Snow Day: Lemon, Ginger, And Walnut Scones

Two scones sit on a white plate in front of a snowy background
Snowy bokeh for snow day scones.

You wake up to a wintery landscape, snow blowing in delicate flakes, adding to the two inches that has already fallen on the railings of your balcony and weighed down your plant’s new leaves that last week’s 65-degree temperatures coaxed unseasonably into life.

Scones. That’s the thing for today. It’s too blustery for walking, and there is no need to go anywhere, so you pile up books and paper and pens and lists of movies (or whatever you really like when you’re hunkering down), and you throw together scones, ready in 30 minutes (but better after cooling if you can wait that long).

When you realize you don’t have an egg, you don’t panic. You substitute a tablespoon of vegetable oil, a tablespoon of water, and a few splashes of cream. And it all turns out just fine.

Lemon, Ginger, and Walnut Scones

Ingredients

2 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour (or regular AP flour, but don’t knead too much)

1/3 cup sugar

1 ½ tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

½ tsp. baking soda

8 T. butter, frozen and grated

½ cup sour cream or yogurt

1 egg, beaten

1/4 cup each chopped walnuts and chopped crystallized ginger

Zest of one lemon

Turbinado sugar for topping

Method:

Make sure your butter is frozen before you start.

Preheat oven to 400⁰.

In a medium bowl (big enough to get your hands in) mix together dry ingredients. Grate butter into dry ingredients, and quickly rub flour into butter until the mixture resembles cornmeal (this can also be done in a food processor).  Add chopped walnuts and ginger and stir to combine.

If you are using sour cream, mix egg and sour cream together in a small bowl. Stir this mixture into the dry ingredients, pressing and stirring the sticky dough until it comes together.

On a lightly floured surface, shape the dough into a circle that is approximately 8” across. Cut into eight triangles and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet about one inch apart. If you want smaller scones, you can also cut the triangles in half.

Sprinkle each scone with turbinado sugar.

Bake scones for 15-18 minutes or until they are golden brown. Let cool slightly before serving.

That Beef Stew Thing

A white ceramic bowl holds a stew of beef with white chunks of potato, bright orange carrots, and fresh chopped green chives. It's sitting on a wooden cutting board in front of a brick wall.
A steamy bowl of unconditional love.

So The Child is coming home for the holidays, and she has requested a few things for food. Salad (shocking), spice cake (not as shocking), and That Beef Stew Thing.

“That Beef Stew Thing” is what she has asked for since I casually tossed it together back in 2014, whenever she wants something hot and flavorful and slightly spicy but just generally warming.

It’s probably not the most traditional type of curry recipe, as it calls for a powdered mix, which seems like maybe sacrilegious, except I don’t know from curry, and when I made it was just trying to get my child to eat during a really tough year. I found the recipe on The Kitchn, linked above, and have made precious few adjustments or changes, mostly to the amount of beef, spice, or vegetables (sometimes I’ll only use sweet potatoes). Also, in my original post on this subject, I noted the conspicuous lack of salt. For God’s sake, salt your food.

Choose any curry you like. This also makes killer leftovers.

Finally, this is the posh version of That Beef Stew Thing because there was no stew beef or beef short ribs to be had in these COVID times. So I grabbed a pricey grass-fed steak and cut it into chunks, and ZOWIE. It’s good. If you’ve got the ducats for that, yay, you. Otherwise, this is equally delicious (if not more, honestly) with a lean cut of beef that needs a little time to get tender.

That Beef Stew Thing (originally called Korean Curry Rice)

2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 pound boneless beef short ribs, cut into 1-inch cubes (or any kind of stew beef in cubes)
1 medium onion, diced
Curry powder (honestly, to taste, any kind you like)
2 medium carrots, peeled and cubed
2 small red or yellow potatoes, peeled and cubed
1/2 large sweet potato, peeled and cubed
3 cups stock (veg or chicken)
Salt and pepper (season properly or it won’t taste great)
Steamed rice for serving
Optional: Kimchi for serving


Method
Heat the sesame oil over medium-high heat in a large pot. Add the boneless beef short rib and diced onions, season with salt and pepper, and brown on all sides. Add curry powder and cook, stirring, until the spices begin to open up.


Add the carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and stock and mix well. Bring to a boil and then turn down to a simmer, really a lazy slow one, until the beef is tender and the veg is cooked through (this is a good one for a tagine, perhaps, with enough stock, or a clay bean pot? Not sure but will definitely try the bean pot, as I have one.). If you like a thicker stew or want something more like a curry with sauce, make a slurry with 1 tablespoon of cornstarch and 1 tablespoon of the stew liquid. Mix completely, then add into the stew and stir through. This will thicken up nicely without any off flavor.

Serve over steamed rice with some kimchi on the side.

Aukey PowerTitan Portable Power Station: A Review – And A Coupon Code

AUKEY PowerTitan 300 Portable Power Station 288Wh
Aukey PowerTitan 300 Portable Power Station: scroll down for some $$ off!

So this is not the normal post for Charm City Edibles, but this product has been incredible, and I feel like sharing (plus there’s a coupon code – head to the bottom of this post if you’re impatient).

Aukey sent me the PowerTitan 300 Portable Power Station 288Wh – named like a superhero, natch – to test drive, and KWeeks and I took it for a ride on two trips to the middle of the woods. We definitely did some stuff with it that you’re not supposed to (charged cordless power tools, including a 56V lithium-ion battery), plus some stuff it really is more suited for (charging phones and devices). The verdict?

WORTH IT.

