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Creole Grits – for Sami

April 17th, 2010

Most of my young life, growing up in New Orleans, grits was a daily breakfast staple. If my grandmother didn’t make grits for me for breakfast – no matter what else she made – I would ‘pout’ until she produced grits. My favorite breakfast in those days was grits and liver. My neighbor used to tease me because he could hear me through the window in the morning calling downstairs for my ‘drits and liba, Mama’ when I was just learning to talk.

It is amazing how things change as we grow-up. Today I can’t stand to eat liver. When I think of my grandmother’s lovingly prepared calf’s liver I remember the conversations about who had the best calf’s liver, how old the calf should be -not too old or the liver would be tough with that strange taste, how long to let it cook (You didn’t want well done liver) etc. I could not hold that conversation today without getting a little sick to my stomach. I often wonder if my turning away from liver was a function of growing up or of the society changing around me having an affect on my eating likes and dislikes.

Grits, however, has remained a favorite and not just any kind of grits – Creole grits. I look down my nose at anyone who prepares grits according to the recipe on the box and tries to serve it to people for them to actually eat. It seems such a sacrilege to a great food.

The amounts below will feed about four or five people, with some left over for later to fry in butter or reheat. You need to get to know, for yourself, the amounts you want to use for the number of people you are feeding. Cooking is not slavishly following someone else’s discoveries, but taking the general idea someone else follows, making it your own. The pre=prepared pre-processed food companies have spent billions on marketing to make cooking seem like some mysterious process, which is known and can be successfully practiced only by the professionals in the food processing company’s commercial kitchens – ergo you have to buy their prepared foods. Because you couldn’t possibly make your own – cost too much, takes too much time, you don’t know how to make these complicated dishes. Many of us have bought that story-line. I am still amazed at the number of people I meet who think baking bread from scratch is a really difficult and time consuming process – it is definitely not. With a little planning, baking bread fits into the busiest lives. In reality, cooking is easy and much of it quick. Spending hours slaving over a hot stove to make a meal is an advertising guru’s creation, not a reality.

Back to Creole Grits:

1 cup organic yellow stone ground grits

(I prefer Arrowhead Mills grits. We try to stick to Arrowhead Mills products with flour and other grains, because we discovered the only place in the U. S. which does not have DDT residue in the ground is in the area around Arkansas where Arrowhead Mills products are grown. Robert says it is because the farmers were too poor to afford the pesticides which were so popular in the 1950’s and ’60s and which were going to save the world from starvation. Well, we know that didn’t happen – instead they’ve caused the world much grief. So today, those farmers and their descendants are rewarded by being able to charge a premium for their organic products because they are the only place one can get truly organically grown grains.)

4 cups water
1 organic onion – vary the kind you use when you make this dish
3 stalks organic celery
1 large organic green pepper
1 teaspoon himalayan salt – or sea salt if you haven’t changed over yet
cayenne pepper to taste
3 kinds of your favorite cheeses – we use parmesan reggiano, jack cheese and cheddar. We use Stonyfield Farms’ organic raw milk cheeses as much as possible because they are made with raw un-homogenized, un-pasteurized milk and they do not use rennet or other synthetic things to rush the cheese-making process and cut corners.

Put water in a glass corning pot and set the pot on the stove over a medium to low flame. Use a steel wire whisk to start the water swirling around and while you swirl the water slowly add the grits. You do this to keep the grits from clumping.

Let this mixture cook a few minutes, stirring it and keeping a close eye on the pot because you don’t want it to either burn or clump so stirring is essential. While keeping an eye on the pot and stirring the grits, chop the vegetables or put them in a food processor to chop pretty fine – unless you like to see the vegetables in this dish. In that case, chop the vegetables to whichever size makes you happiest.

Because we make this for bed and breakfast guests, we process the vegetables almost to a sauce. Not everyone enjoys the different textures produced when you chop the vegies. You will notice we do not fry the vegies in butter or oil before putting them into this dish. That is an unnecessary evil and produces a very different taste, which I don’t like.

Add the vegetables to the grits and continue stirring. I think putting the vegetables into the grits without pre-cooking them gives added nutrition to this dish and eliminates the oil that would come from adding the vegies after frying them in oil or butter.

When the grits look almost, but not quite done, add about 2/3 the cheese (two cups of cheese is great, but that is my taste, you might want to add more or less depending upon your taste buds.) We grate the cheese before adding to this dish. The only difference chopping the cheese into pieces instead of grating makes – it takes longer for the cheese to melt and takes you a longer time stirring the dish to incorporate the cheese. So you either spend your time grating, or you spend it stirring.

Stir the pot until the cheese is well mixed into the grits.

If this is the pot in which you want to serve the grits, sprinkle the remaining cheese on top of this dish (which would be about 1/3 the amount you started with), put a cover on the pot and put the pot in a 350 degree oven for about 1/2 hour. If you do not want to bring this pot to the table, transfer the grits to your serving pot – which should be oven-proof – sprinkle the cheese on top, cover this pot and let the grits cook for the requisite 1/2 hour. The amount of time you let the grits cook depends upon how long it takes for the cheese on the top to melt and form a nice added taste and another texture. The top will look like melted cheese with a light brown color with oil, which has come out of the cheese, on top.

This is great for breakfast, lunch or dinner. It is especially good served with broiled wild-caught (not farm raised) fish – halibut, cod, etc. If you don’t obsess over fried foods you might also serve this with cat-fish, covered with corn meal and fried in butter.

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Tags: Bed and Breakfast in Cambridge MA
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Old Fashioned Tea Cookies

April 12th, 2010

1 cup organic butter
1 cup organic turbinado sugar
2 large eggs
2 1/2 cups organic whole wheat stone ground pastry flour
2 generous teaspoons baking powder
1 generous teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup organic milk (more or less)

These are wonderful cookie/cakes which go unbelievably well with tea. They remind us of freshly baked vanilla wafers, before the recipe for vanilla wafers was changed and fixed up so they could sit on the grocery shelf for a year or more without going rancid. These cake/cookies are delicate, light, cake-like with a wonderful taste whether warm out of the oven or at room temperature.

Put butter in your electric mixer and beat a few minutes until it becomes creamy. Add sugar, a little at a time, beating until the combination is creamy and light. Add eggs and beat a few minutes to blend the mixture.

Mix flour, baking power and cinnamon in a bowl using a spoon to lift up the flour and pour it back into the bowl – letting lots of air into this dry mixture.

Add half the flour mix to the electric mixer, which is now turned to low, add the milk and the remaining flour while mixing the cookie dough. Be careful to mix only to combine the ingredients, don’t mix too much because you will get a tough cookie.

Put the cookie dough into the refrigerator for an hour or more. This is a cookie dough you can keep in the refrigerator, taking a bit out as you are ready to have freshly baked cookies.

Butter a baking pan by making circles with the butter where you are going to put a cookie.

