A bit over a week ago, I mentioned that my Kitchenaid stand mixer was having issues. Well, these were real issues, since the geartrain had separated, so it would no longer turn the beater; indeed, the beater wouldn't even fit inside the bowl. See?
It wasn't pretty. So I called Kitchenaid. My first indication of happiness was that the lady who answered the phone, Christy, was American. Indians are very polite. I have friends and acquaintances in this country who are Indian born or of Indian descent. But Indians who were not born here, and anyone else from any other country, for that matter, simply don't understand the nuances and implications of what people say. So, we just don't end up feeling like the customer service rep "feels our pain" or understands exactly what we mean. Stupid example: a couple of years ago, when one of my sons was flying from here back to Greenville, SC, for the end of the college semester, his layover was in Charlotte, and they cancelled his final leg to Greenville. No big deal, except that it was very early Monday morning, and his first class was at 1PM, and it was the last week of classes before finals, after which he would receive his Masters in Economics. Except, of course, if he failed this course. So, he had me on the phone, and was trying in vain to work with the reps at the airport in Charlotte, so I picked up another phone, and called airline customer service. I got an Indian. She was very sorry but since his flight had been cancelled, he would have to wait until tomorrow because all flights were full. No talking or cajoling changed her mind, until I began hollering about his class, his degree, and the reparations I would expect from the airline if he did not get on the next flight, in 15 minutes. Only when I spoke a language she understood ("you will be personally responsible for ruining my son's life, and this airline will pay for that, and so will you personally,") did I get any response. Immediately after I began talking about her personal ruination of my son's academic career, she put me on hold, and before she got back, my son's name was called to get on the "full" flight which was leaving immediately. At least with an American, they might have understood that he could drive the 100 miles if they reimbursed us for a car rental. The "I can drive there" culture simply doesn't exist elsewhere. But I digress.
Anyway, after I spoke to Christy at Kitchenaid and explained to her that using one's mixer doesn't cause the mixing head gears to separate, and I knew that the mixer was 4 months out of warranty, but could they possibly assist me, she took my phone number, so she could present the information to her supervisor. This was a Thursday afternoon. 7PM Friday she called: they would replace my defective 5 quart stand mixer with a refurbished Kitchenaid 6 quart stand mixer in my choice of color! Well, if I hadn't been the winner of "So You Know You CAN'T Dance!", and unable to carry a tune in a bucket, I'd have been singing and dancing with glee.This was not my first Kitchenaid stand mixer. The previous one lasted 12 years, and I gave it to someone else when I bought my new one. It still works, as far as I know. So if Kitchenaid hadn't been so cooperative, I'd have been deeply disappointed.
A week later, this Saturday afternoon, the FedEx dude arrived, bearing gifts from Kitchenaid:
It's so beautiful! If I weren't involved in sewing, I'd have been cooking today! But with a hurting molar, I don't want much to do with food.
And here's the best part, from my perspective:
Look at that label! It's American made! I am officially the biggest Kitchenaid fan on the planet today! So the moral of the story, folks, is that if you want a quality product, made in America, and with excellent customer service, find Kitchenaid. No insult intended to people from any other country, but sometimes we just need someone from home to understand our woes. And with everyone's concern about global pollution, doesn't it make sense to buy from closer to home, whether it's food or appliances, and use less fossil fuel to move the goods?
It was a cold night in August. It felt more like late September. So Marjie decided that steak under the broiler would be just the thing, especially since she won't let her dearly beloved turn on the furnaces until at least September 15. Well, that's great, but what about me, with the stupid broken tooth? Soup, again; let's toss stuff in a pan and see what comes out the other side!
VEGETABLE BEEF SOUP FOR ONE
1/2 cup small beef cubes (about 1/4"x1/4" small!)1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp. cornstarch
1-1/2 cups beef broth
2 tbsp barley
1/2 cup broccoli
1/4 cup diced zucchini pieces
1/4 cup cut corn
1 tomato, diced small
Satue the beef in the olive oil for 3 to 5 minutes, until browned. Stir in the cornstarch until it coats the meat, then slowly stir in the beef broth. Add the barley, heat to a boil, and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the vegetables and simmer another 10 minutes. Note to Paula: substitute diced potatoes for the barley, and it's gluten free for your baby. I have no potatoes in the house. ( How did that happen, I wonder?) This is another picture taken for your benefit, before I poured it in the blender. You really don't want to see pictures of brown mush with green grains in it, do you? It's just not a pretty sight.
But, hey, I go see Kevin and get my temporary crown Monday, so if he hasn't beaten up my gums too badly, I can eat real food Monday! Hooray!
Around 2 this afternoon, I decided I wanted breakfast. I hadn't needed it earlier, and I don't usually eat before noon anyway, so it was time for some eggs and "fat broad toast" with my dearly beloved.
