Craft Pals

Christmas is over. Soon we will put away for another year the tree and all its ornaments, as well as the lights that we have draped around various windows in our house. And soon, Wyatt may stop asking every day whether any boxes arrived for him.

Getting letters, cards, and fun surprises in the mail is so thrilling. The holidays brought us a fat stack of beautiful cards, many parcels, and fortunately, extra exuberance from our mail carrier, Roberto. One of the most special gifts that arrived at our house this year was for Wyatt, from his friend, Benjamin, who just turned six. Benjamin made Wyatt a needle-felted toadstool:

This most marvelous creation was the latest in an ongoing informal craft exchange that sprang up over the last year or so. The boys have never met, but Benjamin's mother, Sarah, and I became friends through a book club I joined when I moved to San Francisco. Sarah and her husband moved back to South Carolina before Benjamin was born, but Sarah and I have stayed in touch through social media and email. Sarah's cooking, canning, knitting, writing, and her joy and frustration in wrangling life's chaos inspire me.

The exchange began with homemade marshmallows. In October 2014, Wyatt and I decided to make marshmallows. I posted about it online, as one does, and Sarah commented that she wished she had some herself, but having made them in the past, she was in no hurry to experience the process (the smell, really) again any time soon. Our marshmallows turned out well, and because marshmallows are best shared, we sent Sarah and Benjamin a bag of them.

A few weeks later, Benjamin sent Wyatt a tin of homemade pumpkin pie spice. It smelled heavenly. We used it to make pumpkin custard. The tin has long been empty, and the label is a little stained with vanilla extract. But we keep the tin because it was such a fun gift, it smells good, and we might even refill it one day.

Once the spice was gone, we thought and thought about what we could make for Benjamin. Wyatt decided on hand-rolled beeswax candles. Wyatt rolled, I mailed, and Benjamin loved. The day Benjamin received the box, Sarah sent us a photograph of him enjoying his dinner by candelight. 

Some time went by, and then one day there was a surprise parcel for Wyatt. Benjamin had made him a garland of felted balls. Benjamin explained in the accompanying card that the balls reminded him of planets. Wyatt was delighted and immediately asked if he could hang the garland in his room. It hung on his toddler bed for awhile, and when he moved to his big bed, we hung it over the window. The garland arrived wrapped securely (and untangled!) around a toilet paper tube that Benjamin had painted. Wyatt kept that tube, too.

This summer, we made some felted soap for Benjamin.

We went to Rainbow Grocery and bought some soap that smells like creamsicles taste, and we set about giving that soap a woolen jacket.

Wyatt wrapped the soap in wool roving, and we knotted the roving-wrapped bar in a nylon stocking. He rubbed the bar of soap in as hot water as he could stand, and then dipped it in cold water, and then went back to rubbing it in hot water, then cold water, then back to hot. The bubbles grew thicker and thicker as we worked on the soap for about ten minutes. The wool shrank and felted to the shape of the soap. We let the soap dry so we could pack it for mailing. (Wyatt made a bar of soap for himself, too, because why not?) Wyatt thought Benjamin's soap (the blue one) looked like a map of England, so we mentioned that in the card.

Around the same time as we felted the soap, I finished knitting a lace scarf from teal alpaca yarn. I sent the scarf to Sarah. She's worthy of hand-knit gifts any day, but at that time she was extra deserving, having recently given birth to Benjamin's little brother and having just gone back to school for a master's degree. The scarf seemed like something she would enjoy when the weather grew colder.

A couple of weeks ago, Benjamin sent Wyatt the excellent toadstool and a handmade autumn-themed card. Sarah told me she painted the tree and Benjamin added the leaves with a q-tip.

The timing of this gift couldn't have been better. Just two days before the gift arrived, Wyatt had been cross-examining me about why, OH WHY! could he not do needle felting? I have no idea why needle felting occurred to him. It's not like I had ever done needle felting myself. We didn't even have any tools for it. I told him he could do it when he was older because of the needles. He might stab himself, and stabbed, bleeding fingers would feel very bad. He was unmoved by my explanation. When he learned that Benjamin had made the toadstool himself, he immediately confronted me with the reason why it was totally appropriate for him to start needle felting: "Benjamin does it!" After marveling at the toadstool for an entire afternoon, Wyatt carefully re-wrapped it in its golden tissue paper and placed it in his basket, saving it for when we got our Christmas tree. We shopped for needle felting tools the next day.

Once we had our tools, and then our replacement tools because some needles broke, we made Benjamin a needle felted ornament. Wyatt was very clear that it needed to be made of hearts.

He was careful to have me write in the accompanying card that Benjamin could put the ornament on his Christmas tree, but he didn't have to. We also sent some caramel popcorn clusters because the only thing nicer than sending Sarah the recipe was to send the popcorn itself.

There are so many reasons why I love this little exchange of treats and crafts, not the least of which is the way it sprang up so spontaneously. There has never been any pressure to send anything, never mind by any particular date. It's just really fun. We've also made some pretty great items with our boys. I am mystified why crafts are so often considered and almost always marketed as an activity for girls. After all, who among us wouldn't enjoy a good roving-stabbing from time to time? Seeing Sarah and Benjamin's creativity has inspired us to try new crafts. And the joy and appreciation that Wyatt has in receiving something that his friend has made for him, a couple of thousand miles away, with his very own hands, is truly wonderful. 

Christmas Breakfast

We started planning this year's Christmas breakfast around the time we started planning Thanksgiving dinner.

During one dinner planning conversation, I told Wyatt the story of the year I joined my best friend, Debbie, and her parents in Palm Desert for Thanksgiving. We had such a fun holiday weekend, and I made a peanut butter pie. That pie was so deliciously memorable that for the next several Thanksgivings, when Debbie and I would phone each other to trade "Happy Thanksgiving!" greetings, I would hear her dad's voice call from the background, "Ask her where my peanut butter pie is!" And Debbie would repeat into the phone, "My dad wants to know where his peanut butter pie is."

Wyatt found that story very, very funny. "Where's my peanut butter pie!" he shouted over and over, and then dissolved into giggles. Suddenly, he stopped, and said, "What IS peanut butter pie? It sounds DELICIOUS. I love peanut butter. And pie! I KNOW! We should have peanut butter pie for Christmas breakfast."

I don't remember how the tradition started, but this year will be our fourth Christmas where we have "Whatever We Want" for breakfast. So far, "Whatever We Want" has translated into "Dessert." Dessert for breakfast is basically forbidden, so it's an awfully special annual experience. In addition, there's something spectacularly satisfying about responding to a sullen child who says, "I want candy/cake/pie for breakfast!" on any other day of the year by saying, "Oh dear. Let me check the calendar. Nope! It's not Christmas."

Because we're us, it's not like dessert means a break from cooking or baking. We make all of our Christmas breakfast treats. Last year, we baked gluten-free Florentine cookies and served them with sweet potato ice cream. If you're ever at Mitchell's Ice Cream in San Francisco, try the purple yam ice cream and you'll understand why we went with David Lebovitz's sweet potato ice cream recipe. For the two Christmas breakfasts before that, we made apple crisp and vanilla ice cream.

This year, we are planning on peanut butter pie and ice cream. The ice cream flavor will probably be chocolate. I've found a four-fork-rated peanut butter pie recipe on Epicurious, and I have the already proven Joy of Cooking recipe. Whichever recipe we choose (Joy of Cooking), we will need to make some gluten-free graham crackers so that we can have a graham cracker crust. Wyatt just informed me he cannot wait to smash the crackers into bits with a mallet.

Christmas Eve is slated to be our cooking day. We will make the pie crust and the pie, and prepare the ice cream batter, which we will freeze in the ice cream maker on Christmas morning. We will also make Christmas Eve dinner, which will be latkes, recipe courtesy of Debbie's mom, of course.

Between now and Christmas Eve, we will be busying ourselves with activities, because it is Christmas Break. We're planning to head downtown to ride a cable car and see the giant gingerbread houses at the Fairmont Hotel one day. We've got years of experience building our own little houses thanks to kits and extra candy that Wyatt's grandparents send:

Another day, we'll head to the Exploratorium. And if it's not too rainy, perhaps we can fit in some ice skating at some point.

Just a few days left of the crescendo of Christmas excitement. And then, maybe we can relax? Wishful thinking, I'm sure.

Holiday Treats

"Mom. I love Christmas carols. And Christmas trees. And presents! The only thing I don't love about Christmas is waiting for it to come."

