I did a favor for a writer friend recently, reading her manuscript and writing a blurb for her publisher. It was an easy favor to do– I’d enjoyed her earlier book, a collection of essays called Because I Love Her, and expected I’d like the new one, which I really did. So when we met up for a movie sometime after I’d finished, I was completely surprised and delighted to receive a shopping bag full of apples from her tree.
This is how our supply looked after a week:
In the meantime, I baked many apple-y things:
apple galetteapple walnut bundt cake
A couple batches of my mom’s apple crisp and my new favorite, apple streusel coffeecake, a recipe I adapted from good old Joy of Cooking:
Preheat the oven to 350 and butter a 13×9 baking pan.
Stir together and set aside the streusel topping:
2/3 c flour
2/3 c finely chopped toasted walnuts or pecans
2/3 c brown sugar
5 T melted butter
1 t ground cinnamon
1/4 t salt
Whisk together:
2 c all-purpose flour
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
Combine in another bowl and set aside:
1 1/4 c sour cream or yogurt
1 t vanilla
In a large bowl, beat well until lightened in color and texture:
4 T unsalted butter
1 c sugar
Beat in, one at a time:
2 eggs
Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in 3 parts, alternating with the yogurt mixture, stirring until smooth. Scrape the batter into the pan and spread evenly. Top the batter with 2 1/2 cups diced, peeled apples, and then the streusel topping.
Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
It’s not, despite the jingle, Rice-a-Roni. No, the true, old school, San Francisco treat is an It’s-It, a chocolate-covered oatmeal cookie ice cream sandwich, originally invented by George Whitney in 1928, and sold for decades at San Francisco’s Playland-at-the-Beach. Now that the playground is gone, It’s-Its are made in a small factory near San Francisco airport. We’ve been driving past the factory for years, and finally the other day I looked at the website to see if they offer factory tours. Sadly, no. We drowned our sorrows in homemade It’s-Its:
I know I should make jam. Every summer the local paper runs an article about jam making, with lots of delicious-looking recipes and helpful instructions. Every summer my good friend invites me over to her kitchen to make jam with her. I know it’s not hard, and the fact that I don’t have good tongs for lifting jars out of a hot water bath shouldn’t stop me. My grandparents all made preserves of various sorts (jams, pickles, jellies), and now my parents do, too.
But somehow the insistent chorus of “It’s easy!” is not having the intended effect on me, and I continue to stick with the oven, not the stove.
Occasionally, the farmer who sells our biweekly mystery box offers little extras, produced by her friends and other farmers, for sale. A pound of homemade lard for instance (pass), or a dozen farm eggs (yes, please). Sometimes it’s cheese or honey (sign us up), and this past week it was flats of apricots.
I thought about it. A whole flat is an awful lot of apricots. On the other hand, apricots don’t need to be peeled; they don’t even need a knife to slice them — you can just crack them open at the stem end with your thumbs. Apricots can be frozen easily, or pureed, baked into things and of course, eaten fresh by the handful.
I signed up for a flat. We probably ate a dozen the first day, and continued to eat lots of the apricots fresh out of the box over the next few days. And here’s what I did with the rest of them:
apricots on granolaapricot smoothieapricot galetteapricot crispapricot upside down cakeapricot sorbet
And then I froze a tray in order to capture some of this summer gold for the rainy winter to come.
It isn’t the Cinque Terre, nor is it Venice, and it’s definitely not Paris, where Caroline & her gang are lucky enough to be on vacation, but Bay Head, NJ still has quiet, clean beaches, flanked by stately homes, canals, and Mueller’s Bakery— which has got to be one of the best small bakeries in the country.
Our rental was just around the corner from Mueller’s, which we knew about thanks to my brother, who lives the next town over. Every morning, the youngest girls would descend from their sleeping garret in the attic, find me and Finn in the second floor sunroom watching Cyberchase and drinking coffee, and we’d throw on our swimsuits and walk around the block to the bakery.
Inside was everything a butter-sugar-flour addict could dream of: the best jelly donuts I’ve had in 30 years–powdered and sugared both; chocolate donuts; powdered and glazed cake donuts; melt-in-your mouth apricot and berry danishes; bear claws; cheese claws; apple bars; turnovers; sweet pretzels; cinnamon rolls and twists; fresh bagels; fat muffins stuffed with blueberries; fancy cakes; everyday cakes; loaf breads and long breads–including sweet and savory varieties like Irish Soda; tray after tray of cookies, including decorated, themed ones as well as more traditional ones; cupcakes; and the major reason for my family’s swooning: the crumb cake–the recipe for which is unchanged since the Bakery’s inception over a century ago.
