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snacks & adventure

Tag Archives: baking

So Snacky All the Time: Urban Homesteading round #2

16 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Snacks

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Tags

baking, cooking, courgette, seasonal vegetables, zucchini

Urban homesteading is a grand adventure.  I’ve fended off dogs and small children in the Mill Road Cemetery; climbed trees in Grantchester (Felix, just try and stop me!); and snagged free vegetables in a variety of other places, as well. I’ve written about my plum pie and my elderberry syrup, but I want to document my other successes as well.

The most exciting vegetable I stumbled upon this autumn (so far!) was a pair of zucchini/courgettes that a coworker brought in to the office.  I found a recipe on Becky Bakes.  As is an unfortunate trend with cooking blogs, her writing is super annoying but her recipes are super delicious (the outlier is Smitten Kitchen.  I’m not a regular reader, but when I do read her posts, they are almost always typo-free and minimally obnoxious, which is more than I can say about this blog).

Anyway.  Literary style aside, the zucchini snacking cake was the most delicious thing I’ve made since salted nutella tarts.  The regular zucchini bread was equally delicious (and quickbreads are impossible to screw up.  Banana, pumpkin, zucchini, applesauce…easy peasy). I don’t remember what recipe I chose or I’d share it with you – but I can share some tips for making your zucchini bread healthy (honestly!healthy!….ish).  Go scant on the sugar (this is something I’m going to push the boundaries of. I also want to experiment with coconut sugar and/or honey, which have lower glycemic indexes and are therefore better for you and less likely to give you diabetes).  You can swap out all of the oil for applesauce or even chunks of apple microwaved into submission.  Finally, go a little heavy on the zucchini – you can get 2 loaded cups in there and it just tastes more moist and not like you’ve added healthy stuff.

You’re welcome!

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A Week in the Life

17 Friday Feb 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

architecture, baking, entertainment, food, Harry Potter, John Lewis, Kings College, shopping, travel, yoga

When we first moved here, being unemployed was depressing and boring.  But in 2012, my social has really picked up steam, and we joke a lot now that I could never find the time to have a job (not that I’m not still looking…)

This was a particularly good week in the Life of a Woman of Leisure, even with my Woman of Leisure Walking Tour (see post below) cancelled for half-term.

Sunday: I went to yoga, then went to John Lewis and bought a new lamp, rug, and wastepaper bin.  I decided that, rather than pick something up later, it would be a good idea to bring all three home at once.  On my bike.  In the snow.  For a mile and a half.  I looked like an idiot, and all my new stuff turned out to be pretty heavy, so by the time I made it home I was as sweaty from carrying my new housewares as from the yoga class.  Then Ian and I bought a new carpet for the living room, and I went to circus school.  You know, just your average Sunday.

Monday: I interned/volunteered with Shape East, a planning organization in Cambridge.  I really like the people who work there (some of whom have started reading this blog, which is the fastest way to my heart these days) and I’ve finished the project where I had to cold call people and take a survey, which was useful but not super fun.  Then I went to yoga.

Tuesday: Yoga in the morning.  Then new friend Robert and I attempted to make macarons.  He’s done it successfully several times before, but these were a pretty sad little fail.  Still, afternoon well spent.  In the evening, Ian and I met a friend for High Table at King’s College.  Despite having eaten at Christchurch in Oxford, where the dining hall scenes of Harry Potter were filmed, this is probably the closest I’ll ever get to eating at Hogwarts.  With the professors.  I sat next to a retired lawyer, now a photographer, who was very earnest about the need to help lawyers (who typically retire in their 50s here) find a second career.

Wednesday: A friend and I went to Letchworth, one of Ebenezer Howard’s two garden cities.  It was a nerd pilgrimage, but I was ultimately kind of disappointed.  Radburn, in New Jersey, made for a much better nerd pilgrimage.  Still, I’d been  wanting to go.  In the evening, I went rock climbing and then to the Emmanuel College Bar with climbing compatriots for Wednesday funk night.