Using a teaspoon, take up a spoon full of the mixture, roll it into a ball in your hand and put the ball where you have made a circle on the baking pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 13-15 minutes. When you take these out of the oven, immediately release the cookies from the baking pan using a spatula to lift them from the pan. Put the cookies back in their place on the baking pan to cool a few minutes. When cool enough not to stick together or to stick to the plate in which you are going to put them, transfer the cookies to a serving plate. Take the cookies you would like off the plate before you serve them because they won’t last – it is hard to eat only four or five and impossible to eat only one.

4/16/2010 an email from a blog reader follows
Thanks for the tea cookies recipe. They are wonderful – they taste like fresh vanilla wafers. The ones you buy at the store in various boxes from different manufacturers are hard and stale. We are so used to them we have collectively forgotten why vanilla wafers were so popular.

I put a pecan into the top of the cookies before I baked them and it made a world of difference. The taste was barely modified with the pecan, but they looked much more elegant. I am sure other things pushed gently into the top of these cookies before they bake would also be great – depending upon the taste of the baker. Keep those recipe’s coming. I love being a part of the Bettina Network’s bed & breakfast community even though I only travel once or twice a year I read your blog religiously.

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Even More Stock Market Information

April 6th, 2010

A summary of this breakfast’s stock market conversation is only for the strong of heart.

We had a guest who was celebrating wildly at breakfast. He owns 1 million shares of a little stock called EKWX. To find it we had to go to http://investorshub.advfn.com/, an information web site for people who spend $50 and buy a few million shares of stock (I hope you realize that is an exaggeration).

This is a stock which sat dormant for several years at about .0006/share and since March 31, 2010 has gone to .002/share. Figure out that profit if you owned the 1,000,000 shares. There is no information on the company I could find. The guest knew nothing, he was totally into his euphoria over his great luck and he was going home to buy more.

Going to Investors Hub,—- when their site opened, on the landing page on the left hand side was a list of the 15 stocks with the most comments, which were left by those who regularly follow what happens on investors hub and at the top of the list was EKWX. Much of what we read was about conjectures that this was going to be a reverse merger where EKWX is a publicly traded shell, probably merging with a private company and the activity comes about because, as you know, news leaks, only we aren’t on the top of the list to get the leaks.

EKWX traded almost a billion shares today and has gone up some 350% since 3/31/2010.

We are going to follow this guest and his stock tradings. We asked him to write a blog for Bettina’s, but he spends his days watching the stocks he buys and sells and doesn’t write.

He danced around the breakfast table all morning, trying to stay sane until the stock market opened and he could watch his stock – which he did, all day. We would have danced with him if we owned any of EKWX, but since we don’t we just drank an extra cup of coffee.

If the stock goes to $1, he becomes an instant millionaire.

This has better odds than the lottery, at least you get to keep some of your money if what you expect doesn’t happen.

The blogs are hot with this stock and the conjecture on most of this is that EKWX – a public shell – is in the process of becoming a Reverse Merger. Which is what is causing all the furor.

What is a Reverse Merger with a Public Shell?

“A Reverse Merger is a transaction where by the private company shareholders may gain control of a public company by merging it in with their private company. The private company shareholders receive a substantial majority of the shares of the public company (normally 85% to 90% or more) and the control of the board of directors. The transaction can be accomplished in as little as two weeks, resulting in the private company becoming a public company. The transaction does not go through a review process with state and federal regulators because the public company has already completed the process. The transaction involves the private and shell company exchanging information on each other, negotiating the merger terms, and signing a share exchange agreement. At the closing the public shell company issues a substantial majority of its shares and the board control to the shareholders of the private company. The private company shareholders pay for the shell and contribute their private company shares to the shell company and the private company is now public.

Upon completion of the reverse merger, the name of the shell company is usually changed to the name of the private company. If the shell company has a trading symbol it is changed to reflect the name change. An information statement, called an 8-K, must be filed within 4 days of the closing. The 8-K describes the newly combined company, stock issued, information of new officers and directors, a full description of the business, and financial statements audited to US GAAP standards. The 8-K must disclose the same type of information that it would be required to provide in registering a class of securities under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
(See Sec Final Rule 33-8587, pdf file)

If the shell company is listed on the Bulletin board, the registered or “free trade” shares can continue to trade. The company can do a private placement immediately. To trade new shares offered by the public the newly combined public company must first register the shares with the SEC. This process takes three to four months and normally requires filing a Registration statement with the SEC under Reg. SB-2 or SB-1.

If the shell company does not have a symbol, an application for a symbol is usually made to the NASDAQ Bulletin Board. The application for a symbol requires filing a Form 211 by a market maker that is a member of the NASD. The Bulletin Board has no financial requirements. A listing will be granted if the affairs of the company are in order and the company answers the questions posed by NASDAQ.”

ED: NOTE; THIS WAS COPIED FROM THE Investors Hub Web site to give you an idea of what this kind of trading is like and how and where to find information when you are off the big board and onto the sub-penny stocks. We hope they don’t mind.

Of course, another possibility is that this is what is called a “pump and dump”, something which happens on these boards. Someone starts buying a stock to get your attention, little by little others jump on the band wagon seeing the action and when the stock has moved up a bit, the original person sells all of his stock and runs to the bank with the money, leaving a lot of folks holding the “bag”. Only generally, the stocks don’t go this high this fast with a pump and dump operation going.

Wheee! Isn’t this fun? It actually would be if we had money invested in EKWX at .0006. This way, as observers, it is a learning experience and especially learning how to contain our jealousy of someone who has that 1 million shares.

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A Great and Healthy Cookie

April 1st, 2010

I have been experimenting with cookies and wanted to share the recipe and the process that came out of those experiments.

The cookie is fantastic. If you have just a little will power you can eat and enjoy only one. If you have no will power, the cookies are gone before they cool and you are left with a heavy stomach-ache because these are heavy cookies meant to be enjoyed one at a time.

Ingredients:
2 cups organic stoneground whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking power
1 teaspoon salt – we use himalayan salt, some people use sea salt, try for the purest and most organic salt you can find
1 heaping teaspoon cinnamon
1 and 1/2 sticks organic butter
2/3 cup organic peanut butter
2 and 1/2 cups organic turbinado sugar
2 large organic eggs
1 cup – or to your taste – organic dark chocolate chips
the same amount of roasted organic peanuts
1 teaspoon or 1 tablespoon or to your taste organic vanilla oil

I made these cookies without baking powder and they were almost rock hard. You had to really work at eating them. I tried them with baking soda and they were still rock hard. I sort of knew you add baking soda when baking with sour milk products, but I didn’t know why or what happened if you added it to other baking times and now I know. It was only when I added baking powder did I get great cookies.

I always wondered why add baking powder and I now have my answer. When adding baking soda or nothing, the cookies came out of the oven and they were great – soft, but not too soft, etc. When they cooled, however, they also hardened – really hardened – late night stand-up comic jokes hardened. When I added baking powder, they cooled and stayed nice.

There are many stories about cookies made for dunking in coffee and now I know why. They are cookies where the baker forgot to put in the baking powder, or picked up the wrong box and added baking soda without thinking.

