Belated Halloween Recap Post. Includes Squirrels and Wallpaper and Voting.

Good LORD I've missed this.

HI EVERYONE.

I started going through my photos from Halloween and deleting the ones that were blurry and/or crime-scene like and oohing over the ones that showed the chocolate ganache in all its decadent glory, and I realised just how much fun I was having, and how long it had been since I'd done it, and how I really kind of wanted to write a post. So.

I decided that I needed to do a Halloween recap post. If for nobody else but me.

BEETLE HALLOWEEN RECAP POST
ps I'm sorry this is so late. 

In the interest relaying the most pertinent events with the minimum (for me . . . ) of babble, and because my memory tends to sort itself into bullet points (and sub-bullet points) after a few days, here are the major happenings of Halloween 2014.

• Madame Vastra and I drove down from Vermont on Friday morning.
• This of course included the requisite 4am gym, so I stairmastered with the BBC, showered, drove 40 more miles on I-93 South, and stopped for coffee when it hit 7am and places that were NOT Dunkin Donuts were open. At 7.01 and 23 seconds I cracked the door of a coffee shop in Lincoln, NH that had literally just been unlocked by it's groggy owner said, perhaps a tad too cheerfully, "GOOD MORNING MAY I PLEASE HAVE TWO LARGE CUPS OF COFFEE WITH SOYMILK AND A GLASS OF WATER?"
• In case you missed the major bullet point of above. I drove. From Vermont. For me, in my relative driving novice-ness, this is kind of an achievement. I didn't get lost! I didn't crash! I only stopped to pee once! 
• I noticed that when I am doing interstate changes or other similarly high-attention-demanding manoeuvres, I talk to myself in a very clipped British accent. I don't know when this started. Or when it will go away. 
• We went and watched the trick or treaters on Main Street and had a total fluffy-warm-and-fuzzy-on-the-inside-Disney-Family-Movie moment watching all the adorable kids in their adorable costumes worn underneath their adorable parkas. 
• New England childhood rite of passage #9849849: trick-or-treating with an ugly old coat thrown over your painstakingly created costume because it's 27 F outside and snow is forecast for tomorrow. 
• Ashby, btw, is THE TRICK-OR-TREATING CAPITAL OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY. We had flood lights, state police, troopers with those runway landing glow stick thingys . . . THE WORKS. It was totally awesome.
• We got one trick-or-treater.
• This trick-or-treater was a squirrel.
• Who showed admirable self control in eating precisely ONE mini Snickers before apparently deciding he wanted to watch his waistline and leaving the rest. 
• I found this out when I went before bed to collect the bucket full of approximately $50 of candy that I'd left on the front porch, with all the lights on, with all the curtains open, hoping it would prove a beacon to still hungry children. The bucket had been knocked over, and one mini Snickers had been divested of its wrapper and consumed. We figured it was a squirrel because if it had been a raccoon not only would all the candy be gone, the raccoon would have probably knocked on the door, informed us that he was moving in, and did we have anything "savoury" as a palate cleanser? 
• I voted.
• Reason #65165 I love living in a tiny Massachusetts town:
• When you call the town clerk requesting your absentee ballot, "Lorraine" not only says "oh, you guys are in the big white house, yah I see your Mother all the time" but invites you over on Saturday for voting and tea. You fill out your absentee ballot in front of the woodstove in her kitchen, aided by her large blue-eyed husky Jack, who sticks his nose in your armpit as you check all the boxes for DEMOCRAT. 
• retrospective bullet point: Fat lot of good that did. 
• We discovered a suspicious leak in the corner of the dining room ceiling. 
• This means I got to see our handyman, a rare treat for a lightning weekend home. 
• I always hated that wallpaper anyway.
• I COOKED. DUH. 

HALLOWEEN WEEKEND FOOD

*not a comprehensive list as if I were to list all four loaves of bread and various other things I'd be here all day and this is already late enough. So herewith are the photogenic highlights. 

CARAMEL CORN WITH SALTED ALMONDS

This is such a fussy recipe for me to make, I know, but I was drooling over the Epicurious and Martha Stewart slideshows that get SO AMAZING at this time of year, and I just decided to take a risk and do it. Had I made caramel before? No. Did we own a popcorn popper? No. Does either of us eat popcorn? Um, no. 

