Culinarily speaking... there are my dreams and then there's my reality

I am always discovering new recipes in vintage cookbooks, pamphlets, magazines, books and, now, on Pinterest. The thought of making culinary delights thrills something deep inside me and makes my heart skip a beat. I just got a new copy of Frances Mayes latest book The Tuscan Sun Cookbook: Recipes from Our Italian Kitchen and it seems that every page I read makes that flutter inside my chest happen.  It all sounds so wonderful... the process of making something with my own hands and then giving it to loved ones to enjoy and savor as we chat, laugh, and create memories while sitting around a big table laden with the dishes that once held my culinary creations.

There's just one problem... I don't cook.

I've resorted to creating a board on Pinterest called "Want to Try It (Food)" (which is really code for "Honey, can you make this?").

Hubby is a culinary genius in the kitchen. Early in life he aspired to being a chef and has the skills to be one of the best of the best. But he also dreamed of having a wife and family and made a conscious decision that being a chef would require hours away from that dreamed-of wife and family that he wanted more than he wanted the dream of being a chef. So he became a technology guru instead, and I (the wife that finally came along) now get to enjoy all his chef-i-ness for myself.

I'm spoiled. I'll admit it. I rarely have to cook dinner. And most of the time Hubby even plates my dinner like I've ordered it at a restaurant. His talent for creating a beautiful plate of food is amazing. I always want to photograph his plate after we've gone through the line at our favorite salad bar restaurant, because it's so beautifully arranged and colorful.

I guess we have a sort of partnership (at least I like to think we do). Like a bloodhound, I go out and find the recipes to inspire him, and then Hubby makes the recipe come to life in a mouth-watering way I cannot begin to achieve.

I've tried. I really have. I love Olive Garden's chicken fettucini alfredo. I found the official recipe for their alfredo sauce online through Pinterest. I decided I was going to make it. Hubby was skeptical (cream sauces are daunting). I charged ahead with a full head of steam and all the ingredients laid out on the countertop. How hard could it be? As long as I have the recipe, I'm golden, right?

Wrong.

The resulting dish didn't taste like Olive Garden's creamy divinity that I love. It tasted like eggs.

I gave up after that.

This last week, Hubby kindly made a bacon and cheese quiche recipe I had pinned on my Pinterest board. Well, actually he used the Pinterest recipe as the base for a recipe that he made up on the fly that would be more healthy for me to eat. In the end, it was beyond fantastic! I had never tasted anything better... until a couple of days later when he remade it with a couple more tweaks (the addition of swiss cheese and green onions). Holy cow, it was even better than the first one!

Oh yeah... I am SO spoiled!

P.S. If you want to read the first tweaked version 

of the bacon and cheese quiche Hubby made click here.

Here's what happened to the Vidalia onion that was FedEx'ed from Georgia

Click here if you haven't read about how the mongo-sized Vidalia came to Rosehaven Cottage

We debated... should the onion be made into onion rings or should they become a wonderful pile of caramelized onion goodness. Friends put in their votes. We capitulated. In the end, two lovely steaks were pulled from the freezer to thaw and this bad boy was given the honor of being caramelized by the very talented Chef Hubby.

As he prepped and cooked, Chef Hubby took photos with his iPhone, so I could share them here on the blog.

I am happy to report that my steak was smothered with a pile of all that onion-y goodness and that Vidalia onion lived up to its reputation. Georgia can be proud.

Now a little bird from Texas tells me there's an onion from the Lonestar State that rivals the Vidalia--the Noonday onion. I'm thinking the Texan may be right. My Grampy was from Texas and said the onions were so sweet he'd eat them like apples. I just gotta get my hands on one to find out.

Chapter 12: The gift of a kitchen sink

Click here to start at the beginning of the story of how Rosehaven Cottage came to be

Click on any image view it larger and read the captions easier

As our first Christmas in the house approached, we settled into our routine of roughing it. We had a warm bed in the larger of two bedrooms downstairs. We had a toilet and tiny sink vanity upstairs. We had a bathtub and shower downstairs.

We had no kitchen sink anywhere.

When we had to use “the facilities”, we would trek upstairs to use the toilet up there. When we showered, we gritted out teeth and braved the chilly December air coming through the cracks in the subfloor under the newly installed bathtub and got in and out as soon as possible. When we had to clean a dish or utensil on the odd day we didn’t get take-out or go to a restaurant, we cleaned them in a small plastic bin in the bathtub. It reminded me a lot of camping.

