A Christmas Gift For Caffiends: BuzzBarz

Every year around Christmas, I try to come up with a new cookie recipe or two to add to the already copious list of cookies I make every year.

This year, I didn’t get started baking until, oh, yesterday, so that curtailed my explorations in cookiedom. However, I did manage to adapt a recipe from The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion that I think will become a new favorite in our home. The original recipe was called “Cafe au Lait Bars,” but my high-octane, Kahlua-iced version was given the less mellifluous name, “BuzzBarz” due to the fact that after eating one of them, I found myself perched on a kitchen stool, swinging one leg back and forth like Edith Anne on crystal meth.

Yes, I am giving away my age, now. Do you know who Edith Anne is? She was a character played by Lily Tomlin on the old comedy sketch show, Laugh-In, back in the late sixties and early seventies. She was a precocious five year old who used to sit in an over-sized rocking chair and tell stories about herself, her family and her dog, Buster. They always ended with her tagline, “And that’s the truth,” which was followed by a raspberry.

So, yeah–these little squares of caffeinated bliss are great–especially if you want a little, okay, a big pick-me-up. Just watch out if you are sitting in a rocking chair–you might rock so fast you whiz off into orbit. Yeah, I added more instant espresso than was strictly necessary–and then added a glaze of espresso, Kahlua and lots of sugar–but boy, it made them good.

I guess you could consider them rocket fuel for your inner child.

And that’s the truth.

The coffee bean garnish is optional, by the way. It looks really pretty–hower some folks don’t like to chew on coffee beans like I do. Those who don’t like crunching on them can remove them–or, you can just leave them out.

BuzzBarz

Ingredients:

3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups raw sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla paste
1 teaspoon Kahlua
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted (Plugra rules)
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons instant espresso powder, divided
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1 tablespoon instant espresso powder
1 teaspoon Kahlua–optional (if you don’t want to use it, use 1 teaspoon water or coffee instead)
handful of coffee beans for garnish. (Optional)

Method:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line a 9″x13″ glass baking pan with foil, then grease and flour it lightly. (Or use Baker’s Joy)

Beat the eggs on medium speed until they are pale and thick. Add sugar and beat on high speed until the mixture is glossy, cream-colored and quite stiff. Add the spices, the melted butter, vanilla and Kahlua, and beat to combine. Mix together the flour, salt and three tablespoons of espresso powder. Add gradually to the sugar mixture, and beat to combine.

Heat the first measure of cream in the microwave for a few seconds, then stir in the remaining two tablespoons of the first measure of espresso powder. When the powder dissolves, then stir the flavored cream into the batter and beat until well combined.

Pour batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 30 minutes–20-25 if you have a convection oven. The edges of the bars will pull away from the sides of the pan, and will brown slightly on top.

Allow to cool, and then cut into 2″ square bars. Do not separate yet.

Whisk together remaining ingredients until smooth, and drizzle over the cut bars. If you wish, place a whole coffee bean in the center of each bar. Allow the glaze to dry before separating the bars from each other.

These are great with milk–but even better with–you guessed it–coffee.

Weekend Cat Blogging: Christmas Edition

It was Christmas Eve Eve–the night before the night before Christmas–and all through the house, many creatures were stirring, measuring, shaping and baking a multitude of cookies to sweeten the holiday and make the season bright.

I caught a glimpse of a sweet sight beneath our horrifying fiber optic Christmas tree–it glimmers and glows on its own, but with its plethora of extra lights, it looks like a concatenation of little pixies and epileptic fireflies collided with Las Vegas and a plastic tree got in the way.

Anyway, the sweet sight was our oldest cat, Ozy, who is sixteen years old–soon to be seventeen–laying all dignified and full of feline gravitas–under our tree.

So, I ran and grabbed the camera and was lucky enough to snap off a scant handful of pics before he got up, stretched and headed off in my direction for a chance to put his nose on the lens. He loves to do that.

The best one is posted above. Ozy is looking way more dignified and kingly than I ever would have imagined in his younger, more kittenish, days.

Which leads me to the other weird cat stories which have happened this weekend.

You see, I am a Weird Cat Lady In-Training. Which means that while I love cats and help them out every chance I get, I only have eight of them in the house. Yes, it is true, that I have not hit a double-digit number in my housecat population. When it happens that I get my tenth cat or kitten to live in the house all at the same time, not only does a Cat Angel get its wings so it can cross the rainbow bridge into cat heaven, I will graduate from my appreticeship and pass on to full membership in that rarefied crowd which is the Weird Cat Ladies’ Association.