BUT LIBRARIANS DO. ESPECIALLY LOVELY ONES.

Please note the added Witch Hat.

Epicurious calls this one, quite poshly, Caramel Corn with Smoked Almonds and Fleur de Sel. And honestly it's not that hard despite the intimidating name. I did shell out for Marcona Almonds (thank you amazon.com) because I didn't want to spend four hours smacking grocery-bought Diamond Roasted with a hammer. I also used microwave popcorn (I KNOW!!! RIGHT?!? CAN YOU STAND IT???), the oil and butter free kind, which I figured would give me the same results in the end and also make my life so much easier. I did three envelopes of the stuff and it seemed to work out proportion wise. 

The trick, which they tell you and which I initially TOTALLY SCOFFED AT, was that you do need to work faster than you have ever worked in your life. Caramel hardens in a nanosecond, and if you have not evenly spread it over your popcorn, then you're fresh out of luck and left holding a meteorite-shaped mass over a bowl of blissfully caramel-free golden kernels. But once you understand that, and hopefully this understanding will be reached BEFORE rather than AFTER, it's actually a pretty simple thing.

The one other thing I learned was that when you plunge your hand into a molten pot of boiled sugar by mistake, it really hurts. Really really really hurts. 

I held on to the saucepan though. 

Beetle = Hardcore

CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH BITTERSWEET GANACHE

or

HALLOWEEN BLACK CAT CAKE

which sounds so much nicer

Duh, Halloween means chocolate. 

I realise that the same can be said for Easter, and Christmas, and all right Valentine's Day too, but when I was deciding what to make for pudding it was obviously going to be deep, dark, squishy, and chocolatey. Kind of a given. 

I wanted just a simple, dark chocolate cake. One that had sour cream in it and would therefore remain moist and gooey, and one that used unsweetened, bittersweet, and at the very palest semi-sweet. NONE OF THIS MILK CHOCOLATE NAMBY PAMBYNESS, PEOPLE. I'd had a lot of luck with my Ganache truffles so I figured I'd do a ganache icing too, since it's really really easy and spreads so nicely, especially when your kitchen is the relative temperature of the outdoors. 

Once again Martha saves the day. This recipe from her Everyday Cookbook popped up in my search engine, and it had the ganache hyperlinked and everything. Done and DONE. The cake really was super easy, not fussy, and I didn't have to buy anything special. The chocolate is just unsweetened cocoa powder, which I think everyone has in their kitchen, even if you never cook at all and hate chocolate. It's just something that EXISTS in the back of your cupboard. It's a fixed point in time and space, is what I'm saying in Doctor Who terms. The ganache, too, is just heavy cream and a giant hunk of bittersweet. I mean . . . 

But with the ease of the cake, the cooling, the ganache, the spreading, what was I going to obsess over? 

Ohhhh.

Right. 

Someday I will remember the FIRST time that when you cut out a template, you have to cut the INSIDE out. Someday I will remember this BEFORE I waste ten sheets of paper and a lot of unnecessary scissoring.

Totally random yet cool ganache / powdered sugar intersection that makes the cat look FEROCIOUS.
Quite unlike my own kitties.
Who prefer to be ferocious in their dreams.
Or possibly at treat time.

It should be noted that we have not one but TWO black cats, and both were particularly pleased with this contribution to the menu. Though the standard silhouette for them during the weekend was more of the large shapeless blob variety, one ear visible over the rim of a basket, twitching towards the space heater.

Less this:

More this: 

OH AND ALSO I MADE PARSNIPS

Inconsequential, but they were so pretty that I had to share. I braised them, incidentally, for what seemed like EONS but they were pronounced delicious, so it was worth the wait. 

The bowl in the background, btw, is lentils and spinach and kelp YES KELP.

So, Halloween! All benefits of kelp, lentils, and parsnips completely overshadowed by black cat cake made entirely of chocolate and butter and heavy cream, but hey.

IT'S THE HOLIDAYS, YOU GUYS. IF NOT NOW, WHEN?

Get ready for Beetle Thanksgiving Extravaganza. I've been doing a LOT of stairmaster menu planning . . .

THE ALL-CAPS POST TITLE I'VE BEEN WAITING TO POST FOR WHAT SEEMS LIKE ETERNITY

BEETLE GOT A JOB!!!!!!!

