Book Report Inspiration: Tuck Family Dinner

One the things I love most about Tuck Everlasting is the strength of the Tuck family's bonds. Through an accident of Nature or Providence, they're consigned to live forever, but even though the two sons wander away from home, the family reunites every ten years. They reconnect by telling stories of their adventures, giving each other small gifts, and eating together. And when Winnie Foster finds her way into their cabin, she also ends up at their table...

Made and Found: Pickles

Most people who know me are very aware that I'm not a fan of cucumbers. I pick them out of fresh rolls, push them to the side of salad plates, and will slowly edge away from you if you're eating them. Blech and double blech! 

But pickles--now that's a different story. I'm a huge fan of pickles and frankly, find it baffling that something I loathe, when sealed in a jar with vinegar and spices for a month or more, becomes something I love. So, this year we planted pickling cucumbers in the garden and had a go at making pickles...

Book Report Inspiration: Cowboy Cookies!!!!

After writing about True Grit last week, it seems like I have Westerns on the brain. Add that to the fact that Melanie Blodgett of You Are My Fave instagrammed about monster cookies last week and the obvious result is cowboy cookies. As near as I can tell, cowboy cookies have no real connection to actual cowboys, but what cookies do?

double yum

My dear friend, Maya, gave me a jar of scrumptious strawberry-rhubarb jam this week.
I went straight to the store and bought a loaf of bread because it was toast and jam time. Straight up.

Tea with jam, jam and bread. Tea with jam, jam and bread. 

With jam and bread, with jam and bread, with jam and bread! 

That, of course, is from The Sound of Music. My, what a lovely interlude.

Glistening in the sun.

The second yum? Homemade oreo cookies. What? Yes. I saw the picture on foodgawker and wanted, wanted, immediately wanted them. So, I made them. Results? Tastes just like oreo cookies, except delicious. The recipe from the foodgawker picture may be found on Poet in the Pantry. The recipe I followed for my cookies is from smitten kitchen. Double yum, indeed.

Yes, I will eat this now, please.

sweet tooth

Why yes, I do still have molasses cookies in the freezer, but I was craving something a little different on Sunday afternoon. Different like this:

Sugar and Spice Pecans 


1 egg white
1 TB water
2.5 cups pecans
1 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt


Beat the egg white and water until frothy. Add pecans and stir until coated. In a separate bowl, mix the sugar, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Add the pecans and stir again. (I did it in three batches.) Heat your oven to 250 degrees and line a baking sheet in tin foil (there is the definite possibility of a cooked-on sugar mess with this recipe). Spread the coated pecans on the baking sheet. You'll need to stir them every 10 minutes so they roast evenly and don't stick to the tin foil forever. Bake 50 minutes total. Remove from oven, let cool, and eat them like there's no tomorrow.

Admiring my teacup and saucer?

I found them at a Tacoma estate sale for 50 cents. They're from Germany. Bonn, to be exact. And I certainly don't use them for tea. No, sir. I don't drink hot liquids of any kind. (That's the devil's temperature.)
I use this teacup to store my ghost toys.

And there they are, just waiting for some ghost children.

c is for cookie

I needed cookies this weekend. Big time. So, I called Mom and forced her to read me Grandma Schaffer's recipe for molasses cookies over the phone. Good idea or great idea? Either way, what bliss. (You're right. That is a quote from The Addams Family.)

Grandma Schaffer's Molasses Cookies
by Helen Schaffer


3/4 cup butter (actually, the recipe calls for oleo, but you don't need to get into that {if you even know what it is}. Butter will do nicely.)
1 cup sugar, plus a 1/4 cup for dusting
1/4 cup molasses
1 egg
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cloves (didn't have that, so I subbed nutmeg)
1/2 tsp ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt

Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat. Let cool. You could beat that egg while you're waiting. In a medium bowl, mix together butter, sugar, molasses and the beaten egg. Congrats! You've just taken "care of the slippery stuff", as Mom said while reading the recipe.


Now, sift together flour, baking soda, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt. (Or you could not sift. I don't own a sifter, so I never sift.) Add the dry ingredients to wet and mix. Let the dough chill in the refrigerator for ten minutes or so. Use that time to heat up your oven. Grandma wrote 375 degrees on the recipe card, but she added a note that 350 degrees would probably be OK too. I baked at 350 and all was well.


Remove the dough from the fridge and form into 1 inch balls. Roll the balls in the remaining 1/4 cup sugar and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Into the oven for 10-12 minutes. Presto! Scrumptious cookies!


