Mon petit chou

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.



Vanilla and local Texas honey form a rich pastry cream center for the choux. The glaze is lime-sugar hard caramel topped with local Texas bee pollen granules.


Please bring me some bees mes choux...

Shipe Park Pleasantries

My front porch, covered in pots and buckets of various sizes, appears as a miniature Eden. My new red plastic adirondacks offer a quiet repose luring me away from homework and paper writing. Eleanor is now allowed out of doors and into the jungle that is our little parking lot. She gets lost in the beggar's lice weeds and the tall wild rye...cat treats will soon fail to bring her back.

But there across the street in quaint Shipe park is a little bubbling creek, well not quite bubbling, perhaps more like lowing, but a flow of water none the less. Along this creek bed grow dozens of spindly trees with leaves similar those found on grape vines. Beneath these palm size greens hide bundles of tiny berries...yet no one seems to know that they are edible. So they remain.



Until I found them. 4 or 5 pints later, my freezer and fridge are packed with fresh mulberries, ripened in the Texas sun. The ground is so slick with fallen mulberries my feet and sandals stain purple as if I were stomping grapes into wine. Cautiously tiptoeing to reach the higher branches, the sides of the creek slope ever so slightly downward and the berry sludge make things slippery.



At least a dozen more pints remain on the trees, almost ripe, too high to reach, or still barely green. I've weeks left to sneak back cupfuls of these native treasures...

Anyone for mulberry muffins, pancakes, syrup, bread, oatmeal, macarons?

Slow Money Austin April Event

This is an amazing event that every foodie, farmer, and even friends of those previously mentioned groups should attend. My lovely housemate works at Barr Mansion and is proud to be part of one the only organic venues in the nation. Please help out your plate, your community, and the environment by attending or donating to this event. Read below for a full schedule of events and information for registration.




Former Odwalla & Sweet Leaf Tea CEOs Join Visionary Investors & Fellow Food Entrepreneurs to Talk Slow Money, April 21 & April 22

Slow Money Austin Sets Table with City Hall Showcase and Barr Mansion Dinner featuring Dai Due Supper Club

Local and Organic Foods also on Menu at Malverde Happy Hour, Upstairs from La Condesa

Austin, TX- April 12, 2010- This April, companion events redefine the value of a healthy Central Texas food system, and reassess the role risk capital plays in fueling its growth. Joining the conversation are leading investors, entrepreneurs and regional sustainable food advocates, including:

-Woody Tasch, Chairman Emeritus of Investors' Circle, author of Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money and Founder of the national Slow Money Alliance

- Greg Steltenpohl, Founder and former CEO of Odwalla, and Co-Founder of Adina for Life

-Clayton Christoperh, Founder and former CEO of Sweet Leaf Tea

-Sarita Role Schaffer, Director, GrowFood.org

-Craig Wichner, Managing Director, Farmland LP

-Jenny Brown, Administrator, Whole Foods Market's Local Producer Loan Program

-Ronda Rutledge, Executive Director, Sustainable Food Center

-Scott Collier, Managing Director, Triton Ventures

-Mason Arnold, President, Greenling.com

-Margo Weisz, Executive Director, People Fund

-Marla Camp, Publisher, Edible Austin

The April 21 Slow Money Austin Showcase, held in partnership with the Sustainable Food Center and the City of Austin, provides an afternoon-long program laying out the players, the issues and the opportunities involved in a healthy food system. With the event, Slow Money Austin brings together consumers, food businesses, civic leaders and investors to learn about the regional food chain, and explore funding alternatives essential to the continued growth of the regional food economy. Specific program highlights include:

-The current status and future of a sustainable Central Texas food system
-"Farm to Table to Farm" Showcase of regional food enterprises
- Delivering Slow Money to Austin

Attendees of the April 21 City Hall event will receive a gift bag featuring local fare from Better Bites of Austin's food purveyors, and are invited to attend the Slow Money Austin Happy Hour immediately following. Co-hosted by La Condesa, this networking event, held directly upstairs as Malverde, will showcase local ingredients as fashioned by Texas born, nationally esteemed Executive Chef Rene Ortiz.

The following day, April 22, Slow Money Austin and nationally recognized Barr Mansion host a special Earth Day dinner prepared by the Dai Due Supper Club.

The dinner program combines a delectable exploration of the diverse, sustainably grown riches Central Texas has to offer with a continued dialog about funding growth in our region. In addition to a keynote presentation by Odwalla and Adina for Life founder Greg Steltenpohl, program highlights include:

-a special meet and greet dinner with local food and beverage artisans
-a first-hand perspective on the challenges and opportunities in running all-organic operations
-brief presentations by emerging local food enterprises seeking investor capital

At both events, made possible by underwriting sponsors Whole Foods Market and Barr Mansion, local food entrepreneurs embracing organic methods and focused on sustainability will discuss challenges and capital needs, suggesting myriad opportunities for investment and expansion. Presenters include food and beverage producers, distributors, restaurants, service providers and support businesses.