Christmas is coming! Wyatt reminds us about it every day.

Before Wyatt was born, our house was not usually very Christmas-y around the holidays. Sometimes we got a tree, and when we did, it was usually a very manageable car-trunk-size. The years we decorated a little tree, our other Christmas decorations would stay boxed away because one of the worst parts of Christmas decorating is putting it all away for next year. In fact, the Christmas a few months before Wyatt was born, we consciously opted out of getting a tree or decorating our home in any way. We figured it would be our last chance for awhile to get away with such a stripped-down holiday.

Our instincts about holiday decorations were absolutely correct. Like every child I've ever met, Wyatt loves holiday lights, decorated trees, treats, and of course, presents. So we're now five Christmas seasons into CHRISTMAS!

And having CHRISTMAS! while striving for "less is more" in our lives can get tricky. Acquiring only great items we know we need or will really use and enjoy has helped make our home livable, our lives less cluttered, and, with any luck, the earth a tiny bit less of a waste dump. Of course Wyatt disagrees 100% with this approach to consumerism and complains bitterly every time we tell him, "No, we are not buying that."

Some of the best gifts we have received over the years have been memberships to museums or gift certificates to favorite restaurants. These types of outings have helped us create connections in a way that unwrapping a thing, no matter how thoughtfully chosen, doesn't. It's tough to beat having a terrific time on a loved one's dime while you recount fun (and funny) stories about times you have all spent together.

And while Wyatt would swear he absolutely prefers toys over fun excursions, there is a small chance that on a given day he would choose a day of ice skating or a dinner out over a toy truck. Not a fire truck or anything fancy, mind you, just a frills-free one. So we do our best to strike a balance for him between experiences and things. We try to minimize overlap with toys he already owns, choose things we think he will use a lot in a variety of ways, and include items like art and craft supplies that will spark creativity and get consumed.

Let's face it: Gift giving is challenging. Most adults we know would prefer less stuff in their lives. But I've noticed that almost everyone welcomes a homemade, edible holiday gift. So, like any good urban homesteading family, we started working on certain gifts awhile ago.

In mid-November, we started a giant jar of preserved lemons with rosemary. My friend, Maja, shared the idea with me, and the lemons were easy and fun to make.

The only issue we had was that salty, juicy lemons can make your hands sting like crazy if you have even the tiniest "owie," as Wyatt always does. Using disposable food service gloves helped keep his little hands sting-free. We checked on the lemons every few days to see and smell how they changed with time. They were a bright and sunny addition to our fermentation corner.

Yesterday, we repackaged the giant jar into two smaller gift-sized Fido jars for Wyatt's teachers. And thanks to Marc, who commented, "Wow. If someone gave me that, I would have no idea what to do with it," I included some recipe ideas in the card.

In the just-in-time edible gift department, we made four batches of caramel popcorn clusters. We made three batches with peanuts and one without, because as Wyatt pointed out, "Some friends might be allergic to peanuts." Wyatt assisted with some measuring, stirring, and of course he carefully tasted every batch. I packaged the popcorn clusters into treat bags.

Once Wyatt had tasted our caramel popcorn, he found it very difficult to give it away, or even look at it in the pantry without complaining that he wanted to eat all of it. But giving it away is becoming easier for him. The other day, he happily presented our most favorite Recology driver with some gift cards and a bag of caramel popcorn. Wyatt informed him, "I helped make this popcorn. It's really good. You'll want to eat all of it all the time, but it's only a sometimes food."

The recipe we used for our caramel popcorn clusters is here. We have a hot-air popcorn popper, so we use it for this recipe and skip the first paragraph of instructions. Lately, I substitute brown rice syrup in an equal amount for corn syrup. Having made the recipe over the years with corn syrup and other years with brown rice syrup, I can honestly say that the substitution doesn't seem to affect the recipe or outcome at all. I seriously doubt that the substitution makes the popcorn healthier. But it does make me giggle to think that, thanks to my careful shopping this year, I could honestly slap an "Organic, Gluten-Free and Corn Syrup Free" label on our treat, and still send someone into orbit on a sugar high.

And finally, we did some unexpected baking this weekend because Wyatt's classmates will be working on "gluten sugar cookies" at school this week. Thanks to Molly, my friend of a quarter-century or so, who is an extraordinary cook and baker with years of gluten-free experience, Wyatt and I made our first batch of gluten-free roll-out sugar cookies. At Molly's suggestion, we used this recipe, and substituted Cup 4 Cup gluten free flour, used only 6 tablespoons of butter (1/4 less butter than the recipe says), and added some lemon zest. Yum.

Cheese Tasting

One downside of a blog is that it's not the greatest place to post little updates on things like cheese that have just been coming along at their own pace for the last couple of months. But the cheese has indeed been coming along, as you can see.

   Homemade Creamy Feta, Shankleesh and Classic Style Feta in the back; Fern's Edge Feta in front.

As you may remember, we started a classic style feta, a creamy (or Bulgarian) feta, and a middle-eastern yogurt cheese called shankleesh. We then did our best to forget about them. Benign neglect, really. The shankleesh lived in the garage, and the jars of feta lived in the back of the refrigerator.

Over the past many weeks, our three cheeses have been aging and we have been tasting, and now that the cheeses are gone, I can honestly say they were great. Maybe they were even outstanding, if you consider that they were our very first attempt at aged cheeses.

And we were very patient. After I had counted, Wyatt put a sticker on the calendar to mark the day that our creamy feta turned 30 days old. When that day arrived, Marc, Wyatt and I tried all three cheeses. The shankleesh was really full-flavored thanks to the tangy yogurt and herbs. Wyatt claimed it was sour and didn't enjoy it. The fetas, on the other hand, while definitely fetas in texture and appearance, were still pretty mild and frankly a little boring in flavor. So all the jars went back to their aging locations.

A month later, we tried the cheeses again. But we were even bolder than just tasting them ourselves. We carried them with us when we flew to visit friends in Los Angeles. I packed the cheeses in containers in Wyatt's lunch bag (without brine or oil, lest they be confiscated by TSA) and guarded them in my carry-on. We enjoyed all the cheeses with our friends during lunch at their house the day we arrived. Fortunately, the cheeses had either remained the same or improved somewhat over the last month. The shankleesh tasted the same, but the fetas had definitely changed. The more classic feta had become softer and saltier. The creamy feta had become drier and deliciously tangy, but remained only slightly salty in flavor.

A few weeks after our Los Angeles trip, we brought the cheese out for another tasting, this time with some local friends. Once again, the shankleesh didn't taste much different. But with the fetas, the same flavor trend had continued. The classic feta had become almost too salty to enjoy on its own, and the creamy feta was still tangy, showed even more complex flavors, and remained only slightly salty.

During this last tasting, we tried our homemade cheeses beside a commercially available artisan goat feta, Fern's Edge, that I had found at Rainbow Grocery. The Fern's Edge feta was amazing, of course, but what shocked me was that it wasn't actually better than the creamy feta we had made. We achieved some wonderful flavors in our cheese that weren't present in the Fern's Edge. And even though I had mentally downgraded our classic feta because it had taken on so much salt, after trying some commercially available sheep's milk feta last weekend, I found myself stunned at its saltiness and its similarity in texture to our classic feta. I started to think that there may not have been anything wrong with our execution of our classic feta after all.

These successes have been more than enough to encourage us to continue trying to make aged cheeses. Now that the weather is cooler, we have started to think about trying aged goat cheeses and camembert. We are even ten days into aging a mason jar marcellin from The Art of Natural Cheesemaking.  Here's a photo of our cheese so far, with Geotrichum candidum well-established on the rind. The cheese smells a lot like camembert, and I find its wrinkles adorable, the same way I find wrinkly Shar-Pei dogs adorable. I am still astonished that this remarkable little pot of cheese started out simply as raw milk and kefir culture. But more on the story of this cheese later, in its very own blog post.

Meanwhile, this jar and its four siblings went into the refrigerator today. We'll check them again in two weeks to see how they're doing.

Small Kindnesses

Sitting among hundreds of little humans at the Davies Symphony Hall Concert for Kids this morning, waiting for the concert to begin, I started to think about climate change, refugees, mass shootings, and what being an American may mean today. I thought about how we all need to do so much better, in so many big ways. And I realized that my sphere of influence had never felt smaller.

