Sub-Cake or where I pretend that I can bake

It is Chanukah, so naturally I am blogging about Sukkot, when I took the whole 9 days off, we had our own sukkah this year and had been expecting friends over for dinner.  Suddenly I found myself in an unusual position of being able to experiment with food and having volunteers to be experimented on.  (Unlike my family, guests couldn't opt for cream cheese sandwiches at the sight of unknown food.)  It was a perfect opportunity to try Suburban Correspondent's upside down cranberry cake.  It had everything I was looking for in a recipe:  it was easy; it came highly recommended; it had cranberries in it; and being from Suburban Correspondent, it had a potential for good blogging fodder.

Honestly, I don't know why I keep bothering with the last requirement.  Firstly, life keeps on throwing blogging fodder my way ALL THE TIME.  Fodder that would make you laugh, cry or remain uninterested - I have it all in my life.  If only I blogged about it.  Which would be, "secondly." Probably because I have so much fodder thrown my way, I can't find time or energy to produce a readable blog entry.  Actually, any entry.

But there it was, in all of its perfection - easy, tasty, cranberry-filled cake with high potential for blogging fodder.  I was sold.  That night, after I made three gazillion side dishes, soup, main course or two and a super hot pepper dip, it was finally time for cake baking.  SubHub, exhausted from watching me cook all night, slowly made his way into the kitchen only to restart the conversation we have been having for the past 8 years.

"Wow, what a mess."  "Yeah, I know.  I am almost done," I replied.  Then SunHub followed with a friendly suggestion I heard only three hundred times before, "Why don't you clean up as you go along instead of leaving it till the end when you are so tired?" "The counters ARE clean," I countered.   I'll spare you the details of this dialog because it deserves a post, if not a book, of its own.  That time it ended with SubHub taking a mercy on his hapless wife and washing a few pots and pans.  And, as the genre would require it, SubHub went off into the sunset feeling he had performed his duty and saved him damsel in distress.

The next day I, after the guests at SubCasa were souped and main coursed, was about to serve the dessert.  Fortunately, I had enough sense to try the cake before experimenting on my guests serving it.   The first cranberry I tried tasted a bit off.  "Wow," I thought, "those are some spicy cranberries."  This phrase was also off, so I repeated it again and again in my brain before finally realizing how crazy it sounded.  Spicy cranberries?  I took a big bite of the cake and felt my mouth on fire.  To my credit, I must say I never blamed the recipe or Suburban Correspondent.  Or SubHub, even though everything  that goes wrong is his fault. Unfortunately, not that time.  I had no one but myself to blame.  I tried to retrace my steps on the night of baking.  The only logical explanation I had was that the knife I had used for cutting up very spicy peppers for the dip was also used for cutting up margarine for the cake.  I knew I washed it, with soap, but apparently that wasn't enough to get rid of their aftertaste.

So I went in, fessed up to everyone who would listen, from the guests to the neighbors, about the importance of cleaning the knives after very spicy peppers.  We had a good laugh, at my expense, ate jello or lollypops or equally horrific backup dessert, some of the guests probably vowed to never eat in my house because I couldn't even wash my cooking knives properly.  

A few days later SubHub, while chowing on the very spicy cranberry cake, fessed up that during the clean up time he found a small quantity of unidentified goop on the otherwise clean counter, right next to the pan with the cake, so he just threw it in the pan thinking it was dough, or lemon peel, or something that truly belonged in the cake.   Which we now, of course know, to be the ground up super duper spicy peppers. "It's not even that spicy, I don't know what all the fuss is about," said the man who finds jalapeno peppers mild.

And I learned several valuable lessons, the most important of them that it is always husband's fault.  Even if all the evidence points in another direction.

The Mysterious Affair in Brooklyn

This post will make the most sense to local kosher Brooklynites. Did you notice that about a month ago whole chickens - that previously were sold with all limbs attached - are now missing at least one wing and sometimes both? First I thought it was the Mountain Fruit schtick, but now that I have started shopping in Moisha's, I have noticed the same thing! Not that I miss them or anything because kosher chicken wings look like that have been on aggressive Rogaine therapy and are pretty much inedible unless you want to spend an hour plucking them. But I am curious nevertheless...

