GeeCee's Not-Entirely-Original Miscellany

I have a bunch of cookie recipes I want to try out, but I don't want to have six or fourteen dozen cookies sitting in my house. (That way lies madness and blood sugar problems.) This, my friends, is where you come in. I'll send at least a dozen assorted cookies to the first four people on my friends list to comment here. [Edit: All four claimed. Depending on how much I bake, I may have a few additional available. TBD.] The catch, such as it is, is that I may not get around to baking for at least a week, so please don't camp out by the mailbox on Thursday or anything. Note: if you are currently dating me, you do not have to throw your hat in the ring for cookies because you're already accounted for.

Today was the last day of the big fall used book sale at my local library branch. To my chagrin, it was "fill a box for $10" day, which means I ended up with something like 18 books, including some information systems and user interface design textbooks, for $10. The box was far from full, but a combination of the tables being really picked over by this point and already having something close to 70 books tagged "unread" in LibraryThing meant that I wasn't in a big hurry to go fetch any more. Anyway, one of the things I picked up mostly for amusement value was The New York Times International Cookbook, copyright date 1971. The second ingredient listed for "Swedish Christmas Ham" is 1 tablespoon saltpeter. o_O Most of the recipe, in fact, is how to cure your own ham. Needless to say, a large percentage of the book is taken up by the sections on France and Italy, but I was pleasantly surprised to find at least small sections for recipes from places like Haiti, Fiji, Peru, and Benin (at the time of publication, it was still Dahomey). If anyone's interested in the recipe for Danish Fish Pudding, let me know. ;)

Penzeys is coming to DC.

"The New Year is off to an exciting start. We finished last year with stores opening in Denver, Philadelphia and Long Island. Now we are putting the finishing touches on four new stores. One on the west side of Cleveland at 28601 Chagrin Boulevard, one on the west side of Omaha at 616 South 72nd Street, and two in the D.C. area, one in Rockville, MD at 1048 Rockville Pike and one in Falls Church, VA at 513 Broad Street. Look for these stores to be opening in the spring."

About damn time. =)

Tonight I decided to try using up some of the CSA veggies, since I've been very bad about using them while they're still edible. Today's experiment was the fennel, using a recipe from Melissa's Great Book of Produce which I cut down to a single serving (from four; these are roughly the right amounts for a single serving below):

Fish fillets with fennel and orange

1 tablespoon olive or vegetable oil
1 small fennel bulb, trimmed and cut in crosswise strips
salt and pepper to taste
1 orange, Cara Cara preferred (I used your ubiquitous Valencia instead), cut in segments and juice reserved
1 5-7 oz fish fillet, such as salmon, red snapper or sea bass
1/2 tablespooon minced Italian parsley

In large, deep skillet, heat 1/4 tablespoon olive oil on high heat. Add fennel, salt and pepper. Lower heat to medium and cook until fennel browns slightly, about 3 minutes. Add reserved orange juice (should be roughly 1 tablespoon), cover, and simmer on medium low until tender (about 2 minutes). Set aside.

Heat 1/2 tablespoon oil in large, ovenproof skillet on medium-high heat. Add fillets and cook about 3 minutes on each side, browning well. Smaller fillets will be cooked through at this point, but thicker ones will need additional cooking. Place skillet in 350-degree oven until cooked through, about 3-5 minutes.

Stir parsley into fennel, spoon over fish and garnish with orange segments.

The verdict?  Eh.  It sounded good on paper, but apparently I don't like fennel.  I'm not sure why I thought I would, seeing as how I don't particularly care for licorice or anise.  Seemed a shame to let the veggies go to waste though, and the fish itself was okay.

The cookbook collection For someone who rarely cooks, I have a bit of a thing for cookbooks. The magazines are mostly few years worth of "Cooking Light" that I need to cull to make room for a few more books.
Luckily I have Gateway around to help when I need to clean off a shelf.

Found a link at Simply Recipes to this sale at Amazon:

Cuisinart Chef's Classic Stainless 10-Piece Cookware Set: 8- and 10-inch skillets, 1-1/2- and 3-quart covered saucepans, 3-1/2-quart sauté pan, and 8-quart covered stockpot. List price is marked $400 (although I've never actually seen it at that price), Amazon's current price is $129.99. It also qualifies for free super saver shipping (at least $20 otherwise), and through Oct. 24 you can use their promotional code to take $25 off a $125 order in Kitchen & Housewares or Bed & Bath, making the final price $105.

From my inbox, because I thought some of y'all might like to know:

Introducing Saucy, Bookslut's First Sister Site
http://www.saucymag.com

From the Letter from the Editor at Saucy, which debuts today:

This is not a website for picky eaters. If you’re cutting carbs, eating at McDonald’s, or buying margarine, this may not be the site for you. But if you love all kinds of food like we do, Saucy is here to entertain and enlighten.
[...]
I want Saucy to encompass many issues – from the political to the technical – and still remain a celebration of food. In the coming weeks you’ll find articles on why buying locally grown produce matters, or how a co-op grocery is built from the ground up. We won’t tell you why French food will or will not make you fat, but we will tell you which French cookbooks are essential to every collection and which will leave you sobbing in frustration on your kitchen floor. Saucy has assembled some great, original voices, and their columns will entertain you with tales of food gone both good and bad.

Saucy will be updated daily, Monday through Thursday. Let us know what you think.

Not bad. Not as stunningly wonderful as I'd hoped, but definitely not bad for a first attempt and some guesstimation. There's something slightly off-balance in it, perhaps next time an adjustment to the saffron amount. Or maybe next time I'll just make vanilla/rosewater instead. =)

I went with the basic ice cream base recipe that came with my ice cream maker:

1 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 cups heavy cream

Warm the milk in a small pan. Whisk the eggs with the sugar in a separate bowl. Slowly add the warm milk to sugar mixture, continuing to whisk. Pour mixture back into the pan and heat slowly until thickened, stirring constantly (do not boil). When thickened, remove the mixture from the heat and let it cool to room temperature.

While I was heating the mixture, I added somewhere between an eighth- and a quarter-teaspoon of saffron powder to it (using the eyeball method). Once the mixture had cooled sufficiently, I added two tablespoons of rosewater, then the two cups of heavy cream, stirred, and then froze it.