Worms in dirt on cupcakes

Little N is coming to the end of her year at kindergarten. When I picked her up today, she was taking her time leaving the classroom. This is a regular occurring event for Little N. She starts to chat with her friends, slowly puts on her coat, wanders the room in circles. She takes her time at school, she takes her time at home, I've tried rushing the girl, and sometimes it's just not worth the fight. We tend to pick our battles and give her plenty of time when we can.

Today, when she was done wandering the classroom, she chatted with her teacher on the way out the door. Since everyone else had already left, she had the teacher's full attention (perhaps she had a plan for her wandering). Little N suggested to her teacher that she would like to bring snacks for tomorrow. The teacher looks at me, raises an eyebrow as a question mark and I said, "why not." I, of course, underestimated Little N's grand plans.

As we were driving away from the school, Little N started to describe grandiose, flower covered cupcakes. It turns out that watching the food network can backfire on you. I had to break it to Little N that Mommy cannot make a frosting flower and I wasn't sure where we could find edible flowers as a substitute.

I suggested gummy worms on chocolate cupcakes, to which Little N suggested that we needed to make "dirt" for the worm to crawl out of. My super creative Little N thought of the chocolate graham crackers we have in the cupboard and the worms in the dirt cupcake was born.

This evening we made cupcakes. Little N did all the measuring and ran the mixer. Once we frosted the cupcakes, she put a worm on each cupcake and then dipped the top into the ground up graham crackers. She wanted the worms to look "dirty" and she was very successful. Big N helped, too. He was the official worm tester.







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Pete's Potato Salad

Three weeks ago, I flew off to Bangalore for work. I flew home a week ago and Pete left for Boston the day after I got back. Needless to say, I am looking forward to talking to Pete when it doesn't involve first figuring out what time it is where the other person is.

In honor of Pete coming home, I'm making one of his favorites. It is actually more of a recent favorite I've put together based on tips for some of my friends in my life.



Pete's Potato Salad

2-3 lbs of white and red new potatoes
1 or 2 celery stalk - diced
1 dill pickles (spicy garlic!) - diced
1/4 cup diced onion
1-2 Tablespoons white vinegar
4 slices of bacon, cooked, cooled and diced.
1 or 2 boiled eggs, diced
Kosher salt
Fresh ground pepper
1-2 Tablespoons Mustard
Mayo (~3/4 cup)
paprika

Clean and chop potatoes into large bite-sized pieces. Boil until fork tender. Drain. Add to a large bowl and toss with vinegar, Salt and Pepper. Cover the bowl and chill in your refrigerator for a few hours.

Once potatoes are cooled, add pickles, onion, celery, boiled egg, diced bacon. Hold a little of the bacon off to the side to sprinkle on top. In a separate bowl, mix the mustard, paprika and mayo. Add salt and pepper to taste. Fold into the potato mixture. Sprinkle remaining bacon on top.

Serve chilled.

Kohlra-what? Kohlrabi!

We recently signed up for a 1/2 share of a CSA produce delivery. At our pick-up, the nice lady in the booth at the Farmer's market slowly went over everything in the box, pulling each item out with the love and care she had put into growing it. I took the box home, placed the contents in the refrigerator and immediately forgot what she told me. We were on the way to Big N's concert and I was in more of a hurry than I wanted to admit. Fast forward to this evening and I am now trying to figure out what one item in particular is.



Some internet searches later where I started by looking at what is in season in August and then looking up photos of the names I didn't recognize led me to find out that the odd shaped item was a Kohlrabi. Of course, once I found the name, I remembered the nice lady in the booth itemizing the box and saying Kohlrabi.

My next problem was how to prepare the it. According to simply recipes, kohlrabi is German for cabbage turnip. I immediately chopped it into small pieces and tried a piece. It reminded me of a radish, but it did have a cabbage and broccoli undertone.

I could have eaten the entire kohlrabi raw, but opted to try the pickled kohlrabi recipe from the restaurant widow blog and it was delicious. The kids didn't get to try this one, I hogged it all to myself.


Very delicious!

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

You would think that this wouldn't be my first pie recipe post, but it is.



Today we are celebrating Father's day a little early. In honor of the day, I am making one of Pete's favorite desserts, Strawberry Rhubarb Pie. The recipe grew out of suggestion to saute the rhubarb from a friend of mine and my strawberry rhubarb jam recipe.

I use the perfect pie crust recipe for all my crusts. I have the pie crust recipe memorized, I've made it so often.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

2 cups Strawberries, cleaned, hulled and sliced
2 cups rhubarb, diced
2 Tablespoons butter
4 Tablespoons corn starch
1 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

My pie plate is 7 inches across. For a 9 inch pie, add more strawberries and rhubarb. I also like to taste more of the fruit. You may want to add in 1/2 cup more of sugar if the strawberries are too tart for you.