Still hungry? Here are a couple blog recommendations:


Nick Eats Food Follow Nick as he embarks on the food adventure of a lifetime! (P.S. Nick is Catherine's boyfriend. Just thought you should know.)


Gluten Free Indy Rachel dishes (yes, that is deliberate) on the ever-expanding world of gluten free food. I have tasted of this world and found it delicious. (Rachel is my friend--she's also a stellar cook. I can vouch big time.)

New Year's Eve Feast

Ok, prepare yourself because this is going to be a long one. There will likely be some blood. (How much? Well, not an inordinate amount, but let's be honest here, any amount seems like a lot when the bloodiest thing you usually deal with is a Mayan sweet onion, and that's really leaking something closer to onion milk than anything else.) There will be moments in the process where you discover that you've washed your hands so many times that your fingernails have become entirely translucent. And the whole house will smell like beef, onions, pickles, mustard, horseradish--basically every single ingredient has a distinct scent staying power. Prepare to have that infiltrate your clothes. Good thing I have a couple days off.


Scott, the butcher, wrapped my top round cuts (four cuts per package) in butcher paper and then sealed them in plastic because, as Scott said, top round tends to juice up. Juice up? That's butcher talk for blood. It tends to leak a bit of blood.

It's fine. You're fine. Let's do this.

The Menu:
Beef Rouladen
Spaetzle
Red Cabbage Salad (auf Deutsch: Rotkohlsalat)


Ingredients for Rouladen:
rouladen-cut top round (your butcher {Do you have a butcher? I do.} should be able to cut this for you)
2 carrots, peeled and diced (I used baby carrots, 12 or so)
1 medium onion, diced
1 cup dill pickles, chopped (the traditional German recipe calls for gherkins)
5 strips of bacon
mustard (I'm guessing I used 1/3 to 1/2 cup. In my opinion you can never have too much)
horseradish (Another guess: 1/4 cup)
salt & pepper
toothpicks


Ingredients for Rotkohlsalat dressing:
head of red cabbage (for 1 person, I recommend a fourth the head)
fresh dill, a handful
salt & pepper
3 TB olive oil
2 TB lemon juice
1 TB half & half or cream


First off, you want to get everything chopped, roughly the same size, and then assign all the fixings (including the salt & pepper) their own little dishes. Mix the mustard and horseradish together. Like I said, I just kind of eyeball this. You'll be slathering (truly the perfect verb for this action--you'll see) the mustard/horseradish concoction on the beef. It will provide a pleasant zing to everything. I guess I'm suggesting that you use your own judgement here. How much or little zing do you want? I err on the side of more zing. Anything that's leftover (this goes for the chopped veg too) goes into the pot anyway. 


Other prep: Get a pile of toothpicks ready on your cutting board. You want everything ready to go and within reach because once you have beef juice on your hands, you don't exactly want to go searching through cupboards or grinding your pepper mill. (There's always the hand washing option, but that gets old fast. Or, maybe you have another person around who can fetch things for you--lucky you.) Some recipes recommended pounding the rouladen with a meat mallet. I don't find that necessary.


Now, there are two ways you can proceed. 1: Assemble the rouladen with raw ingredients and cook all at once. or 2: Cook the bacon, onions, and carrots first. Mom always cooked everything beforehand, so that's the route I'm taking, but it's perfectly acceptable to tread the other path.


Cut the bacon and fry it in a skillet until it's golden brown and has rendered much of its fat. Transfer the bacon to a bowl with a paper towel (to soak up some of the bacon grease). Add the carrots to the same skilled and cook in the bacon leavings. Do the same for the onions. They don't need much skillet time, just enough to soften. Transfer everything back into the dishes. Keep the skillet going. Add a little olive oil if you're low on bacon fat.


Another cooking crossroads. 1. Brown and cook the rouladen in the same skillet you used to cook the bacon. 2. Brown the rouladen in the same skillet and then transfer to the oven for 30 minutes or so at 350 degrees. I'm going with the second option because I have a new enamel cast iron casserole dish I want to use. Mom mostly made rouladen in the skillet. The choice is yours.

I'm hoping for a nice layer of cooked brown stuff. Exciting!

Time for assembly. Lay out a strip of beef on your cutting board. Rub a couple pinches of salt & pepper into the meat. Drop a generous dollop of the mustard/horseradish mix on and spread it around.

Add carrots, onions, pickles, and bacon. How much depends on you. A little bacon goes a long way, especially when you're cooking in bacon leftovers. Ahh, the tang of applewood smoke.

