Like I could fool anyone into thinking I put the appropriate amount of effort into my appearance. I mean, today I forgot to put on deodorant. Just forgot. Forgot like I don’t put it on every damn day of my life. I also chose this day to walk to work. A cool hour of San Francisco hills later and I’m sure I didn’t impress my coworkers with my freshness.

The point of this post is that though I am often confused on how to act like a human being, I know my way around a crumble. By heart. I can crumble almost any fruit. This is my go-to ratio, and pears and cranberries are somewhat of a December thing, but we’re going to give me a pass on this one because I forgot to put on deodorant this morning.

Make it in your brand new Le Creuset that you got for Christmas that you sometimes talk to when you’re feeling lonely. If that’s the kind of person you are. Me and Cressy won’t judge you.

Pear and Cranberry Crumble

4-5 pears (i used….comice?)
1 1/2 cups cranberries (frozen’s ok)
a few tbsps of sugar, depending on how sweet your pears are (2-3 is a good bet)
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
half a lemon’s worth of juice
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1/2 vanilla bean

1 cup flour (you can do 1/2 white 1/2 whole wheat if you wanna)
1 cup oats
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon allspice
a pinch ground cloves
1 teaspoon salt
1 stick unsalted butter, cubed

Preheat oven to 350.

Roughly dice pears and place in your baking dish. Add cranberries, sugar, cinnamon, and mix (with your hands is cool). Sprinkle lemon juice over. Melt the butter in a saucepan and scrape your vanilla bean seeds into it. Heat on low until lightly browned. Pour the vanilla-butter mixture over the pear-cranberry mixture and mix to coat.

Whisk together flour, oats, brown sugar, cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and salt. Add the butter and mash up with your hands until the butter is mostly incorporated. Squeeze together some larger chunks and crumble them over the pears. Press lightly. Make sure there are a lot of different sizes of crumble top.

Bake 45 min to an hour-ish. or until the topping is crisp and brown and the pears have been bubbling for 10 minutes.

And I defrosted my bananas on my stove top. I mean it wasn’t turned on or anything, but I was trying to use ambient heat and it took like 6 years and they were oddly hot in some places and still frozen in other places and…well, I tried to be energy efficient so I guess that’s what I GET.

Also I used yogurt instead of milk because I didn’t have any (and RUSSIAN yogurt at that). Aaand I honestly forget what else I added. Maybe raisins? Currants? God knows. I have all sorts of bags of things that sit on my shelves that sometimes get used up very quickly after they are bought, and sometimes they spend very long sabbaticals behind my bags of flour and then I find them 9 months later and say, ok, I’m totally going to use these really shortly, and then I like, don’t bake for 6 months again and they get all questionable and stuff.

So, my final issue is that there aren’t any eggs in this bread, which is a thing I guess. To be honest, I’m the opposite of anti-egg, and the only reasons I decided to use this recipe were 1) my sister raved about it (though she arguably followed the instructions, as is her general way of living) and 2) I was all out of eggs, and similarly out of ambition to walk the 2 blocks to the nearest corner store. So, you know.

Something tells me the bread is totally legit if you don’t use stale walnuts and raisins, and if you like….pay attention to what you’re doing and don’t be all incomplete about it. So do it, internet user! Plus, what it does have going for it is that it’s SUPER banana-y. You know when you make banana bread and it’s like…not banana-y enough? I feel that way a lot. Probably way too much. I feel everything a lot sometimes. Internet emoticon.