In addition to underwriters Whole Foods Markets and Barr Mansion, Slow Money Austin thanks sponsors:
Austin Ventures, Greenling, La Condesa, White Mountain Foods, Casa Brasil, Coyote Creek Farm, Dai Due Supper Club, Eastside Cafe, Daily Juice, Kiimy, Skematik, and the LBJ School of Public Affairs' RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service.

Complete event information is online at the Slow Money Austin website.

March Daring Bakers Challenge: Grapefruit Tian

In Texas, though oranges are abundantly available, we prefer our own Ruby Red grapefruits from the Rio Grande Valley. This dessert French dessert has now been revamped Texas style (minus the big hair; although it might have an accent). What inspired my citrus swap was a) the large yellow mesh bag of pink globes recently purchased on my return trip to the Valley and b) the French's historic obsession with all things Texan. While grapefruits are not strictly Texan, nor American for that matter, they represent something to us as a State: Our grapefruits are the biggest!

The French language even has a word for grapefruit: pamplemousse. Though they don't have a word for jalapeno or taco. So of course I don't mean to be inventing the wheel of cheese here.

An excerpt from my American Food History class:

"Tacos benefited from a French infatuation with all things Texan in the late 1980's. The Tex-Mex historian Robb Walsh attributes this fad to Jean-Jacques Beineix's hugely popular film Betty Blue(1986), about a mentally unbalanced woman and her tquila-swigging, chili-con-carne cooking lover, Zorg. When the film premiered, a struggling Tex-Mex restaurant called Le Studio, in the Marais neighborhood of Paris became an overnight success and spawned a dozen imitators. " -Jeffrey M. Pilcher "Eating Mexican in a Global Age"

Now the thoughts of crepes shaped in the infamous "U" filled with chunks of brie and filet de boeuf and herbes de provence instead of chili spices. Doesn't sound too bad, non?

The 2010 March Daring Baker’s challenge was hosted by Jennifer of Chocolate Shavings. She chose Orange Tian as the challenge for this month, a dessert based on a recipe from Alain Ducasse’s Cooking School in Paris.

February Daring Baker Challenge: Tiramisu

BLOG-CHECKING LINES: The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

Here is my more cake-like version of the tiramisu challenge. I guess I should have used the entire pot of coffee instead of drinking it. Oh well.

Foodzie Winner Receives Food

This morning the jolly FedEx man rang my doorbell with four little boxes in hand. I quickly signed for them and dashed up stairs to open the packages with the boyfriend and Eleanor.

This is what I've received thus far:


A sweet shortbread cookie selection from Saralyn's Shortbread in Deluth, Georgia.


Chewy Mexican Chocolate Caramels from Petite Bouchée in LA, California. But these are for Fey so I can't tell you how they taste...yet.


Flavoured Sugars ranging from Curry to Spiced Gold from Didi Davis Artisan Food in Ipswich, Massachusetts.




And Homemade "Oreos" from Elsylee Galetes Artesanals in Miami, Florida. Each cookie she makes is named after a city or place and some are combined into various collections. I purchased a few "New York"s and she sent me a sample of Morton Pumpkinsnaps.

Oh, Happy Day!

Blues Song for Blue Baker

Perhaps this will get me a life time of free BlueBaker cookies...I doubt it though.

A Blues song for Blue Baker (think of me soulfully singing with a guitar on my lap and a fedora on my knee…maybe throw a harmonic in there too

I have the blues before sunrise,
waiting in line for an everything bagel with cream cheese.
I have the blues before sunrise,
adoring the array of baked pastries, oh may I have a Nutty Muddy Water latte, please.
It was a wonderful feeling,
Now babe, a feeling I do despise.

I have to leave, leave you baby,
But I’ll be back before noon.
I have to leave you baby,
I’m coming back for my Quattro Formaggio Wood-fired pizza real, real soon.
I’m gonna pack up and leave you darling
but make sure no one sits in my favourite booth. Ahh…yea…baby.

I have to leave, leave you baby,
But there is still dinner
I’m gonna leave you baby,
perhaps I’ll have a Caesar salad or a soup with bread bowl-owl-owl.
I’m gonna pack up and leave you darling
But you know I don’t wanna go…cause today is rosemary kalamata olive bread day baby, ahhh yea.

Well now goodbye, goodbye baby,
I’ll see when I’m home from college one weekend soon.
Well now goodbye baby,
I still expect there to be no one sitting in my favourite booth, cause you know I’ll kick ‘em out, ahh bluesy baby.
You can go ahead now little darling,
Keep on making those daily breads of yours, shiner bock beer bread and jalapeno cheese too, but for now… I’ll just take my cinnamon roll for the rooooooaaaaad.

Adapted from Leroy Carr
For the complete adoration for my local bakery called Blue Baker in College Station, Texas.

Look for the full story and the wonderful world of Foodzie on their blog.
They claimed me a winner for this little diddy and my smokin' mug. Hello carrot cake caramels!