Start rolling the beef. Anything that falls out, gets tucked right back in.

Secure the roll with toothpicks. One at each end and one in the middle should do it. And really, if you're using more than three toothpicks, something is obviously wrong with you.

Transfer the rolls into the skillet.
A few minutes on either side should do it, just enough to get a nice sear.

Once you've seared both sides of the rouladen, you'll either cover the skillet and let things cook for 20 minutes or so, or transfer the rouladen into your casserole dish and cook in the oven for 30 minutes. Either way, keep whatever liquid the rouladen has released--that is the makings for your awesome gravy. Wherever your rouladen's headed for the next 20-30 minutes, that liquid needs to be with it.

I had about a fourth of an onion that I didn't end up chopping, and it was sitting pretty close to an open package of juiced up beef, so I considered the onion tainted goods and decided to throw it in the pot. This is perfectly fine. I also added a bit of olive oil and the remaining mustard/horseradish and salt & pepper.

As soon as the rouladen is the oven, you can start boiling water for the spaetzle. It usually takes about 20 minutes to cook, so the timing works out about right. There are several types of spaetzle--I like the kind that's a bit craggy.

You can also chop the red cabbage for you rotkohlsalat. Mom read me a recipe over the phone that suggest pounding the cabbage with a mallet to make it more digestible. At first I scoffed at this, maybe because I don't have a mallet, but then I decided that more digestible was probably a good thing, so I rolled a glass measuring cup over the chopped cabbage. So far so good.

Mix your dressing ingredients together. My measurements are really just approximations. I just kind of poured some of each into that glass measuring cup I used for smashing the cabbage and then whisked the heck out of it. Taste it. Is is all right? Then you're good to go.
Is it weird tasting? Add a bit more of something.

What's in that dish? Something awesome, I bet.

Time to put everything on a plate.

I hope you have a beer on hand. I probably should have mentioned that in the ingredients. Well, I'm about to eat this for New Year's Day dinner, and then I will fall into the deepest meat sleep ever.

Merry Christmas Cookie!

I love food coloring bottles. They're just so festive.
Plus, their little caps look like gnome hats!

Before I eat my Christmas pizza, which is regular pizza with the word Christmas attached, here's a last minute Christmas cookie recipe...like really last minute because it's 8:45 on Christmas Eve. What are you doing reading this? Maybe a better question would be: What am I doing writing this? True story: I came home from work and played with Matilda and then fell asleep on the floor for 45 minutes, so I'm just getting around to this now. It's fine.

Cornflake Wreaths
1/2 cup butter
50 large marshmallows
5 cups cornflakes
1 tsp vanilla
green food coloring
red hots

Melt the butter in a large pot. Add the marshmallows and cook on medium heat until melted. Keep an eye on them because once they start melting they can burn pretty quick. Stirring is a good idea. Add the vanilla and food coloring. How much food coloring? That, my friend, is up to you. But I add food coloring until everything starts looking vaguely Ninja Turtle-ish. Remove from heat and add the cornflakes. Stir, stir, stir, until everything is nice and coated. Let the mixture cool for a bit or you'll burn the crap out of your hand skin during the next step.

A piece of wax or parchment paper will be your work surface. Use a little butter or Crisco on the paper and on your hands. Gross? Maybe you think so now, but if you choose not to go that route, you'll regret it. Believe me. After the mixture has cooled a few minutes, grab a clump and shape it into a wreath. Keep doing this until your pot is empty. Now you'll add the red hots. I like 3 per wreath. That's it! Give them time to cool completely and you're ready to go.

Well, that was loads of fun. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

cold comfort food

Yup, it's cold. Time for soup!  

Lentil Soup with Veggies
3 cloves garlic

2 celery stalks

2 carrots

1 onion

1 can of tomatoes
2/3 cups lentils
1/3 cup elbow macaroni
6-8 cups soup stock
olive oil
2 bay leaves
salt, pepper & other spices!


*Usually I make this with only veggies, but since we're having an especially cold week (temperatures in the tens!), I decided to add some extra heartiness to my soup pot with a bit of pre-cooked Italian chicken sausage I found in my freezer. It was a good very idea.

It's the salt, pepper & spices stage!

Directions:
Start a soup pot on medium heat and cover the bottom with olive oil, about 2 tablespoons should do it. Add the carrots, celery, and onions-cook until they start to soften. Add the garlic and chicken sausage-cook until everything starts to turn golden brown, 8-10 minutes or so. Add the lentils and cook for another couple minutes.

