Kohlrabi as big as my head!
January 30, 2010 Posted by: ERIN
Please excuse my horrendous hat hair. Thank you.
Never underestimate the in-flight magazine
January 26, 2010 Posted by: ERIN
One of the things that I've gotten much better at since moving to San Salvador is making things (mostly food) from scratch. For instance, I'm a big fan of brownies, the chewier and fudgier the better. My whole life living in the states, I always made them from a box and never even thought twice about it. But then I moved here, and low and behold there is no boxed brownie mix to be had. Along with raspberry jam and maple syrup, the grocery stores just don't have it.
At first I thought, "No big deal ... I'll just learn to make my own." But several failed attempts later, I was quite discouraged. Maybe I shouldn't say 'failed' attempts. The brownies would turn out fine and were quite edible, but they were never my ideal of the perfect brownie. They were always cakier than the thick, chocolatey brownies I craved, even when the recipes promised otherwise. And my recipes were coming from very reliable sources. We're talking Joy of Cooking, Food&Wine magazine, and Martha Stewart here. I was pretty much ready to give up and resign myself to having to cram a couple of boxes of brownie mix in my suitcase whenever I traveled.
But then, before it was too late, I was saved! And from a very unlikely source, I might add. I was on a USAirways flight, leafing though the in-flight magazine, when I stumbled across the key to my future brownie success. A short article by Susie Middleton, an Editor for Fine Cooking magazine, entitled 'Sweet Nostalgia' enlightned me thus:
"The best brownies, like the ones featured here, are made with cocoa powder, not solid chocolate. Cocoa powder has very little cocoa butter in it, and ounce for ounce packs more intense flavor than solid chocolate."
Right then and there I realized that Susie might just be a genius. All those other recipes I had tried all called for melted solid chocolate, whereas it was cocoa powder that I truly needed all along. As soon as I tried her recipe, I knew I had finally found the perfect brownies. And as an added bonus, cocoa powder is sooooo much easier to get here than solid baking chocolate. What could be more serendipitous?
Chewy, Fudgy Brownies
Adapted From USAirways Magazine, September 2008
3 sticks butter
3 cups granulated sugar
6 eggs, at room temperature
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 and 1/8 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 9x13-inch baking pan.
Melt butter in medium-sized saucepan over medium heat. Remove pan from heat. Stir in sugar, followed by eggs and vanilla. Stir in flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. Stir batter until smooth and uniform, about 1 minute. Spread batter into the prepared baking pan, smoothing to fill pan evenly.
Bake until toothpick inserted into center comes out with a few moist clumps clinging to it (about 35-40 minutes). Let brownies cool completely in pan on a rack. Cut into squares and serve.
Keep brownies at room temperature, well wrapped. They can also be frozen and enjoyed later.
Today's Harvest
January 23, 2010 Posted by: ERIN
Erosion Action
January 20, 2010 Posted by: ERIN
We've had a couple cold fronts go through in the past few weeks, although I should probably say "cold" fronts given what many of the rest of you are dealing with these days. But anyway, with "cold" fronts come rough seas, and rough seas mean lots of waves pounding away at the beaches.
Zipper and I were walking on the beach out front of the field station last week when I suddenly became disoriented, which was alarming becuase it is not an exceptionally large beach and we walk on it almost daily. But I soon realized why I wasn't quite recognizing my surroundings ... the weeks of strong wave action had scoured away about four vertical feet of sand. Four feet! In other words, what we were standing on used to be buried by 4 feet of sand, and what used to be under our feet was now at about eye level.
Here, take a look:
Do you see where Zip is sitting? That is what was formerly "ground level". Everything below him was buried and unseen. You can tell those rocks don't generally see too much of the elements, since they're so much lighter in color than those above, even though they are the exact same stuff.
How long before the sand builds back up again? This is the first I've seen of it in 2 and a half years, but how often does this happen? Does anyone besides me care? Am I the biggest geek in the world??
Head for the Hills
January 13, 2010 Posted by: ERIN
Last evening, after the devasting earthquake in Haiti, we were under a tsunami watch for about two hours. Thankfully, with the highest reported swells being only 12 centimeters, it didn't amount to anything. But it did make me think about what I'd do if such a situation were to arise.
First I wondered how we would be able to tell if a wave was coming in the dark. And then, in contemplating what my gut reaction would be, I decided I would grab Zipper (and maybe my passport if there was time) and head for the top of our water catchment basin, since that's one of the higest points here on the north side of the island. Apparently my gut figures Tom can take care of himself. But seriously, it felt really strange to have to think about.
Bragging Rights
January 9, 2010 Posted by: ERIN
I'm a few weeks late in posting this, but you're looking at the 2009 Family (Dis)Function Fantasty Football League Champion! That's right, I beat out my mother, father, sister, husband, brothers-in-law, and teenage cousins to bring home the title, along with the coveted cash prize.
Tom claims that I have no place posting this news on TBL, because it "really has nothing to do with living in the Bahamas, per se". Apparently he has suddenly become a purist for sticking to an overarching blog theme. But I say he's wrong, because what is the name of my fantasy team? The Bahamian Potcakes, of course! Named in honor of Zipper, his offspring, and all their San Salvador Potcake brethren. What could be more Bahamian?
Sadly, I think Tom's reluctance for me to post about my victory has less to do with its inherent "Bahamian-ness" (or lack there of) and more to do with the fact that in his several seasons as a fantasy footballer, he has never tasted the sweet success of a championship. And here I managed to pull it off in my rookie season. A season at the beginning of which I didn't even know who Philip Rivers or Chris Johnson were. GO POTCAKES!
Solar Food Dehydrator
January 8, 2010 Posted by: TOM
In order to preserve some of the harvest from Erin's garden, we decided to look into drying. A solar food dehydrator seemed like just the thing given the amount of sun we get on a regular basis. I wanted to design my own, but Erin thought I should stick to a plan (this by the way is why nothing that I cook gets posted in the recipes, since I don't have a reproducible plan to publish). In the end I tweaked the plans from this book to work with the glass that I scavenged.
I was suppose to build this about a year ago, but was a little slow gathering all the materials. This past September I finally built the solar food dehydrator after securing the last critical pieces (food grade screening).
Recently we did a test run using canned pineapple. After a few days of drying, the final product came out pretty good, but I think with a bit of practice we'll get better. A couple things we learned: something like canned pineapple, which has been sitting in its own juice, should be pat dry to speed things along (yes, this should have been obvious); December/January is a tough time to dry given the fact that it has the shortest days of the year (again, I should have thought about this); and, the dehydrator can get quite hot even on overcast days and needs to be watched carefully to stay cool (we easily hit temperatures of 160 degrees F, which is a bit high for drying fruit and herbs, but perfect for things like jerky).
The 12 Days of Lupe
January 5, 2010 Posted by: ERIN
Tom's mom, Lupe, was here with us for 12 days over the holidays. She brought us tortillas and tamales and pure vanilla extract, so it was truly Christmas. Unfortunately, after her first few days, the weather turned cloudy, windy, and rainy for the remainder of her stay, so I don't have the usual array of "fun-in-the-sun" photos that normally gets posted after we've had a visitor.
Instead, I have photos of golf cart antics...
I had promised her I would not put these on the internet, but it turns out I couldn't resist. Especially since I know she has several friends who check in here at TBL pretty regularly. Here you go, ladies!
I am very lucky to have a mother-in-law with a great sense of humor, who I know would never hold this against me.