Saturday, May 9, 2009

Cash is king

A few weeks ago, I got new furniture for my living room. My parents, my sister, and her husband came with the pick up truck to take my old furniture. One of my sister's coworkers wanted my dilapidated leather couch - a $600 buy at BJ's 9 years ago that served me well. The leather recliner went to my dad's "man cave". The leather pieces took up too much visual space, and I've replaced them with more modern pieces - a love seat and an accent chair.

Now that I've gotten somewhat side-tracked... When they arrived, we went to get dinner - at the fish fry place a few blocks from my house. (Are fish fry places an Albany thing? We have several, but I saw it mentioned that you can't find them other places.)

My dad stated that if he lived where I live he would weigh 500 pounds. Here's what I always get, the "fish and chips deluxe dinner":



For $6.15 plus tax, it's fish, fries, cornbread, a choice of "salad" (I got macaroni), and a can of soda. And I get two meals out of it. A much better deal than McDonald's, and it tastes better, too!

My other favorite local place is a pizza place. It's a couple of miles from my house, but I drive there rather than go to places that are closer. It's good pizza.



In a world where McDonald's, Taco Bell, and every other shop under the sun take credit cards, these places are anomalies. I've heard a statistic that most people under 30 don't carry cash anymore. (I usually don't, even though I'm just past that marker.) Signs on the door state "CASH ONLY." If they restrict your purchases to cash, the food must be worth it, if you've got to find an ATM so that you can eat it.

Are "Cash Only" signs as good as a Zagat rating?

Friday, April 3, 2009

Not your "Mother's" animal cookies

When Mother's/Archway closed up shop last October, everyone was reminiscent of their animal cookies. I remember the (Archway) rich dark chocolate cookies that came in packages of 8 or 10, but their animal crackers...weren't the ones that I recalled.

I remembered these, brought to school and Brownies for snacks:



Stauffer's. They have a slight spice to them, and just a schmear of frosting on top. They boldly pronounce that they are trans fat free, but HFCS is one of their ingredients.

Stauffer's also makes an awesome slightly different version of Goldfish, called Whales - check them out, if you see them!

Friday, March 27, 2009

Added pictures



I've finally added flickr to my Crackberry, so I've added pictures to a couple of posts:

New York City

Nonna's Apple Cake, Take 1

(Pictures with the date stamp are from my Kodak DX6490.)

Nonna's apple cake, take 2

A few weeks ago, I had a second go at making Nana's Apple Cake. I still haven't got it quite right, but here's what I ended up with.

1.25 cup sugar (10 ounces)
1.25 cups cake flour (5 ounces)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon



I decided to go with all cinnamon after I noticed that there are recipes to make the apple cake mix into things like banana bread.



The batter had a better consistency this time.



And I didn't have the doming issue.



But the end result was kind of - candy-ish. (Too much sugar?)



I guess I will have to break down and buy a package of the mix to do some comparisons.

Black and Whites



This is what a Black and White cookie looks like to me. (Though, not necessarily chocolate.) Notice the buttercream frosting, versus the glaze-type frosting associated with NYC B&W's.

I'm not sure if this is a very local thing - this is what I grew up with, about an hour west of Albany. I found this at the Niskayuna Co-op today. This particular cookie looked better than it tasted, which was disappointing.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

A love for mass transit

I forgot to mention this in my post about NYC a couple of weeks ago. In Grand Central Station, they have a small NY Transit Museum store and a few exhibits. What are some of the things you can buy there?

A metal "grab-hold" from the old subway cars.

A set of 5 historic tokens. For those of you who haven't been on a subway lately (in the past 8 years or so), they've switched from tokens to electronic cards.

Coin purses, bags, and clutches made from recycled subway maps.

Go to transitmuseumstore.com and check out all of the neat things they offer!

Monday, March 16, 2009

All hail Pi!

In honor of Pi Day on Saturday, I decided to bake a Lemon Meringue pie on the ides of March. I was inspired by the posts on the kitchn and Serious Eats with pictures of pies. I asked my dad what kind of pie he would like, he had no suggestions, and thought "Pi Day" was odd.

A couple of hours later, I got a call back. "I've come up with a list," my dad told me. "Peach pie, or apple pie, or lemon meringue pie, or cheesecake pie. Are you really going to make a pie?"

I thought about his list. Apple pie - we make this most frequently. Peach pie - would be much better with fresh peaches. Cheesecake "pie"...not really a pie. So, I settled on Lemon Meringue.

And...Kemon Meringue pie is a pain! I went with the recipe in The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The Original Classics. BTW, if you've looked in the index of the New Classics version, and are now searching through the pages in 440's and 450's, give up - it's a holdover from the Original Classics version, someone forgot to edit it out.

Making Lemon Meringue pie, as I've said, is a pain. Blind baking a crust. Making a custard. Making the meringue. I looked through Shirley Corriher's Bakewise for a recipe, but didn't find one, specifically. There was information on the crust, and custard recipes, and meringue recipes. I don't have a candy thermometer, so the meringue was out. I decided to stick go the Martha recipe. It called for a butter crust, mixed in the food processor. The dough was so easy to roll out! But it ended up tough - I think I'll stick with hand mixing.

I had gotten up rather early for a Sunday morning, put on my R-"Pi" shirt, and been to the grocery store for lemons for the custard. The recipe said 3 lemons for 1/2 cup liquid; I went with 4 for safety. It was a close call! In the future, I think I'll buy double the number the recipe suggests. And I forgot to zest them...so no zest in the custard. And the custard didn't set up as solidly as I would have liked.

And then, there's the meringue. Bakewise had a recipe with vanilla in it - Martha's recipe was egg whites, sugar, and salt, which turned out to be - bland. The Bakewise recipe called for putting the pie into a 375 degree oven for 10 minutes, which I found odd - could it melt the custard? So, I stuck with Martha's instructions to broil it. And almost burned the top. Yet the sides were still stark white.

In the end, my dad was very happy to have pie! And it wasn't bad, but I would look for a different recipe next time. The custard and the meringue were just lacking...something. Does anyone know of a way to fuse the meringue and the custard? It seems to me that the ones at bakeries are much more "one" - I was afraid my meringue was going to slide off!

A side note, just a thank you to Mr. Dandrew, my tenth grade English teacher. It was in his class that we read Julius Caesar, and I later picked up the useless knowledge that every month has ides. It was just how the Romans kept their calendar.

St. Patrick's Day is tomorrow. I'm not Irish, nor am I Catholic. Yet, I think I'll celebrate via a Reuben sandwich and french fries. (My friend from Ireland tells me that they don't eat corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's day, anyhow.)

PS - One other thing I realized in my adventures with pie was that I need a different pie plate for blind baking! One with a ledge would be much better than the one I used, which let the crust slide down in places.

Which reminds me of another thing I learned. Martha's recipe called for an egg wash on the edges of the crust. I used dried beans as pie weights, in aluminum foil... When I went to remove the beans/foil, the foil was cooked to the crust. That's not a good thing.