This is a good time to add salt & pepper and any spices you might want to use. (Remember: sausage {as well as your canned tomatoes and soup stock} will bring its own salt to your pot, so take that into consideration before you break out the salt shaker!) I used dried basil and a general dried Italian spice mix.

Add the tomatoes (with juice), bay leaves, and soup stock. Bring to a boil. Once you're boiling, you can put a lid on it and leave it alone for 20 minutes or until the lentils begin to float to the top. This is your signal to add the macaroni. Cover again and cook for another 8 minutes, and then you're done!

I suggest enjoying your soup with a hunk of nice bread and a beer.

Don't mind if I do.

sigh

My week's all out of whack. I don't know where it went off the rails exactly, but it did and there's no getting it back. I had big plans for today. It was going to be a baking day and a project day (time to get started on Christmas--I'm vastly behind schedule already) and a take-advantage-of-the-sunlight-coming-through-the-window-to-get-some-pictures-of-my-succulents day (so I could finally do that post). But you know what happened? I ended up watching all 3 episodes of Conan this morning. So far not too bad. And then I was going to make soup and some kind of cheddar biscuits and a batch of granola (with honey this time), but I was missing some crucial ingredients. The granola and soup were both nixed. The cheddar biscuits were put on hold while the butter softened. I had to eat up some time...so my plans were altered to include The West Wing. I mean, who didn't see that coming? The apartment was sort of cold, and I felt like I wanted to be under a blanket--blanketing. All right, shut up.


Well, I've got a cheddar biscuit recipe for you at least. Oh, and the knowledge that I'm working on crafty projects and won't be able to reveal details until after Christmas. Actually, until after Second Christmas, which will take place the second week in January, when the sisters and mother and I can all be together. I hope the results will live up to the anticipation. If, that is, the anticipation exists for any of you. Does it?

It wouldn't have killed me to dress this up a little.
A sprig of something green at least.

Cheddary Biscuits
2 cups flour
1 TB baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 & 1/2 cups butter
1 large egg
1/2 cup milk
(I used vanilla soy because that's what I had. Totally fine.)
1 cup shredded cheddar
(I image garlic, sage, pepper, onions would all be good additions.)


Mix the flour, salt, baking powder and butter together. You want the butter to be mostly cold (not melted!), and the mixture to get kind of pebbly. Beat the egg and milk together and add that to the flour/butter mixture. Add the cheddar, but don't over-mix! Just a couple times around the bowl. Get a little extra flour and knead the whole mess a few times for good measure. You can either make little biscuit blobs, or get out a rolling pin and roll the dough out and cut the biscuits in whatever shape suits your fancy. I went for a scone sort of shape. Bake on a parchment-lined baking sheet at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. Keep an eye on them if your oven is at all sketchy (like mine). You never know when things will take a turn for the worse.


Also, it has not escaped me that today is Veteran's Day. While writing all the stuff I just wrote, I felt like I was being hostile, but when I read over it...I don't know. I guess not?


Well.


I read President Obama's Veteran's Day Proclamation. It's nice.

1. This weekend.

Ok, I know I haven't posted anything in a while. I get it. A blog has to be updated pretty often--otherwise the blog's readers (hello, Kathy) become frustrated. So, it's time to get cracking (or crackin') again.

Matilda is ready for this to be done...also for me to throw her sparkle ball.

I've spent most of this evening compiling a Halloween playlist (Marilyn Manson: Sweet Dreams, Julee Cruise: Falling, Nick Cave: Red Right Hand, The Misfits: Monster Mash, Screamin' Jay Hawkins: I Put a Spell on You, The Cramps: I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Nouvelle Vague: Bela Lugosi's Dead. It's all coming together now.) and rearranging the furniture in my living room. Yes, the construction mess is nearing completion.  Well, I hope it is. See? The wall is painted. The outlet doesn't work, and I discovered that the light fixture (removed from the ceiling like a month and a half ago) is also broken, but I will console myself with this completed structure. I will put things in front of it. What's the other half of the room look like? Oh, I'll show you. Right this second.

So many piles.

Yikes, right?  Perhaps tomorrow I'll move some of this somewhere. Perhaps.


But before I started in on this project, I pulled out the old Dumont cookbook. Why? The plan was to make cookies, and then to call Catherine and tell her I was making cookies. So she'd know I have cookies and be jealous. Duh. Well, guess who was waiting for me when I opened that cookbook. My pal Drusilla Friedly. She knows her cookies, and I trust her implicitly (and honestly, most of that trust is generated by her name). So, here's her recipe for:

The "special" is cream of tartar. Or do you have a better guess?