I found a recipe for baking powder, but haven’t had the guts to try it. It is 2 parts cream of tartar to 1 part baking soda. Anyone out there try this? Any feedback you want to give the cowards among us? With real experience from a friend I might take the plunge. When your grandmother dies, your experience corner is gone and you have to rely on your own hard-won experiences. My grandmother has been dead for quite a few years so i’ve had to rely on my own experimenting, except where friends came forward to share. Make peace with your family before the silence falls – you miss a lot after that happens – the stories, but mostly the life experience. You can either get it from those older than you in your family or you can reinvent the wheel over and over and over again. Why in your family, you ask? Because you share the same culture, tastes, history, DNA. We don’t want to recognize that and try to move on to – ‘my friends are my family’, but it is not true. Your family is your family.

You know, after all these years, and thousands of breakfast conversations I am beginning to understand why so many people have such negative feelings about their families. Mostly, they are trying to change class and culture and family is like a bright red blinking neon sign which makes that more difficult. Either they show up and ‘out you’, or your newly acquired way of speaking, eating, thinking, living are put in jeopardy because family comes along with the old ways and you have to struggle to maintain your new higher status. What a stunner! I guess you all knew that already. Reject your class, race, culture, history, DNA and you are forever conflicted and have heavy conflicts with those who knew you when. AH! Truth telling in a cookie recipe, but then when you reach my age you can take all kind of liberties.

Now – preheat your oven to about 325-350 degrees.
Put the butter in an electric mixer with the paddle attachment and mix on almost high speed until it begins to lighten in color and texture. Add sugar and continue to mix while the two blend and become sort of like whipped cream. Then add the peanut butter and mix until all are combined.

In a separate bowl put in flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon and mix with a large spoon, picking up a spoonful of the flour mixture and pouring it back into the bowl over and over again to let a lot of air get into the mix. I don’t believe in sifting. You have to do that with non-organic white flour to get the pesticides and the little lumps out before using it – you know, the tiny little lumps in the flour and the black flecks which are the remains of the bugs which were killed in the flour by the pesticides when the flour was in the Silos – where it got an infestation of bugs – which were killed off with the pesticides, left in the flour, with the pesticide residue, to deteriorate and are now the little black specks and little white flour covered lumps you have to sift out before using. Since you are using stone-ground organic whole wheat flour you don’t have to worry about that.

Back to your mixer – once the sugar and peanut butter have been added – crack your organic eggs and add them to the mixer one at a time. Don’t mix too much after adding the eggs.

Gradually add the flour mixture, turn your mixer to low and mix only until the flour is incorporated into the cookie dough. Add the chocolate chips, peanuts and vanilla, again mixing only until they are well distributed. This is the crunch time for baking – too much mixing and you get a tough product – so be careful at this point.

Refrigerate the dough until it is firm – or until you are ready for freshly baked cookies. You can bake these all at once, or you can bake them as you want freshly baked cookies. The dough will last in the refrigerator a couple days. Impress your friends, bake cookies after they have arrived in just a little over ten minutes – the time it takes to make tea and put together a pretty serving tray to gossip over.

We use them for afternoon tea. They are substantial enough to bridge the gap from lunch to dinner without eating too many. The problem is, whenever I eat them I don’t want tea I want hot chocolate. The two go together like peanut butter and jelly, or rice and gravy.

To bake you can have either small bite-sized cookies or larger ones. For small cookies, take a teaspoonful of dough, roll it in your hands to make a ball and put it on a greased baking sheet. The size of the dough you take out of the bowl and roll is dependent upon the size of cookie you want as a final product. They will spread a little when baking, but not much.

These are very rich cookies so you don’t want to make them too large, most people won’t be able to eat a large cookie and they will waste your hard work and hard-earned money by eating a piece and leaving the rest.

Bake these about 12-13 minutes. Don’t bake them much longer than that or the bottoms will burn. They will be soft to the touch when you take them out of the oven and look as though they are not thoroughly baked. Ignore that – they are – these are tricky little cookies. To get a really good final product the baking time is the most crucial stage for these cookies.

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A Change to Your Lemon Tea Bread Recipe

March 31st, 2010

by: A former guest

I tried your Lemon Tea Bread recipe several times and love it. The problem has been, it is a little dry for my taste so I added 1/2cup heavy cream – organic, of course and it was perfect for my taste. Others may have the same problem so I decided to share my change with you.

I also have a question. How do I find heavy cream which is organic, but not super-pasteurized? I have looked all over with no luck. The only kind I can find will last in the refrigerator for almost 3 months, but I want fresh, organic heavy cream which only lasts days because it hasn’t been super treated.

Thanks,

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Stock Market Talk Over Breakfast

March 15th, 2010

I love those stock market conversations. This time, I decided to buy the stock and make a few dollars (hopefully). I hope you forgive me for buying the stock before telling you about it – since I only bought a few shares it certainly hasn’t affected the market. I am not really a big spender, the stock I bought cost $.1915/share for this company which mines molybdenum. I know nothing about molybdenum, but that has never stopped me before.

The stock we talked about and that I bought is Avanti Mining (AVNMF). The same person who told us about this stock several months ago came back and we had a more in-depth conversation. When he was here before, I was a little shy about grilling him on his stock interests, but this time I found my aggressiveness and gave him the third degree.

He found the stock through www.stockhouse.com, a web site which is about American, Canadian and Australian stocks, among others. You can find information on Stockhouse about stocks you can’t find other places – like its currently traded price, press releases, comments and a blog hooked to each stock where people, who are buying the company, tell you what they know. They are mostly very inexpensive stocks.

You can do many things on Stockhouse, but if you want to know more, you should check it out yourselves. The breakfast conversation centered around the column and newsletter written by Thomas Calandra. Calandra co-founded ‘CBS Market Watch’. He has been around quite a while and knows his way around buying and selling stocks. Our bed & breakfast guest follows Calandra’s ‘Ticker Trax’, which is a newsletter which comes out on a regular basis, which has made lots of money for its subscribers. It is mostly about gold, silver, molybdenum, uranium, Biotechnology, Diagnostic Substances, drug manufacturers, etc. The stocks in Ticker Trax are low in price, so most of us can buy a nice amount. I should also tell you it is not a free newsletter, you have to subscribe and I don’t know the cost per year. You might check that out too. I think the address is www.tickertrax.com or you might try www.ThomCalandra.com. You can go on Stockhouse.com and get a free copy of the newsletter to see what its like. It will not be the latest issue because he saves that for his paying customers and rightfully so.

Calandra checks out all of these companies, follows their management and keeps up with the health of the company. His track record is impressive. I used to follow and subscribe to another newsletter written by John Embry, who was known as THE person to go to about gold miners and other miners, but he retired and I have been left hanging out trying to decide what to do so we were very interested in knowing what our bed & breakfast guest thought about Thom Calandra since he seems to be Embry’s heir-apparent.

The last stock we talked about on Bettina’s Blog was Ford Motor Co. It was selling about $11/share at the time – check out the blog – and it is now selling about $13/share. WE have also told you about other stocks which were the topic of breakfast conversations. At some point, I will do another update on what has happened to those stocks. In the meantime, you can re-read those blogs and see for yourself what happened to the stocks our bed & breakfast guests discuss.

