What's a butler?

Martha and her staff this month recount the "short list" of hotels around the country they found memorable in categories of design, food, gardening, and craftsmanship.  Craftsmanship?  I'm not even sure what that means for a hotel choice.  Of the 30 hotels featured, I have stayed in a grand total of zero!  How depressing.  All of this wonderful design, food, and "craftsmanship" out there and I am missing out on it all.  Granted, most of my travel nowadays is with kids to Florida or for work overseas, so none of the hotels I've stayed in would have made this cut.  I was happy to see that the "best kitchen" went to the Park Hyatt in D.C., whose Blue Duck Tavern I have been to and found to be delicious.  I recommend it for locals and visitors, but can't comment on the hotel.  

Martha chose the Fountainbleau in Miami as one of her "picks" describing the spa as the most beautiful in America and pointed out that if you go to the spa you get to use the amenities like mineral pools, massage jet showers and eucalyptus steam baths after your treatment.  Hmmm, sounds like Ali and I need a trip to Miami! 

Photo credit: Fountainbleu Hotel
Yup, I could get used to that!

 The best hotel I've ever staying in was the St. Regis in Singapore.  The hotel itself was wonderful, but it was the service that was truly phenomenal.  I went on a work trip with several colleagues and when we arrived at the St. Regis after a long flight and got off the elevator at our floor, we each had a personal butler waiting for us.  Yes, a butler.  Everyone needs a butler once in their lives.  When I returned from this trip and told my husband (at the time a stay-at-home Dad) about the butler, my then 5-year old asked what a butler was.  We explained that it was someone who does things for you around the house.  My son then said, "oh, like you Dad."  Nice.  

- Jacqui

Braids

It's summer, yes.  We've had vacations, yes.  And, well, let's just call a spade a spade, we've been slackers.  But, in all honesty Martha's magazines this summer have been less than inspiring.  Recipe after recipe with no fun crafts or anything else to try (September isn't much better.)  One item thought merited trying--braids.  Not just run of the mill braids but braids called "fishtail" and "rope."  Impossible to try on my own short hair (and in the case of the fishtail impossible to perform on one's own hair anyway) I enlisted the head of my surprisingly willing three-year old.  My guinea pig, uh, model at the ready, I tried the easiest first. 

The Rope
This is pretty cool.  Not really a braid at all, it's just the hair divided into two equal portions and each portion is twisted to the right so there are two twisted sections.  Then the right twist is crossed over the left twist again and again and the hair is secured at the bottom like a normal braid.  Here's my end result.

It looked pretty, but it didn't really stay in place very long.  I sent her to school with this style this morning and my husband said when he picked her up half her hair was hanging down and the rest was in some funky pony tail.  Maybe this one is for times when I'm at the ready to redo it.

The Fishtail
Next I tried the fishtail.  This one looked really amazing.  Here's the picture in the magazine.

Photo Credit: Martha Stewart Living

I struggled with this one.  First I misunderstood the directions.  You're supposed to divide the hair into two sections and take small pieces to cross over and incorporate into the other section.  I thought you had to somehow get the hair to the back of the other section after its crossed over which, it turns out, is really hard to do.  Anyway, after I finally understood the directions and had the idea to try it with her hair still a little wet, I got it.  It's not as nice as Martha's, granted, but not bad either.  This one stays put too.

I noticed when I was looking for the picture of Martha's braid that she has a whole series of useful videos on her website with instructions for all kinds of interesting braids.  For anyone else who has a daughter who likes having her hair done, it's a great resource. 

-Jacqui

Attack of the Zucchini

I thought my zucchini plants had finally stopped producing, but boy was I wrong.  I harvested four or five good sized ones right before I went to New York to visit my mom and when I came back a week later I found these giant mutant zucchini.

I included the soda can to provide some perspective on how big these guys are.

Seriously?  So, back to Martha's on-line zucchini file.  This time I went the savory route, choosing Zucchini Quesadillas http://www.marthastewart.com/313833/zucchini-quesadillas.  To make it a full meal I also made Martha's corn soup http://www.marthastewart.com/904230/corn-soup from the July issue.  The quesadillas were delicious, the soup ... not so much.  Let's start with delicious.

The quesadilla filling is essentially sauteed onion, zucchini, and corn (Martha suggested frozen, but I used fresh).  There were no spices other than fresh cilantro, but the filling was really good.