Suffice to say the crumb cake has a dense, rich layer of incredibly moist cake, and an even richer, not-to-sweet thick layer of buttery crumb, topped with enough powdered sugar to lightly dust your shirt while you eat. They’re impossibly good, the Platonic ideal of a crumb cake, and if you’re craving one right now, Mueller’s ships them. Anywhere.
We’d grab our cakes or donuts and cross the street and sit on a bench in front of the canal, where we’d unwrap the cakes and donuts from their waxed paper bags and eat, happily, while the morning woke up around us.
It was just like eating croissant on the Seine, Jersey Style.
When I moved to the suburbs, I quickly fell in with an excellent group of moms. These women were funny, friendly, well-educated, down-to-earth. They had adorable, energetic, smart kids. They made me feel welcome and they fed my soul. We and our yearlings became fast friends…and the years sped by. More than five years later, this group has been through a lot. Pretty much everything, really: births, deaths, divorce, remarriage, being hired and fired, moving house (internationally, even), serious illness…truly the gamut of what can happen in the middle years of breeding, parenting, and relating to one’s spouse. We’ve celebrated and consoled together, taken day trips and had plenty (okay, maybe not enough) of nights out.
But as often happens, when the oldest of our children entered kindergarten, the group began to fracture. Our kids attend different schools, and a few have moved out of town, though still within reasonable driving distance. So when weekly meetings became impossible, we convened a monthly Pizza Night. The goal was simple: to sustain our friendship and those of our kids. The overarching plan was to to Keep It Simple. No fancy cooking, no competitive potlucks, no late afternoon kitchen work allowed. We knew we’d never keep it up if this were the rule. To keep the emphasis on the friendship, we would order in pizza and bring a few simple sides to supplement.
We gathered the first Friday of every month, chipped in for pizza, and potlucked the rest: we brought appetizers, salads, sides, dessert, drinks for the kids, & plenty of wine. I’m pretty sure we all just chipped in whatever we could make that week, depending on the state of our pantry and the level of our weekly insanity. It was really, really fun. The kids ran a little wild and free, and we got a chance to catch up–sometimes around the living room, often outside on the patio. Since the kids have been together for so long, they were as eager to hang out as the moms were and, once fed, required minimal attention.
And something happened when we went from the morning playgroup to the Friday Night Pizza Party. Sure, we always had great food in the mornings, but there’s something different about convening for an easy dinner at the end of the week. We were all relaxed, and the event felt more social and less like a scheduled kids’ activity. It was something to look forward to for moms + kids alike, and something both groups were equally happy about attending. Of course, it’s great–and necessary–to get out without the kids, but there’s a certain excitement generated when the party is for them, too. There’s something about gathering for a meal, even–maybe especially–a simple one, that feeds hungers that are not always apparent. And that is what this group of women (like so many groups of women across the country, I’m sure) has always done so well.
For a while, we were good about keeping this up pretty regularly, but inevitably, it got harder. Now we get together only every few months, but the thing is–it’s still the same. Each time we meet, it’s still as if I’ve seen these women yesterday.
At our most recent night in, one friend made her flan, which is a little bit of a dessert staple for the group. It’s mostly for the moms but the kids sometimes finagle their way a slice, too. A quick search on Epicurious turns up nearly 60 recipes for flan, including coffee, orange, almond, corn, dulce de leche….but this is my friend’s version, and it’s always pleased us.
Mom’s Night In Flan
4 large eggs
1 can sweet and condensed milk
1 can evaporated milk
1-2 tsp.vanilla
1.boil water for “water bath”
2.mean while, in saucepan bring about 1 cup sugar to boiling over medium low heat till browns into carmel, watch and stir constantly, (I don’t use a thermometer or anything, I just eyeball it.
3. in any baking pan pour hot carmel into botton of pan (I’ve used glass, metal bread pan, corning ware, any size. My preference is a round dish about 7-9″)
4. Combine eggs, both cans of milks and 2 tsp. of vanilla in blender,mix on high spead 30-60 secs., depending on which kids are screaming
5. pour mixture over carmel and use a larger pan to pour the boiling water into for the “bath”
6. cook for 1 hour-1:15 mins. in 300 degree oven
7. cool to room temp.and then put in fridge for as long as you like
I know I should make jam. Every summer the local paper runs an article about jam making, with lots of delicious-looking recipes and helpful instructions. Every summer my good friend invites me over to her kitchen to make jam with her. I know it’s not hard, and the fact that I don’t have good tongs for lifting jars out of a hot water bath shouldn’t stop me. My grandparents all made preserves of various sorts (jams, pickles, jellies), and now my parents do, too.