As we left the concert, Marc (who was still in Cincinnati) called to say that our elderly neighbor, Ed,* fell in the bathtub today, and his wife, Helen, couldn't help him up. I immediately called Helen. She explained that in addition to calling Marc, she had gone across the street to a neighbor she saw was home, but who didn't answer the door. Helen said she continued down the street to another neighbor who fortunately came right over, with his tiny daughter in tow. He helped a shaken and exhausted, but seemingly unhurt, Ed out of the tub and into bed to rest. As Helen said, "It was really scary. It has been an awful morning."

Wyatt overheard my end of the conversation, and he became visibly concerned about Ed. I explained what had happened, and that Ed seemed okay now, just tired. Wyatt supposed, based on his own experience, that Ed had been standing up and playing around in a wet bathtub with the water running when he fell. I put on my best serious face and opined that it was probably just an accident.

On our Muni ride home this afternoon, Wyatt and I talked about Ed and how we hoped he was feeling better. Somehow during this discussion, we decided to bake Helen and Ed an apple pie. Maybe it would improve their day. Or maybe they would just have pie. Either way, we figured it was worth doing. The pie turned out beautifully. We carried it over while it was still hot. Helen beamed at us when she opened the door, and she said the pie would really brighten up the instant chicken soup she was having for dinner. Ed was still resting and didn't feel like eating. She mentioned how lonely she had felt during the day, so we promised to stop by tomorrow, too.

Wyatt and I walked back home and after dinner, as Wyatt dug into his own slice of pie (yes, we made two pies), I noticed a missed call and voicemail on my phone. It was Helen, calling to say how much she and Ed had enjoyed the pie and had eaten the whole thing. Just kidding! They only ate some of it, and "Kelly and Wyatt, you did a great job!" Wyatt grinned, made me play the message three times and asked me to save it so he could listen again. We talked about how it feels when you do something kind for someone and then hear a message like Helen's, and the answer is "REALLY GOOD."

I think the kid's heart grew at least one size today. And while our neighborly pie baking and delivery is a very small thing, especially in light of all the big things that need doing in the world, it's something.

I can't be the only one who feels like she affects so little. But it doesn't mean I shouldn't try. Perhaps all of our small kindnesses in all of our communities could add up to something big. In the worst case, there will be more kindness. Or more pie. Either way, we win.

*Neighbors' names have been changed, because if I fell in the bathtub, I might not be thrilled about someone writing about my mishap on her blog.

Gooey Food and Gratitude

"Mom. I'm hiding my eyes because when I look at that gooey food on my plate, it makes my body feel weird."

I wasn't planning to write a post about our Thanksgiving. But on Wednesday, a lovely friend of mine texted that she was looking forward to reading about what we had for Thanksgiving dinner. I thought to myself, why not write about it? It was going to be an amazing meal; I had already spent hours working on it.

For years, our traditional Thanksgiving meal has centered around Dungeness crab. But this year, crabbing season has been postponed because "potentially deadly levels of domoic acid have been found in Dungeness crab."  We needed a new plan, and we decided to go with Winter Vegetable Pie from the Fields Of Greens Cookbook. I had never made the recipe before, but it was the reason for adding the cookbook to my Christmas wish list last year. A vegetarian foodie friend had told me that this time-intensive pot pie was the ultimate in delicious, vegetarian comfort food. The recipe suggests that a salad of bitter greens, pears and walnuts is great with it, so I planned to make that salad. I decided we should also make some gluten-free sourdough bread to eat with our homemade cultured maple butter. And Wyatt requested crème brûlée for dessert because "we always have that." I think we may have only had it last Thanksgiving, but who was I to argue where a cooking torch was involved.

On Tuesday, I spent the entire day cooking while Wyatt played astronaut (and other wonderfully imaginative games that I don't recall) at the other end of the kitchen. I began by making crème brûlée. Next, I simmered mushrooms and other vegetables into stock for over three hours. Finally, I made the dough of my first ever gluten-free pie crust.

On Wednesday, we took a break from cooking and went to the Exploratorium.

Thursday morning arrived, and it was time to bake and cook again. Wyatt and I started the bread on its final rise around 7:30 before I headed out for a class at the gym.

When I got home from the gym, I found Marc and Wyatt just hanging out, and I felt myself getting really annoyed. With just the three of us having Thanksgiving together, it felt like a regular weekend day, only with a whole lot more preparation and cooking than I wanted to do. But instead of expressing those thoughts directly, I demanded that we clean up our messy house. Marc, suddenly irritated himself, pressed me as to why I was "leveling edicts" about tidying-up when no guests were coming over. I am pretty sure I responded that I had been planning for days and cooking for hours, and I would really prefer that today, Thanksgiving, which he didn't seem to care much about, be different from all the other days when I plan and cook all by myself and we eat surrounded by clutter. I like to imagine the wonderfully evolved adult I would be if I had said all of that in a calm, eloquent and loving way. But as the person I am today, I remain grateful to Marc for quickly understanding my point of view, forgiving me for "leveling edicts" before explaining where I was coming from, and immediately getting on-task after our discussion.

I baked the bread while we ate a light lunch, and after lunch, it was time to start cooking the pie. I assembled the many vegetables we had gotten from our farm share box, the additional vegetables I had bought from Rainbow Grocery, as well as herbs and one little carrot from our garden. I then realized I had miscalculated how many pounds of mushrooms we needed, and Marc dashed out to the supermarket to get some more.

I started rolling the pie crust.

Next, Wyatt and I started chopping. Soon, Marc returned with more mushrooms and joined the prep party.

I made an actual gravy out of a roux of homemade mushroom stock and gluten-free flour. I could hardly believe the gravy worked, never mind its hearty flavor and smooth texture. I assembled the pie, and while it baked, we enjoyed cocktails, washed the various salad greens, burned the walnuts, substituted sliced almonds, and crumbled some bleu cheese into the salad. When the pie was finished baking, our dinner looked like this.

When the pie was cut, our dinner looked like this.

And the verdict? Well, our 10-hour Winter Vegetable Pie was met with mixed reviews. Marc thought it was fantastic. I thought it was fine, but I was expecting something more amazing for the time spent on it. Wyatt hated it. I hadn't realized until we sat down to dinner and he said, "looking at that gooey food makes my body feel weird" that we never, ever cook gravy or classic American comfort food. Wyatt never got past the gooey brown factor. Instead, he ate bread with maple butter, some salad, and he asked every three minutes whether it was time for crème brûlée yet.

The crème brûlée was perfect, thank goodness.

And even though Wyatt didn't say it, it was pretty obvious that he was grateful we had stuck with tradition for dessert.

Homemade Cultured Maple Butter - Part 2

"Mom. Does everyone in this family have a Christmas list? Or just me? You really should ask for a chef's hat that way we can be chefs together."

On Saturday, we began testing Dave Arnold's ideas about improving our maple butter. As he explained on the podcast, the problem with getting maple syrup into butter is one of water. To get the maple syrup into the butter, you have to either replace as much of the water as possible in the cream with maple syrup, or make the maple syrup more of a solid and knead it into the butter. We tried both approaches.

We started with two pints of heavy cream, kefir grains, maple syrup and salt.

For the first jar, I cooked two cups of cream on low heat, stirring continuously, until the cream had been reduced to 1 1/2 cups. I stopped there because the cream was starting to look a little grainy and weird, like something irreversible was about to happen. I also reduced 1/2 cup of maple syrup to about 1/4 cup. I stopped cooking it when the temperature reached about 245 degrees. Once again, I stopped because the color appeared to be starting to darken and the smell was starting to change, and it seemed that at any second, there would be no turning back. I let the syrup cool down, and I mixed it into the cream. I then cooled the cream mixture, stirring continuously until the mixture was about 90 degrees. At 90 degrees, I found myself so bored with stirring that I just refrigerated the bowl until the mixture was about room temperature. I added a tablespoon of kefir grains and left the cream to ferment overnight. In retrospect, I probably should have just added a tablespoon or two of active kefir so we wouldn't have had to strain the grains out of the thickened cream the next day. I recall considering this option and then going with the grains themselves for a reason I don't remember. I did not hold back later, though, when tweeting my questions about the health of my mapled kefir grains to Amanda Feifer of Phickle. She confirmed that prepared kefir would have been a better way to go, but assured me all would be well with the grains. She's the best.

For the second jar, Wyatt poured the pint of cream into the jar, we added a tablespoon of kefir grains, and we left it to ferment overnight.

