My First Fougasse

Olive Rosemary Fougasse from Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan, baked with French Fridays with Dorie

I tried very hard to come up with something interesting/coherent/funny to say about this bread and the making of it.

After several tries, I gave up.

So, I am giving you some randomness today.

1.  The dough was easy to make, but then I forgot about it and left to rise for several hours instead of just one.  It quadrupled.  Oops.  I just stirred it down and stuck it in the fridge.

2.  When I checked on it in the morning, it had more than doubled.  This sure was a really active dough!  But, I fretted over whether the yeast would have enough oomph to make it to the end.

3. The dough was sticky and difficult to shape.  I was lazy and just did it on the parchment sheet and used no flour.  I might oil my hands next time.  They were not very pretty.

4. I baked it on a stone.  I bake almost every bread on a stone.

5.  Dorie says it will not get very dark and she was right.  This is pretty pale bread, but I worried needlessly about whether the dough would “spring” in the oven.  It did fine.

6.  The texture was great; soft and springy with a little crustiness.  The lemon zest was interesting.

7.  I liked the first 4 olives I ate, then I did not want any more.  Next time, I will make one with olives and one without.

8.  There probably won’t be a next time.  Maybe it’s because I have been baking so much sourdough lately, but I found this bread, overall, to be rather underwhelming.  I am looking forward to trying the recipe in Baking with Julia.  That one looks yummier to me.

9.  Despite my mediocre feelings about this bread, it did make for some yummy sandwiches the next day.  So, maybe, it’s the kind of bread that is better with something rather than by itself.

Well, I think I have said all I can think of about the fougasse I made this week.  How did yours turn out?

Portion Control

Here is one way the husband and I have devised to instill some portion control in our lives:

Tiny ice cream cones.  Aren’t these great?  We can pile on the scoops and still be light on the calories, as long as you stick to just one.

Summer bathing suit season is coming soon.  How are you getting ready?

Leftover Lessons

Last week, I finished my leftovers quilt.

This quilt is my first attempt at free motion quilting.  It started out rather roughly, but turned out ok in the end.   I did learn some things in the process of making this quilt, so even if it is not perfect, it has served me well.

Lesson #1:  Speed is everything.  I found that when I tried to go slowly, my curves were more zigzaggy and my stitch length varied wildly.  This is one instance where having a lead foot is sort of an advantage…unless…you can’t move your quilt (see #2).

Lesson #2:  Stopping abruptly is better than a slowdown to a stop.  I had an especially hard time with this one.  I would reach a point where I could move the quilt no further and had to stop to adjust, but if I didn’t let off the gas suddenly, the machine would sew a lot of stitches in one place (because I couldn’t move it).  This created some little knots in places and actually made it harder to create a fluid line as well.

Lesson #3: A smooth back is better.  I thought it would look cool to use up all my leftover pieces to sew up a more modern looking back.  And, yes, it does look cool.  I might even like the back better than the front, but those seams on the back caused a bit of trouble for me.  I could avoid a lot of the larger seams on the top because I could see them, but occasionally, the seams on the back would get stuck and I would have to tug at it to move the quilt.  This caused some jerky stitches that I was not terribly happy about.

Lesson #4:  Irregular is better.  I am a beginner.  It is very difficult to follow a precise pattern, unless you draw it on, but I did not feel like doing that.  It’s better to pick an irregular stitch pattern until you’ve practiced enough to have total control over your stitches, otherwise the mistakes will stick out.

Lesson #5:  Just keep going.  Only a lot of practice will help get your stitches more even and fluid.  If I stopped and tried to fix every mistake, I would never have finished this.   Except for that part where I stitched two parts of the quilt together, I didn’t take any stitches out, even though I started out with a different design intent that I originally planned. Yes, it looks a little funny, but it’s not worth ripping out in this case.

Lesson #6: Look at the big picture.   Now that it is done, I kind of like it, but only if I look at it from across the room.  If I look at it any closer, I see all the imperfections and that would bug me if it were on my lap for a long time.  Isn’t that the case for a lot of things in life?  Don’t look too closely, you may see something you may not want to see.

Well, that’s it with me and fmq for now.  I can say that I was impressed with how fast I got this quilt quilted.  Once I got over that figure eight thing and went random, it truly was “freeing” to just move the quilt around and not have to follow any set lines.  I may come back to this technique in the not so distant future, but for now, I will put it to bed.  I have other things I want to do.

Close Encounters of the Sheepy Kind

I am really a fortunate knitter.  I live very close to one of the best fiber festivals in the country and I get to go (almost) every year and not have to spend any money on a hotel room.  This means more money for yarn.  Yay!  For me, The Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival is almost (if not more) anticipated than Christmas.  Where else can you look at, touch, and buy thousands of different kinds of yarn or fiber related supplies?

The Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival has been getting busier and bigger.  In the last few years, they have been opening up more vendor space in outside fields and there were definitely more food vendors there this year as well.  My friend and I got there early to do our food shopping.  They have great sheep’s milk cheeses, goat cheeses, fresh lamb, and local honey.  After we had that all secured in our coolers, we got down to our serious shopping.

This next photo is one I took just before lunch.  You can see that the midway is just packed with people.  We were so busy with our shopping that this is really the only picture I took the whole morning.

Later, after our lovely picnic lunch by the car, we went to hear Sue Blacker from Blacker Yarns in the UK give a talk about the value of breed specific yarns.  This was truly a treat and I learned a lot about the yarn and wool industry.  I left that talk convinced of two things: we pay really very little for our yarn and we need to support the preservation of our sheep breeds (i.e. buy more yarn!).  She said that they are considering ways to make the UK yarn that they produce more readily available in the US.  I am looking forward to that!  In the meantime, you’ll just have to order online from here, which I plan to do as soon as I can save some more yarn money.  While I wait, I can play with this lovely ball of yarn.

Sue was kind enough to bring samples of all different kinds of yarn that they stock.  I sure wish I could have gotten a picture of all the yarn piled on the table, but I was too busy squeezing yarn!  We each got to take home a ball–yay!  I chose this nice gray Gotland Yarn, a breed I hadn’t heard of yet.  My friend got a ball of North Ronaldsay, a sheep breed whose main diet is seaweed, imagine that!

After the talk, we did a bit more shopping and, thankfully, it had really cooled down and it was a lot less crowded as well.  Before we left, though, we had to go visit all the sheep.  We saw all kinds and I even got another skein of Gotland yarn from a farm in Pennsylvania.

There were cute little lambs.

(I know this is not the greatest picture, but isn’t he cute anyway?)  And we also had great fun with some particularly outgoing sheep.

The sheep was licking my arm!  The sheep were really very sweet and we had some very nice conversations with both farmers and vendors.  And, of course, I got some yarn!

If you live close by, I highly recommend you make the trip to the festival.  It’s free and it’s fun.  They have lots of vendors and other activities that kids and those who do not knit or spin would enjoy.  It was a wonderful day and I am already looking forward to the next one, but first, I have a little bit of knitting to do!

Butter, with a Little Fish

I have always loved to eat fish.  My mother cooked it often when I was growing up and it was usually whole.  She cooked it all kinds of ways, but my favorite was when she pan fried the fish.  It had a nice clean flavor and the skin got crispy.

Now that I have to cook my own meals, I usually shy away from cooking my own fish.  Partly, it’s because I am afraid of ruining it and fish is not cheap.  The other part is that I have difficulty finding fish that I trust.  Those fishy fillets sitting in the grocery store case on their bed of ice, how do you know they are fresh?  You can’t see their eyes and they are hard to smell.

But I love fish and I love that it is one of the healthiest foods out there.  So, I was really excited to make this week’s FFWD recipe: Almond Flounder Meuniere .  I did not want to drive all over town looking for the baby flounder fillets that Dorie calls for, so I went to the closest place where I trust the fish:  Trader Joe’s.

I know, almost all the fish at Trader Joe’s is frozen, but so is a lot of the fish sold in the grocery store.  They just thaw it for you.  I’d  rather buy the fish frozen and thaw it when I want it and skip the upcharge.  I could go all the way downtown to the fish market or drive 40 minutes to the asian grocery store where they have tanks of fish, but I don’t have that kind of time.  Plus, I like that TJ’s labels the fish wild or not.  I like to eat wild, not farmed fish.  At TJ’s I found what I thought would be a great substitution for the flounder: wild caught Dover Sole.

The hardest part about this recipe was waiting to cook it.  I had everything prepped and ready, but I had to wait for the husband to get home from work before I started cooking, because it takes less that 10 minutes to cook each batch.  I doubled the recipe since I was feeding the four of us and we all like fish.  And, since butter was to be a big part of the flavor, I used salted Kerrygold butter.

I had to cook my fish in two batches and I think the second batch came out better.  I followed the instructions to lower the heat on the first pan and they came out really pale.  I like a little more color on my food, so for the second pan, I kept the heat on medium the whole time.  We all really liked this dish.  The oldest said it was the best fish ever.

The lemon juice really helps to cut through the richness of the butter, but the husband and I both thought that the fish had a little too much butter and my youngest does not really like the flavor of butter (I know, weird, but he will eat buttercream icing).  Next time, I will not use as much butter.  We really liked the Dover Sole, though.  It was a nice tender fish that took very well to the cooking technique here. I think snappper might also work well or maybe a thicker fish fillet, such as sea bass would be better and would develop a better crust with its longer cooking time.  Hmm…maybe I’ll see what they have in the tanks when I go to the asian market today and try this again.  I think I see more fish on our dinner tables in the future.