Lemon Mystery Cake

My mother spent the last year putting together a new Family Cookbook for all of us.  It's kind of a family thing we do every 10 years or so.  My extended family is flowered with many wonderful cooks, and having a book of everyones' favorite recipes is a true treasure.

Anyway, I have begun to cook from it, and I thought those of you in the larger interweb world might like to try a recipe or two or three from it once in a while.
Here is one that I tried last night.  It's my mom's Mystery Lemon Cake.  This "cake" is indeed very mysterious.  First of all, I have no idea where my mother got this recipe (maybe she can chime in and solve that mystery)...  secondly, the way that this "cake" actually becomes a cake is completely mysterious to me.  You make this soupy lemon egg mixture, with very little flour, and fold in some egg whites, and somehow, through the chemistry and magic of baking, this dessert comes out of the oven that has cake on top and pudding on the bottom.  Very mysterious.  Even yet more mysterious is how easy this thing actually is to make, and yet it still turns out very very awesomely good (and impressive, I might add!)
Mystery abounds!


Here is a very mysterious song to get you in the mood for cooking this mysterious pudding-cake.   

Lemon Mystery Cake

1/4 cup flour 

1/4 tsp salt 

1/4 cup lemon juice 

1 cup milk 

1 cup sugar 

1 Tb grated lemon zest 

2 egg yolks 

2 stiffly beaten egg whites 

Preheat oven to 350.  

Blend flour, sugar, and salt.  Stir in zest, juice, egg yolks, and milk.  

Fold in egg whites.  

Pour into 1 qt. baking dish or 6 custard cups, and set in a pan of hot water (1" deep).  -- this step is very important, as this thing cooks like a custard.  

Bake 40-50 minutes (until golden brown on top).  

It should be cake on the top with lemon custard on the bottom.  

YUM.  

Dollhouse

For Christmas, Tyler made Violet a dollhouse.  It is wooden and quite beautiful in its simplicity; 3 floors, a roof, and just enough walls to give the impression of house without too many corners and details to get in the way of little hands.
But, let me begin again---
Have you heard of this store The Land of Nod?  They have lovely toys.  Too lovely for our price range, normally.  But man is their stuff nice.  Flashing lights and plastic is edited out of most of their things;
an indie-yuppie mom could go bananas in that store.
Well, anyway, we had been thinking of a dollhouse type thing for Violet for a while, and of course I found the most perfect one at Land of Nod with the most perfect little wooden dolls and wooden dollhouse furniture.  But the price of the house was just a little too high....
So, somewhere in between dissertation writing, teaching, preschooling, etc.....  my crafty and coffee-fueled husband was able to find a moment or two to recreate this gorgeous little house for our daughter.... and then the grandparents organized buying various pieces of furniture and dolls so that the little dolly home could be complete.

In the past week, Violet's little dollhouse has had many visitors; a barrage of tiny rubber cats, little people, and lego safari animals can often be found occupying the main living area.  She has a little Dora The Explorer doll who seems to have become the live-in waitress, serving tea to everyone night and noon.  The daddy doll is almost always on the toilet, and the mommy (I am happy to say) is often sleeping in the top of the bunk bed, under a crisp pink blanket.

Usually Ernie and Burt can be found in the bath tub, and poor Violet is constantly having to switch all of the furniture around daily to make room for a party or, of course, a parade coming through.  The little boy doll came with a back pack, and so he is usually going off to India or Paris, and the refrigerator is stocked full of dried split peas.

Photos--

  

Welcome January

Heading steady through the first week of 2012.
Woke up this morning to a bit of a head cold, and a  beautiful urban sunrise. Ok, January, I see you.

To give credit where it's due, no month feels quite like this one; with such a distinguishable personality; cool, quiet, clear-- reflective-- after the indulgence of December.

 

California Christmas

Back in Seattle from a most wonderful California Christmas.  I was severely lazy with the camera this trip, but let me tell you, Tyler and Violet and I have had one party after another for the past couple of weeks--
a tamale-making party, a Hanukkah dinner, a Swedish Smorgasbord, a pea-soup party, an enormously full Christmas day with my four brothers and their multitude of kids, two Chico parties with friends and family, a party for the Cal bowl game, late night drinks with friends, two separate birthday parties, and a few more festivities thrown in between the cracks....


So much overwhelming love from family and friends who we miss every single day.  We even got to meet some new fabulous friends-- Lark's Michael, and Emilia's Louie.  Our roots hold strong and deep in the Bay.  A dose of Berkeley, backed with the love from over 50 family members is like eating a cup of stew, or swallowing some earthy tea-- very rejuvenating-- just what we need to face January, February, March-- gray and dark and chilly and quiet in Seattle.