On Sunday, we made the crème fraîche in the two jars into butter.

For the first jar, we strained the crème fraîche, whipped it into butter, drained it, rinsed it in cold water, and kneaded in salt. Let me just tell you that the maple-flavored buttermilk that resulted was incredible. Really amazing. 

For the second jar, we made the butter the same way. We also made Dave Arnold's recommended "snotty xanthan gel" of maple syrup. I made a 1% fluid gel by first dispersing the xanthan into water because, from what I had read, maple syrup is about 66% sugar and xanthan doesn't hydrate well in liquid that is more than 60% sugar. 

As Wyatt said about this preparation, "Try it, Mom! It tastes WAAY better than it looks." The gross-out goo level on butter bits was pretty high, so I actually rinsed the butter bits in cool water in the sieve. Only then was I able to get it all merged back into one ball of butter. 

Marc was our taste tester. He concluded, "These both taste really good. But maple? I don't know if they taste like maple. They may be circling maple. They taste sweet to me."

I think the xanthan preparation resulted in stronger maple flavor, but it was still pretty mild. The cream and syrup reduction preparation was even lighter on the maple flavor. After all, much of the maple flavor ended up in the best buttermilk ever created. While the flavor was more robust in the xanthan preparation, the butter unfortunately ended up with little blobs of maple gum throughout. The butter spreads well, but my kneading of that mess was apparently not thorough enough. 

There is one more idea that we may eventually try: adding maple sugar to the cream before culturing. Maybe that would work. But before we go there, we will need help eating our way out of the current round of butters.

Homemade Cultured Maple Butter - Part 1

"Hang on Mom! I need to change into my jeans, put my tools in my pockets, put my hard hat on, and Halloween beads. Then I will be a real construction worker. And we can start mixing the butter!"

With an eye towards homemade holiday gifts, we began experimenting with flavored butters. Delicious kitchen experiments are the best.

We started with cultured maple butter. Our first attempt tasted good. It could definitely use some improvements, but before I get into the issues, I'll describe what we did.

We started with a quart of homemade crème fraîche, and turned it into butter by whipping it gently in the stand mixer. We gathered all the butter bits, drained the buttermilk, and then washed the butter in cold water. Wyatt wore his Canobie Lake Park hard hat and sparkly Halloween beads for the occasion. 

Then we added salt, cinnamon, maple syrup, and mixed it all up by kneading it.

As I mentioned, it tasted good. But the maple flavor was not very robust. Also, the maple syrup that we were able to get into the butter (you can see from the photo that there is a fair amount left in the bowl) never fully integrated with the butter. As a result, the syrup continuously collected in little droplets on the surface of the butter and in the butter container, like the butter was weeping syrup. Weeping butter is weird. To me, it seems to require excuses, or at least an explanation.

I emailed Cooking Issues, my favorite cooking podcast, to see if Dave Arnold had any thoughts on how to improve our maple butter.

The Tuesday after I emailed the show, I listened live to episode 227. There was no mention of my question. As a result, Wyatt, my defeatist attitude and I started a giant jar of preserved lemons so that we would have some homemade gifts ready by Christmas.

I didn't bother attempting to listen live to the next episode of Cooking Issues.  I just listened as usual, later in the week, while doing cooking-related things. This past Thursday evening, I had time to listen to Episode 228 while cleaning up dinner and making Wyatt's lunch. And at minute 47:30, I had to sit down because I was too stunned and excited to do anything else. Dave Arnold read my email on the show and he had suggestions of things to try to improve our maple butter! 

That little bit of encouragement-via-podcast was all I needed. Wyatt and I spent time this past weekend trying two improvements inspired by Dave Arnold's suggestions. The details of those delicious and weird messes will be included in another post, "Homemade Cultured Maple Butter - Part 2." And because I am so grateful to anyone who is reading about this maple butter experiment during this Thanksgiving week, I'm planning to break with my my recent tradition of one-post-per-week and publish that story tomorrow.

So Much Pumpkin

Did you know that the warty pumpkins are supposedly the sweetest ones? With that trivia nugget in mind, Wyatt and I set about finding the biggest, wartiest pumpkin in the store. And then we roasted it whole for over an hour in a 400 degree oven. 

I didn't weigh this beast, but I should have. From this one big, warty pumpkin, we made pumpkin custard (which took about two cups of pumpkin), pumpkin bread (another cup), pumpkin soup (five cups), pumpkin muffins (one cup), and we still have have one cup of pumpkin purée left in the freezer.

After roasting the pumpkin, we quartered it, scooped out the seeds and strings, and then removed the flesh from the skin. We then puréed the pumpkin in the Vitamix until it was smooth.

To make the pumpkin custard, I followed Against All Grain's Maple Pumpkin Custard recipe. My only recipe changes were to use cream instead of coconut milk, and to bake the custard in one 9 inch x 12 inch glass pan instead of in individual servings. Using the larger pan nearly doubled the recipe's estimated baking time for me. And no surprise, pumpkin custard baked in such a casual way is not very photogenic, so there are no photos of our final product. But I promise that we ate it the first night with whipped cream on top, and later in the week, we enjoyed it plain.

Wyatt insisted on wearing his chef's hat to mix the custard. The hat seems to give him focus and determination while cooking or baking. He keeps telling me I should get one so that I can be a real chef, like him.  

Our pumpkin bread recipe came from Elana's Pantry: Easy Paleo Pumpkin Bread. We used the Cuisinart for this recipe. 

I made several changes to the original recipe. The volume of spices for this recipe sounded heavy for our taste, and I don't have a tiny loaf pan. So I doubled all the ingredients except for the cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. I omitted the stevia because I can't stand the taste of stevia. And I baked the bread in a regular sized loaf pan. Baking a larger recipe in a larger pan extended the baking time. The bread was done after about an hour in the oven, and it was delicious.

Our last pumpkin product (before deciding to freeze the rest lest we overdose and never willingly eat pumpkin ever again) was pumpkin soup. I followed the spirit of my Really Good Butternut Squash Soup recipe. Because we had already processed the pumpkin, I didn't have any strings or seeds to brown in the pan for flavor this time. But I did a really good job browning the onion. The soup was great, and we garnished it with sprouted pumpkin seeds.

We then took a pumpkin breather for a couple of weeks. 

Next, with an eye towards baking some gluten-free Smitten Kitchen pumpkin muffins, I defrosted one of the remaining cups of pumpkin purée.

Keeping in mind some of the lessons from America's Test Kitchen's cookbook, How Can It Be Gluten Free, I substituted, in a ratio of 1:1, my current favorite gluten-free flour blend (I mix it at home, but you can also buy it pre-mixed) for the all-purpose flour called for in the recipe. I also used a full tablespoon of baking powder, and I allowed the batter to rest at room temperature for a half-hour before baking.

I've been calling these muffins "cupcakes." Their snickerdoodle tops certainly elevate them over any regular muffin. But the real reason for my sleight of language is that they'll be Wyatt's treat at an upcoming birthday party. Because this recipe made a dozen muffin-cupcakes, I have also tucked several away in the freezer for another day.

Vegans, Vegetarians, Gluten-free-ers, and Thanksgiving

I've had enough of the Thanksgiving articles and listicles about what to make for the perfect Thanksgiving dinner, how to make it flawlessly, and most of all, how to "handle" the people we apparently most dread coming to our Thanksgiving tables. You know the people I mean. The ones who show up to dinner with their dietary restrictions: the vegans, vegetarians and gluten-free-ers. 

Silly me. I thought Thanksgiving was the holiday where we got together, regardless of differences, to share in a feast while letting our gratitude shine so brightly that our Puritan forefathers would be embarrassed for us. 

On Thanksgiving (or any other day), if our family of three is eating the same dinner, we are eating gluten-free vegetarian fare. And I've been thinking a lot about why we, who make a point of being on time, helpful, polite, and never arriving empty-handed, qualify as some of the most dreaded guests anyone could have at their Thanksgiving table. I've come up with four possible reasons why people like us, with dietary restrictions, are so dreaded. Only one of the reasons seems irrefutable: we pose a threat to tradition. We don't eat a lot of what has become accepted as the traditional recipes for Thanksgiving dinner, and people don't like other people fooling around with their annual eating traditions. I get it. And if you're into following tradition for tradition's sake, you probably should continue not to invite us to your Thanksgiving gathering.

