Holiday Disaster or Great Story in the Making?

Got the call around 10am a week ago Monday, "Betts, you're not going to believe this. In my effort to 'fit' in Thanksgiving, I lost a week and defrosted my turkey this past weekend. Help!"

Laura, a childhood friend, is used to planning life out by the quarter and the year due to the demands of her design business. With nuclear family spread out in three states and constant travel to keep up with everyone, it's easy to understand how uber-organization could seemingly turn into disaster. Thanksgiving is happening today with said turkey. We talked through the steps of roasting a quick and amazing Two Hour Turkey, as well as how to carve, plate, freeze and defrost the beast a week later. I'm sure they're kvelling this minute over the moist meat, given it's prolonged bath in stock.

Plan in place and nerves under control ("This actually sounds better because I won't have to deal with a greasy pan next week."), I reminded Laura of my family's best Thanksgiving "disaster" exactly nine years ago. We had the triple threat - a new house, in a new town, and a newborn - and family wanted to "give us a break" for the holiday and descend upon us ("It'll be easier to get tickets to the new Harry Potter movie!"). We also discovered our oven could not even hold a cake pan, let alone a turkey. Plan B was to borrow ovens of neighbors who were away for the day. Suffice to say, a few whirls around the neighborhood with a slathered bird on my lap and we were back home with a raw one. Plan C was to use the grill. Now newborn is screaming to be fed, so I threw the remainder of the flavorful paste on the bird and ran to my feeding post. My husband was now in charge of turkey duties.

Fast forward one hour. Gentle knock on the door, "Um, Betsey, we have a ... small...problem. Turkey caught on fire and uh, the siding's melted off the house." "Is everyone okay," I asked. "Yes, lots of yelling, lots of pictures and they're getting hungry." "Great, well at least we'll have a great story to tell about this Thanksgiving."

I'll spare you the details of the next few hours. Let's just say everyone enjoyed the meal to remember and we got the kitchen renovation we had wanted. And the kids have one more wonderful story to tell every year at Thanksgiving.

Enjoy a peaceful and bountiful life, filled with laughter.

Never Too Many Pumpkins

Once in a while, we each discover one of those grand slam recipes - cleans out the fridge, is healthy and delicious - in one crunchy bite. Sunday was my lucky day.

I had leftover, uncooked kabocha squash from a cooking demonstration. What to do with it? When in doubt, roast. This way I could use the squash more ways than I could imagine, little-by-little. High heat, a dash of salt, a little water as I didn't want the squash to brown too much and 20 minutes later I was ready for the week ahead. Pumpkin muffins for my daughter's birthday snack? Set. Pumpkin risotto with dinner (will also use up leftover sparkling wine)? Set. Oh, yes!, the pumpkin granola recipe I had found through a link on Food in Jars. Psych set.

The premise was that pumpkin puree and applesauce replace the fat - all of it. Yes, this is granola without any added fat. While the "pumpkin" in the title primarily refers to the "pie spice" combination of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger (and I added ground star anise, because it was screeming to me from the shelf), like using zucchini in chocolate cake, you're adding nutrients and a new food group. And if you have homemade applesauce to spare, you're that much further ahead in the whole food game. How's that for a power breakfast?

I didn't love the large amount of brown sugar and that rolled oats were the only grain. So I took my favorite every day granola recipe, loaded with a variety of grains and seeds and without processed sugars, swapped the olive oil for the pumpkin and applesauce, replaced the brown sugar with my honey/maple syrup blend and decreased the usual amount of cinnamon for a pie spice mixture.

All-in-all, I was thrilled with the results. The texture is a bit chewier and a little less crunchy than the usual, but it's a trade off I can get used to. Check out Pumpkin Granola here.

Back to (Cooking) School

I love this time of year. I admit it, I'm a creature of habit and routine of some sort suits my personality. It's almost like a mini-new year, without having to publicly state a resolution I may or may not be able to follow through. I can finally conquer my to-do lists and catch up with everything set aside during the summer. More often than not, the catch up includes experimenting with a few new cooking techniques or unfamiliar ingredients.

