On Friday evening, we took the kids to go see Santa.
We had also tried to go see the big man the previous Friday, getting in line early but seeing the gross inefficiency of the line made us retreat. I waited in line with Lily for a good forty five minutes, to only see the line advance about twice.
We went to The Shops at Southglenn to go see Santa there. They have a big courtyard that is usually lit up with lots of Christmas lights year-round, and in years past, Santa has been outside near a big outdoor fireplace and under those lights. Except, last year, apparently Santa got pneumonia from sitting outside in the cold. So they moved to a different spot indoors.
The other ‘bonus’ about this is that it was free, and you are to bring your own camera to take pictures. Taking large volumes of pictures is something I am very, very good at.
So at about five o’clock on Friday evening, with cameras, kids, and gadgets in tow, we headed over to see Santa.
There was a small line. In front of us was a couple with a thirteen-month-old daughter. She and Lily were getting along just fine. Lily was in a great mood, smiling at everybody, clapping, and she was totally enamored with the lights and trees and decorations.
Owen went first, and he did really well given the last two years. I think he’s starting to get the association now. I also think he’ll be really sad when Christmas is over.
By ‘really sad’ I mean that he’ll probably be upset for about five minutes before moving on to something else, like with trick-or-treating at Halloween. The night after Halloween, after dinner he went and put on his hat and jacket and announced he was ready to go trick-or-treating again. We explained it was a once a year thing, and he just said “Oh, okay!” This reminds me that I need to get an audio recording of him saying this, because he says it in a very funny way.
Then we tried both kids together. I mentioned earlier that Lily was in a great mood, which you most likely (and correctly) understood was a precursor to this photo:
The bonus here is that you also get to see the peril of being your own photographer. It was a little dark in there, even with the teeny pop-up flash on the camera. Eventually the little Santa Sock Monkey won out, and she calmed down a bit.
Owen was excited to get outside and see more Christmas lights, so we kind of hung around a bit before going to dinner at Diego Zhang’s. We had never been, but in totally awesome family night style, we had a coupon and decided to give it a try.
It was a slider restaurant – tiny burgers. Lots of variety. Lots of small dishes. Then we rushed home to put the tired babies (and mama) to bed.
These things are the new best part of Christmas. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. And I don’t want to forget.
So, far this writing – even though it’s mostly shameless self promotion, has made me realize a lot of things.
In between the lines of a lot of that analysis and crap are a bunch of things I subconsciously would like, without actually realizing it. Well, I guess I realize it now anyway.
When looking at yesterday’s post from the BBQ Brethren forums, particularly the pictures from the post about bbq ribs and other pictures along the way to that post, I noticed that all of those cuts are nearly perfect, with no tearing or off-grain mess.
For big cuts of meat like a brisket, flank steaks, ribs – I have been using our Wusthof 9″ Chef’s knife which I keep very sharp. It works well, but it is difficult to get a uniform cut.
A long time ago, when we got married, we registered for an electric carving knife. And we did get one – but when we opened the box, it was empty. And due to the weirdness of registry gift buying and shipping and whatnot, it basically never got resolved.
It dawned on me yesterday that with the amount of barbecue that our house generates, it would be totally sweet to have an electric carving knife. Then it dawned on me that I haven’t smoked any pork ribs in a while. Yay, weekend!
If you head over to the BBQ BRETHREN forums, you will find a trove of barbecue knowledge from professionals and enthusiasts.
Also, lots of food porn and even more food porn.
One thing I have learned from these forums is that there is an abundance of bbq rubs, seasonings, and sauces that I have never heard of before. One brand that seems to be uniformly appreciated and loved is the Oakridge BBQ brand.
I can’t say I’d have use for the venison rub – though apparently that’s what got them started. The single person who runs this front was perfecting a venison rub for his buddies at deer camp one season. And now we’re here. The habanero death dust seems to be popular on the forums, but I can think of approximately zero folks that live in my house day to day that would be interested in eating something rubbed with habanero death dust.
I’ve always liked making pizza.
Growing up, mom and dad always made ‘American’ style pizza. You all know it – think of any of your typical delivery pizza chains. Red sauce, lots of toppings, a thick crust. That was pizza for most of my childhood. I still love it, and on very cold days, the thought of a thick, tomato-laden pan pizza from Pizza Hut is very warming.