But if you dread vegans, vegetarians or gluten-free-ers because we make you feel a little guilty, it's time to let that go. Maybe you're really altruistic and would feel sorry for us because we were missing out on amazing food. Or maybe you'd worry we'd be hungry because you don't want to disappoint all the other guests who are counting on your traditional menu. Either way, you may actually be concerned about being an inadequate host. As someone who admires and occasionally strives for perfection, I totally understand that concern. But we who have dietary restrictions are the last people who would ever accuse you of falling short of being the host(ess) with the most(ess). Remember that we are used to avoiding foods everywhere we go, and many of us even happily bring our own cupcakes to birthday parties. In short, it's really no big deal to avoid certain foods or bring more than the usual number of dishes to Thanksgiving dinner.

In all likelihood, though, you dread us because we threaten to require extra work, and you don't need extra work, especially on Thanksgiving. I suppose we do require some extra attention, but it's only because you care. And we care, too. Thanksgiving menu planning articles always manage to leave out how we "dreaded guests" are fully aware of what a pain in the ass it can be to cook for us. And the menu listicles also always ignore the fact that we can help with your menu woes. We have so many recipes! And work-arounds. And not only would we be willing to share how we do things so you don't waste time experimenting, but we'd be eager to make and bring things to your table that would be not only great for us to eat, but also delicious for your other guests to share. Let us help solve the menu problem and not add to your load (by much). 

"But," you might exclaim, possibly with your index finger in the air, "it's Thanksgiving! It's about togetherness, sharing, and leftovers! We should all be able to share and enjoy the same meal!" Absolutely. I agree one hundred percent. Joining friends and family around a Thanksgiving dinner table is really special. And it would be so nice and easy if everyone ate exactly the same meal. But did an American family ever sit down to a home-cooked dinner on a Thursday where every family member ate all the same things, and no one complained about anything on their plate? I suspect that Thanksgiving dinner is probably not going to be any different in that respect, regardless of whether you have vegans, vegetarians, or gluten-freers in your midst. 

It may be time for us to try embracing the imperfections in our guests and in our feasts. It could make the whole affair more enjoyable for everyone. And if it backfires? You can always fall back on tradition another year. 

Chèvre. Twice.

After listening to David Asher on Cutting the Curd and Fuhmentaboudit!, I was inspired to make his favorite cheese: chèvre. As he promised in The Art of Natural Cheesemaking, this cheese was very straightforward and required very little active time. 

Look at this beautiful chèvre! We got about a pound and a half of it, too, which is terrific. We ate it for snack on some crackers, with apples and honey. I also put some into a vegetable frittata for lunch yesterday. 

For as simple as this cheese is, would you believe that we may have had another cheese fail along the way? Here's what happened.

On Wednesday, I set up our kefir to culture so we would be ready for cheesemaking on Thursday. Thursday, morning, I went to Rainbow Grocery to buy four quarts of Claravale Raw Goat's milk. The milk was delivered that day. In fact, I had to wait for it to be taken off the truck. I brought the milk straight home, refrigerated it, and after school, Wyatt and I set to work making cheese.

Right away, we noticed an issue. The milk smelled strong. And while the milk didn't taste horrible, it didn't taste good. It had a strongly acidic and goat-y flavor, and there was no way either one of us would have even entertained drinking it. But this was only the fourth time or so that we had purchased goat's milk, and I wondered whether it was just we who had a problem with it. Maybe this milk was within the acceptable range of goat milk flavors. Or maybe the idea of doing another hour-plus round trip to the store with drippy milk bottles was just more than I could handle. We decided to move ahead with the cheese to see what would happen. 

As usual, we poured and heated the milk, dissolved the rennet, added the kefir culture, added the rennet, and then left the cheese to ferment. The period for this cheese to ferment is 24 hours at room temperature.

The cheese that resulted was definitely weird. The curd was firm, full of holes and spongy. You could actually wring out the whey from it. It looked nothing like David's photos, and it tasted strong. The flavors were more like the milk had been clabbered, so maybe there was something that had happened with refrigeration during the milk's transit to Rainbow. I emailed Claravale to find out what might have happened, but they never responded. We ate some of the cheese, crumbled on tacos on Friday. None of us suffered any ill effects, but we weren't that eager to eat more of it. 

On Saturday, I bought more goat's milk and we tried it again. This time, the milk tasted good and only mildly goat-y. And the curd we achieved looked like David's photos. Even better, the cheese tastes amazing.

I think the (admittedly obvious) lesson I have learned from this recipe is that we should trust our noses and taste buds, regardless of when the milk was delivered. If there's something off with the milk, the cheese will be off, too.

If anyone has any experience with goat's milk and can let me know what may have been wrong with the first batch we tried, I'd love to hear it. Please leave a comment!

Our Little Elephant

Let me present our little elephant. He will be very cozy this Halloween!

(In case you are concerned about how Wyatt can see through or around this hat, don't be. He was looking down for this photo for full elephant effect. The hat does not cover his face.)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we started working on the hat for this costume in June. June may sound like a crazy time to start working on a warm, wooly hat, but we live in San Francisco, and for the last two years, June has been the absolute perfect time for Halloween hat making.

Wyatt opted for the elephant hat pattern from Vanessa Mooncie's Animal Hats book. The yarn we chose was Lamb's Pride, Charcoal Heather, in bulky weight, and I purchased it locally from Imagiknit. Lamb's Pride is 85% wool and 15% mohair, and is made by the Brown Sheep Company, a family owned and operated yarn spinning mill in Mitchell, Nebraska. The company has been around for decades, and over the last several years, they have updated their equipment and developed ways to reuse 70-90% of their waste water every day. The yarn is soft and warm, and it looks like it would felt very easily.

Once the hat was mostly finished (only the lining was left), I put the elephant costume project on pause until September.

In September, I started working on the body of the costume, the elephant suit, as Wyatt calls it, knitting it out of Balance yarn by O-Wool. 

As I neared the end of the elephant suit, I realized we would need buttons, as well as lining and matching thread for the hat. And I realized that to stay true to my plan to use sustainable materials for this costume, I would need to do some research. I first looked for vintage buttons, but couldn't find the sixteen I needed in the right size, never mind in colors we wanted. After some further poking around online, I found Honey Be Good. They sell unfinished wooden buttons (made in the USA from sustainable hardwood) and some cute, organic patterned interlock fabric.

I consulted with Wyatt on the buttons and the lining. He was excited about the buttons but really wanted me to use the light pink interlock fabric in my stash to line the hat. His plan worked for me, so I purchased the buttons and light pink thread (to match the lining) from Honey Be Good. The thread I purchased is by Gütermann creativ, 100% recycled polyester, from post-consumer plastic bottles, and is Oeko-Tex Standard 100 certified.

The next question I faced was what to do with the unfinished buttons. Beeswax polish for a natural finish? Stain? Paint? Natural dye? I considered all of it. Beeswax polish was out because Wyatt and I wanted a pop of color on the suit. Stain and paint would be fine, if I could find a less toxic alternative to what's available in most hardware stores. I looked into mixing my own paint with pigments, but a linseed oil base wouldn't cure in time. I considered milk paint, but I didn't feel willing to commit to such a large amount of paint for such a tiny project. I bought some turmeric root, but after going to two stores, I could not find the alum that would help bind the color to the wood during natural dying. In the end, I stopped overthinking it and went with the acrylic artist paints in my stash. It felt so good to get them out again.

Wyatt and I mixed the paint colors for the buttons of his suit from the three primary colors, plus some magenta and a touch of white. We also used shiny gold paint for one big button, to give the suit the sparkle it needed. Mixing the colors thrilled and delighted Wyatt, and the project engrossed him like no other project I have ever witnessed. He remarked to me as he painted buttons with tiny, thorough brushstrokes, "We're working very hard on these buttons! Let's pretend we are a button factory!" 

Later that night, I varnished the buttons after I discovered that the paint color transferred pretty easily to a damp cloth. Color transfer wouldn't do for an elephant suit that still needed to be washed and blocked!

In the morning, Wyatt helped me arrange the order of the colored buttons. The front of the suit was to be mostly in rainbow order, so I did that, and then he set up the buttons for the butt flap. 

I sewed on the buttons with gray thread I had in my stash, and I lined the hat while Marc took Wyatt out to the park.

I wet-blocked the suit and it took about three days to fully dry.  Once it was dry, I added the tail. Wyatt now spends some of most afternoons as an elephant, until he overheats. I really hope Halloween isn't that hot, or we will have a very sweaty elephant on our hands.

