Maggie

Maggie gets her own post. There are few words to describe her, but this picture explains about 90 percent of our relationship.

Around The House

Rarely do I get the opportunity to whip up a recipe with all the ingredients lying around the house. I usually make one, two or three runs to the store depending on how the recipe is going. Down in Portland, I found some blueberries and nectarines lying around so I decided to make a crisp. Crisps are just the best things on earth. You can ad-lib any ingredients and they are hard to ruin.

This recipe was found somewhere online and goes like this:

Filling:
6 nectarines cut into large pieces
2 cups blueberries
1 cup sugar

Topping:
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup flour
1/2 cup oatmeal (you can never have too much)
5 tablespoons butter (room temperature)

The crisp went fast after two bottles of wine out on the deck on a warm summer night:

Fourth of July

Fourth of July was spent at the coast in Manzanita, Ore. There is nothing more American than strawberry shortcake, so that is what I made. The strawberries were from Ian's parent's yard and they were delicious. The recipe came from The Modern Baker and was very simple. I cut up the strawberries and let them sit in sugar for a few hours until ready to serve. The shortcake recipe was a cinch, and can be put together quickly with a food processor. All in all it was a fantastic Fourth of July.

Uh-mazing

This morning's game was just incredible. Way to go USA. We were robbed once again with the first goal, but the second goal in the 91st minute was just impressive.

Birthday Cake

Last week was my Mother's birthday, so I made her a cake. After three failed attempts at a Genoise cake from The Modern Baker, I decided to stick with what I know. I really couldn't tell you what happened. It was like a frisbee you could fling across the room (I think at one point I did). I followed the directions to a T with zero results. I will not give up on this book though. It can't get the best of me.

This is a classic yellow cake with chocolate buttercream frosting. The buttercream turned out well, but it had a pound of butter in it with chocolate so it is hard to taste bad. The cake on the other hand was in need of some major moisture. I am looking into some cake strips that Rose Levy Beranbaum (all hail the cake goddess) talks about in her books, but for now I need to work on bake time, and more experience.

I have yet to find a yellow cake recipe that I truly, truly love, but when I do I will be sure to write about it.

Souffle

So, I tried my hand at some raspberry souffles for Father's Day. These...were hard. The ingredients are simple and I was lucky enough to have fresh raspberries in the backyard.

Most of the souffles sank when I took them out of the oven, and I may have been overeager and took them out too soon. This was my first try at souffles and they definitely take many trial runs to get just one right. These were out of the Sur La Table book and were raspberry flavored with a chocolate truffle in the center.

For the souffle:
6 egg whites
1/4 cup sugar

Raspberry puree:
2 1/2 pints of raspberries
Sugar

Truffles:
3 oz chocolate
Cream

Bake at 400 degrees for 14-17 minutes.

2010 World Cup

Now, I am late in my mention of the World Cup, it started a couple weeks ago, but it will carry onward for a few more weeks. There are very few perks to being unemployed, but one of them by far is the ability to watch any and all World Cup matches. Tomorrow I will be getting up at 7 a.m. for the U.S. Algeria game.

It is great to watch France reinforce every stereotype this World Cup with their whining, complaining and protesting; and in general most teams who were picked to do well have done meh. Case in point: England, France, Italy and Spain.

I hope you are watching the World Cup, too. According to Reuters, it looks like you are: ESPN and ABC had an average of 3.35 million viewers for the first 14 matches of the tournament - a 64% increase since the last World Cup in 2006.