nobody else likes anyway, like my pickled turnips. But sometimes it’s more serious, like when I have a bar of Dagoba chocolate with chili flakes. Yeah, that’s a back-off everybody situation. I’ve been known to slap hands reaching towards my Dagoba chocolate.

But I’ll share the granola because there’s nothing that makes me happier than hearing the contented chewing sounds and yummy groans coming from my people when they’re eating something I have made with these two hands.

Lila has asked for “yogurt cereal” just about every day since I made it last week, and I’m probably eating too much of it. That lightly sweet, toasted nutty flavor with the chewy crunch, well, you’re just going to have to take my word for it that it’s the best thing for breakfast and makes one hell of an afternoon snack. Or even better, try it for yourself.

Bookmark It

More cupcake awesomeness happening over here.

I wanted to do something yummy for St. Patrick’s day to bring to work. Corned Beef and Cabbage? Not cubicle friendly by any stretch of the gastroimagination. Beer might help, but is probably not allowed. Sweets are always appreciated. Then I saw this post and knew I had to try stout and chocolate together.

Oh, my.

Oh my, oh my, oh my.

I used this recipe from Dave Lieberman with Droste chocolate and a Guinness stout. The cake came out so spongy and moist (a tiny bit chewy due to about one minute of over mixing) with perfect little puffy domes.

I didn’t follow his recipe for Cream Cheese Frosting exactly. I prefer it with equal parts butter and cream cheese. It’s an incredibly wet frosting, the butter and cheese creamed until fluffy and then whipping cream added and beat until frothy. Then you add your sugar and vanilla. I used vanilla bean paste and too bloody much cream, so had to use more sugar than I wanted to in order to get it to some kind of spreading consistency. I piped it on with a giant round tip and then dusted them with cocoa.

I’m thinking I’ll just go ahead and put them out at breakfast tomorrow, because otherwise I’ll be eating them all day. I had one tonight after supper and I think I’m in love. The frosting is so soft and creamy, with a mild sour, but sweet vanilla intensity and just the perfect texture to go along with the dense, moist cake that’s almost black. The frosting looks like the foamy head on the top of a glass of Guinness.

Bottom’s Up!

Bookmark It

It took a few days longer than I expected to announce my new project, but did you know that it’s really hard to take a picture of your own hand in action? Especially when you don’t know how to use the timer function on your camera (or if there even is one)? Really hard. I used the beautiful new-to-me tripod that Chris brought home from his mother’s house. Apparently his father’s father had quite a photography equipment collecting habit. Alas, no Nikkor lenses. Boo. But a 50 year-old, in perfect condition tripod in its original box. Actually, it looks as if it has never been used. Well, needless to say, I gummed up the works with flour last weekend.

Have I mentioned how much I love kneading bread dough? My dear friend Lorin taught me how to bake bread, way back in 1995, I think. She suggested I start with The Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown, and I made starter from a helping of her sourdough mother and got busy one afternoon while Tyler roared around the kitchen pretending to be a dinosaur.

When I reported back to her, I mentioned that I loved the whole experience, and that the bread came out almost as good as hers, but that the instructions for kneading just felt so cumbersome. To fold the dough, roll with two hands, turn, fold, roll with two hands, just felt forced and unnatural. She laughed and said she agreed, and that she just did it the same way she kneads her clay (she’s an amazingly gifted potter) with one hand on the dough at all times, and the other hand cupped around the edge to help guide and turn it in little eighth turns.

Now, I didn’t get that lovely two-handed shot because as I said, no clue if I can or how to use the timer on the camera, so the turning and guiding hand was busy reaching back to press the shutter.

So the next week, I tried her method and it was bliss. I overworked the dough because the motion was so bloody therapeutic. Because I wasn’t thinking, oh wait…I’m supposed to turn and then fold…wait…did I roll before I turned…my whole body sank into the motion and I lost myself in the rhythm. But that was 13 years ago and my body hurts more now, so I sometimes employ the dough hook on the Kitchen Aid for the first five minutes, and then finish the kneading by hand. Arthritis runs in the female line of my family, and while I haven’t suffered with it in a major way, my hands, elbows and shoulders hurt quite a lot after physical work.

