Category: cville

Guest Shots.

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One of the badges the girls in my Girl Scout troop said they wanted to earn this year was the Digital Photography badge.  We got to it this past week with some help from the lovely photographers behind Beyond The Flavor, Sarah and Andrea.   After a brief introduction by our guests in which they shared some of their photos and gave the girls some tips on photography, the girls spent the rest of the meeting taking pictures.  They warmed up with a few shots of our surroundings – which happens to be the library at their school as well as the adjacent science lab.
The girls were encouraged to not use their zoom function, but to get as close to their subject as possible.  As a result, there were a number of ear shots.  
 

It would appear that headbands & ponytails with pearl earrings is a common look among my girls. Something I hadn’t noticed before.

They didn’t limit themselves to ears though.

Another tip Sarah & Andrea gave the girls was to try different angles and perspectives.

Which they clearly embraced.

 
 
After warming up, the girls were given the first of a few assignments.  These are some of their texture shots.
Their next exercise was a portrait of someone.
 
The girls were encouraged to try for some candid shots.
Then came the self  portraits. 
Lastly, the girls were to snap three pictures that told a story.  Lauren & Alayna teamed up for a fabulous Goldilocks and the Three Bears narrative that used Alayna’s flair for drama but I don’t have those photos. You’ll just have to take my word on the awesomeness of it.  What I do have however, is this photo of a Pokemon character that lives in the library and has become our unofficial mascot this year.
I had every intention of capturing the ‘behind the scenes’ of our meeting, but as one of the girls had a snafu with her camera, I handed her mine, which she figured out how to use in about the time it took me to hand it to her.  Kids seem to have no fear in picking up things like cameras and iphones and immediately figuring them out, while us grown ups take forever to get the hang of them.  Or maybe that’s just me. Anyway, only the first two shots in this post were taken by me, the rest by various members of my girl scout troop.  I love their creativity, don’t you?  The self portraits just slay me.  I watched Hannah set hers up with her violin.  So stinking cute.
Thank you again Sarah & Andrea for taking time out of your busy schedules to share some of your knowledge with my girls.  And thanks to the parents of the girls in my troop for sharing your girls and their photos with us. I love seeing the world through their eyes.

On Chocolate Caramels.

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I was recently asked if I wanted to try some Gearhart’s Chocolates, specifically a Dark Chocolate Caramel. Of all chocolates, Chocolate Caramels are my hands down favorite.  I will go through a box of assorted chocolates and poke the bottoms of every last candy until I find the elusive chocolate caramel one and when you discover that someone went through and poked a hole in the bottom of every last candy in the box, I will lie to your face that it was me.  So how delightful to not only be spared the work of poking out every bottom, there were no mystery nougats to be endured. Phew. 
Enough about me.  Let’s talk Chocolate Caramels.  Here’s the description I was sent of the chocolates:

Gearharts was approached by several of the local wineries around Charlottesville and asked to create a chocolate that would pair well with red wine. The result was the Dark Chocolate Caramel. Using Gearhart‘s Signature Caramel (with cocoa added to the actual caramel), this chocolate also contains a hint of balsamic vinegar and cracked black pepper, is coated in extra bittersweet dark chocolate and finished with Maldon smoked sea salt flakes.

I’d be curious to see what some of the wine pairings are, because none came with the chocolates, nor could I find them on Gearhart’s website.   Not all red wines go well with chocolate – my eloquent friend Megan wrote a wonderful piece last Valentine’s Day for The C-ville Weekly on pairing wine & chocolates in which she explains why that lovely Malbec I had did not pair well with these chocolates. I knew that was going to be the case, but I went ahead and tried it anyway.  Not very good.  A better match would probably have been a Norton (I highly recommend Horton Winery’s Norton) or any of the other wines she mentioned in her piece but as I don’t make it a habit to keep dessert wines on hand, I can’t talk to you about how the wine paired with the chocolates.
I can however, tell you about these caramels. The dark chocolate and caramel were superb. As for the black pepper,  it was only noticeable when nibbling on the salted corner – which is sort of interesting – you don’t think that one flavor, salt, would pull another flavor,  black pepper, through so much, but it did here.  The touch of balsamic vinegar came through on the finish, providing a nice counterpoint to the sweetness of the caramel that lingered on the palate.
The kind folks over at Gearhart’s also included an 8 piece sampler of their other chocolates with the dark chocolate caramels.
The sampler came with a small brochure that lists all their fine chocolates and includes color pictures, so there’s no need to stab the bottom with your fingernail to see what flavor you are holding.  It’s a nice touch if you are inclined to sharing or if you’re like me, only share what you aren’t entirely wild about.  Which doesn’t apply when it comes to Gearhart’s.  I just like certain ones (The Earl Gray, the Taj and now the Dark Chocolate Caramel) better than others.