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HELP! Google has kidnapped our web-site!

March 9th, 2010

Google is going crazy with its world control.

What did I do? I didn’t buy a domain name from Google so they could move my blog, I was happy with the domain-seller and server company with whom I do business. I didn’t want to give up my server company to allow Google to be the server company and I didn’t want to buy my domain name from Google. When I tried to navigate their new system for FTP published Google Blogs the Bettina web-site went away and Bettina’s Blog took over the site.

What to do? There is no way to talk to anyone from Google. They have ignored my emails, which have been sent to everyone we could reach at Google – including the new addresses for those supposedly ‘helping’ in problems like this.

In the meantime, we have to find someone to pay a lot of money to so we can re-establish our web-site. In the meantime, our business is being negatively affected BIG TIME!

Take care people – Google came after us in the morning – they will come after you in the afternoon.

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Grandmother’s Wisdom

March 4th, 2010

We live in a society where there is much discussion about companies – especially banks – which are too big to fail.

Is that a deflection away from the fact that actually, we live in a society where a reigning truth is today businesses can be too small to succeed. If they look successful, the load put on their backs by large businesses increases. No one or two people do this, it is in the structure!

That is sad because small businesses are the engines which create jobs.

Boston has a group formed – the inheritors of the old “Vault” – to talk about job creation. All huge businesses – no small business executives involved and no minorities. Is that to discuss job creation and do something real about it or to blow smoke in our eyes so they can continue building the wall where large corporations are on one side – where the sun shines, buildings are beautiful, money plentiful, executives very wealthy, all owners of private jets – and small businesses are on the other – where the work is hard and never ending, the stress is high and getting higher, their resources are ripped and used by those on the other side of the wall and etc? Hmmmmmmmmm, where have we seen that model?

The last incarnation of the “Vault” had a very questionable track record – this one doesn’t look as though it is going to outperform its predecessor. I suspect there will be several more such groups forming around the U. S. When you live many years you begin to put things together which you didn’t have either the wisdom or experience to do in your younger years. So many carrots attached to very strong strings – why? To quiet those who don’t like what they see and might cause a ruckus? And those carrots are unanimously withdrawn when society’s anger begins to subside. True change could have avoided what we have been through these part couple years.

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An Update on Bread Baking – Bettina Style

March 4th, 2010

We are unbelievably delighted with our bread baking. Finally, after many years, we have mastered the art of freshly baked bread every morning without getting up at 3am. We mastered this art not in the process of trying to accomplish what we thought was an unattainable feat, but in the process of trying to make great organic croissants.

Our latest breakfast experiment is organic croissants. So far, it has not been successful, but on our way to croissants, we’ve discovered other wonderful bread treats.

We are only willing to use organic stone ground whole wheat flour and everything else has to be real, whole, organic food. We’ve been given many “secrets” to a successful croissant, but they all have made us question even eating croissants. We’ve heard about using everything from a ‘starter,’ to very expensive kitchen equipment. The healthiest suggestion was a Yogurt starter, but when we read the ingredients we couldn’t pronounce some so we dropped that possibility. When we checked out the kitchen equipment there was aluminum in crucial places, so we will continue the effort without those suggestions – and you know we won’t give up.

Our ‘accidental discoveries’ on the way to a successful, organic, whole wheat croissant have been exciting and exceptionally delicious. Our latest discovery is a wonderful bun which can be used for hamburgers; a breakfast biscuit of any shape you desire; a wrap for ‘pigs in the blanket’ or beef hotdogs for those who won’t eat pork; cinnamon buns, which are a little bit of heaven; the best monkey bread you can find and more. Our ‘new’ dough discovery has many applications, however, if you want a great slice of very tasty, nutritious, substantial bread, the original Bettina Bread recipe can’t be beat – especially if you use organic apple juice for the liquid and molasses for a little sweetener.

As we experimented trying to make croissants we mixed half organic whole wheat flour with half organic whole wheat pastry flour. In addition we used one stick of organic butter for the fat in the Bettina Bread recipe. We used organic apple juice for liquid and organic maple syrup for a sweetener. Once we’ve been through the first steps of making bread and have reached the point where the dough is mixed and ready for its first rising, we roll out the bread dough with a rolling pin, cut a stick of organic butter into pats and put them on 1/2 the rolled out dough. We folded 1/2 dough without butter over the 1/2 dough with butter and continued to fold the dough in halves until it reached a small packet. We then rolled that out with a rolling pin – refolded the dough – rolled it out again, refolded it again and wrapped it tightly with a clean cotton towel and put the resulting packet in the refrigerator. We did this in the middle of the day. So at night, before bed, we re-rolled the dough, folded it into a small square packet again, covered it and put it in the refrigerator. If we were up to it we would re-roll and re-fold the dough a couple time before wrapping and putting it in the refrigerator. We found that the dough rises, even in the refrigerator, so it was always pushing hard against its cotton cover. Some people use Saran Wrap for this, but we weren’t happy with that.

The next morning, we unwrapped the dough and cut off the amount of dough we wanted to use for breakfast rolls, rolled out the remainder with the rolling pin, folded it into a small square and put it back into the refrigerator.

Keeping this going – we re-rolled the dough at night before going to bed and the next morning, took off the piece we wanted to use for breakfast rolls, re-rolled the rest, covered it, put it in the refrigerator, etc. You get the picture. There is always dough in the refrigerator if you would like freshly baked bread, pizza, etc. with very little work and time spent. It would take anywhere from 1/2 hour to 2 hours for the dough to rise and that didn’t depend upon the dough, but upon our time once we shaped the dough into its final form. If we didn’t have much time, 1/2 hour gave us a beautifully risen sheet of breakfast biscuits which took about 15-20 minutes to bake. If we were busy and didn’t get back to the rising dough for an hour or more it was still in great shape.

We did find that organic yeast was the best to use if we didn’t want bread dough which would smell like ammonia if we let it rise too long. The other stuff we had to watch carefully or we would have to throw out the half-made bread and start over again. One day we will try keeping the dough going using some of the old dough to serve as the rising agent for the dough being newly made, but that’s another year and another blog. We are feeling good about all of this bread baking, but not that good!

As we saw that we would run out of dough the next morning, we started another recipe of dough so it would continue being available. We used the dough for three mornings before we ran out so we don’t know what would happen to the dough if you kept it in the refrigerator longer than that.

The pizza we made from the dough adding tomatoes, parmesan cheese and whatever else we had in the refrigerator which fit, was unbelievably fantastic! It was so good a couple bed and breakfast guests who saw us make the pizza the night before and tasted it, requested pizza for lunch and came home from their all-day business meeting to eat pizza. That isn’t something we normally do or encourage, but we loved every minute of preparing that pizza and enjoying lunch with guests.

That’s our story! Let us know what happens if you try this, or some of your experiences making croissants. We are seeking information to make great organic croissants with whole wheat flour. We clearly don’t know how to do that!

