Dinner Delight

I have exciting news to report to you live:

I just found mold on some rolls Uri bought a week and a half ago!

Isn't that great?!? Bread that's actually natural enough that bacteria found it attractive!

Not that I actually ate it.. I'm going to stick with my fabulous 45 calories a slice Pepperidge Farm Light (Extra fiber is my fav). But it's exciting to know that real bread is available, especially in roll form, any rolls we bought thus far have lasted over a month with no mold in sight.

Weird Science

Baked good for the weekend: Apple cake from various apples I still had that I bought at the Ithaca Apple harvest Festival using the recipe for the apple cake in Sheshet.

Pregnancy observation for the weekend: My belly button has become huge – as in its opened up like a big cavern. Super strange!

Other strange pregnancy matters: I find that an increasing number of people are asking me “how are you feeling” with a somewhat over sympathetic voice. As though there is something more than “fine” that you can say to a person you hardly know that you are quickly passing in the hallway. Actually it takes me longer than the whole interaction to process that their referencing the pregnancy.

In general, I’ve been finding that my life hasn’t really changed. At least not in the usual ways – I’m eating less, exercising more, sleeping the same (well, maybe a little more). The hectic life at school doesn’t let me focus on the pregnancy too much – for good and bad. Thus, the fact that my body is physically changing is really weird and detached from anything else in my life.

When you pause to think about it, the fact that I’m growing a life in me is super bizarre. I mean, what else have I ever grown in my life? I’ve successfully killed 2 gold fish, and over a dozen plants. And, just so you don’t misunderstand me: It’s not that I’m complaining that I’m inept for this pregnancy. It’s just an observation that I’ve never had any urge or interest in growing anything, but here I am so fascinated with the growing life inside of me. Indeed, it our modern society we’re so disconnected from the origin of anything. All manufacturing starts out in a land far far away. So it’s surprising that something that happens so frequently as childbirth is still, in part, done in a manner that’s so un-facilitated.

Weird Jello

Just so you know that I haven’t broken my baking promise in the few weeks I haven’t blogged:

This is my mom’s recipe for roses, but instead of meringue with vanilla pudding mix, it’s homemade chocolate creme anglais (aka fancy pudding). I would have actually liked it o be exactly like my mom’s roses, but the two times I tried making the filing, the meringue completely fell as soon as I put in the pudding mix. I assume it’s something in the Jello mix, but I don’t know what it is. If anyone has a clue, please tell me. Anyway, the result of trying to make meringue twice was a whole lot of egg yolks, so that sort of lent itself to making pudding as a filling.

Here’s the recipe for the dough – in terms only Israelis can understand:
1 small package self rising flour
200 g butter
1 unit sour cream (or Eshel)
Combine all the ingredients in a food processor using the metal blade. Form into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap and let sit in refrigerator overnight.
I’ve actually been having some rather deep thought s lately about American culture, cultural relativism and social solidarity, but I’ll leave those for other days. Meanwhile, and interesting take on consumerism and relative wealth , for those of you willing to spare 16 minutes.

I'm not fat

It’s not that I was purposefully trying not to mention it. Well… maybe I was. But I was afraid that maybe I’d forgotten to tell someone, and that this would be the first place someone would read about it. But now, first of all it’s physically evident (sort of), and moreover, it’s just the context of more and more stories. So if I did forget to tell someone, I’m sorry but you should know that I’m not fat, I’m pregnant; 23 weeks pregnant, to be exact.

That is the reason that I’ve taken a ridiculous amount of courses this semester, which is the reason that I’m completely overloaded with schoolwork. And that is the reason that I’ve neglected to write for quite some time.

