Since I made dinner last Friday night, I haven’t done much cooking. We went out to dinner Saturday and Sunday night. Monday we had lunch out and ate a hearty meal, so we ate nothing but tidbits for dinner. In the interim I was able to write up two posts about last Friday’s dinner. I’ve been busy working on a project so haven’t spent much time actually cooking. So I’ve taken a photo of the Chicken Breasts with Garlic Lemon Crust – I just sliced them cold and put them on a green salad sprinkled with some crushed tortilla chips.

We’re having a company dinner on Saturday and are joining our son and his family on Easter Sunday after we sing in three services at church. I’ll be making two dishes for that. Our daughter from Northern California arrived last night with two of our grandchildren. So we’ll be busy these next few day. The kids have requested hamburgers. Hamburgers, I asked? Really? Hmmm. Not my favorite thing. But I”ll make them for the grandkids.

A year ago: The Beater Blade (for Kitchen Aid stand mixers)

Two years ago: Flourless Chocolate Cake with Caramel Sauce

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No, I’m not in Tuscany. I wish I were. It ought to be beautiful there, right about now. With spring popping up all over. I happened to be searching on my upstairs computer for some pictures. And had so much fun going back over some of the trip photos from our travels over the last 10 years. I’d forgotten they were even there. One of the days we were on this particular trip (we had a group of us who stayed at an old villa in the eastern part of Tuscany – this was in 2004),  most of us took a drive up a long, unpaved windy road – it looked a lot better on the map than it was in actuality, but we eventually ended up at a lovely restaurant where our group met at the end of the day. We all got there by circuitous routes, with many stories to tell about what we did and how we got there. Anyway, we stopped the car on this ridge, and as I glanced over this little valley, there was this gorgeous vineyard plus a very typical Tuscan farmhouse, and the twisted junipers punctuating the landscape. It was so beautiful. And an evocative recollection for me. I do love Tuscany.

I’ve been meaning to put a photo of myself on my front (home) page. And I knew I had some photos here and there, but had to hunt for them. If you are viewing my home page you’ll now find this same one over on the left sidebar as part of my “Currently Reading” section. There is one on my About page, but you’d have to click over there to see it. Rather than create another section on my sidebar, I just decided to put this little snapshot of me by my current reading area. I find that when I read other people’s blogs, I want to see what the writers look like. So there you have it. That’s me!

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Our rains have subsided, mostly. It rained again last night, and my DH was out in it trying to keep any one place from flooding.

In the picture at left is a view of our front entrance. The rear part you see is the parking area behind our house. (We can park about 8-10 cars back there if they’re arranged like sardines.) You come down those steps to get to our front door, where I’m standing under an awning so I don’t get soaking wet. And there’s my favorite Meyer lemon tree on the left.

It’s actually a bit hard to see, but these photos were taken during a very heavy rain a few days ago, and you can see the water gushing down the steps. It’s a rapidly flowing stream of water just rolling constantly off the steps. Because the drain way up in the back of the photo couldn’t take the volume of water pouring into it, all the excess water comes flooding down the steps. The pump is working away on the left (where the hose is connected just to the left of the lowest lemon) trying to take overload water off about 60 feet to our downward hill. Fortunately, the rain slowed down before it began to fill up like a lake again.

On the right  you can see one of the drains from our gutters which is just gushing out at a VERY fast pace. There is a drain just below the spout, but it also is overloaded, so the area by our front door was beginning to fill up. Fortunately, as I mentioned, the rain slowed down and we didn’t have an overflow anywhere. The water is about 1-1 1/2 inches deep there.

And finally at left, there’s a photo just outside our front door. With the sandbags standing sentry. I know these photos don’t begin to show the severity since my camera captured a quick moment in time. A moment when you can’t even see the millions of raindrops!

We still haven’t determined exactly what we’re going to do – to fix these drain issues. Yet. We’re working on it. We are having two very large trees (one behind the Meyer lemon) removed. It’s a ficus tree, and should never have been planted in an area with area drains or sewers. Ficus have invasive roots. We’d hoped to not have to remove them, as they’re really beautiful, mature trees. But we finally decided they have to go.

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This week, amidst our thundering rainstorms, I received an email from a friend, Yvette. She informed me that she’d not known about my page of Favorites on my blog. And after finding it, she made a New Year’s Resolution to, over the course of 2010, make every one of my TOP favorites – I haven’t counted them, but perhaps there are 25+ of them. She also told me that some of the links were broken on that page. And sure enough, she was right about that. In between sweeping rain into drains and keeping an eagle eye on the back door that could flood, I worked on fixing all those broken links. Gee, there were a lot of them. And in the process I added a few new sets of asterisks to the list.