Being a Weird Cat Lady In-Training means several things.

It means that stray cats know that you are carrying a Weird Cat Lady Union Card (they smell like catnip) and so they will come out of the woodwork to plead for assistance. It is true, and according to the bylaws and customs of the Weird Cat Ladies’ Association, a Weird Cat Lady in Training MUST render what aid and assistance she can to the ailing, lost, hungry or otherwise unhappy stray feline.

So, uh, when a cute gray kitten tried to slip in the back door at Salaam, I was honor and duty-bound to do what I could to help him out.

So, I gave him a bit of half and half we had sitting around. Not long after, a second grey cat showed up–this one without shadow-stripes of darker grey, and hours later, I went out to the back door to Salaam to see if I could see them, and there now three of them–the third was grey and white and was so skittish that I simply could not get near enough to touch him. The other two took to me immediately–which is very typical cat behavior–I have a way with cats, well, all animals, really, but cats in particular. Hence my unavoidable fate to become a Weird Cat Lady.

It turns out that another local business owner had been feeding them for two weeks, and she said they were a mother and two half grown kittens who had probably been tossed out by someone to fend for themselves.

So–well–I am looking for a home for these guys. I go out to our back parking lot where they hang out and feed them and water them every day, and they all get more friendly and sweet. Zak and I will pay for their vetting–spay, neuter and shots–for whomever would want them. They are beautiful greys–one has grey shadow stripes, one is solid grey (Mom) and the other is grey and white. They look quite healthy, too.

So that happens on Friday.

Saturday morning, we went out to eat at another restaurant–Jana’s–and had a great breakfast. We came out, and Zak and I got Kat strapped in her carseat, we jumped in our seats, and Zak turned on the engine. Right then, the sound of a great, piteous mewling filled our ears, and we were sure that a cat had gotten trapped in our engine.

He turned off the car, I jumped out of my seat, and out from under the car next to us–which was still unoccupied–popped a little tortoiseshell kitten head. She bounded out, and put her paw immediately on my knee, and mewed and purred. She was skinny, and had fleas, and ear mites, and was much younger than the two kittens from the night before–but she was adorable and friendly.

Well, so I thought. As I walked back across the street to Jana’s to ask if they knew if she belonged to someone, we passed two fishermen, whom the kitten tried to run from, and two old ladies coming out of the restaurant who scared her, too. Jana said she thought it had been dropped off–it seems to happen often out where the restaurant is–so I told Zak to call our vet who often fosters cats and finds them homes. The office was closed. Then, we drove the mile to another local vet office where we have had good dealings–but they were closed, too.

By now, the kitten was curled in my arms, purring mightily, and Zak and I had resigned ourselves to at least taking her in our home until we could find her another set of parents. She was charming, gorgeous and sweet.

And then it dawned on me. Heather wanted a friend for her first kitten.

So, we called her.

And we dropped by.

And the kitten has a new Mommy.

But, there are still three cats in the alley behind Salaam waiting for a Christmas miracle….

BTW–these sorts of things happen to me often, and usually around Christmas. Two other strays came out of the woods near our house in the past–once in Athens, years ago, before we left, and once in Pataskala, after we came back to Ohio. Both were found homes around Christmas. The first one, an orange tiger-striped cat who came to us with a broken jaw, we called Hobbes. Our vet, Dr. Kroner, did surgery on his jaw free after we paid for antibiotics and treated him for the infection that had settled in. Then, he stayed at Dr. Kroner’s office until Christmas Eve, when two middle-aged siblings took him home as a gift for their elderly father whose cat of fourteen years had died earlier in the month.

When Dr. Kroner told us that story, we got all teary-eyed and felt great about helping Hobbes find such a good home.

The second one–Pippen–still lives happily down the hill from us in Dan’s home. He bonded with Dan the first time they met, and I was thrilled to have gotten him out of the woods, and into our house where he lived until Dan could take him in.

I guess that December is the Season of Cats for me.

Look for a new cookie recipe tomorrow, and on Christmas Day, some pictures of all the action around the old homestead.

A Menu For Hope: Just A Few More Hours To Send A Lot OF Hope

I want to thank all of my readers who have so generously donated to A Menu For Hope this year, and while it is true that we have together broken last years record of approximately $62, 000.00, we’d like, in the last few hours of the campaign, send as much as we possibly can to the schoolkids of Lesotho.

There are some woefully neglected prizes with some great odds of winning out there: Pim breaks down some of them, and on her blog, there are links to more extensive lists breaking down the odds on prizes regionally.

