Sweet Corn and Blackberry Popsicles and The Secret Life of Bees

Cooking!

Pinterest has been a wonderful boon on my creative output. At this very moment, as I write this, I am waiting for some chocolate ice cream to set in the freezer and a coat of polyurethane to dry on a floor mat I'm making, both thanks to someone else's cleverness and Pinterest. 

The reason I mention this is that this recipe comes from a pin I saw a few days ago that led to this NPR article about blackberries. In case you weren't aware, I love blackberries. Out of all fruits, they are second only to boysenberries, and general just end up winning, since boysenberries are never at the farmer's market anymore.

Now if you clicked on that link, you might have noticed that there are a few tasty blackberry recipes there, but the most intriguing (to me anyway) is for Sweet Corn and Blackberry Ice Pops. Corn is tasty, to be sure, but not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of breaking that summer heat with a delicious popsicle. Well think again! These are super tasty, easy to make, and completely unique.


Sweet Corn and Blackberry Popsicle Recipe
(makes 6 small popsicles, or 4 medium-sized popsicles)

Shuck and rinse:
2 ears sweet corn

Then cut off the kernels and cut the de-kernels cobs in a few pieces. Put everything together in a saucepan.

Add:
1 1/2 cups half and half
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt

Bring the entire mixture to a simmer for a minute or so. You want the corn to turn a deeper yellow and soften. When that happens, turn off the heat.

Add:
1/2 tsp vanilla

Let the mixture cool for at least an hour, preferably a few. We did just an hour and it was tasty, but I imagine the flavor will get stronger if you let it sit for a few more.





In the meantime, rinse and mash:
1/2 heaping cup of blackberries
2 tsp (or so) sugar


You don't want the blackberry mixture to be too sweet, since the corn will be sweet and the sweet/tart contrast is what makes these so tasty.

After the corn mixture has cooled, pick out the cob pieces and discard them. Then pour the corn mixture into a food processor or blender and puree it. Pour it through a mesh sieve. You will likely have to scrap and push with your fingers to get all the solid corn bits out and all the corn juice through. That's fine, I'll wait.

 

Now it's time to fill your popsicles. I had the little ones from Ikea, which hold probably 2 or 2.5 oz. With them, I had the perfect amount for 6 pops.

For pouring, you just want to alternate between the corn and blackberry mixtures. the blackberry is a bit heavier than the corn, but it didn't end up sinking very much in our pops. In fact, most of the blackberries were at the bottom of the pops (the end that is highest during freezing.

Let them sit in the freeze for at least a couple hours to firm up. We let ours sit overnight. If you have trouble removing them, run the plastic under some warm water and they'll slide right out.

Yum!

Reading!

The Secret Life of Bees

by Susan Monk Kidd

I always want to start these reviews by telling you how much I loved the book, but I doubt I'll ever spend a lot of time reviewing a book I really didn't like, so let's just assume I loved this book (I did!). It's been sitting on my shelf for a long time, and it seemed like a summer-y sort of book, so as soon as my summer classes finished, I picked it up. 

The story follows a girl named Lily Owens who lives in a racist little South Carolina town in 1964 with her abusive father T. Ray and her Black "stand-in mother" Rosaleen. Lily is haunted by one of her earliest memories: a fight between her father and mother, a gun that Lily picked up, and a shot that killed her mother. Lily yearns for parental love and forgiveness, but finds none in T. Ray's house. When fierce-hearted Rosaleen gets on the wrong side of the biggest racists in town, Lily takes the opportunity to run away with her and discover her mother's past in the home of three Black sisters and bee keepers. 

I found Lily to be a compelling narrator. She is not particularly exceptional, but her need for a mother's love, which can be so strong at times that it produces a physical, feverish type of pain in her, endeared her to me. She is very much an adolescent, wanting her imaginary perfect mother while blind to the fact that she is surrounded by surrogate mothers ready to take on her cares and protect and love her. Most interesting is her relationship with Roseleen, who is the oldest of her mother figures. It's complicated, because Rosaleen is paid to care for Lily, and because Lily is White and conditioned to see Rosaleen as somehow inferior, and because Lily randomly exhibits classic examples of teenage daughter tension with Rosaleen. She has a tendency to notice Rosaleen's defects (which include crimes such a chewing too loudly) when they are in new or important company, or just when Lily is angry or upset about something else entirely. 

Lily's thoughts on race are interesting to watch develop as well. She constantly questions the racial views of other white people, which she never held to very strongly in the first place. During her time living in the pink house with August, June, and May, she tries to find her place in the house of people who her peers see as "beneath her." She finds herself attracted to a Black boy and must deal with an entirely new element of race relations. She sees racial tensions erupt into racial violence and breed hatred and anger in good people. Her observations are insightful and I enjoyed watching her point of view develop throughout the novel. 

