Long Distance Baking - Session One

My sweet yoga sister, Gay, and I have been friends since we took Yoga Teacher Training together in 2010. She came up to visit me the first summer I lived here in Northern Idaho. We often text each other for hours on end as we watch Star Trek: The Next Generation together on Saturday night. We talk about what's happening on the episode we're watching, or discuss theology, relationships, cooking, whatever. I know, we lead exciting lives, don't we?

Recently, we decided to bake the same brownie recipe on the same day at the same time, texting as we went. We chose Valerie Bertinelli's "Classic Gooey Brownies".

First step was melting the chocolate and butter together.
I chose the double boiler method. Gay chose to use the microwave.

Next, we had to whisk the wet ingredients together until they were "fluffy".
















Hmmm, Gay's looks "fluffier" than mine.

Gay used dark chocolate chips, per the recipe, but I decided to chop up some dark chocolate blocks that I already had in the pantry. Messy job, but then I get to eat as I clean up :-)

Mine was ready to go into the oven. I noticed my batter was much wetter than Valerie's was on her show. Perhaps it was the homemade butter? It seemed to have a higher water content than the store-bought kind. But boy, is it yummy and fun to make.

Gay was still working on hers, so after I put my brownies in the oven, I cleaned up my huge mess (leaving only the ingredients for the frosting out).

"Hi, Gay! What's taking you so long?"


Finally, I got a photo of Gay with her brownies in the oven.

"Hello, my beautiful friend!" Her brownies were about 15 minutes behind mine. They were supposed to bake for 30 minutes. They were supposed to "crack" and set in the middle.

Boy, did mine crack! It's an earthquake! They were still raw in the middle after 30 minutes, so I put them back in. Tick tock, tick tock.




Meanwhile, Gay was waiting for hers to crack...














Finally, after another 15 minutes, mine were done in the middle and I could take them out.

And Gay's were done at the same time, in the allotted 30 minutes.




She took hers out of the pan to cool. She decided not to frost hers. Oooh, I'm going to tell Valerie!!!!

I frosted mine (hiding that wild crack).

Hello, sweet yoga sister!





And now, for the taste test (my favorite part).

First, Bruce...

Umm, I think he liked them.

My turn!



Hmmm, they were good, but they didn't knock my socks off.

Gay? What do you think?

She agreed with Bruce. They are Good!!!

I decided to give them another try later while I watched TV. I liked them better than before. Yeah, OK, I'll eat the rest :-)

Stay tuned for the next Long Distance Baking Session. We have three Brownie recipes lined up!

For those of you wanting to try this recipe, you can find it here:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/valerie-bertinelli/classic-gooey-brownies.html

Ready To Get Our Hands Dirty

As the ground slowly thaws and the snow melts, our thoughts turn to warmer days and lush, growing plants in our garden. Our mouths are watering, thinking about the bounty of veggies and fruits from years past.

"They look professionally grown!"

We are troubleshooting issues we had last year regarding low-grade crops and slow/no growth. We're going to better augment the soil, rotate some crops, stagger growth cycles better and reduce the number of crops per bed (in some cases). Oh, and we are really, really going to try and be better at thinning (our least favorite gardening chore).

Presenting our 2016 Garden Plan:

Last year, we planted sunflowers against the inside of the fence on the garden perimeter, but they didn't bloom until very late in the season. This year, we're going to try decorative corn.

We hope to get more apples from our Haralred tree, and maybe some Honeycrisp this year, too. Last year, a mighty wind came through in late spring and blew all of our blossoms away :-(

We're going to bring our pumpkin and decorative squash plants back to their original bed. Last year's bed move did not work. We're hoping to recreate 2014's bumper crop:

It was a little difficult to harvest and maneuver around the bed,
but it was beautiful and prolific.

We look forward to rising early (Teddy will help us there), getting out into the garden in the morning sun and sowing, weeding, watering, and eventually, harvesting our bounty!

Dreaming of Stuffed Buttercup Squash

Carrot Creatures

Crunchy Homemade Pickles

We're going to (hopefully) grow tons of Roma tomatoes so I can make gallons of marinara and enchilada sauce.

It was heavenly this winter to be able to pull out homemade sauce
from the freezer and make lasagna, eggplant parmigiano and enchiladas.

Our plan is ready. Now we wait. Every garden year is different. What will this one bring?