Jen's Den

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that there seem to be more people putting up more lights this year? I wonder if it has anything to do with the advent of the new LED lights that are intensely bright, never get hot, and use a lot less electricity than the older types. I picked up just one string of the LEDs, on sale at Winco, just to compare to our old ones.

What a difference! They actually seem to glow with an aura (and yes, I was wearing my glasses at the time I made this observation). I guess I just have to trust that it's not EMF radiation I'm seeing ... if I grow a third arm, I'll let you know.

Anyway, thank you to all those who take the time to decorate their homes, because you've certainly gone all out this year. One of life's little pleasures, and I have my parents to thank for this habit, is to drive around the neighborhoods we know have great lights and see what new features they've added. (We don't do this as much as we used to. Gone are the days of riding around in my folks' 1965 Buick, when gas was 31 cents a gallon.)

Posted by Jen at 08:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night I was reading the ad inserts in the paper for today's after-Christmas sales. It got me to thinking: Who on Earth gets up at 5 a.m. the day after Christmas in order to be at the stores at 6 a.m. when the sales start? Are people that cranked up with shopping adrenaline that they didn't get enough of a rush BEFORE Christmas? Or are they just waiting for the sales to do some late holiday shopping for people they weren't going to see before Christmas anyway?

In any case, this urge to splurge confounds me. I don't understand the need to spend, spend, spend. Whatever happened to "Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify, simplify!" (Henry David Thoreau)

Personally, I've been inspired by having to clear off the coffee table to make room for our little table-top tree. This is the first year we bought a tree that was less than 5 feet tall, and I'm hooked. It's so cute! And it only needed one string of lights, and has plenty of room for all our favorite ornaments.

Anyway, in making room for the tree, I went through some piles of stuff that had been on the coffee table for (ahem) a few months. OK, about 12. Lo and behold, it ALL went to the recycle bin! Outdated catalogs, magazines, newspapers, maps for a trip we took a year ago, and on and on.

So I'm inspired to tackle a few more piles tonight, a few tomorrow night, and so on. In fact, I'm even excited about it. Maybe I've finally caught the feng shui bug that I've been chasing for years that has so far eluded me, just out of reach.

I'm reading a great book on feng shui called "Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life" by Karen Rauch Carter. I have several other books on feng shui, but this one is my favorite. I'll try to remember to add some quotes from it to this blog in the near future.

One suggestion I found incredibly useful (and so obvious I can't believe I never thought of it): Place an attractive basket for recycling junk mail somewhere near the front door or wherever you dump the mail when you come into the house. Never take the junk mail any further than that basket, and don't even open it - just drop it in its place. When it comes time to take in the recycling, or put it out for pickup, just dump the basket into the recycle bin. The recycle center doesn't care if it's unopened, as long as it doesn't have stuff like CDs, pens or other freebies in it.

Meanwhile, Happy New Year, cyberfriends! May 2008 bring less clutter to your space!

Posted by Jen at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

SAVORY SAUSAGE-APPLE STRATA

— 6 eggs, beaten
— 2 cups milk
— 1⁄4 teaspoon nutmeg
— 8-ounce loaf Italian peasant bread, cut into 1-inch thick slices
— 3 cups fully cooked, finely chopped spicy Italian sausage
— 3 crisp, sweet apples, cored and sliced into very thin rounds
— 2 1⁄2 cups grated Grana Padano cheese (or Parmesan, or Asiago, or Romano)

Lightly butter a 9-by-9-inch baking dish.

In a medium bowl, beat together the eggs, milk and nutmeg. Soak each slice of bread in the custard until fully saturated. Arrange a third of the slices in the prepared baking dish.

Top the bread with half of the sausage, half of the apples, and 1 cup of the cheese. Layer another third of the bread over the fillings, then top with the remaining sausage, apples and 1 cup cheese. Top with remaining bread.

Pour any remaining custard over the top. Sprinkle with the remaining 1⁄2 cup of cheese. Cover tightly and refrigerate overnight.

When ready to cook, preheat the oven to 325 F. Bake uncovered for 1 to 1 1⁄2 hours, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Serves 6 to 8.

(Recipe from Michele Kayal/The Associated Press. Published in the Times-Standard 12/19/07.)

Posted by Jen at 02:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We ran an AP recipe for "Savory Sausage-Apple Strata" on today's Food page (12/19/07). I've added the recipe to this blog.

This is a breakfast casserole, kind of like a savory bread pudding. There are a lot of these types of recipes around, especially the make-ahead type. A very common one that I find in those church fundraising cookbooks uses ham, cheddar or Swiss cheese, and white or wheat bread. Tres boring, IMHO.

Personally, I would probably use mild sausage rather than spicy (as the AP author uses), or even something like locally made chicken-apple sausages. (Since the casserole includes apples and cheese, I would think a spicy sausage might overwhelm the other main ingredients.)

The AP writer did something that always irks me. She assumed everyone who would read her recipe has access to a gourmet cheese shop; one of her ingredients is "Grana Padano" cheese.

I always have a problem with writers who list ingredients like "Grana Padano" cheese without telling you that it's just like Parmesan except it comes from a different part of Italy, and without telling you what you can substitute for it.

So, before adding this recipe to my blog, off I went to one of my favorite references: The Cook's Thesaurus.

