The Steamboat Arabia

With a name like Arabia this Missouri River steamboat already had me fascinated.  Why Arabia, when clearly this boat never sailed anywhere near the east?  As quite a large ship, it contained a picturesque glimpse into life in the 1800s.  With a wide array of knick nacks, apparel, tools, food (even glass jars of unopened and still EDIBLE pickles!) and toys, the Arabia was a virtual treasure trove sunk 45 feet below the mud and muck of the Missouri River.  Over time, the course of the river altared and allowed the family access to the steamboat.  After weeks of winter excavation the ship was finally unearthed and artifacts were carefully uncovered from the dirt. 

Once the family realized the quantity of artifacts preserved underneath the rich farmland, they were unable to separate the collection.  It would be the largest collection of 18^th century frontier items ever discovered(preserved in mint condition-most items having never been used).

It is the sheer quantity of items that first dazzles the visitor, but as the tour began, my guide quickly explained that the preservation effort is still underway.  The museum has an active preservation lab on premises and with a staffer on site daily, continues to preserve the past right in front of anyone who cares to watch.  I spoke with Dr. Wright, the Textiles Preservationist at the museum.  She works with the boots, reams of fabric (which are not surprisingly few and far between, as anything plant-protein based was entirely disintegrated)  The biggest hurdle to the preservation effort is just that; all cotton and organic matter has disintegrated over time, leaving boots like old banana peels, ready for a preservationist to spend more than thirty hours lacing together.  To give you an idea of the work these historians have undertaken I'll detail some of the findings.  In the hold of the Arabia, the family found 5,000 boots, even more shoes, thousands of buttons, barrels and barrels screws, and all kinds of equipment meant to furnish life on the frontier. 

Currently, Dr. Wright is working on a particular shirt of unique historical importance.  In the 1800's rival gangs patrolled the borders of the three states (Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska) fighting other gangs and controlling their territory.  The way Dr. Wright explains it, these gangs seem to be a form of entertainment, like sports teams today.  To augment this image, the gangs each had a particular symbol, a heart, a star, or an eagle.  These symbols were proudly displayed on the front of a handmade shirt.  Unlike today, it was extremely uncommon to find manufactured shirts with patterns in the 1800’s.  Dr. Wright is carefully piecing together one of these symbol shirts.  It is unique in that it is a manufactured shirt, it is not handmade.  The stitches are too regular and widely spaced for the maker to be a human.  The shirt was also constructed with as little material waste as possible, following the utilitarian style of the factories. 

This particular revelation, coupled with the knowledge that these shirts were on a steamboat coming from a popular factory town, St. Louis, with an end destination in Omaha, we are to imagine that factories have begun mass producing these 'gang' shirts.  Why would they do this?  What does this mean in terms of the history of these places and the history of these rivalries?  No one knows for sure the answers to these questions, but visit Dr. Wright and she’s sure to give you her theory on the matter. 
If you are in KC, swing down to the river market district for a tour of the museum.  There is sure to be something here for everyone.

If you're not in KC visit the website for a virtual experience: http://www.1856.com/

Also visit Dr. Wright’s textiles blog at:

Best Laid Plans

I don't have time to explain right now the entirety of what happened with this cake.  I'll save that for after I return from work this evening (around 10).  But I will say that I had lofty ambitions for this cake that were only partly fulfilled.  You will see through the photographic journey the flaws and minor setbacks that were my first client's sheet cake order.

 The mishap begins....sugar work is a bit more complicated than it looks...

 All the Ironman heads broke except the one I managed to repair for the b-day boy's cupcake.

Fancy on the Inside

So as you might know, I'm something of an avid baker.  I love trying new recipes and adding ingredients and twists to classic foods.  Specifically when it comes to sweet treats.  Well, as you may also know, I have been going through the Wilton Cake Decorating Basics courses.  I just completed the second course last week, as a matter of fact.  And now, I know various techniques for decorating cakes, as well as baking them.  So I have put my skills to use.  Sunday night I baked (with my mother) two cupcake recipes, a chocolate and vanilla.  We made mini cupcakes for me to decorate and take to work to suprise my boss on her birthday.  She is a classy lady, very white wine and pearls, and so I wanted to make some mini treats to match. 

As I have little time, and believe fully that a picture is worth a thousand words, I will simply end this post with showing the results. 

