Surviving Hurricane Irene, Freezer Deposits and Baking Redemption

With Hurricane Irene hitting Connecticut over this past weekend, I had a few quality days at home to catch up on some of my kitchen/cooking projects.  With the hype over the storm starting on Thursday and then New York basically shutting down for 2 days I knew I had to take advantage of the time to try out some of those projects that I keep wanting to accomplish.  I know I've fell off the wagon with telling you all with what has been coming in the farm share and this Friday, I will stat listing again what we come home with.  This week, we did take home another batch of kale (yes, it's back) and a number of green peppers, both of which I wasn't really into cooking in anything.  So instead of letting it go to waste, I figured let me start to plan ahead to the time in the winter when we are going through farm share withdrawal so I made a few deposits to the freezer for future use.  Both the kale and peppers got a quick parboil and then got frozen in freezer safe bags and now they are sitting pretty ready to used in soup or other dishes.  I also fried up 2 big eggplants into cutlets and froze them as well to be used for eggplant parm sometime in the fall.  

By Sunday afternoon cabin fever was starting to take place in our house even though we never lost our power (for anyone who has lost their power over the past week because of Irene, I know it hasn't been pleasant so I'm sorry that I'm rubbing in all of the cooking that I've done) and I knew we were going to have to do something before bored-ness or crankiness came into play.  So what else to do but invite over a few friends and family members for a "hurricane survival party".  We had a fully stocked fridge and pantry after getting caught up in hurricane preparedness talks and since we had a few blizzard dinner parties this winter, why not keep the tradition alive with other weather conditions.  We had a great summer meal of steaks, roasted potatoes, salad, and sauteed fresh corn accompanied by wine and lots of laughs where everyone was just so relaxed with such a lazy weekend behind us.  At the last minute, I decided to throw one more dish into the mix and had all of the ingredients to cook up the Grilled Squash Ribbons with Prosciutto and Mint Dressing from the most recent 'Food and Wine" magazine.  Really easy to pull together, took only a matter of minutes to cook and was different play on grilled veggies that I've never had before.  Can't wait to break out the skewers and do this again before the summer is over. 

I've been on somewhat of a cookbook hiatus lately because our cookbook collection has pretty much gotten out of control but I broke the fast this past week with the most amazing new book "Williams-Sonoma: Home Baked Comfort".  The book has a ton of great baking insights, has some really clever recipes (for example: did you ever think to put orange zest into your chocolate chip cookies?)  and maybe with hurricane on the brain I knew that it was the perfect opportunity to crank out some sweet baked treats.  The gooey cinnamon rolls were a perfect breakfast for Sunday morning that weren't difficult to make at all and there are a number of other recipes that I can't wait to try.  I also had the great idea to bake up a batch of chocolate chip cookies as well which turned into a huge baking debacle that really threw me for a loop.  As I've said before, I can make chocolate chip cookies in my sleep, with my eyes closed.  It's one of those recipes that I pretty much have memorized and will come home at 9 o'clock on a Tuesday night and decide that my life calls for a batch of cookies.  Well I really wish I could tell you what happened and maybe it would give me some peace of mind but my cookies for some reason completely failed me this time.  They kept coming out like pancakes and one batch burnt up so badly that they went straight in the garbage.  I know that we are talking about sugar and flour but I took it uber personally being the competitive, perfectionist that I can be so Monday night I came home from working knowing I needed to redeem my myself and reaffirm my faith in my baking skills so I baked off a batch of "orange berry muffins" that were in the cookbook.  And I can assure you, that after one bite of these muffins, all was well in baking land again. 

Orange-Berry Redemption Muffins (from WS's Home Baked Comfort)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Line a 12 cup muffin pan with liners and set aside. 

Mix together in a small bowl and then set aside:
-2 cups all purpose flour
-2 tsp baking powder
-1/2 tsp baking soda
-1/4 tsp kosher salt

In a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment cream together until fluffy one minute the:
-1/2 cup (4 oz) cold unsalted butter cut into chunks
-2/3 cup granulated sugar

-finely grated zest of 1 orange

Add in until well combined:

-2 large eggs

-1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Mix in and beat on low speed:

-1 cup sour cream

Gradually add your dry ingredients until mixed together and then stir in:

-heaping 1/2 cup of blueberries

-heaping 1/2 cup of raspberries (I used blackberries because that is what I had at home)

 Your batter will be super thick.

Using a 1/4 cup measure or an ice cream scoop, portion out the batter into the prepared muffin pan filling them nearly to the top.   Top with:  

-coarse sugar for sprinkling the tops (optional but I would do this step because it gives you the crunchy muffin tops like you would find in a bakery)

Bake until muffins are golden brown 15-17 minutes and when a toothpick comes out of the middle clean.  Let cool for 5 minutes.