Finally, Kidd's writing style  is beautiful. It's straight forward, with moments of extremem poetry that would make you look up from the book and roll over the words in your mind. These are best when they creep up with you in the text, but here is one for an example. Lily and Rosaleen are escaping and they get in a fight and sit, fuming, on different sides of a river. Lily looks across the river at Rosaleen, and thinks, "In the dark she looked like a boulder shaped by five hundred years of storms."

This book is full of sad things, but it's full of happy ones too, and beautiful ones. The Black Madonna is something I'll leave to the novel, but it is a powerful symbol and story. Happy reading!

Nectarine and Boysenberry Sorbet + Fairyland

Cooking!

Yesterday was a magical day at the Farmers' Market - not only did we find cheese curds for poutine (it was Canada Day, after all), but I learned what boysenberries were.

Most people, I think, have some faint awareness about the existence of boysenberries, but don't know what they are like, probably picturing some tiny, very tart berry that no one really uses except elderly people whose taste buds have reached a sad state of decline where they enjoy that sort of thing and like to bake delicious looking pies and eat them in front of the grandkids, who won't, on principle, eat anything that is fruit and is not sweet.

But most people (i.e. me) would be wrong. They are delicious! A hybrid of raspberries and blackberries, they embody the best of each - they keep the bumbly texture of blackberries and the sweetness and tartness of both berries combines in a epic symphony and they are adorable and you really should just go out and get some.


 Anyway, upon discovering their excellent characteristics, Joe and I decided to add them to out nectarine sorbet plans for the evening. We picked out some tasty yellow nectarines and a bit of mint and got to work.

Ice cream making is pretty straight-forward, especially with the truly wonderful KitchenAid stand mixer attachment that Joe got me for graduation. We leave it in the freezer all the time (you need it in there for at least 25 hours before making your ice cream) and take it out when it's time to go.



Nectarine Boysenberry Recipe

6 yellow nectarines, peeled, pitted, and cut into chunks
1 generous cup boysenberries
3/8 cup water
1 handful mint, chopped







Your first step is to put the nectarines, boysenberries, mint, and water in the food processor until it is nice and pureed. At this point, you may want to do a taste test to make sure the ratio is to your liking. We had pretty sweet nectarines, so this was the perfect sweet/tart blend for us.


Once processed, you want to push the mixture through a mesh strainer, to get any seeds, skin, or pulp out, for maximum creaminess.

Here is the result of the straining, a cream, homogenous mixture. We put it through in batches, scooping the pulpy remains into a jar to use as jam later and rinsing off the strainer in between batches. This helped us get the most creamy mixture at the end and made the process easier. We did about three batches.






At this point, you want to put the container in the refrigerator for 8 hours, or the freezer for about 3 or 4. Your goal is to get the mixture good and cold so it will freeze easily when you mix it. If you choose the freezer method, be sure to give it a stir every 30 to 45 minutes or so, to let it freeze uniformly.





After we took it out of the freezer, we added a bit of simple syrup that we had chilling in the fridge, probably 1/4 cup sugar dissolved in 1/4 water. Totally optional - the fruit is already sweet enough!

When it's cold enough, set up the freezer bowl on your stand mixer, following the instruction guide. Turn the mixer on the lowest setting and pour your mixture in as the paddle turns. Let it mix in there for about 10 minutes, then pour it into an airtight container and let it    
                                          freeze up the rest of the way for at least an hour or two before serving

Take it out, scoop, garnish, and enjoy!

**Thanks to Joe and Amalia for doing lots of work for this ice cream <3**

Reading!

I'm going to be much more diligent and elaborate with my reading recommendations, guys, starting... now!

Recently, I finished The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente. Running with the theme of this post, it too was a graduation gift, from a friend who knows me well enough to stick the subtitle "The Emily Knight Story" on the book's cover with scrap-booking sticker letters.

It really was my kind of story. Fairyland, in all its disturbing manifestations, is my preferred setting and children/YA fantasy fiction is my preferred genre, at this moment. This story did not disappoint.

The plot follows a little girl named September, who lives in Nebraska. On page two, the Green Wind arrives and says, "You seem like an ill-tempered and irascible enough child. How would you like to come away with me?" Which September, of course, does without a second thought.

As a main character, September is everything a ravished child (in the G-rated sense of the word) should be: at times petulant and ill-tempered, at times frightened and wishing for home, at times brave and selfless, and above all, constantly curious. Though she is enjoyable to follow, my favorite character was the narrator and her voice, as she interjected the story often with her snarky and dramatic commentary.

