Best Birthday EVER!

OK... it happened. I hit the speed limit. I am 55.

I am alive, happy, not too many wrinkles and healthy. Those are all good things. You are going to have to indulge me here, as I am overflowing with joy at what I am about to share. Most of my posts are not about me, but this one is.

But this was the best birthday ever. It even tops my 8th birthday when I had my birthday party on TV on the Chucko The Birthday Clown Show! That morning we had to wake up at 4 am and take my 12 best friends (including my brother and two cousins) and their mothers to the studio for the early morning broadcast. I was caught yawning on camera. It was quite a day in my birthday history. My Chucko birthday topped the charts.... till now.

Now for the good stuff. I had been wanting to see the movie Julie and Julia, a movie about a food blogger who cooks every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering French Cooking in the space of a year. It was a great book and even a better movie because they also incorporated Julia Child's memoir, My Life in France into the movie, showing Julie and Julia going through their cooking experiences, three decades apart. Oh how I love food, Julia Child, Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci and of course BLOGGING! So, I told Wes, I was going to ask my girlfriends to go with me, thinking he would not care so much about seeing it. But he insisted he wanted to see it too. And he informed me that we would go see it on Friday the 14th of August, (4 days before my birthday) and then to dinner at the restaurant of my choice. He informed me that he made reservations for dinner and we were all set. Though, I thought it odd that we were going so much before my birthday.

When we arrived at the theater at 3:00 in the afternoon, I expected the usual empty theater (we normally go to art and independent films early in the day=not blockbuster material). Instead I saw a lot of people sitting there, but did not make eye contact with anyone... all of a sudden everyone stood up and said, "Happy Birthday!" And it was then that I realized that the "crowd" in the theater was a group of our dearest friends. Hugs and kisses abounded. I had never been surprised like that and it was a very sweet feeling that all of these couples took time to be part of my birthday. At least one of them had taken the day off of work to be there.

After the movie we all gathered to say good bye in the lobby and my friend Janet asked me what we were doing, I said we had made reservations at a local restaurant. She insisted that we did not want to go there, that we should come to her house for Chicken Curry. Wes immediately agreed, I attributed two reasons for this. # 1 He loves curry # 2 He would get out of paying for dinner! So Janet said she had to stop by her mom's and for us to come over at 7. We went home, walked the dog and then went to Janet and Dan's.

Here are some pictures showing what these friends of ours were up to. Photo Credits to Ricardo Zepeda and Ron Pusateri:

When we arrived it looked a bit dark inside and then as we came across the walkway to the house Dan and Janet were offering us champagne and welcoming us, then we walked in and everyone yelled, "Surprise!"

These wonderful friends of ours had created a birthday party based on Julia Child's recipes. The table on the lanai was set with crystal, silver, flowers and candles.

Janet had made little chairs from champagne cages to hold the place cards & napkins were exquisitely folded.

Keith created menus for us listing all of the courses for the dinner which were taken from Julia's Cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Here is the menu:

Apertif

Kir Royale

Hors D’Oeuvres

La Tentation de Bramafam

La Brie Cuit au four avec noix de pecans

Les Entrees

Coquilles Saint Jacques la Parisienne

La Bourride

Piece de Resistance

Canard a l'Orange avec haricots verts

La Salade

Salad verte avec la sauce de vinegarette

La Fromage

Assiette de fromages

Le Dessert

Creme Brulee

Every course was served with "oohs and ahhs" and some with instantaneous applause. Each couple made one or two courses for the dinner and everything was served with panache by Ron and Keith. It was overwhelmingly exquisite. I just cannot say how precious everything was, created and delivered with such grace and love. I still get misty thinking of it. I am sure of one thing, there was no finer dinner served in Hawaii that night!

Until now, my birthday was just a day I shared with Robert Redford, Partick Swayze, Dennis Leary, Frankie Avalon and Jada Pinkett.

Here is to wonderful friends:

Hurricane English Muffins

As many of you know, I am participating in the Bread Bakers Apprentice Challenge, where each week we make a bread from the book of the same name.

