Sunday, January 15, 2012
Vanocka
This
recipe for Czech Christmas bread or vanocka(vah-NAWTCH-kah)
is similar to houska, chalka,challah and
other Eastern European egg twist breads. Traditionally, this loaf is
made of three braids of decreasing size placed one on top of the
other, but a simple three-strand braid will work just fine.
Some
variations of vanocka call for dried apricots and raisins to be
soaked overnight in brandy or rum, and additions of citron and anise
seed. The vanocka dough is the same one used for Easter -- bochanek
velikonocni --
just round with a cross cut into it.
Makes
1 large Czech Christmas Bread - Vanocka
Prep
Time: 1 hour
Cook
Time: 1 hour
Total
Time: 2 hours
Ingredients:
1/2
cup (1 stick) butter
1
cup sugar (or less, to taste)
1/2
teaspoon salt
2
packages active dry yeast
1/4
cup warm water
2
large room-temperature eggs, beaten
5
1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2
cup golden or dark raisins
1/2
cup blanched sliced almonds
1/3
cup chopped citron
Topping:
1
large room-temperature egg, beaten
2
tablespoons blanched sliced almonds
Confectioners'
sugar (optional)
Preparation:
Place
yeast and warm water in the bowl of a stand mixer and, with the
paddle attachment, stir until
dissolved. Add lukewarm milk mixture
and 2 eggs and combine.
Add
3 cups flour and beat with the paddle until smooth. Add the raisins,
almonds, citron, and remaining
flour and mix, 3 to 5 minutes until
smooth. Dough will be sticky.
Place
dough in greased bowl. Turn over and cover with plastic wrap and let
rise until double, about 1
Punch
down dough and turn out onto lightly floured board. Divide dough into
3 large pieces and 5
smaller ones. Roll each piece into a rope, about
14 inches long. On a parchment-lined baking sheet, braid
the 3 larger
pieces loosely and pinch ends together.
Braid
3 of the smaller rolls, pinch ends together, and place on top of
large braid. Twist the last 2 rolls
together and place on top of
second braid, tucking ends under large braid. Cover with a cloth or
greased
plastic wrap and let rise 1 to 1 1/2 hours in a warm place.
Heat
oven to 400 degrees. Brush vanocka with 1 beaten egg and sprinkle
with 2 tablespoons almonds. Bake 15 minutes, reduce heat to 375
degrees and bake 30-45 minutes or until instant-read temperature
registers 190 degrees. Let cool completely before slicing. Dust with
confectioners' sugar before cutting, if desired.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Coq au Vin with a 2007 Cab Sauvignon
My last meal before school starts tomorrow... This was by far the most amazing dish I created!
Saturday, January 7, 2012
hair cut and color day.. always leaves me really nervous.. then EXCITED in the end!
kinda excited about today.. woke up to a quiet house (hubby left for Salem for some shooting practice and grading soldiers for promotion).. so it's just me... having my nice warm cup of coffee.. and about to head out to get my hair re-colored.. and shorter bangs.. perhaps even blunt bangs? I will let my awesome stylist decide! This site shows some really good examples of bangs and the difference! Ill post updated pics when it's all complete! Darker hair with shorter bangs... love it!
my new hair cut and color :)
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Palmiers... How I love thee
Gonna make these yummy lightly sweetened buttery flakes of swirl...
http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/palmiers_elephant_ears/
http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/palmiers_elephant_ears/
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
3:30 am... really
why on earth would my body say, "Hey Keri, get up.... come on, get up.. lets go outside and play in the street.. you know you want to go check out those Quadrantids... come on Keri get up!" So I laid in bed till 4am, got a cup of coffee brewed, bundled up and headed for the great outdoors... to the middle of the damn street to see not just any night time sky, but the Quadrantids.... so I peer deeply in the sky.. and BAM !!!!!! A freaking dog is barking, scars the daylights (no pun intended) out of me and I jump... making the flood lights on my house go off... damn dogs and their barks! Anyway I start walking further from the light and gaze deeper into darkness... there it is.. the Quadrantids... really amazing if you ask me. Just shooting from the sky are what I grew up calling "falling stars" and yes they are falling stars.. but this morning there's a bunch of them...