So what’s up? Uri is in Israel. I think he’s having lots of fun… that’s what he says. It actually sounds like it’s one of his better trips to Israel. I’m trying to franticly make up for spending a weekend in NYC (ie, not doing enough schoolwork during the weekend). I’m also trying to constantly remind myself to dedicate time to finding a job. And the pregnancy? I sort of feel like I’m neglecting it.. I mean, I think I’m OK, sort of like women that have already had children are. But I imagine that most first timers dedicate a lot more time to reading up on things. Oh well… My latest pregnancy story is that last night I went to the supermarket at around midnight to by some antacid, because I had run out and I felt as though I wanted to rip my throat out. Good thing too, because I had a lot of other things I needed to buy (milk, bread), and I’d been putting off getting those… HA.

Soft and Chewy Brownies

For a while now (over a year), I’ve been signed up to be one of America’s Test Kitchen Recipe testers. This means that they send me recipes to make and then I need to fill out a survey on how the process and the end result were. In all this time I think I only made 2 recipes (and it might even be only one). Last week I got a recipe for brownies. Given my new pledge to bake once a week I saw an opportunity. You see – this is what I’m in business school for, to learn to recognize opportunities!

Since it’s a test recipe, I can’t give a link for it, so here it is in full:

Soft and Chewy Brownies

Our goal was to create a soft, delicious, homemade brownie with chocolaty flavor and chewy texture.

Makes twenty-four 2-inch brownies

Note: For the chewiest texture, it is important to let the brownies cool thoroughly before cutting. If baking the brownies in a glass baking dish, to prevent them from over-cooking remove them from the pan after they have cooled for 10 minutes. While any high-quality chocolate can be used in this recipe, our preferred brand of bittersweet chocolate is Callebaut Intense Dark Chocolate, L-60-40NV and our preferred brand of unsweetened chocolate is Scharffen Berger.

1/3 cup Dutch process cocoa
1 1/2 teaspoons instant espresso or coffee powder (optional)
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons boiling water
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, very finely chopped (see note)
½ cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 ½ cups (17 ½ ounces) sugar
1 3/4 cups (8 ¾ ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon table salt
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, cut into ½-inch pieces

1. Adjust oven rack to lowest position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Cut 18-inch length foil and fold lengthwise to 8-inch width. Fit foil into length of 13- by 9-inch baking pan, pushing it into corners and up sides of pan; allow excess to overhang pan edges. Cut 14-inch length foil and fit into width of pan in the same manner, perpendicular to the first sheet (if using extra-wide foil, fold second sheet lengthwise to 12-inch width). Spray foil-lined pan with nonstick cooking spray.

2. Whisk cocoa, espresso powder (if using), and boiling water together in large bowl until smooth. Add unsweetened chocolate to mixture and whisk until chocolate is melted. Whisk in oil. (Mixture may look curdled.) Add eggs, egg yolks, and vanilla and continue to whisk until smooth and homogenous. Whisk in sugar until fully incorporated. Add flour and salt and mix with a rubber spatula until combined. Fold in bittersweet chocolate pieces.

3. Scrape batter into prepared pan and bake until toothpick inserted halfway between edge and center comes out with just few moist crumbs attached, 30 to 35 minutes. Transfer pan to wire rack and cool for 1 ½ hours.

4. Using foil overhang, lift brownies from pan. Return brownies to wire rack and let cool completely, about 1 hour. Cut into 2-inch squares and serve.

They ask not to change the recipe, so despite really wanting to substitute some of the sugar with brown sugar, I made the recipe as is. There was one thing that I had to change – I added some white chocolate pieces as well. Also, I didn’t use the ultra-expensive brands they recommend. For the unsweetened chocolate I used Baker’s chocolate, and for the dark chocolate I mixed between Baker’s semi-sweet and Hershey’s new Fine Dark chocolate. I know the latter sounds kind of strange – me using Hershey?!? I mean, in Israel I refused to by Elite, and here I am baking with Hershey’s. But they’ve actually come out now with a series of fine chocolates that are actually pretty good and are very reasonably priced, so they might just become my go-to chocolate.