We also saw the UK's first roundabout. Woot!

Thursday: I’m working on a design competition in Shanghai with an architect at Wolfson College, so after a morning spent puttering around the house, I met up with her for a work session followed by a zumba class.  Later in the evening I ended up at a pub with Ian and a friend playing a game called “War on Terror,” which would be more fun if we fully understood the rules, but I plan to play again anyway.

Lauren made that face on purpose.

Friday: I’m meeting a friend for lunch before hopping a 15:15 train to Brussels for a weekend of eating and sightseeing with the hubs, followed by a one-night stay in Ghent.

Have a great weekend!

Domestic Goddess Spree, Round 2

27 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Snacks

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

baking, chocolate, cupcakes, dessert pizza, food, meringues, snacks

…I have a feeling that, until I get a job, cooking sprees might be a recurring theme in my posts.  I took some cupcakes to my neighbor yesterday, a very nice man named Jim, and he took one look at them and said “so you’re still job hunting?”  Which is maybe a compliment? That’s probably how I should take it, right?

Anyway.  Being unemployed has allowe me to make lots of delicious food.  The cupcake recipe was Thomas Keller’s, from his incredible book Ad Hoc At Home.  Below are some recipes I’ve gotten from the internet and would absolutely totally recommend making, even if you’re not a person with lots of time like I am.

1. Dessert Blueberry Pizza from Spoon Fork Bacon
2. Chocolate Meringues from Bakerella (how is that woman not morbidly obese? She makes so many delicious things) (also, these are great, but they do NOT photograph well)
3. Lamb Meatballs & Orecchiette from Design Sponge
4. Baked Macaroni & Cheese from Simply Scratch

I need to stop making cupcakes because I want to regain my girlish figure, but I have to say, learning to cook and bake new things has been a distinct pleasure of being unemployed, and learning to take pictures of cupcakes has been a bonus too (believe it or not, my food photography skills are improving, as is my command of my fancy camera.  Woot!)

Bonus Post: I Make an Awesome Cupcake

21 Saturday Jan 2012

Posted by frannyritchie in Snacks

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

baking, candied citrus, cupcakes, poo swirls, snacks

Usually food bloggers say that they ‘adapted’ recipes from other blogs.  I’m not a real food blogger, so I don’t adapt recipes. I just trust that if they made it onto a blog its because they tasted good. In this case, I used a recipe from JoyOfBaking.com and omitted the cream of tartar because I didn’t have any.

I topped them with chocolate buttercream (6 ounces butter, 6 ounces icing sugar, 1 ounce cocoa powder) and then put pieces of candied citrus on top, which was a good idea in theory and a sloppy-looking idea in practice.  The chocolate frosting was delicious but came out looking like poo swirls of CakeWrecks fame.  And then I put them in my cupcake carrier for its inaugural use (I insisted on registering for it when I got married.  Then I decided that was ridiculous.  Then I decided, hell with it, I want a cupcake carrier.  Then I didn’t use it for a year and a half).

Anyway, I got about ten feet from the house on my bike with the damn cupcakes before they all fell out of their little holsters and smushed all over the place, and then it didn’t matter that they hadn’t looked that good to begin with (could’ve seen that one coming).  I put them back in place, biked two miles one-handed (including up the only hill in Cambridge!) and then lied and told everyone they were beautiful before I spilled them.

I didn’t intend to post about them originally so the only thing I have to show for my efforts is the candied citrus.  I was inspired by a recent post on winter citrus from MattBites but the local grocery didn’t have blood oranges, so I used oranges, lemons and limes. I’d never had candied lime before, but its pretty amazing. Candying the pulp along with the peel makes everything a little sloppier and wetter, but also much, much faster.

The cupcakes were great, but I would note that they were utensil-intensive.  It would help to have a hand mixer and a stand mixer; an electric mixer of some sort is absolutely essential, and you go through a lot of bowls and spatulas and whatever else.

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