Misadventures in Macarons

Some days are more frustrating than others.

I had big plans for this week. These plans were based on the fact that my oldest daughter is at summer camp for a week and my husband is at a work retreat for three days. Somehow, in my mind, that translated to an ability to get more done. I’m not sure why, since I’ve actually lost the two lowest-maintenance and most helpful members of the family.

Last week I bit the bullet and ventured into the world of biscotti.

Last week was the first week of the local farmers market. I’ve always wanted to make biscotti but have always been intimidated, so I decided to tackle that fear and made not one, but five different flavors to sell at the farmers market. The super-crunchy cookies were so much easier than I ever imagined, especially with this Classic Biscotti Recipe – Four Ways from Kristine’s Kitchen. I promised myself several more flavors for the market this week, and have already knocked out lemon and anise.

The biscotti was such a success, both in ease and in farmers market sales,
that I'm back at it this week. So far I've made anise (above) and lemon.
I plan to add almond and hazelnut to the mix

That’s the good news. Meanwhile, I’m dealing with a nine- and ten-year-old, who both have an endless supply of observations and “what if” and “why” questions. I have a barking dog. I have a cranky old cat, and a mother cat with five kittens underfoot—under my feet, that is. I have dishes to do, flower beds to weed, a garden to finish planting, and … in a paraphrase of the Disney song, “We don’t talk about laundry, no, no.…”

The obvious way to deal with all of that is to tackle another intimidating (but actually difficult) recipe I have on my bucket list.

Macarons. That’s macarons with one “o,” not to be confused with macaroons, which are tasty but not nearly so particular. Macarons are French and, like many French foods, have an attitude all their own. I found a French macaron recipe by John Kanell on his Preppy Kitchen blog, which seemed to have enough directions and tips for a nervous novice like me.

Did I mention I have two children talking at me nonstop? They’re like a noisy little conversational tag team, though they don’t always take turns. I blame that, not the recipe author, for how this recipe has gone.

There's the meringue, lingering at the soft peak stage.

First, for the first time in several months, if not years, I failed to correctly separate an egg on the first try. That’s a no-no for these meringue-based confections.

Second, the recipe called for two kinds of sugar. I perused the directions for when to add the granulated sugar. (“Mommy, what if you met a seven-foot-tall Chinese man?”) Not seeing it, I assumed the author neglected to say they should both be added to the almond flour at once. Not until later did I see that I was to add the granulated sugar to the egg whites before beating. Oops. That’s probably going to change something.

It doesn't really look like lava to me.

Third, egg whites linger at the soft-peak stage forever. That’s not really news since it’s always true for me, but it is irritating.

Fourth, the directions said to fold the dry ingredients into the meringue until the batter reached the consistency of “lava.” That’s interesting. It never did, which of course has nothing to do with adding the sugar at the wrong time.

Wrong piping tip, but they're kind of pretty. I didn't bother
trying to fill them this week. Heaven only knows what would 
have happened.

And, as I filled the pastry bag to pipe the macarons onto the baking sheet, I realized I didn’t have a plain round tip large enough to pipe the cookies without making a mess of them. I improvised. I eventually ended up with something pretty, if not macaron-looking.

Two things I did right—they taste good, and I think they’re the right size.

Never mind. I just realized my count is off by half a dozen.

I’ll try again next week.

The macarons won't be going to farmers market this week, but
they're still good with a mid-morning cup of coffee

In Patience, or Out of It

There’s an old saying: “Be careful what you pray for. You just may get it.”

I learned long ago not to pray for patience.

I’ve also heard Christian authors and speakers say that when they write a book on a certain topic, that is the worst season in their life for that topic. Write a book on marriage—have difficulties in marriage. Write a book on community—struggle with loneliness.

Shortly after my last blog post, I was reflecting on all the waiting we do in life, from waiting on God to waiting for food to ferment. I thought, I’ve made pretty good progress with patience. I should write a blog post about it.

A month ago, I researched how to grow sweet potatoes and decided
to begin my own process with a store-bought sweet potato.

What a terrible idea.

Everything went wrong. The weather turned bad again. I lost precious patience resources as I had to wait yet again to accomplish long-neglected outside chores. Even worse, my own mood has always been linked to the sun—or lack of it—and I quickly became moody and tired, losing patience with my own weakness.

My sweet potato experiment began May 19.

Inside chores went undone, causing me to lose patience with the housework.