Here is something fun--

...All the Who girls and boys

Would wake up bright and early.  They'd rush for their toys! 

And then!  Oh, the noise!  Oh, the noise!  Noise! Noise! Noise!  

Thank you so much to everyone for making our Christmas so special-- Mom, Dad, Michael 1, Mary, Kenneth, Joseph, Daisy, Luke, Rose, John, David, April, Laura, Michael 2, Jessica, Pete, Jen, Vicki, Tim, Sammy, Kavita, Samir, Sanjay, Auntie Jean, Uncle Bob, Ruthie, Fred, Jenny, Kevin, Greta, Vera, Elizabeth, Linnea, Richard, Lark, Michael 3, Emilia, Louis, Jeremy, Erin, Andy, Lucenna, Pamela, Roy, Patty, Dick, Alison, Takashi, Airi, Diana, Alan, Sen, Elena, Hilary, Joey, Monroe, Carol, Andrea, Jason, Annalise, Vivian, Henry, Ben, Julie, Marshal, Brian, Chris, Dan, Aunt Mary, Uncle John, Ryan, Ariel, Steven, Nicole, and the list goes on.... 

Insomnia

Another great poem by B. Collins.  Appropriate following a night filled with a two-and-a-half hour 3AM.


Insomnia


Even though the house is deeply silent

and the room, with no moon,
is perfectly dark,
even though the body is a sack of exhaustion
inert on the bed,

someone inside me will not
get off his tricycle,
will not stop tracing the same tight circle
on the same green threadbare carpet.

It makes no difference whether I lie
staring at the ceiling
or pace the living-room floor,
he keeps on making his furious rounds,
little pedaler in his frenzy,
my own worst enemy, my oldest friend.

What is there to do but close my eyes
and watch him circling the night,
schoolboy in an ill-fitting jacket,
leaning forward, his cap on backwards,
wringing the handlebars,
maintaining a certain speed?

Does anything exist at this hour
in this nest of dark rooms
but the spectacle of him
and the hope that before dawn
I can lift out some curious detail
that will carry me off to sleep—
the watch that encircles his pale wrist,
the expandable band,
the tiny hands that keep pointing this way and that.

picking a tree

There is something very adult about buying a Christmas tree for your family. -- deciding how much you are willing to pay; having to tell the man at the lot that yes, the noble firs are indeed lovely, but we just can't spend $50 on a tree, and could we please see the one advertised for $14....  

So, you'd like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree?  the guy says, a bit disappointed in us, and points over to a small pallet of about 4 humble trees.  

Absolutely we do!  

My Christmas childhood memories are pretty potent, and I honestly don't remember our trees being anything less than perfect, although looking back now, I would bet everything I own that my lovely wonderful [frugal] father and mother also refused to shell out a small fortune for our tree each year.  Often times my family was super clever, and bought a live tree in a pot, and we just used that for a few years, hauling it in from the yard, until it finally got too big to haul.   

But it was always perfect, even if not perfectly Christmas tree shaped.  

I do remember my dad lopping off one or two extra zealous branches that had grown from the year before, and those, I think, my mom usually ended up using as decoration on the mantle around the Swedish horses and Christmas goats.  

So, we got the $14 tree this year, and guess what.....  it's lovely!  Violet thinks it's the most amazing thing she has ever seen; and really it is perfect, and has been so much fun.  It is a Douglas Fir, which apparently is the poor man's Christmas tree and a lesser form of foliage than the noble grand blue whatevers that will run you a pretty penny.  Christmas snobbery is not a welcome guest at our table.

Tree topper, chosen by Violet O. 

  

Haircut

Before the haircut.... 

I think I forgot to write about the haircut.
Well, a couple of weeks ago I decided that it was high time Violet had a real haircut.  I've been trimming her hair up until this point, and it's been ok.  But her hair has started to confuse me a bit.  I'm not sure how to explain it---  it's as if all the hair on her head grows from one dot way on the back of her crown, and it all grows forward.  In other words, the girl has no natural part.
So I took her to this place just for kids, "Li'l Klippers"--   the name makes me gag a bit, but really they were very good.  Violet got to sit in this chair shaped like a speed boat, and rummage through a bin of random disney toys the whole time.  In our typical way, both she and I were very serious and nervous throughout the whole experience, but afterwards we couldn't stop talking about it, and we were very proud of ourselves for having gone through with it.  And neither one of us cried, which is always a good thing!
Here are some photos, and post-haircut interview.

Ta-Da! 

Pleased as pie, after the haircut!