I got a real name tag.

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Over the years, I have acquired a small collection of various name tags from different events I’ve attended.  By various, I mean, the names are various.  You see, I don’t always let a proper invite keep me from a party and some of the events I’ve attended over the years have had everyone’s name tags printed and laid out ahead of time, not allowing you to walk up to the door and get in if you haven’t made plans in advance. Which means if you are spontaneous like myself, you find yourself picking out a name and going with it.  Only once have I ever had anyone actually question the fact that I was not who my nametag said I was, because they knew the real ‘me’ and I was 20 years younger, several inches taller, noticeably thinner and a completely different race than the other version they knew that went with that name.  I found that telling the gentleman I was undercover for a very important investigation and that I would appreciate his cooperation, as it may or may not have to do with national security, I was not free to divulge anything further than that, in fact I may have said too much, helped quiet him.

In crashing parties, one must act with complete confidence and authority. 

Last Thursday evening was the holiday party for the local weekly that I’ve done some projects for this past year. Despite the fact that I’d been up & down all week with the upper respiratory bug going around town, I felt we should go and make an appearance.  Besides, I was feeling better that day, surely I was on the mend. (When they say that bug is a 10 day to 2 week bug, they aren’t joking, btw.  I was most definitely not on the mend, but that’s a completely different tale.)

As we walked in, there was a table with a guest list at which you were supposed to check in.  There was also a small collection of name tags which were clearly for people who are affiliated with the publication throwing the party.  Among the name tags was one for me, with my real name on it.   Even better was a title – “Green Expert”, a nod to the fact that I wrote (and partially photographed) their Green Homes and Living special edition this past fall, although in no way do I consider myself an ‘expert’ in being ‘green’.  Honestly, of the 18 pieces in that, 8 of them are some of sort of interest or project of ours around the house.  All I really did was write about us and just tried to make it not sound as personal as I do in this space.

I’ve had a good bit of encouragement lately from friends and family telling me I should just write a book already.  On what I ask and they all say, on just being me.  From what I’ve gathered, one should have a certain niche, a focus if they are going to pitch anything that’s going to be published.  If this blog is any indication, I’m all over the place – baking one day, canning the next with mentions of knitting fail, dinner fail and girl scout troop craft fail.  I’m more of a B+ personality than I am a type A.  I’m the underachiever of the overachievers, the overachiever of the slackers, not excelling at any one thing, but rather, doing a few things pretty okay.  Sometimes making everything perfect, staying on top of every little detail is just way too much energy that could be better used doing something else, like having a glass of wine with a friend or better yet, curled up with a book.  How does one go about putting that into a proposal for anything published? 

Not quite eighteen months ago, I was laid off and pretty quickly decided that I was going to just figure out a way to make a living out of being me.  Since making that decision, I’ve been much happier with my every day life, although cash flow can be a bitch.  I’ve made some things happen, I’ve had some things land in my lap.  It seems that in casting a wide net, I’ve caught a number of things that I’m pretty okay at – writing, teaching, cooking at the top of that list. 

When I started this post, I had every intention of talking about the party last week, how I danced with the guy dressed like a Christmas tree, because really, when there’s a guy dressed like a Christmas tree, you need to do something with him, right? Instead I had this moment where I realized that there was some link between the fact that I have a collection of fake name tags to the fact that I had a real name tag with a title that I found amusing to the fact that I am still very much trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.  That this idea I keep hearing from people as something I should do – write a book – somehow needs to come to life.  And somewhere, in that link, is the theme.

Making Mincemeat.

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During some conversation with my friend Leni at some point either this past fall or summer, the topic of mincemeat came up.  Leni having recently retired this past year as the African-American Historian at Monticello,  I knew that our exercise in mincemeat was going to entail historically accurate recipes, at least one of which would probably be from Mary Randolph’s  The Virginia Housewife cookbook.  First published in 1824, it’s considered one of the first American Southern cookbooks and a fairly decent record of how food at Monticello was probably prepared. The conversation had sprung out of discussions of what she was going to do with the all the various parts of the pigs she was then raising.  I was slightly curious to get a pig’s foot or two to try (what else) pickling them while she was more interested in boiling them down and making mincemeat out of them.
 
