Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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Sopapilla Bread

   I ran across a yummy looking bread recipe on Pinterest* that really must be shared. This past weekend our fabulous little book club was feasting on Mexican delicacies while discussing Before I Go to Sleep (which is reviewed here, if you are interested). 
   I toted this along as a dessert thinking everyone craves a sugary speck of bread after a spicy Tex Mex meal but maybe not something fried. It was well received, and I’ll be making it again. The next time, though, I think we’ll serve it drizzled with honey. That’s how we eat sopapillas in Oklahoma. Do you do that where you live?
   I did not invent this, of course, but I do feel like I can simplify the approach a tiny bit just by saying this: The ingredients and process for this are pretty much the same as any standard cinnamon roll recipe, right up to the point that you would roll the dough and slice it into little pinwheels. This means that you could probably take your own favorite cinnamon roll recipe and just treat the dough differently to come up with a slightly different presentation. No biggie. 
   I am happy to report, however, that this particular filling is much more buttery and waaaay more sugary than I have found others to be. Yum. I mean, it’s so sugary that it crunches between your teeth in a delicate, state-fair-food kind of way. And it is so buttery that it stays moist. Not at all dry, even naked of icing. To illustrate this point, the test batch I made on Friday afternoon was under a cake dome all weekend and when I nibbled some on Monday it tasted perfectly moist and yummy.
   Care for the recipe?
For the Dough:
2 3/4 cups + 2 Tablespoons flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 1/4 tsp. active dry yeast (one packet)
1/2 tsp. salt
4 Tablespoons butter
1/3 cup whole milk (I only had skim milk so used heavy cream, no problemo)
1/4 cup water
2 eggs (room temp & beaten)
1 tsp. vanilla
For the Filling:
1 cup sugar
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
4 Tablespoons butter, browned
To Make the Dough:
1. In a saucepan, melt the butter in with the milk or cream. Remove from heat, add water & vanilla, & allow to cool to about 125 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together 2 cups of flour with the sugar, yeast, & salt. 
3. Pour the warm milk mixture into the dry ingredients and mix well. (I used a wooden spoon, not an electric mixer, and it worked great.) Now add the beaten eggs to the batter as well as 3/4 cup of flour. At this point I mashed it all up with my bare hands rather than stir. It worked well to incorporate the new flour.  The batter will be sticky.
4. Place the ball of dough in a greased bowl and let it rise (covered) in a warm spot until it doubles in volume. This takes less than an hour.
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5. Knead in 2 more Tablespoons of flour, making the previously sticky dough nice and springy, replace the cover, and let the dough rise once more while you mix up the filling.
6. The filling is simple. Just stir together the spices & sugar in one bowl. And the same saucepan as earlier  heat the butter past the point of melted, gently until it turns a nice clear, brown color. Now remove butter from heat and hang on a little longer.
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7. Roll the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Spread browned butter all over it, right up to every edge, then sprinkle on the sugary mixture. (Personal note: While making the test batch I panicked a little. It seemed like an excessive amount of butter and sugar, compared to recipes I’ve tried in the past, but this turned out to be what made this recipe so wonderful. Personal opinion.)
7. This is where the cinnamon roll/sopapilla bread road divides. Rather than roll your dough into a cylinder then slice that into little pinwheels, you use a pizza cutter to slice the flat sheet of dough into long strips. Then you stack those strips into a long, skinny dough skyscraper. Then you cut that long skinny dough skyscraper into stacked squares.
8. File your stacked squares on edge into a regular bread pan and let it rise one last time, just for a few more minutes. 
9.  I forgot to mention preheating your oven. Mine heats up with ridiculous speed, so I can do it right at this point. 350 degrees is good. Now bake the dough. Bake it till your house smells amazing. This takes about half an hour, then I suggest letting the bread rest for a while in the oven, but with the oven turned off and the door open.
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   Now for a little housekeeping. As mentioned earlier* I found this recipe on Pinterest, where I was happily led to a blog called I Heart Food and So Can You. The author there did a great job illustrating every step, and her blog is lovely, so go check it out. She also credits two other previous blog posts for this recipe, Mandy’s Recipe Box and, ultimately, Joy the Baker. Credit where credit is due, I groove it. Whoever first dreamed up this particular incarnation of cinnamon-butter-drenched yeasty love, I don’t know. But it was B & K whose blog photos lured me in through Pinterest, so there we have it.
There’s No Such Thing as Too Much Mexican Food,
and Credit Your Sources.
xoxoxo
   

