Category — Food

Guess what happened about 2 minutes after we should have already left for gymnastics on Friday?

Yes, that’s my butter dish, which was shattered all over the floor when the refrigerator door was opened with the vigor that is only possible when you are a 7-year-old with an obsessive desire for salami while your mother is standing by the door calling to you, “Come on! Please! Let’s go!”

So yeah, that was awesome.

I tried two slow cooker recipes that were limited successes, both from the Fix It and Forget It Big Cookbook.  First, I made a Macaroni and Cheese, which was this recipe. This was a decent homemade mac and cheese, and the whole family liked it. I thought that it was a little dull, so I added about a teaspoon of dry mustard, which helped. I think next time I’d throw in a bit of dried milk, too. So:  it was easy, it smelled good all day, and everyone ate it. On the other hand, no one raved about it and it certainly isn’t too healthful. But its a good slacker meal. I have no photos, but follow the link and Erin’s got lovely photos.

Then I tried Iranian Wash-Day Stew.

This one smelled super-awesome all day, and then it was. . . good. It could have been slightly more interesting. I’d make it again and add more tomatoes (not peeled) and some other vegetables.  Cute W and I liked it, J took one look and opted out completely, and M painstakingly picked out the pieces of meat. Also, I should have gotten better bread.

Tonight we made a recipe that’s a labor-intensive but delicious family favorite. It’s sort of homemade chicken fingers, which we call Mrs. Seals’ Chicken after our neighbor in Ft. Worth, Texas, who passed it to us in 1978. It’s a pain in the neck. And a mess (see photo below), but it’s super-yummy, and it’s good hot or cold, so it’s great for a picnic. Not, like, now. But you know what I mean.

Mrs. Seals’ Chicken

Ingredients:

Back when Daniel B. posted on All Over Albany about Tacos at La Mexicana Grocery & Restaurant, Cute W and I sent each other the link with messages laden with multiple explanation points about how we must try it soon. But of course, the holidays were busy. Over the weekend, Cute W planned a menu out of one of his Rick Bayless cookbooks, so it was the perfect opportunity to shop and get some takeout at the same time.

Mmmm, it was a hit with the family. If you want the nuanced, well-considered, foodie review, check Daniel’s. I’ll give you J’s review. Regarding the chicken taco, she said, “I think that I have found something new which I adore.”

And the tacos are $2. So that’s awesome. Cheaper than Chipotle, for sure.

Of course, Cute W’s dish was delightful as well: tostadas with a black bean concoction, shredded chicken, romaine lettuce with a bit of dressing, Mexican cheese, roasted tomatillo salsa, and tomatoes. Just typing it is making me a little bit sad that the leftovers are gone.

Cute W is not the only cook in the family. J invented a new dessert recipe. Simply unscrew an Oreo, add a dollop of cranberry sauce, replace the tip, and voila! Very sophisticated if you are 7 years old. And Cute W thought it was tasty, too.

So, do any of you eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day? Growing up, this was a required tradition. The truth is, I hate black-eyed peas, but each year I would dutifully eat one. More recently I’ve blown this off, but it came up in a recent phone conversation with my mom, and she was adamant. “Oh, you must eat at least one. Just a little bit.” I whined that I just don’t like them, and I heard my father calling out, “Katie, sometimes you have to do things that you don’t want to do.” My parents are a little freakish on this topic because the one year that they didn’t eat black-eyed peas, there was a big, painful stock market crash. They won’t make that mistake twice.

Luckily, Sylvia’s makes black-eyed peas, because she’s the best chance that I can possibly like them. My favorite are her pinto beans, which have inexplicably disappeared from every local grocery store shelf. But that’s another story.

Anyway, I decided to check the whole black-eyed pea tradition out on Wikipedia, and I found, among other things, this information:

In the Southern United States,^[5] the peas are typically cooked with a pork product for flavoring (such as bacon, ham bones, fatback, or hog jowl), diced onion, and served with a hot chili sauce or a pepper-flavored vinegar.

The traditional meal also features collard, turnip, or mustard greens, and ham. The peas, since they swell when cooked, symbolize prosperity; the greens symbolize money; the pork, because pigs root forward when foraging, represents positive motion.^[6] Cornbread also often accompanies this meal.

