Hello world!

It is with great joy and honor that I present to you my very first post on Sarah, Shelly and Brett's illustrious cooking blog. I enter this format with much trepidation, so please do not pulverize me in the comments section (or I'm afraid my ego will never let me come back). However, needless to say, I'm pleased to bring you a scrumptuous, little recipe for caramel corn!

To be totally honest, I'm kind of bummed this is my first post. I was hoping for something a little more culinarily challenging, but when you've procrastinated past the point of apologies, this is what you're reduced to. So, CARAMEL CORN it is!



Ingredients
12 cups of popped corn
1 cup of roasted pecans
1 cup of M&Ms (optional)
1 stick of unsalted butter
1 cup of packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup of light corn syrup
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 large brown paper grocery bag

I'd like to preface the instructions by stating you can use whatever kind of popcorn you'd like. Precooked popcorn, microwave popcorn, stovetop cooked popcorn. I personally cooked my corn on the stovetop in oil (cheapest!).

Instructions
1) Place popcorn and roasted nuts in brown paper grocery bag. Shake it up a little to combine (If you'd like, you can add pretzels too!)

2) Melt butter in microwave for approximately 1 minute. Add brown sugar, corn syrup, and salt and microwave for 2 minutes. Stir the mixture for about 30 seconds to a minute, and then placed back in the microwave for 2 more minutes. The mixture will bubble and boil. Do not be alarmed!

3) Add baking soda to sugar mixture. It was get foamy, but once it starts to do this... carefully pour it on top of the caramel corn. Fold over the paper bag and start to shake!

4) Throw it back in the microwave for another minute. Take it out and shake again. Then another minute in the microwave. Open the bag, add the M&Ms and shake for 30 seconds one last time!

Voila! Just spread it over a cookie sheet and let it get crunchy! You can break it up and start munching on it within 5 minutes.

Here's an idea: For an inexpensive Christmas gift, I put mine in Christmas-themed Chinese take-out boxes. Good for coworkers or neighbors!

Either way, this is such an easy snack to make... I hope that you enjoy!

Okay. . . maybe I'm the only one here, but I'm sort of wishing that I had some of the recipes from last weekend's party. . . so if you're reading this, you should post your party food recipe. In the meantime, here is the recipe for the dish that I brought. I'm too lazy to get up and retrieve the recipe for the Chocolate Pecan Pie, but if somebody wants it, let me know, and I'll go dig it out. I have to say that I did like this recipe, but it seemed like a lot of work for what it was. It's a shame frozen pie shells don't come in a mini size. . . Then again, maybe I should not attempt to do this sort of thing after working a late shift at the library.

Leek and Onion Tartlets

2 T. butter
1 onion, thinly sliced
1/2 tsp. dried thyme (I didn't have thyme, so I used Herbes de Provence)
1 pound leeks, thinly sliced
2 ounces Gruyère or Emmenthal cheese, grated (I live in Podunk, America, so I had to use Parmesan)
3 eggs
1 1/4 c. light cream
pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
salt and ground black pepper

For the pastry
1 1/3 c. all-purpose flour
6 T. cold butter
1 egg yolk
2-3 T. cold water
1/2 tsp. salt

1. To make the pastry, sift the flour into a bowl and add the butter. Using your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour until it resembles fine bread crumbs. Make a well in the center of the mixture.
2. Beat together the egg yolk, water and salt, pour into the well and combine the flour and liquid until it begins to stick together. Form into a ball. Wrap and chill for 30 minutes.
3. Butter six 4- inch tartlet pans. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough until 1/8 inch thick (which I found to be an IMPOSSIBLE task), then using a 5 inch cutter, cut as many rounds as possible. Gently ease the rounds into the pans, pressing the pastry firmly into the bottom and sides. Re-roll the trimmings and line the remaining pans. Prick teh bottoms all over and chil in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
4. Preheat the oven to 375. Line the pastry crusts with foil and fill with baking beans. Place on a baking sheet and bake for 6-8 minutes, until golden at the edges. Remove the foil and beans and bake for another 2 minutes, until the bottoms appear dry. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Reduce the oven temp to 350.
5. In a large frying pan, melt the butter over medium heat, then add the onion and thyme and cook for 3-5 minutes, until the onion is just softened, stirring frequently. Add the thinly sliced leeks and cook for 10-12 minutes, until they are soft and tender, stirring occasionally. Divide the leek mixture among the pastry crusts and sprinkle each with cheese, dividing it evenly.
6. In a medium bowl, beat the eggs, cream, nutmeg and salt and pepper. Place the pastry crusts on a baking sheet and pour in th egg mixture. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until set and golden. Transfer the tartlets to a wire rack to cool.

