Cookstory: January 20, 2013. Stickin' it to the Blender.

Afternoon

Grilled Ham and Cheese and Grilled Turkey Sandwiches.
The big news in our house: Susannah has discovered peanut butter and jelly sandwiches! Even better: she makes them all by herself! I can't tell you how exciting both of these developments are. (The kid whose monogram is "PBJ," however, still will not eat PB&J.)


Evening

Cider and English Cheddar Soup.
Another recipe from that soup collection that appeared in the recent American Lifestyle magazine, this was a terrific tasting soup. But I made one key mistake in the making of it that completely ruined the texture. The recipe indicates that, working in batches, I should purée the soup in a blender. "Blender ... pshaw!" I thought. "I have a stick blender that is not used nearly enough. Time to give a good workout!"

Either I didn't give the stick blender enough of a workout, or the tool is simply not able to do the intended job. It did not entirely purée the onion, celery and potato, with a result that every bite had tiny vegetable bits in it. Again, didn't affect the taste; just the texture.

This was an excellent lesson in "mouth feel," something that I wouldn't have even bothered paying attention to not long ago. Time to start thinking about the entire food experience! The next time I make this, I will definitely go for the more thorough work of our sturdy blender and hopefully get rid of the "grit."


Penne Rigate with Tomato Sauce and Ricotta.
I probably could have given Piper and Susannah the soup as well, but I wanted to give them something I knew they'd eat, and I wanted something that paired better with the garlic bread, which I'd already decided I was making.


Garlic Bread.
After I made this recently, Piper announced that she wanted to learn how to make it. It turned out not to be the perfect recipe for her: it required her cutting the loaf of Italian bread lengthwise using my new favorite weapon, the 12-inch bread knife I got for Christmas. Piper's conduct around the knives in our kitchen goes beyond respect and well into the venue of fear. Perhaps this is because the family remembers all too well a trip to the emergency room with a small sliver of my left ring finger in a baggie. (A story for another time!) So even though the bread knife (despite its size) is a relatively safe knife to use, I really had to coax her through the slicing.

In addition, the recipe requires roasted garlic cloves to be mashed with a fork with a few other ingredients to create the delicious paste spread liberally over the bread. Sadly, Piper got her "arm strength genes" from her dad, which is to say she has none. Even when we moved the bowl of garlic cloves to a lower surface so that she could get some leverage, she was unable to mash them effectively. I had to step in.

Ironically, after all the excitement about having the garlic bread again, and after she actually *made* it (isn't it supposed to taste better when you make it?), she didn't even touch the bread I put on her plate! Children's palates can be confounding.