mulberryshoots

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" ~ Mary Oliver

maple-oatmeal scones! . . .

DSCN7944

Today, I watched someone on a cooking show make scones and it inspired me to make a half batch of my own for dinner tonight. I used Ina Garten’s recipe for maple-oatmeal scones but I cut it in half. The other thing that I did was to process the entire dough in my Cuisinart and patted the dough into shape with my hands rather than handling it further by rolling it out.

In order to make it easier to follow, I hand-copied out the ingredients halved in order to make about half a dozen scones. I had two sticks of unsalted butter, fresh buttermilk, and two large eggs in the fridge. The dry ingredients were readily available also, which I added together in my Cuisinart, whisking it together to blend before I added the cold butter. Then, I gently pulsed the mixture until the butter became small fingertip sized bits in the flour/oatmeal mixture.  The wet ingredients went in next – just a quarter cup each of buttermilk and sugarless maple syrup plus the eggs. Pulsed it some more and the batter was a little sticky but mixed together. Rather than add more flour, I floured a silit pad and added the sticky batter, rolling it in a little flour to offset the stickiness. Instead of rolling the dough with a rolling pin, I gently patted it with my fingers to about 3/4 of an inch thick.

I used my crimp edged 3-inch biscuit cutter (dipped in flour) and placed six tender scones on a baking sheet lined with pre-oiled aluminum foil. Brushed egg wash on the top and slid them into a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes. When they came out of the oven, I brushed the egg wash on again while they were hot and sprinkled oats on the top.

Tonight, we’re having wild-caught haddock, fresh spinach with garlic and these scones. If we’re going to have a few carbs once in awhile, this is a great way to have ’em!

 

Advertisement

NBC et al. . .

photo from NBC news media

photo from NBC news media

A fresh update on Brian Williams’s fate appeared in the NYTimes today:  NBC will retain Brian Williams on MSNBC, its cable TV news station, but has solidified Lester Holt as its primetime announcer. The article was based on hush-hush, off-the-record information from confidential sources not at liberty to be quoted. Nevertheless, it’s a “leak” that will test the winds of public opinion before an official announcement is made later this week.

To the over 200 comments that followed this article, I added this one: 

“Wipe all the judgment aside. This is a cold-blooded business decision and a politically astute one too, it seems to me. MSNBC has been floundering for quite some time and where else to give Brian Williams a probation period to prove that he can do something else besides read the teleprompter and embellish himself in editorial comments? NBC has nothing to lose (except perhaps poor Andrea Mitchell who deserves a safe haven somewhere at NBC and not under Brian Williams, God forbid.) Plus, it puts Williams on ice as it were, as mentioned in the article, so that he doesn’t move to another network, spill more NBC dirt, or try to compete with NBC. Very smart move – Solomonic, even.

Let’s see what they do with Lester Holt’s succession queue too – Savannah Guthrie appeals to women, Millennials and would retain older viewers too. Her appearance this week has been refreshing even as we acknowledge that Lester Holt has lightened his anger and trimmed his physique to stay the course for NBC after Brian William’s public hara-kiri on screen.

The only reason we’ve watched NBC is not who reads the news, but that their news organization actually goes to places that matter and shows more in-depth coverage than the People-Magazine human interest stories that seem to proliferate on all three major networks. So, let’s keep our fingers crossed for Andrea Mitchell and hope that she can hold her own – or move up to another level of national political reporting on NBC itself. She deserves no less.”