If I've never mentioned it, the best recipes are never my own. Again, this one comes from my Mom-mom. It's one that she's cooked for years, and, for some reason, she thinks that Jared's the only one who likes them. . . So, she makes extra for him (spoiled brat) but not for the rest of us. So, this year, I decided to make a batch for myself. I'm sure that I'll bring most of them to the Cookie Swap at the library. It's going to be next Saturday at 10:30 if you want something to do that morning. We're also making beeswax candles. Just bring some cookies, your recipe, and a sense of fun! Anyhow, when we were eating Thanksgiving dinner, I asked Mom-mom for this recipe. She mailed it to me this week, and I noticed (I guess because it was on her ice cream recipe too) that she always writes "Good Luck" on the bottom of her recipes. I wonder if she thinks that the recipes are that hard - or that I'm that awful of a cook. Anyhow, these are awesome and are well worth the work. This does make a pretty big batch, so if you're eating them yourself, you may want to half it.

Oh, dearest readers!

When Sarah came to visit this past weekend, we were talking about food (of course), and it came up that we had both made quiche last week. I wonder if the beginning of Autumn triggers some subversive quiche cravings in the modern mind. Regardless, I promised to post something about the wonderful conjoining of pie crust, egg and cheese. A week later, after a diagnosis of possible mono, I'm finally getting around to it. Because it's so tedious to sit down and write about eggs, right?

So, my quiche story is quite recent. It was never something that I had growing up. It's funny to discover these foods and wonder how on earth you've missed them for so long. . . . especially something like this. It seems like quiche (well some of them) would have been perfect on fridays during Lent. Goodness knows that I wouldn't have complained if we ditched the tuna salad sandwiches from time to time. Alas, it took going away to college for me to discover this, apparently German, culinary delight which has been popular in America since the 1950s (aka long before I was around). http://www.foodreference.com/html/artquiche.html

I can't say that I remember the first time that I ate quiche, but I do have fond memories of the first time that I cooked quiche. One of the grocery stores in town decided to stock feta - which doesn't seem like a bad idea at all. However, the population of Natchitoches, Louisiana, apparently didn't feel a need for feta at the grocer's. . . which left them in a real pickle. To clear the shelves, God bless them, they marked down all of the feta to 50 cents a package. Being an impoverished college student, I decided to purchase an unseemly amount of cheese. The lid of the feta container included a recipe for quiche - which seemed too easy to be true. Now, I had a ton of feta, a recipe for quiche, and eggs are super cheap. . . so we hauled out Crissy's copy of Where's Mom Now that I Need Her? http://www.amazon.com/Wheres-Mom-Now-That-Need/dp/0961539011/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253802089&sr=8-1 (a book that every graduating senior should get as a gift) and found an even easier recipe and got to cooking. The feta stayed that cheap for months, and we ate an excessive amount of quiche that semester.

I'm not going to tell you that I don't like quiche with all kinds of fun meat and veggies in it. I was even looking at a recipe recently for a Spanish version of some sort with potatoes and will probably try it soon. However, when I think of quiche, I think of this very simple method of combining those few main ingredients which create cheesey, eggy perfection. I never use a recipe anymore, so this recipe is going to sound like one of those annoying recipes that you get from old people who have been cooking their whole lives and are just guessing at measurements. Fortunately, eggs are cheap, so if you screw this up (and how could you really?) just pawn it off on some unsuspecting and hungry person and start another, tweaking things to your taste.

Quiche
1 frozen pie crust (I prefer the deep dish crusts)
6-8 eggs
1 pkg. feta cheese
1/2 c. cream (or whole milk)
salt and pepper to taste

Simple as pie. . . preheat the oven to 350. Scramble the eggs in a large mixing bowl. Add the cream, salt and pepper. Sprinkle the cheese on the bottom of the pie crust. Pour the egg mixture on top, and bake until done. I think that this usually takes 30-45 minutes in the oven, but you'll really just need to keep an eye on it. The top will start to turn a light golden. That's when you'll want to take it out. And voila!