When I started writing this blog I never did establish a way to give myself marks, or stars, or a grading system for my own recipes. Over the course of the nearly 3 years I’ve posted here, there are very few recipes I’d never make again. There are a few, but I was upfront about it and told you a recipe didn’t meet my expectations. And why.

But meanwhile, I do have a BUNCH of recipes that far exceed my critical taste buds. The kind that I can’t wait to make again and again. So when I had a new design done on my blog, I decided to create a favorites page (if you go to my home page you’ll see a tab at the top far right that says “Carolyn’s Fav’s”). That’s the one. When you follow through on that link you’ll find a list of about 60+ recipes that are my favorites, with some of them showing asterisks ****** at the end of the recipe title. Those are my absolute all-time favorites. Better than 5-star. Requiring lots of superlatives.

The other day I received an email from a long-time friend, Joanne, who lives in Geneva, Switzerland (her recipe for Syrian Pita Bread Salad is one of my top favorites, by the way). She was planning a big party for a group of friends and asked my advice about some of my appetizer recipes she wanted to make. I gave her some ideas from my list.  She ended up making the Coriander Lime Shrimp and the Crostini with Blue Cheese, Apples, Watercress & Honey. She emailed me after the party to tell me that those two recipes were the hit of the gathering. Warms the cockles of my heart to hear that!

So, if you’re new to my blog, or in need of some new inspiration, I’d suggest you head over to my Favorites page and find something there to try. Then let me know if YOU liked it.

A year ago: Wild & Brown Rice (not one of my stellar recipes, actually, so see, I do have some that don’t make the favorites cut)
Two years ago: Roast Pork Tenderloin with Fennel

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Oh my goodness gracious. Rain. You’ve probably heard we’ve been having rain here in Southern California. It’s unbelievable. On Monday we had such a torrential rain that it overwhelmed the area drains around our house. The dozens of small 3-inch drains around the exterior of our house work fine under normal conditions. But not with the downpour that occurred. Water began pouring in a back door because our driveway (which is above the level of our home) just funneled water towards the house and the drains just couldn’t handle it. Too hard to explain, but water poured in our back hallway (underneath the door, pictured below), down into our wine cellar, and flooded into our family room about 6-8 feet. I was busily shoving pool towels everywhere I could, but it couldn’t begin to staunch the water flow. I took this picture above from inside our living room. At that moment in time this morning it wasn’t raining. We also had water seep into a downstairs bedroom (where we’ve had a problem before). We spent thousands of dollars getting a water barrier put in so it wouldn’t happen again. Uh, well, something didn’t work right because we did have more water, although nothing like it was before the repairs were done some years ago.

At right is a photo of our back hallway door (a door we never use). Those are dry towels waiting for the next onslaught. During the worst of it on Monday, I had dozens of towels by the door, which hardly made a dent in the flow. The water was up the door about 6 inches, so if I’d opened that door we’d have had a much bigger flood. Now we have a sump pump ready to operate during the next storm, expected today.

When we bought this house about 6 years ago, I can’t say that I gave much thought to rain/water/drain issues. We live in a desert environment, and although we do get rain every winter, it hardly makes a blip most of the time. We knew from the home inspection that we could have a problem, and tried to rectify the specific areas as best we could. We have our drains cleared fairly regularly (hmmm, not often enough, obviously). What we didn’t know was that an end cap on one of the gutters had come off so water from our roof was pouring down into a small flat pad just outside this door pictured. We’ll get that fixed as soon as we can. We’ve plugged the gutter end with a towel. Won’t stop the flow, but should force most of the water to flow to the other end where it might go out the drains.

Here’s a view from our front door looking west. The pool is out past the opening there. During the worst of the rain, water was coming towards the front door like a small river because our next door neighbors had a flood too, and water seeks its lowest level, so it poured over to our side. Unfortunately the ground here is not level, but tilts back toward the house. Don’t know if it’s always been that way or not. Surely that’s not what  you’d want. We’ve never had a problem with THIS before.