[insert every happy dance known to mankind]

[although, if you want to go by my actual reaction to this momentous news, insert staring through the porch screen at the rain as the news is delivered to me, hanging up, continuing to stare at the rain without moving for about five minutes, going into the kitchen and staring at the rain through the windows in there, going into the dining room and staring at the rain through the windows in there, looking up when Mum comes in the room and says "WELL?", responding "I got a job and they want me to start next week", and promptly bursting into hysterical, rib-breaking sobs]

So. Yeah.

BEETLE GOT A JOB!!!!!

I'm also in Vermont. I also own a Subaru. A dark green Subaru. A 2014 dark green Subaru Outback. A 2014 dark green Subaru Outback named Madame Vastra.

Madame Vastra, a Silurian, also the head of the detective agency known as the Paternoster Gang.
Did I mention I'm a Doctor Who fan? 

Madame Vastra keeps me safe, warm, transported to places, and she is the best thing ever.

So to recap. In the last two weeks I got a job, bought a Subaru, moved to Vermont, and am now teaching four sections of English and acting as a dorm proctor at St. Johnsbury Academy.

Nothing like ripping the bandaid off, huh?

So. I would love to give you an exhaustive recap, but honestly, dear reader, the mental floodgates are BEYOND overwhelmed, and I couldn't even form a coherent sentence until Friday when the final bell rang. (We have BELLS, btw, CLASS BELLS. They're awesome.) And walking back up the hill to my house (we have HILLS, btw, LOTS OF HILLS) I was able to say, in response to Mom's millionth request for information, "I really like it . . . " and trail off with a stupid grin on my face.

[Ok, maybe insert another proper happy dance here, if you must. Perhaps similar to the triumphant one I did after successfully wrapping teflon tape around the screw threads of my new shower head and effectively stopping the drip, which was kind of a funky-chicken-will-and-grace-iggy-azalea mashup, only in my underwear.]

So for the time being, I will busy myself with the final two Beetle Bakery creations, and hope they will serve as a temporary farewell of sorts. I will hopefully be posting happy kitchen things when I go home for weekends (which will happen frequently as Mum and the farm aren't too far away and also there is NO WAY she is mantaining the proper organisation of the house and the mere thought of what is happening to the towels, dishes, newspapers, etc, makes me itch) and holidays (don't think I haven't started thinking about Thanksgiving), and you can see them then.

SO WITHOUT FURTHER ADO.

Oh Good God I don't even know where to START with all of this. It just so happens that the weekend before jobgate happened was an EPIC BEETLE WEEKEND in which so many delicious and photogenic things were made . . . WHICH WOULD BE THE CASE, OBVIOUSLY. Mum was away on the Cape being glamourous and I was at home, cooking and pottering about and binge-watching Masterpiece Theatre. And the weekend AFTER jobgate but BEFORE the move was also visitor-weekend, so MORE food was made, and then at the same time Beetle Bakery had a COMMISSION so MORE baking was done, and then of course I couldn't let my lovely, lovely, BEYOND LOVELY librarians go without a thank you cake, either, now could I? No, of course not. SO. Between jobgate and moving, approx. two weeks  . . .

I made:

• CREAM CHEESE POUND CAKE which the FIRST time was a disaster of epic, sweary-trash-dumping proportions but the SECOND TIME was delicious and crunchy on the outside, gooey on the inside, in the way that only Southern Living magazine can do. (also only in the south would they use THAT. MUCH. CREAM. CHEESE.)

•  LEMON DILL POTATOES with gorgeous Blue Potatoes from our farmstand, that Mum has requested in perpetuity until she dies.

• ORANGE MARMALADE BREAD PUDDING from my new Williams Sonoma Dessert of the Day cookbook which has a recipe for every day of the year on a calendar. Beetle Note: if you are OCPD like me, this can cause stress if you make a dessert for say, Nov. 14th, on August 10th. I did it, but I wasn't super happy about it. 

• LEMON SHORTBREAD which really needs no explanation.