Make a 2 pie crust following the perfect pie crust recipe or your favorite pie crust recipe.

Melt the 4 Tablespoons butter over low heat in a large saute pan and add the diced rhubarb. Gently saute to soften and release some liquid. Spoon into a bowl, leaving as much liquid behind as possible and set aside. Let cool.

Roll out your bottom crust and line the pie plate and set aside.

Add the strawberries to the cooled rhubarb. In a small bowl, mix the sugar, cornstarch and cinnamon. Add the sugar mixture to the strawberry rhubarb mixture and gently fold in. Pour filling into prepared crust.



Roll out top crust and place on top of the pie. Crimp edges and slice top to allow steam to escape.



Place on top of a baking sheet or plan to scrub your oven. Bake in a 375 degree F oven for 25 minutes. Lower temperature to 325 degrees F and bake for an additional 30-45 minutes, or until crust is browned to your liking. Wrap the edges in foil for the last 20 minutes of baking to keep the edges from getting too dark.

Enjoy!

Sugar Cookies

Both the Ns and I made cookies on Saturday. The kids had wanted to do a rolled sugar cookie using cutters. I decided to try the recipe on the back of the last bag of sugar. I haven't found a sugar cookie recipe I really like, so this one appeared to be as good as any other.

There was a slight problem in that the dough was a drop cookie dough, not a rolled cookie dough. The kids were having no part of a drop cookie. They both wanted to roll out their dough and use the cookie cutters.

Little N hasn't quite grasped the concept of not overworking the dough, but she had a blast doing so. If it meant we didn't eat (or in this case, bake) half the cookies, she didn't seem to notice. Big N wasn't a fan of the sticky dough, but he was a fan of the edible cookies. As a compromise, we pulled out all the play dough while the cookies baked and all was right with the world.

I was quite happy with the flavor and texture of the cookies, so I will have to share the recipe before I toss out the empty bag.

Old-Time Soft Sugar cookies
Courtesy of the Fred Meyer bag of sugar

1/2 cup shortening 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1/2 cup light brown sugar 1 egg 3/4 cup buttermilk 1 teaspoon vanilla	2 Cups all-purpose flour 1/2 tspn baking soda 1/2 tspn salt
Cream together shortening and sugars. Mix in egg, followed by the buttermilk and vanilla. Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and stir into the wet mixture. Chill dough for about an hour. Drop by rounded teaspoon 2 inches apart onto a parchment covered baking sheet. Sprinkle sugar with cinnamon (or colored sugar) on top of the cookie. Bake at 400ºF for 7-9 minutes or until set.

NOTE
I do not keep buttermilk on hand. The best substitution I've found is to pour your milk into a glass cup measure and add a tablespoon of white vinegar. Let it sit for a few minutes, and you have a great alternative to running to the store for buttermilk.

Apple Pie Princess

Little N made her first pie!

She rolled out the crust using the scraps from the larger pie we made for the fourth of July dinner. She managed to roll out the crust, and place it into the mini-heart-shaped cake pan. She filled the crust with apples and then rolled the top crust, all by herself. She managed to place the crust neatly on top of the mini-pie. She needed a little help sealing the two together and crimping the edges with a fork, but she got the hang of that very fast.

I will say she handled the hard part of rolling the crust and putting the pie together very well!

Happy New Year! Welcome 2010

Good morning and Happy New year!

Big N decided that we should have a family New Year's party. His idea of a party involved making a cake. I agreed, a cake on New Year's is only a good idea.

Big N helped me make 2 little cakes while Little N was napping. I have four mini cake pans in the shape of a heart which seem more appropriate for an Easy bake oven than a normal oven. The pans are about the size of two cupcakes. We used these pans and a modified cupcake recipe to make our "cakes". The cakes were frosted with a Chocolate cream cheese frosting that was delicious. I seriously suggest trying this frosting.

Big N has decided that our family tradition should involve cake on New Year's eve. Who am I to argue with a very good suggestion for a very good family tradition.

Big N's recipe

Big N's kindergarten class put together a recipe book full of their favorite recipes for Thanksgiving. I was very proud of Big N for selecting Apple Pie as his favorite.

He really liked being able to pick the apples for his pie. An acquaintance cut this out of the local paper for us.

Zucchini month

August has a little known distinction. It is the annual give-your-neighbor-giant-zucchini month. This holiday is very well know to anyone with a neighbor, co-worker, friend or somewhat casual acquaintance with a garden full Zucchini.

