We be jammin???
June 1, 2010
What???s the oldest thing in your refrigerator? This jar of Welch???s grape jelly is five or more years old. Rob gave it to me when he was cleaning out in preparation for a Minnesota???California move. I never told him that I don???t really use grape jelly???at all. I don???t really use jelly of any kind???it seems mostly to be solidified corn syrup. When I did get jelly, I???d get currant jelly or something else red.
Kelly???s Unnecessary Blog, a.k.a. Kelly???s Confessional to Rob.
But I still have that grape jelly and it does get consumed???by my parents a few times each year. It???s pretty much just sugar. It???s fine.
When I did still eat toast for breakfast, I eventually shifted from the currant jelly to any mostly-fruit jam in an attempt to ingest as natural ingredients as possible, which I do not consider corn syrup or grape juice to be, even though they are touted as such. If fruit wasn???t the first ingredient listed, I put it right back.
I still don???t eat toast for breakfast (now I go more eggy), though sometimes I do keep whole wheat bread. My favorite is Healthy Choice 7-Grain. Whole wheat flour is the first ingredient and it???s soft and tasty. There again, just because bread is brown, that doesn???t mean it???s whole wheat. You must check the ingredients list. If it says anything other than ???whole,??? it???s not true whole wheat bread. Thomas 100% Whole Wheat English Muffins are good, too. However, the double fiber whatever muffins are like eating twigs and should be avoided.
I digress.
Now I have something new???Raspberry Pinot Noir jam, special delivery from Annie in Portland, Oregon. It is awesome! It???s made by the King Estate Oregon Wines, an organic, sustainable operation. Follow the link above and then explore the rest of the site. They use sheep to ???mow??? the grass. ???Moo??? the grass? ???Baa??? the grass? ???Bleat??? the grass?
The point is, it looks like a neat place. And the jam is made from raspberries grown in the vineyard???s orchard and spiked with Pinot Noir. From the moment you unscrew the lid, you can smell the wine. It tastes as delicious as you would imagine.
So when the jam arrived, I didn???t have any bread to spread it on. I experimented with making whole wheat flour baking powder biscuits, but those were a disaster. But they were good enough to sample the jam and find out that it???s as delicious as it sounds. I would have made the biscuits with white flour, only I???ve been out of it since March. Yesterday I went to the store mainly to get a frozen pizza for supper but with the secondary intent to get some pop ???n??? fresh biscuit dough. I ended up getting pop ???n??? cinnamon rolls. No raspberry Pinot Noir jam got spread on those.
Today I went to the store again to get a steak and some fresh veggies to grill for supper. Still no bread.
But I might just put a dollop on these whole wheat brownies I just made. Chocolate, raspberry, and wine, especially red wine that I???m drinking? Oh yeah. Not even noticing the whole wheat aspect 🙂
Favorite dessert
April 11, 2010
You should answer this not taking calories into consideration, though it is true that last night instead of making brownies, I ate two grapefruit for dessert. This wasn’t because of any hippy skippy 5-A-Day thing. No, it was much simpler than that. I was out of white flour and wasn’t confident enough that brownies made with whole wheat flour wouldn’t taste, well, you know, like chocolate cardboard.
I wouldn’t say I’m a huge fan of dessert. Unlike my dad, I don’t feel like I need a little sweet something to finish off a meal. If something comes my way, I might eat it, but I don’t feel incomplete without it by any stretch of the imagination.
Once again, I am influenced by my mom on what my gut instinct answer is to the question of my favorite dessert—pecan pie. I prefer it without a dollop of ice cream, though I might like it just warm enough to take the chill off. And if I were being completely truthful, I would also say that really, to me the pecan nuts are at least 50% incidental to my enjoyment of this delight. I like the sugary sweet custard, plain and simple.
I like regular yellow egg custard, too. My Grandma H often made it when we’d go visit in the summer. She had brown ceramic custard cups. Not ramekins, just cauldron-shaped dishes. I suppose they could have been considered ramekins, but they weren’t the white ones you mostly see today.
I also like cheesecake—just plain cheesecake with no “fruit” toppings. My favorite non-plain cheesecake was the Butterfinger cheesecake at Pizza Lucé in the Warehouse District in about 2003, I’ll say. I never saw it other than that one day. Pizza Lucé’s pizza is amazing; the Butterfinger cheesecake was out of this world.
Ice cream is sometimes good. By ice cream I mean plain chocolate in a sugar cone, or a chocolate malt extra malt, such as the kind I get at Potbelly Sandwich Works.
By now you may be wondering why I picture brownies. The answer is simple. They are the easiest to make at home with the ingredients I have on hand anyway. Okay, I suppose technically it’s easier to scoop ice cream out of a cardboard carton, but you can’t just whip up a batch of ice cream with ingredients that are just lying around. Brownies you can.
And I like making them myself because then I know what’s in them. So this is the recipe I use. I don’t bother with the cream cheese filling because that would require forethought. I just make the brownie part, and I have adapted it as it is typed in. The original recipe is pictured below.
Today I ate my grapefruit in conjunction with my brunch (this is the best time of year for delicious grapefruit in the Northern Hemisphere and they’re my favorite fruit, so I’m eating them frequently right now). In honor of the question of my favorite dessert I went ahead and made the brownies using whole wheat flour, pictured above. I’m pleased to report that they don’t taste at all like cardboard.
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(my adapted version)
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