Weekend Update June 23, 2013

“Logic will get you from A to Z;

 imagination will get you everywhere.” 

Albert Einstein

Here's a question whose answer will tell you more than you probably wanted to know about how plans around here actually materialize.
Ready?
What do a walk around the mall, Abraham Lincoln, a broken air conditioner and a trip to DC have in common? Hands up when you have the answer.

         

I see that hand, creepy John Brown guy- you are correct!
the answer is dinner!

Sigh. There are times when my trains of thought wind up in very unexpected stations. Times when my thoughts are more like an interior dinner conversation than an interior monologue- I could lie and tell you that it's an urbane, witty, sophisticated and well-educated inner dinner conversation, but it's really a lot more like this:

Hmm. Last week's menu lineup for example. I wonder if I could illustrate the planning process with  a sort of thought diagram....Hmm.
well, it started last Tuesday, when Josie the wonder dog hopped up, gave me a kiss on the nose and an important bit of calendrical information:

Lady Person!  It's Juneteenth!!
Does this mean I get a treat?

From there, it went here.And there, and here:

And so we started at Juneteenth, and traveled through a week of beat the heat meals, and some of them were worth writing from home about.
Starting with the Salmon in parchment, (which I still cannot call by it's French name without laughing at how  pretentious it sounds.)
This method continues to wow with it's ease and versatility- here are 7 variations on the Williams-Sonoma site alone! My daughter has been taking these little paper parcels to work, filled with vegetables and chicken, and the two of us together are brainstorming ways to wrap them around kidlicious combos- mac&cheese and chicken parcels maybe? Here's how they worked on the grill:

Note that I did not even thaw the fish.       On the grill, away from direct flamage             Viola! dinner is unwrapped!

They were seasoned with a little of the Outback Steakhouse seasoned butter and on the grill for about 12 minutes. My mother asked me after the first time we tried these if the twee little heart shape to the parchment was really necessary, and mom, the answer is no.  Fun and sweet, but not necessary. We assembled these on paper rectangles torn directly from the parchment roll and it was just as fun, and faster.
Friday's gazpacho recipe was one of the nicest I've tried- two minor changes were prompted by pantry necessity: I used V-8 juice instead of tomato juice, and added a can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes when I realized that I didn't have enough fresh tomatoes. Healthy, cool, and tasty.
You may remember that I was looking forward to turning some leftover steak into steak gyros and turning the no-knead bread into the gyros wraps, and while grocerying on Wednesday, in  the baking aisle of my local Kroger I noticed a new addition- a box of "gluten free baking mix" that implied it could be used as a straight substitute for all purpose flour.
And if you think I could let an implication like that go untested, you are so wrong.  You are wronger than a very wrong thing.

You are almost this wrong.

It's kitchen experiment time!

Here they are, and you can see that
 Houston, we already have a problem

While the regular flour batch stirred up like a nice bowl of bread dough, the gluten free batch laid there doing a pretty good imitation of runny mashed potatoes. Apparently, trouble lay ahead.

Both batches rose for about 20 hours, then I smooshed them into round shapes. The texture of the gluten free batch filled me with foreboding, so I decided to bake some of it in the oven as directed in the recipe, and cook the rest on the grill with the regular batch.

 Bubblicious regular discs of chewy goodness                                                    meh 

Here they are after grill-baking:

And the bit that oven baked:

Pretty bad.
And by pretty bad I mean
Epic Fail.

There are those who think that nothing is wasted as long as knowledge is gained- I was trying to remember that instead of thinking that I'd spent a day making 5 dollars worth of gluten free baking mix even less tasty than it would have been had I served it straight from the box.

It turns out that the no knead recipe is a white wheat flour recipe that just can't turn into gluten free bread, and it doesn't do a good job of turning into whole wheat bread either. Yet it remains the easiest, most delicious, most versatile yeast bread recipe I've found- just as long as it can be itself.

and it makes stellar gyros wraps.

Being what you are.

That's another rabbit trail my thoughts have wandered down, as they've pondered what it means to get from here to there.

Because despite the ease with which people on television throw around the word journey,

Sometimes getting there is a really confusing ride.

And I want you to know that it's okay.

Okay to not quite understand the place from which you started.

And okay to not quite know where you want to end up.

And okay when what's hidden beyond the next bend

veers from exciting to scary to sad and back again.

It's okay that you don't control the road or the way it unwinds.

Because you control something more important than all of that.

You have so much power over the very most beautiful part-

So much power to choose

the sort of wonderful you you'll be

when you get there.