I can do other things, too.

Damn, I cooked the shit out of stuff today. I promise to get at least one sentence written today so I can share it with you, but first:

Thanksgiving 2009

7 a.m.
Checked on pumpkin cheesecake made last night. Figured someone would notice if I had a piece for breakfast.
Rolled out and blind-baked pie dough from yesterday.

7:30 a.m.
Baked sweet potatoes in microwave.

8 a.m.
Mixed pie filling and baked.
Started grading papers.

9:30 a.m.
Put ham in oven.
More papers.

10:30 a.m
Didn't realize I needed more than a dozen eggs. Quick trip to the store.

11 a.m.
Made grits.
Started sweet potato casserole.

1:00 p.m.
Shit! I should have soaked the blackeyed peas overnight!
Found quick-soak method on internet.

1:30 p.m.
Put grits in oven.
Steamed squash in microwave.
Finished sweet potato casserole, set aside until marshmallow-melting time.

2:00 p.m.
Made corn fritter batter.
Put together squash casserole.

2:30 p.m.
Grits done.
Blanched greens.

2:50 p.m.
5-minute shower.

3 p.m.
Ham done.
Cooked onion and bacon for greens.
Sweet potatoes in oven.
Squash casserole in oven.
Fried corn fritters.

3:25 p.m.
Finished sauteing greens.
Put out vegetables.
Set table.
Poured drinks.

3:30 p.m.
Ate until cross-eyed.

4:30 p.m.
Made brown sugar-bourbon cream.
Ate sweet potato pie and cheesecake with a cup of coffee.

It's been a good day.

Tasty!

I spent the whole day today in the kitchen.

We bought a new smoker last weekend and about 12 pounds of meat to cook last night.  We set up the brine bucket (when not in use for brine, it holds all my knitting stuff), and this morning I was up at 8 to rinse, dry, and put on dry rub.  I put the pork shoulder on, wrapped the ribs in plastic to season, and started on the beans.  Check this out:

Smoked Barbecue Beans

2 cans Bush's Maple beans

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup ketchup

1/2 T dry mustard

1 small can crushed pineapple

salt and pepper

1/2 onion

1 jalapeno

2 serranos

1/2 pound bacon

1. Cut bacon into 1/2" pieces and cook in a skillet until fat renders.

2. While bacon is cooking, dice onion and mince peppers.  Mix all other ingredients together in a large bowl.

3. When bacon is done, remove from pan with a slotted spoon and add to beans.  Saute the onion and peppers in the bacon drippings until the onions are browned.

4. Remove onion and peppers with a slotted spoon and add to beans.  Stir everything together, pour into a deep 9" disposable square pan, and put in the smoker, uncovered, for 2 1/2 to 3 hours.  Remove to a 350 degree oven until very hot, 30 minutes to one hour.

When those went into the smoker, I added the ribs and started making a grocery list for the rest of the week.

This afternoon, I made an apple-raspberry pie with a vodka crust that was truly the best and easiest to roll out ever.  The vodka adds moisture without messing with gluten formation in the crust, so you can make a moister dough (read: easier to roll), and the crust still comes out flaky.

THEN I made a pot of braised collard greens with onions and bacon.

The only think I don't like about spending all day cooking is that by the time dinner is ready, I'm tired of food.  Good thing there will still be pie for breakfast.

Yankee-Mex is not Tex-Mex, but is pretty okay nontheless.

Actually, it was flan and tres leches cake.  Tasty!

Divine!

Sourdough toast with Nutella is perhaps the best breakfast food anywhere.

Pie!

Yesterday, Tyson was hankering for something tasty to eat, so I made us a blueberry pie. No kidding, I did the whole cold-butter-cold-shortening-ice-water pie crust thing, then made a filling with blueberries, sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and rice flour to put in between.

I think I will start keeping a batch of pie crust in the freezer for when fruit is on sale. I feel a lattice-topped peach pie coming on soon!

mmmmmmmmMeatloaf!

I make this meatloaf dinner almost every week during the winter.  People in the know (such as my moms and Deidre) will recognize this as a recipe from The New Best Recipe book, great as a cookbook and highly informational as well.  It took some experimenting to get the potatoes ready before the meatloaf cools because they cook at a higher temperature, and turning up the oven with the meatloaf in it makes it ooze way too much.  You'll probably have to buy a full pound of veal and of pork; just put the rest in a bag in the freezer for next time.