September's adventures form a series of loosely connected vignettes, at least during the first half of the novel, during which she encounters characters so numerous that one must make use of the dramatis personae at the beginning of the book. Valente raises the stakes more towards the end, however, as a Wyverary (his mother was a Wyvern, his father a Library) named A-Through-L and a Marid called Saturday join September and the three must face the dreaded Marquess, who is terrible, but has a very nice hat.

The novel is full of classical allusions and reads like previous delightful romps through fairyland; Oz and Wonderland come to mind. Though I enjoyed that aspect of the novel, I occasionally felt a lack of purpose and development. That aspect came in to play, however, when September meets the Marquess and is compelled to complete a task for her. Seeing the Marquess as a foil for September and seeing September veer from what both she and the readers see as the "typical" fairyland plot was refreshing and gave the novel greater depth. The climax was suitably complex and thoughtful and embodied something I wish I saw more often in fairyland fiction: rather than rejecting fairyland for the real world, September (and the novel as a whole) says "yes to magic," as Valente puts it in an interview. It's about "seeing a new world, a new way of living and embracing it instead of turning away." I whole-heartedly recommend this novel for anyone enamored by magical children's lit and look forward to the sequel!

~Out!~

Strawberry Almond Roulade and Little Bee

I made a strawberry roulade from a squishy pink baking book that Bridget brought home from work! It is all gone already, that is how delicious it is (was). Make it and see for yourself!

The Prep: Heat your oven to 425 degrees. Take a jelly roll pan (or something 14x10 inches (ish) and line it with parchment paper. This is going in the oven, so don't cheat and use wax. Go out and buy some parchment. It's August and I had to bicycle to the store to get some, so I don't wanna hear you complaining.

The first step is making the spongy cake part. Start with a pot with some water in it. Put that on the stove and heat it up while you find a nice heat-proof bowl to put on top of the pot, so the bottom of the bowl is in the pot but not touching the water. Now put 3 eggs and 2/3 of a cup of sugar into the heat-proof bowl and whisk them until everything is warm and thick and mixed. Don't cook the eggs though.



Action shot!

Take that off the heat and get another bowl with a little bit less than 1 cup of flour. Be sure and sift this pretty well, because you will be folding the eggy sugar mixture into this and you want as few lumps as possible. Okay, now you can fold the eggy sugar mixture into the flour. Add 1 tbsp of hot water to the mix as well.



Pour the mixture into the pan and pop it in the oven for 8-10 minutes, until golden and springy.



Meanwhile, you can make the filling by mixing 3/4 of a cup of mascarpone cheese with 1 tsp almond extract. I added some sliced strawberries as well, and then sliced some more strawberries in another bowl to put on top of the filling. I really love strawberries.



When the cake is done, turn it out on a fresh piece of parchment paper and peel the old, oven-y parchment paper off.



Roll the cake up in a spiral, with the fresh paper to keep it from sticking. Wrap it in a dishtowel and wait for it to cool. Meanwhile, let the filling get cool in the fridge.



Wait a couple hours and pull everything out to assemble. Unroll the cake bit and spread the filling on it. Drop some sliced strawberries on the filling and roll it all back up. For extra decoration, add slivered almonds on top.







Yum!

Last night I finished Little Bee, a novel by Chris Cleave. It is about a young woman from Nigeria and a less-young woman from England. It's about a lot of other things too, but it is a story that I was told not to spoil by explaining. Suffice to say that it was beautiful and heartbreaking and please enjoy this, one of my favorite passages from it: "We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived"

Yummy Ratatouille

I made ratatouille for the first time last Wednesday! It was pretty good, but a little too liquidy, so you will want to check the pot pretty frequently (I did not do this).

First step is to chop up lots of things - an onion, 3 garlic cloves, an eggplant, 2 zucchini, a yellow squash, 2 bell peppers, and 4 tomatos



Yummy cut things!



Put 1/4 cup of olive oil in a big pot and put all the veggies in (except the tomatoes) with a couple bay leaves and some thyme and salt and pepper.

Leave them in there, covered, over a medium heat, for 15-20 minutes.



Meanwhile, add some chopped parsley to your chopped tomatoes. Pretty!



Now that the other veggies have softened, add the tomatoes and parsley to the pot and cover for another 15-20 minutes. Be sure to watch it and uncover it when everything is soften enough, but not falling apart. While you're waiting, stick a baguette in the oven to make it nice and crusty.

Dinner!



It is finals time, which means that, if you are an English major, you are all done reading the assigned books for the semester and you can enjoy reading stuff for yourself. What I want to read most is Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. I read it once last year and it was Most Excellent. If you enjoy alternative reality period novels that include magic, silly and cranky and pedantic English people, and novels that have fun and informative (lying) footnotes, then you should read this novel too. I happen to like all if these things, and I love, love, love stories that have parts set in Faerie. So this is what I'm reading now.

Enjoy with your tummy and with your brain :D