At some point, I think via the Bertucci’s that opened up by Springfield Mall, I was introduced to brick-oven pizza, which is really more of a neopolitan style. Coincidentally, that’s also where I had barbecue chicken pizza for the first time. I liked it a lot – the crisp, chewy crust with light topping and char.
Since then, I have done a lot of experimenting with different doughs for neopolitan style pizza crusts.
My new favorite, though, is a recipe we got from the Pizza! Pizza! Pizza! class we took at Cook Street here in Denver, where the instructor told me, “You win the class.” It helped that I had a lot of self-taught experience. (I love taking classes at Cook Street – we also took the Fish Tale course.)
And really, the recipe isn’t much different than the second dough listed above – but really more the techniques used to make the dough and prepare the pizza. Basically, you try and work it as little as possible to get it to come together, and let the yeast do its thing. Flour hasn’t mattered, the quality of olive oil hasn’t mattered – at least not yet.
The class taught a pizza-making fanatic like me that I really do need a pizza peel. It also taught us how to make Flammekuchen, which is a white pizza sauce made with bacon, butter, and cream.
We cooked our pizzas in an actual wood-fired brick oven that was running at about 750 degrees. The way to get pizzas in and out of there was with a peel. It made great pizzas – the extremely high heat charred the dough and made it crisp and melted and singed the cheese and toppings. The char is what tastes good.
Sadly, we only have a Pampered Chef pizza stone that isn’t approved for temperatures higher than 425 degrees. I was reading about this, though. That may be something to try one day.
My current technique is to put the stone in the oven to let it get hot. Pull the stone out, then try to work the dough quickly into a circle. Then put the dough on the hot stone – at which point it starts to become inelastic as it starts cooking when it hits the stone. Next, quickly top the pizza before the dough gets overcooked from the hot stone. Load stone and pizza back into the oven. It has to be done very quickly, which means that there is a huge margin for error. This is true especially when trying to shape the dough.
We were taught in the class to make the pizza on the peel, and then use a quick flick of the wrist to unload the pizza from the peel into the oven (or in a home case, the pizza stone). Saves some frustration and stress, since I wouldn’t be trying to very quickly assemble a pizza to avoid overcooking.
I always thought I wouldn’t use a peel, or didn’t think it was necessary. I also thought it wouldn’t work in our house, since our oven opens towards the island in the center of the kitchen – but turns out, I’m wrong!
Now I want to eat pizza.
Not too expensive … definitely tastes like a cupcake.
Owen is very helpful in the kitchen these days. Perhaps a bit too helpful. Every time he sees us in the kitchen he wants to help “cook”.
We’ve enabled this by giving him some measuring cups, measuring spoons, and some dried beans. Oh, and his knife.
We also give him dried rice. And veggie scraps for him to chop. Oh, and rice, tofu, and just about whatever else we happen to be preparing. Some gets “prepared” and most just gets eaten.
Apparently there’s a special stool you can buy. It’s a stool that is counter height, and is designed to allow the kid to help and watch cook without being able to fall out – at least not easily. And also $199.99.
We use a twenty dollar murderous step ladder. He hasn’t died yet, but but all accounts I’ve read, it’s only a matter of time until he either falls off this two foot stool to his untimely death, or the stool rises up to devour Owen’s tasty innards.
Here he is cooking a special dish:
We hired a sitter and went to brunch yesterday at Snooze, a local place that does pretty good breakfast.
Anna had this, which I am now kicking myself for not taking a picture of:
Graceland Pancakes Legendary buttermilk pancakes griddled with fresh bananas, topped with peanut butter cream, whipped butter and bacon caramel sauce. Long live The King!
The bacon caramel sauce was delicious.
It’s not really a tradition, but this weekend I decided I wanted to try and make gingerbread cookies and have the boy help me out. It went about as well as you could expect when you have a toddler “helping”.
I like this photo because I don’t know what he’s doing – but he’s very focused on whatever it is he thinks he is doing.
He also helped ice the cookies, which I have video of. Again, your imagination of how that went probably isn’t much different than what really happened. I’ll have to post the video later.
Perfect!
We’re having a barbecue this weekend at our home. We’ve done this barbecue now for each summer that we’ve been here, so I guess it makes this the fourth annual version of said barbecue.