Until next time, happy baking. 
~Samantha

Chocolate Cherry Bomb Cupcakes

I'm a nanny, in case you didn't know, and today is one of my charges birthday.  David is five years old today, and he asked if we could make cupcakes.  Certainly!  He wanted chocolate, with chocolate icing, and cherry bombs.  So voila, Chocolate Cherry Bomb Cupcakes were born. 

The boys both helped mix the ingredients together.  As someone once said, it is a comfort to know that eggs mixed with flour, oil, chocolate, and all the other ingredients will unquestionably yield 24 dozen cupcakes.  After mixing the ingredients, I poured batter into cupcake tins and let the boys drop maraschino cherries into the batter, knowing also that the cherries were heavy enough to sink to the depths of the cupcakes, transforming regular cupcakes into cherry bombs. 

After 20 minutes in the oven, the cakes emerged, chocolatey and deliscious, from the oven.  We let them cool (impatiently) while playing with fondant, and then glazed them with a thin layer of chocolate icing before applying our fondant creations.  I pulled a suprise from the freezer, turtles I had piped the night before, and we slid those onto our creations.  We added sprinkes for pizzaz, and then the boys returned to playing as I cleaned the mess.

Their creations (and my careful preparation) spoke to me, and sent me reminiscing about the simple times of childhood.  Everything is done for you, when you're younger than 4.  Your meals are prepared and set before you, your hair is combed, your body bathed, at times your clothes put on and shoes tied.  All that is left for children to do is play and learn a little.  They learn social skills, letters, colors, and the reasoning skills to build upon when they start school.  It's incredible that these little people become us.  The thinking, reasoning beings that become brilliant scientists, outstanding athletes, and parents.  It all comes down to the fundamental skills and our funtamental personalities we developed when we were children.  And I get to have some kind of affect upon these two kids.  I feel such a privelage just to be able to spend these hours with them, learning from them as they do from me. 

Ah well, time to change Chris' diaper.

Light and Fluffy

When you think of those words, "light and fluffy" airy cute things come to mind. Like clouds. Sheep. Pillows. Not, of all things, peanut butter.

But that's what this recipe called for. Mom and I decided to make Reese's inspired cupcakes for cake class tonight and she and my sister just left to get supper. So I was left to make the simple filling myself. That sounds easy enough, so I spooned a cup of peanut butter, 3 tbsp unsalted butter, and 2/3 cup powdered sugar into our transport tupperware. The next instructions have caused unforseen frustration and pain. Beat until light and fluffy.

Light and fluffy my butt! How is peanut butter supposed to get light and fluffy? Peanut butter has informed me that it will stay thick and creamy no matter what you do to it! Believe me, I tried. My elbows hurt from the effort! That was a lot of beating going on, and it hasn't changed much in its consistency.

I give up. It can stay thick and creamy and my friends can just deal with having a thick and creamy filling. I mean, they don't know that it should be light and fluffy, right? They should be thankful that I even thought to bring them cupcakes. Sheesh. Light and fluffy.



Stepping back from this rant, I'm wondering how many times I've been told to do something seemingly impossible with the 'ingredients' i have. Like, pull a winning resume out of a pretty average college experience. I did an internship, I took classes, I had a job, I was involved in student government. I studied abroad. Plenty of people have done those same things. ANd plenty more have done bigger and better things. How am I supposed to transform my resume into "light and fluffy" when it is a seemingly impossible task? Or do I just leave it "thick and creamy" and try and sell that.

Here's my current plan: Do a great internship, make all kinds of good connections, and then use those to find a job. That way my "thick and creamy" resume comes with a five star recommendation and I get the job in spite of it all.

Take that light and fluffy.

Royal Icing Roses (and the smaller bouquets of our lives)

Today is Tuesday, which means cake class day for mom and I. This particular Tuesday is the day we will learn drop flowers, star flowers, and leaves. I'm excited, though last night baking the cupcakes I had a chance to practise a bit. Mom and I made amazing chocolate cupcakes from scratch. We plan on filling them (in class) with a peanut butter concoction, making Reeses (r) inspired treats. Then we will decorate with not-so-inspired flowers.

Anyway. After the cupcakes were finished cooling and we were beginning to put them away, I decided to ice the mini cupcakes we had baked with the extra dough. I pulled out the practise page for roses and decided to take a stab at it. Roses were one of my primary motivations for taking the class, after all. They look so elegant and impressive sitting on top of a cake, especially a wedding cake. I wanted my cakes to look professional like that. (By the way, it turns out we won't be learning roses until Classes 2 and 3, so I may as well practise now, right?) To start your rose, you first need tip 6 (I think, I can't remember right now. It is the larger round hole, about 1 1/2 centimeters in diameter) to make a blob in the center of a flower stick. I used my small cupcakes as the flower stem. Then you start at the center of the blob making circles with tip 2D. The rounds turn out to be petals and after several rounds of ribbon-like icing, you start to see the bigger picture. Even with my amateur hand, the roses still looked pretty darn good.