My children forgot every bit of character training they’ve ever had, arguing constantly and pushing every last button I have. My patience wore paper thin.

I caught a doozy of a cold that knocked me sideways for several days, which again made me impatient with my own body as my children fended for themselves and piles of dishes and laundry grew higher.

By May 30, I had a tiny sprout and a tendril of root on one sweet potato.

Our internet went down and remained down for a week. It wore on me as I waited for it to be restored so I could complete online tasks that had already been left too long. Worse, anyone who has been in a house with modern children during bad weather with no internet access will know that the whining and fighting increased exponentially.

June 13, healthy sprouts and more roots.

I was still struggling with remnants of my cold when I babysat a couple of my friend’s children, including a two-year-old. I’d planned to putter around with chores and let the toddler hang out with me. That was the morning the water was shut off for two hours without warning.

That was when I finally admitted, Okay, God, I get it. I’m not that great at patience!

Now, on June 20, I think this sprouted sweet potato may be ready for the next step.

(Just now, as I was trying to find words for my next sentence, my teen daughter walked in and promptly began spewing out every thought in her head without regard for what I’m doing at this computer. Breathe in… Breathe out… One… Two… Three… )

If I can regain the point I nearly lost just now, I know I’m not trying to say God likes to mess with us. However, like any good parent, He never misses a good teaching moment. It’s as if, the moment we think we’re ready to graduate, He hands us the midterm. If you’re like me, you find yourself barely passing the test, if not failing outright.

I have grown in patience. I can look back and see the unsteady progress I’ve made over long years. I have not reached the pinnacle of mastery, however. I never will this side of heaven.

Not everyone reading this is a homeschooler. Let me tell you, as a homeschooler, one of my least favorite statements from non-homeschooling parents is, “Oh, I would never have the patience to homeschool.”

No kidding. No one does. If life is a testing ground for the things God wants us to learn, like patience, homeschooling is a pressurized environment that amplifies everything tenfold. At times I compare it to living in a pressure-cooker. I don’t homeschool because I have exceptional patience. Any patience I have has grown through homeschooling.

Last year, before my husband left his job, I bought a fig sapling.
I had a spot picked for it off the back corner of the house.
With our future suddenly in the air, though, I decided not to put it in the ground,
but to keep it in a pot. It overwintered by a window in our office.
Several times I thought I was going to lose it.
Now, more than a year later, it has several green figs clustering on its branches.

As I fail those tests, though, I find myself most of all losing patience with myself. How can I have been through so much and still get it so wrong? Knowing weakness, how do I so quickly condemn others for theirs? Experiencing grace, why am I so slow to extend it?

Knowing God’s patience, how is it so difficult to be patient with myself and others?

“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

It’s a good thing God is so patient with such a slow learner.

Adventures with Beverages: Kvass, Carbonated Pickle Juice, and Ginger Ale

The bread kvass was a success, so my
experimentation with this beverage continues.

It’s Monday. We had some beautiful, warm days last week, but the weather has returned to gray and rainy. I don’t know about you, but my energy and mood tend to tank on gray, gloomy days. After the last couple of years of drought and terrible fires, I know we need the rain. My head knows, anyway, and I keep repeating the mantra: We need the rain. We need the rain. We need the rain. Still, I would rather have sunny, warm weather to make me feel cheerful and motivated.

My son doesn’t seem affected. He has been talking nonstop since first thing this morning—mostly energetic nonsense that feels more like noise than conversation. That alone makes me feel ready to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head.

I did promise I would report back on the bread kvass, though. I tested it last Tuesday and…

It. Was. Amazing.

I have to admit that I didn’t have really high hopes after tasting the carrot kvass, but the bread kvass exceeded my expectations. It was pleasantly sweet, but not overwhelmingly so, and the light carbonation gave it the perfect little sparkle. It’s actually something I might be tempted to overindulge in.

(There is a caveat here. My husband likes the bread kvass, and my son said, “I didn’t know bread juice could taste so good.” My daughters, however, think it’s nasty and refuse to drink it. Perhaps it’s an acquired taste.)

It was all about fermentation in our kitchen last week.
It was also deja vu all over again as we tried to find creative uses for the sourdough
starter discard--like sourdough pancakes and sourdough chocolate chip cookies.