Coziest Banana Bread
from My New Roots 

¼ cup milk of your choice (almond, hemp, cow, goat, soy…)
6 Tbsp. olive oil, butter, ghee, coconut oil
6 Tbsp. maple syrup
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
2 ¼ cups mashed ripe bananas (approximately 5 medium bananas)
2 cups flour (I used equal parts light + whole spelt)
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. sea salt
1 cup chopped nuts + seeds (I used walnuts, pecans, and pumpkin seeds)
¾ cup chopped dark chocolate (1 standard 100 g bar) – optional

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Line an 8” x 8” cake pan or loaf pan with baking paper, or lightly oil and dust with flour, shaking out excess.
3. Put the milk, oil, maple syrup, vanilla, and bananas in a blender and blend until smooth.
4. In a large bowl combine dry ingredients. Add banana mixture and combine using as few stroked as possible. Fold in nuts and chocolate.
5. Pour into a cake pan and smooth the top. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean (time varies greatly according to oven – mine takes about an hour, but this recipe suggests only 30 minutes. Check periodically after the half hour mark.)

Today we are not making any bold changes, but we are exploring prosciutto from the fancy Italian deli near my apartment. I went in and asked for the most “bacon-like” meat and the guy thought I said “vegan-like meat” and he was very concerned for me as a human being. But we sorted it out and got a good chuckle out of it, and I walked out of there with some deli meats, so all was well.

The thing about it was, I was a bit let down by the prosciutto.  It just…it wasn’t bacon. Some minor experimentation with a sort of spicy red pepper sauce which was a hit. Not as much tang as ketchup, but more kick. A nice mild cheddar, a dense loaf, and we’re in business. Because I keeps it classy around here, I ate these on top of the box that my vacuum cleaner came in, which also serves as my kitchen table.

If you are concerned for me, you should remember that this means I own a vacuum cleaner, and you should just be happy about that.

Red pepper spready egg sandwich

2 eggs
2 slices dense, doughy bread
mild cheddar
roasted red pepper spread (i assume you can make some from like….roasted red peppers, red pepper flakes, oil, vinegar, salt, pepper in a food processor real quick?)
2 slices prosciutto

Fry the prosciutto in a pan until crispy. While that is happening, toast the bread in a 350 oven and add the cheese slices when the bread looks almost toasted. Fry the eggs to your liking. Remove cheesey toast from oven, spread pepper spread on bread, add prosciutto and top with the eggs. Close, eat on a cardboard box with some preciously-brewed coffee.

And yet, who am I to judge? I bet her life is kinda shitty sometimes, and maybe her husband IS mean to her (maybe he makes her listen to his music! ooh burnnnn coldplay, how’d you like that one?), and maybe all the other moms make fun of her for naming her daughter Apple and they don’t invite her to their Pinot Gris high heel bouffant-hair parties. I bet she sometimes confides in her husband that she wish she was “one of the girls,” and he tells her to keep being her and she’ll find her people. Or something. Anyway. I feel bad for the hardship I have projected onto her most-likely-charmed-life. So I read some GOOP.

Actually, this is my second GOOP recipe. The first was a bibimbap-type rice bowly thing. It was incredibly complicated. It was delicious, sure, but I know about 5 restaurants in a 15 minute radius that will hand a better version to me in under 10 minutes for under $5. These cookies, however, are from Tate’s bakeshop. Tate’s is from Long Island…technically. Tate’s is not from LONG ISLAAANNNDD. Tate’s is from Southampton, where I’m sure Madam Paltrow has some sort of be-ponied estate. Still, as an Island girl, I grew up eating Tate’s, and it’s one of those places that acts like there’s some secret recipe to their cookies. I think, from my deep analysis of this recipe, that the secret ingredient is……water.

So I feel pretty good having debunked the Tate’s cookies code. They are still not my favorite cookies ever, but I’m tired of trying to quantify favorites. I’m pretty sure no one cares (myself included) what my 3rd favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe is. (This isn’t it.) My favorite part of the recipe is when Gwenny suggests that Nestle chocolate chips “can’t be beat.” I like this moment for 2 reasons. 1: She includes the accent in Nestle. 2. She is trying SO HARD to not be snooty about this, but I have to call bullshit. (see: accent!) Also, Nestle chocolate chips are shitty, Paltrow. Come off it! I KNOW you use Valhrona or Callebaut or whatever else. I know it. Don’t get all Main Street on me now. Stick to character!

In conclusion: goop.

Tate’s Chocolate Chip Cookies
from GOOP

YIELD: About 40 cookies

2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) lightly salted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed
1 teaspoon water
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs, beaten
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (Nestlé can’t really be beat) <–ha.
Preheat the oven to 350º.

Whisk the flour, soda and salt together in a bowl. In another large bowl, mix the butter with a wooden spoon to lighten it a bit and then mix in the sugars. Add the water, vanilla and eggs to the butter mixture. Stir in the flour mixture until just combined and then fold in the chocolate chips. Using two soup spoons, drop the cookies 2″ apart onto two nonstick or greased cookie sheets. Bake for eight minutes, rotating the sheets after four minutes. Remove the cookies to a wire rack to cool, and repeat the process with the rest of the batter.

So I bought some green to go with my 3-meals-a-day-cookie-diet. I was going to make my tried and true raw kale salad, but there were so many PARTS to it. I was trying to clean and wrap presents and go on ridiculous errands, and I didn’t have time to make any casual homemade breadcrumbs or mortar and pestle any garlic cloves. So I was like , can I just fuckin…..eat this? The answer, of course, is yes…with the help of salt and olive oil. Basically the kale just becomes a conduit for salt and oil. They could be pieces of paper towel for all anyone cares.

I suppose that’s not fair. I do enjoy the taste of kale. I don’t cream my jeans about it, but it’s got some nuttiness and greenness and whatever. So I ate the whole bunch of it in the form of kale chips. All of it. All the kale. If you want, buy me a few drinks and I will tell you what happened to my poop the next day. You can actually just buy me a few drinks to NOT tell you poop stories. Which is my standard Saturday night bargaining and how I get free drinks from dudes.

Kale Chips
from the Horny Toad email newsletter (yeah………I subscribe. their fleece is booommmmbbb)

1 bunch of organic kale
olive oil
sea salt

Preheat your oven to 325°.  The secret to kale is that it responds really well to human touch, so use your hands to de-stem and tear it into chip-sized pieces.  Put the kale in a glass baking dish.  Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt.  Use your hands again to massage the kale until it’s completely coated with the salt and oil.  Think happy thoughts or hum a happy tune while you do this, and the chips will be even more delicious and special tasting. Bake them for about 15 minutes, more or less, depending on how crispy you like ‘em.

Then, my brain imploded.

Tonight I’m making a cake! Stay tuned…..

That’s a lot of things. I’m ready for a clean sheet of paper, as it were. I have scribbled the shit out of 2011′s. Like, I didn’t even pick out colors. I just overturned the crayons and went manic. But somehow my resulting drawing isn’t the worst year ever. It’s dense and soggy and there are all sorts of unsavory bits, but there’s also a lot of pieces that somehow got colored in and connected. I’m not ready to phone in my final thoughts on 2011, but I haven’t felt this decent about a year in a long ass time. Certainly not since, like, 2007. I don’t know about you, internet blog reader, but I might be starting to find some sort of comfort in the fray. Not the band The Fray. God, they’re terrible.

Since we are approaching “The Holidays,” my sister and I made some red stuff: pomegranate jelly from some donated-and-only-slightly-moldy backyard pomegranates. My sister did the grunt work of picking all the seeds out, which is super laborious and probably 100% the reason pomegranate juice is like $8 per oz. Also, it stains everything. I at least remembered to take precautions. I was wearing a white long-sleeve shirt, which I removed because–I am no dummy! Then, for further protection, I wore an apron. I started to push the pomegranate seeds through a sieve with confidence only to look down and see that I had completely sniped. There might’ve been a square centimeter of exposed fabric and that pomegranate laser beamed itself onto it. I couldn’t believe it. What a dick!

Bloodlusty pomegranates aside, this was really a beautiful jelly to make. Deep dark red, and tart! Though we started with about 10 pomegranates and ended up with about 1 pint of jelly, it was really quite beautiful and delicious. Whoever once decreed Quality Over Quantity must’ve made some pomegranate jelly in their time. That person probably also has never spent $100 on taco bell (yes. yes i have. you get SO MANY things!).

So go stain some shirts, reader. Go on a self-destructive dinner date. Cry when you read a shitty email from your ex. Pull a muscle riding up a mountain. Ruin your favorite pair of jeans mud-sliding. Let someone keep you up all night and kiss him if he doesn’t kiss you first. Bite off more than you can chew (and  just keep chewing with your eyes closed until you can swallow). I don’t have any of the answers, readers. All I know is that I made by far the most mistakes of my life this year, and somehow none of them are what I regret. Strangely enough, I ALMOST regret not making more. Well, yeah. Almost.

Pomegranate Jelly
adapted from several sources 

8 or 9 pomegranates (supposedly 5 cups of juice, though we got a measly 2. i guess our pomegranates weren’t particularly robust)
1 package pectin (6 fl oz?)
juice of one lemon
5 cups sugar (or 1:1 ratio with your juice)

Boil the juice, add the sugar and lemon juice, then the pectin. Boil for a few minutes, skim the foam, and jar.

Just in case you think Kat surrounds herself with fabulous, domesticated, modern women all the time, you’re wrong. She’s got some pretty baller friends, but we’re not all the goddesses of the kitchen that she is.  We all met back when we spent a lot of time running around in circles, eating pancakes until we were literally ill (editor’s note: seriously, we vomited), and staying out until all hours of the morning chasing boys.  Kat was the captain of these adventures.  Now we all have jobs, more degrees and apartments, and so we never do any of those things anymore… except the running and the overeating, and, well, right.  But Kat’s still our captain, and so we try to follow her lead when we can.

But we don’t bake. Some of us dabble, some of us don’t.   However, a couple weeks ago we all went to Maine (without Kat, sadly), and maybe it was the summer breeze blowing through my mom’s kitchen, maybe it was the fact that we just really missed her, maybe we all want to connect with our inner kitchen goddess.  Regardless, Steph, who is the biggest lover and critic of baked goods among us, and probably the least enthusiastic about making them herself, got herself all in a tizzy over some muffins.  See, this girl loves muffins. Loves them in a sometimes they’re the only thing in our fridge and it’s ok that all the tops are gone kind of way.  Loves them in a has several million adjectives for how chewy the innards should be.  But she’s a consumer, not a baker, and so when I got an email with the subject “we can try to make these!” I knew a little bit of crazy was in the air and we were in for an adventure.

So, after a run and a grocery trip at 8am on a Sunday, we were off. (side note- yes, all the pics include Steph. This was because 1. we didn’t anticipate blogging this, although this was admittedly very selfish of us, and 2. we needed a full documentary record that she had in fact made them. You don’t see Lydia behind the camera giving instructions, but that would really ruin the illusion for Steph’s mom, now, wouldn’t it? No one needs to mention that part. Although props to Lyd who really carried the day with her instructional support on this one.)

Steph gets the real shout-out though for her commitment to this recipe. First my mom gave her  “a muffin recipe that involves multiple steps and chilling things? Go pick some blueberries out back and whip up something simple.” I said “really, the grocery store at 8am?” Lydia just sort of shook her head. But Steph was NOT put off. That girl made crunchy pastry top with the best of ‘em.

So yeah, these muffins have lots of parts, which you can read about below. That’s not the fun part of this story. Although making them is a good time, and easier than you would think.  Just read the instructions and do it.  If Steph can, you can.  And yes, those are bubbles on the counter, which we also purchased at the grocery store.

The fun part of this story is that sometimes in life, things happen. Sometimes a weekend causes you to fall into the Atlantic with your fourth iphone in a month in your pocket and sometimes you get food poisoning and sometimes you sit in JFK for 6 hours waiting for something, anything to happen with your flight.  So how is it the best weekend ever? No idea. But it is.