And, you know, I’m aging. I don’t notice it very often, but looking at a photo of my hand brings it all, please forgive me, into sharp focus. I’m not 25 anymore, am I? But then, I can do so much more with these hands for having had those 15 years pass through them. Time brings such perspective. Many moons ago, an exquisitely dashing young man held my hands in his and swore they were the softest things he had ever touched. I suspect he would revise that statement now that he’s had a child, because we know there’s nothing softer on this earth than the skin at the nape of a newborn baby’s neck.

And all of this to say that I hope you’ll participate in The Able Hands Photo Project.

Send me a photo of a hand or hands, at work, at rest or at play. Your own or someone else’s. Include a few sentences of description. Say anything, I don’t want to influence the shape of the story, I want to hear it. What do you do with your hands?

Photos should be no larger than 500 pixels wide. I’ll assemble them all on their own page as thumbnails with a slide show for viewing. The individual slides will include the story and your name. Still trying to work out having link-backs within the slide show and I may have to list participants in a blogroll format. You’ll also see an album with rotating photos in the sidebar, and a badge that you can download to put on your blog if you like (as soon as I design it). This will be an ongoing project, so no deadline or cutoff.

Send photos to kelly AT herablehands DOT com and put Able Hands Photo Project in the subject line.

Okay, people! Show me your hands!

————————————

ETA: I started a flickr pool: The Able Hands Photo Project for those of you with flickr accounts, so head on over to join and get busy uploading your awesome hand photos!

If you don’t have an account, you can still send your photos to me via email.

Bookmark It

If you’ve always wanted to try making your own bread, but worry it will come out like a brick or a hockey puck—this is your bread. If you don’t have the time and/or energy it takes to make beautiful artisan loaves like you can buy at the local bakery (some of those recipes take 3-4 days), but really wish you did because it chaps your hide to pay $6 for something you know you ought to be able to make in your own damn kitchen—this is your bread.

I used to bake artisan breads every week when I was home with the kids, but have only attempted it twice since I went back to work. I’ve missed having that in my life but there are only so many available hours away from the cubicle, and as you can probably see, I’ve been a bit cupcake obsessed lately. Both times I committed to the 3-day process and made the incredible Rosemary Olive Oil breads from my Amy’s Bread cookbook, the loaves came out stunning and I thoroughly enjoyed the process from the first mixing of the sponge, to tipping the loaves to knock on the bottom to see if they were ready. It made me feel connected to my food in that special way that I believed only a long, slow process can do. Well, that’s what I used to think.

Now I know that the long, slow process can happen with fewer steps—with steps so few as a matter of fact, that anyone and everyone should be able to find time to put a fresh loaf on the table once a week—and still turn out a most amazing loaf of bread with a chewy, flaky crust and large air bubbles and a beautiful crumb.

Now, I used a mix of whole wheat and unbleached white organic flours and let it sit on the counter for 22 hours, but my kitchen was cold. I never have it up to 70º unless I’m already in there cooking, so I don’t think it ever got quite warm enough. The 2-hour rise in the floured towels did not produce a tall puff so much as a wide, low one, but the dough had very good spring, so I gave it an extra half-hour while the dutch oven warmed, then dumped it in and hoped for the best. The fragrance of freshly baked bread may even top my love for the smell of melted chocolate. The finished loaf, as you can see, came out a little flat, but it did puff up in the oven some, and really, it didn’t seem to effect the flavor at all. It had a slightly sour aftertaste, and the crust was rich and chewy with bits of cornmeal baked into it, the air pockets were shiny from the stretched gluten and they made the perfect little spoons for sopping up extra sauce.

We tucked into that loaf with the ragú (which blew my mind, again with the slow process cooking, so very, very good) and a green salad with honey mustard dressing for our Sunday dinner, and it was heavenly. Chris’ mom joined us and we sat at the dining room table (which hasn’t happened in a while because we’ve been piling things in there while we work on other areas of the house) and it made me so happy to have everyone facing each other. To have conversation. To see my family’s faces while they ate, the happy little noises everyone made as they tasted each thing (though Lila emphatically did not like the salad dressing because it was too spicy).

So seriously, try this bread. It’s well worth the effort, and as Sandra said in the comments on Saturday’s post, making it made her feel like a real baker. And if you’re interested in a most excellent online source for all things bread, do go and check out The Fresh Loaf.

Bookmark It