Given the debatable success of the bread kvass, I tried to redeem my second batch of carrot kvass. Adding sugar and sourdough starter turned it into something slightly more drinkable, but it’s still too salty to be enjoyable. I left a small bottle out a day longer than the rest of it, just to see what happened. That bottle developed amazing carbonation but lost some sweetness, so it still tasted like carbonated pickle juice. I officially consider that carrot-ginger-orange kvass a failure.

Without a viable sourdough starter, yogurt and
baker's yeast will have to pinch-hit for the natural yeasts.

Since I had such success with the bread kvass, though, I decided to give it another go. It would have been more frugal and way more authentic to make my own rye sourdough starter and rye bread, but I was impatient, so I bought highly authentic dark rye bread at Walmart. The flaw in my plan turned out to be my sourdough starter. After tending it like a baby the first few days, I neglected it for a few more days. It had not only separated, which is normal, but had developed a gross and questionable film over the liquid. I dumped it and will have to begin again with my starter.

This jar of fermenting rye bread kvass looks like a hot mess,
but I'm hoping the result will be something wonderful.

Since I now lack a sourdough starter, I used a combination of plain yogurt and a pinch of yeast to replace it in the kvass recipe. I also used my own raw honey instead of sugar, boiled with water and orange peel. I combined all that with the toasted rye bread. Hopefully the result will be as tasty as the last batch of bread kvass.

Hopefully these ingredients are part of the recipe for success in 
homemade ginger ale.

Since I was already in the kitchen messing with fermentation, I also carried through with a promise I’d made to my youngest daughter. Several weeks ago, I had told her I would make homemade ginger ale. If you Google homemade ginger ale, you’ll find a variety of recipes, most requiring club soda or CO². I, however, was in search of the old-fashioned method to create the pop/soda version using yeast. I found it, of all places, on WikiHow. I used the traditional, non-cooked method requiring only sugar, yeast, ginger root, lemon, and water. We’ll see how it turns out.

Kvass and home-fermented ginger ale. Am I going too far?

Beyond that, I’m still finding it difficult to motivate myself for the day. The kiddos may be getting microwaved taquitos for lunch--with a side of kvass, of course.

Kvass, Take 2, and Sourdough Oatmeal Bread

I didn’t have any great desire to make bread first thing Monday morning. However, I’d started a sponge Saturday afternoon, and I was a day overdue making it into dough. (I’m not sure what I was thinking—between church and a six-hour round trip to the airport on Sunday, when exactly was I going to make bread?)

Even at the resting stage, this sourdough oatmeal dough looked promising.

So, first on my list today was the dough for Sourdough Oatmeal Bread. It’s another Bernard Clayton recipe, which I’ve made successfully before using the Amish Friendship Bread Starter. Since I had my doubts about this starter, I also had my doubts about how the bread would turn out this time. It’s rising as I type this, though, and I can hardly wait to try it warm from the oven after it’s baked.

A finished loaf of Sourdough Oatmeal Bread.
The smell in my house right now is heavenly.

I also promised myself I would start the week with another batch of kvass. Last week’s batch has settled into a nice pickle-juice flavor. Maybe my pickle-loving son will like it.

This time I’m using bread. It’s an entirely different approach from the carrot kvass I tried last week. This recipe from PracticalSelf Reliance calls for toasted bread, sourdough starter, water, and sweetener.

Toasting the bread is the first step in making the bread kvass.

I didn’t go completely authentic. I didn’t have any rye bread or rye sourdough starter on hand, but I did have a loaf of buttermilk bread that had received a less-than-enthusiastic response from my family. I diced that and toasted it, which gave me a little more than four cups of bread. I combined that with my honey sourdough starter and sugar water. Maple syrup or honey would have been better for this recipe—a.k.a., more authentic—but I had white sugar on hand, so I used that.

Into the jar the toasted bread goes.

A kitchen helper couldn't help photo-bombing the kvass, unbrushed hair and all.

Again, this recipe was amazingly simple to put together once I had the ingredients together, so I had it in the half-gallon jar in a jiffy. Now all that remains is to let it be so it can ferment for the next couple of days. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Within minutes, the toasted bread had expanded in the liquid.
Let's hope we have the same success with the fermentation.

Finally, my eldest has been 14 for a week, heaven help us all. Those birthday kittens are also a week old. Eyes not yet open, they seem to have doubled in size. The negotiations have started over which one, if any, our children will be allowed to keep. Good thing their father is in on the bargaining, or we’d have a lot of cats when we left the table.

