Category Archives: food

>The Secret is in the Egg

>I think I could do at least a whole week of cooking posts, so maybe I will. But for now I wanted to share our New Year’s Day recipe. This was a yummy soup that I made to use up a bunch of collard greens that we got from our CSA this summer. With the ham (symbolizing forward motion), black eyed peas (luck), and greens (prosperity) it seemed like a perfect dish for New Year’s Day.

I needed some help from one of my junior cooks, because I wasn’t feeling 100% on New Years Day. It’s weird, because it seems like a night that starts with a nice glass of eggnog, progresses to wine with (and by with I mean, before during and after) dinner, and ends with a to go cup of Irish cream would make for a great start to the new year. (I think I just put my finger on the holiday weight gain. Note to self: Make a belated new years resolution to steer clear of egg based drinks.)

Anyway, Jack was glad to oblige. He tore up the kale.

From 2010January

He sampled some carrots, and he stirred.

From 2010January

And when I wasn’t looking, he put Luke’s egg full of silly putty in the crock pot. I noticed it hours later. The silly putty was sort of melty but completely contained in the egg. So I just threw it away and didn’t tell anyone. Then, to be thorough, I threw Jack’s silly putty away too. The soup was delicious though! I plan to defrost some of the leftovers for dinner next week with cornbread.

Recipe – basically this. But I used dried beans instead of canned. And instead of a piece of ham I used a giant ham hock. And I did it in the crockpot instead of on the stove. Note to self – high temp next time. And I added carrots and celery. I used collard greens the first time I made it and kale the second time. It works either way. Don’t forget the silly putty.

>First: The Cake

>
I was changing Jack’s diaper the other day and discussing, sort of over his head, that he may be susceptible to bribery in exchange for some potty training.  Possible M&M’s.  Possibly.  As Dave ad I discussed it a light-bulb went off over Jack’s head.  He grabbed his stomach and started writhing around and shouting, “I hungry!  Choklat!  I hungry, choklat!”  

And hence, the idea to make a chocolate cake for Jack’s birthday was born.  I went to my fave food blog and looked up chocolate cake, and I came up with two contenders.  One was too complicated and the other had coffee in it.  I went complicated.   Mmmm.  Complicated:  Chocolate cake with peanut butter icing underneath another layer of chocolate and peanut butter.
Due to the snow, I knew my favorite peanut-o-phile wasn’t going to brave highway 93 to join us so I sent her pictures of the cake throughout the day to torture her.  Good thing, because I can’t find the card reader today so we have to rely on the phone picture. My phone takes some good pictures! 
OK, I know everyone wants the recipe.  So here you go.  High altitude readers:  I subtracted one tablespoon of flour, and  I used one 1.75 teaspoons baking soda.  However, I have also made another cake from Sky High before, and I didn’t adjust it at all.  
For the record, blogging about the recipes I make from a food blog that I read, is sort of meta.

>The Dummening: In the Form of Clumsiness

>You’d think I would be really calm, and not at all jittery to the point of dropping things and breaking things now that I really can’t make coffee. Yeah, I recently broke the coffee carafe. It wasn’t that big of a deal because we could just use the french press until I search every store in the tri-state area for a replacement carafe. That worked until I broke the french press. There was also an incident where someone knocked a glass into another glass in the cabinet, causing massive breakage, but I am not claiming that. I swear that was Dave.

Regardless, now that I am unhappily giving up caffeine, it’s odd that this sort of thing keeps happening. What sort of thing you ask? The sort of thing where I say, “Oh great! There is the perfect amount of salad left over to make a really big salad for my lunch tomorrow!” And then I followed that up with, “I’ll just take a picture of this with my camera.”


A few nights later I was making a fritatta for dinner.

In case it isn’t clear, that is a picture of four eggs* on the floor. Luke took a look and said, “Crack an egg on your head, let the juice run down.”

On the bright side, the frittata did turn out to be delicious. There weren’t any leftovers. (I took the picture before everyone had seconds.) Happy Friday the 13th, everyone; I hope you enjoyed your week of dummening! (And since the week was about The Dummening, I am sure no one will care that it was only 5 days long!)

* I did not use the eggs that fell on the floor.

>The Food Of Yellowstone

>One our long ago trip to Yellowstone, all the adults took turns making meals.
I made fajitas, served with guacamole, wine, and a side of ibuprofen. Actually the ibu was just for Luke and his potentially dead tooth, a story that I will post about just as soon as I can look back on it and laugh.

From Yellowstone

Grandad made a pizza with with guac, chicken, chedder and salsa. On the grill. We have a friendly pizza making rivalry between the two of us.

From Yellowstone

Grandad has to get creative after he insisted that I not continue to buy wine with screw top lids.

From Yellowstone

Which inspired all sorts of resourcefulness:

From Yellowstone

After our awesome hike, Grandmom made chili dogs.

