People always ask how we manage to keep within our food budget. One thing that I do is to take just a few minutes each week and actually plan every meal. Normally that means one night is pasta, one is fish, one is chicken and so on. I find it much easier to avoid buying unnecessary items when I have a detailed shopping list. The trick is to think of tasty variations within each category so we aren’t eating the same thing every week.

Tonight just happened to be chicken night so I decided to make my favorite yogurt curry chicken. It’s basically a simple tandoori chicken recipe baked in a home oven, but a bit of planning is key, as the chicken really needs to marinate for at least 8 hours. Perhaps more important is a really good curry powder (I like to make my own). Curry powder is not the traditional tandoori chicken seasoning, but I use it anyway because it’s both easy and delicious. A quality curry powder, however, makes all the difference. The yogurt and curry combine to form a delicious soft crust for the chicken, a welcome change from whatever boring chicken I might have made last week. Serve this dish with basmati rice and any Indian style vegetable dish.

Yogurt Curry Chicken

2 cups whole milk yogurt
2 Tablespoons curry powder
1 Tablespoon salt
1 chicken, cut into pieces

Whisk the yogurt, curry powder and salt together in a large bowl. Add the chicken and toss to coat. Refrigerate for at least 8 hours, preferably overnight.

Preheat the oven to 375. Remove the chicken from the marinade and place on a foil-lined baking sheet. Brush any remaining marinade over the chicken so it is coated with a thin layer. Bake until golden brown and completely cooked, 45-55 minutes. Serve immediately.

I had a hard time falling asleep a couple of nights ago after a long day of cooking and watching the kids. My thoughts eventually drifted to marshmallows and how I’ve not been very happy with my first test batches. The texture turned a bit chewy after a few days and the flavors seemed to fade. Then, out of nowhere, I had an idea that might address these problems and I was actually tempted to get out of bed and try a batch (but no, the sound of the mixer at midnight would surely wake the kids!). I did make a batch first thing when I got up that morning and I am pretty thrilled with the results so far - light and fluffy in texture and subtle, smooth flavors, even after being stored for a week (and counting). I’m not going to divulge my new technique as some things need to be kept secrets, but I will say that I used typical marshmallow ingredients and combined them in a different way to produce the improved product. This particular batch is caramel, which is something special in itself - think of an untoasted marshmallow infused with a toasted marshmallow flavor.

A few of you have emailed asking about my basic biscotti recipe. My base recipe is simple enough, so you just need to decide what you want to add - nuts, chocolate chips, dried fruit, etc… One-third of a cup of any of those is enough for this recipe and if you want to experiment with flavored extracts, one teaspoon should suffice.

Basic Biscotti Recipe

1/4 cup butter
6 Tbsp. sugar
1 egg
1 cup flour
3/4 tsp. baking powder
pinch salt

Cream the butter and sugar in an electric mixer. Beat in the egg. Mix in the flour, baking powder and salt until just incorporated. Form into a log about 3-4 inches wide, 1 inch thick, and maybe 10-12 inches long, and bake on a silicone baking sheet at 325 for about 25 minutes, or until completely cooked. Cool and slice diagonally into 1/4 inch slices, then bake again until crisp, 10-12 minutes. Cool completely before eating.

Naming a business is like naming a child, which is something we know all about considering we’ve done it twice, with a difficult last name to boot. We considered a few possible contenders, asked friends and families for suggestions, and then this name sort of just came along. It’s totally not the vibe we were going for originally (we were thinking something a little more urban, with Brooklyn somewhere in the name), but it stuck with me even though it was kind of odd and I didn’t love it immediately. The name started growing on us and we started to plan a whole concept of sweets infused with spices and everything sort of made sense. Suddenly, the name just fit and I started imagining “whimsy” and “spice” as illustrated characters (I do have this strange urge to make plush marshmallow dolls).

I’ve been spending the last week designing a logo (the latest incarnation above - can’t promise that it’s the last), business cards and labels. The labels have been particularly tough because you have to fit all this information in such a small space and since my design style goes towards minimal (can you tell?), it’s been a bit of a struggle. It’s crazy to think that we just started this business 5 weeks ago. Mark went to file the papers to register the name officially at the county clerk’s office on Friday. We have our EIN number now and a tentative date for our first run in a commercial kitchen to produce the goods in earnest. Part of the decision to go to a commercial kitchen is so that we can eventually sell on the web - you can’t sell food on the internet in NYS or even have a website, period, if you decide to bake out of your home, even if it’s certified (can you imagine? Who doesn’t have a website these days?). So it’s real and it’s scary and we feel like we’re operating a bit on autopilot because things are moving so fast. That’s been a good thing really, because this has been a great distraction from dwelling on the reality of unemployment.