So then I go inside to check on the dogs... crying cause it's to freakin' early for them and also so I can take that first sip of my morning coffee.. how I love that first sip.... And then I head in to check on my Amazon.com textbook trade in status.. cause you know I love to trade in my books for 1% of what their worth... then I stumble across this funny question in the Q&A forum... take a gander.. its funny! (here's the link to show you how funny this actually is)
GO foreign exchange students, GO Death Valley.... GO!
So then I go inside to check on the dogs... crying cause it's to freakin' early for them and also so I can take that first sip of my morning coffee.. how I love that first sip.... And then I head in to check on my Amazon.com textbook trade in status.. cause you know I love to trade in my books for 1% of what their worth... then I stumble across this funny question in the Q&A forum... take a gander.. its funny! (here's the link to show you how funny this actually is)
GO foreign exchange students, GO Death Valley.... GO!
Hi everyone, I'm wondering if you can help. I have a slightly damaged textbook and am wondering if it would be OK to sell through Amazon's excellent textbook buyback scheme. The story is this: I was sitting in a bus station quietly reading, when the whole place filled up with a large group of very noisy exchange students of various nationalities. They were all wonderful people, but they were also annoying me, and from their very noisy chatter I could tell that they had the same destination as me. I saw that there was another bus with destination Death Valley, so I nudged one of them with my book, nodded my head towards the other bus, and said, "I think you'd better hurry, as your bus is about to leave."
"That not my bus," replied the exchange student.
"Oh yes it is, and you need to hurry. And don't forget to tell all your friends that they need to hurry too."
Well, to cut a long story short, I persuaded them, but in the process one corner of the book got slightly dented. I also accidentally dropped the book while it was open, which got dirt on a couple of the pages. It's otherwise in good condition and is legible throughout. I'd be very grateful for any advice. Does anyone else have experience of books that have been used for nudging?
Edit: In view of the considerable negative reaction to this post, I feel obliged to offer a small apology. Such humour as there is in the post (and it's not meant to be side-splittingly funny or anything) derives from its similarity to a much funnier post, not by me, that led to a long thread that was pulled in its entirety by Amazon. I cannot risk saying more about that post in case this one too gets pulled. The main point I'm making is that if you didn't get to read the original post then this one will indeed seem pretty lame, and I'm sorry that there's not much I can do about it.
"That not my bus," replied the exchange student.
"Oh yes it is, and you need to hurry. And don't forget to tell all your friends that they need to hurry too."
Well, to cut a long story short, I persuaded them, but in the process one corner of the book got slightly dented. I also accidentally dropped the book while it was open, which got dirt on a couple of the pages. It's otherwise in good condition and is legible throughout. I'd be very grateful for any advice. Does anyone else have experience of books that have been used for nudging?
Edit: In view of the considerable negative reaction to this post, I feel obliged to offer a small apology. Such humour as there is in the post (and it's not meant to be side-splittingly funny or anything) derives from its similarity to a much funnier post, not by me, that led to a long thread that was pulled in its entirety by Amazon. I cannot risk saying more about that post in case this one too gets pulled. The main point I'm making is that if you didn't get to read the original post then this one will indeed seem pretty lame, and I'm sorry that there's not much I can do about it.
Posted on Jun 28, 2010 4:09:52 AM PDT
It apparently wasn't a textbook on being funny.
In reply to an earlier post on Jun 28, 2010 4:32:43 AM PDT
Apologies -- forgot to mention that it was Hardy and Wright's classic book on number theory. So you are indeed correct.
Posted on Jun 28, 2010 4:45:20 AM PDT
That wasn't a bus, that was the HBM.
Posted on Jun 28, 2010 7:09:21 AM PDT
OH. We must have been out making our welcome wagon rounds. And I thought those were speedbumps...
