In a pickle

I've always wanted to learn how to make pickles. I had heard it was easy, but I was always a little wary, due in no small part to a very memorable episode of The Andy Griffith Show. I figured summer vacation would provide me with enough chances to practice, so I took the pickle plunge a couple weeks ago.

Before:
After:

I don't have any idea how Aunt Bee managed to turn her cucumbers into kerosene-flavored catastrophes. I do know, however, that I'm still not entering my tasty creations in any county fairs any time soon.

Baking (and eating) bread

Most weekends, my wonderful husband bakes the bread that we eat throughout the upcoming week. He kneads it by hand, tries all sorts of different recipes and even buys special grains from a little organic market down the road. To quote one of my nuns: "Wow. Where did you find him?"

Last weekend, Matt had a bit of help baking tasting his bread. Really, we shouldn't be surprised anymore when Barley counter surfs and eats goodies that we leave out, especially after the way he was eyeing the most recent delectable temptation last night:

Sweet success!

I baked a cheesecake about this time last year, and it's taken me that long to try to bake another one. My maternal grandmother is from New York, and her aunt (my mom's great aunt and my great-great aunt) had a cheesecake recipe that has been passed from generation to generation. I first attempted to bake the famous "Lapp Family Cheesecake" twice in as many days last fall.

The first time I tried it, I had the oven set 100 degrees warmer than it should have been. I blamed that on the old, practically illegible recipe card my mom had. The second attempt a day later, however, was even more painfully unsuccessful, mostly because I had only myself to blame. I used the wrong Kitchenaid attachment, and I ended up with so much air in my batter that the cake puffed up in the oven to the point that it overflowed the sides of the pan. I also used a springform pan that was too small, so an already precarious kitchen situation became an outright kitchen disaster. But it didn't end there.

Instead of scooping up all the bits of cheesecake that had landed on the bottom of the oven (and hardened, thanks to the "cook it for an hour and a half and leave the door closed and don't you dare open it for anything!" rule), I decided to turn the oven to "clean" the next day. I don't know if I thought that a self-cleaning oven actually scraped the chunks of stuff from the oven, or if I just didn't want to know. Either way, when I locked the door and set the oven to "clean," all those bits of greasy cheesecake went up like a bunch of Roman candles. Smoke was shooting out the back of the oven, Barley was barking at the stove, and at some point, there was a rather large explosion. I turned the oven off and tried to open the door to air it out, forgetting that the oven door locks for quite some time after being set to "clean." I opened windows and brought in auxiliary fans, but the smoke was too much. I took Barley to the basement, but it was still too strong. My eyes were burning and he was rolling around on the carpet, rubbing his face. So we went outside, where I contemplated whether to wait it out or call the fire department to bust into my oven and put out what was, in my imagination, a raging inferno of cheesecake. Ultimately, we waited it out, sitting on the front step and chatting with curious neighbors until the fire in the kitchen went out.

As easy as it is to laugh about it now, last year's disaster was more than just a culinary failure. This recipe was something I should have been born knowing how to make! I think it took me a year to try again not so much because I nearly burned down our house, but because I was failing a long line of Lapp women. I must've channeled them better last night, because the end product came out beautifully (as evidenced by the fact that half of it is now gone, though Barley played a hand/paw in that one):


Oh, what sweet, delicious success!