Homemade Shaving Cream

My friend C came over to help me make shaving cream. It's nice to do these projects with a friend,  have a cup of tea, listen to music and talk while you work. It makes it feel like a knitting bee or a shucking bee (did people used to shuck things in bees? Probably) or a barn raising. Having company takes the work out of work, and it gave me a break when my arm got tired of grating soap. Also, C is responsible for some of the most charming (and slightly terrifying) artwork going and she made several adorable labels for the shaving cream we made together.

Roasted Acorn Squash Brown Butter and Sage Pasta

Brown butter is alchemy as far as I am concerned. It takes something that is already good-butter-and turns it into something glorious, nearly unrecognizable. When I served dinner my friend L said "What's in this sauce?" and I said "Butter"and she said "Yeah, butter and what?" and I said "Butter". We went on like this for a while. The transformation from butter, creamy, slightly sweet and mild, and brown butter, deep, nutty and salty is a little unbelievable; she couldn't believe that there was only butter in the sauce. 

Some recipes call for brown butter to be strained and remove the milk solids, the little brown, crunchy, salty wonderful crumbs. I think this is crazy. Those caramelized milk solids are what make brown butter nutty, complex and a little magical. I cannot endorse straining brown butter. 

Roasted Acorn Squash Brown Butter and Sage Pasta

-Acorn or similar squash

-1/2 cup plus 2-3 tbs salted butter

-1 bunch sage leaves 

-pasta, any kind you like

-salt and pepper

Halve an acorn squash and scoop out the seeds. Brush the inside with olive oil  and sprinkle with salt and coarse pepper. Roast in a 400° oven for about 40 minutes. 

While the squash is roasting, melt the butter over medium high heat. Pay attention to the butter, it can burn quickly and it turns into disgusting black char. I have field tested tested this myself. After the butter melts it should boil and spit as the water in the butter evaporates. Then it should settle down and get foamy and frothy. Swirl the butter in the pan, watching for the colour to develop. The goal to get the milk solids in butter to turn a nice toasty brown. The milk solids hang out at the bottom of the pan, so check on their development by taking the pan off the heat every so often and letting the foam subside to check out the colour. Scrape them off the bottom of the pan occasionally so they don't burn. When the butter is a deep nutty brown pour it into a small bowl and set aside.

Add a couple more tablespoons of butter to the pan and melt on quite high heat. Fry the sage leaves for a minute or two. Test them for crispness pretty quickly after you start to cook them; let one cool for a moment on a paper towel to see if it is crispy once it cools. As soon as they are crisp remove them from the butter with a slotted spoon, drain on a paper towel. If the butter is brown you can add it to your sauce, if it got a little too burnt, toss it out. 

Set a large pot of salted water to boil; once it is boiling vigorously cook the pasta. When the squash is roasted let it cool until it isn't too hot to handle. Cube and peel the squash and set aside. 

Toss the steaming hot pasta with squash cubes, brown butter and a generous pinch of flaky salt and pepper. Smoked salt is particularly good but any nice sea salt is great. Plate the pasta and top with a crispy sage leaves. This pasta wants a leafy green little salad to take some of the edge of the richness and the edge off of my guilt for eating quite that so much butter. Because everyone knows salad cancels butter. That's science. 

Dry Shampoo

I use this all the time. It is great for mornings when I can't manage to get out of bed and into the shower, when I have to go to an appointment right after I go to the gym or when I get called into work unexpectedly. I was most grateful for dry shampoo when I stopped shampooing my hair. Dry shampoo is a lifesaver in the icky inbetween time when the baking soda and vinegar doesn't seem to be working yet. For a couple weeks my hair never really felt clean and using dry shampoo really helped me stick to the no shampoo method instead of just giving up.

The proportions of ingredients are not exact, I more or less make it up as I go along each time. In a pinch I just use cornstarch, which make a perfectly good dry shampoo all by itself. Since it's white, it takes a little more brushing to make it blend well with my hair. This recipe is the dry shampoo I use most often, cocoa and red clay make the powder blend in better with brown hair. If you have red hair you could use less cocoa and more red clay, if you're blond you may not use either, or add a teeny tiny bit of either to just take the stark whiteness out of the powder. Just experiment until the colour works for you. It doesn't actually need to match your hair colour.

(Not Quite) Spring Garden

   

                            

Despite the fact that it snowed on Sunday, despite the fact that it's so windy and cold right now that I just walked home clutching my hat so it didn't blow away the windows are rattling in their frames, despite the fact that our birdbath is frozen over every morning when I get up, I am already so so excited about gardening. I have started a lot of seedlings in the sunroom, which is a nice cozy thing to have; it's soothing to see the little shoots growing and reminding me each day that spring is coming. But even more than the seedlings, I am excited about what my garden has done on its own, unsupervised. Things I left untended, things I forgot about, things I never knew about, are coming to life. 

I was thrilled to discover that one of my purple sprouting broccoli plants is sprouting some purple brocoli. I went into the garden to pick some kale and there it was-a tiny, tightly coiled little mass  of broccoli flowers at the top, and another, tinier one at each branch all the way down. I hadn't forgotten it exactly; I vaguely remembered planting broccoli there, but it was still such a nice little surprise. 

                             

I really enjoyed seeing the first signs of rhubarb coming back to life, tight pink skin stretched over the packed leaves. The whole thing reminded me of a brain when I first saw it. When I poked around I saw that it has a few new crowns around it. I planted it last year and harvested a little rhubarb, but I'm hoping this year will have a more substantial harvest.