If you can't find Grana Padano, substitute Parmesan or Asiago or Romano. "Grana," it turns out, is simply the term used to refer to hard or grating cheeses — like Parmesan or Asiago (sold by the chunk in the deli section, not in a green cardboard can!). I added this notation to her recipe.

I often find myself wishing we had a gourmet cheese shop here. Some of our local stores carry a nice assortment — I'm thinking of Eureka Natural Foods and Wildberries in particular — but they're nothing like the cheese shops I used to frequent in the Bay Area. That said, imagine my surprise to find one of my favorite cheeses, Mizithra, at Safeway of all places. But that's for another recipe, at another time.

Posted by Jen at 01:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This recipe is so simple it almost doesn't need instructions. It uses ingredients you're likely to have on hand in the pantry, plus a baguette one should always have in the freezer, and is a perfect quick solution for hungry drop-in visitors.

- 1 can (14-16 ounces) tomato sauce
- 1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese
- 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
- 1 small can chopped black olives
- 1/2 teaspoon oregano (or to taste)
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder (or to taste)
- 1 sourdough baguette, sliced about 1/4-inch thick

Preheat the oven to 425 F.

Mix the first 6 ingredients in a bowl. Lay out the slices of baguette on a cookie sheet. Spoon a dollop of the pizza mix onto each slice, pressing down slightly with the back of the spoon to spread the mix almost to the edges. (You may need to experiment with quantity - you don't want so much mix on each slice that it flows down over the edges when baked.)

Bake for about 5-8 minutes (watch them carefully the first time so you know how your specific oven cooks them). They're done when the sauce is bubbly and the bread slices are crispy around the edges and the cheese is melted. Some ovens may take up to 10 minutes.

Let cool a few minutes, then transfer to serving plate. Hide some in the kitchen for the cook, otherwise he or she won't get any once they leave the kitchen.

Experiment with your own ingredients - chopped artichoke hearts, mushrooms, fresh garlic, pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, kalamata olives, jack or mozzarella or whatever cheese suits you. Just be sure to chop all the ingredients fairly small so they mix thoroughly in the sauce.

Bon appetit!

Posted by Jen at 07:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Like looking for the perfect lead on a story, creating my first blog entry (ever) is a bit of a daunting task. Should I try to be clever? Of course. Should I go for “the hook” that’s going to make people want to read more? Probably.

But ... I don’t need that kind of self-inflicted stress. (Who does?) So, my very first blog entry is going to be based on the K.I.S.S. principle: Keep It Simple, Sweetie.

First, who am I and why am I a T-S blogger?

I’m a staff writer in the Lifestyle/Features section of the Times-Standard in Eureka (CA), and I’ve worked here for almost seven years. I started out as a reporter on the “cityside” -- that’s the cities, county, politics, education, public safety, crime, environment, industry, health care and business beats. I covered business and health care for about a year, then business and special projects for two years, and I’ve been a features writer in the Lifestyle department since August 2004.

So why the blog? Well, that really is simple: I’ve had an idea for a while about putting on the T-S Web site some of the recipes we run in our Food section on Wednesdays. Discussing that possibility with our Web editor, James Faulk, the idea of doing it via a blog was the obvious solution.

As the idea evolved, I decided my blog would not just be about food, but that I would also throw in random observations about life and love, home and hearth, animals and people and whatever else seems worth mentioning. Or not. Sometimes I just like to babble.

For instance, yesterday morning I stopped at Downtown Express on the way to work to get one of their yummy scones. I noticed the time/temperature sign on the bank across the street said it was 96 degrees. Um, guys, I don’t think so. But it got me thinking about when we used to live in Sonoma County, where it was frequently 96 or hotter. I don’t miss it. I love the cool weather here. (But maybe that’s because we moved here right about the time I started having hot flashes.)

Now, about the label James tagged me with at the top of the page -- “amateur gourmet” -- which I’m sure some HumCo foodies will find amusing if not downright outrageous. Webster says “gourmet” is “a connoisseur of good food; a person with a discerning palate.” My palate, overworked as it is, is nothing if not discerning (even though my partner will tell you that I can’t tell when the milk has soured -- but that’s just my nose).

The simple truth is that I just love good food. I love to cook, and find it’s a great stress reducer. And like many, I have piles of recipes on the shelf in the kitchen that I cut out of the newspaper and have yet to try. But someday...

So, without further ado, I will share my first little slice of life from growing up in the Morey household: Mini-Pizza Hors D’oeuvres.

These bite-size pizzas on thin slices of sourdough baguette were a favorite at my parents’ parties, and they barely made it out of the kitchen to be circulated among the guests before the platter was empty. In fact, Mom always asked me to set aside a few for her on the counter while she worked on dinner, otherwise she wouldn’t get any.

And it’s to the memory of my Mom and Dad, Helen and Floyd Morey, that I dedicate this blog. I credit Mom for my love of food, as she taught me to cook at a very young age, and for my love of music, as she was always singing in the kitchen and we would harmonize together. It’s Dad I credit for my eternal optimism, as he taught me to “pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again” (apologies to Fred and Ginger). And I credit both of them for my sense of humor and love of beauty. Mom, Dad -- I love you and miss you.

Posted by Jen at 07:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)