It was after this experience (and after looking through Martha Stewart's cupcake book) that I proposed to Mom a home business idea. Why not try making all different kinds of cupcakes, different flavors, fillings, and icings? Once we have our favorites (and have perfected our technique), we can post pictures and descriptions of the cupcakes up on Ebay and sell our bakery/catering services online for local delivery. That way if it is unsuccessful we haven't invested all that much and we can go on with our lives. But if it is successful, we earn some money, gain experience, and hopefully can open our own little bakery with confidence. We would do artisan breads, muffins, cupcakes, cakes, pastries, and maybe even add a cafe with warm beverages.

Opening a bakery has been something that I have wanted to do for a long time, and now my mom has started getting enthusiastic about it as well. Though, as usual, she's a bit hesitant because her humility has her convinced that she is never going to improve to professional status. I beg to differ.

The life lesson I take from these Royal Icing Roses is this: never let reality douse your creativity. Though I am outwardly confidant and excited about this idea, I have a nagging doubt that any of this will come to fruition. Too much will get in the way, and I might get a job yet. But none of that is going to stop me from learning all these techniques and attempting to achieve professional results in my cakes/cupcakes/desserts with the hope that one day I will be able to own my own bakery.

The Ball in the Bowl

Our littlest dog eats too fast.  He runs in at dinner time and scarfs down his little kibbles so fast that he sometimes chokes because he neglects to chew.  My sister, a pre-vet student at Kansas State University, informed us that there are several solutions to this dilemma. 

Did you know they make special bowls for dogs like Indy with eating disorders?  (http://brake-fast.net/index.htm)  Eating too fast causes bloating (Gastric Dilatation/Volvulus is the technical term), vomiting, and other nasty symptoms.

According to the pre-vet student it can make a poor doggie's stomach swell due to the extra air ingested (called distending) and causes irregularity. The website for the doggie bowls says that when that happens the stomach can volvulus, which means that the stomach can twist.  If you saw Marley and Me you'll know that in older dogs, volvulus can be a life-threatening condition.  (If you haven't seen the movie I recommend it...great performance all around). 

A second solution (and less expensive than the special bowl) is to place a ball in the bowl of the aggressive eater.  So Indy now has a racketball in his bowl.  He seems to manage eating around it, still pretty quickly but much slower than before, and as an added bonus our other older dog Norman no longer licks the bowl after Indy is through. 

Another added bonus, according to the pre-vet student, is that their puny little minds are stimulated while consuming their food.  They have to scrounge around the ball to get at their kibble. 

Thinking about this situation broadly I come to some interesting connections between humans and man's best friend.  How many people just mindlessly scarf their food in front of the television?  Whether snacking after school and watching the tube, eating a TV dinner and sipping soda, or munching popcorn at the movies, a lot of what Americans do is mindless eating.  We don't even think about it.  I mean, what are the movies without popcorn? 

Our oral fixation is a little ridiculous.  I think the reason we continue to battle obesity in this country is directly related to technology use.  Technology seems to keep us in the same place all the time (or much of the time). 

Chocolate Molten Lava Cake

In accordance to my mission statement for this blog, this entry will fall into my pursuit for the perfect chocolate goodness and curiosities about baking/food preparation. 

 A few evenings ago my mom and I decided to experiment in the kitchen.  She wanted something chocolate and I wanted to bake.  So I found a recipe for Chocolate Molten Lava Cake on the internet (epicurious.com in case you were wondering) and we decided to try it out.  Fortunately, it had few enough ingredients (and we maintain such a well stocked kitchen) that we had everything we needed.  It was a blissfully simple recipe and yielded very good results.  A little too eggy for me, I would like to tinker with the recipe and see if I can improve it.  But over all, a very good dessert.  Herein follows the recipe:

Five ounces of bittersweet (we used semisweet) chocolate, chopped
Ten tablespoons unsalted butter
Three large eggs
Three large egg yolks
One and one half cups powdered sugar
One half cup all purpose flour

 Essentially, what must be done is melt the chocolate and butter together then add it to a whisked combination of eggs and sugar.  Then you add the flour and pour the batter into buttered custard cups.  The cakes are baked until the sides are set but the center is soft and runny (give or take 10 minutes.  Ours took 13.)  When you're done, you run a sharp knife around the cakes in the cups and placing a plate on top, carefully flip them over.  That was the difficult part for us.  Ours stuck to the bottom of the custard cups and so we had to shake them loose, causing the "molten" part to ooze everywhere.  They weren't the prettiest of things, but they sure were delicious. 