From Yellowstone

Pancakes are usually my specialty, but Dave developed quite the knack this summer:

From Yellowstone
From Yellowstone

>Silver Medal Dutch Oven Rainer Cherry Crumble

>Another year, another camping dessert competition, another silver medal. Well, the judging was a lot less formal this year, so this is pretty much self awarded. I suppose I could have fought for a tie for first, but MB’s strawberry shortcake was realllllly good. Dave and I made the Rainer Cherry Crumble from the June Cooking Light, and it was also really good. We borrowed MB’s cherry pitter and Luke pitted cherries, almost faster than Jack was eating them. Then we pawned Jack off on MB, so we could finish pitting cherries and actually end up with enough for the crumble. Actually, instead of angling for first place, I should be sharing my second place with MB, since she helped so much.

The picture makes the Silver Medal Cherry Crumble look sort of disgusting, I blame my phone, since I was still camera-less at the time.


Fortunately, other people brought cameras, so we have these pictures of the boys:


>Happy Birthday Dave!

>Dave took Luke and Jack camping on Thursday, and the plan was for me to meet them after work on Friday. Well, first the campsite was closed, then they could only get one night at another campsite, then they got 2 more nights in another spot, so they had to pack up and move, and then it rained and then the wind blew the rain shelter/tarp into bits. Then I got there and convinced them to go home. Good thing, since Jack threw up all day yesterday.

While Dave stayed home with the sickie, I took The One Who Can Not Keep A Secret birthday present shopping. I asked The One Who Can Not Keep A Secret what he wanted to get his dad for his birthday and he said, “A wii game, or a remote control car, or light saber, maybe…” I asked him exactly whose birthday we were shopping for and he said, “I KEEP ASKING DADDDY WHAT HE WANTS AND HE KEEPS TELLING ME I DON’T HAVE TO BUY HIM ANYTHING!” Sheesh, Ok. SO TOWCKAS and I went to Best Buy because I have been meaning to go there for the last 14 months since the light on the refridgerator starting telling me to replace the filter. I figured we could get a filter and shop for games for the wii. Long story short, we got Wii Little League, and thus began the longest 17 hours of secret keeping that TOWCKAS has had to endure since last year. Oh wait, last year he only had to keep the secret as he helped me carry the present down the hallway. So over the course of those 17 hours there were lots of,
“I can’t wait until tomorrow.”
“You want to open your present in the morning, right?”
“I can’t wait to play with your present tomorrow Daddy.” Etc.

Then, last night during dinner, Dave said, “After dinner, do you want to play Mario Cart Wii or play baseball in the front yard?”

TOWCKAS’s response? “Wii Baseball!!!!”

Fortunately Dave was walking out of the room, so when we was out of earshot I said, “Sssshhhhh! Or you don’t get to pick out any more presents!”

TOWCKAS’s response? “What!? I said, we should play baseball!”

Dave likes a pink cake with chocolate icing, so this year, instead of the pink (strawberry? cherry?) cake from the box, I made a triple layer strawberry cake with chocolate ganache icing. It was really good. The batter seemed really pink from the strawberries, but I guess I should have added food coloring too. Mmm. So good. It calls for 8 egg whites, and I used a trick I learned from the cupcake class, where you separate the yolk from the white one at a time in a little bowl and then dump the recently seperated egg into the bowl with the rest, so you don’t waste a lot of eggs by getting yolk in the main egg bowl on the 7th or 8th egg. However, I forgot to add in the last egg white , so I imagine that this cake would have turned out 1/8 again as tall if I hadn’t made that mistake.

>Smore Baking

>
Last week on our way to camp at Buffalo Creek, I said, “I wonder if I should make my own graham crackers from scratch and then make my own marshmallows and then maybe pre-melt the chocolate onto the graham crackers and have a gourmet camping dessert. Does that sound really good, or like the dumbest thing you have every heard?”

See, I had just read a recipe for graham crackers that sounded like fun to try. And I have always loved Martha’s idea of premelting the chocolate. Hmmm. Maybe, I thought, I’ll go for the happy medium and just pre-melt the chocolate on some grocery store crackers and call it good. But happy mediums are not my specialty. I can’t find the middle ground between making marshmallows from scratch on one end and eating oreos for breakfast because I forgot to pack anything else. And then Franz had to go on and on about how he was going to bake a key lime pie for the next camping trip that would be nothing short of legendary, and my old competitive baking instincts kicked in. When we got home from camping on Sunday night, there was this marshmallow recipe just staring up at me and I knew what had to be done. And it was fun. Messy, but fun. The graham crackers were a real hassle, and to my disappointment they are delicious. If they had just been sort of blah I would never feel the urge to make them again.

So, now that the hail has stopped, Iwe need to pack the car for this weekend. Right now I have pulled pork in the crock pot and spaghetti sauce on the stove, and I had planned to bake bread at the campsite until I found out that we were out of yeast. I predict our next trip will involve a hot dog wrapped in a piece of bread. Unless I find that happy medium.

>Chicken Pot, Chicken Pot, Chicken Pot Pie!