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L. A. Burdick’s – A Restaurant Review

March 3rd, 2010

52-D Bratle Street
Cambridge, MA. 02138
Phone: 617-491-4340
website: burdickchocolate.com

Hours: Sunday 9am-9pm, Monday-Thursday 8am-9pm, Friday-Saturday 8am-10pm

Visiting the newly renovated Burdick’s was a bit of a disappointment. I passed many times, but didn’t stop because I didn’t have time to wait in the line which seemed to be perennially outside the door – to the point of having signs telling you not to block the neighboring store and how to stand in line to wait.

I passed with a friend about noon this week and was able to get in without waiting and to even get an empty table.

Given all the people in line, I expected an outstanding list of offerings and there was my first disappointment. The lines formed because there are only ten tables in the restaurant and those are tiny table which can barely accommodate two people. On one side there are six tables with seating for two – on the other side there are four table with seating for one at each table unless you want to scrunch in and squeeze next to the two people at the neighboring table trying to do the same thing.

People seemed to be there for the hot chocolate since that is what was on everyone’s table. That was great, but I wanted something more. Friends have given me boxes of chocolate from Burdick’s, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was like a teaser, which wasn’t followed through on by what I found in the restaurant.

We had two chocolate pastries, which were good, but they took me back to when such pastries were introduced in the U. S. about 1980’s. It was kind of ho-hum and not really spectacular.

Getting tired of being pushed into the people at the next table, I bypassed the hot chocolate and wanted to go home where I had organic chocolate waiting for me.

It is very hard to enjoy a restaurant when you have accumulated a bit of knowledge about real food and your taste buds have moved definitely way beyond your childhood tastes.

Bottom line for us – Burdick’s is a nice place to go if you want to buy a gift for someone and you think a pretty box of chocolates would do. Beyond that I don’t see the attraction.

I went to Burdick’s before they renovated the store and I like the old store better. The tables were larger, you could sit with your friends and enjoy conversation with what you were eating. This is neither one thing nor the other.

The bare wood floor down the middle of the store which divides the tables – looks as though an aisle was made so those coming in to buy something would have room to wait in line while others eat on the sidelines. As a consequence, the light color of the wood may have been a nice idea on paper, but it has worn and looks as though it needs more stain to cover the wear which is not that appetizing as you sit and try to enjoy your dessert. Neither is it great to sit at those tiny tables, trying to balance yourself with people coming and going and sweeping past you. The concept of the store leaves a lot to be desired and is not the sophisticated place Burdick’s marketing claims.

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Olive Oil for Cleaning – a Hot Topic

February 18th, 2010

From a bed & breakfast guest:

Your posts on using olive oil have opened the doors and windows for me. I’ve had a grand time with it and you have answered many quesstions I’ve had for years.

When I read your post about cleaning furniture with lemon juice and olive oil, I pulled out my old wooden chopping board. It is dried out horribly and I haven’t used it for a couple years because I didn’t know how to treat it. All the literature says clean it with white vinegar, to get rid of the smell, and then rub mineral oil into the wood. Well, I eat what I chop on the board and I was not going to eat something which had been prepared on wood cleaned with white vinegar (acetic acid) – and mineral oil (petroleum). I wouldn’t put mineral oil on my food, nor would I put it on my body – which means I don’t get professional massages because that is basically what is contained in their massage oil.

When I read your post I thought – what do I have to lose – so I mixed up about 2/3 cups olive oil with 1/2 lemon and went to work on the old board. The next morning I was amazed. It was beautiful. I used the entire amount of olive oil and lemon juice because the board just soaked it up. It is now showing the squares the way it did when it was new. The oil has dried and it is not greasy. I had to wipe the dried lemon off, but that took a second and I am certain the brightness and cleanness of the board is due to the lemon addition, so the extra second was worth the effort.

Thank you! I have my chopping board back; I am not afraid to use it; It is once again a beautiful addition to my kitchen and all is right with the world.

Keep on keeping on. This has made me a loyal reader of your blog and I will also tell everyone I know about this experience.

Somehow, I think this was probably how my grandmother cleaned her chopping board, but I wasn’t listening, watching, or learning from her when she was around. I guess I really missed a lot from being so absent from the older women in my family. They are who should have been my role models. Wish I could pass that bit of wisdom down to my own children and future grandchildren to help make their lives easier. Better to learn from them than from the marketing media, who I learned from and because of whom I must now relearn and try to make a better life for myself than they tried to do for me.

The older women in my family had my best interest at heart, although I didn’t think so at the time. They were not trying to pry all the money out of my pocketbook leaving me with health issues as a result of their wrong-headed advice. A friend of mine even bought “food grade” mineral oil as a present for me to help me with my chopping board. Food grade or not, it is still petroleum and I didn’t use it, although she had all the right arguments to try to get me to use it. I sent her the link to your blog so she could see where she was really an air-head about buying the advice of those who are paid to sell bad stuff. I knew if I waited long enough something would come along to help with these little problems. One down, four hundred ninety- nine to go. Keep those posts coming! God bless you!

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In Addition to Cleaning Furniture the Bettina Way

February 13th, 2010

I love your company. I wasn’t really sold on traveling bed & breakfast, but after trying Bettina’s I am a convert. May it and all of you live long and prosper.

I tried the olive oil and lemon juice and it was FANTASTIC!!!!! I had some left over and went about cleaning other things. Did you know the same mixture cleans brass? I hate to clean brass and we have tons of it from my just married days. We were given a lot and started collecting exquisite pieces, but they can be horrible to clean so we didn’t. Some had turned quite dark. The only time any of our brass pieces were cleaned was when the woman who cleans for us had extra time and she would pick up a piece or two and rub forever. The stuff she used had a foul smell, which lingered in the house for hours.

I used the 0000 steel wool and what was left over from the olive oil and lemon juice mixture I used to clean a couple pieces of wood furniture. It is unbelievable how easy it was to clean my brass pieces – trays, statues, candles. They look beautiful – but best of all I didn’t have to suit-up to spend half a day cleaning brass. I didn’t even use rubber gloves and like you said, my hands are all the better for having done the work.

THANK YOU! And you know I won’t ever stay anyplace else. By the time you help me get my house into a very “organic” state I won’t be able to stay anyplace else. As it is, I am hooked on breakfast at Bettina’s. However, I haven’t turned my own kitchen organic as a result – my husband is a little unhappy paying the extra money for some organic foods, but we have gone completely organic with milk and butter. Eggs are next. Hopefully, he will relent, especially when he sees the money we are going to save on brass polish. The one we bought was VERY EXPENSIVE! I’ve tried to show him that you spend more on some things and less on others when you go organic – maybe this proves the case.

ed. Note: We added the bold type to this guests comments.

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Cleaning Furniture the Bettina Way

February 11th, 2010

Several months ago, we received a telephone call from a host family in the Bettina Network whose home is open for bed & breakfast guests.

She had an exciting experience cleaning and polishing her furniture. Not many of us get excited over such things these days. It has taken a couple months for us to share this with you because we were afraid to try her suggestion to verify her results. We’ve done that now and it is actually, really exciting.

