Tasting Spoons

Location: Rudesheim, Germany
Weather: 55, sunny
The photo: from Amsterdam, actually. A frequent scene, as bicycles are a popular mode of transport for the locals. Parking places are strictly monitored there, and permits are very expensive.

The internet connectivity on the ship is sometimes marginal. They actually have a “ship computer,” a laptop, that passengers can check out, like a library book, for an hour at a time. I brought my own. Anyone wanting to use the internet must purchase a 10 euro ticket which gives one hour of internet time. When that’s used up, you buy another. It takes awhile to connect, to log in through the ship’s wlan, and each page takes a loooong time to load. What little I’ve done to date has taken 50 minutes of my hour. I compose my postings offline and quickly cut and paste it once I get connected. Photos take awhile to upload, and re-directing to other web pages are also time consuming.

What we do, as with most cruises, is eat, walk around a little, read a little, eat again, and repeat, sleep and repeat. The food on board is fairly good. Not exceptional, but certainly better than some. The chef uses every morsel of food from each meal. Leftover green beans, you say? Ah, add them to some ground meat, roll them in some kind of flat bread (that isn’t a tortilla, but more like lebanese flatbread that’s been softened), cover in sauce and cheese, bake and call it Tex-Mex Roll-Ups. Some mixed vegetables? They become garnish for the lunch dish the next day. Two nights in a row I’ve had fish of varieties I don’t know. Last night was limande. Have no idea what it was, except thin white fish.

Today we cruised the Rhine and looked at dozens of castles. Some in ruins, most restored and functioning as hotels. A few are privately owned. One we saw is owned by a company in Berlin and not open to the public. Now I ask you, what does a Berlin company want with a castle on the Rhine? A retreat? A placed to take visitors?

We’ve watched dozens upon dozens of open and closed barges ply the waters. We speculate about what each barge contains. A few are identifiable as carrying oil. A few have carried gravel and coal. Others? We don’t know. Makes for interesting conversation. We also passed the notable spot, the Loreley. And several small islands in the middle of the river. The steep hills are covered in vineyards (all sweet white wines like Riesling), and the trees are still turning color here. Makes for lovely scenery.

My DH’s project this morning was to compute the speed of the ship by timing the distance between the kilometer markers. He’s good at that kind of thing and deduced that today, anyway, we traveled at about 10 km, or 6 miles, per hour.

Currently, we’re docked in Rudeshiem (rude-ess-hime) and will stay here until sometime during the night. DH and I decided not to walk into town today. He has a sore spot on his knee (as a double amputee, that’s a painful state to be in and prevents much, if any, walking). My foot is quite swollen, I guess from the lengthy walking I did yesterday. Swollen enough that I can hardly get my foot into the larger of the shoes (two) I brought on this trip. A month ago I had to buy new shoes because of swelling from my broken foot. If I wrap my foot then I can’t get the foot into a shoe at all. So, I’m resting the foot, consequently. But we’re fine. Enjoying the river-side scenery. Each afternoon they serve “afternoon tea.” It’s not a formal affair, it’s just different teas with some cookies or pastries. We haven’t attended that yet, so maybe today is the day.

Location: Cologne (Koln), Germany
Weather: partly cloudy, about 50

Hate this jet lag. Have some trouble keeping my eyes open in the daytime, but then can’t sleep a wink at night. Only when I’m so exhausted close to dawn am I able to fall a sleep. DH is sleeping well, darn him! Last night I listened to several podcasts I’d downloaded at home onto my ipod. Music perks me up, but listening to a radio program about high tech innovations puts me to sleep, sort of.

Scenery: pleasant pastoral scenes on both sides of the Rhine. We passed Dusseldorf at 6 am (thankfully I was finally asleep) and docked here at Cologne about 30 minutes ago. It’s 1:30 pm. About to leave for a walking tour of Cologne, including the magnificent cathedral. Over the years of European travel I’ve been through the Cologne train station many times, but never had time to visit the cathedral. It’s very striking looking on the city skyline. The tour will also include a beer tasting. And I can visit a chocolate factory if I want to. There are about 125 people on this cruise. Everyone is English speaking (interesting). And the nicest thing, they have both 115 volt plugs in the staterooms, as well as the usual 220 that is standard here. I’m able to charge my laptop and ipod and camera battery without having to use the converter, just using the plug extension.

Maybe later today I’ll have some photos to post. It was quite dark and dreary yesterday, and nothing at all worthy of photographing. I’m reading Portrait in Sepia, by Isabel Allende. Interesting story. The ship has a small library, which is good!