Would you believe that I happen to have collard greens in my freezer, bacon in my fridge, and we were already planning on making cornbread johnny cakes with our leftover chicken chowder for dinner tonight? So now I think I’m going to have to make the whole dish. But I’ll probably go easy on the peas themselves.

Besides eating black-eyed peas, I don’t have much in the way of New Year’s traditions. I do like to do post-holiday clean-up and try to clear the decks for the new year. I had a stack of stuff to go through on my desk for the blog, so I made a few updates that I’ll share in the next day or two.

I don’t really do New Year’s Resolutions, because I’m always making new resolutions all through the year, and I always have too many, so it’s hard to choose. In fact, I just looked back at last year’s post and I realized that I said much the same thing last year, so let’s see how I did, shall we?

Here’s what I had. . . . and the results:

Umm, be a better and more patient mother. . . . Eh, not really. I’m basically holding steady. Actually, my kids were more pleasant to be around in 2011 than in 2010, so I think there was overall improvement.

be a more thoughtful person who remembers to send people birthday cards. . . . Actually, I did pretty well with this, sending cards to my family quite well all year until October, when I crashed and burned for the remainder of the year. I’ve also taken up writing random thank you notes, although I’ve also missed a few thank you notes along the way, too.

eat much better and work out regularly, resulting in a loss of at least 25 pounds. . . . Eating’s been spotty although I did improve my breakfast. Working out’s been mostly quite good, and I’ve probably lost about 10 pounds, so yay.

learn to write better and do more writing every day. . . . I took a class over last winter and started submitting articles for publication, which was scary but good for, you know, personal growth. More recently I haven’t been doing as well at writing every day. In fact, a couple of weeks ago I rebooted with a resolution to just write randomly every day for 20 minutes, and it was going well until I got so busy that it wasn’t anymore. I’m going to re-start that this week.

make money. . . . Yay, me! I sold several articles and started getting paid for work with KidsOutAndAbout.com. It’s not a ton of money, but it pays better than the mama gig. Plus, getting stuff published was a great confidence booster.

and at the same time manage to make my house much cleaner and more hygienic. . . . Hmm. I did institute little cleaning wipes in bathrooms so that anyone could do a quick wipe-down. Actually, I’d say I have been a little cleaner than 2010. But you’d have to look pretty hard to notice.

floss every day. . . Well, maybe not every day, but that little floss holder thingy has absolutely upped my flossing frequency.

and stop grinding my teeth by achieving Inner Serenity. . . I haven’t achieved Inner Serenity, but I’ve been good about wearing my little mouth guard so that my teeth aren’t ground down into nubs.

Okay, when I sat down to write, I really hadn’t intended to do this whole personal assessment thing. It’s not that kind of blog. But now I’m kind of glad that I did, because I did pretty well, really. I’d give myself a solid B, maybe even a B+. Yeah, what the hell? I’m going with a B+ for 2011.

And I’m not going to come up with a whole bunch of new resolutions. I mean, when I wrote the ones above for last year, I was kind of kidding, anyway. But one little guiding quote that I’ve had for this year, and that I’m going to shoot for in 2012, is from Eleanor Roosevelt: “Do one thing every day that scares you.”

How about you, dear readers? Any resolutions? And how was last year for ya?

Here’s a guest post from June, my colleague at Kids Out and About. She occasionally (and it’s very occasionally lately–ahem!) writes a blog called My Name is June. I Like to Cook. She also wrote the post about making pancakes. Thanks, June!

Do you order pizza on Halloween to scarf down while you pass out chocolate to the trick or treaters? Really? Lame. Really lame. If you plan ahead a little, you can make this stew in advance and then just pop it into the pumpkin at the last minute. You still have two weeks to plan and cook it, because since you’re a good parent like me, you have abdicated all responsibility for the young ‘un’s costumes to the young ‘uns. It’s good for them. Makes them use their little noggins to come up with something original using only duct tape and the leftover tulle from their sister’s wedding. Can you say “Mummy”?