"What do you want to be for Halloween?"

What to be for Halloween is such an important question in our house. Wyatt starts planning his costume early. And by early, I mean November 1. I remember driving Wyatt to school one day last year in early November, and he had a list of about seven different Halloween costumes he wanted to wear, in order: "Next year, I want to be a polar bear, and the year after that, a duck, and the year after that, a kitty cat..."

His polar bear plan lasted a few months, but after sitting down with my book, Animal Hats To Knit And Show Off, he changed his mind. And that change stuck. Just like last year, Wyatt had fully committed to his Halloween costume by early June. And just like last year, I knit his hat during the summer but waited to work on his suit until September. 

This time of year, I think back to the hours I used to spend as a kid dreaming up and crafting costumes out of fabric and trim remnants. Hot glue, pins, and stitching--we used it all in a flurry of activity.

And this is the perfect time of year to look back at old Halloween photos. We have four years of Halloween photos, because Marc and I never dressed-up before Wyatt was born. We are unusual for adults in San Francisco. Anyway, I think we may have peaked early as a family on Wyatt's first Halloween. All three of us dressed up that year, and only that year. I was the beehive, Marc was the beekeeper, and Wyatt was, of course, the bee. I ordered my wig, Marc's t-shirt, the netting for his hat, and Wyatt's costume online. I made our tiny bees out of pipe cleaners.

For Wyatt's second Halloween, he was a Great Horned Owl. I ordered his costume on Etsy, and it was ingenious. The base of the costume was a hoodie, so it was super easy to wear and very comfortable. The crafter had affixed a variety of felt and actual feathers all over the sweatshirt, very much like a great horned owl. I ordered a pair of matching sweatpants from Kohl's (the source of the costume's hoodie), and Wyatt was good to go.

By the fall of 2013, I had found my crafting mojo. Wyatt wanted to be a dragon, and I accepted the challenge. I modified a pattern for a crocheted crocodile hat, adding claws and ears. I also sewed wings from one of Marc's old shirts and the fabric of the skirt of the bridesmaid dress I wore for my sister's wedding. Finally, I sewed Wyatt a green fleece sweatsuit--his dragon suit. Wyatt made a truly splendid dragon. He still wears the hat and wings, but much to his dismay, he outgrew his dragon suit awhile ago.

Last year, Wyatt wanted to be a lion. That was pretty easy compared to the dragon. I made his hat from the pattern in the Animal Hats book, with Malabrigo Rasta yarn in Coronilla that I bought at Imagiknit. As I mentioned earlier, I finished the hat in June, but waited until September to make his "lion suit," which ended up being a purple fleece sweatsuit. I used the same pattern that I had used for the dragon suit, but I made a bigger size. As you can see by the photo below, the lion costume lends itself to accessorizing. Wyatt continues to use and wear his costume regularly.

In fact, my favorite part about the costumes that I have made is that Wyatt still loves wearing some portion of them. Hats and wings are a great way for him to dress-up and pretend, and the dragon and lion suits have been super cozy to wear after swimming lessons.

This year's costume is finally finished and drying next to me on the floor, because like a good knitter, I wet blocked it last night. Wyatt is not at all happy that it is still wet. He'd rather be wearing it everywhere. Next week, I will share the rest of the story about this year's costume. If you're dying for a sneak peek, I have posted some "Work In Progress" photos on Instagram. 

Victorian House in the City

Lately, I have been knitting like it's my job. I am knitting Wyatt's Halloween costume this year, and I started later than I should have. I ordered my yarn at the end of September, which is too late for much measure of comfort in terms of an end of October deadline.

During the same time that I've been knitting up a storm, I've been reading Little House on the Prairie aloud to Wyatt at bedtime.* Hearing about the long wagon ride from the Big Woods out to the Prairie, how the family built their home and stable out of raw materials, and how they traveled and kept house in the wild has been absolutely riveting to him. For me, revisiting this story as a parent has given me new respect for every pioneer parent who ever lived. Life was hard.

While Ma and Pa have been felling trees, building a house, cooking over an open fire every day, and ironing their clothes on a bed in their covered wagon,** I've been knitting a Union Suit pattern by Megan Grewal. I chose this pattern because it will work perfectly for Wyatt's costume, and because it involves several design features I've either never done or never mastered. For example, I've never knitted a garment with legs or a gusset, and I need to practice my buttonholes. 

The yarn I am using is Balance, by O-Wool. I've been challenging myself over the last year to make more responsible choices when buying crafting materials, as well as when buying ready-to-wear clothing and home goods. O-Wool has terrific standards. Owner Jocelyn Tunney offers environmentally responsible, affordable yarn that is made in the United States from certified organic materials. Jocelyn also gave me excellent advice on which color yarn to purchase. I didn't feel like I had time to order a swatch card before actually ordering the yarn, so I emailed her and told her about my project. In my email, I included links to the general color of yarn I wanted to find, and I told her I thought that I should order Graphite, but I wanted to see what she thought. She confirmed that Graphite was the way to go, and it's absolutely perfect in person.

I have just found and ordered the buttons we will use. I think Wyatt will be able to help me paint them, which should be fun.

Wyatt checks every day to see my progress on his suit. He is starting to understand that knitting takes time (for me anyway). And he knows that when I finish the legs, I'll move on to the arms, then the butt flap, and then the button bands. His anticipation is great, and I love that he's gaining appreciation for the work that goes into creating things. 

The other night, after I put Wyatt to bed, I sat grafting together the two halves of the gusset on the suit. That little patch connecting the two leg holes reminded me of the many pairs of store-bought tights I've worn, ripped, and thrown away in my life. I imagined having to sit and knit a pair of stockings because someone in my family absolutely needed them. And there would be so many other other garments everyone would need. Knitting was probably the easiest and most restful activity a pioneer homemaking woman would have during her exhausting day, and there would be so much of it to do.

Reading about the Ingalls family during a week of furious-knitting-by-choice has made me so grateful I live with modern conveniences. We have running water, electricity and a washing machine! And we get to choose whether to knit our sweaters and socks, sew our clothes and sheets, or hunt, grow and cook our own food. Modern life may be more complicated in some ways than pioneer life was. But I prefer the luxury of making choices about what to buy, what to make, and researching sustainable options over having to make everything myself.

*We had already read Little House in the Big Woods a few times and were ready to try another one in the series. When I read these books to Wyatt, I do some editing on the fly. I omit the scenes, songs, and references that are not appropriate for him right now. 

**The ironing really gets me. Was this ironing out of pride? Or habit? Good, crisp Christian values, maybe? They saw no one else for days and days, and yet, Ma ironed everything. I feel like ironing would be the last thing I'd do if I were resettling, but maybe that's because I only iron when I absolutely have to.

Lambtown Festival

Lambtown has been on my calendar for months. I read about it in Clara Parkes' book, The Knitter's Book of Wool, where she included a list of popular fiber festivals. Lambtown, which is held annually in Dixon, California, seemed like the closest fiber festival to where we live, and therefore the best choice for us this year. Wyatt agreed that a 90-minute drive for sheep, sheepdogs, and music would be worthwhile.

We went on Sunday, along with my friend Maja and her family. We all watched two of the seven sheepdogs in the final round of competition. Each dog and handler pair had ten minutes to herd three sheep from a homogenous flock around obstacles and into a pen. The competition was surprisingly intense. We had to stay quiet (a challenge for little ones, which is why we only watched two competitors), and as the dogs got close to getting all the sheep into the pen, the crowd held its collective breath, silently cheering on the dog and handler. When the sheep decided to go around, rather than in, the pen, the crowd let out a groan of disappointment.

Wyatt loved the petting zoo. There were a variety of gentle animals, including some tiny, irresistible pigs who would give an adorable little snort-squeal when you touched them. 

There were also red helium balloons, stamped with a seal of the Republican Party. The kids loved the balloons. And as you may have guessed, many of us non-Republican-voting parents were vaguely irritated by having to chase, and secure these floating advertisements all day long. 

No other political parties were represented, but there was a non-partisan voter registration tent, and they had a craft where the kids could build little sheep out of toilet paper tubes, cotton balls, and pre-cut construction paper. These volunteers also had a sheep trivia contest that I failed miserably. I learned, however, that the three states with the greatest number of sheep are: California, Wyoming, and Texas. Also, sheep do not have to turn their head to see behind them.