I had always been one to go all out for the holidays—decorating my current abode and filling the air with the smells of Christmas goodies. I figured I could still do a little decorating to make it feel like Christmas. That would have to suffice since we didn’t have a kitchen sink, let alone a clean space to roll out cookie dough. And since both of us were traumatized by the bathroom-plumbing incident, plumbing the kitchen sink wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

One Sunday only a couple of weeks before Christmas, I was sitting in the women's Relief Society meeting at church and the women were having a discussion about Christmas traditions. We were asked to share our Christmas traditions aloud. I sat there listening to wonderful suggestions. All of them sounded lovely—traditions I wanted to incorporate into our lives to make the season merry. But they all sounded so unattainable from the place we were at with the house.

I finally raised my hand and shared, “Every year for as long as I can remember, I’ve found joy in the Christmas tradition of baking cookies and making homemade fudge or English toffee from the recipe my mom had always used. But this year is different. I don’t even have a kitchen sink. So I’m learning that I have to find joy in the season in other ways that are within me. This year, I’m learning a valuable lesson about what the true meaning of Christmas really is.”

After the meeting, a newfound friend approached me and said, “If you really want to bake Christmas cookies, I have a wonderful kitchen with a big island that’s great for making cookies. You are welcome to come over any time and bake as much as you want.”

I was very touched by her thoughtfulness. Even though I couldn’t imagine myself taking her up on the offer, the fact that she had been willing to open up her home to me was gift enough.





Only a day or so went by, and we got a phone call from one of the men in our church congregation. He told us that his wife had been in the Relief Society meeting when I had made my comment. He then said, “You need a kitchen sink. I’m going to come over and install it for you. You will have a kitchen sink by Christmas.”

His blunt no-nonsense approach left us little room to object. Had he not said it in the way he had, Hubby probably would have simply said, “Oh thanks for the offer. We’ll call you when we’re ready,” and then let it go, never to take the man up on his generous offer. I think the man knew that, and he knew exactly how to approach the situation so he could get in to install that sink. He was bold. He was brief. And he meant business. He got Brent to commit to a day later in the week when the installation could happen.

Later in the week, we had another newfound friend (and his wife) in our home. In one evening he installed the kitchen sink and fitted all the plumbing while his wife and I sat in the living room and chatted to get to know one another. In a few short hours, we had a running kitchen sink instead of a hole in the countertop. It was the best Christmas present anyone could have given us—running water in our kitchen.

That Christmas, I learned so much from the example of that couple. I learned what it really means to have a heart willing to serve one’s fellowman. Many people feel charitable at Christmastime. Often the benefactors of that charitable sentiment are bell-ringing Santa’s outside department stores or toy/food drives sponsored by local fire departments. The people who truly benefit from our charity are often faceless and far removed from us. That Christmas in 2000, I realized that not many of us go the extra step of seeking out and finding benefactors personally, and then taking the steps to serve them in the way they need it most.

In the past decade, I haven’t been able to live up to the example of the stellar couple that gave us the best Christmas gift we've ever received, but the bar they've set has me I’m always looking to try.

A mongo-sized Vidalia onion Fed-Ex'ed all the way from Georgia

Hubby has business colleagues that are located in Georgia, and while chatting with one recently he mentioned that we get Vidalia onions all the way out here on the West Coast in California. He then added the caveat that they're the best and sweetest onions we can buy. His colleague was surprised that Georgia's produce makes it all the way out here.

A few days later, an unexpected FedEx box came to Hubby's office addressed to him with a return address from Georgia. Inside the box Hubby found a beautiful assortment of Vidalia's--one being the biggest onion he has ever seen. He was giddy with laughter when he called me mid-day to tell me about his surprise package. Only a true foodie would do that.

When he came home later that day, I found he wasn't exaggerating about the size of the onion. He doesn't exaggerate so I expected it to be big, but not that big. We put it up next to the largest onion we had from our recent trip to buy produce and it dwarfed it (see photo above).

Then I put it next to a head of elephant garlic and the Vidalia's size was even more pronounced (see photo above). It was so striking the Vidalia deserved it's own photo shoot (hence the photos in this post).


Now like every onion in our kitchen, it sits in the onion bowl waiting to be cooked up into something super yummy in the hands of my skillful and talented Hubby. He's thinking it'll become homemade onion rings. I'm thinking it might become a lovely pile of aromatic caramelized goodness to be served with chicken or beef. Regardless, I know it will be yummy and live up to the reputation the Vidalia onion has in this household.