Last week, I practiced a bit. We went up to my parents’ condo in Cuchara, CO. We had no real plans of things to do, and mostly just hiked around the condo a bit. On one of the days up there, I read about a smoking technique for smaller charcoal grills and put it to work to see how it would do.
By visual inspection, you may guess (correctly!) that it went pretty well. I smoked a pork shoulder rubbed with this. It came out perfect – you can ask Anna and Owen. And possibly some bears that got to smell it.
While I don’t intend to do a pork shoulder for our barbecue, the important thing was the smoking technique, since I will likely try it this weekend.
What really makes our family’s barbecue is the sauce. People like the sauce – it’s a sauce my dad’s mom taught him to make, that he taught me to make, and people seem to generally like it. (Side note: I need to make it again at the beach this year and not experiment like I have the last few years, so beach attendees can taste the proper sauce.) It’s kind of funny – the thing my neighbors like the most is my sausage and my sauce – and they’ll talk about how my “sausage is so good” and how I “have great sauce”. You haven’t lived until a gaggle of ladies talks about how good your sausage is. It’s cool, but not as cool, when one or many of the dudes say the same.
Oddly, Anna never complements my sausage. Huh.
We have some neighbors that moved away to whom I’d like to send a care package of some sauce so that they can still get a fix. The problem there is that the stuff only has a shelf life of a week or so. In past years I’ve had neighbors ask me to make extra sauce that they can bring home.
We got one of these last summer.
What is that, you might ask? A pressure cooker! I started canning things last summer with all the stuff we got from our farm and from our vegetable garden. It went very well – having cans of vegetables through the winter and spring was very awesome. It was especially more awesomer when the tiny moocher decided he wanted to start feeding himself.
It seems I can do this!
So, last night, I made a giant pot of sauce, and canned it in the pressure cooker. Problem solved! The sauce should (if I canned it properly) last up to a year unopened.
Last year I canned vegetables. I never actually thought about canning sauce – let alone the barbecue sauce my family has always made. This is the first time I’ve ever done this with the sauce – but I feel like it’s kind of a monumental occasion. The sauce is being distributed for the first time!
I need to come up with a clever name to slap on the jars with a label.
The other yellow jars contain an experimental sauce that I’m not sure how I feel about yet. It’s a honey-peach-bourbon sauce I kind of followed a recipe for. I say “kind of” because it gave me a vague idea of what to add, and then I went ahead and ignored most of what it said to do.
The problem here, for the neighbors, is that I think they know what they’re getting for Christmas each and every year from this point forward.
We are still members of our farm. Last week we got a bunch of turnips, some garlic, and some peas.
One of the opportunities we’ve had available to us as members is the ability to go pick fresh asparagus and strawberries. We’ve never done it, because in our heads it was just too far to drive, and possibly wasn’t worth the effort. This year we wanted to do it because we thought it’d be a fun activity for us and the wee man. We weren’t wrong – but we weren’t entirely right.
Google Maps puts it at roughly an hour and a half a way. I think that those directions are based on the fact that a lot of the roads to the farm weren’t paved. Well, now they are – we got there in little over an hour, which required us to take various county roads that traveled in straight cardinal directions.
You see those nice clean rows of veggies behind Owen? Our strawberries weren’t there – they were in a weed-filled field. And by weeds I mean undesirable plants that you could smoke if you were really inclined to.
There were tons of berries in there, but the rows were hard to discern, and there was a lot of weeds to fight. We ended up with a pretty good haul, but only made it halfway through our row before Owen decided he was done stumbling over weeds. He was a good sport and made it quite a ways and impressed many of our fellow pickers – but any strawberries he picked did not make it into our box, so he wasn’t very helpful – the moocher. They all went directly into the mouth:
I think we’re going to keep doing this annually. It’s pretty fun, and I think it may be somewhat valuable to teach the kids that strawberries don’t actually come from plastic clamshells at the grocery store. We’re far away from that lesson, but it probably won’t hurt to start early. He wasn’t bothered by bugs or weeds or scratchy plants – which was really cool to see.
The farm also takes volunteers to do farm work – this is something else I’d like our family to be a part of in the future. Again, it’d be neat to have the kids associate that food comes from somewhere and is a lot of work.
The whole album from the pickin’ experience can be viewed by clicking on our bounty below:
