This is mostly so I can find the recipe again. A friend of mine gave me a bag of Thai Iced Tea, which is one of my favorite beverages. I can only have one and early in the day, because I have issues with caffeine,¹ I just made it at home for the first time and it is perfect, perfect I tell you, for beating the heat.

6 cups water
1 cup Thai tea
3/4 cup sugar
6 tablespoons cream
6 tablespoons condensed milk

In a kettle, bring the water to a boil. Place the tea in a teapot or glass container. Pour the water over the tea and let steep until bright orange in color, 3 to 5 minutes. Strain into a clean container, such as a pitcher (or, if in tea bags, remove the bags). Add sugar and stir to dissolve. Let cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Fill 6 tall glasses with crushed ice and add tea to 3/4 full. Add 1 tablespoon cream and 1 tablespoon condensed milk to each glass.

1. More than a half cup of coffemakes me shake, sweat but mmmmm… so good. [↩]

Friday I had a meeting about a show I’m going to do set design for — one that does not involve any body parts at all — and then… then I had nothing on my calendar. I staggered for a bit, feeling like I had to race somewhere or do something but I didn’t.

I took the subway home, where my fabulous husband had dinner waiting. I spent some time getting work done that’s been pending at home and rediscovered the surface of my desk. It is brown and wood. Who knew?

Saturday, well, suffice to say that Saturday was lovely and is private. It has been a good six years.

Then today we rode the motorcycle up to D– and J–’s home from their son’s second birthday party. It was good seeing them both. I hadn’t seen D– since the show we’d worked on in Iceland. My heavens. Their son was still in-arms last time I saw him and he’s a tyke now. Plus! They had a puppet show there, which was performed by our mutual friend Steve Widerman, of The Puppet Company. Great seeing him.

We headed from there to Katonah to visit the L– family. They let us store Rob’s motorcycle in their garage and, as a bonus, we get to spend time visiting. Tonight I introduced them to hot toddies and may have made converts.

If you don’t know, a hot toddy is the best cold weather beverage ever invented. Unless you don’t drink, in which case I’ll argue for hot apple cider.

We just returned from those outings. Heavens. I feel like a real human being.

Edited to add, per request:

There are many variations and I make no claims that this one is The Genuine hot toddy, but it’s the one I like. Tweak to your hearts content; I like mine on the tart side, so I tend to keep the lemon juice ration high.

Oh, great internet. Please grant me a good recipe for no-bake cookies. One with peanut butter and chocolate married with oatmeal. One which does not crumble into a zillion pieces when I try to eat it.

As I mentioned, Rob and I went to the farmer’s market yesterday and picked up some mushrooms. Then, today, in a splendiferous surprise, our plaster repair man came by and gave us a quart bag of morels. It seems that he always picks a freezer full of them when he goes on his vacation. He’d said he would bring me some, but I didn’t expect this many.

So tonight, I am making the Wild Mushroom Risotto Recipe at Epicurious.com.
ingredients
3 14 1/2-ounce cans vegetable broth

3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 shallots, chopped
1 pound assorted wild mushrooms (such as oyster, crimini and stemmed shiitake), sliced
1 cup arborio rice* or medium-grain rice
1/2 cup dry Sherry
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (about 2 ounces)
3/4 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
preparation
Bring vegetable broth to simmer in medium saucepan. Reduce heat to low; cover and keep broth hot.

Melt 3 tablespoons butter with olive oil in heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add chopped shallots; sauté 1 minute. Add wild mushrooms; cook until mushrooms are tender and juices are released, about 8 minutes. Add rice and stir to coat. Add Sherry and simmer until liquid is absorbed, stirring frequently, about 8 minutes. Increase heat to medium-high. Add 3/4 cup hot vegetable broth and simmer until absorbed, stirring frequently. Add remaining hot vegetable broth 3/4 cup at a time, allowing broth to be absorbed before adding more and stirring frequently until rice is just tender and mixture is creamy, about 20 minutes. Stir in Parmesan cheese and chopped fresh thyme. Serve warm.

*Arborio, an Italian short-grain rice, is available at Italian markets and at many supermarkets nationwide.

Today was mostly spent tidying and sending things away. Folks from various corners of Portland came and picked up various things, slowly creating more space in the house.

I also made snowcream tonight with the snow I saved in the freezer. Snowcream, for those of you who didn’t grow up with it, consists of a bowl of snow, evaporated milk, sugar and vanilla. When I called Dad to ask him for the recipe, he said that you just mix those things together until it tastes right.

sigh

So that’s what I did. Mmmm… snow cream. Rob was not impressed, but I think Christina appreciated it. I grew up thinking that everyone made snow cream, then thinking that it was a Southern thing. And now I’m beginning to suspect that it’s a very localized thing. Like, maybe just Tennessee. Have you ever had it?

While searching for a perfect pirate beverage for World Fantasy, I stumbled upon CocktailDB, which is a beautifully laid out website. Rob and I have lots and lots of liquers in our cabinet from when all the puppeteers left the country. Everyone cleaned out their cabinets and dropped the supplies off with us. So, tonight I plugged in three of the ingredients from our cabinet and the database recommended a Menlo Club Cocktail. It’s very citrusy and not one I think I’ll order again although I imagine that it would be lovely on a hot summer night. I’m sipping it very, very slowly because it’s also quite potent.

I’ve had time to cook lately, which has been a nice change of pace. Last night I made a Espresso Black Bean Chili that I’d discovered when I was staying with my folks at Woodthrush Woods. I really like this recipe, although I cut it in half and still have more chili than makes sense.

I froze some of it and stuck it in the freezer. The challenge there is that three large haddock now fill our freezer. Right before Julie headed out of town, she popped in and dropped these off. The gang had gone fishing with Tóti and caught ridiculous numbers of haddock. These are not small fish and, although they’ve been cleaned, they are whole fish and take up a lot of space in our tiny freezer. It was not easy to fit everything in, so the bags of frozen chili are nestled between the fish.

Meanwhile, the pot in which I’ve cooked the chili is carbon black on the bottom. I don’t know what it is about this particular pot, but everything that I’ve made in it chars. It’s really frustrating. I had to scrape the bottom of the pot, trying to release the crust. I alternated between letting it soak, while I did other dishes, and scraping it. As I turned from tossing some of the scrapings in the trash, I whacked into the cabinet door–left open from the other dishes.

I broke the skin, but not badly. It lines up nicely with the wrinkles on my forehead, so I don’t think it will leave a mark. Still, it seemed like a good idea to put an icepack on it. Except that it was behind the haddock. As I held the first of the frozen fish in my hand, I briefly considered just putting it on my forehead and lying down.

Rob came in and found me about then and took over the dishes, including the pot of carbon. So, I guess that the frozen haddock did relieve me of one my headaches.

Sarah, Jonathan, Emily, Jodi, Sam and their friend Amelia came for dinner tonight. It was so nice to do some serious cooking, which I haven’t done enough of lately.

Menu

Cabbage and Apple Soup
Orange, Cranberry and Spice Walnuts on a bed of Spinach
Mushroom Risotto served with Sesame Broccolli
Daim Icecream

I made this for dinner tonight. It was easy and tasty.

MISO-GLAZED EGGPLANT Recipe at Epicurious.com
Active time: 15 min Start to finish: 25 min

6 tablespoons shiro miso* (white fermented soybean paste)
3 tablespoons rice vinegar (not seasoned)
1 1/2 tablespoons water
3 3/4 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon finely grated peeled fresh ginger
2 tablespoons vegetable oil plus additional for brushing pan
6 Asian eggplants(about 8 inches), halved lengthwise
2 scallions, finely chopped

Preheat broiler.

Whisk together shiro miso, vinegar, water, sugar, and ginger until sugar is dissolved.

Brush a large shallow baking pan with oil and arrange eggplant, cut sides up, in pan. Brush tops with 2 tablespoons oil (total). Broil eggplant 4 to 6 inches from heat until it begins to turn pale golden and soften, 4 to 5 minutes. Brush generously with miso mixture and broil 2 minutes more. Brush eggplant with miso again and rotate pan 180 degrees (do not turn eggplant over), then continue to broil until eggplant is tender and glaze is golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes. Serve sprinkled with scallions.

Note: I used a regular eggplant cut into eighths and only half the miso glaze.

We climbed part way up Esja today. On the way back down, Steve saw a side path and said, “Why don’t we go back down that way?”

“Okay. But you know it’ll hit a point where it goes straight down,” I said.

Steve got a wicked grin and said, “Great.”

So down we went. At a certain point, Steve was ahead of me and stopped. The path, in fact, the ground in front of him had disappeared. “Hey, Mary. Guess what?”

“What?”

“It goes straight down.” And then my brother vanished over the edge.

I followed him, leaning back on my heels and trying to stay on the vegetation instead of the sheer gravel slide that the path had become. The thing is that I’d always thought of Steve as a sporty sort of guy, but not as particularly outdoorsy. I’m wrong. Who knew?

We had to cut the hike short because Tóti from work came over for dinner. I made ratatouile with goat cheese and pesto vinaigrette and served that with greens and the leftover potato salad. We had daim ice cream for dessert.

Last night, while waiting for a recipe to chill, I amused myself by helping out John Joseph Adams with his headshots. As a joke, I also created a tribute which he has on his blog, The Slush God Speaketh: New Photos.

Some people knit for a passtime, I photoshop.

This is one of Grandma’s recipes. I’m putting together recipe cards as party favors for her 101st birthday party this weekend. We’re having it at her house–yes, my grandmother lives by herself and she can still thread a needle. She’s pretty remarkable.

This is one of my favorites at Christmas. They’re like miniature pecan pies.

Teatime Tassies
1 - 3oz. Cream cheese
1/2 cup butter or margerine
1 cup sifted flour
1 egg
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon butter
Dash of salt
2/3 cup broken pecans

Let cream cheese and butter soften to room temperature. Blend and stir in flour. Chill slightly until firm. About 1 hour. Shape 2 dozen 1 inch balls. Place in tiny ungreased muffin cups. Press dough on bottom and sides of cups. Divide half the pecans among pastry lined cups.
Beat together remaining ingredients until smooth. Add to pastry cups and top with remaining pecans. Bake in slow oven 325 for 25 minutes or until filling is set.

Tonight I made this recipe for red-wine spaghetti with broccoli that I found at Epicurious.com. You actually boil the pasta in the red-wine. It was very good and quite light. I also made the salad dressing from this salad, and liked it quite a bit.

For those of you who received ginger syrup from us this year and were wondering what to do with it. We’ve recently discovered that it’s a lovely addition to gin and tonics. Since I don’t want anyone to feel left out, here’s a recipe for your own gingered gin and tonics.

Once you have the ginger simple syrup, may I also recommend it in lemonade.

Tonight, for a simple meal I made a split-pea soup with carmelized onions and cumin. I have to say, that I really liked this recipe. Split-pea soup is one of those things which doesn’t translate well to a vegitarian version, because it seems to need the addition of ham in some form. This didn’t.