Under Construction

Holiday baking 2016

Following news (politics) has completely taken over my brain in a way that is no longer helpful. I hop online and instead of doing something productive (finding a recipe to cook for dinner) or even something innocuous (looking at quilts on Instagram) I am clicking through to Twitter and following the disaster that is our current political situation. And thinking that maybe nobody else is but owners of Twitter stock must be LOVING our president elect.

ANYWAY after a long posting hiatus I didn't want to come back to this place and complain. I wanted to record (somewhere I can find it) the menu from our December baking and holiday party. Yes, it's several weeks late but that won't matter in December 2017 when we're all looking for links to solid recipes to make and share.

The annual holiday party has fallen in a bit of a rut: many cookies, two soups (one is always Hungarian Mushroom), raw veggie platter, cheese and crackers and some other stuff brought by family/friends.

This year I switched out the raw veggies for roasted veggies with this Labne dip and it was amazing. Yes, I was roasting veggies as guests arrived but they were good warm or at room temp. Speaking of veggies, I roasted: carrots, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, sweet potato, delicata squash, turnips, broccolini, green beans and probably something else. I tossed each veggie in a big bowl with olive oil and a bunch of kosher salt and roasted at about 400 until they looked done. Each veg cooked a different amount of time so I just had trays going in and out over an hour or so. It was awesome! I ate leftovers for days and couldn't have been happier.

For the non-Hungarian Mushroom Soup we switched to tri tip sandwiches. I seasoned many pounds of tri tip with Badia Complet seasoning (from Costa Rica!) and grilled them Friday. For the party we sliced them cold then re-heated the slices, covered, in the oven. We served with Kings Hawaiian rolls and cheese, mustard and horseradish sauce. Yum!

Sweet stuff:

• Toffee (best thing served, hands down) (sidebar: I met the man who co founded Brandini and totally went on and on about loving his recipe. I think he thought I was weird and in hindsight, how annoying because I've never BOUGHT his toffee and I met him at a sales event. Despite that he seemed nice)
• Peppermint bark
• chocolate chip cookies
• Ginger cookies
• Coconut cookies
• Buckeyes (Mr. H's favorite, I know the recipe was from Smile and Wave but I can't find it)
• Toffee almonds

In addition to the soup and sandwiches I did cheese and crackers (basically didn't get touched), spiced, roasted nuts and likely something I'm forgetting. Really, it was all about the veggies and tri tip.

Mr. H made Irish cream which is always a good idea.

Everyone showed up and it was a lovely time. So lovely I didn't take any photos so here is a photo from sugar cookie making. Oh, we also had sugar cookies for the kids to decorate. 

 

And here is the mess from the sugar cookie making.

Hope your Christmas was great (if you celebrate) and your New Year off to a good start despite the always depressing news.

And if you are at all interested in politics I'd recommend the Pantsuit Politics podcast for a thoughtful, balanced perspective. 

 

Orange you glad it's October?

Can you tell the birthday party theme? We do a joint birthday party in the Spring for the boys so this Fall we started a joint party for the fall babies: Biscuit (11), my mom and my brother-in-law. I couldn't come up with a theme so I went with a color. If you're planning an Orange theme party October is the time to do it--orange is everywhere and there are plenty of orange foods available.

In addition to the fruit (cantaloupe, persimmon, tangerine, mango and canned peach) and vegetable (carrots, orange peppers, orange cauliflower and orange cherry tomatoes) we served orange cheeses and orange snack foods (cheezits and some sort of snack mix). The main dish was butternut squash soup (so good!), grilled cheese and orange chicken straight from Panda Express.

Finally, dessert was cake three ways. An ice cream sandwich cake inspired by this but not following those directions. The cake was the chocolate cake filled with Biscuit's homemade vanilla ice cream. My mom had the most delicious chocolate peanut butter cake ever. Biscuit had carrot cake. Because you have to have carrot cake for an orange party!

The only game was an orange peeling contest and watching my niece chase the cat around. Let's be honest, the party was mostly about eating (with a side of presents). It's so fun to think about these joint parties and do the decor and make the food. I'm pretty sure birthday cakes are my love language.