Improvements I might make would include experimenting with adding raw sugar to the batter.  It would stiffen it a little, maybe give it less of an egg-foam texture (it was slight, but it was definitely there for me).  Perhaps even using one less egg and substituting oil and a little water, see how that does.  It would make it a bit more fudgey, which I think would be spectacular. 

That's all for now...gotta run and help mom make Chicken Broccoli Braid....mmmmmmm!
~Samantha

Cleaning

I have successfully moved back in with my parents, if you can accept using the words "successfully" and "moved back in with my parents" in the same sentence.  I have been working at my old job, attempting to locate employment elsewhere AND helping my mother sort through some of the things she has accumulated over the years with the end goal of condensing.  It has been a fairly successful endeavor thus far, and today we are switching rooms.  I have cleared out my childhood closet and am awaiting her say-so when the spare bedroom closet (significantly larger) is cleared.  I will be moving into the spare room and my room (slightly larger) will be transformed into a study/library/storage. 

It observing this move (my mom is currently carrying boxes from the closet into the hallway--and yes, I did offer to help.  This is apparently something she must do herself) that has compelled me to write.  First, the contemplation of the amount of stuff one accrues over a lifetime (and your offspring's childhood).  I mean, she is carrying box after box of things she has held onto for 20 years.  Things like little t-shirts and polos that my sister and I wore when we were 1 and 2, tutus and dance costumes from my sister's ballets, ceramics from my artistic days.  All things that are minimally significant to the naked eye but hold an intrinsic value.  She smiles tenderly upon observing the contents of each box (which she has not seen for at least 5 years as they have been behind a closed closet door). 

 As humans we hold on.  We attach emotional significance to everyday things and when those things are put in jeopardy, it affects us emotionally (and sometimes physically).  Imagine a fire.  Your home is set ablaze by someone with bad intentions.  What are those things you would most lament losing?    It is not the fact that your quilt would be gone.  You can certainly replace a quilt.  It is the fact that your grandmother made the quilt and she snuggled with you under it while watching TV when she would babysit.  It's those countless blanket forts you made in the living room with the quilt as the roof (because the quilt cast the best colors on your secret tea parties when the sun shone on the fort).  And now, even if you're 34 and your dog is the one who snuggles with you on the couch, that quilt on your bed (or maybe in a box somewhere) is a vital part of your heart. 

My father posed this same question to me once, if I had to pick one thing to save of all of my stuff, what would it be.  And being a child that was moved around as a kid, I lost somewhat the significance of things and places.  My photographs, however, retain their significance.  I would be devastated if I lost my photographs.  It would affect a very deep, secret part of me and I don't think I would recover entirely.  After this revelation, my father helped me back up my computer's picture files.  (Aren't parents great?)

But after all that, these are all just things.  They might hold great significance to us, but we can ultimately survive without them, even if it may not feel like it at the time. 



My second contemplation involves the move itself.  Hopefully more successful college graduates move home than just me.   I mean, I did slightly better than average (a 3.4 on a 4.0) in my academic studies.  Though, when looking at such an evaluation I feel obligated to point out that I was a double major double minor student who held a job (working 15-25 hours a week) and an internship.  In addition to that I maintained something of a social life, though seeing how some friendships turned out I often wonder what would have happened had I nixed that social life a bit sooner. 

But surely, there are college graduates who accomplished similarly in their academics who are also out of work.  Our bright minds bored, our bodies immobilized, seeking desperately a meaningful occupation. 

I recently skimmed through a book titled, Refuse to Choose and came to the realization that this book was talking about people just like me.  Widely curious, desire to pursue and excel at multiple careers at the same time.  Never satisfied with the knowledge we have, always driven to seek more.  She called these people "scanners" and detailed the difficulties of a job search using conventional methods.  I have since been on the look out for jobs in the unconventional methods she described, though I am somewhat at a loss about where to go from here. 

Mostly I would like to move to a place like Washington DC and start interning at all the different non-profits and exciting NGO's available in that environment, though I am quite worried that if I did so difficulties paying the bills would ensue.  So, I am here, waiting to bank some funds in order to go explore the headquarters of non-profit activity.