Exactly who is supposed to resist these cuties?

Temperature-mental Ferments

After an explosive start, you might have expected a lot from my sourdough starter. However, the starter not only slowed down, but now seems downright dormant.

It could be operator error, but I blame the temperature in our house. Our oil heater broke, leaving us at the mercy of limited electric heat. Since the outside temperature has dropped back into the fifties, the temperature inside is several degrees cooler than normal. Whenever I’m tempted to complain about the cold—which is often—I remind myself that the heater was working when we got snow right before Easter. Things could have been worse.

On the bright side, the hose on our dryer vent is broken, and I keep forgetting to buy a new one. Whenever I run the dryer, it creates a warm, moist, spa-like atmosphere in the downstairs. It’s like our own little jungle. I even put my peace lily in the bathroom/laundry room to enhance the effect and soak up a little of the humidity. (I recently read this article on the 17 Best Houseplants for Your Bathroom. Spathiphyllum is on the list, so why not?)

I also overflowed a birthday cake in the oven Wednesday (yes, the second birthday in a week), which gave me a good excuse to run the self-clean on my oven. So, for at least a couple of hours, the kitchen was warm.

If it seems like I’m grasping hard for bright sides, it’s because I am. I feel gratitude is an essential part of life, and God is graciously giving me lots of opportunities to practice that attitude.

All that to say, fermentations are temperamental about temperature, so I’m not surprised if some of mine aren’t performing at their best.

The apple-scrap vinegar is an exception to that. At two weeks and three days, I was satisfied it had fermented enough. I strained out the apple scraps and bottled it. If the bottle doesn’t look fancy, that’s because it used to hold store-bought vinegar. It’s full of the homemade stuff, now, and I’m pretty satisfied with that.

The kvass still doesn’t taste like something I want to drink. The saltiness has decreased to a point of semi-drinkability, though, and I could detect the barest hint of carbonation. I decided to move on to step two. I strained out the carrots, orange peels and ginger, then placed them back in the jar with a cup of the kvass to start another fermentation. It will be weaker than the first, but that may be a good thing. I filled the jar with water, covered it with a coffee filter, and placed it back in the cupboard.

That left me about five cups of kvass, so I decided to put that through a second fermentation. I sweetened each jar with about a teaspoon of raw honey from my last honey harvest. The honey was well crystallized, but that won’t hurt anything. I sealed the jars and set them, yes, into a cupboard, to ferment for another day or three. I’ll check back and let you know how it turns out.

With my vinegar done and bottled, I have a half-gallon jar free for another culture. I’m already pondering more kvass. Should I try a fruit kvass or go way, way old school and make some out of rye bread? Send me your thoughts.

Have a good weekend!

Birthdays, Birth Days, and a Little Bit of Light

 I’m thinking about light today. I’m making my way through Cas Monaco’s Bible study on 1 John, Astonishing Love. It’s strange how you can read the same words over and over, but then one day they hit you – Bam! – in a new way.

First John is all about love and light. 1 John 1:7 says, “But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another….” I’ve always loved the imagery of light. When I read these and similar words, I picture myself in a circle of brilliant light surrounded by inky darkness. That light is a safe, comfortable place, full of warmth and, well, light.

What about the light source, though? I tend to picture it out of sight, up above somewhere, but the Bible tells us God is the light source (1 John 1:5). Moreover, Jesus Himself is the light.

“Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’” (John 8:12).

God in Christ isn’t simply with me, walking in a circle of light cast by some outside source. He is the light. He will always be in the center of that circle of light, because it cannot exist without Him. He is the radiance dispelling the shadows and casting the light in which I walk.

But what does that mean for me? I’m reminded of Paul’s words in Galatians 2: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).

Christ lives in me. Christ is the light. I am to walk in the light as He is in the light. So that means…

“You are the light of the world” (Matt. 5:14)

“…for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord” (Eph. 5:8a).

The simple birthday cake looked amazing until all the lemon slices slid off.

Whoa. Ponder that as you walk through your day.

On a more mundane, but still miraculous, note, remember the pregnant cat I mentioned in my post about my daughter’s birthday? Well, I should have waited to publish that post. While I was putting the finishing touches on my daughter’s cake, she called to me, “Autumn is acting strange. She meowing a lot and panting. I think she might be having the kittens.”

By the time my daughter's birthday dinner was ready,
our cat had presented us with three wiggly kittens.