Oh, and that great polka dot paper I put on the table and wrapped around the lampshade is from the dollar store. And all those orange veggies in the centerpiece were fun to buy. We grew the pumpkins! And that centerpiece is moving nicely into fall.

 

Small Victories

Last Wednesday (on a school night) I took off work early, picked up Biscuit (but not Oscar) after school and we drove to San Francisco (two three hours away) for a book signing. I had listened to Julia Turshen interviewed on the Design Matters podcast and was struck by her descriptions of herself as a child. She sounded just. like. Biscuit. So we had to go meet her and get a signed book.

And we did!

And the cookbook is good! We have made the merguez (with beef and served with pitas). We also made the chicken pelau which was different but tasty. The book is perfect for someone just getting into cooking--it's filled with tips and straightforward recipes. And Julia was just delightful at the signing. Seriously seems like the nicest lady.

I kind of love the "small victories" concept. It's about all I can muster these days. Small projects, quick to finish. Like this Halloween costume that Oscar and I finished up tonight.

Tasting the bulk bin chocolate from Winco Foods

There is a new Winco Foods in our neighborhood. To be honest, I thought it would be like another Walmart moving in (we already have a Walmart quite close) so I was skeptical. But this morning Biscuit and I stopped by based on the encouragement of my co-worker who said the bulk bins were really awesome and cheap. She was right! There were many (many!) bins devoted to chocolate chips, chunks and discs. I make a lot of chocolate chip cookies and chip prices are so high I was motivated to find a cheap solution.

A friendly customer let us know that we could look up the bulk bin codes online so we put the numbers on the twist ties and went to town buying about 1/4 cup of each of the chocolates.

Then we laid them out, poured red wine for grown ups and milk for kids and got to tasting and note taking.

Want to know what to buy?

1594--white "chocolate" discs are awful. Unless you have nostalgia for pretzels dipped in white candy coating. Which I kind of do. In which case, this is your product.

The white chips, 1825 are almost acceptable but are not chocolate and are not great. White chocolate (with actual cocoa butter), as far as I can tell, can only be found at Whole Foods for one zillion dollars per pound.

Onward to other flavors.

I pretty much loved the peanut butter chips, 1815. My mother-in-law did not but she is not a flavored chip lady. The butterscotch, 1814, were too sweet for everyone.

CHOCOLATE.

One taster--my MIL-likes only dark chocolate. One taster, Biscuit, likes milk. I like both, milk for eating, semi sweet or dark for baking.

1568 is a really good dark chocolate chip. I initially liked 1821 which seemed very fruity and flavorful but 1568 is solid. And, I think, cheaper.

For milk, Biscuit loved 1824 for chips and 2456, the chunks of bulk chocolate, was her favorite.

On the chocolate discs, 2965 was listed as "super good" by Biscuit and was a very good dark chocolate. I think it was the Guittard 62% cacao one. I would definitely buy this again. 1599 was a gross fake chocolate disc. Biscuit loved 1337, the milk chocolate disc.

Overall, I was impressed.

Tomorrow we'll be making "garbage" cookies with all the various chips plus nuts, oats and coconut. Yum!

::

Unrelated: I tried this baba ganoush recipe with grilled, Japanese eggplant. It was super easy and quite tasty with pita.

 

Strawberry cheesecake popsicle recipe

Because this recipe worked out and I might want to make it again, I'm writing it down somewhere I will be able to find it again. Here. On the blog.

Really Delicious Strawberry Cheesecake Popsicles

In a small saucepan, cook together until mushy:

• 1 cup sliced, fresh strawberries
• ~1/3 cup sugar

In a separate bowl, whisk together

• 4 oz. cream cheese (softened)
• ~1/2 cup half and half
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1/4 cup sour cream

Layer into popsicle molds, a bit of cream mixture a smaller bit of strawberries, repeat, end with cream. Use a skewer to swirl and blend the layers a bit. Freeze and enjoy!

::

This recipe is a mash up of everything I found on the internet modified based on what was in my fridge. And it worked! BTW the photo is NOT of this exact popsicle recipe. The cheesecake pops are more layered.