And sometimes you’re about to bake muffins that you’ve worked really hard on and life decides to throw you another curveball.  We had the oven all preheated, we get the muffins in, and all of a sudden, we hear a bang.  Now- we are in Maine. It is very possible that someone just fired a rifle at a woodchuck that got into the carrots a few too many times, or someone’s uncle’s step-brothers kid was screwing around with early fireworks.  But we conferred with my shirtless neighbor holding a can of Bud in the street at 10am on a Sunday, who informed us that the power was out and the whole neighborhood was dark because a transistor blew. Ayuh.

Now, we have an electric oven.  You can put two and two together here.  So we took a towel and stopped up the vents which would let any extra heat out, didn’t open the door, and just let the muffins sit with some quickly chilling air and encouraging words.  After 30 min, they didn’t fully rise, they were a little chewy, but they were definitely edible.  Who knew you can bake without an oven? Kat, stop pretending this is hard.

Muffin

Here’s our “wow be really impressed with the finished product” picture. Yup. If you look closely, there’s a container of half-risen muffins which are mostly missing their tops. (the girls all have their tops on, whatkindofblogdoyouthinkshe’srunninghereanyway). But really, that’s not the point now, is it?  Sometimes you have to head into a baking adventure with exclamation points, be excited when it’s edible, and end up enjoying a beautiful day. Sometimes its ok that everything went wrong, because you can’t possibly be unhappy on an afternoon like this.

Kip, come back and cook for us, please.

[Editor's final note: I love these ladies]

Oatmeal Muffins
from 101 Cookbooks

Don’t use instant oats here, go for rolled oats. It’s worth noting, I used the crumble-topping from the Tutti-Frutti crumble in Super Natural Every Day - and it makes about double the crumble you’ll need for these muffins. I’m never one to complain about having extra crumble on hand – you can keep it in the freezer until the next time you want a crumble top on something. Crumble, then freeze. Also, this recipe yields a slightly awkward 1 1/2 dozen muffins. Bake all at once, or bake a one-dozen pan batch, keep the leftover batter in the refrigerator for a couple days, then bake the rest.

Crumble topping:
scant 3/4 cup / 3 oz / 85 g whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup / 1.5 oz / 45 g rolled oats
1/2 cup / 2.5 oz / 70 g natural cane or brown sugar
scant 1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1/3 cup / 2.5 oz / 70 g unsalted butter, melted

Muffin batter:
1 cup / 3.5 oz / 100 g rolled oats
3/4 cup / 3.5 oz / 100 g unbleached all purpose flour
3/4 cup / 3.5 oz / 100 g whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
scant 1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
7/8 cup / 7 oz / 200 g unsalted butter, plus more for greasing pan
1/2 cup / 2.5 oz / 70 g natural cane or brown sugar
1 1/2 cups / 12 oz / 350 ml plain yogurt
2 large eggs, whisked

Preheat oven to 350F / 180C. Butter one or two muffin pans generously. I didn’t use paper liners, and I’m glad I didn’t. Place oven racks in top third of oven.

Get your crumble topping for your muffins started first. Use a fork to combine the flour, oats, sugar, and salt in a bowl. Stir in the melted butter. Divide the mixture into three portions, and use your hands to form into three flat-ish patties. Place the patties in a bowl in the freezer for about ten minutes.

Now, onto the muffin batter. In a medium bowl combine the oats, flours, baking soda, and sea salt. Set aside.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Remove from heat and stir in the sugar. Whisk in the yogurt, and then the eggs. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry and stir just until combined. Do your best to avoid over mixing.

Pour the batter into the muffin tins, filling each 3/4 full. Pull the crumble from the freezer and break it up into small and medium pieces. Sprinkle the top of each muffin with crumble, place the muffins in the oven and bake 30 – 35 minutes or until tops are golden and a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool just a minute or so, then turn out onto a cooling rack – important!

Makes about 1 1/2 dozen muffins.