Mix in a small bowl and set aside:

1/2 c. ketchup

1/4 c. brown sugar

4 t. cider vinegar

Sautee in olive oil:

1 medium onion, diced

Whisk together in a large bowl:

2 eggs

1/2 t. dried thyme

1 t. salt

1/2 t. ground pepper

2 t. Dijon mustard

2 t. Worchestershire sauce

dash hot pepper sauce

1/2 c. milk

Add:

1 pound ground beef

1/2 pound ground pork

1/2 pound ground veal

16 crushed saltine crackers

sauteed onions

1. Mix thoroughly and shape into a 9"x5" loaf on a foil-covered pan.  Your hands are all dirty already, so smear on about half of the ketchup glaze.  Bake in a 350 degree oven until thermometer registers 160 degrees.

2. While the meatloaf cooks, cut 2 pounds of red potatoes into even pieces.  Golf-ball-sized potatoes can be cut in half; cut larger potatoes into fourths or eighths.  Put into a gallon-sized bag with 2T olive oil, kosher salt, and pepper and toss to coat.  Pour potatoes onto a baking sheet and arrange in a single layer so that all potatoes have one cut side down.  Cover baking sheet tightly with foil.

3. After 44-50 minutes of baking time, add the sheet of potatoes to the oven.  When the meatloaf is done, carefully remove the foil with a potholder or tongs.  No kidding, I've steam-burned myself here, and it's no good.  Take the meatloaf out and cover it with the potato foil.  Turn the oven up to 450 and cook the potatoes for 15 minutes.

4. Using a metal spatula, scrape the potatoes off the baking sheet and flip so that each potato has the other cut side down.  Return to oven and cook 12-15 more minutes, or until skins are wrinkled.

5. To get everything done at once, use the oilve-oil bag to coat some asparagus spears.  Put the asparagus on a baking sheet and add to the oven when you flip the potatoes.  Depending on thickness, they will take 10-15 minutes to cook.

I hope you enjoy!

Cookies and a Contest

But not a cookie contest, unfortunately.

I am making my very very favorite cookies to celebrate Tyson's last day of school, which he is celebrating by playing poker.  It is a combination of two recipes:

Kitchen Sink Cookies (with commentary)

2 sticks butter, softened but still cool (not margarine, not canola sticks, not shortening; real, honest-to-god butter)
1 cup brown sugar (the darkest you can find--better for brown sugar cookies later!)
1 cup white sugar (I used washed raw sugar last time because that's all I had, and it was good, too.)
2 eggs
1 T vanilla extract (don't be cheap; use the real stuff)
1/2 t baking powder
1/4 t nutmeg
1/4 t cinnamon
dash ginger or whatever else I'm in the mood for
1 1/2 to 1 3/4 c flour
3 c whole (not quick) oats
1/2 bag good-quality dark chocolate chips (like Ghirardelli)
1/2 bag butterscotch chips
1/2 c dried cherries (or Sunkist makes a really good mix of blueberries, cherries, cranberries, and raspberries, except I don't like the texture of the raspberries so I pick them out first)
1/4 c raisins
1/2 c walnuts or pecans (or a combination of both)

Beat butter until creamy; add sugars and beat until fluffy.  Add eggs one at a time, then add the vanilla.
With the mixer or by hand, add the baking powder and spices, then gradually add flour until combined.
With a wooden spoon, mix in oats, chips, dried fruit, and nuts.  Shape into 2-inch blobs on a cookie sheet and bake in a 350-degree oven for 10 minutes, rotate the tray, and bake 10-12 more minutes or until done.  (For super-easy clean-up, line your baking sheet with parchment.  I think this is supposed to help even out the heat distribution, but the jury's still out on that one.) Remove to a wire rack and allow to cool.  
Really, wait for a good 20 minutes or so: this is one cookie that isn't as good straight from the oven.  If you need something to tide you over, sneak a little of the dough.