Which got me thinking. While I'm not alone in my risk-taker status in the kitchen, I'm aware I'm not in the majority. Clients tell me all the time how their high interest in cooking is trumped by an overwhelming fear. The first time I heard this, years ago, I was shocked. Afraid to cook? My escape, my love, my creative outlet, my place ... to be ... fearless. Afraid? Huh?!

I recently came across the following list, "Why We're Afraid to Cook," submitted by the readers of Smitten Kitchen and compiled by the blogger. I could have paraphrased, but it hits the high notes so beautifully, I'm sharing the whole list (read it, you'll like it):

1. Our mother or mother-in-law cooks it better: Whether it is out of respect, deference or certainty that your version will pale, it seems that there are many of you who don’t even want to touch dishes that are others’ signatures.

2. The Food Police scared us: They’ve struck an absurd amount of fear into our hearts, now our panic over undercooked chicken and eggs or imperfectly canned food is so great, we cannot approach either calmly or rationally. (Don’t worry, I’ll get to all of these in time.)

3. It went really badly the last time (or times) we made it: So you’ve responded by keeping your distance. Had I not been actually forced by the deadline of the wedding and my desire to make a specific frosting for the wedding cake, I would have taken a year to get back to Swiss buttercream. At least.

4. We jinx ourselves: Failure is so often a self-fulfilling prophesy, wherein we are so certain something is going to go wrong, we indeed make some futzy errors. (This would be me, with phyllo, every single time.)

5. It’s hard to get our head around the steps: I admit, I feel more confident when I can remember a recipe without even looking back at it, because it is simple, or proceeds in logical steps. I always forget that I’m only expected to do one thing at a time.

6. There’s a very specific deal breaker: It requires pig’s blood, will stink up your apartment or serve 24 people. Kim Severson discussed these in a funny article in the New York Times last month, and she’s absolutely right. It only takes one word of some of these for me to flip the page and call out “next!”

7. We’re afraid of wasting an expensive ingredient: Many of you mentioned this in reference to large cuts of meat and good fish, where the price of making an error seems so steep, a flop is that much more of a risk. I totally get it as when I blow it on a pricey dish, I feel that much more awful about it.

8. Our skills aren’t where we wish they were: Recipes that require poached eggs, when you’re terrible at poaching eggs, just seem easier to skip. So can instructions that demand a fine brunoise or long, thin juliennes if you haven’t taken a semester of knife skills, or have a natural finesse in the area (or a really good mandoline, at least in the case of juliennes).

Sound familiar?

Enough of the diagnostics. We're here with the solution. Join us this fall for a new class, Six Basic Cooking Skills. We'll start with the biggies, including those knife skills, as well as the oft-mentioned, cooking with leafy greens. We don't know how you've lived without them this long (so sad).

We've also expanded our schedule and will offer the class on 2 separate dates, September 30 and October 20, 2010. Finally, in an effort to increase access to Essen, we've added a new tier to our pricing structure, Pay What You Can. We'll try it out for the September Class and see how it's received.

Let us know how these additions meet your needs. Enough with the reading. Get up and into the kitchen. We're here for you. Just sign up already!

Take the Kohlrabi Challenge

I'll be on location this Friday night at Expressly Local, a downtown Lancaster destination food store for folks who want an extensive selection of delicious, wholesome, locally produced fresh and prepared foods. Previously, I had mentioned my interest to the store owners in sharing recipe ideas for unfamiliar ingredients.

Karran and Cheryl, the store proprietors, took me up on my offer a few days ago when I received my cooking orders. Would I take the Kohlrabi Challenge?

I've used kohlrabi. It's part of the cabbage family and just like a turnip. Let's face it. My family is never exactly begging for turnips and they're definitely not urging me to pile the kohlrabi on their plates. (Me: "Need anything from the store?" Them: "Oh, yeah, we're clean out of kohlrabi." Huh?!)

The more I thought about it, it hit me once again how food is the metaphor for life. It's not about the kohlrabi, it's about getting out of our comfort zone, opening up our minds to exploring what's around us and finding the "yum" in what instinctively may make us feel "yuck."

I can't wait to share just two (practicing self-control is a part of the deal) of the kohlrabi preparations I came up with for this Friday. Ground breaking? Not really. Easy and delicious? If you have to ask the question ...