Background: A few years back, my mother in law decided that I needed a George Foreman grill. It would help the kids make snacks, and it would make delicious sandwiches, and she cooks her meat on hers, so she was sure I'd love it. She probably never got the memo that said I don't like grill marks, but it has been a great item from the kids' viewpoint. Anyway, a while back, I started grilling homemade bread on it
as toast for my husband with his breakfast, and he dubbed it "fat broad toast". Suffice it to say, he'll wolf the stuff when I put it in front of him. So, this is my husband's breakfast today; I couldn't chew the toast *sob*, so I just had 3 eggs with mandarin oranges. I'll bet you didn't know you can eat canned mandarin oranges without chewing - I did! Hooray! Last night I was able to eat watermelon after my soup, and WOW! Was that fruit sugar great! I felt like dancing and singing, except that I can't carry a tune in a bucket, and I'd win "So You Think You CAN'T Dance!" because I KNOW I can't!
It's cold here today - high of 61 - so steak tonight; I'll be eating some sort of beef soup. Updates at a later time.
In my quest to not chew, while waiting for my temporary crown next Monday, I've been hunting soup recipes. I found several that were somewhat appealing last night, but none were "just right". I was cooking haddock for my dearly beloved, so I decided to create a fish chowder. It was really good, and, while not as filling as the cream of chicken soup from the previous night, I didn't feel stuffed for a couple of hours afterward, either.
FISH CHOWDER
1/3 pound Haddock (or any white fish), boneless & skinless
1 tbsp. butter
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup water
1/2 cup frozen corn
1/2 cup small broccoli florets1/3 cup instant mashed potato flakes
1/4 cup (4 tbsp) powdered milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
fresh ground pepper
Melt the butter in a small pan and cook the fish in it, until the fish flakes apart. Add the chicken broth and water and bring to a boil. Add the corn and broccoli, return to the boil and cook 5 minutes. Stir in the potato flakes and powdered milk, and cook another 5 minutes. Stir in the cream, heat through, and serve with ground pepper. Serves one (me!). I ate it with the last of my sour cream bread from the previous night, warmed up (but not toasted).
This was as good as any clam chowder. Yes, I know you are all gasping at the idea that Marjie could possibly use instant potato flakes for anything - so am I. But I had them in the cupboard for making potato bread without the fuss of boiling and mashing potatoes, and thought I'd give them a whirl in this chowder. Again, my picture was taken before I put my soup in the blender so it would be non-chewing texture. I will certainly be making this again!
During dinner last night, Thor was curled up behind Mark's chair, waiting for anything Mark might drop. Now, the child hasn't been that clumsy in quite some time, but a guy can hope, can't he?
In my quest for foods I could swallow without mastication, I concluded I needed bread to go with my soups. Soft, warm, delectable bread. This one made the grade on all counts.
SOUR CREAM BREAD
1/2 cup hot water
1-1/2 cup sour cream, at room temperature
6 tsp yeast4 cups flour
4-1/2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
Combine the water and sour cream, and add the yeast. Add all other ingredients in order (stir in, if by hand, pour in bread machine pan otherwise). Mix about 15 minutes, let the dough rise until doubled in size, punch down and put into two 8x4 loaf pans. Let the loaves rise again, then bake at 350 for 25 to 28 minutes, or until they reach the desired level of darkness.
This bread makes excellent sandwiches, or so I am told. It has a nice flavor, and my dearly beloved enjoyed it as toast this morning with his eggs. And it stayed nice and warm in my bread cozy. No one was laughing at my creation last night!
"The good news," Kevin said, "is that there's enough enamel left for me to crown your tooth. Next Monday." (Yes, of course I call my dentist Kevin. He calls me Marjie, after all.) The tooth is broken off at the gumline, all the way around, but there's no nerve exposed. Be happy, Kevin says, and eat whatever you want.
Except that I'm afraid to eat anything that involves teeth. On top of that, I can't tolerate hot or cold. Oh, that makes eating so much fun. So, last night, while everyone else ate a lovely roast turkey breast with rice and cranberry sauce, I made myself a small batch of cream of chicken soup. This is enough for 2 people, when served with bread.
CREAM OF CHICKEN SOUP
2 tbsp butter
1 small chicken breast (about 3 oz.)