So those are the cookies.  The very best thing about them is that it takes half a bag of the chips and dried fruits, so there's a built-in reason to make more before too long.  And if you staggered the chips and the fruit, you'd become trapped in a delicious cycle of cookie making.

The contest is the link Tyson posted yesterday.  First person to explain how it works wins.  Maybe if you are Tyson, or Juan or Karen who live in our back house but probably don't read my blog, you win some cookies!

Dinner is Cooking!

Well, it's brining actually.

Tonight I am butterflying and grill-roasting a chicken. I cut out the back (with my new kitchen shears; the old ones weren't quite up to par in the chicken-cutting department) of a 4-pound free range organic hormone-free blah blah blah chicken and it's soaking in salt water to help keep in juicy. When it's done, in about an hour, I'll break the breastbone so it will lay nice and flat on the grill. Then I'll chop up some chilies in adobo sauce until it makes a paste and add minced lime zest and cilantro and smear that all up under the skin. I'll put it on the grill for 15 minutes, smooshing it down with a cookie sheet with bricks on top, then flip it over. Near the end of the cooking time, I'll take a honey-lime glaze and baste the skin.

I am also going to grill up some ears of corn with some of the chili paste, butter, and lime juice.

Finally, I will go to the store and get stuff to make hot fudge pudding cake (even though I made brown sugar cookies yesterday and they are already gone) because I have to get butter anyway.

Can you tell I have been looking forward to this dinner all week?

On the radio today, the DJ, looking out for my best interest, I'm sure, pointed out that TOMORROW is the biggest day of the year: April 20th, better known as 420.

As far as I can tell, nobody actually knows where these numbers come from. Some people swear it's some famous stoner's birthday, or the day they died, or the first time they ever smoked pot, or something like that. Others will threaten to harsh your mellow if you don't concede that 420 is some city's drug-related ordinance number. However it came about, everybody on April 20th at precisely 4:20 (PM, although you know it would have to be AM to actually make sense, and don't get me started on how it's not really symbolic of anything when it happens 24 different times that day.) everybody smokes their brains out.

Like stoners need some kind of "holiday" or something to want to get high.

To celebrate that holy day, our local head shop/tattoo parlor is hosting a "bake sale." (Don't get me started on that either--it's basically the tattoo equivalent of McDonalds, and it's called--get this--Diversity. 'Cause that little heart with angel wings you want tattooed above your ass will really set you apart from everybody else.) There will be fun activities like bong-building contests, baked goods, a stringy-hair expo, and slouching on a sofa and saying "whoa."

Oh, and Great Harvest (Christian) Bread Company is the chief sponsor.

What the fuck?!

Waffles Woo Hoo!

I was so excited to find this in my inbox yesterday! This, my friends, is widely reported to be OMG THE BEST WAFFLE RECIPE EVAR (or so all the Switzerland people said this summer), and the translation from the French is really, really cute:

2 quarts and 1 pint liquid (half mineral water, half full milk)(2,5 liter)
2/3 ounce of yeast (20gram)
1 lb of flour (1/2 kg)
5 oz diary [sic] (cream) butter which you melt in a bain-marie (a "double" boiler)(150g)
1 spoon of (salad) oil
3 or 4 eggs, depending on their size
4oz of sugar (100 gram)
a pinch of salt

Heat the liquid up until it is tepid. Take a cup of it apart and let the yeast dissolve in it. Sift the flour into a bowl; sprinkle the salt around the edge of the flour and make a hole in the middle, where you pour the dissolved yeast and the melted butter.

Add the egg yolks, the sugar, and the remaining liquid in the hole. Kneed the mass from the inside out until you have a homogeneous dough. If necessary, dilute it with a little liquid.

The dough should not be so liquid as for pancakes. Whisk the egg whites and scoop them carefully with a slice through the tough [sic].

Cover the dough and leave it to rise in a heated place (if in winter) until its volume has doubled.

Pour some dough into the heated and greased iron. Close the iron immediately and bake until it gets golden brown.

Now, I have never seen a yeast-risen waffle recipe, but it looks worth a try. I will certainly give it a shot and let you all know.