Autumn, of course, is the cat. And yes, I did have to abandon the cake to help the first-time mother give birth. That may or may not have anything to do with the way the cake fell apart later. (Probably not, but we’ll say it did.) I’m sure it’s simply a sign of her inexperience that she chose to give birth not in a provided box or dark hidey-hole somewhere, but right in the middle of the foyer. Also, if you’ve never had to help a cat expel a placenta, it’s just as slimy as it sounds.

My children had various reactions to the wonder of birth. My eldest daughter, receiving such a marvelous birthday gift, said, “I know this is supposed to be the miracle of birth, but it’s kind of gross.”

My youngest daughter, who had been over the moon at the prospect of kittens, exclaimed, “That kitten is more ugly than cute. It’s terrifying!”

My 10-year-old son said, simply, “This is a big day for me.”

By the next morning, we had five newborn balls of fluff.

Sourdough Explosion

 Holy smokes, how is it Monday already? The weekend went way too quickly, am I right?

It's cloudy and breezy and threatening rain. I want nothing more than to curl up with one of my cats – either the cranky old cat or the hugely pregnant cat. They both like to snuggle.

It feels like a good day to snuggle with our very pregnant calico cat.

Despite my feelings, though, I stuck to business and spent much of my Monday morning doing PR and housekeeping for our local farmers market, which starts next month. I was more than a little irritated that our small town now requires park permits, but what can you do?

Otherwise, I feel like I’ve been in the kitchen all day. First, it’s my eldest’s 14^th birthday, so there was a special breakfast to be made. She’s been asking for Nutella-stuffed pancakes for a while now (that is, since I made them for her a couple of birthdays ago). Today seemed like a good day to do it. I’m not a morning person, though, and I’m especially tired today, so there are no pictures of those stunning creations.

Of course, there was a cake to be baked. Three layers made from cake mix, canned filling, and store-bought icing. Sometimes I go all-out. Often, I don’t.

I have yet to start the marinara sauce for her birthday dinner. Not how I planned it, but I’ll get there yet.

As for the sourdough…

It didn’t actually explode. Not quite. Let’s simply call it – energetic. I wanted to use a sourdough starter recipe I’ve never used before, so I went to my favorite bread source, Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Breads. His honey starter looked simple and amazing, so I decided on that. It’s supposed to make three cups and fit in a quart jar to ferment.

I’m not sure what I did wrong, but it quickly overflowed my quart jar.

Quart jar? No.

I transferred it to an old, quart-and-a-half pickle jar. Surely that would be large enough.

Larger pickle jar? Nope.

Nope.

My final effort was a half-gallon canning jar. As of now it’s contained at a mere double the bulk I expected, so I’m hoping for the best. However, I can hear the fermentation gases leaking around the seal, so who knows?

This half-gallon canning jar rests on my kitchen windowsill.
The sourdough starter has already taken over three quarters of the jar.

Since I was in the fermentation mindset already, I checked on my two other fermentation projects. That’s right; I have three fermentations going in my kitchen right now. Don’t judge.

The apple-scrap vinegar from two weeks ago is almost there, but I will wait to bottle it until the flavor is sharper and less sweet. Right now it has a slightly fermented but mildly sweet flavor, with a hint of carbonation.

My kvass is a different story. I’d never seen a recipe for a fermented beverage that didn’t contain at least a little sugar or honey. Since this was my first time, though, I stuck with the recipe, which called only for salt. Since I didn’t have whey, I increased the salt content according to the recipe. Today is the three-day mark. It smells sweet and carroty, but it’s still, well, salty as heck. Between the vinegar and the kvass, I’d say the vinegar is the tastier at this point. I’ll follow through with the fermentation process, though, and see how it turns out. Either way, I plan to try it again, but next time with the traditional rye bread. If you beat me to that experiment, let me know how it goes.

On a seemingly unrelated note, I'm going to leave you with a quote from this morning's Bible study. In The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: 1 John, John MacArthur, Jr. writes:

"Our heavenly Father does not simply give us subsistent forgiveness that will barely cover our sins if we are careful not to overdo. We cannot sin beyond God's grace, because as wicked and extensive as our sins might be or become, they will never approach the greatness of His grace. His forgiveness is infinite, and He lavishes it without measure upon those who trust in His Son" (pg. 24).

His grace overflows. Kind of like sourdough starter in a quart jar. Happy Monday.