Pippin has strong feelings about his catnip…
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Cynthia McKenna is a therapist in private practice in the Texas Hill Country. She's passionate about helping clients find peace in their lives. She can often be found in the garden, kitchen, or hanging out with the dogs and cats. You can learn more about her work here.
Posted in Gardening, Organic Gardening
Tagged cat nip, catnip, Cynthia McKenna, garden, garden blog, pippin, psychotherapist, therapist
I bought some sodium free bouillon because I thought needed it for some soup I was making.
Just read the ingredients
sugar, potassium chloride, onion powder, maltodextrin, monoammonium glutamate, gelatin, dextrose, chicken fat, turmeric color, dehydrated parsley flavoring, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate, silicon dioxide,
Finding it tough to find the right words for how much I don’t want this chemistry project in my soup or in my body. If I were home, I’d use the homemade stock I keep in the freezer. This “stuff” is going in the trash.
Want to make your own stock? Scrape up those tasty pan drippings after you roast a chicken or other piece of meat, and freeze it. Then you can cut off little bits to add to soups, beans, etc. Or you can use your crock pot and add vegetables and the meat of your choice and let it simmer while you are at work. I generally use: onion, garlic, celery, carrot, tomatoes, plus chicken or turkey.
Did I mention how grossed out I am about this stuff?
Cynthia
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Cynthia McKenna is a psychotherapist
specializing in anxiety, depression and healthy living. You can learn
more about her work here.
Posted in Counseling
Tagged bouillon, chemical, chicken fat, cooking, Cynthia McKenna, dehydrated parsley flavoring, dextrose, disodium inosinate and disodium guanylate, garden blog, garden gate blog, gardening, gelatin, maltodextrin, monoammonium glutamate, onion powder, potassium chloride, silicon dioxide, sugar, turmeric color
These look like croissants.
I bet it's because I played Carla Bruni's Comme si de rien n'etait while I rolled out the dough.
Fingers crossed!
Cynthia
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Cynthia McKenna – making Croissants from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking
A friend sent this to me, and it is worth watching. Mark Bittman talks about how our food has become industrialized. Its a good reminder to eat local as much as possible.
http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf
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Cynthia
Posted in Gardening
Tagged Cynthia McKenna, eat local, garden blog, garden gate blog, mark bittman
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/10032373001?isVid=1&publisherID=1612833736
Great video about the White House Garden. I love seeing gardens make a difference. I was pretty interested in this project when it started and I am glad to see the process and some of the harvest. The White House Garden is an organic garden, and a teaching garden – hard to ask for more than that.
I'm going to start my fall garden this weekend – about a month late thanks to our 100 degree temperatures. We should still be able to get some beans and lettuces since they grow so fast. I'll probably buy broccoli plants though, and who knows what else. First I need to make some space…
Cynthia
I just learned that Sheila Lukens, co-author of The Silver Palate cookbook, died yesterday.
Here is the obituary from the New York Times.
When I was in seminary, we were required to take a short course in January – between the main fall and spring terms. The class doesn't jump out in my mind, but it was taught by Dusty McDonald, Dean of the Seminary of the Southwest, and I remember him recommending to us that we find something we enjoyed to add to our busy lives.
Dusty said that he had purchased The Silver Palate cookbook years before, and had (or was) cooking his way through the cookbook. This was before Julie & Julia – and it seemed to me that finding a good cookbook, and making things from it regularly was a really good idea.
I bought The Silver Palate and started cooking. I think the first thing I made was the potato cheese soup (page 60). I've made that recipe so many times that the book binding is broken.
I have so many cookbooks that are barely used, but The Silver Palate had been a great help to me, and given me and the guests at my table, many, many good meals.
Thank you Sheila Lukens & Julee Rosso. Thanks to you too, Dusty, for the good recommendation.
Cynthia
The croissants are great. I learned a lot and really can't wait to make another batch so I can correct a few mistakes.
I found the "rolling out into the actual croissant shape" part of the recipe to be confusing. In hindsight, I think I rolled wrong and that is why it was such a chore. It took me 45 minutes to roll out 12 croissants – I did roll two of them differently and the difference was remarkable – these two are probably the best croissants out of the batch – really beautiful texture. The others are good , but more like a dinner roll than a flaky croissant.
But they are still good – super buttery taste and remarkable flavor.
I have to teach a class tonight – otherwise I'd probably make the second batch today – but I'll wait until the weekend and see what I can do. Start to finish this took 14 hours and I turned out the lights just after midnight – It'll be quicker next time and I'll start early in the morning.
The bottom line – try making croissants. Even if you don't get it just right, you still end up with a pastry that is delicious.
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Cynthia McKenna – making Croissants from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking
Well, well. Its 9:15 and time for bed, except I just got the croissants rolled out and they have 1.5 hours to rise before baking.
The rolling out and actually forming the rolls was challenging.