I’m pretty tired and sleep deprived and trying to fit all this in while juggling 4 freelance projects at the moment, yet I just couldn’t sleep at all last night because of all the things we still needed to do. On top of that list is thanking everyone who have come here to visit us in the short time that we have been up (and thanks to Apartment Therapy’s ohdeedoh for the shout out), especially those of you who have written about your own personal stories of starting a business. If there are more stories out there to share, I’d love to hear them.

I admit I don’t cook all that often these days. There was a time when I used to cook much more, but Mark can do it better and quicker so the household roles had been cast early on: I clean and he cooks. There are a few dishes that I still make every once in awhile - spaghetti with fresh tomatoes, salty black olives and capers, and soft, fluffy scrambled eggs in the morning. Last year, my mother-in-law showed me how to poach eggs since I do love a nice, soft poached egg over toast. Mark claims that the way I do it is not technically poached since the egg isn’t completely submerged in water and the yolk is visible on top, but I say whatever to that since it pretty much all tastes the same in the end.

Gently break an egg into a small bowl so that the yolk stays in tact.
Fill a small, shallow frying pan with about 2 inches of water and bring to a sizzle. The water should not be boiling, but it should start to bubble to the surface.
Gently slide the egg from the bowl to the water, holding the bowl as close as you can so that the transition is smooth and the egg undisturbed.
Again, the heat should be kept low and the water should never be boiling.
I like to spoon some water over the yolk a few times so that it pushes the egg under the water a bit. You can also use the spoon to “corral” the egg whites to prevent it from spreading too much, but if you’ve successfully slid the egg in to the pan, the egg will more or less keep its shape.
I have no exact time for how long the egg should be in the pan, but I take it out with a slotted spoon when I think it looks “done” - usually about 3 minutes.

What I like about this method is that it doesn’t use vinegar to hold the egg together. I know that there are many different ways to poach an egg, and this may not be poaching in the true sense of the term, but this method has definitely taken the mystery out of it and now I can have yummy, runny eggs to dip toast in whenever I want (yeah I’m the only one in the family that eats runny eggs - Mia likes it for a bit, but will never finish the whole thing.)

Having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, I remember biscotti as being those gigantic funny-shaped cookies in coffee shops that nobody ever bought. I was introduced to a better biscotti when I took my first job in New York as a pastry assistant in an Italian restaurant over 11 years ago. It was there that I found the smaller and more thinly sliced biscotti, served with the traditional accompaniment - a glass of Vin Santo, a sweet Italian dessert wine. Since then I have made biscotti on more than a few occasions, but never had given it much thought until now.

For some reason I had the urge to make a batch the other day. Maybe it was the gray rain that reminded me of back home, but I felt like having something to dip into my fourth cup of coffee. I whipped up a small batch using my basic recipe, plus some coconut, dried mango, and a bit of Chinese five spice powder just for fun. It was very satisfying and perfect for dipping into a hot beverage or snacking on its own, but I think I will omit the mango next time, as its chewiness canceled out some of the biscotti’s crispness. They also seem to be one of the more versatile forms of cookie, in that they can become a vehicle for just about any conceivable flavor…which means that I’ll probably be headed back to the kitchen to try a new flavor soon.

This is my all time favorite picture of Claudine. When I’m down, tired, overwhelmed, or just plain bored, I pull this picture out and I can’t help but smile. I know, I know, such a typical, smitten parent. As if seeing and being around your kids all day long isn’t enough, we need to constantly look at pictures and videos too. It’s like when your kids are beating you down with every little “mommmmmmy! I NEED you!” and you can’t wait (I mean seriously, cannot wait) for 7:30 pm to roll around so that you can tuck them into bed with a goodnight kiss and hug and forget about them for at least a few hours. Then an hour or so goes by…the house is all clean with toys put away…and you’ve finally plopped on the couch for some peaceful downtime…and you start to miss them. You know what I’m talking about. You try to push the kids out of your mind because it’s your time, but you really miss them. WTF??

I love my 2 girls equally, and Mia, our four year old, is amazing me in ways I would have never imagined. She’s sharp as a thumb tack and funny as all hell. But she’s also loud and hyper and talking ALL THE TIME - the total opposite of Mark and I, who tend to be on the quieter side. She’s got presence in a room and can fill up space with her personality. It’s all good and fun, but it’s also exhausting day in and day out. Still, I wouldn’t wish her to be any other way and we enjoy seeing this extroverted personality emerge (from where though? Not inherited from us).

Claudine, on the other hand, is still very much our baby. And because she is our last, I am trying to savor every minute of her sweetness before she too explodes into full toddlerhood, learns to talk back with an attitude that seems way too fresh to come out of that mouth, and bounds into rooms with tireless energy, never walking but always running. I figure we have another 4 or 5 months. So for now it’s all chubby cheeks and funny faces and mispronounced words and big smiles.

Spending the weekend with my parents and we went out for Korean-style Chinese: whole fried fish with scallion and ginger, sweet and sour pork, spicy chicken, and noodles in brown sauce. Familiar, comfort food.