I was holding off on the English Muffins for no real reason. In the end, there was a window of opportunity: Hurricane Felicia. You see English Muffins are not baked in an oven, but cooked on a griddle. During possible hurricane related power outages I could not use my oven even though it is a gas oven, because it has an electric thermostat and digital controls. But I do have side burners on my gas grill as well as a portable butane burner that I use for food demos. So cooking on a burner could be done in a hurricane situation.

If you have read my Hurricane post, you will also know that as every hurricane has historically done, even though Felicia was at one point a category 4 headed straight for Hilo, she first lost power over cold pacific waters and then veered North of us, missing our island entirely. She was a tropical depression when she hit Maui, the island above us and is now dumping rain on Oahu. We on the other hand had to water our potted plants yesterday and will again today. Nary a drop has fallen on us, not even our usual midnight sprinkles. I guess Felicia sucked all the moisture from the atmosphere. Good for baking!

So, even though I could bake this week (and will also be baking focaccia) I did my English Muffins in what was supposed to be a storm and which ended up being a sunny day! Go figure.

My "outside dog" Bingo.

My cat Kiwi sat next to me and watched the whole baking process:

The English muffin recipe varies from some I have done before where the muffins are made like crumpets with a batter that you pour into forms on the griddle. This recipe actually requires a dough that is soft, yet stiff enough to form into muffin shapes.

I used the Kitchen Aid Mixer to mix the dough and then switched to the dough hook to knead it into a smooth yet slightly tacky dough that passed the window pane test after about 7 minutes of kneading.

Because my husband surprised me and took me out to dinner last night (to celebrate the sale of our CA house) I had to stick the risen dough into the refrigerator over night and then proceeded to de-chill and form the muffins, which actually worked out nicely, as we had them for breakfast with some white pineapple and delicious local mangoes and papayas.

This recipe was also blogged by several other challenge members; Cheryl Tan who made some beautiful muffins (see what she did with them in her Shrimp and Tofu Burger post), Jeff of the blog "Culinary Disasters" who writes about his oven dying just after doing his English Muffins and Focaccia, Susie also one of my long time followers, Paul who made them loaf style, Phyl Divine who's blog I adore and follow decided to make a double recipe and did a loaf too which was a very smart move, as he said, "I knew 6 muffins were not going to last long around here." & Joelyn who did hers at 1 am so she could have them in the morning.

Peter Reihart's formula was straight forward and I followed it to the letter, using butter milk as he suggested as an option. I had noticed that some other BBA Challenge members had a size issue with the formula, in that it made 6 very large puffy English muffins so they suggested make 7 or 8 instead of 6. But I made just 6. In retrospect, I would make 7, even though it might be difficult dividing the dough. While they must rise to get those characteristic air bubbles making nooks and crannies for butter or whatever else you use them for, there is also a point at which a 3 inch tall muffin might be a tad too high (even though we have bagel sized toasters now days.) I think that this issue is best addressed when forming the muffins, starting out with flatter shorter muffins in the rising stage. I did a bit of an experiment, only because I had muffin rings, I let two of mine rise in the rings, making for a more uniform shape. I decided to cook them in the rings too. I sprayed the interior of the rings with grape-seed oil for easy removal.

One note, for ease of transfer to the griddle, I cut the pastry paper while the muffins were still on them and used them to move the muffins, then flipped the muffins leaving the paper on top once they were on the griddle. I then removed the paper. This is a very soft dough and the less handling the better, so this method worked well for me.

My dear friend Fran has a bakery, Puff City here in Hilo and while Cream Puffs are her trademark, she also makes some breads and English muffins to use in her sandwiches and for muffin pizzas. Hers I noticed (I was lucky enough to do some product testing for her) are flatter too. She does not use rings when making hers.

What I found was that the amount of dough used in the molds should be just a little more than half the size of the mold. With the one muffin that I used a larger amount of dough, I had some problems of over proofing in a vertical way, leaving a mark much like a soufflé which had been contained would do.

