Category — Food

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?

We’ve been getting peaches from our CSA. Cute W and I are temperamentally incapable of having peaches in the house without singing that peaches song “. . . peaches come in a can, they were made by a man. . . .” Of course, then the girls protest, outraged, “Peaches don’t come in a can! They’re from trees! What are they talking about!?!” At some point we offered them some canned peaches just to end the argument. They both thought the canned peaches were weird and gross, which made us feel pleased with ourselves as nutritionally successful parents.

Mary pressed even more peaches on us, so we used them to make  a recipe that Cute W’s always called Good Pie Stuff. This recipe is from Cute W’s family. Mary said it reminded her of what she called “the national recipe of New Zealand,” pavlova. But those recipes don’t have what we consider the key ingredient (besides the fruit): saltines. The result is salty-sweet yummy goodness.

Ingredients for the bottom of the pie:

• 3 egg whites
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• ½ cup chopped walnuts
• 15 saltine crackers, crushed

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Set the eggs out and allow them to come to room temperature before you begin.
• Beat egg whites until they are stiff. Mix in baking powder and sugar. Fold in vanilla, nuts, and crushed crackers.
• Bake for 10 to 15 minutes.
• Remove and allow to cool completely before adding the topping.

Topping:

• 1 cup whipping cream
• powdered sugar to taste
• 1 or 2 cups fruit of choice: we usually use peaches, berries, or mangoes

Directions:

• Whip the cream and add a little bit of powdered sugar if you’d like it extra sweet.
• Slice fruits into bite-size pieces. This pie is really not worth making unless the fruit is very good, so make sure there’s some yummy fruit available.

For the record, Cute W says that this is too much whipped cream. Personally, I don’t believe in the phrase “too much whipped cream.”

Do you have random things that you Google once in a while? I do. One of them was my search for the lyrics to a song that I learned at Increase Miller Elementary School, written by one of my teachers, Mr. Kahn. In the past I’d looked online and even contacted the school looking for the lyrics, to no avail.

But recently I found a  group on Facebook that was formed just to remember all the lyrics. Yes-the song is that good. It’s a catchy little ditty called “The Presidents Song,” and if you learn it, you, too, “can name all the Presidents/All the White House residents/Of the United States.” Hooray! I was so excited to find it.

I don’t know how to write music, and I wish I did. But if you know me, I’ll sing it to you. My kids love the song. And I’ve used it for years to remember the order of the presidents, even though things got murky around Millard Fillmore. People’s versions differed a bit, so this is not absolutely exact, but it’s my best guess after gleaning from all the different recollections. Mr. Kahn kept updating the song long after I graduated elementary school, and there was a rumor that he got as far as George W. Bush before he died. I didn’t find that very last line. The Clinton line is Mr. Kahn’s, and I added the very last one on Bush & Obama. Here it is:

 The Presidents Song by Jeff Kahn

Washington, then John Adams, followed by Jefferson, number three,
Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Jackson (Old Hickory)
Martin Van Buren, a little obscure, and he was number eight
William Henry Harrison died too early. . . or came too late.

Chorus:

So you need not be hesitant–
You can name all the Presidents,
All the White House residents
Of the United States!

In a little while there came John Tyler, James K. Polk was next,
Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, check any history text.
Franklin Pierce, then James Buchanan, Lincoln did supplant
When he was gone, came Andrew Johnson, then U. S. Grant.

[Chorus]

Rutherford Hayes, then count the days of James A. Garfield’s run.
Chester Arthur followed right after, then Grover Cleveland won.
Benjamin Harrison stayed 4 years but Cleveland’s support was firm–
Again he ran to be the only man with split presidential terms.

[Chorus]

William McKinley’s luck spread thinly, shot by a mad man’s gun.
Theodore Roosevelt ran two terms and William Taft for one.
Woodrow Wilson went to the Front, then Warren G. Harding died,
And after Calvin Coolidge, we had Hoover’s landslide.

[Chorus]

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, to Eisenhower’s eight-year stay,
When John F. Kennedy died in Dallas, next came LBJ.
Richard M. Nixon, Watergate’s victim, pulled out of Vietnam,
Gerald R. Ford, then James Earl Carter suckered by Iran.

[Chorus]

Ronald Reagan, Star Wars fadin’, Hollywood’s greatest ham,
George Bush cracked the whip on Iraq, but couldn’t drive out Saddam.
William Clinton strayed with an intern, nearly got the sack,
“W” Bush next, then Obama, first president who’s black!

[Chorus]

. . . Now, that’s what I call a teaching legacy!

- – - – - – - – - -

In other news, my struggles to enjoy the many offering of my CSA continue, and I have to strongly recommend the Grilled Coconut Kale that I found in an old New York Times Magazine. It is seriously tasty.

I took this picture, then sat down and ate this entire plate. When I was grilling I was concerned about burning it, and when I make it again, I won’t be so fretful. The slightly-more-done pieces were absolutely the tastiest.

Update: I made more of this and presented it to my family with great fanfare and enthusiasm. . . . Alas, no one else was particularly thrilled with it. And by not “particularly thrilled” I mean that perhaps there were some muted gags. But I swear, it’s delicious. The kale chips, just baked with some olive oil and season salt, were more popular wit the rest of the family.

The other night we had one of our favorites, yummy crepes.

Cute W uses the recipe (called French Pancakes or Crepes) from JOY OF COOKING, that glorious cookbook that also  explains the difference between various lettuces and teaches you how to skin a squirrel (with pictures)! I mean, how can you beat that? In one delightful volume?

Anyway, the crepes are pretty easy. Especially for me, since Cute W makes them. He uses a non-stick griddle.

Crepes in progress

We tend to do the same fillings every time: the girls like ham and cheddar, Cute W and I have ham and Swiss and mushrooms, and I throw in some spinach too. We cook the veggies separately first. Also, plenty of salt and pepper.

For dessert, Cute W and I go for bananas, J likes raspberries, and M skips the fruit. But we all agree on the crepe dessert essential:

Oh yeah, baby! Just don’t look at the saturated fat content because it will spoil your appetite.

In other news, J did her first day of all-day girl scout camp. She reported that it was wonderful, and she and her BFF were the only girls in their little Daisy group to pass the swim test. She was exhausted and I seriously thought she was going to fall asleep when I drove her home at 5:15 tonight, but now it’s 8:15 pm and she’s lying, sleepless, in bed. I think she went past overtired and caught a second wind while waiting for dinner and then reading bedtime stories. I’m going to have to serve her dinner and put her into PJs ASAP tomorrow.

With both girls camping, I spent the day from 8 am to 5 pm child free today. I know. I grocery shopped, washed some floors, caught up with a couple of sisters, wrote 3 articles, and knocked some other items off of my “To Do” list. One item that I haven’t done, but which is on the list, is updating that What About TODAY page. I know it’s outdated. It’s just so annoying and boring to go through it. But I will, soon, I promise.