What's going on? Did they start purchasing their chickens from the abused bird shelters? (Just imagine that from the chickens' perspective. There you are at the shelter thinking that you are finally being rescued only to be slaughtered after they fatten you up. Unimaginable cruelty, I say. Unless, of course, these birds died of natural causes. - I'm going to pause for a minute and gag.)

Or did the chicken wings became the choice of poultry among the rich and famous and all of a sudden saw a sudden increase in demand? Or maybe they are using them to feed/torture political prisoners/war criminals and Madoff?

Here's another theory, maybe our patriotic kosher chickens are cutting off their wings to protest all the bailouts, stimulus packages and current economic situation? Or maybe their wings are falling off due to a lack of preventive care because chickens do not have universal health coverage?

Does anyone know what's going on?

P.S. For those who are not very familiar with the laws of kashrut, animals who were sick at the time of the slaughter or died of natural causes are not kosher by default. I was just trying to be funny, that's all.

Patience, young Antonio!

I will not bore you with my usual “kids got to me”, “life’s hard”, “I am exhausted” blah blah blah stuff. Sometimes I make even myself nauseous with all the whining. Just thinking about the number of people who would give up five years of their life to live like me and have children like mine should make me a little more grateful for what I have. Yet I whine. But I refuse to whine about whining; after all, one has to draw a line somewhere.

This post is actually about my cooking. I have mentioned several times on this blog that I enjoy cooking. That is not entirely true. It’s not the cooking itself that I love; I like feeding people. It makes me feel good. I don’t really know why; maybe, I subconsciously hope that if everyone around me gained weight, it would make me look slimmer. Desperation is a powerful motivator, what can I say. But this time I was making food for people who I hope will never get fat, my kids. Since Friday afternoons before Shabbat are so long now, I need not to only worry about what they’ll have for breakfast while I am at work, but also lunch. This Friday I decided to treat them with baked ziti.

So I started cooking Thursday night. It was pretty late by the time I managed to boil water, and I was anxious to call it a night. When the pasta finally seemed done and before I drained it, I took one piece to taste to make sure it truly was cooked. I barely waited enough time for the ziti to cool off, taking an educated risk of burning my tongue by hot pasta, but I definitely didn’t expect what happened next. I bit into the very hot ziti, and all of a sudden instead of a burned tongue I felt my lip and chin getting burned. The water from inside the ziti (something I didn’t think was there and never thought to check for) squirted onto my face, making me scream with pain and scaring SubHub in the process. It didn’t look so bad immediately, but when I woke up the next morning, I had an ugly blister on and under my lip.

It all would’ve been worth it if the ziti came out fine. (I know, I am a masochist.) Since I was tired and burned, I decided to bake the ziti with cheese Friday morning, reasoning that I didn’t have to prepare kids for day care and would have plenty of time if only I got up at the regular hour. Ha! Ha! And another sarcastic HA!!!!! When did I ever wake up to give myself enough time for anything? I was rushing like a maniac in the morning, and when the time finally came to make ziti, I was already 10 minutes late for work. But one cannot compromise when it comes to kids’ nourishment. I made ziti, leaving SubHub specific instructions of when the oven should be turned off.

When I called from work, very puzzled hub said that he followed instructions, but didn’t understand why the cheese hadn’t melted. After a brief investigation, we concluded that I must’ve pressed the wrong button and actually never cooked the ziti. After initially warming up the oven, I must’ve pressed the “stop” instead of the “start” button on my toaster oven. What led me to this conclusion? The dish was cold to the touch, for crying out loud, coming out of supposedly 350 degree oven. So Hubs put the ziti back where it belonged, actually turned the oven on, and afterward kids reportedly liked it. When I came home, I saw the remaining of very well eaten bakes ziti on the table and…horror of all horrors… it was all white! As in NO TOMATO SAUCE WAS POURED ON IT!!! In my haste I forgot to add the sauce I so painstakingly prepared!

So now I am wondering. Is my cooking so horrendous that kids didn’t feel the difference between a normally prepared baked ziti and the sause-less? Or they don’t actually care and would eat anything as long as it is sprinkled with cheese? In that case, I want 2 years of my life spent making their food “just right” back!