So, while the little ones thrash about desperately trying to complete their costumes before sundown on Halloween, pop this fun stew into the oven and you can pull it out just as the first little monsters show up at your door and demand protection money in the form of chocolate. And let’s not even get into those of you who are too cheap to spring for anything better than a mini tootsie roll. Puhleeze. It’s once a year. But then, who am I to judge? We live so far off the beaten path that I have never had a trick or treater darken my door. I have to go sit on a friend’s porch, but not before we eat the traditional Halloween pumpkin stew. Grandma Foodie used to make it every year when I was a kid. But I’ll bring a pumpkin roll and a bottle of wine with me to my friend’s house, so she’ll be happy to see me. I might even bring her a bowl of pumpkin stew.

Pumpkin Stew

3 T vegetable oil
3 cloves minced garlic
2 chopped green peppers
2 chopped onions
2 lbs beef stew meat
2 chopped tomatoes
1 T sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 pkgs frozen corn
3 diced potatoes
3 smallish sweet potatoes, diced
2 C beef bouillon
8 peach halves
1 medium pumpkin (if you can find  a pretty large pie pumpkin, they are sweeter and not stringy)
3 T butter
11/2 tsp salt

In a large dutch oven, brown garlic, peppers, onions, and stew meat in oil. Add tomatoes and salt. Simmer 20 minutes. Add corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, bouillon, and peaches and simmer 40 minutes.

Brush inside of pumpkin with butter and sprinkle with salt. Add stew and put lid on and bake 45 minutes at 350 degrees or until pumpkin is tender.

Here’s a guest post from June, my colleague at Kids Out and About. She occasionally (and it’s very occasionally lately–ahem!) writes a blog called My Name is June. I Like to Cook. Thanks, June!

Last Sunday Hannah and I decided to make pancakes for breakfast. Now this is not a rare occurrence; we make pancakes fairly frequently for Sunday breakfast. I had bought some blueberries the day before just for this purpose. I did forget to get buttermilk, though. However, this day, Hannah decided she wanted to make them because we had eggnog in the fridge and she wanted to make eggnog pancakes, and so I said she could and I would go behind her and clean and make the bacon. She started gathering her ingredients while I started the bacon. As she pulled out the baking powder, she asked me what the difference between double-acting baking powder and regular baking powder was. “Oh god”, I thought to myself, “I can’t quite remember why they call it double-acting, I know I used to know, and I, the goddess of food, can’t let my offspring know that I don’t know everything!” Or something like that. Actually that’s really not true, I am fine with admitting that I don’t know everything to my kids, and a few others, but I will NEVER admit that to my hubbie. Or to you. I am the final authority on all things culinary! I am the goddess of food! Don’t forget it. So I mumbled something about people how in the olden days people had to make their own baking powder which consisted of a few ingridients mixed to gether in a certain proportion and when commercial baking powder became available ‘double acting’ connoted that it contained two active ingredients, only one of which I could remember at the time.

Hannah and I really are starting to enjoy cooking together. She is becoming enthusiastic about learning about cooking and willing to try new things. And really, isn’t that about all it takes? Oh, and learning that people who like food and care about it do not serve cheese in a can. Or a jar. (have you ever eaten that stuff? Disgusting!) So I find the times when Hannah wants to cook to be times when she will let her teenagerish attitude down and just be a nice girl again. She respects my abilities in the kitchen and sincerely wants to hear what I have to say about cooking. And so I may slip in a word or two about values, or things I care about, what I want her to know about life. Cooking together gives her a way to let down her defenses. I treasure that time together.

So, as we talk and cook, and drink coffee, (yes, I am a terrible mother. I let my fourteen year old drink coffee. Sue me.) we start to cook the pancakes on the cast iron griddle. I had a banana on the counter that was too ripe to eat, but perfect to cook, so we sliced that and added it to some of the pancakes as we laid them on the griddle. We made some with blueberries, some with banana and some with both. Oh, and don’t forget the eggnog. I wasn’t sure how the combinations would be, but hey, I am always up for experimenting. As we started eating them, with some really great maple syrup from Vermont provided by my friend Gi-gi, we started noticing that the texture was a little waxy, and flat. Maybe it was the eggnog? No, that wouldn’t have done it. Why were these so different? And then I realized: Hannah had forgotten to put in the baking powder. After our long discussions on the origins of baking powder. The pancakes had the consistncy of crepes or clafouti, and they were still quite delicious. We ate them all. We decided to call them pancrepes. It was fun.

