Butter coffee

Please don't tell me this is "trending" or anything, but have you tried butter coffee yet?

Good organic butter and my TJ's coconut oil offering

Here's the deal. Try putting a pad of unsalted butter and a dollop of coconut oil in your coffee. Some instructions out there claim you should blend this to mix it, but I've just been whisking in my mug. I suppose calling this "butter coffee" is only half right. In full, it's delicious coffee. I normally like milk in my coffee but with these oils, milk isn't even necessary anymore. NUTS.

So why on earth would you do this to your coffee? Well, it tastes fucking awesome. It also satiates you for a long time. I sometimes have stomach pain if I don't eat something before drinking coffee (that raw stomach eating itself feeling), but with this concoction breakfast be damned! 

Satisfaction and satiation.

To be as vague as possible, I think it's the paleo diet people that brought buttered coffee back into my attention sphere. I don't follow diets, gurus, or marketing schemes. Do the internet digging for yourself if you wish. But know this - this butter coffee is vouched for by me, your experimenter de rigueur (and a professional experimenter). Here's hoping it warms up your winter as well.

Toast racks for toast...

... and cast iron dog door stops.

I remember the first (and only) time I saw a toast rack on a kitchen table. It was holding toast. How adorable. It said, "Here is toast to eat - hurry and eat toast!". OK, little toast master. I am hungry for toast.

And I'll never forget this cast iron boston terrier door stop at my grandparent's house. How nice of you to hold that door open, little fella! Aren't you adorable. And oh so heavy! I wish I could feed you treats for doing such a good job being a cast iron dog door stop.

I don't think anyone makes toast racks or cast iron dogs anymore. I could see these types of things coming back into style when hipsters get older. One day vintage toast racks will cost hundreds of dollars, like some of those doggies up there. The toast racks I don't expect to find at charity shops - not in the USA anyway. Them I may need to buy online.

But cast iron dog door stops? I will hunt you down, little doggies. And I will find you. I will not pay those shipping and handling prices.

For the love of Moss

As cheesy and pointless as it can be, I find myself excited for the Golden Globes every year - especially when it has two bitchin female hosts. This year the Hollywood Foreign Press affirmed its hold on nonsense by calling Brooklyn Nine-Nine better than Modern Family. By calling it better than anything! Shame on you HFP. You've officially rendered yourself idiots.

But at least there's a red carpet.

My favorite look this year was donned by Elisabeth Moss, who often impresses me with her ability to work it:

And best hair goes to Amy Adams:

My hair is currently unbunable, therefore this updo is digging in good.

Till the (equally irrelevant) Oscars!

Challenge accepted

You come back from visiting family for a week and your fridge is filled with 4 pounds of carrots, 3 pounds of turnips, and 2 pounds of beets. Those bags on the floor boast onions and squash for days. No need to go to the store for a while. Heck, you even have beer! But to the store you walk with your relentless winter cold.

My food shopping staples are milk, bread, coffee, wine, and citrus. I always need those things. The one thing on that list that I can (supposedly) make myself with relative ease is bread. Therein lies my first cookbook challenge.

I decide to start my challenge a little early (December) because A) I'm slightly obsessed with learning to make staples like a farm slave (AKA female) from The Good Earth, and B) I know this is just round one and round two will technically be in January. And it was. Three loaves of bread later, I've begun the 2014 cookbook challenge.

My book is from The Cheese Board Collective because I miss Berkeley with a passion. I feel this way every January in Chicagoland. If I could get my hands on a sourdough starter (the sourdough in the Midwest certifiably SUCKS... I yearn for Acme) I'd make sourdough but instead I just make their Plain and Simple whole wheat bread. This is toast bread. Sandwich bread. Everything bread.

The first time I make it I halve the recipe. The recipe makes two loaves and I don't want to mess up two on my first try. Better to fail at one. Like the first pancake. This turns out to be a bad decision because the stand mixer that moved into my apartment doesn't work the same on 3 cups of flour as it does on 6. The dough pulls together too fast and I'm led to believe that since it pulled off the sides of the bowl the kneading it done, like the cookbook says. Perhaps elsewhere in the book it warns of this, but not on pages 82-83.

The dough is under-kneaded but I don't quite know this. It nearly rises as it should after the resting periods so I bake it in my new silicone loaf pan (thanks, Santa!). The bread was dense... and delicious!! It reminded me of Vital Vittles Real Bread (another Berkeley memory). I used organic whole wheat bread flour instead of regular whole wheat flour, so I know this bread has extra protein and some fantastic flavor from the flour, which came through my Wisconsin CSA. I'm thoroughly pleased with my bread brick. I'm drinking rye to stay warm and burn off my cold. It's snowing beautifully outside. I don't have to think about work for a few more days. Life is wonderful.

I try again, this time with the whole recipe and 2 loaf pans. This time I used 2/3 bread flour and 1/3 regular. Unfortunately I don't add enough water (sometimes my eyes and brain just abandon reading comprehension) and as a result I nearly overheat the poor stand mixer. Kneading shouldn't be that hard for a machine. I add the missing water, knead again what now looks like undercooked slimy chicken parts, and eventually pull the dough together. It doesn't rise well this time. Too cold? Too tortured? But I bake it anyway and now have two more delicious loaves of dense bread. These are not quite as good as the first loaf (well, they do have better gluten development) simply because the flour from the first batch was superior in taste. But whatever, I made extremely edible bread! Now if only I'd buckle down and learn food photography.

Before January is up I want to try one more time with this recipe before moving on to other yeasted breads. By March I'll probably be opening a sourdough specialty bread store to service Chicagoland, so stay tuned (for more delusions)!

My cuteness with her winter coat. No bread for her.

Figuring it out

I'm not sure about you, but 2013 was a pretty trying year for me. I started and ended the year in what feels like the exact same place. The same uncertain, unmolded, untidy place. Thirty-two at the start. Thirty-three at the end. Same exact place throughout.

Where was the growth? Did it happen? Has it materialized yet? 

What the fuck am I doing with my life?

It may interest you to know that Julia Child also asked herself these sorts of questions. From her book:

Discovering who we are. Figuring shit out. That's what I've been doing with my life. I'm on pace. Breathe. Keep going...

And remember - "It's all the same fucking day, man." ~ Janis Joplin approx.