Normally I wouldn’t bake cookies again for awhile, because I made cookies for Todd, our son-in-law, a few days ago. He likes soft cookies. Although the almond-cranberry cookies I made were nice enough, they don’t make my heart sing. They’re soft. He, however, loves them. AND, he told me last night that his cookies are all gone already.

I, on the other hand, prefer crisp and crunchy. So when I spied the photo of these Chocolate-Almond Biscotti over at Acme Instant Food, they called out to me. They’re low in fat (with only 6 tablespoons of butter in the full recipe) and rich in chocolate and almond flavor. These are really cinchy to make. I kid you not. Just have everything at room temp when you begin, and you’ll have these in the oven in about 10 minutes. They do bake for 35 minutes, cool for another 15 (then you slice them carefully), then bake again for another 10 minutes. That’s less than an hour.

These get their chocolate flavor from both cocoa powder and chocolate chunks or chips, so they’re truly chocolate-y. They also keep well, and would travel well too.

I certainly don’t know about the cooking experience level of my loyal readers, but if you’ve never made biscotti, there are just a couple of things you need to know. You make a dough-type cookie batter. Usually, the stickier the better since you don’t want the resulting cookies to be too heavy (read: hard) so you can’t even eat them unless you dunk them in coffee or tea. But, making them too wet and sticky is next to impossible to manipulate (roll) into logs. A happy medium is what you’re looking for. These were quite easy to mold, although I did have some difficulty with the crumble factor once they did their first baking, as Kevin mentions in the recipe.

Biscotti are drier to begin with - you bake them in logs (pictured above) until they’re more than “cooked,” then you allow them to cool some so you can handle the logs. Then you cut them into longer sticks. They must be thick enough to hold together, but this is always the tricky step for me.

One great helpful hint from Keven, though, that I’d never tried before, was to use a serrated knife only to cut through the crust, then use a flat bladed knife to finish the “cut.” That worked like a charm. Then you bake them a bit longer to completely dry them out. Cool, package and store in plastic bags for a few days (or a tin) or freeze. These cookies have a very nice deep chocolate flavor. Satisfies my chocolate cravings and my desire for crispy/crunch cookies.

Chocolate Almond Biscotti
Recipe: Acme Instant Food (blog), adapted from epicurious.com
Servings: 28
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs — room temperature
1 cup almonds — unsalted, sliced
3/4 cups semisweet chocolate — chopped
1. Preheat oven to 350F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper (or butter and flour).
2. Whisk flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt together in a bowl.
3. Using electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until creamed and very fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating until well combined. Slowly stir in flour mixture to form a stiff dough. Stir in almonds and chopped chocolate. Divide dough in half. Form each half into a log about 2 inches wide and lay on prepared sheet. Remold if necessary on sheet and flatten the logs slightly. Bake for 35 minutes or until outside feels firm.
4. Remove sheet from oven but leave oven on. Let logs cool on sheet for 15 minutes. Transfer biscotti to a cutting board.
5. Using serrated knife, gently slice logs diagonally into roughly 1/2 inch slices. If crumbling is a problematic, use serrated knife to “saw” just through outer crust and then use a very sharp (non-serrated) knife to slice through–using a motion straight from the top down. Arrange cut biscotti on their side on baking sheet and return to oven for an additional 10 minutes, or until crisp. Once cool, you may optionally dip half of each biscotti into melted dark or white chocolate.

Per Serving: 142 Calories; 7g Fat (42.5% calories from fat); 3g Protein; 19g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 22mg Cholesterol; 128mg Sodium. Exchanges: 1/2 Grain(Starch); 0 Lean Meat; 1 1/2 Fat; 1/2 Other Carbohydrates.

To view a PDF recipe, click HERE.

(photos from the Orange County Register.)

One of the things that deters me from buying whole butternut squash is the difficulty of cutting it (first), the yukkiness of scooping out and discarding the seeds and strings (second), scraping that stringy stuff away from the inner hollow (third) and lastly, the slicing or dicing of the hard squash itself (fourth). So when I spotted fresh pre-cut butternut squash at Costco last week, I bought two 2-pound bags. Some of it went into a soup I made last week, and the balance was made into butternut fries.