We have poppy seeds!

Do you remember the wonderful Hungarian Bread Seed Poppy that bloomed on the first day of spring? I've been anxiously anticipating the time when that seed pod would be dried up enough to harvest. And today was the day!



I carefully brought it inside and slit the side open with a kitchen knife to spill out the seeds. Look at how many were in just one pod!

I then took the seeds and carefully poured them into a small seasoning shaker that I'd labeled appropriately. Hubby is a big poppy seed fan so these seeds are for him. When he saw them his first comment was, "Anyone have a bagel?"



The first poppy bloom was the earliest of many flowers that followed weeks later and have been delighting us for the past month. Now I'm on "pod watch" as I wait for the rest of the pods to dry. At least one of the pods will be emptied into a seed envelope for planting next year. But the rest will end up seasoning breads and salads.

Adventures in Fruit Leather

After a failed attempt at making prunes over a week ago, it took a while for me to build up enough gumption to try and make fruit leather from what is left of the plum harvest from our tree this year.

Yesterday, I looked at the basket and two bowls of plums on the kitchen table and realized that if I didn't do something with them, they would go bad (I've had my fill of fresh plums this season).

So, as I approach many of my "projects", I had to dive right in while I still felt the nerve and drive to do it. I knew if I waited, that the mood would pass, and I'd still have the same basket and two bowls of plums as well as a nagging thought that I'd chickened out.

Following the instructions that came with our Nesco dehydrator, I pureed the pitted plums (skins and all) in the blender until smooth. I sweetened the mixture to taste with corn syrup (apparently granulated sugar will make it brittle). Then I poured the mixture on the one plastic tray for making fruit leather that came with the unit. I had quite a bit of mixture left over in the blender and didn't want to do only one trayful, so I used another tier of the dehydrator as a template and cut out a "tray" out of parchment paper (I was feeling adventurous).

The dehydration took a little longer than expected (probably because my mixture was poured out a little too deep), but the result is exactly what I wanted! Believe it or not, the parchment paper tray was done in far less time. I liked the result better too.

I've now successfully produced my favorite flavor of fruit leather--plum! Now I am much more confident with the process and plan on turning the rest of the plums into fruit leather as well.

And as an endnote... I thought of my friend Emiline over at Visions of Sugar Plum the entire time I did this as well as when I was taking the photos. So, Emiline, this plummy post is dedicated to you!

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View from the Kitchen Window into my "Secret Garden"

Click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

Hubby is the king of the kitchen around here. It's his domain. I don't complain, since he lets me have the garden shed all to myself.

Our kitchen isn't big--perfect "cottage size". Hubby likes it that way. He says that his "work triangle" is perfect in that space. Over the kitchen sink is a window that looks out into our smallish front garden. I think that's one of the reasons he likes the kitchen so much (just a hunch).

When I came in from taking garden photos today, I realized that the view from the kitchen window is really pretty right now. That's probably why Hubby had the window open to let the cool breezes flutter in and air out the house after its been closed up for a week during the heat. Even though I had to shoot through a screen, I took a photo out the window so I could share it here.

The bright pink billows on the lower right are the "Raspberry Ice" bougainvillea that is resting atop a mature rosemary hedge. Behind the bougainvillea you can see the tall yellow spindle blossoms of the fennel, looking a bunch of bare umbrella frames stretching to the sky. The round shrub just to the left of the fennel is my "Pineapple Sage"--a variety of salvia that smells just like fresh pineapple when you crush the leaves (I have a honeydew variety that's wonderful too).

I walked out into the road in front of Rosehaven Cottage so I could photograph it with all the blooms on the pergola. The white flowers on the right of the pergola are a "Lady Diana" bower vine. The left side of the pergola and picket fence are covered in red Japanese honeysuckle with some bougainvillea poking through here and there.

You can see a little corner of the white kitchen window shutter (I drew an arrow on the photo to make it easier to see).

From inside the kitchen, the garden looks like a little enclave of blooms and greenery. So many people have been surprised the first time they walked under the pergola to find the garden within.

It's my own little "Secret Garden" of sorts. There's a line from one of the film adaptations of "The Secret Garden" that always come to mind when I'm in the garden--"curtains and fountains of roses" is the line. I think maybe I've been subconsciously using that movie line as a pattern for my plant-as-you-go form of garden design which has resulted in what we have now.

Stay tuned for the next post when I share more shots of the blossoms that are in my "Secret Garden" right now...

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