Giant Zucchini are somewhat intimidating, but we are making a huge effort to use those two ginormous yellow zucchinis our neighbor so kindly bestowed upon us.

We have had the following (all from a single zuchini)
1. Zucchini bread - 2 full size loaves, 2 mini loaves, 12 muffins, 18 mini-muffins. (hubby says add chocolate chips next time)
2. Zucchini fritters -- Major hit with Big N
3. Zucchini Pie -- Very apple pie like.

One Zucchini down, one to go.

Teddy Bear's Birthday

In Teddy Bear years, Teddy is aging very, very well. He seems to have a birthday every week and sometimes twice a week. Big N will announce that today or tomorrow is Teddy's birthday and we need to have a party. Teddy is typically pretty happy with a Lego cake, but I thought Big N might like a real cupcake party.

I came across a fantastic vanilla cupcake recipe and had the bright idea that 9PM on a Tuesday evening was cupcake baking time. Especially since my alarm would go off at 4AM to head to Seattle the next morning. Yes, this was obviously very well thought out.

The cupcake texture was fantastic and the butter cream was very light. I did not have a vanilla bean on hand. To compensate, I increased the vanilla extract added to the batter to 2 teaspoons.



I asked Pete to host Teddy's birthday party since I was on the west side of the mountain. Big N was pretty excited. He did inform me that Teddy is more of a chocolate guy, kind of like him. Funny how that works. Little N made sure I was aware that she truly appreciated the vanilla. She would be very happy to have vanilla cupcakes at her birthday party.

Big N just informed me that Teddy will have ANOTHER birthday tomorrow.

One habenero...

I love to cook. Anyone who knows me will agree to that. Whether I cook well or not is debatable, but I do enjoy trying new things.

My latest cooking experimentations have included peppers. In particular, spicier peppers. I've grilled peppers as a side dish and added them to mango salsa over shrimp. My most recent attempt was an oven roasted pepper dip. I've made this before with only sweet peppers, but I thought a little heat might add some depth.



I roast the peppers the night before and let them cool so I can peel the skins off. I treated all the peppers the same, including those 2 innocuous looking little orange peppers. Once I got the peppers and onions into the oven to roast, I cleaned up and washed my hands.

Once I had the peppers roasting, I decided to snack on a pluot we had picked up from the farmers market. About 15 minutes later, I noticed that my lips were burning. It took me a second, and I realized that the residue from the habenero must still be on my hands.

I scrubbed my hands like you would see an actor playing a doctor scrub for surgery and they still burned.

In the future, I will use gloves to handle the peppers.

Roasted pepper dip

1 sweet red pepper
1 sweet yellow pepper
1/4 sweet onion
1 or 2 habanero pepper
1 clove garlic
kosher salt
pepper
cooking oil
Cream cheese
Sour cream
juice of half a small lemon

The night before you want your dip, preheat your over to 400 degrees.

Lightly coat a large baking sheet with oil. Clean and cut peppers into quarters, throw out the seeds and veins. Lightly toss in oil. Spread out on the baking sheet and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cut the onion into rings (1/4 inch thick or so). Add to sheet, coat in oil and add salt and pepper. Place into a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes. Remove small habenero pepper from pan and continue to roast larger peppers for 20 minutes longer.

Place onions and peppers into a plastic container and refrigerate overnight.

The next morning, peel the skins from the peppers.

Take the garlic clove and crush into a paste with some kosher salt. Add this to the bowl of your food processor. Add the peeled peppers and onions and mix to a coarse paste. Add 1 heaping Tablespoon of cream cheese and sour cream and mix. Add additional Cream cheese and sour cream until desired consistency is reached. Add fresh lemon juice from half of a small lemon.

Serve with chips!

Dinner tonight

We had planned on hamburgers tonight for dinner, that is until my daughter was napping and Pete was somewhere in the land management land with the dogs AND I realized we didn't have hamburger rolls.

Big N and I decided we could make some because there was no way I wanted to wake up little N to drag her off to the store on a Sunday afternoon.

The rolls smell fantastic. I had enough dough that I made a small round loaf for tomorrow.



We did a combinations of two recipes, one from the Hillbilly housewife's site and a second from An American Housewife's site.

The two recipes are very similar. I tend to lean more towards the the first one, omitting the powdered milk. I also opt to proof the yeast in warm water prior to adding it into my mixer with the dough hook attachment.

I do get a more consistent loaf using the mixer over kneading the bread by hand, which is fine by me. Its easier to clean up the bowl than my counter. However, the kids like helping with hand kneading more. If both kids are helping, we all knead it by hand.