I think that this concludes the festive string of posts celebrating J’s birthday. This yummy pumpkin cheeseball could work for a grown-up party, too. We got the idea for it from the Southern Living Kids Cookbook, but J wanted to go with our much-loved family recipe for cheeseball. And then I decided that if there was a chance in hell that any kid besides J would eat any of it, I’d have to simplify. So I cut out all the veggies and about half of the spices.

The thing about cheeseball is that you just have to give in and use your hands. ut once you just surrender to the process, it becomes like creating a work of art. J wanted no part of “touching the ickiness.” But I had fun.

First, I sculpted the main shape, with ridges for the pumpkin.

Cheeseball shaped

Then I cut a little rectangular stencil shape and shook on some paprika.

Shaking on Paprika

The stem and leaves are from broccoli. This part, J was willing to do.

J puts on finishing touches

We served it with apple wedges, crackers, and pretzels. The kids admired it, but they didn’t eat much. I mean, come on: it was competing with popcorn balls. So, yeah. I finished it off.

J picked out Snack-o’-Lanterns from Family Fun magazine as one of her many Halloween treats. I was skeptical: they looked tough. So I made a test orange jack-o-lantern. Turns out, it wasn’t too bad:

Of course, the whole point is to get the kids involved, so I took a deep breath and handed each of them a paring knife. Generally speaking, I’m in favor of giving kids knives. They tend to be much more careful with them than grown-ups, anyway. Still, it was nerve-wracking.

Careful, honey!

You cut off the top, pull out most of the insides, and cut a face. Then we popped them into the fridge for later. For the party, we filled them with fruit salad.

M loved making these. They were her favorite of all the Halloween treats. J liked it, but she’d get frustrated, too, and so she’d take breaks between o’-lanterns. If I’m honest, I have to admit that she was partly frustrated by me stressing out and saying, “Watch the knife! Keep your fingers higher on the handle! These are sharp!” Once she even said ouch and I freaked completely, but it was just because orange juice had squirted into her eye. Phew!

Anyway, the oranges were cute, and the kids loved them!

Hey! I keep expecting hotels to let me use their Wifi for free, and I’m consistently disappointed. So I’m writing this one up quick at a Starbucks in NYC. Luckily I’d already collected photos. Here are a few more Halloween treats that J planned for her party.

First, some popcorn balls from our Southern Living Kids Cookbook. Basically, it was your standard popcorn balls, to make it more festive, the cookbook suggests chocolate Teddy Grahams and candy corn. Yummy. These were marshmallow-y, so they were sticky and messy. For another sticky, messy option, you could go with caramel (here’s a recipe I’ve shared before).

Because I’m insane, I managed to leave this job ’til one of the last things before the party started. About 12 minutes before start time, all four of us had marshmallow hands, and my mother phoned us. She got the machine. Two minutes later we had, maybe 3 clean hands between all of us and the doorbell rang with our first guest. Phew! But they’re cute, right?

Of course we had the punch bowl, but J had an idea to make the lemonade more Halloween-y.

That’s right! We dyed it green with some food coloring!

And finally, we went with chocolate cupcakes and chocolate frosting with spider webs. This turned out to be our easiest treat-just make circles with white decorator frosting and drag toothpicks from the center out. They loved doing this, and it was yummier than those crazy eyeballs. There are recipe variations of like this all over the place.

One of the items J wanted for her party was the Forked Eyeballs that she saw in Family Fun magazine. Basically, they’re donut holes dipped in white chocolate and decorated to look like creepy eyeballs. I ended up scheduling them for the bring-to-school treat instead.

Of all the things that we made, J thought that these were the most fun to do.

The recipe says to use white chocolate chips and a double boiler, but I went with the almond bark-style stuff and melted in the microwave. For us, it was a bit goopy. Someone who commented on the site (linked above) tried frosting. I don’t know: I found it a little bit stressful. We also used Dunkin’ Donuts and found that the plain glazed held together better than the chocolates for this project.

