Well, it isn't a snow day, really. It's an icy, cold day. The kids are asleep and most likely will not be too happy about being stuck in the house again. The thought of the work on my desk growing every minute makes me want to cry. I could be more productive at home and do some laundry or clean a bathroom, but UGH...I just can't do it. We will have to get out of the house today if the roads are cleared enough.
Late yesterday afternoon I let my kids out. I head them in front of our building and saw another kid with them. My oldest kid's friend walked over from her house. They came in soaking wet and freezing asking for hot chocolate. It got dark so we walked the friend home. I could have kicked myself for not bringing my camera. The dark sky, the bright street lights and the glitter and sparkle of the dripping snow/sleet was beautiful. On the way back home, we stood in the middle of a dark street and listened to the clinks and ping of the ice falling from the trees. I wish I had pictures.
There is nothing in the house to eat either. Pasta, no sauce. Flour, no butter. 2 eggs. 1/4 of a gallon of milk to last through Friday. As I look through my recipe books, I am getting more and more discouraged. I can eat anything, but the kids......they are hugely, finicky pains about food.
One thing I can make (and the kids will eat) is a fabulously easy coffee cake from the book above. "
The Fannie Farmer Cookbook", by Marion Cunningham is full of good reading and good food. Fannie Merrit Farmer wrote the first version of this cookbook in 1896. Wikipedia says:
"Fannie published her most well-known work, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, in 1896. A follow-up to an earlier version called
Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book, published by
Mary J. Lincoln in 1884, the book under Farmer's direction eventually contained 1,849
recipes, from
milk toast to Zigaras à la Russe. Farmer also included essays on
housekeeping, cleaning,
canning and drying
fruits and
vegetables, and nutritional information.
The book's publisher (Little, Brown & Company) did not predict good sales and limited the first edition to 3,000 copies.
[1] The book was so popular in America, so thorough, and so comprehensive that housewives would refer to later editions simply as the "Fannie Farmer cookbook", and it is still available in print over 100 years later.
Farmer provided scientific explanations of the
chemical processes that occur in food during cooking, and also helped to standardize the system of measurements used in cooking in the USA. Before the Cookbook's publication, other American recipes frequently called for amounts such as "a piece of
butter the size of an
egg" or "a teacup of milk." Farmer's systematic discussion of measurement — "A cupful is measured level ... A tablespoonful is measured level. A teaspoonful is measured level." — led to her being named "the mother of level measurements."
Farmer left the Boston Cooking School in 1902 and created Mrs. Farmer's School of Cookery. She began by teaching gentlewomen and
housewives the rudiments of plain and fancy cooking, but her interests eventually led her to develop a complete work of
diet and nutrition for the ill, titled Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent. Farmer was invited to lecture at
Harvard Medical School and began teaching convalescent diet and nutrition to
doctors and
nurses. She felt so strongly about the significance of proper
food for the sick that she believed she would be remembered chiefly by her work in that field, as opposed to her work in household and fancy cookery. Farmer understood perhaps better than anyone else at the time the value of appearance, taste, and presentation of sickroom food to ill and wasted people with poor
appetites; she ranked these qualities over cost and nutritional value in importance."
As you will soon learn about me, I heart anything representative of 18th and 19th everyday life. I love realist painting and naturalist writers. Imagining the obstacles, implements, finances, sounds, tastes, textures and smells people encountered creates a connection between that world and mine. The idea of people facing the same issues, but under wildly different circumstances than our own fascinates me.
ANYWAY, this is the coffee cake I am about to make (its on p. 775 of my book)
Quick Coffee Cake (8-inch square cake)
1 cup sugar
1 3/4 cups white flour
2 tsp baking powder
4 tbsp butter (I have to use Country Crock)
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 cup milk
1 tbsp sugar mixed with 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter an 8-inch square cake pan. Mix the 1 cup sugar, the flour, and the baking powder in a large bowl. Work in the butter with your fingers or a pastry blender until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the egg and milk and blend. Spoon into the pan. Sprinkle the sugar-cinnamon mixture evenly over the top. Bake for 20 minutes.
So good.
Okay. So my angel helped me with the coffee cake so the cinnamon and sugar was concentrated in the middle of the cake. Also, the Country Crock was not as nice as real butter......STILL you see they ate it. And started with the extra cinnamony-sugary part.
The recipe right after the coffee cake is for "Griddlecakes". They make the best tiny pancakes I have ever had in my entire life, ever.
It's been awhile since I treated myself to new music. In the past few months I discovered Fiest, Inara George, Lilly Allen, and Corinne Bailey Rae. You might think I only love the ladies, but yesterday I re-discovered Chet Baker! Thursday night, I came across a pretty nice movie, The Band, about a lost Egyptian orchestra and one of the band members sang "My Funny Valentine" to an airport employee, but we can talk about the movie later. So I downloaded "The Best of Chet Baker Sings" and I am officially in 'Saturday morning, the laundry is done, breakfast is over, the kids are quiet, HEAVEN'!! By the time I publish this post, I will find my self grounded once again. We are entertaining one of the girls friends and picking up my mother from an apartment sale (sad symptom of our disastrous economy). I'll probably go to work for a few hours, too. Chet will make it a little more bearable. 