These links are on the right hand side of the front page of her blog–under A Menu For Hope Daily, which lists the up-to-the-minute donation total.

It is amazing to me to see generosity in action among food blog readers: you all are a wonderful bunch of people! Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.

Oh, and while you are at it–keep playing Free Rice. With Free Rice, the bookish cook’s hunger for vocabulary can help feed poor people around the world. It is a great way to extend the generosity of A Menu For Hope all through the year.

Remember, the more people who play, the more people who win a full dinner plate through the United Nations World Food Program.

Food in the News: Restaurant and Blog Edition

Cooking in a War Zone

Some people liken working in a restaurant during the dinner rush to dodging bullets in a war zone, but at least most restaurateurs don’t have to work in an actual war zone.

That is, except for the foreign women who have come to Kabul, Afghanistan, in order to open restaurants and coffeehouses which serve the local and expatriate (primarily UN aid workers) communities there.

Reading about restaurateurs having a decor based on barbed wire, high fences and armed guards, as well as having to deal with armed war-lords demanding free food or “collecting” non-existent taxes (read: protection money) makes my complaints about the size of the kitchen at Salaam sound whiny and insignificant. In fact, I feel like a privileged, sniveling twit for even worrying about anything compared to that.

I cannot help but admire these women for their toughness and fortitude in the face of a very dangerous situation. While, yes, some of the restaurateurs sound as if they are there just to make a buck, others care that they are helping to rebuild Kabul’s economy, and that they are feeding people in a dangerous place comforting food.

Wolf Served Burger in Italian Bar

You read that right. A wild wolf, forced by hunger, came down from the mountains near Aquila in central Italy, and wandered calmly into a bar. There, it made no threatening moves to the bartender or other patrons, but calmly moved around, sniffing for food. The bartender made a nice juicy burger and tossed it to the animal who–pardon the expression–wolfed it down

And then the wolf left. (Without paying the bill, mind you. He probably let his wallet at home in his lair.)

Or, so the story goes….

Tigers & Strawberries in the Local News

Folks at the Athens News got wind that a popular food blog was based in their very own town, so I got a call from a reporter who came down to Salaam for an interview. It was fun, and the photos turned out well, and we got to introduce the world of food blogging, including A Menu For Hope. In the print edition of the article, which is longer, an excerpt from a recent post was quoted at length, which was really nice.

Book Review: Indian Spice Kitchen

I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to see that Monisha Bharadwaj’s Indian Spice Kitchen is back in print. It is, quite simply, an indispensable reference work for Westerners who are just beginning to learn how to cook the myriad regional foods of India.

It contains comprehensive listings of all of the major spices, legumes, flours, vegetables, herbs, grains, nuts and cooking fats used in the kitchens of India, with a full two-page description, historical overview and information on how and where to buy these ingredients, along with recipes for each ingredient and many photographs, including close-up identification photographs for each ingredient listed.

It is amazing in its wealth of detail and information, especially considering how very thin it is. It is very concisely, yet clearly written, so what could be a huge, unwieldy, encyclopedic tome which would become a dust collector on a hidden bookshelf somewhere, is instead a handy reference guide made to be whipped out at a moment’s notice for a quick perusal whenever needed.

Bharadwaj’s writing style is breezy and conversational without being silly–reading this book is rather like having her take you on a personal tour of her kitchen cabinets where she pulls out spices, and while describing the details of their history and use, having you smell, touch and taste them. She is just that way–a very approachable author whose work is unpretentious while still being utterly essential.

When I taught my classes in beginning Indian food, and especially my introductory classes in Indian spices, I always brought copies of this book along for my students to buy–at a discount, because I could get them at a quantity discount. Everyone loved it, because they said it was like they could carry me home with them, tucked in their briefcase, just in case they didn’t remember every little thing I said about each spice. It really helped my students and I remember that it really helped me a lot when I was a beginner, overwhelmed and scared to death to even try to cook Indian food beyond the one or two recipes I had dared to try in my youth.

Now, even though I am no longer cowed by Indian recipes, I still refer to Bharadwaj’s book, especially when I see a dal or bean at the Indian market I don’t immediately recognize. That way, I can learn the Hindi and English name of them quickly and easily, as well as see a recipe which uses it as a featured ingredient.

It is one of the best supplements to any Indian cookbook you can have in your kitchen.

If you or anyone you know is passionate about Indian food and cookery, this book would make a perfect Generic Winter Holiday gift. I promise.

And, if you were not aware, a free copy of this book goes to the lucky winner of my A Gift of Indian Spices prize for A Menu For Hope, which is still ongoing for the next several days.