Normally, “fries” ought to be long wedges, but I had cubes. That didn’t deter me one bit. I snooped around the internet a little bit and found a few recipes (I just did a google search for butternut squash fries). I kind of used my own imagination. Rachael Ray’s online magazine had a recipe that used maple syrup and creme fraiche, plus lime juice plus some seasonings. I took ideas from the few recipes I did find, and here’s what I did: I tossed the cubes with olive oil, and sprinkled them all over with a mixture of ground cumin, garlic salt and some mild chile powder (I used Chimayo). The squash went into a relatively hot oven (425) and baked for about 45-60 minutes. I thought they’d be done in about 40, so tasted it. Disappointment at that point. I’m SO glad I left them to bake another 10-15 minutes because they became succulent, a bit crispy on the outside edges, and those said edges had begun to caramelize with their own natural sugars. In that short time they became magic. Amazing how baking chemistry works. These are remarkably easy. If you prefer more sweetness to them, by all means sprinkle them with some brown sugar, or try maple syrup. But it’s not needed, I assure you.

Butternut Squash Fries

3 pounds butternut squash, cubed

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons ground cumin

1 tablespoon mild chile powder

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Olive oil spray to coat pan

1. Preheat oven to 425. Prepare a large sheet pan and coat with olive oil spray or cooking spray.

2. Pile the squash cubes on the tray. Combine the dry ingredients and mix with a spoon, then sprinkle it all over the squash. Using your hands, mix the squash so every cube has some herbs and is slick with olive oil. (You may want to add more olive oil than I did.) Add salt and pepper to taste.

3. Bake for 45-55 minutes, testing the squash, removing it when the edges have begun to brown and crisp and the squash has begun to caramelize. You’ll notice a sweet taste to it, even though there is no sugar in the recipe. Serve while they’re hot, and add more salt just before eating.

Per Serving (excluding unknown items): 103 Calories; 4g Fat (31.3% calories from fat); 2g Protein; 18g Carbohydrate; 3g Dietary Fiber; 0mg Cholesterol; 18mg Sodium. Exchanges: 1 Grain(Starch); 0 Lean Meat; 1 Fat.

To view a PDF recipe only, click HERE.

• Open refrigerator and scope out everything that is still usable (dispose of slimy, moldy, smelly and questionable items)
• Line everything up and do an overview of the situation
• In my case, this meant look, smell and taste the following: chicken and onions topping from the pizza last week, the twice-baked cauliflower take 2 from a couple of nights ago, the raw carrots languishing in the produce drawer, the lemon crusted chicken from another dinner and the butternut fries.
• To the pot add a quart of boxed chicken broth, and add raw carrots. Cook for awhile, then add any cooked vegetables and a few cups of water. Use an immersion blender once the soup has reached simmering.
• Add 1 cup or so of milk, taste for seasonings, add the meat (chicken) and heat through. Scoop into bowls and serve.

The next order of business was to turn on the television and watch approaching wildfires in our area of Southern California. At about 6:30 pm last night my DH spotted a huge, black smoke cloud as it spread east and south of us. He’d been watching football games, so we switched to news, only to find the only fire they were reporting was the very serious one in Malibu (which is still raging out of control as of this morning). It was at least an hour or more before they began reporting our fire, by then raging out of control, virtually no firefighters on tap because they were mostly sent to Malibu.

We’ve known that our area is a potential tinderbox after the very dry spring. Throw in a relatively hot summer, and only one day of showers a week or so ago, and you have a potential for disaster.

After dinner, we lost power. Quick hunt for candles and candle lighters. Knowing the fire was within about a mile of our home, we began packing up our most precious belongings (using flashlights), evacuated our station wagon full of valuables, mostly paintings and artwork. We took turns driving to a ridge near us (along with dozens of other lookie-lous) to watch the fires as they whipped more our direction from the further ridge. Scary. Very, very scary. Our firefighters are taxed beyond comprehension with fires that are blazing all over Southern California. As I write this, there are 10 fires, major fires, here and the winds have already picked up now that it’s dawn. Today we’re expected to have continued very high winds and temperatures in the high 90’s. Bless the firefighters for holding the fire line beyond our homes.

Spent a very wearying night, listening to these Santa Ana winds just whip around our home, toppling potted plants and trees, leaves everywhere, the pool a mess of dirt and leaves. We lost power for about 11 hours, so only had battery operated radios. Power was restored at about 5:45 this morning, so we now have TV reception again. It’s going to be a long day. The fire is far from contained (5% contained at 6 am this morning), but at least it’s not burning our direction. Thank you, Lord, for sparing our home.