She cleans and polishes her wood furniture every six months. How she does it is what’s at issue: she mixes olive oil with the juice from 1/2 lemon and rubs this into her wood furniture.

Having been conditioned by the petrochemical crowd and their fantastic marketing, we thought this would be a disaster. We asked a few people to try it before we set out on this project and their results were astounding – so, our turn.

We mixed one cup olive oil with the juice of 1/2 lemon, used 0000 steel wool and set about rubbing our furniture. Once we rubbed the furniture with the 0000 steel wool, (always in the direction of the grain), we wiped off the oil and the steel wool residue with a soft cloth and went back over the furniture with plain olive oil. We let the furniture dry overnight.

The next morning I fully expected to find little animals feasting on the oil residue and an oily ugly mess, but instead the excess oil soaked into the furniture and left a hard beautiful sheen. The results are phenomenal. The furniture is clean, bright, and has a shine that is real. Not greasy, nor slimy, nor anything like that, just a good, clean, hard, dry sheen.

The side benefits from this furniture cleaning and polishing expedition came when we looked at our hands. No rubber gloves were needed because we were using olive oil and lemon juice – neither of which would hurt us if it touched our skin. Our hands were beautifully soft because they had been nourished by the olive oil we used as furniture oil. Another benefit came from the house not smelling of petroleum distillates, a really foul smell. I sniffed around in the evening and couldn’t smell anything. We asked bed & breakfast guests if they smelled anything when they came in, they said no – nothing. I was concerned because I didn’t want the house to smell like a salad dressing, but that didn’t happen. The house had a nice, clean, fresh, smell.

A variation on this came from trying a substitute of lemongrass essential oil for the lemon juice. That is an essential oil which we’ve found has side health benefits. The results were not as dramatic as when we used the olive oil and lemon juice combination, but still very good. The smell was a major difference – probably because of the lemongrass essential oil – the house had a fresh, light sort of lemony smell. We didn’t pick that smell up with the olive oil and lemon juice but then lemongrass oil has an old wives tale with it which claims it is an excellent insecticide, so maybe that explains the smell.

Copying from an article on the internet “Lemongrass essential oil is analgesic, anti-microbial, antiseptic, astringent, bactericidal, carminative, deodorant, insecticidal, sedative, nervine and a tonic; in aromatherapy, lemongrass oil is used to treat acne, to repel insects such as fleas, lice, ticks and mosquitoes, to relieve muscle pain, indigestion, fever, disease, headaches, stress and nervous exhaustion.”

Read more at Suite101: Lemongrass Essential Oil: The Properties and Uses of Lemongrass Oil in Aromatherapy http://aromatherapy.suite101.com/article.cfm/lemongrass_essential_oil#ixzz0fEJAqYes

We are going to ask all Bettina homes which offer bed & breakfast to use olive oil and either lemon juice or lemongrass essential oil to clean their furniture in the future. We can’t see anyone objecting. The benefits are – less money spent on furniture polishers; no need for rubber gloves to clean your furniture; does not compromise your health; nice fresh, clean smell; beautiful furniture and possibly an insecticide side-affect; AND its benefits to the environment are immense.

Afterthoughts: The 0000 steel wool for the initial cleaning was our idea and it is not something that is a necessary part of cleaning the furniture. We are the only ones who used the 0000 steel wool, everyone else rubbed the olive oil and lemon juice combination onto their furniture with a soft cloth and rubbed the furniture until it was clean. They also wiped off the olive oil and lemon juice combination and followed that with rubbing plain olive oil into their furniture as a second step. Everyone let the oil dry overnight for an added benefit instead of wiping off the excess oil immediately and went over the furniture the next morning with a soft dry cloth. We all also found that the oil was gone from the furniture the next morning and the hard, dry shine was in place.

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Fresh, Healthy-Looking Eyes

February 10th, 2010

A tip from a guest – sent via mail to the Bettina Network, inc.

Thanks for Bettina’s Blog. I enjoy reading it and followed your suggestion of saving it for Sunday morning. It is more fun than the newspapers I read on Sundays and informative in ways no one else tells us. My experience at breakfast in the Bettina Home where I stayed was fascinating. I learned an enormous amount and was very impressed with the intellectual level of your guests.

My tip doesn’t begin to meet those lofty levels, but it was astounding to me and I would like to pass it along to others.

I read your post about keeping your skin beautiful with vitamins A, E and organic powdered milk and have been using it religiously. It has done wonders for my wrinkled skin, which is smoothing out and has taken on a fantastic sheen. My husband tells me I have taken on a “glow.”

I’ve taken your post one step further to increase the good results I get. When I rinse my face with water from my cupped hands the ten splashes you suggest, I don’t dry around the eyes. I dry the rest of my face because I don’t like the feeling of water dripping off my face as I wait for the water to dry, but not wiping around the eyes has done wonders for me. The skin around my eyes was puffy and wrinkly. For several months now I have not touched around the eyes, only did the ten times water splashes to my face without drying my eyes and I can’t believe the difference. Imagine dewey eyes at my age.

A nurse I know said it happens because whenever you dry around your eyes you are compressing the veins and the thin skin and that is what’s happening. Don’t know if that’s true or not and don’t know if I am remembering exactly what she said, but it was something like that.

I really don’t care why, I care about the results from the ten splashes and not wiping the eye area – I look well rested. I send this tip to you in exchange for your tip about what clipping the vitamins has done for the rest of my face.

ed:Note – the Blog to which the reader refers is “Bettina’s Premier Beauty Secret” published in March, 2008

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Your Credit Card and their ‘Rewards"

February 2nd, 2010

Let’s take a look at those Credit Card “Rewards” offered by just about every bank. This came from several breakfast conversations. We put it all together and voila – for your information!

Who pays for those rewards? Are they really ‘gifts’ from the banks and credit card companies as payment for your loyalty to them or are they profit centers generating more money transferred from John and Mary Q. Public to the banks without John & Mary realizing the game plan?

Those rewards do not come from either the Credit Card companies or their underlying banks. They come from you, the consumer using those credit cards. You pay for the rewards you think are ‘free’ and you pay a substantial amount of money for those ‘gifts.’

How? When you make a purchase via a merchant with your credit card, the credit card company takes a percentage of your charge from the merchant; and takes a monthly fee; a rental fee for the equipment the merchant uses; money for telephone calls the machine makes from the merchant to the processing company to approve and record your charges; PLUS – an extra amount for whatever credit card ‘program’ your card indicates. So, the merchant is left with a fairly heavy discount taken by the credit card companies. The ‘reward’ program discounts can be pretty substantial as an addition on top of everything else.

I am sure by now you get the picture. The merchant can not absorb those discounts and stay in business so they are passed along – TO YOU!

Merchants have contracts with their credit card processing companies – just as you have a contract with your credit card company. Those contracts are changed on a basis about as regular as your contract is changed. The only ‘consent’ the merchants can give to those changes is to either agree and go along or stop accepting credit cards from their consumers and we all know what that would do to that merchants’ business. So the merchant is pretty well locked into allowing the discount percentages for the rewards to be taken from the money they receive from the credit card processing companies. Those discounts are taken and sent to the credit card banks whether you use your ‘rewards’ points or they just disappear!