Another One Bites the Dust (Small Stone January 15th)

   We are speeding along the two lane paved road which is flanked by dry grassy fields and quiet groves of bare deciduous trees. Blurring anonymously through a brown and gray still life. The cold wind hisses in through the barely open sunroof and a Queen classic pounds out of the speakers. Gasoline fumes faintly poison our fresh air but it’s intoxicating. I lay my left hand on his right thigh and wait while we accelerate uphill, the force of the car’s acceleration pressing me steadily backward into the curvy seat. Through his pants, I can trace one finger along the unseen hem of his boxers. Once we reach about 4800 RPMs, his leg flexes for the trade of gas for clutch and rapidly back again, and we’re off as if before we’d been sitting still..
   My spine melts into the seat and watch him command the vehicle. I am such a goner.

Seed Catalog Fantasies

   This is the month for gardening catalogs. No doubt about it, every year January’s slow rhythm and cold climate join forces to draw me into colorful, papery daydreams about how my flower beds and vegetable gardens will look in the coming months. If I am a willing slave to  list making and reVolutions, then I am a love struck teenager when it comes time to dream up the new year’s lushness. 
That is a heckuva lots of carrots, you guys.
Do not forget to thin them once they sprout to about an inch of green fluff.
This makes all the difference in the world.
My Grandpa has always grown it, and I agree it performs really well in Oklahoma.
   Between farm chores, ironing Handsome’s work shirts, sort of doing P90x, cooking meals that are NOT chicken-lime-cilantro-tortilla soup, and reading for our fabulous little book club, I have been salivating over the myriad possibilities held teasingly in the pages of two truly gorgeous catalogs: Burpee and Gurney’s. Click on those links just to browse, but also do yourself a favor and request their free catalogs. 
Some like minded soul somewhere in the world painted this. 
It made it to the internet without a source. 
And now sits on my lowly Pinterest page, 
inspiring and reminding me to dream big green dreams.. 
Three cheers for Audrey Hepburn.
As well as for the neat and tidy, anonymous artist 
who loves gray paint as much as I do.
   This year we’ll be tackling some major improvement projects around the Lazy W. And just so no one thinks I am throwing around the Victorian “we” too loosely, it is true. I am one of the lucky women whose husband is happy to do some heavy lifting in the garden. In fact, he freaks out a little if I do certain jobs myself. Another way I am spoiled, I know.XOXO
   We’ll be building raised beds in the largest (and also enclosed) garden plot which is on the west side of our house, sort of the way to the pond and back field. Within those raised beds we’re installing plastic and/or cardboard weed block, infilling with layer upon layer of horse and buffalo manure, chicken litter which includes  shredded paper, hay, dirt, chopped leaves, you name it. This lasagna process has already begun, thankfully, several weeks ahead of our first seed sowing. Between those raised beds I hope to grow something short and fragrant but also mow-able. We’ll see how THAT pans out. Any brilliant ideas?
   The bald spots in the east facing flower bed are gradually diminishing, each season since we’ve lived here bringing with it more “kept” plantings and bigger, prettier shrubs and perennials. But there aren’t NO bald spots yet, so flowers will be planted. Big flowers this year. Really big ones.
Can you see the sparse garden over there? It’s the east facing one.
This is how we first saw the house back in September 2007.
Let me just say that the previous owners had been renovating the home’s interior
 and had great ideas for the garden but ran out of time to implement them 
before being relocated by the military.
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Since 2007 we have replaced the roof with a really pretty dark charcoal shingle,
following a vicious hail storm which was followed by an equally vicious tornado.
We have replaced the front door and picture window 
because of a pretty devastating house fire,
and moved back then replaced that chain-link fence with three wire.
Also, that is not our horse, but she was a sweetie.
This is more or less how the flower bed looks now, 
when viewed standing at the front door. 
I think this photo is from November 2011.
   I am only planning to dig two new beds in 2012, and they are both small ones, and I have already started amending the soil to make the job easier. One is the space near the chicken coop, where a few things like butterfly bush, cedar, and Rose of Sharon have gone wild. The other is a curvy spot right outside my kitchen window, which this year will be my very own potagerie. A place to grow heat-loving herbs like basil, oregano, and mint. As well as those little food stuffs that a cook needs quickly while preparing meals. Cherry tomatoes, strawberries, carrots, hot peppers, etc. Smaller crops that require less real estate but more attention.
   Thanks for listening to me ramble about farm improvements and for joining my little garden fantasy. We’re approaching the end of January soon, so the time to stop dreaming and start working in earnest is upon us. I’d love to hear what your garden plans are for 2012!
Slow Food is the Best Food
xoxoxo