The cake is out of the oven. It baked 40 minutes. I tasted an edge and it was super chocolaty. It’s a rather adult brownie, because it’s not overly sweet, like a dark chocolate version of a kid dessert. Below are pictures, they aren’t that good, I’ll probably be able to take better pictures after they cool down and I cut them, but I could wait to upload this post.

BTW – the pics were taken using our new Sony Cyber Shot. It’s the same camera Uri used to take pictures in Mexico. While both Uri and the camera made it back safely, the USB cable that connects the camera to the computer did not. And since Sony has to be so different, its USB cable is unique only to its camera’s and so costs $20 to replace. So, marking a year in the USA and the deepening our assimilation, I went on eBay and placed a bid for a cable (there is cost $4). The cable arrived last week, and what do you know – it actually works!

Weekly recap

Back to school it is – And back to not finding time for the little things. So now I’m back to recapping a whole week’s worth of events.

Friday I actually made my goal of baking one a week. I made another Dorie Greenspan recipe. This time it was biscotti. I opted for “tropical biscotti” changing her recipe a bit to by swapping the almond essence with Tahitian vanilla and the almonds with a blend of dried fruit, coconut and pistachio. The recipe lends itself to American biscotti, which are cut rather thick and not the slender fine biscotti that I made before. It was fine by me, because the thick biscotti are much easier to make. In the picture, I completed the tropical thing by making some chai Thai tea. I frothed the milk with my handy Bodum frother :).

On Saturday we attended the Israeli Student’s Association’s annual start of year BBQ. It was a nice event, a lot of good food, a lot of new people. Most importantly though we held elections for officers and so I am no longer the president. Woohoo!

After that – school officially started, and I quickly realized that the real problem with taking as many courses as I’m taking is the amount of reading that I have to do during the week, complicated by the fact that I don’t have too much time to do the reading during the week because I’m in class. Here are the courses I’m taking: Consumer Behavior, Services Marketing, Macroeconomics, Cases in Business Strategy, Financial Statement Analysis and Managerial Spreadsheet Modeling. I got tiered just writing all that down.

Uri had a busy week too. He did a lot of prep work for Saturday’s BBQ, and as usual took charge of all the actual BBQ-ing for everyone while we were there. Then on Tuesday we invited people for dinner which was planned as a pot-luck, but ended up being Uri cooking for everyone, last but in no way least, he was hired to cater an event for 80 people. The event is today (Saturday) but since it’s in the synagogue, it has to be kosher, so Uri had to finish cooking by Friday night. He worked all of Thursday and Friday (well his version of “all of Thursday”, meaning he started at 1 pm and worked until 10 pm). The end result was a huge amount of food, hopefully enough (I really don’t know what enough food for 80 Americans looks like). I’ll report back with the client’s feedback next time.

Not naked on my first day of school

Yesterday was the first day of school. In some way, it’s nice to be back. I had two classes that seemed to be very interesting – Consumer Behavior and Integrated Marketing Communication, and a third class – Financial statement Analysis, that wasn’t as scary as I was afraid it would be. So all together, it was a very good day. The real test will be the end of next week, seeing how I deal with a whole week’s worth of classes. I really packed my schedule this semester, and right now it seems like it’s going to be alright, because the classes seem interesting, but we’ll see if that’s true or not next week. This was what my Outlook looks like so far:

It was also nice to see everyone, and hear how people spent their summer. It was a bit weird not having the 2nd years there, and alternatively having all the 1st years there, a whole bunch of unfamiliar faces that suddenly “took over” the school.

More updates soon,

Me.

PS – for those of you who aren’t food buffs, the picture from the last blog is the pasta leaves that we hung to dry in our kitchen. Since I haven’t complained about our house in a while, I’ll remind everyone that we have pipes throughout the house (for fire safety reasons). They add that final touch on the house feeling like a bunker. So an added perk to our pasta making was that we were finally able to put them to good use.