>Luke hates chicken pot pie, but Dave and I love it. Mmm. Chicken pot pie. Whenever we grill a beer butt chicken, I take all the leftovers, and mix them in with chicken gravy and frozen vegetables, and freeze the whole thing for later in an 8×8 pan. Then I take half of this chicken pot pie topping and put it on top of my defrosted pan of leftovers. Mmmm. Chicken pot pie. It’s so good. Well, the last time it wasn’t so good because I kind of tried to improvise the gravy out of chicken stock and chicken. And not much else. And it was sort of yucky. But that is just one time. One tiny little mistake. And really, I have made delicious versions on many, many occasions. And Luke has hated them all. We pretty much always threaten to send him to bed without dinner every time I make it because of his attitude. The rule is, no complaining about my meals unless I say, “How did you like it?” He knows the rules.

So when I got home from work today, Luke was sulking in the back yard because he hates chicken pot pie. Then he came into the kitchen.

Luke: What’s for dinner?
Me: Chicken Pot Pie.
Luke: I HATE chicken pot pie!
Dave: Do you want to go to your room without any dinner?

And that is when I pulled an awesome parenting trick out of my hat, and asked him to help me make the pie crust. He chopped butter, he pulsed the food processor, he rolled out the dough, he brushed it with egg wash and he cut the little slits in it.

And then, at dinner, he ate every last bite.

And yet…

I couldn’t help but be annoyed by his many comments along these lines:
-Wow – this is the best chicken pot pie I have ever had.
-It’s weird, because this time, I am eating the whole thing and I have never done that before.
-I wonder what is just so different about this chicken pot pie that makes it so delicious.

OK, I get it! Your pie crust is awesome. Don’t eat so much, I want leftovers.

>Reverse Reverse Dummening

>This post was supposed to be about how I’ve gotten so much smarter since I quit nursing. When I started to write it last week, it went like this:
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Day 12 – I think the brain cells are starting to regenerate.
Thought process number 1: Hmm, what dessert should I make for the barbecue? A cake? Cupcakes? Cookies? What kind of cookies? If I said to Dave, “What kind of cookies should I make?” He would say, “Chocolate with peanut butter filling.” But what’s the point of that when I can’t eat… OMG! I quit nursing! I can eat peanut butter again! This story would make a lot more sense to a lot more people if I wasn’t the only mom on the face of the earth that had been told not to eat peanut butter while nursing. So, yeah, it’s been 18 months. (And you know what? Totally worth it, because Jack already has allergies, and I prefer not to have to deal with a peanut butter allergy if I can help it.) Anyway!!! It only took a week of not nursing for me to re-grow enough brain cells to remember that I can eat peanut butter. As for the dessert, I settled on cupcakes. And my cupcakes turned out like this:

Instead of like this.

So I think things are getting a little better every day.
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But that was last week. Last week, I hadn’t been to the grocery store 3 times in a 24 hour period. My most recent trip was to pick up my wallet and cell phone. The manager said, “Had you already canceled all your cards?” “Ummm. No, I didn’t know my wallet was missing until you called me. From my phone.”

It looks like it may take the dummening a little longer to recede than I had originally thought. Or else, it reversed briefly, only to strike again. On the bright side, the transition into full on dementia should be pretty smooth.

>Granola, Revisited

>Once upon a time, I loved to cook and plan menus, and make delicious meals and desserts. Then Jack was born. The End.

Somehow I found myself alone in the house, and the kitchen wasn’t already disaster, so I decided to make some granola. The recipe calls for 2 cups of oats, but I usually double most of the recipe and then throw in an extra cup of oats to justify the sugar and honey and orange juice. And I don’t really measure the oats, I just get 5 scoops out of the bulk bin. And that seems just about right. So I started to make granola and I measured, heated, stirred, chopped, mixed just about everything and then I dumped the oats out into the bowl on top. But it wasn’t 5 cups/scoops. It was way, way more than that. I stirred and stirred, but it was pretty dry. So I mixed up another batch of brown sugar, orange juice, honey, vanilla, and canola oil. And I stirred and stirred and stirred. Still sort of dry. So I poured some orange juice into the bowl, with a glop of honey and some canola oil. And I stirred. Little more juice. Little drop of oil. And done.

Then I hoped it would either be disgusting, since there was no way I could ever replicate it, or really, really good, because I now had two giant tupperware containers full of it. And there was still a lot left on the tray, but I was just too tired to deal with it at that point. For the rest of the evening everyone took a handful whenever they walked by. (Why yes, there is granola all over the floor, why do you ask?) I left it out and considered myself a nice mommy for preparing Luke’s breakfast the night before. Nothing like getting up on a Saturday morning and watching cartoons while you eat homemade granola out of the pan.

And then, Saturday morning, a miracle happened.

Luke was watching cartoons and eating handfuls of granola when I walked by with Baby Jack, who had made it abundantly clear through both verbal and non-verbal communication that he was interested in nursing. I grabbed a handful of granola, ate some, handed a bite to Jack and then sat down to nurse him. And he started to nurse, and then he sat up and said, “Mo? Pees?” And he did the signs for both more and please. And he wasn’t talking about breast milk. Faster than you can imagine, I had him in his high chair, eating a bowl of granola, and he hasn’t nursed since. He has eaten a lot of granola though. It’s been 6 days now, but I still feel like I am “in the process of weaning him”. That is because, according to Dave, I am “crazy”.