The filling goes into the tortilla with pepper jack cheese and is baked until golden brown.  Martha suggested brushing the tortillas with oil, but being quite an experienced quesadilla maker (one of the few items my kids will eat) I thought that was unnecessary and just added unneeded calories.



Here are my finished quesadillas. 

I really liked them and will definitely make them again.  I guess I have to with all those zucchini to finish.

The corn soup was not as successful and was a bit of a pain to make.  First I had to make a corn stock using six corncobs--yes, that is a lot of shucking and kernel removing.  The rest of the soup was chopped onion, garlic, corn and half and half.  Sound kind of bland?  Yeah, it was.  Really, this soup was virtually tasteless. 

I did come up with a solution to liven it up though, I added some of the leftover quesadilla filling to each bowl.  It ended up being a pretty tasty soup and looked pretty too, though I won't be making this again.  I'd have to always make both recipes and I just don't think that would be worth it when there are plenty of tasty corn soups out there.

 So, to sum things up, zucchini quesadillas - yeah, corn soup - nay.

-Jacqui

Plum Perfect?

Sorry for the terribly long hiatus.  It's summer.  I have no other excuse.

This month, Martha featured a very summery plum puff pastry tart and I thought it would be a perfect way to get back into the swing of things.  Or so I thought.

Martha requires 10 plums for this recipe. I know, right!?  It seemed like an awful lot to me too. While I'm not sure exactly how much 10 plums weigh, I do know they're not light.  Martha paired the recipe with puffed pasty - about as light and airy as pastry gets.  And here, my friends, is where the problem lies.  The puff pastry simply can't support the weight of the plums.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Martha has you toast almonds, grind them in a food processor and sprinkle them, mixed with sugar, on the pastry.  But you can't taste them.  And by that, I mean you can't taste them at all.  As you know, I don't like doing unnecessary work.

And then there were the 10 plums.  Ben ate plum slices.  Benjamin ate plum slices (ok, spitting them out doesn't really qualify as eating them...).  And I ate plum slices.

I still couldn't squeeze all the remaining slices the 10 plums generated on the puff pastry.  So we ate some more plum slices.

AND then there was the jam.  There was no way I could have used Martha's recommended cup of apricot jam, I tried to use 3/4 of cup, but I thought it ended up soupy instead of nicely glazing the plums.  1/2 cup of jam would have been ample.

The tart came of the oven a jammy, juicy soup.

Slicing it proved to be a challenge.

The tart would have been better had the plum slices been laid on their sides and maybe using only 5 plums.

Between the food processor, the need to put the tart in the freezer at various stages, and the exaggerated amounts of ingredients necessary, the recipe gets a big fail from me.  However, it did receive glowing reviews from those with whom I shared it.  The lesson here is eat it if it's given to you, just don't make it yourself.

Here's a link to Martha's recipe: http://www.marthastewart.com/904198/striped-plum-tart

Ali

Zucchini and Cookies Don't Mix

As I usually do, I went overboard on my zucchini plants this year.  It's not my fault really.  The seed package comes with so many seeds and you can never really be sure they are all going to sprout (they all always do) so I plant a bunch just to make sure. And as usual, I have a LOT of zucchini.  With no zucchini recipes in the magazine, I, of course, turned to Martha's website.  Bingo, she had a feature on zucchini with 75 zucchini recipes! I chose several to try, the first of which was for Zucchini Nut Bread Cookie Sandwiches http://www.marthastewart.com/349243/zucchini-nut-bread-cookie-sandwiches.  Although I wouldn't normally think zucchini would be the best fit for a cookie, the online reviews were good and the cookies looked really good (here's Martha's picture) so I gave it a shot.

Photo Credit: Martha Stewart

Dough was simple enough.
 

Then the recipe called for the "finely" grated zucchini.  Hmmm, which side of the box greater would be "finely" grated?  I went for the second smallest grate which seemed to result in a product that wouldn't be identifiable as zucchini in the finished product.

And, into the mixer.

At this point Martha directs that we chill the dough for an hour, but she had already instructed me to preheat the oven.  Martha, that's not very environmentally friendly!  So, I turned off the oven and chilled as directed.  After an hour, back to the oven and ... this was the unfortunate result.

As my son would say, "What the heck!"  I followed the directions exactly.  There was even a discussion in the reviews about whether to drain the zucchini and not draining seemed the way to go.  Annoying!  So, I added more oatmeal for the next batch.