1 tbsp onion, grated
1/2 carrot, grated
2 tbsp. cornstarch
2 cups chicken broth
1 rib celery, minced
1/2 cup cooked rice1/4 cup dry milk powder
1/2 cup heavy cream
fresh ground pepper to taste
Melt the butter in a sauce pan. Cut the chicken into very small pieces, and cook the chicken with onion and carrot in the butter for about 5 minutes, until the vegetables are softened. Stir in the cornstarch until the chicken and vegetables are coated; slowly add the chicken broth, stirring so the cornstarch doesn't lump up. Add the celery and simmer about 30 minutes. Stir in the dry milk powder and cooked rice; when it's hot, stir in the cream and continue cooking 1 to 2 minutes. Grind in pepper and serve with bread. 2 servings.
My picture was taken before I poured my soup in the blender, so I could avoid chewing, because I wanted you to see how pretty it was. It tasted good even without the solids!
Doubtless there will be anothe soup tonight. Or maybe just a bread recipe.
But there's enough soup left over for me to eat some today, and that's a plus!
I thought Pam's Patty Cakes were adorable. I really wanted to make them. I only had 2 small problems in my little world.
First, my stand mixer's not working. Not that big a deal; more of a pain in the rump. But, second, one of my back molars broke in half on Saturday, so I'm living on advil/tylenol, not eating, drinking little, and generally rather miserable. So, since my family "needs" dessert every night, I decided to use Pam's idea, but cheat. I used 1-1/2 cups of chocolate cake mix, blended with 1 egg, 1 tbsp. oil and 1/2 cup water, stirred vigorously with a spoon, and spooned into a cupcake pan. (I felt entitled to be lazy). Then, as Pam did, after they were cooled, I scooped out the middle using a cream soup spoon. I detoured and filled them with vanilla or chocolate pudding, replaced the scooped out top, and topped with whipped cream and colored sugar. They were quite pretty, and, since I don't like chocolate flavored things, no temptation to me whatsoever.
Pam, my children thank you for your beautiful idea, even if I didn't use your recipe. So, it's off to the dentist for me this afternoon, where I will be royally chewing him out for his receptionist's attitude yesterday morning ("We can't possibly see you today. Maybe we can see you later this week." Yeah. I'm not thinking that Kevin wants that attitude from his staff).
The best laid plans of mice and Moms oft go astray.
Wait. What do you mean, that isn't what Steinbeck wrote?
Well, if he'd paid more attention to his mother, he would have.
So, on Thursday I wrote that my first order of business this weekend would have to be my daughter's college bedskirt. Great plan, right? Well, I had the skirt fabric, but not enough plain white fabric for the part which goes over the innerspring. GASP! How could someone who claims to sew reasonably well be out of someth
ing so basic???? Yeah. I had 47" and needed 82". What to do?
Quick! Start something else! For a long time, I've been meaning to make a thing for my bread basket. My dearly beloved called it "basket clothing". I call it my "bread cozy". This got made 
Friday night. It's two different green tiny floral prints with a very thin layer of batting between them. To keep the batting from sliding around and bunching up in the washer, I quilted a giant M in the middle of it. Well, I like it; the rest of the family can just laugh at me all they 
want.
The girls didn't want to go get the white fabric Saturday, so I made two identical dresses, this one in white, and one in pale pink. (This isn't hemmed yet, so excuse the strange looking lower edge on it. I just ran out of enthusiasm.) My princess seamed sundress pattern seems to have gone missing - GRRR, I hate when that happens - so I tried a new one. I'm not sure I like it well enough to try it on the yellow fabric, which has gone through two washings this weekend, so I'm wearing the new dresses to decide.
Finally, on Sunday, the girls got me more white fabric. This is a corner of Kellie's bedskirt, with the box pleat. Yes, it is really long
, but at college, they flip over the bedframe so it sits higher and they can cram more crap under the bed, and this is my feeble attempt to guess at what the height is. Cass says the one I made for her was perfect, so here's hoping I'm somewhere in the ballpark for Kellie, as well. I'll take a picture when we take her to college in a couple of weeks.
So, the project that absolutely, positively had to be done first squeaked in last, just under the wire. As I said, and Steinbeck should have said, the best laid plans of mice and Moms oft go astray. But all's well that ends well.
Gaylen was asking recently what's on the calendar for sewing. Nothing much has made its way out of my machine lately, but a number of projects are either required or desired, pretty much immediately.
First up is a bedskirt for my daughter's college room. We went shopping last weekend, and after many hours traipsing through every store in the world, or so it seemed, we found the "perfect" quilt, sheets, towels, lamp, hamper.....but no bed skirt. So off to Joann's we tromped! Of course, they had fabric in just the right shade of pink to go with the green quilt and pink sheets. That's the first project for Saturday afternoon.
