I couldn’t stay away!

Well, I tried to take a break! Filled up the bird­bath that John repaired after it fell over the first year we tried to pro­vide his pre­cious birds with the ameni­ties (but they still pre­fer the pond and the stream), man­aged to make a start on pow­er­wash­ing the white picket fence and the Red Gate (John has taken over the chore, though, since it involves a power tool). I think we can start paint­ing it on Fri­day. As you can see, it’s embar­rass­ing right now, but that’s the nasty halfway point of a project. The FedEx guy deliv­ered some­thing today and when John said, “Enjoy your after­noon,” he grinned and said, “Ayuh, you need to get back to that fence!”

We’ve been keep­ing a close eye on the fam­ily of wild turkeys that fre­quent our back­yard, as well as the ground­hogs who will eat any fruit and the squir­rels who turned up their noses at some stale almonds, but will do any­thing for bird seed. And we have spent some time jump­ing with Avery on the tram­po­line, tool­ing around in the Land Rover now that the reg­is­tra­tion is legal again, and over the week­end took another trip into the city to watch Avery ride (the lovely and tiny Albert, this time — his show name is Lit­tle Einstein–).

But I can’t stay silent on the sub­ject of the flood­ing in my adopted land. I feel guilty enjoy­ing a gor­geous rain­storm here in Con­necti­cut when so many of our favorite spots in gor­geous Eng­land are under­wa­ter, and the towns­peo­ple suf­fer­ing such ago­nies of ruined homes, no drink­ing water. We’re very wor­ried. Stay safe, every­one, and we’ll keep fin­gers crossed for dry weather to come.

Then, too, of course I found myself in the kitchen and turned out two new recipes, each of which is a mile­stone in its own way. Num­ber one: I thought I didn’t like zuc­chini, and num­ber two, I almost never make or eat desserts. But rules are made to be bro­ken, aren’t they?

We found our­selves the other day at the farm­stand owned by Farmer Rollie’s wife Judy’s brother (got that?), and manned by Judy her­self, and there was a lovely dis­play of green and yel­low zuc­chini. “You know, I want to like zuc­chini, but I just don’t,” I said. “Why not try this?” she suggested.

Judy’s Baked Zuc­chini
(serves four as a side dish)

2 slen­der green zuc­chini (leave the big mon­sters for some­one else!)
2 slen­der yel­low zuc­chini
2 cloves gar­lic, minced
hand­ful basil leaves
3 tbsps olive oil
sea salt
1 cup grated cheese: ched­dar, Gouda, Edam, anything

Wash and slice the zuc­chini into thin disks. Spray a 9 x 9 dish with non­stick spray and line with half the zuc­chini, then sprin­kle the gar­lic over them and top with the remain­der of the zuc­chini. Chif­fon­ade the basil and sprin­kle it over top, then driz­zle with olive oil, sprin­kle with sea salt, and layer the cheese over all. Bake at 325 degrees for 20 min­utes or until bub­bly and browning.

*********

This was just divine. Of course, any­thing with gar­lic, olive oil and topped with melt­ing cheese can’t be bad, but there was some­thing fresh and appeal­ing about the com­bi­na­tion of zuc­chini and basil, too. It was a def­i­nite winner.

And then for some rea­son Avery said, “I wish I had a choco­late cake.” “I can do that,” I said bravely, not really know­ing what we had in the way of ingre­di­ents. It turns out that even my dessert-starved pantry yielded some inter­est­ing stuff. I ended up over the next two days with two vari­eties of the eas­i­est cake you can imag­ine, each of which is really good. They strike me as very old-fashioned, with a nursery-like warmth and no sur­prises. Sim­ple, noth­ing fake or fancy, and you’ll prob­a­bly have every­thing in your cup­board and fridge with­out hav­ing to shop. The frost­ing, espe­cially, made me laugh as it was a com­plete emer­gency inspi­ra­tion. Go on, have a piece as soon as it comes out of the oven. Very com­fort­ing. Plus, I have declared a mora­to­rium on white sugar, so this cake is made with some­thing called “Sugar in the Raw.” This sugar is made from a very min­i­mal ini­tial pro­cess­ing, with­out going to the lengths that it takes to remove its nat­ural amber color. It’s a nice crunchy tex­ture, too, and has real fla­vor, as opposed to just a vague “sweet” impression.

Avery’s Favorite Choco­late Cake and Crazy Frosting

1/2 cup but­ter, room tem­per­a­ture
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups “Sugar in the Raw“
pinch salt
2 tsps bak­ing pow­der
1/4 tsp bak­ing soda
1/2 cup choco­late chips, melted (they stay a bit grainy, don’t worry)
2 eggs
2 tsps vanilla extract
3/4 cup evap­o­rated milk
3/4 cup sour cream, plus 1/2 cup more for frost­ing
1 packet Swiss Miss Hot Choco­late mix

Now, in Con­necti­cut I don’t have a hand blender, and guess what? You don’t need one. I also do not have a sifter, and as far as I can tell, I don’t need one of those, either. I just mixed all the dry ingre­di­ents together, beat them about 300 times with the milk, sour cream and vanilla. Then I added the egg and beat about 150 times more, then stirred in the choco­late chips which were grainy and not liq­uidy at all, so the result­ing bat­ter is a sort of golden color with brown flecks. Bake at 325 degrees for about 35–40 minutes.

Now, the crazy frost­ing. Not feel­ing con­fi­dent about what frost­ing involved in the way of ingre­di­ents, I looked up many recipes in my trusty and ven­er­a­ble New York Times Cook­book. The link I’ve given you here is to the fab­u­lous, quirky, intel­li­gent and delight­ful Hick­ory Stick Book­shop in Wash­ing­ton Depot, Con­necti­cut, our “local” book­store. It is always a favorite (and extremely expen­sive) after­noon there, as we all find things we had no idea existed but then feel like things we can’t live with­out. But I digress.

About frost­ing. So all the recipes I read called for confectioner’s sugar and light corn syrup, nei­ther of which I had. Also, I knew the choco­late chips wouldn’t melt enough for frost­ing. So I had an inspi­ra­tion: why not hot choco­late mix? Listed on its ingre­di­ent label were both confectioner’s sugar AND light corn syrup! Fur­ther inspi­ra­tion: sour cream? And sure, enough, the extra half cup of sour cream made the mix absolutely creamy, spread­able, and it melted right over the top of the cake, and into the holes I made with the tines of a fork. Delicious!

And if you want this cake to be lemony instead of choco­late, sub­sti­tute the grated rind of three lemons, plus 2 tea­spoons of lemon extract, for the choco­late. Then, I did acquire some confectioner’s sugar by the time I tried the lemon ver­sion of the cake, and a lit­tle lemon juice plus sour cream plus confectioner’s sugar makes a DIVINE glaze.

Never say I’m not sweet…

Tomor­row I get to see my friend Alyssa! For the first time since Feb­ru­ary. We just have not been able to get it together this July. So August 1 will see me in Tribeca, dog­ging her heels, fol­low­ing her around and gen­er­ally mak­ing a nui­sance of myself. I can’t wait.