Jenn
Jenn
Posted on Jun 28, 2010 7:23:40 AM PDT
So how does all this work? Well, I was in the HBM with a blanket over my head, as only some will remember, and the journey became long and boring (for me at least, with nothing to look at) until we pulled into a bus station. I was told to get out and wait in the waiting room: they allowed me to remove the blanket on condition that I didn't look behind me as I walked to it from the bus. (And if I did? The woman in the chicken suit would be changed to a pillar of salt. But I didn't.) Seems that I hadn't taken in the shape of the HBM all that well, since all it took for me to mistake it for a bus was for somebody to replace the letters HBM by "Death Valley" on the front.
I now had a choice. Either I should get back on the HBM, putting up with the noise of the exchange students but having a chance of being introduced to Mister Sir, or I should get on a proper bus. The fact that I had no idea where I was didn't make the decision any easier, and life on a traffic island had caused me to forget simple techniques like having a look around or asking somebody. And in the end it turned out that I didn't have a choice anyway. Two women approached me, brandishing textbooks.
"Are you getting back on the HBM or will we have to nudge you?" they asked.
"Nudge me?" I replied.
"Don't ask," said one of them, eyes pointing heavenward. "Trust me, you don't want to be nudged."
So I got back on the HBM. The blanket was a nuisance, but at least it slightly muffled the noise of the exchange students. And there was a nice smell of chocolate.
I now had a choice. Either I should get back on the HBM, putting up with the noise of the exchange students but having a chance of being introduced to Mister Sir, or I should get on a proper bus. The fact that I had no idea where I was didn't make the decision any easier, and life on a traffic island had caused me to forget simple techniques like having a look around or asking somebody. And in the end it turned out that I didn't have a choice anyway. Two women approached me, brandishing textbooks.
"Are you getting back on the HBM or will we have to nudge you?" they asked.
"Nudge me?" I replied.
"Don't ask," said one of them, eyes pointing heavenward. "Trust me, you don't want to be nudged."
So I got back on the HBM. The blanket was a nuisance, but at least it slightly muffled the noise of the exchange students. And there was a nice smell of chocolate.
Posted on Jun 28, 2010 11:00:17 AM PDT
Conjectural Emendation: There may be some confusion over the OCR-scanned version of the original post here. The so-called "exchange students" were students who were studying how to use Microsoft Exchange Server, and a glitch on the scanned copy had altered an "r" into an "n", for these were students who were studying Microsoft Exchange who were of all different rationalities, not nationalities. In all other respects, the post is accurate, except to those conspiracy theorists who believe the book in question was actually Classical Electrodynamics Third Edition by Jackson. When asked why they believe this Jackson-swaperoo theory, the conspiracy theorists whisper the words "academic blackout" and "vendetta" to explain the alleged motive behind the swap. But that is simply to quibble.
In reply to an earlier post on Jun 28, 2010 11:06:51 AM PDT
Thanks for the clarification, Mr. Sir. And now back to our regularly scheduled bludgeoning . . .
Posted on Jun 28, 2010 11:30:34 AM PDT
Nudging if you please. Bludgeoning is wicked and sinful and cannot be mentioned directly.
In reply to an earlier post on Jun 28, 2010 11:33:13 AM PDT
You're right. <Nudges a_math for that reminder.> Just doin' my duty.
Posted on Jun 28, 2010 11:47:25 AM PDT
Yes, I see the case you can make that those folks should have been nudged toward Death Valley, making one wonder Who Pooped in the Park? Death Valley. But I think these folks should have been directed toward The Inferno instead. Then you could slip them a nice bottle of Zweigle's Hot Dog Sauce to swig for hydration's sake, and provide them with a Heavy Duty Meat Cleaver (8" long x 4" wide) for self-protection from the Elements of Government Contracting. As should we all.
< Okay, did I promote enough Amazon products to protect THIS thread? >
< Okay, did I promote enough Amazon products to protect THIS thread? >
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