One of my sons decided last Thanksgiving weekend that his full sized mattress, upon which he's been sleeping for 21 years, was "worn out". Whatever that may mean. So he went to the store and bought a replacement. Only one minor problem: he bought a queen sized mattress. For a full sized box spring and sheets. Well, last weekend I got him to build extensions to his boxspring so the mattress is properly supported, and took apart and remade his bedskirt. Now, of course, the quilt is too small. But, "I grew up with this quilt! It's MINE!" So, it's left to Mom to figure out how to enlarge it. The quilt will grow a new, quilted border of around 6" width around the 3 outboard edges, but it will still be his quilt. That'll happen before Thanksgiving, but I don't make any representations as to exactly when - just covering my bases here.
Most exciting of all, however, is this:
Hunter Green!
Yellow!
Kelly Green!
Jersey knits!
I've been unable to find nice yellows and greens. So I was really excited to find these on ebay, and, yes, I bought the full 10 yards of each. I even confessed to my dearly beloved in advance that I was doing this, and he inquired as to whether that would be enough to make me happy. What a guy! He even feigned great excitement when they arrived yesterday, along with this:
Yes. about 180 zippers. Not entirely my fault. I found this website, zipperstop.com, and the zippers were under 40 cents each in quantities of a dozen. My dearly beloved looked at a couple of zippers I had in my sewing pile, looked at those prices, and said, "Get yourself a couple hundred, in lots of a dozen per color." When they came in, he did say that was an awful lot of zippers. Yeah, even I think I've got nearly a lifetime's supply.
Sewing projects for me: tank tops, summer dresses, long sleeved tops in yellow and greens. More to be determined later.
No, my Kitchenaid stand mixer problem is not resolved. But I really, really wanted to try this cake. You can tell by the ingredients list that it's very rich (translation: bad for my butt), and should be superb for those of us who are citrus fans. So, off to the box drawer, where I found my trusty 1979 model GE hand mixer. Isn't it a beauty in that harvest gold? When I found hubby dearest, I found a nearly unequipped kitchen. So, even before we married, I dragged him off to Bradlees, where he magnanimously agreed to let me purchase a pyrex loaf pan, a pyrex 9x13 pan, 2 cookie sheets, a 1 cup pyrex measuring cup, this mixer, and a blender, which, sadly, bit the dust in 2003. It's Oster's fault, really; that blender had a hard plastic base, which, after 24 years of service, cracked too badly to continue. Now, the jar on that blender was plastic, also, which meant that it was scratched, and once my husband tried to blend something with a spoon in it, causing the spoon to fly upward and put a lovely hole in the plastic top of the blender, but it was a good appliance. The trusty hand mixer, however, and all the pyrex and cookie sheets are still with me. So, onward with the cake!
I found this recipe in the newspaper, and made virtually no changes.
ORANGE BUTTER CAKE
Cake:
2 cups sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
5 eggs, at room temperature
1 tbsp. grated orange rind
1/2 cup orange juice
2-1/2 cups flour
3-3/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt1 cup milk
Preheat oven to 350F. Grease and flour two 9" round cake pans. Cream butter, adding the sugar 1/4 cup at a time, until it's all combined, with mixer at medium high speed.. Add the eggs, one at a time, and the orange rind, and mix completely. Reduce mixer speed to low and add the orange juice. Then beat in half the flour, powder and salt, followed by the milk and the balance of the flour. Beat until smooth, and pour into the pans. Bake 22 to 25 minutes. Cool 15 minutes, then remove from the pans and cool completely.
Frost with this frosting:
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 tbsp grated orange rind
1/2 cup fresh orange juice
2 pounds confectioner's sugar
Beat together the butter, rind and half the juice. Add the confectioners sugar a cup at a time, and mix well. Add the remainder of the juice as it's needed.
Now, assemble this beauty!
Place one layer on the serving platter. Put at least 1 cup of frosting on it, and stack the second layer on top. Frost the top and sides of the cake. I refrigerated it, because of the high butter content, and to harden up the frosting a bit.
This first piece went to Jeffrey, and he struggled to finish it. (Maybe the pork roast, rice and salad contributed to that difficulty; I make no representations in that regard.) Everyone else except my husband had smaller pieces, and some of us couldn't finish ours. There's enough left for dessert tonight, so I'd guess I'll get somewhere between 16 and 20 servings out of this cake. It was, as I had hoped, splendid! Heavy, rich, delectable! I'll certainly make it again when the weather's cooler again.
It's so beautiful! If I weren't involved in sewing, I'd have been cooking today! But with a hurting molar, I don't want much to do with food.
Look at that label! It's American made! I am officially the biggest Kitchenaid fan on the planet today! So the moral of the story, folks, is that if you want a quality product, made in America, and with excellent customer service, find Kitchenaid. No insult intended to people from any other country, but sometimes we just need someone from home to understand our woes. And with everyone's concern about global pollution, doesn't it make sense to buy from closer to home, whether it's food or appliances, and use less fossil fuel to move the goods?
