Don’t know if you could hear it from where you are, but our Australian family arrived on Friday morning, and it’s been a lot of noisy fun since they arrived. The first day we only had about two hours with everyone awake simultaneously; the rest of the afternoon the cousins did their best sleeping koala imitations in various rooms of the house, draped deeply over furniture and even each other. At one point our niece was sleeping half on her aero bed and half on the rug like she’d just spilled out of a basket of laundry. It was sweet and soporific.
On Saturday, there were games and walks and swims and homemade pizza that was heavenly. Keri introduced us to a new recipe – she thin sliced butternut squash and roasted it with some olive oil and cumin until it was soft and delicious. Tom made his thin crust pizza dough and then Keri topped it with the roasted butternut, pesto, feta, a little fresh mozzarella and parmesan and some sautéed mushrooms. Wowee. It was incredible. She also put together this beauty:
This one had a tomato base with the same squash and cheeses, but it also had some arugula, just for kicks. We loved it.
Last weekend, Courtney and Russell stopped in with their daughter Ducky (the perfect baby) for a visit. Maybe it’s not fair to call her the perfect baby. Not because of the perfect, mind you, but because of the baby. At one and a half you’re not really a baby anymore, but although she’s walking, ‘toddler’ seems to imply at least two years, don’t you think? ANYway, this girl is stunningly beautiful and sweet and good natured and we all want to keep her. Example: we were sitting in the kitchen getting caught up when Ducky wandered in to see us. She was headed straight for her mother when at the last second she veered and held her arms up to me. I kid you not. And the fact that I was sitting closer to the snacks had nothing to do with it.
We had a great visit, and at one point Russell told us that he’d had success making these blueberry scones from Cook’s Illustrated. We looked to see if it was in my fancy new baking book from those folks but no luck. However, it was online and I tried it out yesterday morning. It looked a little intimidating on the first read-through, but once I stopped panicking, I realized it wasn’t so bad. The coolest part of the whole thing was – now hold on to your (chef’s) hats, everyone – you take frozen butter, grate it, and then just toss it into the flour instead of cutting in regular cold butter. I know. Earth-shattering. Here’s how they came out:
They were a bit flumpier than the ones in the pictures online, but they tasted just fine. I’d been thinking of subscribing to Cook’s Illustrated, but it turns out their website is subscription based, so I can get all the content there and save the paper. There’s such a wealth of information around each recipe: how-to videos, ingredient comparisons and definitions, extra instructions. They don’t just tell you how to do something; they tell you why. Now I must come up with something stunning for dinner. Where’d I put that phone?