When I used a lesser amount of dough as seen above, I then had what would be a "perfectly shaped" muffin. I think you will agree. But do we really want a perfectly shaped muffin? If I were baking and selling them, the answer would be YES. However, look at the 2 larger free form muffins, they look like they would be perfect for splitting and making into pizzas don't they? So, while the actual formula worked wonderfully, sizing and shaping may be something that should be questioned here.

My mom used to make us English muffin pizzas, I decided to give that a try for lunch. I will add the pictures for that in an update later.

I will make a double recipe next time and have enough to make some muffin pizzas as well as some breakfast muffins, I may even try the loaves when I read more about what other bakers in the challenge thought of the loaves. I would like to try incorporating some whole wheat flour next time too.

On a final note, the muffins should be split with a fork, not sawed into with a knife. This preserves the crumb.

Felicia, Once Upon a Hurricane & her Rainbows

A few days ago Hilo was being cautiously optimistic about Hurricane Felicia which appeared to be heading straight for us as a category 4 Hurricane on Thursday August 6th. There was actually some reason to the optimism, no hurricane has hit the Big Island since they started keeping records of such events. Relatively few hurricanes have even come near the state of Hawaii. Historically, even when it looked like hurricanes were headed right for Hawaii Island, they have veered off, usually hitting Kauai. Only five major hurricanes have done major damage to the Hawaiian Islands since 1950 when instruments and record keeping made it possible to track storms.

Here is a film of the waves yesterday afternoon at what would have been the peak of the storm. For perspective, the rock outcropping in the lower right side of the pictures is about 14' tall. The video is taken from our deck about 90' above the ocean.

This was our first experience at being in the path of a Hurricane, so we took it a little more seriously than some Hilo residents. However, by yesterday, there was a clear shortage of many supplies in town. Batteries, ice, kerosene lamps, propane, milk, bottled water and other goods were in far less abundance. The merchants made a few extra sales. We were prepared to be without running water and electricity for a few days if we had to be.


There were many closings, even the Hilo Farmer's Market was empty yesterday. Schools remained open but state & county beaches and campgrounds were closed. Remote parts of Volcano National Park were also closed.

Here is an example of the hurricanes that have come through Hawaiian waters since they were able to measure them. As you can see, most petered out because of cold pacific waters and some think because of our two mountains on the big island, Mauna Kea (white mountain), the world's tallest sea mountain(measured from the ocean floor) and Mauna Loa (long mountain) the largest volcano on earth, rising from the ocean floor to 30,000 feet, or 13,796 feet on land:

Here is the view from my deck yesterday. We are more than 60 feet above the high tide line and generally in the summer, wave action is much smaller than this:

Here is Honoli'i Surf Beach, one block South of our house, taken yesterday afternoon around 1:00:

And a little closer view puts things in perspective, although the county closed all beaches on Sunday afternoon, nothing could stop Honoli'i Surfers:

This morning, the cruise ship came into port as expected and it is a bright sunny day. I think I will head out to Honoli'i in a bit to watch the surfers.

We received a gift last night at around 6 pm, a series of rainbows over the pacific. They came and went and at times there was a double rainbow. To us it was as if Madame Pele sent her sister Hi'iaka to us a sign that all was well and that she was protecting our island once again.

The Big Island Orchid Show and Sale

I am a sucker for orchids. I had them even when I lived in snowy Chicago. But there I had to limp through cold winters and keep them on shelves in my guest rooms. Then I moved to the East Bay and I had over 50 plants, but even there the cold nights had an effect on them. Here, I am in Orchid Heaven. I have them growing and blooming all over the gardens and house. Here is a link to my recent post about the orchids in my gardens: My Orchids

Because we have so many orchid growers here on the "Orchid Isle" there are real bargains at the growers and farmer's markets. Our climate on the coast is ideal for most varieties and they bloom lavishly with very little effort on my part.

This weekend is the Hilo Orchid Show and Sale put on by the Hilo Orchid Society. The event takes place over 3 days and there are not only lots of incredible orchids for sale there, you will also be able to see some new hybirds and demonstrations on cultivating orchids here. Of course there are also orchid themed products; gifts, crafts and even clothing being sold at the show. See you there!