Biscuit sold these at "Paige's Place" her sometimes weekend business. She had her first sell out with 6 flavors of popsicles. Ok, so while I'm typing I'll list them for my own reference

• Watermelon Lime (very easy, very refreshing)
• Fudgesicles (a hassle to make but worth the effort, Smitten Kitchen is never wrong)
• Strawberry ice cream pop (pictured above, Biscuit's idea, melted vanilla ice cream with strawberries mixed in)
• Bananaberry Smoothie pop (Biscuit's creation, a homemade smoothie of banana, strawberries, blackberries, milk etc)
• Grilled Peach and Brown Sugar (grilled peach halves topped with a spoonful of brown sugar, slipped out of their skins, pureed and frozen)

Science themed birthday party--the food

So, the food isn't as exciting as the decorations but I'm writing this post because I was very excited about melon molecules and DNA pasta salad.

In perusing party ideas for science birthdays I saw something about molecular models with gumdrops. But we used melon balls and cherries. I was just making good old H20 but Mr. H got involved and we had N2, methane and all sorts of stuff. With the proper number of bonds, of course.

The salad was the recipe (with almonds rather than pine nuts but otherwise as written). I used the double twisted gemelli pasta. Though I didn't confirm if it was twisting the proper direction. I can confirm the salad was tasty!

The cake was going to be a solar system or an atom. Oscar strongly preferred atom. Mr. H just wanted ice cream cake, same as last year. This year I used purchased ice cream and oreo cookies and just DIY'd the fudge sauce. I'd argue it was better than last year! I had grand plans of creating electron orbit paths out of licorice but, in the end, scattered the "electrons" around the "nucleus" (made up of chocolate protons and vanilla neutrons, of course) and we dug in. Easy peasy.

The rest of the food was standard party fare: veggie tray, fruit, chips, deviled eggs (thanks, mom!), hamburgers and a green salad. A theme doesn't work for everything but everyone likes onion dip.

Oh, and we did serve the drinks out of (food safe) beakers. So that was fun!

We were really full by the end of all this ;)

 

Waste not, want not

Our orange tree made oranges! This is the first year with a decent crop and I keep forgetting about them. At the same time, the lemon tree made lemons! Gotta love winter in California.

Having spent years waiting for these trees to be productive I really don't want to waste any fruit. Which is why I declared last Sunday "National Use Your Backyard Citrus Day." I believe I may have been the only celebrant. The citrus got juiced. The juice got drunk. Drank? Drinked? Or frozen. And even the peels got candied. I tried a new-to-me recipe for Lemon Raspberry Muffins and they were yummy. And I made Ina Garten's lemon pound cake and put it in the freezer for next time I need a dessert. Ironically, I needed a dessert the next day so one cake was in the freezer for less than 12 hours. Bad planning :)

All this citrus use is partly in honor of one of my New Year's resolutions--to waste less food. It's tough with a picky pre-schooler who randomly rejects food all the time but I am trying to menu plan around food we have and actually use it up. Especially produce!

And thus we had these odd looking, but surprisingly delicious, chard pancakes for dinner yesterday. I saw the recipe and knew we had all of the exact ingredients on hand. Except the parsley had mysteriously disappeared so I substituted cilantro. Of course we had the lemon zest for the sauce! Of course I still have most of a bunch of chard left so I'm trying to decide between risotto or quiche. Pretty sure the kids would prefer risotto. And I can use the about-to-turn mushrooms to boot! Wasting less food turns out to be a surprisingly creative challenge.

Next up I'm going to resolve to use what I have when it comes to crafting supplies.

Fall food

Funniest thing. I was at the grocery store and right next to the white, cardboard lollipop sticks they were selling plastic "sticks" for caramel apples. They looked just like sticks from a tree. They were marked down to $1.79 but I still went home and found some (cherry tree) sticks in the backyard. A vegetable peeler worked great to shave off the loose bark and I scrubbed them up and called it good. Nobody died. Only one stick snapped leading to a dropped apple.

The caramel for these apples was just about perfect. This was the recipe. I made 7 tiny apples rather than 8 enormous apples so had TONS of extra caramel. I put it in a pan and made little wrapped caramels with the extra. Win win.