Rain filled up this area (and further back from where I’m standing) like a lake, and rose, and rose, to the point that it began seeping into our front door (up about 3-4 inches above the brick entranceway). The rain was so heavy we couldn’t begin to help. I stood in our doorway, in tears, knowing there was nothing at all we could do. Thank God, the rain subsided just as I was moving in more towels, pulling our Turkish rug out of harm’s way, pulling furniture out of our front hallway. Trying to find more and more towels. Trying to protect the hard wood flooring from damage.

The French drain shown at right looks so innocuous there. But debris can so easily fill it up when you have a lake covering the drain altogether.

There are people in the world, like Haiti, who are suffering terribly, and would probably welcome rain. Our problems are trivial when you compare the two.

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I’ve been under the weather lately. I’m now on day 33 of an upper respiratory infection (bronchitis). Prescription meds have been used up and now my body just has to get rid of the last remnants. It’s been a hard fight, obviously, because I still have a pretty awful cough and I still don’t feel good. My Christmas stuff is still decorating the house – haven’t felt up to un-decorating it yet. This bug is just hanging onto me for dear life. My GP says I’m rid of the wheezing (fortunately) and it will just take a bit more time. I’ve never – ever – had a cough that’s been this bad. I’ve never smoked, and I haven’t ever had asthma, but the first doctor I saw in an emergency clinic two weeks ago thought I had both. Anyway, there hasn’t been a whole lot of cooking going on in my kitchen lately. We’ve been pulling out frozen stuff (mostly soups) and my DH has been making trips to local eateries for some take-out. Not fast food since neither of us like that stuff much. I’m not even up to going “out.” I’d rather stay home.

I did walk out to our patio at sunset one evening last week and this was the view:

On the left, at the horizon is Catalina Island (the dark left-to-right strips – it’s 25 miles from the coast to the islands).

There’s also a little update about the Wensleydale cheese I wrote about a week or so ago. Our local Costco (a larger Costco, a bit further away) does carry the cheese year ‘round. I also heard from one of my loyal readers, Cindee, who tells me that Wallace & Gromit adore this cheese. I didn’t know anything about Wallace  & Gromit until then – have never seen any of their movies. Will have to add them to my Netflix queue. As the story goes, the Wensleydale cheese factory was floundering some years ago until by chance the cheese made an appearance with Wallace & Gromit. Since then the cheese has been flying high, the company came out of its slump, and in England they now market the cheddar with a Wallace & Gromit package:

Isn’t that just a kick? And, I’m happy to report that my DH bought more of the cheese with this kind of packaging:

So, stay tuned. I’m not blogging daily, and won’t be until I feel better and have begun cooking again – so I’ll have something to BLOG about.

A year ago: Ground Beef Moussaka

Two years ago: Creamy Leek Soup

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Lots of other bloggers do a year in review, and I thought it would be a good idea. Just in case you didn’t happen to be in the mood for some of the recipes I blogged about when you read them. But now might be different. So here are my favorite recipes I posted in ‘09:

Butterscotch Pudding – made with real Scotch in it. Heavy-duty on flavor. Not difficult to make, either.

Caesar Salad Dressing – an easy, really easy dressing made with mayo. It’s my go-to Caesar dressing now.

Garbanzo, Feta & Cilantro Salad – a wonderful summer dish, but really could be served any time of year. The flavors are just bursting within that little bowl above.

Mahogany Onions (appetizer) – the onions, cooked until they’re almost black (but not, or they’d be burned) and served on little toasts.

Bing Cherry Compote – never thought fresh cherries could taste so good – cooked, that is, into a compote that is sensational over ice cream. Has red wine in it, but the cherries aren’t cooked much so they hold their shape.

Cook’s Illustrated’s Tiramisu – I learned so much about the definitive method of making tiramisu when I watched this on America’s Test Kitchen. Best tiramisu I’ve ever had.

Savory Tomato Pie – never knew good, summer tomatoes in season could taste so good in a pie. Just the right combo of cheese. Nice crust. Wonderful stuff.

Woodford Pudding – similar (if not the same as) an English Jam Pudding. I think it was the quantity of jam that had discouraged me from making this, but I was totally bowled over with the taste. A keeper.

Bombay Cheese Ball – not like the cheese balls of yore – this one is full of flavor, with a hint of curry, and then topped with all kinds of wonderful things like shredded coconut, dried cranberries and a bunch of chutney.

Italian Sausage, Tomato and Cannellini Bean Soup – an exceedingly EASY soup to make. Can be done in less than an hour, maybe even less than 30 minutes – but it’s ever so much better if allowed to cool, chill, then reheat.

