Under a Blue Moon

Dulce de leche

Dulce de leche or Confiture de lait if you want the French version. It's the same thing – essentially milk and sugar that has been caramelized. It is heavenly.

I did the easy method which is to just boil the heck out of a can of condensed milk. Alton Brown has a recipe for it or – if you want a really easy way – go to a hispanic market and I'm sure you can buy it ready made.

I have always been afraid to make it because the explosion risk. There is the danger of the can exploding and spraying molten caramel sauce all over your kitchen. It's actually happened to my cousin. Fortunately she wasn't in the room at the time – but the mess was horrendous.

The dangerous way is to buy a can of sweetened condensed milk, remove the label and completely submerge it in a pan of water. Bring to a low boil and cook for three hours. The important part is that you have to make sure the can stays completely covered with water the entire time. You have to be diligent about watching it and adding more water as needed. If you are lax about it and the water level goes below the top of the can the pressure inside the can could possibly cause the lid to blow off.

I found a less risky method which is to just poke a couple of holes in the top of the can with an ice pick and don't completely submerge it in water. Just get the water level as high as you can without it covering the top. You still have to add water during the cooking process but at least it won't blow up on you if you forget.

I like to spread it on toast (or pound cake like the picture above) but you can also use it on ice cream. Or as a filling between the layers of a cake.

The reason I bought condensed milk in the first place was because I found a recipe for a pound cake that called for it. I figured I'd buy an extra can and try making dulce de leche.

The pound cake was a disaster. I should have trusted my instincts when I read the recipe that it seemed to require a rather large ratio of butter to the other ingredients. It was so greasy it was like eating a pat of butter. Baked goods go pretty quickly at our house and that pound cake is still languishing under the cake dome.

I got right back on the baking horse and made another batch of biscotti. I made two smaller loaves rather than the big one I made last time and I'm packaging up half of it to take to my Mother in law tomorrow. I have to remember this next Christmas. I can see a cute gift basket of coffee beans, a couple of mugs and a batch of biscotti.

Friday’s Favorites

Flickr Favorites

(Can you tell what's on my mind? Ha!)

I love looking at Japanese/Retro fabrics. Retro Mommy is an Australian site (that ships worldwide!) that is just delicious.
Gah! Marie Antoinette inspired stationery. Get your order in before Valentine's Day!
Gorgeous (new to me), blog – fabulous photos: Morning Light in my Room
I find wedding blogs and sites to be great inspiration. Like these beautifully wrapped presents.
I love the vintage section of Etsy. You never know what treasure you are going to find. Like these vintage Swarovski rhinestone earrings.

A Valentine to my house

An interesting thing happened last week. As I casually mentioned, we met with a realtor last Friday to discuss the possibility of putting our house on the market. It has long been our dream to move away from here and settle closer to the ocean and closer to our family.

I mentally moved out a year or two ago.

When we moved here the house was a solid, 70's ranch. With all the harvest gold and avocado that conjures up that era. We immediately started work on renovating the house to our liking. We took out the sparkly popcorn ceilings. We redid both bathrooms. I personally removed acres of wallpaper. We redid the floors – twice. We added architectural details like crown molding and fancy fireplace mantels. Gutted the kitchen of its dark brown cupboards and dark brown appliances.

We replaced all the interior doors and the light fixtures. We painted. We gardened. We made it ours. And, if I do say so myself, we made it lovely.

Because I mentally moved on to our little house by the ocean I fell out of love with it.

Last Friday we met with a nice realtor who came armed with statistics and charts and comps and a lot of brutal honesty. She agreed we had done some beautiful things here and it was market-ready. But the market, as we all know, is not ready for us. House prices are about the same as they were when moved here nine years ago. And after all the money we have poured into the place and the prices of the homes in the area we are interested in moving to, it just isn't financially reasonable to sell right now.

And probably won't be for three, five, maybe even ten years.

As the realtor was talking, and the news was way worse than we had expected, we slowly had the dawning realization that our dreams of moving any time soon were not going to happen.

Then the interesting thing happened. Instead of being crushed I felt myself having a renewed appreciation for our poor, cast aside home. I felt myself moving back in.

There are certain things I was envisioning for our imaginary house by the ocean. A combination office/studio for myself. A workshop for Rick. A proper garden. Chickens.

No reason we can't keep dreaming of those things. I've been happily tromping around outside, picturing exactly where my picket fenced vegetable garden will go. How big the chicken coop should be. When I should plant a Cecile Brunner on my trellis (something I've been meaning to do for nine years now).

Sweet, old patient house. It probably knew I would come back to it.

Something is afoot…

I sense some Valentine Day craftiness. I just went to Michael's and started plopping things in my basket with no real plan. The only thing on my list were the paper mache heart-shaped boxes.

Stay tuned….

Monday’s Musings

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