Whole Bunch of Crap

While Whole Foods definitely appealed to some of my more romantic, white-privelege impulses, I don't think I'll be switching grocery stores anytime soon. (At least until the Fresh and Easy opens up down on Boulder Highway by the KMart.) Here are some of the several conundra I faced:

Pro: Pick out a vegetable, and they'll grill it up for you. Right then. While you are watching and feeling all smug about it.

Con: $6 a gallon for milk.

Pro: Two words: bulk bins.

Con: Many bulk bins full of food items I can't even identify, a source of culinary guilt (or, at the very least, minor discomfort).

Pro: Sliced-to-order barbecue brisket and tri-tip.

Con: $8.99 a pound for chicken breasts.

Pro: Approximately 11,078 types, varieties, and sizes of honey.

Con: Hot cocoa mix?

Pro: Reasonable selection of environmentally-friendly laundry detergents.

Con: Too many hippie-yuppies in store and parking lot.

Pro: Fresh-ground honey-roasted-peanut butter (AKA Crack on Toast).

Con: Employees too fresh-faced and innocent-looking.

All said and done, I think it would cost me about $50 to $70 more a week to buy my groceries there, if I could even count on finding everything I needed and not having to mentally reorganize my grocery list when I couldn't. So anyway, now I am working in my head on a worksheet I could carry around to a grocery store to see if I wanted to shop there. It would have a lot of items I buy often to make the things we like to eat, and I could wander around and just fill in the blanks. I am so not kidding about this, guys. I would really design and print a grocery store worksheet and go practice shopping at all kinds of stores to find the best one.

Maybe I should reinstall Sims on my computer? Or just stop making excuses to get out of reading Great Expectations.

Mock Shop

I know I am a total dork when after a bureaucracy-filled year including mock attendance audits and mock evacuation drills (I made my students hold on to a rope to stay together and in a line, then put it on the grass and stand with a foot on it to keep them in place, kindergarten-military style), today I will be performing a mock shop at Whole Foods. Every time I go there (which is exactly twice, but Wild Oats is practically the same thing), I wish I were a rich yuppie who could afford to cook exotic things. I've decided that I could just about afford to shop there, as long as I don't buy any more than I plan to cook or eat in a week.

This Sunday on my weekly grocery trip, I refused to shell out 13 bucks for real vanilla extract at the regular grocery store--I know they have better and cheaper at WF--and basmati rice was $7, and 5 little cinnamon sticks were $6. So since I have to make a second grocery run this week, I figured, why not wander around and price-check some stuff.

Oh, and I am also a nerd who doesn't mind a practice run before the "real thing." There's nothing worse than being halfway through grocery shopping when you decide that grocery store sucks.

Update: Actually, what makes me a total dork is that I posted this and re-read it, and couldn't deal with the comma I'd inserted after "dork" in the first sentence, so I had to fix it.

Bacon in the Oven

No, that's not some weird pregnancy euphemism. I oven-fried the shit out of some bacon tonight. It was weird not to have to make a mess of the stovetop, and if I don't overcook it next time it'll sure be easy.
Anyways.

Monkey Bread and Brown Sugar Cookies

For Elaine.

Monkey Bread

Quarter
3 cans buttermilk biscuits
and roll in
1 c white sugar
2 t cinnamon
(ginger, allspice, or cloves)
Layer in a Bundt pan with
(walnuts and raisins)

In a small saucepan, melt
1/2 c butter
1 c brown sugar
2 T water (or orange juice)
Boil 2 minutes to make a caramel sauce, and pour over biscuits. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes.
Remove from oven and let sit 10 minutes.

Brown Sugar Cookies

Heat in a skillet
10 T butter
swirling constantly until dark golden brown and nutty-smelling, about 3-4 minutes. Pour into a heatproof bowl with
4 T butter
and set aside for 15 minutes to cool.

Combine and set aside
1/4 c brown sugar
1/4 c white sugar

Add to browned butter, stirring so there are no sugar lumps
1 3/4 c brown sugar
Mix together and add gradually to butter and sugar
1/2 t salt
1/4 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 T vanilla extract
Allow dough to cool 15-30 minutes or more in the refrigerator. Roll into 1" balls and roll in sugar mixture. Place cookies 2" apart on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 for 12-14 minutes. Cookies will look raw in the cracks; be careful not to overbake. Makes about 2 dozen cookies.