Unrelated to caramel apples but related to Fall-ish food.

I've made this gingerbread cake twice in the past two weeks. Once for dinner with friends and once for the neighborhood party. I love that you can mix it up in a cooking pot and it bakes in 30 minutes. Quick, easy, very few dirty dishes, perfect. But make sure you have a lot of molasses on hand.

I've also made this Three Bean Chili twice and even the carnivores liked it. Used dry beans and cooked ALL day in the crockpot on high. Super cheap to make and very filling.

What can I say? I really like Smitten Kitchen.

And I can't leave this post without mentioning Halloween breakfast. I made the banana/pineapple/yogurt smoothie with "blood" but Biscuit put together the egg and jam on toast face complete with chocolate eyes and frosting lashes. So fun!

Top Ten Party for an almost TEN year old

Biscuit had a friends and family birthday party this weekend to celebrate double digits. We didn't really have a big plan but once we picked the party date (10/10) the theme was clear. Top Ten!

We played a game of Biscuit's "Top Ten" favorites. It was nearly impossible but she had fun. We had ten flowers, ten foods and my parents brought 10 balloons but it was actually a rather tricky theme to work out. Until I thought of 10 hot dog/hamburgers. Awesome, right? Yes, the ketchup fell out the middle of the burgers and they look like donuts but still it was pretty fun.

My sister gave her a haircut/hairdo as a gift and aged her 5 years!

The cake was 100% for show. She doesn't like cake and specifically requested ice cream cupcakes as seen on a YouTube cooking channel she has been watching. They were good!

I asked Biscuit what menu she wanted for her party. Ribs, macaroni salad, potato salad, chili and ice cream cupcakes with whipped cream. Weird but true. I added hamburgers and hot dogs as a budget saving device. And who knew that she liked macaroni salad? Not me! I've never made it but Pioneer Woman's recipe did not lead me wrong.

It was so wonderful the entire family could come over and celebrate!

::

Unrelated to the party, I've decided this week will be a bit of a DIY celebration. It's been too long since I've posted crafty projects but I have been doing them! Tonight the "10" burgers are the easy DIY but stay tuned for a little something every day this week!

Recipes made recently (mostly popsicles)

Yesterday was a Biscuit and Mommy day. Mr. H was back at work and Oscar was at preschool but Biscuit's school hasn't started yet and I am not working on Mondays.

So we made popsicles (aside: why does the typepad spell check hate popsicles? Is there another way to spell it?). Anyway, we made three kinds.

Biscuit created a smoothie popsicle called Strawberry Blast.

Here is her recipe:

• 1/2 banana
• 1/2 cup of strawberries
• 1/2 cup of blackberries
• 1/4 cup of yogurt (for the record she used whole milk, plain yogurt)

Blend, freeze and eat.

Makes two small servings. (for the record it made about 5 small popsicles)

::

I wanted to try new recipes so I made these chocolate/fudgsicle pops from Smitten Kitchen. The recipe was a bit fussy seeming but they were delicious so I guess it was worth it. I added some chopped marshmallow and chopped, toasted, almonds to a few and that was extra delicious. Rocky road pops for the win!

::

I also wanted to try a cheesecake popsicle so I started with this recipe and modified it. My version of the recipe for Strawberry Cheesecake Popsicles:

3/4 cup finely chopped, fresh strawberries. Mix with 2 T sugar and set aside.

Blend:

• 1/2 package (4 oz) cream cheese
• 1/4 cup plain yogurt (could probably use sour cream instead)
• 1/3 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup half and half (or milk?)
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp lemon juice

Then stir in the strawberry/sugar mix and freeze in mold.

::

Finally, last week, when I first got popsicles in my head I made these rice pudding pops. I LOVED them but the family detests rice pudding. So I ate them all. And I really, really want to try these key lime pops. I have all the ingredients we just need to eat enough popsicles to free up the molds. Such problems I have. And now I really want to buy the book those recipes are from!

::

I was going to post my new, modified granola recipe but I'll save that for another day.

PS the photo is from popsicles made way back in 2013 or something. Back when Oscar was even littler.