Pete has only good things to say about all of the bread experiments thus far.

We love carbs!

Baking with a three year old

You might never know...

The bread we served was especially delicious with the strawberry rhubarb jam we made last summer.

I didn't bother shaping it into a loaf, instead making a rustic loaf baked on the pizza stone.

Special Ingredient

Little N was watching me make some bread dough. I am planning on proofing it over night and baking it tomorrow before we have dinner with Pete's mom and sister.

Little N reached into the bowl and yanked off a piece of dough. I didn't stop her, there weren't any eggs in the recipe and I had sampled it myself to make sure it wasn't too salty. I turned around for a second and looked back to see her patting the dough with a pretty grossed out expression.

"Yucky! I put it back!"

The question is, will I bake and forget to mention our special ingredient or start from scratch...

The case of the picky eater

Big N is a VERY picky eater. This makes dinner time a challenge and rarely a pleasant event. I refuse to only feed him his 3 favorite foods, which makes for a lot of complaining. Up until recently, the only dinners he would voluntarily eat involved dino-nuggets, oatmeal or mac and cheese from a blue box. Peanut butter and Jelly was the standard lunch fare.

I finally broke down and went the bribery route. I sat down with Big N and my cake cookbook. I told him if he tried a new food for seven days I would make him a cake. We even flipped through the pages together. I went as far as to say it could be any seven, non-consecutive days. I really wanted him to achieve something simply because dinner had become so tedious for the entire family due to his complaining.

Apparently, cake is a good motivational tool.

Apparently, a picky 5 year old has no problem dictating how the bribery cake should be decorated.

Apparently, my son loves cake more than dino nuggets and mac and cheese.

Big N settled on a tic-tact-toe cake very early on. On day one of his quest, he decided the cake should be chocolate and square. On day two, we were told it needed to have white frosting with green Os, red Xs and blue lines. By day there, he made it clear that there would be yellow squiggles, because we needed to use all the frosting colors. By day four, it was very apparent that Big N was motivated to have his cake as soon as possible.

He really gave every new food a try and would decide which parts he liked best. The part that excited us is he would actually finish some of his new foods. These are foods that before would result in a "yucky" with crossed arms and tightly sealed lips.

We found out that he loves anything with corn in it. He will tolerate Quesadillas, nibbling on one or two bites in the past. However, once we added frozen corn in with the cheese, Big N will eat an entire Quesadillas. He even asked for seconds.

He also loves bacon. This one was a well known fact and I may have exploited it. Big N has come to the conclusion that everything is better with bacon. His dad agrees. I came up with a soup involving all of Big Ns favorite foods and he ate two bowls. Big N would never try soups in the past. He even critiqued it and had suggestions.

As you can guess, Big N got his cake. It was a fun evening when we cooked the cake together. We pulled out the mixer and the cocoa powder and made the chocolate cake from scratch. The next night we frosted it with a butter cream frosting. Big N ate dinner without any complaints and we all enjoyed the cake after dinner.



I'm really proud of him for trying new foods. It appears that the cake-as-motivation worked well for him. The best part, even though I haven't promised to make him another cake, he still will take a bite of the new food and that is a 100% improvement from where he was a while ago.

In honor of Big N, a soup recipe using our leftovers was born. Enjoy!

Everything is better with bacon soup

1 1/2 cups cooked white rice
4 strips bacon
1/2 onion, finely diced
1 stalk celery, finely chopped (Big N would prefer that I omit this part)
1 large carrot, peeled and finely chopped
1 box (32 oz) chicken broth
1 can(10 ¾ oz) cream of chicken soup, undiluted
1/3-1/2 bag frozen french cut green beans
1/4 bag frozen corn
1 1/2 Tbspns garlic powder (or to taste)
2 teaspoons dried cumin (or to taste)
Salt & Pepper to taste

Fry the bacon in a large dutch oven. Set it aside to drain on paper towels.

Pour off most of the drippings. Saute the onion, celery and carrots in the remaining drippings.

Dice up cooked bacon.

Once the onions look clear, not brown, add cream of chicken soup, garlic powder and cumin.
Stir this for 1-2 minutes to heat up the soup.

Add chicken broth, mixing to incorporate into the condensed soup, about 1 minute.

Add rice, diced bacon, frozen beans and corn. Bring the soup to a boil. Add salt and pepper.

Lower heat and simmer for 30 minutes.

So Gross

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the imitation syrup no longer requires refrigeration? This grosses me out to no end! What have they added, what gives it a shelf life longer than most people will keep a bottle of syrup?

