Double Chocolate Pecan Cookies

Sense of Home Kitchen

Here is a recipe to satisfy your inner chocoholic.  Chocolate on chocolate with a hint of cayenne pepper to enhance the chocolate.  Cayenne (red) pepper and chocolate compliment each other as does the salty/sweet or sweet/sour combinations.  The red pepper tones down the bitterness of chocolate and the chocolate cuts the heat from the cayenne spice.  I personally like to use 1/2 teaspoon cayenne so I can taste and feel a little heat, but I have made them both ways depending on with whom I will be sharing the cookies.  With temperatures heading below 0°F I can use the extra heat.

Roasted Garlic, Onion and Red Bell Pepper Dip

Sense of Home Kitchen

I keep my life on a desk calendar.  I write down on each block of space what I need to do for that day, appointments, tasks, you get the picture.  Some things I record after the fact, unplanned things, maybe just a phone call I made and what it was in reference to, in this way I keep track of time passing.  I keep my calendars from years past, they are somewhat like a diary.  The other day I was doing some cleaning and came across several calendars.  Looking back I can't believe how my life has changed in the past year and a half, improved really.  I enjoyed my job as Assistant Director / Children's Librarian at our local public library for twenty years, but quitting has really simplified my life. Every day of my calendar was packed to the gills; meetings (we were in the beginning stages of a building project, there were a lot of meetings that ran into the evening), programs, conferences, both local and national (some of which I had to speak at), and then of course the daily tasks.  And on top of all that I had a personal life too!  Towards the end I had a stomach ache nearly everyday trying to keep up with it all.

Rhubarb Clafoutis

Sense of Home Kitchen

Do you ever feel like you may be repeating yourself?  Sometimes I feel that I have said all I have to say here, perhaps several times over, other times I feel like I have only begun.  I started this website just over 3 years ago with random thoughts about homemade living; things like recycling, natural homemade products, and a few recipes.  Over time I began to realize I wanted to focus on cooking, my first love, the one I always come back to no matter how far I stray. I lead a very busy life and really have no business adding one more thing to it...and yet.. and yet I am drawn back into the kitchen to cook, photograph, and write about recipes that I have created or adapted.  This is my creative outlet, and whether anyone reads along with me or not I plan to continue sharing recipes and thoughts on food on into 2013. Though I do hope you will continue the journey with me, it's more fun that way.

Fish Cakes with Caper Lemon Mayonnaise

Sense of Home Kitchen

I like small spaces.  Not crowded, claustrophobic spaces, just small, clean, cozy spaces, I like to be able to see the walls and corners around me (I know, sounds weird).  One of my favorite rooms in my house (besides the kitchen) is a 9' x 9' room I call the library.  One of the walls is covered with floor to ceiling bookshelves full of books, though not as many as it once held, I sold about 100 of my books this past summer in an effort to clean out some of our "stuff", I have picked up a few more since then, so I'm not sure reducing books will work for me.  Another wall has a good sized window that comes down to the top of my desk, that is where I am sitting now, drinking coffee and eating a slice of clafoutis that I am not all together satisfied with, I think I will try using Julia Child's recipe as a base in my next attempt.  My cat and I love the distraction of the window, I stop and look out at the frost covered trees and wonder if the two inches of forecast snow will come, who knows what my cat is thinking about, probably "what happened to the birds I used to watch".  A third wall houses a comfortable reading chair, floor lamp, and an end table with a 6 drawer library card catalog that I have refashioned to house jewelry in five of the drawers and a collection of bookmarks from my travels near and far in one drawer.  See why this is a favorite room, it is the perfect space for reading, research, studying, and writing, all things I enjoy.

Pears Poached in Mulled Wine

Sense of Home Kitchen

When my husband was a young child he ate fresh pears like candy.  In fact, he ate so many pears that to this day he cannot eat another pear.  He has tried, he even took a bite of one of these poached pears, but as he says, "they still taste like pears", I consider that a good thing, I can't imagine not liking pears.  My favorite way to eat them is sliced fresh with a thin slice of fresh Parmesan cheese on top.  These poached pears just melt in your mouth and the mulled wine adds a light spiced flavor.

Florentine Egg Bake

Sense of Home Kitchen

4am.  That is the time that I wake up every morning.  Not on purpose, mind you, that is just when I wake up.  I don't get up, I don't want to wake my husband or the cat whose head is on my upper arm, near my shoulder.  My mind just starts working at that time of day, sometimes I can shut it off and go back to sleep, sometimes I can't.  I reanalyze things from the previous day or week, not that I always agree with my thoughts later.  My mind also begins ticking off a list of things I would like to accomplish during the day, way more than is reasonably possible. Remember how mom always said, "do not bite off more than you can chew", I applied that well to literal food, I generally don't take more than I can eat, but I can't seem to apply that same principle to projects or tasks.  I always think I can do more than I have energy or time for, which only leads to frustration.  There is a reason for my 4am internal alarm.

Whole Wheat Gingerbread Pancakes

Sense of Home Kitchen

Breakfast may simply be my favorite meal of the day.  Not necessarily the cooking or preparation of breakfast, after all it usually does not include chopping, sautéing, or a glass of wine, but the fact that the whole day stretches before me and if I linger a few minutes with my cup of coffee and something semi-sweet, like Blueberry Coconut Baked Steel Cut Oats, I can imagine that I have time to accomplish all I need to without hurrying whatsoever.  That dream lasts only as long as my cup of coffee and Wild Rice Porridge, but it is a good one.

Caramel Apple Upside-Down Cake

Sense of Home Kitchen

I read this New York Times article today and was interested to see that the "canning movement" has reached restaurants.  This summer while on a motorcycle day trip we ate at the Pickle Factory, a little restaurant in the woods.  They not only serve food but have a cellar full of canned goods you can purchase to take home.  I resisted getting carried away thanks to the small amount we could actually carry on the motorcycle and the realization that I too can and had canned some of these very foods and had them already waiting for me in my pantry.  I agree with chef Gjerde quoted in the article, I go through the trouble of canning my own food because it tastes better, it is as simple as that.

Mustard-Crusted Pork Tenderloin

Sense of Home Kitchen

As the gray days of November wore on I found myself more often than not curled up with a good book.  For me lack of sunshine means lack of energy, recently at a coffee shop I ran into an acquaintance who said she was "solar-powered", she pretty much summed up my feelings.  To escape the dull gray days I did some arm chair traveling.  I have been to Botswana while reading a couple of the books in Alexander McCall Smith's "Ladies' Detective Agency" series, I was just starting to think a trip to Africa would be just the cure for cold dreary days when a cobra made an appearance in the plot, hmm, maybe not Botswana.  Then I was off to Paris while I enjoyed Cara Black's "Aimée Leduc Investigation" series, yes I would definitely like to see Paris.

I was really starting to enjoy these foreign settings so I moved on to some non-fiction books about foreign places, "Getting Stoned with Savages" by J. Maarten Troost is about his and his wife's move to the Vanuatu Islands in the South Pacific, the author provides a truly hilarious description of an adventurous location, keep a dictionary handy though, I am convinced the author delights in using the more obscure words from his thesaurus.  I was definitely starting to think living in the south seas would be so much better than the below freezing we were currently experiencing when the author launched into his description of the foot long poisonous centipedes, the spiders the size of his hand, and the poisonous snakes in their neighborhood, um, no, I think I won't be moving there anytime soon.