And finally, best for last I think: 

• RASPBERRY FUDGE CAKE of which I am particularly proud, dear reader. Because I assumed that the only way to make Martha Stewart's Fudge Brownie Cake better was to add a jar of Raspberry Jam to it, and then split the batter into two 9-inch springforms, and bake it juuuuust enough to be gooey but still thin so not overwhelming  . . .  and I assumed RIGHT. 
• HOW ABOUT THAT? EMPLOYED AND RIGHT ABOUT A CHOCOLATE CAKE. MY LIFE HAS PURPOSE YET AGAIN.
• And also, because I bought the coolest stencils in the universe, and I was stress-baking like you wouldn't BELIEVE I did fancy things with powdered sugar and acetate which made me incredibly happy.

• So that was Raspberry Fudge Cake no. 1. That was the Beetle Bakery Commission Cake (along with the Shortbread) 
• Raspberry Fudge Cake no. 2 was for the Librarians. My lovely lovely lovely librarians. 
• It was also for Mum. Who, upon tasting, became rather possessive.
• I have sworn faithfully that this is the first thing I will bake when I'm home in a few weeks. MUM. I'M TALKING TO YOU RIGHT NOW. I PROMISE.
• It took a lot of stencil finagling, including a custom made one, but it was SO worth it.

Because THIS HAPPENED:

It truly was, and is, dear reader, a CAKE OF TRIUMPH. Of recipe experimentation, of stencil creation, and of your own Beetle.

ps custom Beetle stencil = BESPOKE BEETLE OMG I LOVE IT

So. To recap. I'm employed. I'm in Vermont. I spent the day doing vocab sheets. (and this, duh) When I go to dinner in a few minutes I will check on Madame Vastra in the driveway of my dorm. I will then sit with a group of delightful young ladies and discuss their hike this afternoon, the photos of Ariana Grande and Jennifer Lawrence that were leaked this morning, that we won the football game on Saturday afternoon, and how the Chinese food from down the street is preferable to the stirfry on offer.

I'm terrified. I'm ecstatic. I'm beyond overwhelmed.

But I'm doing it. And I'm going to love it.

So for the moment, dear, dear Reader,

Surprise! It's Blueberry!*

*I realise that in revealing the contents of these muffins ahead of time calling them "Blueberry Surprise Muffins" becomes rather superfluous, but I like the name "Blueberry Surprise Muffins" so I'm going to go ahead and call them that because it's fun.

THINGS I LEARNED YESTERDAY

• There is something called a Boiler Emergency Switch.
• We have one.
• Ours is located just to the right of the cellar door, helpfully concealed behind a large mirror because Mum thought it was ugly.
• Our boiler repair man takes his cats on vacation with him. 
• Cleaning up a spectacularly spilled carton of grits is incredibly time consuming. 
• Those little bastard grains get EVERYWHERE. Including places you are pretty damn sure never had grits in them in the first place. Like, on the other side of the room.
• Remember in The Secret Life of Bees when Lily's father T Ray makes her kneel on grits on the kitchen floor? IT IS BASICALLY THE WORST PUNISHMENT EVER BECAUSE THAT HURTS LIKE NOTHING YOU WOULD BELIEVE.   

All I could think of yesterday, apart from how pervasive grits are on a kitchen counter, was Peter in Blueberry Land by Elsa Beskow, one of my childhood favs: 

Granted, when you go back and read it again as an adult, it's actually kind of creepy and involves giant slugs, enslaved mice, indentured squirrels, and a vaguely fascist Blueberry King with his identical and mildly cultish sons, but the overall takeaway still stands: BLUEBERRIES ARE THE BEST. 

These are not the tiny and wonderful Maine ones but they ARE from the farm down the road,
so I'm happy enough using them. And they are delicious. 

It had to be Blueberries again this week. I mean, we went to a BLUEBERRY FESTIVAL this weekend so as you can imagine what with hayrides and tractor pulls and an entire cooking station devoted to blueberry pancakes with whipped cream we both sort of lost our heads and both sort of bought about a million pints. And we threw raspberries and strawberries in there too, because, what the hell. BUT. Blueberries needed to be used. 

Once again I had the possibility of making Blueberry Cheesecake (I will do this, at some point, I will!) but I wasn't feeling it. The weather has been lovely, but on the chilly side, and it just didn't seem warm and hazy enough to justify cheesecake. I was pondering it as I lay in bed yesterday morning, listening to the soothing sound of the cat trying to break down the door from the other side, and suddenly decided that the best course of action, CLEARLY, was to take the Blueberry Topping from a Martha Stewart cheesecake recipe, make it, and shove it inside a corn muffin. 