Call It What You Want

A free, quarterly kids' cooking magazine, "Chop Chop," was launched this week, on the premise that teaching kids how to cook is the best tool to fight childhood obesity.

Jamie Oliver's reality show, where he takes on a West Virginia town to actually cook the food they eat, launched last Friday night and was second in ratings only to the NCAA Tournament.

Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign was pivotal behind the president's proposal submitted to Congress to spend a record $10 billion more on child nutrition programs over 10 years, including school food. While a Senate committee has already slashed the request by half, the bill's $4.5 billion increase would still be a historic improvement.

And the list goes on. And we're saying, "Hallelujah." "Finally." and "We are here teach you how to do it."

Essen's goal from day one has been to get communities excited about the multitude of benefits of scratch cooking. We teach all of you, kids, adults and families, how to leave the intimidation factor at the door and enjoy the process as much as the outcome. Cooking fresh ingredients is not hard, and it definitely gets easier and faster with practice (to paraphrase our dear Julia Child) and planning.

Questions? Shoot it to us. Schedule too hectic? Set up a private session. Battling your kids to try new foods? Reserve a spot at Camp.

We're not the first to say it, but we live it every day at Essen. F-U-N. Food is serious stuff AND it is unbelievably fun. Why would you leave it out?

Kitchen Hardware

Essen Classes are based on the premise the freshest ingredients, combined with the best one knife and pan you can afford and solid cooking techniques, will put a quick and delicious meal on your table day after day.

Winter is definitely our major "pots and pan" season, when I receive the most questions about how to select cookware. Every pot and pan in your kitchen should do at least three things:

• Conduct heat evenly without hot or cold spots. Pans made of copper, aluminum and cast iron, at least 1/4- to 1/2-inch thick are the best heat conductors. If the heat conducting metal is sandwiched between other materials, the conductor needs to come up the sides of the pan, not be just a disc on the bottom.
• Protect your food from discoloring or developing off tastes. Stainless steel, enamel and tin work best here.
• Go from stove to oven thanks to heatproof handles. This is key to minimizing the number of pans you need to use and speeds cleanup. I also prefer those pans whose handles stay cool on the stovetop. Major convenience and fewer burns.

Yes, there's an overwhelming selection out there. Best thing is to shop live and actually touch and feel the cookware. This is a major investment, meant to last decades. Get out and handle some pots this week. You won't be sorry.

Happy Birthdays

Confession: I'm the mom of a 12 year old - for one day.

This isn't going to be one of those sappy entries about how time flies (which it does), it seems like only yesterday he was sleeping on our chest (it does and he still would), and how we have to make each day count (we should and we try). This is about cake.

Confession: I love food. I don't care much for cake.

Birthdays in our family are special days, but dessert was either grocery store cake or dessert at a restaurant. I reasoned that at a young age kids didn't know the difference and wouldn't value a really. good. cake. It helped that cake doesn't do much for me. "Why invest the time if the outcome won't be valued?" I reasoned without guilt. But this year I was about to have a 12 year old. Who really likes cake. And not that much else. It's never too late to begin a new tradition.

From this birthday forward, I'll ask my kids to choose their homemade birthday cake. They already pick their dinner, why not the cake? (For my daughter, this will be broadened to dessert as she's like me when it comes to cake.) It's one more piece to the traditions and history we've been creating since long before they were born.

I took his order the weekend before the big day - chocolate layer cake. With ice cream. I had been paging through a new cookbook from a fabulous bakery in San Francisco, Tartine and stumbled upon a recipe for Devil's Food Cake. Fast forward past baking the cakes, making the caramel twice as I burned it the first time, the ganache with so much left over I'm making truffles tomorrow and the toasted crumbs, a to-die-for new trick up my sleeve, and let's just say we've got a new tradition underway that will not fall by the way side. Yes, I invested some real time this week pulling it off. Yes, I may have been frustrated when I burned the caramel very late at night and hadn't a clue when I'd be able to make another batch. But the look on my son's face and the peaceful, happy silence filling the kitchen when everyone's devouring "the best cake they've ever had" makes it all worth every bite.