Better, but these were a little too puffy.  When I added the cream cheese filling they became these giant cookie ball sandwiches. 

I wouldn't make these again.  Although my kids liked them and my husband even ate all the cookie mush from the first batch, I'm not sure exactly what I did wrong, so I'm also not sure how to fix it.  I guess I could say that at least my kids ate some zucchini, but I have never really bought that idea that disguising vegetables in pile of sugar to get kids to eat them makes any sense. 

I will say that the cream cheese filling was really good.  It just needed some crisp cookies to go with it. 
- Jacqui

Between a Rock and a Hard Place

When we moved into our house there were a lot of rocks.  I mean a LOT.  And, they were nice rocks, not like they happened naturally, but as if someone brought them here, but then just left piles and piles of them.  We'd dig a new area of garden, and have to dig up rocks first. I didn't really want to leave piles of rocks in the yard, so I gave some away , built a rock wall along the front of our property, a rock wall in the back, and two paths using a small fraction of the river rocks that were here.  (My next rock project will be a fire pit using some of the remaining river rocks.)  

I love the paths.  This one only took me a day to make and I think it looks so charming.

Last month, Martha highlighted low-growing ground covers, resilient enough to be walked on and, therefore, used in garden paths. She included Elfin Thyme, Silver Carpet, Bronze Dutch Clover, several others, and my favorite moss. Actually, Martha used Scotch Moss, but in my own rock path I use whatever moss I find in the other parts of my yard. I figure it already likes its environment and it's free!  I have no idea what variety of moss it is, but I like it.

It looks really fantastic in the spring when the weather is much more conducive to moss growing and it fills in between all the cracks.  This time of year in DC the weather can, and has been, brutally hot, so my moss is not up to snuff.  But, I think the path still looks cute.  I also like the way this vinca vine, not usually something you would think of as a plant for a garden path, is growing into the cracks.  Since it seems to be thriving desipite the weather, I'll have to see if I can keep that one going into the path as well.  I like the idea of the Scotch moss too which Martha says has star-shaped white blooms in the spring.  Think I'll have to track some of that down.
-Jacqui

 

Blueberry Dutch Pancakes

First, apologies for the long hiatus.  I returned this weekend from a two week vaction to a chock full in-box at work.  You'd think I would have had some free time to do some blogging on vacation.  No, I have kids.  Anyway, I'm back and ready to tell you about a yummy breakfast treat just in time for the weekend.

Martha's blueberry dutch pancakes http://www.marthastewart.com/901688/blueberry-dutch-pancakes looked delicious and very similar to a french pancake (minus the blueberries) my family has made for years.  I've always used a 9x13 glass pan for my french pancake, but Martha suggested using cast iron - four mini pans or one 12-inch skillet.  I had a 12-inch so went with that. The recipe was super easy.  Mix together 4 eggs, 1 cup of whole milk, 1 cup of flour, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp lemon zest, and a pinch of salt in a blender.  Heat the skillet over high heat and melt 2 Tbs butter.  Pour in the batter, skatter with 1 cup of blueberries, put in the oven (preheated to 400 degrees) and, viola, 30 or so minutes later (depending on the size of the pan) a perfectly cooked and delicious pancake.




I noticed in the comments for this recipe on Martha's webpage that a reader had trouble with the pancake sticking to her cast iron pan.  Her pan must not have been well seasoned, because the pancake didn't stick at all to my pan (a well seasoned yard sale find.)

When my mom came to visit the weekend after I made the dutch pancake I made the french pancake we usually make but added blueberries to half (my kids requested plain for the other half.)

It turned our well also but the blueberries didn't sink down as much as on the dutch pancake and the blueberry side could have used some sugar. The french pancake recipe doesn't call for sugar, which wasn't missed at all on the plain side but was on the blueberry side, I suppose because of tartness of the blueberries.

In the past I've made the french pancake with a layer of apples with the batter poured on top which is also delicious. When I do this I cook the apples in an oven proof skilled and then pour the batter right on top.  The french pancake recipe is almost the same as Martha's dutch pancake and even easier; wisk 4 eggs, 1 cup milk (can use skim), 1 cup of flour. Melt 2 Tbs of butter in a 9x13 pan while the over in pre-heating to 375, then pour in the batter and bake until golden and puffy. I served both versions with butter and powdered sugar. Either would be great for a special occasion breakfast when you want to impress, but not do a lot of work.  

-Jacqui