Yesterday was mincemeat making day.  It seems the Mary Randolph version calls for venison, which Jackson supplied, as well as some bear, which was used to make an 1839 Kentucky Housewife by Lettice Bryan version of mincemeat.  
 
One of the things I like about heading out to gatherings at Leni’s is that you never know who you’re going to meet there.  A few years ago, I’d heard of Jackson’s classes in which students learned to hunt, dress and cook their catch.  I loved the idea of it, would love to actually take it one day, only it seems (to me) that hunting requires patience (that whole sit in the woods thing – I cannot possibly sit still that long) one of those things I’m convinced is an over-rated virtue, mainly because I lack it.  Ideally, I’d rather skip to the butchering and cooking part, getting someone else to do the hunting for me.  
The meat Jackson brought technically was roadkill – the car in front of him hit the deer and I missed part of the story on the bear, catching only the tail end of the tale where he actually completed the killing of the bear. So it wasn’t like either animal was sitting by the side of the road for who knows how long.  I share this because I really just like bragging that I’ve eaten roadkill.  (Although as I typed that, I realized it’s not the first time I’ve had roadkill.  Hey, it’s free, grass fed, organic meat.)
In addition to Jackson, there was his girlfriend Helenah, Jenny, Jessica, two of Leni’s sons, her granddaughters, my Edie and lots of cameras.  We jumped in, with the venison version of mincemeat on one burner, the bear version on another, Leni’s pork version on a third, with a fourth burner being devoted to creating the filling of pelmeni – a Siberian dumpling made with bear.
As I was heading out yesterday, Pat asked if I even liked mincemeat, reminding me that it had been served at various family gatherings over the years to much avoidance on my part.  To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure I would like it.  I find that cooking meat well is an art, one that many members of my family lack, so I tend to avoid anything they made with meat it in over the years as a self-preservation technique.  Trust me, if you had grown up eating some of the meat I was served on a regular basis, you’d avoid it too.  I’m always willing to try something though, especially if it’s prepared by someone I know is a good cook.  Considering Leni has not only raised, but prepared some of the best pork I’ve ever had, I knew I was in good hands here.
There was much similarity in the recipes Leni had us using.  I was surprised (and delighted) to find that each one called for large amounts of fruit, generally in equal amounts or more to the meat and suet, of fruit in the form of apples, raisins and currants.  Brandy, cider, sugar and spices were also added, then the mixtures bubbled on the stove top for a few hours.
While they cooked, we feasted on some tasty smoked pork that Leni had prepared and then I learned how to make the pelmeni, which essentially is a pirogi.  I’ve always wanted to try making them but have been slightly intimidated.  Thanks to Jenny telling me I could just get going on the next batch and not wanting to appear like I had no idea what I was doing,  I just did what I was told, grabbing a dough ball, rolling it out and jumping into the process.  It certainly helped that the dough was positively dreamy to roll out, which immediately took a huge chunk of intimidation away.  (You know I walked out of there with that recipe too.  Because that is what I do when I stumble upon something like that.)
The pelmeni filling was finely chopped onions, cabbage and bear meat, which was cooked before being rolled and then boiled in broth for a few minutes before being served with fresh dill and sour cream.  
Leni thought that mince tarts would be a better way to serve the mincemeat rather than one large pie.  To differentiate between the venison and the bear mince tarts, the venison tarts had a dot of dough on top. As it was a savory filling, she used lard in the crust, making them incredibly flaky and savory themselves.  A perfect pairing.  
Verdict?  I liked the mincemeat.  There was so much fruit in the mix that the meat added texture more than anything else.  There was a nice savoriness about the tarts. The venison version, which was based on the Mary Randolph recipe was a touch more savory than the bear.  I had prepared the bear version, following the Kentucky Housewife recipe, substituting allspice for cloves that were MIA as I was putting it together.  By the time the cloves had appeared, I hesitated on adding them to the allspice, so I skipped it.   As the pork version needed more time, we did not sample it, although Leni assured us all she’d get a jar to us in the near future.  I came home with a pack of pelmini for the freezer, as well as two pint jars of bear mincemeat filling that I look forward to making into tarts over the next few weeks.
Yesterday was a learning experience on several levels – I love cooking with other great cooks because I never fail to learn something new from them. There was history, specifically food history – did you know that historically most wild game was referred to as venison?  I did not.  There was the typical small town connections made that make me love Charlottesville, where it seems everyone sort of knows everyone else somehow, even if you’ve never actually met before.  I listened in on and had some inspirational and informative conversations.  As I’m still getting over this nasty upper respiratory bug, I was not entirely my enthusiastic self, but it was a fantastic memorable day nonetheless, one that I shall be mulling over for some time.  Thank you Leni for hosting, introducing me to mincemeat as well as everything and everyone else I got to know yesterday. What a treat of a day.