Some quick calculations will point you in the direction of the ‘rewards’ system being a profit center for the credit card companies instead of ‘gifts’ to consumers.

The rewards discount is taken from each and every credit card purchase by the credit card processing companies – whether the reward is used or not and each bank has a way of limiting the amount of rewards actually used. There are rules as to when you can use your rewards and when you get stripped of them. The merchant does not receive a credit if your rewards are stripped from you, that goes to the bank’s bottom line profit.

We believe some of the ‘reward’ offers are downright fraudulent. Take for example when you start with a credit card company and they offer special promotions giving you ‘double points’ sometimes ‘triple points’ for buying stuff using their credit card. After a time, those same special promotions are offered to all credit card holders. What has happened? The ‘rewards’ which previously took 100 points to get – now take 200 points or in the case of the triple point offers – 300 points. The number of points it takes to ‘buy’ the same reward has increased two or three times. That was most noticeable when the points it took for airline tickets doubled – particularly with American Express.

On settlement day with the merchant, there are various amounts showing on the merchants statement from their credit card processor.

For example: One merchant – selling widgets – pays the credit card processor 2.99% for allowing that merchant to accept credit cards. The discount percentage varies from one merchant to another or in the case of American Express, from one industry to another.

In addition to that 2.99%, that merchant pays a monthly fee for using the service. In addition, the merchant pays for telephone calls, at so much per call, (haven’t they heard of Skype) generated to put the charge through from the merchant to the processor, in addition, the merchant pays either a rental or purchase fee for the equipment used – some as high as $80/month for a small company (our research shows that is Bank of America) and on up.

And then comes the ‘reward’ discount. The merchant is charged an extra amount, on top of all of the above discounts, depending upon which card was accepted with which program in effect. It is a place where banks can nickel and dime a merchant into capitalisms graveyard without the merchants being aware they are terminally ill because the amounts on an individual charge seem to be so little. Very few merchants are good at that kind of math – and even more don’t believe they are being robbed so blatantly.

When you add up the money across the entire credit card industry it is an overwhelmingly large amount. Then – do the math – subtract from that the amount not used by credit card holders who die with points on their credit cards; credit card holders who are stripped of their points because they had late payments; credit card holders who are stripped of their points for innumerable other reasons; credit card holders who don’t ever get enough points to use them, etc. etc. etc.

When added up, one realizes that much money is being made here and where is it going? Into the banks’ pockets and then into the preferred bankers’ pockets individually through those obscene bonuses! How is it being reported? Is there a stripped out set of numbers which accurately reports the profit banks are making from their credit card ‘rewards’ program and how much the general public is paying for ‘gifts’ that they think are free to them as a bonus for their loyalty to their credit card? That is the area where all are notoriously silent.

Don’t speak of it until we find another service with which to replace this rewards boon-doggle and then it can be trashed out of existence, while we quietly move along taking even more money from John and Mary Q Public.

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Elegant S’mores for Breakfast!

January 31st, 2010

It is a little decadent to have dessert for breakfast, but we rationalize it by advising you to go for a long walk after breakfast to use up all that extra food energy.

You will need:

Organic Graham Crackers
Bettina’s Marshmaples (recipe under ‘Bettina’s Cookbook’)
Bettina’s chocolate sauce

Bettina’s Chocolate Sauce
Make this sauce immediately before serving because it becomes less liquid and more solid the longer it sits and cools. A cooled sauce will not pour over the Marshmaples.

To make the sauce you will need:
organic semi-sweet chocolate chips (the amount depends upon the number of s’mores you’re making.)
organic heavy cream – enough to cover the organic chocolate chips.

Melt the chocolate chips in the top of a double boiler
pour in the heavy cream, once the chips have melted and stir.
If you would like to add flavor, organic oils in vanilla, almond, etc. will do nicely

Once the sauce is ready, use a very beautiful dessert plate (A saucer larger than a cup saucer)
Put an organic graham cracker on the saucer
Cut the Bettina Marshmaples to fit the graham cracker – with a scissors, dull knife, etc.
pour the chocolate sauce over the Marshmaples so it drips down the sides
Serve to lots of ooohs and aaahs and exclamations of joy!

These are best assembled and served one at a time so you can spoon Bettina’s Chocolate Sauce from the pot while it is still over the double boiler!

We keep a glass dish of Marshmaples in the refrigerator because there are so many things you can do with them. We keep them in one piece and only cut as we need Bettina’s Marshmaples for different dishes – or as someone would like one to go with their ginger or tulsi tea – or even at night with hot chocolate!

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Cayenne Pepper Stories

January 30th, 2010

Stories about Cayenne Pepper and what it does for you have been floating around the breakfast table at a couple Bettina homes for several years.

The first time we heard about cayenne pepper – other than as a spice in your food – was from a Canadian Guest, in town to run a 26 mile Marathon. He was a serious runner who trained extensively. Before leaving for that particular Marathon, he asked his host family for cayenne pepper. They obliged and guests watched as he put liberal amounts of cayenne pepper in the inside of his running shoes. Of course, that generated much conversation. Before leaving to run the Marathon he had to answer many questions – how long had he done this; what affect did it have; how did he find out about cayenne pepper, etc.

At the end of the day, the only person who came back still walking and in pretty good shape was the Marathon runner who, that morning, liberally sprinkled cayenne pepper in his shoes.

We tried it for a couple months and it works. We don’t run or train for the Marathon, but we do shop and shop and shop. Before leaving home we always sprinkle cayenne pepper in our shoes and it works amazingly well. What was once a tiring time has become a time which puts a spring in our step. We don’t know what happens or why, but we do know sprinkling cayenne pepper in the bottom of our shoes seems to drop years and gives us much more energy to do our chores.

But for bed & breakfast, we would still be walking on tired legs and feet.

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A Change to Bettina’s Coconut Cake

January 27th, 2010

I made the Coconut Cake and it was just as great as I had hoped it would be. I did a few things a little different and wanted to share that with you.

For the icing, I used whole eggs instead of just the egg whites. I hate to waste and I knew I woulnd’t be up to making Bettina’s Chocolate Pudding or anything else after I finished this cake. I put four whole (organic free range) eggs in the mixer. I bought the Cuisinart stand mixer when you wrote that blog on your thoughts about mixers. I let the mixer beat for about 15 minutes. That is how long it took for the eggs to become fluffy the way I wanted them to.

In the meantime, I put the sugar and water on to boil. I used 1 1/2 cups sugar and 1 1/2 cups water instead of the 1 cup sugar and 1 cup water in your recipe because I wanted lots of icing.

When the water and sugar reached the 240 degree stage I started to pour it, very slowly, into the eggs while letting the mixer keep going.

When I finished that, I started to put into the mixer the butter. I cut the butter into small pats and threw each pat into the mixer letting it mix for a few seconds. Altogether I used three sticks of butter.