Since this was clearly not going to be a gourmet venture, I took what I thought would be the easy way out and bought some instant red icing.

I didn’t notice that you were supposed to buy the tip separately. Well, that’s irritating. I was bitter, but luckily I still had that super-cool decorating kit I mentioned before, so I transferred the frosting. The recipe also suggested cutting the chocolate chips, which would have been a pain in the neck and a complete waste of time. Again, if you check the comments on the recipe, someone posted cute ones with M&M pupils as well. I didn’t go that crafty.

M lost interest after a couple of eyeballs, but J enjoyed helping through the whole process. Ours came out a little bit messier than the glossy magazine examples, but the good thing about Halloween craftiness is that MESSY=SPOOKY.

I mentioned that I had bunches of peaches, Deb at Kids Out and About is dealing with piles of cabbages, and the latest produce overwhelming me is hot peppers.

Okay, so, for a while, I was doing well. We love to make salsa. And Cute W threw some peppers in with his homemade pickles. That meal that the girls wanted to avoid last night? It was this scrumptious Thai Beef with Chiles recipe.

But the peppers just. keep. coming. I don’t really like dried peppers, which would otherwise be a good option.

I decided to try to make pepper jelly. My mom’s friend used to give us a jar of pepper jelly every Christmas. Sounds weird, but it’s pretty scrumptious spread with cream cheese on a cracker.

So I purchased a bunch of supplies because I can’t bear to throw away $5 or $10 worth of peppers. But whatever. I rationalized that if I were successful, I’d have some lovely homemade jellies to give away at Christmas.

Pepper Jelly

Ingredients:

• ¼ cup ground jalapeno peppers (I might even add some more next time; the 1/4 cup version is sweet with just a little hint of spiciness)
• 1½ cup red bell peppers
• 1½ cup apple cider vinegar (or white)
• 6 ½ cup sugar
• 1 ½   boxes of Certo, or 3 pouches (You can’t cut the sugar or it will not set, although you might be able to try a lower-sugar Sure-Jell).

Directions:

• Put jelly jars through Hot Dishwasher Cycle.
• Grind or use a food processor for the red bell and jalapeno pepper (use rubber gloves & keep away from eyes). At this point, you can bag double pepper amounts and freeze it to continue later. (Oh, yeah, baby! Did that!)
• Pour ground peppers, sugar and vinegar in a very large deep soup or lobster pot.  Boil approximately 8 minutes (mixture wants to boil over so don’t take your eyes off it).
• Cool slightly and add Certo.
• Add Jelly to jars. The original recipe says to seal with paraffin wax, but if you have a new lid it’s likely treated so that it will seal. My recipe doesn’t say to do a boiling water bath, but it’s recommended by most people. But since I’m lazy and I like to live dangerously, I skipped this step. I’ll open up a test jar before I start handing it out.

So, it was a bit of a project. I pureed a bunch of red peppers.

That was easy. But the hot peppers–ugh. There were so many, and they were so hot, that I was hacking and coughing just trying to get them seeded. I had latex gloves, but I was wishing that I had an oxygen mask. It was so much trouble, in fact, that I pureed a whole bunch of additional peppers to freeze for later. We won’t need to buy peppers anytime soon.

When I’d read the recipe about how the mixture “wants to boil over,” I thought that it sounded pretty silly. And it seemed even sillier when my ingredients only reached the bottom fifth of the pot. So, cocky, I left the room to help the girls with something, and when I came back, the boiling goo was alarmingly high.

At this point, it was also smelling just like the pepper jelly I knew and loved. Hooray! And it’s pretty, too. The picture below doesn’t do it justice–not at all. It’s glowing translucent with teensy flecks of peppers all through it.

I used plenty of peppers. Ate a pepper dinner, made a batch of pepper jelly, froze enough for a second batch, along with a whole bunch of plain hot pepper puree.

So, I checked the bag full of peppers sitting on my counter, thinking it must be almost empty, right?

Uhhh. . . .

NO.

That would be a no. A big no. Which would almost be okay.

If I didn’t also have this freakin’ bag in my fridge:

Sigh. Any suggestions?