Thursday Potential (Small Stone January 12th)

   After what might have been the deepest, most solid sleep I have enjoyed in weeks, maybe months, I sit here on Thursday morning facing a long, solitary day that pulses with incredible possibility. It is thrilling.
   Snow covers the ground, not deep and fluffy, but crusted and bitterly cold, probably something closer to ice. Yet the sun is bright, loud in his brightness, defiant of the single digit temperatures. I feel grateful to not have to drive anywhere today, fortunate that my place in this world is a cozy one, a safe, happy, meaningful one. 
   Over the next eight or nine hours, what improvements can I make in our little corner of the world? What reaching out can be done? How much can I strengthen our foundations and adorn our dreams?
   Choosing how to funnel my abundant energy is often my biggest daily challenge, and today is no exception. but today it is a motivation, not a burden. Today the possibilities are potential.
   I cannot help but wonder how much of this feeling has to do with my hair being freshly washed and blown dry.
   

Before I Go To Sleep (a book review)

   Our fabulous little book club’s current selection is set for discussion this coming Saturday night. I just polished off the last page tonight after dinner, and I am giddy. You know that feeling after you finish a book that has exhilarated you since page one? No dry spells, no slow, laborious climbs to action or understanding? Some books leave me exhausted; this book has left me inspired, though not in the spiritual sense.
Introducing
Before I Go to Sleep
by S.J. Watson
Before I Go to Sleep: A Novel


   Okay, I do not groove spoilers. I will try to keep this short and sweet. 
   I would recommend this book to a wide variety of audiences, with the simple caveat that it offers up some salty language, violence (though nothing we don’t see in a standard PG movie) and the full spectrum of marital relations. Ahem. 
   Would I approve of my two beautiful teenage daughters reading this? No. But I do think they are both intelligent and sensitive enough to appreciate the story behind the scenery. 
   The premise is that a woman, the speaker of the book, has lost her memory and must live day to day rebuilding it (at least enough to survive and maintain hope) from what she has managed to write in a private journal. As the title suggests, her memory is wiped clean every night when she sleeps. Just take that in for a second and imagine the awful implications, the far reaching consequences of losing both your long term and your short term memory every single night.
   Whew.
   How could a book like this be inspirational? I’ll tell you. I am freshly inspired to treasure my memories, both good and bad, and to be grateful to be an active, viable liver of my own life. Captain of my ship, if you will.
   Watson builds suspense better than Stephen King, in my opinion. He must be incredibly gifted to be able to write such a complex story from such a limited perspective, and using such a repetitive format without causing the reader to get bored? Wow. And the ending is delicious… 
   Okay, that’s it. Anything more and I’ll be flirting with spoilers. Have you read this yet? I would love to hear your thoughts! Haven’t read it but want to? If you’re interested I’ll lend it! My loaning policy is that each person must write his or her name and a quick review on one of the inside covers. Circulate as much as you want. 
Books are meant to be Read a Lot!
Cherish your Memories!
xoxoxoxo