The vendors' booths were terrific, and there was so much wonderful fiber and yarn for sale. I did not get to linger long, though, because shopping in beautifully organized and carefully curated booths was not easy with my young companion. We did, however, enjoy a fascinating demonstration of a drum carder, and Wyatt got to try blending some vibrantly colored bamboo fibers on a fiber blending board. I was so happy to grab a few minutes with designer and teacher, Kira, of Kira K. Designs. And, I finally got to meet Brooke Sinnes of Sincere Sheep! I love her yarns, her creativity, and her energy. if you haven't already listened to her interview on the Woolful podcast, I highly recommend it.

Our day at the festival was terrific. We got there at 9:00 am, and we stayed until about 3:00 pm. The space was really manageable, even for little kids, it wasn't too crowded, and there was even live bluegrass music all day on a stage in front of picnic tables. I suspect we will be back next year!

Really Good Butternut Squash Soup

It seems like everyone loves autumn and all the winter squash it brings. Everyone except me. I do like kabocha squash and some other pumpkins, but if I'm honest, that's about it.

I'd prefer to let the squash lovers keep their acorns, butternuts and especially their spaghettis, for themselves. But cooking for a somewhat vegetarian household in the fall and winter means winter squash will have to grace our table at some point, especially since we are guaranteed to get some in our CSA box. 

In fact, last Wednesday, we unpacked our first butternut squash of the season. I groaned inwardly as I stuck it on the counter, next to the bowl of onions. I figured it would stand there awkwardly for a few weeks until I finally, and grumpily, got around to slaughtering it, cooking it, and then vaguely avoiding it on my plate. One of my complaints about squash (especially butternut) is that to me, it's just sweet and has no depth of flavor. Roasting it helps, but that's not enough. I cannot give up on learning to like squash, though, for the reasons I just mentioned, so I remain open to new recipes.

Last week, I listened to the Local Mouthful podcast where Joy Manning and Marisa McClellan discussed how much they were looking forward to winter squash season and how they prepare their squash. I was totally unmoved by their descriptions of roasted squash with butter. But Joy Manning's suggestion of how to prepare a flavorful squash soup grabbed my attention. Get this: She cooks the squash strings and seeds in the soup pot until they develop into a deep fond on the bottom of the pan, and then removes the extra strings and seeds before going forward with the rest of the soup. What a great way to develop good flavor! Yesterday, Wyatt and I tried it. It made a great butternut squash soup. And I don't mean "great for butternut squash soup," but actually great soup that happens to be made with butternut squash.  

Here's what we did:

I peeled and cut the squash. Wyatt helped to cut the pieces smaller, but squash is hard to cut (yet another of it's charming qualities), so we worked together. We also sautéed some onions until they caramelized. Ours actually got a little burnt, and then Wyatt ate a third of them, but I was aiming for one large onion, thinly sliced and then caramelized. I think that would have been ideal for this recipe. I removed the onions from the soup pot, added a little more olive oil, and then scooped the seeds and strings of the squash into the pot and let them cook there until a fond developed on the bottom of the pan. Once there was a deep-colored fond, I removed the remaining loose squash strings and all the seeds, sautéed some fresh sage for a few seconds, added the squash, deglazed the pan with some white wine, and poured in a quart of broth. We let the pot simmer until the squash was soft, and then we put the soup in the blender in batches. We added salt and pepper to taste, and we added some cream before serving, but you could easily leave out the cream if you prefer.

I'm pretty excited that I'm actually looking forward to the leftovers of this soup. And if you have some clever and delicious squash preparations you'd like to share, I'd love to hear them. Squash season is just beginning, after all.

Mozzarella, Fast and Slow

"I just need to finish building this helicopter, and then I can make cheese."

We've been working on mozzarella for the last week, following the recipes in David Asher's The Art of Natural Cheesemaking. 

Or, I should say, we have mostly been following the recipes. Our first mozzarella attempt was last Monday, and it was our first cheese fail. "Fast mozzarella" is cooked and ready to stretch in about an hour, and it has a very mild, sweet milky flavor because it has not fermented at all. But we didn't learn what it tastes like last Monday because the curd never set in our cheese pot.

Luckily for me (and probably unfortunately for him), David Asher has proven to be the kindest, most supportive cookbook author ever. Last Monday, because we were in the middle of an email conversation about his slow mozzarella recipe, I told him about our fast mozzarella fail. He very gently asked whether I had forgotten to add the rennet. I hadn't, as you can see from this photo (also, I should have used a spoon, not a whisk), so the failure remained mysterious until yesterday when I remembered that I had used tap water to dilute the rennet. I also recalled that at the time, Wyatt had asked me why I wasn't using bottled water, like I had the other times we made cheese (and as David says in his book to use). I had told Wyatt it probably didn't matter whether we used tap water with the fast mozzarella because there was no kefir culture in the fast mozzarella recipe. I was so wrong. A little research yesterday proved that chlorine in water makes rennet ineffective, and while I have been unable to confirm whether whether chloramine (which is in our tap water) has the same effect, I'm pretty sure that it must.

We tried the fast mozzarella again on Thursday, with improved results. But the curd stayed pretty soft. That time, I had used the remaining tiny bit of a bottle of water and topped off the quarter cup I needed for rennet dilution with tap water. Even though our finished cheese slumped, we had decent success and a huge amount of fun stretching the cheese into crazy string cheese shapes.

Our next recipe to try was slow mozzarella. This was the recipe I had emailed David about initially, because the recipe states it takes between 8-12 hours to complete, and you have to test the curd for stretchiness every hour. There was no way Wyatt and I would be able to hang with this project for 12 hours. If it took the full 12 hours, Wyatt would be in bed by the time the fun of stretching came along. And paying attention to cheese every hour for 12 hours, not knowing when we'd have to stretch it, was too much uncertainty. Fortunately, David had a suggestion. He said we could prepare the cheese, ferment it in its whey in the refrigerator for 24 hours, and then knead, stretch and shape it. That plan was totally doable.

Because we wanted the cheese to be ready to stretch around 2:30 or 3:00 pm on Monday, we needed to get it into the refrigerator by Sunday afternoon around the same time. And because the rest of the process would take about 4 hours, we would have to start the cheese around 10:00 am on Sunday. So that's what we did, and it worked perfectly.

I have to note, though, that Wyatt has become more selective about the parts of cheesemaking he wants to do. This time, he decided he'd rather go outside to play than dissolve and pour in rennet, and he didn't really care about cutting the curd or stirring the pot of curds every 5 minutes for an hour. So I did those steps. The cheese forms, on the other hand, were new, so he definitely wanted to fill those. And he definitely wanted to remove the cheese from the forms and put them into their bath of whey. And because he knew how much fun the cheese stretching was, he had no problem setting aside Monday afternoon for stretching and shaping cheese.

We could have attempted to make tender mozzarella balls, but we decided it was much more fun to overwork the curd and make string cheese. So we made Oaxacan string cheese and Majdouli, a Middle Eastern string cheese that incorporates nigella seeds.

The flavor of the slow mozzarella is much, much better than the fast mozzarella. It's still mild, but it's more complex and less sweet. We ate some for dessert with apples and honey, and it was so good. 

But the lessons for me from this mozzarella adventure are that I should heed the recommendations of my assistant and always use bottled water to dilute the rennet.

It's Not About the Pancakes

This morning we had our first school day breakfast meltdown: "No, Dad. I don't want yogurt or Bircher muësli. I want pancakes! Why can't I have pancakes? We have some in the freezer."

I was getting dressed as I listened to all of this begin to go down. Why no pancakes? Good question, I thought to myself. Pancakes are delicious. We had them for breakfast on Sunday, and there are indeed some in the freezer. But that's the thing. They are in the freezer and not ready to eat. And more than that, we don't have pancakes for breakfast on weekdays. 

I cheered silently for Marc as I listened to him stay firm and steady. He said to Wyatt, "I hear you. You want pancakes. You really want pancakes. And I totally get that they would taste really good. But it is a school day, and we are not having them. You may have yogurt or Bircher muësli. I'll put both in your bowl so you can choose." 

