Pictures of January

Let's start at the end (yes, I know it's actually February) with a picture of tonight's dessert. I invited Kristie, Kevin, Colleen, Beth, Loren, and Rod over to help me eat Sticky Toffee Pudding (aka date cake) from the Smitten Kitchen's recipe. I really didn't change anything, although it had to bake 10 minutes longer in my glass pan compared to Deb's metal one. I'm not going to reprint the recipe here, go read her post if you want it. The only thing I did differently was to serve it with pumpkin cream rather than whipped cream, so I'll list that recipe. Unfortunately you can't actually reproduce it unless you have the right squash to start with...

Pumpkin cream 

1.5 cups sweet and smooth pumpkin (squash really) puree
0.5 cup sour cream
1/2 t pumpkin pie spice (use my blend!)
Mix thoroughly and refrigerate at least an hour to let flavors blend. Scoop out and serve...with anything!

The problem is this recipe requires starting with the right kind of pumpkin to cook into puree. This has to be creamy smooth puree that you want to eat with a spoon straight out of the food processor. If all baby food were this good we never would move on to anything else. A perfectly ripe butternut squash might work, but even then many of the ones you buy in the store really aren't ripe enough. I don't think buttercup squash would have the right consistency either, as delicious as it is for other things. My gray pumpkin from the farmers market in October (yep, it's been sitting in waiting ever since) was wonderful though! It was clearly a C. moschata variety rather than a C. pepo. I saved some seeds if anyone wants to try planting them.

Sticky toffee pudding with pumpkin cream

Now that you're hungry, here's some other pictures from the first month of 2015.

Elizabeth, Dave, and I saw the Lincoln Magna Carta at the Library of Congress. You can see a picture of the parchment online so I took a picture of the people instead.

 It's a great exhibit so you should check out the online gallery for Magna Carta: Muse and Mentor.

I liked this story

Here's Roosevelt's letter

A run down the Mall on January 25--really nice day

Dad needs something like this for a post hole digger!

First foray into the Hertzberg/François slow rise refrigerator bread. Thanks Theresa for the cookbook!

DC License Plate BU 2597 you are totally parking in the bike lane. ALL of the bike lane. This was at 2:12 pm on January 11, 2015. Not that I'm bitter or anything.