Special Chocolate Chip Cookies

by Drusilla Friedly

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1 cup butter (softened)

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla

2 1/4 cups flour

2 tsp. cream of tartar

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 cup chopped pecan nuts (as opposed to just pecans)

1 (6 oz.) pkg of real chocolate chips (I used an extra dark chocolate candy bar, broken into pieces)

Mix the first 5 ingredients well. Sift the flour (like I'd ever sift anything), cream of tartar, salt, and baking soda together. Mix well. Add the real chocolate chips and nuts. Drop by sugared spoon (Wait. What? I didn't do that. I don't even remember reading that.) and shape ball on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes, or until browned.

Note: If dough is too thin, add a wee (her emphasis) bit more flour so cookies don't spread so while baking. 

Perfect!

Would you believe I'm eating one right now? If you said, "No, I do not believe that."-- you are, in fact, correct. I laid a trap for you and you almost fell into it.  I have the hiccups, for the second time today, and have been alternating between drinking massive amounts of water and holding my breath. So, I am not currently eating a cookie...though I would like to eat one. Soon...very soon.  

soda pop

Yeah, I bought one last night. I only drank a fourth of it, but still it's sort of a betrayal to my "no pop" policy (which is usually in effect and almost never subverted unless mixed drinks {or long, sleepy road-trips} are involved). But I also sort of wanted a hamburger last night, and I didn't end up with one of those. So, good job, brain, for keeping that craving at bay.

No paper wrappers on these.

My intention today was to post a scrumptious little muffin recipe from my bosom buddy, Maya (of 

Maya and Zoey go to Green Bluff fame). And I'm
still going to do that, but first I'm taking a mini-
detour to mention that fact that it is now October 1st, and I love Halloween.

I recently found myself wandering the seasonal display aisles in JoAnn's Fabrics, almost buying these Martha Stewart blood spatter cupcake wrappers, which were 25% off. (If you're smart,
you'll go there now.) I cannot promise that these will not be in my pantry (OK, the cupboard above my oven) before the end of the month. I had to draw the line at the little 3-piece coffin boxes that were 30%.
I picked them up. I put them down. It was a battle between the 15-21 year-old Christine (1995-2001) and the 30-year old Christine (present day). Awful. Finally the present day me defeated the past me--the winning argument was this: "What exactly will you do with these? Paint them black and put buttons in them? Bobby pins? Your pocket knife collection? Not good enough. Put them back on the shelf."



You've got red on you.

The bloodier, the better.






The 30-year old Christine is not much fun at all. But I did give in when I saw these glittery blood splatter stickers (also Martha Stewart--her team knows what's up) and wanted, wanted, wanted them. See, my brain knows when to say no (hamburgers) and when to say yes (glitter blood splat stickers). They're much cooler in person. Just wait until you get one on a postcard--you'll see.




OK, MUFFINS.

Maya's Blackberry Muffins of Delight

This is my handwriting. Maya's is nicer. Much nicer.

Dry Ingredients
1 2/3 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
(I added a little nutmeg. I mean: why not?)


Wet Ingredients
1 egg
1/3 cup applesauce
1 cup milk (I used soy milk.)
(I added a little vanilla too. Have at it.)


1 cup blackberries

Heat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a muffin tin. Paper wrappers won't work here--they'll stick to your muffins. And you'll want to eat all of these puppies.

Yup, Green Bluff berries from Knapp's.

Mix together the dry and wet ingredients in separate bowls.  (I should probably mention that I didn't have applesauce, but I did have some very ripe pears. So I mashed those up. Worked like a charm. And what else would I have done with slightly mushy pears?)

Maya makes a little well in the dry ingredients and adds the wet to that. (I forgot about that part, but everything turned out OK.) Mix it all up, but hold off on the blackberries for a second. Maya recommends mixing the blackberries in after everything else. I agree. Also, mix gently. Fold. Caress the blackberries into your batter. You want some of them whole, right? You do.

They'll bake for 25 minutes. You pull them out of the oven and eat one immediately. Them's the rules, people.




Even delicious upside-down.

P.S. When I made a grilled cheese sandwich tonight, I also drank some more of that Coke. I stood in the kitchen and drank like another fourth of it in the light of the open fridge door. It seemed right somehow. Then I had a beer with that grilled cheese. Also right. Always right. Just thought you should know.