As Marc returned from carrying breakfast to the table, I joined him and Wyatt in the kitchen. Wyatt was wailing on the floor, and it looked like there was a decent chance that he wasn't going to touch his breakfast before we had to leave for school. But Marc and I stayed calm, relatively unruffled, and pretty empathetic (for 7:00 am on a school day) because we were prepared for this flare-up. We consciously do things the same way every day with Wyatt. Keeping a strong rhythm (or routine) makes it very easy for us to spot when something is off-balance, and it gives us the confidence to stay firm and on track when big emotions overwhelm our little kid. This morning, we didn't know what Wyatt's "sads" were about, but we could tell they definitely weren't about the pancakes. 

Our family would be lost without a daily rhythm, and this morning, I was so unbelievably thankful for Christina Perez, Wyatt's teacher and our parent coach, for helping us to establish ours. I remember, when Wyatt was much younger, how we struggled with the feeling of losing our autonomy and independence once we tied ourselves to a "schedule." But immersing ourselves in a daily rhythm was one of the smartest things we ever did as parents because we all know what's coming next and roughly when it will happen. It just makes everything so much easier. On a Sunday, for example, Wyatt (with less and less assistance) gets up, gets dressed, makes his bed, and brushes his teeth. There's a little time for him to play while Marc or I prepare breakfast. After breakfast, we clean up, and then there's time to play or have an adventure, and a midmorning snack. Lunch happens around 12-12:30 pm. After lunch, if we eat at home, there's a short period of quiet time, and then there is more free time until snack around 3:00 pm. Dinner happens around 5-5:30 pm, and then we slide into Wyatt's bedtime routine.

By now, we are so used to this routine, that when we deviate from it occasionally, we all recognize the change as something special, and it's very easy to get right back on track.

Wyatt eventually ate his yogurt and Bircher muësli for breakfast, and we confirmed it wasn't about the pancakes when we learned that he wasn't excited to go to school this morning. We were 7 minutes late leaving the house, but that's a pretty good recovery considering our original 20-minute delay to the start of breakfast. 

Finding freedom through routine sounds crazy, but that's where we are right now. And thank goodness for all of that.

A Visit With Willy Claflin, Storyteller

Do you know Willy Claflin? If not, you should.

If you will be in the San Francisco Bay Area this weekend, you can see him perform live this Sunday, September 27, at 2:00 pm at Freight and Salvage in Berkeley. You can also see him live at Berkwood Hedge School's Telling Tales Storytelling Festival in Berkeley on October 17. The Freight and Salvage show is geared towards adults; the Berkwood Hedge School event is all ages. Willy will also be performing in the Austin, Texas public schools in a couple of weeks. If you can't make any of those performances, you can see some of his work here or on YouTube.

Willy Claflin was the first professional storyteller I ever heard. And he made such an impression on my elementary school-age self that over thirty years later, I recognized him at our gate at Logan Airport when Wyatt and I were flying back to San Francisco this August. But it's not like I did my usual thing where I think to myself, "Oh! That looks like so-and-so," and then wonder for a few days whether it was, in fact, so-and-so. This time I actually gathered my nerve and said something like, "Excuse me. Is it possible you performed at my elementary school?" To which he replied, "Yes! Where did you go to school?" And then we introduced ourselves, and the conversation took off from there. I don't exactly remember everything either of us said because I was very, very busy being starstruck fangirl at the time. 

Willy and I chatted again at baggage claim in San Francisco. He invited me to email him to find out about upcoming performance dates, so I did. A couple of email volleys later, I asked him if Wyatt and I could stop by his studio space one afternoon. To my delight, he happily agreed to see us.

As kids, we looked forward, like nothing else, to Willy Claflin's performances with his puppet friends (including Maynard Moose), fractured fairy tales and hilariously engaging songs. And you'd be wrong if you thought that by my age, I'd have outgrown my school girl off-the-charts excitement and anticipation of getting to see him. True to form, for the last week, I have been waiting for Wednesday, today, the day Wyatt and I were scheduled to visit Willy's studio.

In preparation for this visit, I assembled my Willy Claflin items so that I could ask him to sign them. The record, "Stones Along The Shore," is an album of his Wyatt and I rescued a few months ago from a bin at The Record Store in West Portal.  And in anticipation of our studio visit, my parents, who save everything important, sent me his cassette recordings from the eighties. Wyatt decided he wanted to make Willy a present, so he rolled a beeswax candle. I tucked all of these items, along with a sharpie, into a tote bag.

After I picked Wyatt up at school this afternoon, we walked the few blocks to Willy's studio. When we saw the moose-shaped door knocker, we knew we were in the right place. I lifted Wyatt up so he could reach the moose and knock on the door. Willy opened the door, and for the next 40 minutes, we enjoyed the most wonderful visit with the kind, smart, hilarious, engaging man I remember from childhood. We also met many of Willy's friends.

We met Maynard Moose, and his back-up moose, "Boris with a B." We also met Little Moose, who is the heroine of the book, The Little Moose Who Couldn't Go to Sleep.

We met Ms. Moo. She has a big voice and tells stories with strong morals.

We also met Gorf, who is a bullfrog flyswatter percussionist.

Riboculous is an inappropriate raccoon who told Wyatt a story about how once he had lots of cupcakes, and they were so delicious because they were made with sugar, "nature's most perfect food." Riboculous said his mom told him share the cupcakes, so he did, but once he had shared with all his friends, he had no more left to eat. Riboculous concluded by saying that the moral of the story was not to share. Willy chided him for that inappropriate conclusion and put him firmly back on his shelf.

We also met Dr. Al, who is a humorless tie-wearing alligator, as well as Buzzy, Willy's well-loved bear, who is in his sixties.

During our visit, I learned that Willy is an award-winning author. He has written The Uglified Ducky and The Little Moose Who Couldn't Go To Sleep, among others. 

I also learned that he is recording his fourth music album and is starting a long children's novel. Between all of this and his performance schedule, I find it hard to believe he's even semi-retired, but he claims to be.

We left Willy's studio with so many presents, including a copy of the album he recorded with his son, Brian Claflin, called In Yonder's Wood. It is a stunning recording of traditional tunes, mostly narrative ballads, some from the British Isles and some from Appalachia and the American West. 

Today was worth every moment of anticipation I had pinned on it. It's not often that someone can live up to a decades-old childhood memory. Today, Willy Claflin did exactly that, and I can honestly say that he's even more wonderful than I had remembered.

More Feta Fun: Creamy Feta

"Oops. Mom. I smushed that little part off. But it was by accident, and it's only a small piece. So it's okay, right? And I can probably eat it, now, right?"

Did you know there was such a thing as creamy feta? I didn't. According to David Asher in Chapter 15 of The Art of Natural Cheesemaking, creamy feta is a softer version of feta, made using a lactic curd, like a chèvre, instead of the firmer full-rennet curd that we made last week. Creamy feta is commonly called Bulgarian feta but is now labeled as Bulgarian white cheese because of the Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) protecting the name feta. If the controversy surrounding feta interests you, you can read more about the "feta wars" here. Because "Bulgarian white cheese" is at best an utterly uninspiring name, I'll refer to what we made as "creamy feta."

Making creamy feta was a pretty leisurely experience. The recipe said it would take about an hour over three days to make, and that would have been about right if I hadn't had any help. For us, it probably took closer to 90 minutes or so over four days, which was very doable.

Here's what we did:

Like our first feta, we made some active kefir culture, and strained it. We heated the raw goat's milk, added the culture and a very tiny dose of rennet dissolved in water. Then we let the covered pot sit out on the counter for a day.

On the second day, we filled our forms with the curds that had formed. Unfortunately, I did not have enough of the proper size and shape forms for this recipe, so we used two crottin forms and two Valençay forms. I'm sure we broke a variety of rules by making feta in the shape of a pyramid, but because I have no idea what those rules are, I'm not too worried about it. We mixed a 7% brine. As the cheeses drained, we flipped them once.

On the third day, we salted the cheeses and let them dry, and we attempted a whey ricotta. The yield was very small and the flavor was very strong. The ricotta was also much wetter than our previous whey ricotta. We preferred the whey ricotta from the firm feta over the one from this recipe.

On the fourth day, we put the cheese in the brine. Unlike our firm feta, this cheese seems to want to float. The recipe says if that happens, to weigh it down. Wyatt managed to wedge a couple of pieces of cheese into the jar in such a way that they are holding each other under the brine. I have no idea what he did, but I hope it holds because I wasn't able to find something in our kitchen to use as a cheese weight.

Now we must wait two weeks for the cheese to age. We're looking forward to tasting the two fetas side-by-side to see whether there's one we prefer.