First, I couldn't tell if I was doing it right – the directions seemed to say cut a square in half, then roll that long diagonal side into the point – except first you have to roll it really long and thin.
Then they weren't all the same size, probably because in my making of 55 layers, I did not get the dough an even thickness – which caught up with me in the end.
I think the croissants look like aliens made them, but then, I was born in Roswell…
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Cynthia McKenna – making Croissants from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking
Posted in Cooking
Tagged aliens, croissants, Cynthia McKenna, garden blog, garden gate blog, julia child, mastering the art of french cooking, roswell
Here's the little packet of goodness with 55 layers of dough and 54 (?) layers of butter.
Wait 2 hours then we'll cut & roll
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Cynthia McKenna – making Croissants from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking
Posted in Cooking
Tagged croissants, Cynthia McKenna, garden blog, garden gate blog, julia child, mastering the art of french cooking
I have had time to bathe three of the four cats and have now decided that I should make croissants when I have a big "to do" list that I've been avoiding.
So, the dough rose as it was supposed to – which was encouraging.
"Beat butter with a rolling pin to soften it." I had fun softening the butter – any recipe that tells you to whack butter with a rolling pin has got to be a good recipe.
BTW – if you come over for toast, you can expect softened butter – this stuff was dreamy.
Then roll dough to 8 x 14, and schmeer the butter. This was the part I'd been dreading but it was really easy, and pretty to look at, and fun. Unfortunately, Julia says to move quickly and since this is my first try at croissants, I did not stop to take a photo.
Then fold and roll it into another rectangle – we are now at 2 layers of butter with 4 layers of dough
It gets another fold so you have 7 layers of dough and 6 (six) layers of butter. How can anything be wrong with six layers of butter. Now its in the fridge for 1-1.5 hours.
If I am calculating this right – the croissants will be ready around 10:00 tonight. Somehow, when I started at 9:30 this morning, 11-12 hours seemed like it would be around 7:00. My bad.
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Cynthia McKenna – making Croissants from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking
4.5 hours in, here is what the dough looks like:
That's a 5×8 rectangle if you are following along at home 
Rectangle folded in thirds "like a business letter" and back in the bowl to double. Wish I'd washed the bowl so it would take a nice photo – but its cloudy looking so you'll just have to take my word for how cute it looks in there, being folded in thirds and all..
The biggest surprise is how much you don't do. So far, there is nothing to this except the initial mix and that was "just barely" mixed in my book. Note – that does say, "so far."
1.5 hours to relax and do more chores. I am starting to think that making croissants is a meditative exercise.
Cynthia
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Cynthia McKenna – making Croissants from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking
Here is the dough at about 2 hours. I love having the Pampered Chef mixing- measuring. Bowl so I can see how far we have to go – to the 7 cup mark. Thanks to whoever had that Pampered Chef party so long ago.
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Cynthia McKenna – making Croissants from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking
The days are getting shorter and even though our temperatures are still hovering around 100, i'm feeling the urge to bake.
I'm getting more brave in my cooking – maybe having slightly more successes than failures has given me courage. Anyway, I've been hungry for a good croissant and decided that today's the day to try making croissants.
So far, it's shockingly easy. But then we haven't reached the tricky part about the butter being spreadable but not warm enough to be oily, and, not cold enough to be flaky. Luckily that part comes this afternoon. For now I'm heading out to the garden and will return to the sticky dough in about 3 hours.
Cynthia
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Cynthia McKenna – making Croissants from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking
Here is a peek into the garden this morning:
A nice sugar pumpkin
And, a little coral snake…
What's in your garden?
Cynthia
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Cynthia McKenna
Posted in Gardening
Tagged coral snake, Cynthia McKenna, garden, garden blog, garden gate blog, pumpkin, sugar pumpkin
Posted in Gardening
Tagged blog, Cynthia McKenna, garden blog, garden gate blog, heirloom tomato, mortgage lifter, one pound tomato
We've had weeks of scorching temperatures and all I can think of is foods that cool. I know that in many countries, people eat spicy food when its hot – India and Mexico are prime examples, and Ethiopia, and…
Posted in Cooking
Tagged blog, Cynthia McKenna, ethiopia, garden blog, garlic, hot weather, hummus, india, lentil salad, mexico, recipe, sorbet, tomato bruschetta, tomatoes
I know I've been busy but its a little hard to believe that I am just now updating the blog – eek.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged blog, Cynthia McKenna, garden blog, pizza, williams sonoma
We are still dancing with freezing temperatures – the forecast is for 32 tonight. Apparently Mother Nature isn't reading the Farmer's Almanac, which says our last freeze date is mid March, but I digress…
Posted in Organic Gardening
Tagged Cynthia McKenna, farmer's almanac, freeze, garden, garden blog, garden gate blog, strawberries
The corn was ready to be picked this week. The ears are pretty small, maybe 4-6 inches at the most. But it is sweet and good. Next year I'll do some research and get seeds for bigger ears of corn. As it is, we've been eating these right off the stalk.