DUH. 

I am calling these Blueberry Surprise Muffins. As stated above, the appellation is slightly redundant because a) I'm straight up telling you what the surprise is and b) you can totally see the aforementioned "surprise" because it comes through the tops and sides of the muffins. But I love the name "Blueberry Surprise Muffins", don't you? 

Yes. Yes you do. 

The corn muffin recipe is from perhaps one of the most old school Yankee cookbooks I own, Judy Gorman's Breads of New England, which even goes so far as to have been published by Yankee Magazine itself. If that's not proper New England cooking, I don't know what is. 

It practically comes with its own LLBean pullover and a bag of self-rolled oats.

BLUEBERRY SURPRISE MUFFINS

INGREDIENTS

• 3 cups blueberries
• 3/4 cups sugar
• 2 tbs butter
• 2 tbs lemon juice
• 1 tbs corn starch

Cook all of this together in a saucepan until the berries go soft and dissolve and it's bubbling nice and thickly. Martha says 4 minutes. I let mine go for closer to 10. 

And now for the muffins:

• 1 1/4 cups corn meal
• 1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup milk
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/4 cup (4 tbs) butter, melted

Whisk together corn meal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Add in the milk, beaten eggs, and melted butter and stir until it's all nicely combined. The batter will be very thick, but that's corn muffins for you. Add more milk if it needs to be slightly wetter. 

And once you've got everything ready to go . . . 

Line a muffin tin with paper cups. Spoon a small amount of batter into each one, then follow with a spoonful of the blueberry, then top it off with more batter. 

Bake them at 400 degrees for 20 - 25 minutes (I went to 30 but that's my oven and the size of the muffins) until the tops are golden and crackly. 

BEETLE NOTES

Judy Gorman knows her stuff. This is a FANTASTIC corn muffin recipe. I know that because Mum almost NEVER likes corn muffins (too dry, too wet, too sweet, eating muffins is like eating cupcakes eg stupid, the paper is dumb and peely and messy, you look stupid eating them especially standing up or in public, people always eat them for breakfast and why would you do that they're so big and sticky and how could you eat that much in the morning, etc. etc. etc.) but these, she likes. She said so. Multiple times. WINNER. From what I could gather, these are moist, crunchy, not too sweet, comforting in the extreme, and decidedly yummy. 

I switched out the all-purpose flour for whole wheat. I love a good whole wheat muffin, especially where blueberries are concerned. For the corn meal, Judy says "coarse ground" and goes so far as to call these muffins "Crunchy" in the title. Being Hillbilly Beetle, I used up the last of the regular ground cornmeal we had in the fridge, and supplemented with grits to make up the difference. (See above re: pervasiveness of grains once spilled onto your counter and pain re: kneeling on them.) 

The addition of a blueberry centre is also a HUGE WIN. Last night she had one for dessert, cooled to room temperature, and pronounced it wonderful. This morning she had one toasted in the oven, with the centre returned to gooey jammy hotness. This, I think, was pronounced "even better" but said pronouncement was delivered silently through a huge mouthful, accompanied by much eye rolling, so it's a best guess. I'm going to go with "even better" and say that the vote falls in favour of toasted.*

*LL's take note for when you get these this afternoon! If you can spare a moment, do toast them in the kitchen downstairs. 

The Blueberry Topping of previous note is actually a total win in and of itself. I have been instructed to make the same, occasionally with other berries as they come, as a spread of sorts for muffins, toast, and other warm crunchy breakfast items. We now know this because I had half a bowl of it left over, and rather than throw it out (I am a Yankee after all. I would rather cut off my own finger than waste half a bowl of blueberries.) I saved it and presented it as a butter alternative. 

From this . . . 

to this!

Reason no. 38749812 why my mother is awesome: "Butter alternative" is a singularly nonsensical statement.

So whilst I may not have been doing THIS yesterday: 

Or hanging out with this guy:

 

I was nevertheless happily ensconced in my very own Blueberry Land. 

And for the record, OUR squirrel chauffeurs get pensions, sick leave, and weekends off. 

Unlike SOME.