Cranberry-Pecan & Apple Salad – brilliant flavors, ideal for the holidays since it’s fresh cranberries. The chopped cranberries mixed with the apples and pecans just make a wonderful combination – kind of like the old waldorf salad, but better.

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This year I was asked to bring dessert to the large family Christmas Eve celebration. And since there would be over 20 people in attendance, I needed something that served a lot of people. I found this recipe in my to-try file. I’ve had it around since 2005. But the recipe’s credentials are very blue-ribbon worthy as it won a Sunset Magazine contest that year, for the dessert category.

Roasted sweet potatoes (the orange-flesh yam type ones) are combined with typical cheesecake ingredients, but with some added fall spices, and baked in a nut crust. The original recipe, submitted by Kari Bowers of Bellevue, Washington, had a pecan and flour crumbly crust. I changed that in order to make this eat-friendly for my cousin Gary, who is wheat intolerant. If you’d prefer to make the prize-winning crust, just go to the Sunset site. This version is made with a ground pecan-cinnamon-butter crust. Very simple. In any case, my version here, is gluten-free. Generally, cheesecake is already GF, but I merely changed the crust to a nut crust.

Don’t attempt to make this if you’ve got 5 other things you’re making for a special dinner. It takes time and a whole lot of bowls and dishes. It’s not difficult to make, just time consuming. But probably no more than any cheesecake, if that’s any better explanation. It is recommended that you make this a day or two ahead. I slightly increased the recipe, since I wanted to serve more people, so mine is certainly taller than the original recipe. I also had to bake it longer too, in order to get it to the just-barely-jiggling-in-the-center done-ness.

People who submitted comments to the Sunset site talked about how good it was, but many mentioned the texture – super smooth. Like silk, one person wrote. It definitely served 20, and it definitely was fine 3 days later, even. Velvety smooth texture. We liked the nut crust, actually. The maple whipped cream was very nice, although I couldn’t really pick out the maple syrup added – I guess there were so many flavors going on in the cheesecake, I couldn’t really taste the maple in the whipped cream. We needed and wanted more whipped cream than the recipe indicated, so plan on whipping up about double the quantity. I’d make this again, with no changes to the recipe except the whipped cream topping. Delicious. Particularly lovely for Fall. Or Thanksgiving.
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A year ago: Cranberry Porter Trifle (the dessert I made for last year’s Christmas Eve dinner – it was delicious too)

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I won’t have any time to blog today. Actually, I’ve been sick as a dog for about 14 days or so, bronchitis, laryngitis and a very bad cough. My DH and I came down with “it” the same day. What a drag having both of us sick at the same time, and gosh does this bug ever hang on! I’m surely tired of feeling puny. Plus, there’s hardly any cooking going on in the Tasting Spoons’ kitchen, either. So here’s a little Christmas humor:

Dear Santa:

I finally figured it out. I’ve been doing really good in school and I learned about how the earth is round. I wondered how you could give gifts to the whole earth the same night. But maybe, if you start over there on the other side of the world when it’s getting dark, and then come to us when we get dark, it makes sense. I was wondering if our town could be like a rest stop for you – where we could give you things other than cookies, things like Gatorade and new ropes for the sleigh, and reindeer food so they don’t get tired. Anyway, think about it. And my teddy bear has holes, if you wouldn’t mind replacing it. . . . Terry, age 11

. . . from Dear Santa: Kids’ Letters to Ol’ St. Nick

I do wish for all of you a happy, healthy and fun-filled Christmas. And if you’re amongst the millions of Christians around the world, do remember that it’s Christ’s birth we’re celebrating.

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Over the last few years I’ve stopped buying Christmas “stuff.” As much as I love it, surely at my stage in life I should have enough, right? The things I do have, I treasure. Like these little guys. They’re actually candle snuffers, but I never use them as such. I bought them in England some years ago; thought they were just too cuuuute. Love the “attitude” of the guy on the left. And she’s on the right, embarrassed because he told a dirty joke, I think. He’s saying “Whaaat?” to her questioning him. Or at least that’s what I conjure about them. The eggnog pitcher in the background is something I did buy about 2-3 years ago – it wasn’t all that expensive (probably made in China). And I never use it. It’s just part of my Christmas decor. Actually the mice aren’t strictly Christmas. There’s nothing about them that’s red. But for whatever reason, they live in my Christmas boxes and are brought out each year to decorate some nook or cranny in my house.

A year ago: Seafood Bisque
Two years ago: Rocky Road (yum, a favorite)

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