I also put in about 1/3 cup organic virgin coconut oil – which was hardened since that is its natural state. I got the idea to do that from your suggestion of using coconut milk in the cake. If you use coconut milk in the cake, why not coconut oil in the icing. It is the consistency of butter, whips up into a very light confection like butter and sure enough, it worked.

I let the mixer beat the icing until it turned into a light buttery like creation. At the end, before stopping the mixer I put in the vanilla oil you suggested in another recipe – the organic oil, you remember? That was the ultimate.

I did not put shredded coconut on my cake, I put the icing on as it was. The coconut milk and oil carried the day and gave the taste so I didn’t need the shredded stuff.

It was unbelievably good. Thanks for the recipe. In case you don’t remember me, I am the one who asked for the recipe and I appreciate your putting it on the blog.

Enjoy this change – it is nice to have more than one way to do something.

A loyal guest!
Thanks for not using my name. We are all paranoid these days.

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Response to Disaster in Haiti

January 26th, 2010

One response the Bettina Network, inc. made to the disaster in Haiti was to respond to a request from a bed & breakfast guest and now a friend, to give a one night stay at a Bettina home in Harvard Square for the silent auction being held by the town of Weston, VT.

We were delighted to respond and grateful that we were included and able to do a little more to help those in such shock and pain.

The event was held this past Saturday (January 23, 2010) and was, by all accounts, a very successful undertaking. Kudos to the town of Weston, Vermont for being involved and for moving so quickly to help address such an enormous need! Proceeds from the auction were sent to Partners in Health to further their work in Haiti.

What made it special to us were the number of people who gave a part of their work and talent: one woman gave cookies – to be baked at a time requested by the successful bidder. She had samples of the cookies at the event to encourage bids. Another gave her special carrot cake, also to be baked at a time requested by the successful bidder – and she also had samples. And there were more.

It is wonderful to give money – that is what’s needed in the end – but to also involve yourself and give something which takes time out from busy lives is indeed special. It insures that you will think of the Haitians undergoing such trauma, after the fund-raising event and will put your hopes and wishes for them into whatever it is you have made.

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Ginger Pralines

January 24th, 2010

Pralines generate memories that takes me back to a really great childhood. I shall always be grateful to those who sacrificed so much for me.

A neighbor and I (Troy Lynn), used to get in my grandmother’s kitchen and experiment with pralines. Troy Lynn took her pralines home and ate them. I sold mine. My entrepreneurial spirit started early. I ran that enterprise the way some corporations are run today – which is probably why I understand those corporations.

My grandmother supplied the ingredients for the pralines, which was great, but I stuck my mouth out when she suggested I pay for the sugar out of my earnings. I was crushed. “Why do you want me to pay for sugar. You have lots of it in the cupboard.” She tried to tell me about making sure you were making a profit. You also had to count your time in the equation so you would know if it was profitable or not. I was truly appalled at that point. If I did all of that I wouldn’t make a profit and it wouldn’t be worth making the pralines. “That’s the point of doing the math,” my grandmother said. My mouth continued to be stuck out and when she insisted, it started to quiver and she knew tears were next so she just gave up and I had a very successful business.

Thinking of those years and my grandmother and having been on the telephone with Troy Lynn talking about this venture, I decided to make pralines, just to connect to those times and those feelings and my grandmother.

She would have been amazed at the results of my efforts. I am in awe at what I have created. The pralines were sensational. I feel a little sick because I’ve eaten so many and goodness knows what the sugar is going to do to my aging body.

Those pralines brought so many memories rushing back I was crying by the time I finished making them. But, they were not a pure New Orleans creation. They connected Old New Orleans to the East. With these pralines I have managed to make cultural connections with New Orleans, Asia and India.

Ginger tea has become a staple in our kitchen. We always have a glass jar filled with Ginger Tea that we make, at least once a week. (ed.note – see Bettina’s Blog for the recipe). We use it either as ‘sweet tea’ or regular tea – and it has a very strong kick.

This time, by Providence, the tea jar was empty and in the bottom were the slices of ginger root which we let steep to keep the ginger tea strong. That was the genesis of these fantastic pralines.

I used the ginger root slices in the pralines the way one would use pecans. I also used a little freshly ground nutmeg in some and cumin in others with the ginger root. The pralines were vaguely reminiscent of New Orleans pralines, but with a newness that made them a sensation. Pralines, for some, are the very essence of Creole New Orleans. The only food with a stronger connection to Creole New Orleans would be hot callas, but then that’s another blog.

New Orleans today has a very large influx of Asians that call it home. These Ginger Pralines are a cultural amalgam which reflects today’s reality of the city New Orleans has become.

We had just one guest in the house while I was making these pralines. She came into the kitchen while the pralines were cooling on the marble slab and between us we ate all except two of the pralines. Two seemed to be a decent amount to keep to see how they would taste when they were thoroughly cooled. She went to bed and after a respectable time, Robert and I split the last two pralines. They were even better cooled so I made more for tomorrow. They are now downstairs cooling. Maybe they will make it into tomorrow and maybe they won’t. I haven’t been up this late for months – my 7pm bedtime has been shot – my children would be proud!

Pralines aux Ginger – a very recherche dessert
(to be served on heavily gold encrusted dessert plates and eaten with your fingers)

Organic Turbinado Sugar how much you use depends upon how many pralines you want to produce.
for a first timer – two cups should suffice so if you ruin the pralines you can try again without knashing your teeth over your loss of ingredients.
for the experienced candy maker who wants a good number of pralines – one pound

Sliced Organic Ginger Root which has been boiled in a large pot of water for several hours to make tea. The Ginger Root you use for these pralines are what’s left over after the ginger tea is gone.

Water – freshly ground Nutmeg – Cumin

1. Put the sugar in a PORCELAIN POT.

2. Add water to moisten and cover the sugar. Don’t mix the two together. Pour the water over the sugar being careful not to let it splash, etc.

3. Bring the water and sugar to a boil to make a, sort of, simple syrup, but not that liquid.

4. When this mixture reaches about 200 degrees, add the ginger root and let it boil until the mixture begins to bubble and has almost, but not quite, turned to sugar. Stir constantly without stopping.

5. Quickly add any spices you want to incorporate into these pralines – ground nutmeg, cumin, whatever. Given the fact that you are using Ginger Root – even Root that has been previously boiled for several hours, I would not add anything with heat. These will have plenty heat on their own.

6. Take the pot off the fire and drop by the spoonfuls onto a buttered marble slab so you form what looks like small pancakes. Spread these with the spoon and round them with a fork until they form neat, round cakes – the size and thickness depends upon you. I like them about 1/4 inch thick and about 4-5″ in diameter.

Let them dry. Pick them up with a knife or spatula, very gently. You will have the memory of a New Orleans Creole Praline changed into an East meets West confection. Someone have a name for this?

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Fresh, Healthy-Looking Eyes

Your Credit Card and their ‘Rewards"

Elegant S’mores for Breakfast!

Cayenne Pepper Stories

A Change to Bettina’s Coconut Cake

Response to Disaster in Haiti

Ginger Pralines

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