Not only did it charge our power tool batteries (three of them) on less than a full charge, but it also continued to charge cellphones without using hardly any remaining power (as in, less than 1% of the remaining power).

We charged it up again for the second trip, and I feel like it could go indefinitely charging devices if we hadn’t drained power with the 56V battery.

The official stats of the Aukey PowerTitan 300 portable power station, for those of you who like that sort of thing:

Capacity: 288Wh (26Ah, 11.1V)
DC Input: 5-25V, 4A
USB-C Input: 5-20V, 3A
AC Outputs (2): 110V/60Hz, 300W (600W peak)
DC Outputs (2): 12V, 8A (DC port); 12V, 10A (car port)
USB Outputs (2): 5V, 3.1A (total)
USB QC 3.0 Output: 18W max
USB-C PD Output: 60W max

For me, the stats don’t matter so much as how it works, and it works great for our purposes. I can see running small appliances on this briefly, but really if you want to spend time off-grid and are worried about charging devices (phones, cameras, laptops), this is a really great portable power station for that.

#vanlife people, this is a good option for you. Aukey says it works with solar, too, but we didn’t get that far.

Charging in a wall outlet is also fast and easy (but see below for the only con of this unit).

PROS: Small, easy to transport, charges phones fast, can handle small cordless power tool batteries

CONS: Takes a long time to re-charge through the car lighter. That’s literally the only con.

AND FRIENDS. I have a coupon code for you to get $40 off, so this Aukey PowerTitan 300 portable power station only costs $209. Just head to the official Aukey site and type AUKEYPLUS when you order. The code expires August 31, so don’t dawdle. Shipping is free and fast: get your power station in about five (business) days.

Just so things are crystal clear, too: I would not write about anything that I did not highly recommend. Aukey was busted and kicked off Amazon for fake reviews, and I am here to say that this is totally on the level. If you buy it, hate it, and live local to Baltimore (within an hour), I will bake you a cake. And that’s on top of Aukey’s 30-day money-back guarantee.

Go get some portable power, and let me know how it goes!

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Oh, WordPress

My sweet horsie, Lark. Here for interest only, and completely unrelated to the rest of this post.

All I want to do is get off of WordPress and onto some other easy-to-use site. And yet here I am, languishing on a platform I hate for the sake of occasionally posting here. It’s a placeholder.

This feels like where we are in the pandemic though, yes? Languishing. Waiting. We aren’t really holed up tight (but we will be again, I predict), but many of us (hello) are not ready to emerge fully.

It’s too people-y out there for me right now.

So here I sit, stuck on WordPress (although go visit me on Medium, where I hope to focus my other writing, poetry and non-food-related musings) if I ever start writing those things again. It’s also ok to click the “follow” button there, and I sure would appreciate it. Nothing will come to your inbox unless I publish, which, if I’m honest, is unlikely for the moment.

Happiest of Sundays to you. Take care of yourselves.

Play The Fool: On Creativity

Seeing through the ice, darkly – leaves under ice in Susquehanna State Park.

At the exact moment this blog is published, 4:26 pm on March 14th, I will turn 50. As you read this, if you come across it on that day, I will be on the sand in Assateague, listening to the waves and looking at wild horses. Arguably my happiest place, and the only place I would like to be on all of my momentous occasions (anywhere near the ocean).

As I write this, though, 11 days earlier, I have sprung up from my yoga mat to make notes. I was following yoga with Adriene’s hip and heart practice in an effort to become a more open person with better balance on a horse, and once the video ended and I lie there breathing quietly, the YouTube automatically forwarded to Ethan Hawke’s most recent TEDTalk.

I thought, well, I’ll just take a nice extended savasana and listen, but only a few minutes in I found myself reaching for my phone to take notes. I have been reflecting in the past several months about creativity, my own in specific, and curiously watching the well dry. I have felt disinclined to write poetry and have not completed a painting (or even put together a canvas) since mid-2020.

And as 50 approaches, I have begun to consider the next 50 years (my grandmother is 102, so that’s not outside the realm of possibility). Among other quotes, this one stands out for me:

“The time of our life is so short, and are we spending it doing something that’s important to us? Most of us not.”

Just this morning KWeeks and I were talking about doing what we love – getting up every day and going to work that is not just a way to fill the endless daytime hours before binge-watching TV and falling asleep on the couch but is instead a buoyant expression of what we love.

Because as Ethan Hawke says above, “If you get close to what you love, who you are is revealed to you.”

I am lucky enough in my life to have the time and space to move ever closer to what I love – to unravel the tangled past and dive into things that are troubling, joyful, and deep. But there is no formula or self-help book here – no treatise of any value that gives legitimate steps to finding out what you love and thus meeting yourself. Ethan Hawke continues, “There is no path until you walk it.”

I returned to the mat, listening to the last parts of his talk and reflecting on my own life and considering the conversation with KWeeks. I want the next 50 years of my life to be spent getting closer to what I love, peeling away the layers of my experience to become more fully revealed to myself. It is only this, as Ethan Hawke says, that allows us to connect with the world and the people around us more fully, this act of walking our own particular path, that we make, that is what marks our place in the infinite, swirling universe. I know as spring comes the groundwater of my creativity will begin to dampen the earth again. I will be filled up, as the well itself.

I imagine as I write this the feeling of sand between my toes, gritty but melting away beneath me as the sea swirls around my ankles. The salt wind brushing the hair from my face as seagulls whirl and cry above. The hand of KWeeks in mine, in that moment and for the next 50 years.

Against all odds and at the impossible age of 50, I am hopeful, on the path and laying flagstones ahead as I walk it.