The Spouse made Nutella this weekend.
We had some on toast this morning and my goodness. This wasn’t just chocolate frosting on toast. This was amazing.
We never had Nutella when I was growing up. I remember Map-o-Spread as an occasional treat, but chocolate must have been crossing a line. (There was a neighbour around the corner who often had a jar in the cupboard, and there were times when her son and I sneaked spoonfuls of the stuff to eat in the basement, never remembering to retrieve the incriminating spoons… but never at my house.) After having acquired the Spouse, I also acquired a fondness for his strange dutch-derived chocolate-for-breakfast ideas, and our shelves have and do house a variety of forms of chocolate for toast. But this morning was entirely new. The home-made stuff is dense with real nuts and with slightly more cocoa than you expect when you take the first bite. As I said, amazing.
The recipe came from the America’s Test Kitchen DIY cookbook that I may have mentioned I got for his Christmas. Like any good PhD candidate, he set right to work. Our kitchen now sports jars of home-made whole-grain mustard, almond butter, crème fraiche, and large blocks of membrillo (Spanish quince paste) as well as the beloved chocolate-hazelnut spread (which the kids were calling dad-ella at breakfast). A little extra to adds some necessary oomph to January. Thanks, dear.
All that might have been bragging. Let’s chalk it up to cookbook reviewing instead, shall we? It really is a super book – great ideas, solid advice, and how-to photos throughout so that nothing seems too daunting. And I love that it’s expanding our ideas about what we can make. We’ve been baking bread for quite a while now, and making granola and yoghurt to fill out our breakfasts. But now we’re expanding. Just in time for more preggers cravings, it seems.
The book has got us thinking about all the jars that come into the house, all the bits and pieces that get added to the grocery basket. Pickles and sauces and all that. I’ll be making some pickled sugar snap peas and I tried a recipe for pickled grapes that hit the spot quite completely. It feels good to make our own foods. Part of that is knowing what’s in them, but it’s also being able the celebrate their goodness, not just for the pleasure of eating them, but for the pleasure of having crafted them. There’s a messiness and a joy to this hands-on kind of living.
Last week, I was handed a box of a dozen donuts on my walk home. A chain is opening in town, and I think the idea was to convince as many people as possible that these donuts are good and are meant for sharing. They were good – in an overly sweet, insubstantial way. Not as good as Timmy’s and so I did get a little homesick over them, too.
Then Blue asked me if we have ever made donuts, and I had to say no. He told me we should. So I scrolled for recipes and then posted the story on facebook and in came the flood! Recipes for yeasted and unyeasted and various ideas for the best frying technique with lard or shortening and suggestions for Pennsylvania Dutch fastnachts (which sounds delicious) and one of my sisters even got in touch with my mum’s old-fashioned recipe. You people are amazing. It’s great to have resources.
Then, strangely, later in the week, I was asked to contribute to a new resource called Renew and Sustain. It’s a newborn blog – the brainchild of my friend Christiana who lives in a Mennonite farming community in Illinois. It will be a community effort, bent on gathering the wisdom and wondering of Christians trying to develop more sustainable ways of living while considering the implications of social responsibility. I’m not quite sure what I will be contributing yet, though I imagine that recipes and reading suggestions will feature prominently. You can take a peek here. It might be a little like Recipes and Memories with theological musings to boot. And there’s talk of soap tutorials. With Wendell Berry, Michael Pollan, and Richard Baukham on the Reading List.
We’ll build it and see what happens. And I’ll let you know about the donuts, too.