I spent 10-15 minutes reading labels at the store, trying to find one bottle of syrup that was brown sugar and water, the stuff we grew up on. But, instead, they all have long lists of ingredients I cannot pronounce. Can this stuff really be good for you?

It grosses me out enough that I started buying the real maple syrup for the kids. Big N and Little N are not very appreciative of the real stuff. They have no idea that their grandfather would hide his little bottle of real syrup in the back of the fridge so his kids wouldn't use it. Perhaps he knew we would appreciate it as much as Little N and Big N's expressions indicate it is not their favorite. They even like to tell me, it is not their favorite (exact words).

In my adult house, the fake stuff is hidden in the back of the fridge, by Pete, and he growls at me if I suggest that we stop buying the chemical stuff.

Apples from our tree

It is really cold at night now and we had not picked the apples from our tree. Big N helped Pete finish that today. The puppies even helped, but they have been stealing the low hanging apples for weeks now.



We were surprised with the amount of apples off of the little tree!

Big N was fascinated with the size variation among the apples. He found one that he could fit in his hand. The tiny apple made his day, he put it in his pocket and kept it warm when he was helping daddy pick apples. Big N was very concerned about the little apple. He went to great lengths to tell me his apple would need a lot of sunlight and fresh water so it could grow as big as the rest of the apples. We talked some about what it meant to pick the apples from the tree and he was sad for the apple.



Little N helped me make apple sauce with the apples that didn't look as pretty. She ate a few that I cut up and hit the button on the food processor once I had cooked down the apples.

Big N gave the apple sauce a try this evening. He gave two thumbs up on taste. The sauce has a really strong apple flavor compared to commercially made apple sauce.

I also had to make an apple pie.

I'm sure that is surprising to everyone who reads this blog.

Little N helped me roll out the crust.


It has been a great, apple filled day.

More apple sauce and perhaps another pie for the freezer tomorrow.

I only made one cupcake

I just had enough batter for one cupcake.



I think they were very happy with only having one cupcake.

Pickles!

I had the bright idea that I wanted to make pickles. It had a little to do with the big box of pickling cucumbers at the farmer's market last week next to the jalepeno peppers.

The recipe I decided on uses the following ingredients:

* Fresh cucumbers
* water
* pickling salt
* jalapeno peppers
* grape leaves (fresh)
* whole peppercorns
* whole garlic cloves (peeled)
* fresh dill sprigs
* white vinegar (5% distilled - commonly sold in stores)
* crushed red peppers

The first major issue was finding a canning pot. Buying one new was more of an investment than I wanted to make for a first pass, just in case I wanted nothing to do with this ever again. If I enjoy making pickles, I will find one for next year. Luckily, one of the mom's in the Ellensburg Mom's group had one that she was willing to part with for a weekend. Thanks, Jennifer!

The next blocking issue was finding grape leaves. After reading some sites, grape leaves are not absolutely necessary, but they do make the pickles crisp. Luckily for me, Dad is growing grapes and I asked him if I could have a handful. I'm a fan of crisp pickles, so this was a must try.

Finally, I needed to find some cucumbers. I bought just under 2 dozen from the farmer's market this Saturday. I also found some dill, but no peppers. On Friday, while weeding our garden, we had 8 great looking cucumbers that weren't too big. I decided to pickle those, as well. Pete found some peppers at a fruit stand in Thorp on Saturday since they were out at the market. I don't know what I used, but the owner said they were hot.

The pickling wasn't that hard. You prepare your cucumbers, stuff the sterilized jars and boil your brine. Then add the brine and put the jars into the canning pot. 15 minutes and take them out to cool. I ended up doing 2 batches and only 2 of the jars didn't seal. I also made some pickled dill green beans for Pete. This was a suggestion from Dina over the phone the other night. I am seriously missing the over the fence conversations.

The pickles look good! I'll open a jar in about a week and try some. My guess is the pickles will be hot. My fingers are still stinging from pushing some dill into one of the open jars after I had added the brine. The hot peppers had already made an impression on the cucumbers. I completely forgot to add the peppercorns, but I think they will still be hot.



The jar in the photo uses cucumbers from our garden. It is the prettiest jar in the batch. The pickling cucumbers really shrunk during the processing and seem to float to the top of the jars. The cucumbers from my garden were just mature, without a lot of seeds, but they were significantly larger than the pickling cucumbers.

Since this was an experiment, I made rounds, spears and whole pickles. I pricked the whole cucumbers with a fork to make sure they got some flavor into them.

PIzza Night!

The kids each made their own pizza this evening. We made dough earlier and then used a jarred pizza sauce. Both kids wanted peas, corn and apples on their pizzas with cheese. We had no complaints at dinner time, except when we tried to take a bite.