Prep time: 10 min - Cook time: 35 min

And oh how I was paid. With applewood smoked bacon and lightly sauteed chard.

Aw yiss, acme italian long. Aw yiss, cowgirl creamery aged sheepsmilk cheese with a crazy yet pleasing name (idiazabal).

Eggs over easy, buttered bread. Salt and pepper. Everything hot. Little bit o hot sauce.

Can’t claim the credit for the ingredients, but I can claim the credit for having a pretty big boner for this egg sandwich. It’s not traditional, but it’s autumnal, and different, and wonderful. Will I make this egg sandwich again? You can bet on it.   (get it? get it? get it? get it?)

Late Fall Farmer’s Market Egg Sandwich

1 long italian bread, sliced into 5-6″ sections and then halved
2 eggs
2 slices bacon, fried
1/2 bunch swiss chard, chopped
spanish sheepsmilk cheese (manchego will do nicely, but we used Idiazabal)
salt, pepper, hot sauce (cholula’s, tapatios, etc)

Heat your oven to 350 (if you want to warm the bread). Fry the bacon. Pour out almost all of the fat, but leave enough to keep the pan coated. Then use that to saute your chard leaves. Transfer to a warm bowl. Sprinkle water on your bread crust (like you’re flicking water in someone’s eyes, no more than that) and pop it in the oven for the amount of time to eggs cook. Spread a little more fat in there and cook your eggs. Remove the bread, lightly butter each side, then eggs, then salt & pepper, then cheese, then bacon, then chard. A few drops of hot sauce (or pour some on your plate and dip), and you’re golden.

I overflowed a toilet. With someone else 2 stalls down. At work. My reaction? Well, first I squealed. Then I laughed and said, shit (though it was all pee, for the record)! Then I fumbled with the lock on my stall as the toilet water rushed toward my foot. I finally freed myself, washed my hands, and casually walked out of the bathroom. I wasn’t sure what the protocol was. Do I stand there and warn others? Do I wait for the person in the stall to come out so I could be like…sorry? That wasn’t me? It was already clogged when I got there?

These are the kinds of things I always struggle with. I get basic situation-handling for the most part. But, how do you save an awkward situation like that? My instinct is to get the hell out of there and pretend nothing happened, but I’m sure that just makes it worse. Everyone is suspicious of a fleer. The good news is I’m starting a new job (again! AGAIN!!! AGAINNN!!!) in a few weeks, so at least I’m going out on some high notes. Maybe they will engrave it in a watch for me. For she’s a jolly good girl-who-got-caught-staring-at-her-boss’-crotch-followed-immediately-by-overflowing-a-toilet-and-running-away-and-not-cleaning-it-up.

And that’s just the stuff I can tell you about! I also made this bread, which I thought was pumpkin bread but WAS NOT. Definitely a gingerbread, with subtle pumpkin notes. Which is cool, and it was moist as hell, and extremely gingery and nice, but. I wanted a pumpkin bread, and this was not it. Luckily there is still a lot of FALL left, so we can try again! But I don’t want you to not try this bread because it wasn’t what I expected. It’s still incredibly delicious. Sorta like, you think you’re inviting George Clooney over but instead a pizza shows up? Like, a really good pizza?

I love pizza so much.

Ginger Molasses Pumpkin Bread
from food52

2.5 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1 egg
1 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons melted butter
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup molasses
1/2 cup buttermilk (I used kefir, it’s allllllll good)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh ginger
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon turbinado sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 9″ x 5″ loaf pan.
In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ground ginger, and nutmeg.
In another bowl, whisk together the egg, pumpkin, brown sugar, butter, vegetable oil, molasses, and buttermilk until well combined. Add the fresh ginger and vanilla extract to the wet ingredients and mix well.
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until just combined (do not overmix). Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan.
In a small bowl, mix the turbinado sugar with the remaining teaspoon of cinnamon and sprinkle over the top of the batter.Bake 40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let the bread cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.