The Oatmeal Post.

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It seems every blogger in Charlottesville has at least one blog post on the subject of oatmeal.  This one is mine.

Oatmeal has been my go-to winter breakfast as long as I can remember.  It’s evolved from those instant packets that you just add hot water to, to cooking it on the stove in a pot to my current daily microwave version. 

I know, there are so many great ways I should try oatmeal.  I’m sure everyone has one they want me to try and while I’m quite sure they are lovely, my daily oatmeal is yet another one of those habits I have had my entire life and I do not feel the urge to mix up something that still works quite well for me.  That whole idea behind not fixing what’s not broken.  After all, I am the gal who’s worn the same thing since college – black tshirt, demin, boots (or clogs).  I am a creature of certain habits.

I like my oatmeal with raisins, cinnamon and brown sugar.  I eyeball the amounts every morning, a sprinkle of this, a pinch of that, and it tastes the same every day.  Well, except for the day I confused the jar of ground cayenne with the ground cinnamon.

I like quick oats – they cook faster.  Plop them in a bowl with the toppings, add water, and microwave for 2 minutes.  Stir and eat.  I actually have tried variances on this, but I always go back to what’s quick and what works. After all, I was a devoted instant oatmeal gal for the first 20 years of my life.  I want fast and easy in the morning.  I am capable of making other forms of oatmeal – the wee one in our house finds my go-to version boring, so on her behalf, I have mixed it up, getting so jiggy with it, I’ve used fruit butters in the mix.

I found myself without raisins the other morning. Vaguely remembering my mother, not being able to find my preferred raisin cinnamon spice packets once upon a time, handing me an packet that featured dried apples with my preferred spices, telling me to try it, that I should branch out. It was a good substitute, but I prefer to eat my apple every afternoon as a snack, not in my morning oatmeal.  However, there I stood the other morning, with no raisins on hand.  Desperate times.  I reached into the fridge and grabbed an apple.  I chopped it up and threw it in the bowl in lieu of raisins.  I cooked it.  I ate it.  It was a good substitute.  I branched out.  I actually ate it that way two mornings in a row this week. And now that I have raisins on hand again, I might try combining the two.  Talk about getting jiggy with it….

It grew.

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Last year, my Girl Scout troop helped put together a little food drive at their school.  I was exceptionally proud of them and blogged about it.  Yesterday,  we went back to their old elementary school and helped out with this year’s drive.
We partnered with the same troop as last year, with their troop taking the lead this time around.  They made the posters and morning announcements reminding their schoolmates to bring in donations.  This year we had a third troop join us in the job of sorting and packing the donations.
I love that as each one of the girls walked in that cafeteria yesterday, the first thing each one of them said was “What can I do?”.  Give them a little bit of direction and every last one of them was off and running.  They worked together well and it’s oh, so good to watch that in action.
Just like last year, the recipients of the drive are families within that elementary school community. This year though, I think my girls had a little bit better understanding of exactly what that meant.
The best part though was seeing an idea I had summer before last take root and grow.  I might be the slackest Girl Scout troop leader out there – I’ve been told by our local Girl Scout council that I’m “robbing the girls of the true Girl Scout experience” because we don’t sell cookies.  We also don’t do a whole lot of crafts, we’ve never been camping (we do have plans to do that this year though, maybe), heck, from about March through the end of the school year every year those girls campaign to throw out whatever the plan is and just go run around and play on the playground outside and I let them.  Slacker or not, I came up with a pretty kick ass service project that other troops have not only joined in, but continued with.  It grew. 
I’m damn proud of that.