About a year ago, I moved into a very cute apartment in a very cute part of town. I live on the second floor of a small apartment building (12 units in all) set around a pretty courtyard with a garden. My landlord tends to the garden in the courtyard and it's filled with beautiful flowers and plants, many of which I've never seen before. I guess all that flora got to me and for the first time in my life I decided to start my own little garden this past spring.

In the two weeks since my last blog, I've been a busy little baker bee as I continue testing out cupcake recipes to be used at my friend's wedding. Not only did I try out a second recipe for the lemon cupcakes, but I also managed to create some very ugly swamp cupcakes, and I made some beautiful Devil's food cupcakes with blue cream cheese icing. My coworkers have been very grateful and eager guinea pigs, but I do feel the tiniest bit of guilt about edging them towards diabetic shock on a weekly basis. Oh, well.

So, I'm going to cheat and not include a recipe here at all. If you're so inclined to cook this mystery dish, you can haul out your copy (or check one out at your local public library where there are tons of librarians just WAITING to help you) of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume One. . . then turn to page 407. There, on that very page, you will find. . . are you ready for this? Foie de veau a la moutarde. . . aka Liver with Mustard, Herbs and Bread Crumbs.

I have to confess, I've owned my copy of Julia's cookbook (and Louisette and Simone) for over a year and haven't cooked any of the recipes. I had decided when I first acquired the book (through nefarious means) that I needed to eat better - like a FRENCH person. I was going to live off of recipes from the book. And then I actually started to look at the recipes and quickly changed my mind. I think that's why I was so fascinated when I began to read Julie and Julia. Julie had made the same decision and followed through with it. In a way I envy her, and in a way I'm glad that she did it, so I know in advance that I'm better off cooking a Julia Child recipe once every two years or so.

When I was reading Julie and Julia, there were a couple of recipes that she mentioned that really caught my attention and stood out to me. I'm sure that this is a fairly common experience. . . Miss Powell is an entertaining storyteller after all. So, this recipe was one of those that really caught my attention. . . and since there are no lobsters writhing around in tanks in Donaldsonville. . .

Okay, I'm going to be honest here. My dad fries beef liver about once a year. My mom always refuses to be in the house when this happens and rarely eats it herself, always in a gravy, never fried. I've never been able to handle liver or do the cooking myself because the texture of it raw really freaks me out. However, I would always eat a piece when dad fried it up (although I won't go near it in a gravy). Since I've been out of my parents house for a little over ten years, and fried liver isn't always that easy to find in restaurants. . . . okay, there's no real justification for craving liver. However, that IS the one recipe that I really wanted to try. I don't know how many people that I've told that I was cooking a Julia Child liver recipe tonight. I've sent Sarah at least six e-mails trying to convince her to come and visit me in my lonely apartment and to experience this with me. . . Alex has even run away across the entire state. . . I can't imagine why, but no one wanted to be here. . . which leads me to my question. . . what did Julie and what's his name do with all of their leftovers? Imagine this. . . she was cooking every day. Most of these recipes serve 6-8 people. . . and sure your friends come over. . . when you're cooking lobster. . . but what do you do with all of the leftover liver?

That is for me to know, and you to find out. . . ha ha ha ha ha. . .

(Actually, it came out quite tasty, if you were wondering.)

On July 27th, my grandfather, "Pop-pop", called to let us know that my grandmother, Shirley 'Bebe' Hutt had passed away. Bebe is the pepper to Pop-pop's salt, and I don't think any of us were quite ready for her to go. I won't dwell on the details of her death or my family's grief. Instead, I'd like to use this space to reminisce about the food that I ate at my grandparents' homes in New York and New Jersey.

When it comes down to it, you can group recipes into a very few amount of categories. There are the recipes that you keep telling yourself that you're going to try. There are recipes that you look at and think that you would never take the time to make or would never want to eat. There are the recipes that you've tried once or twice and remember fondly. . . and there are the recipes that you absolutely can not live without. This is one of those recipes that I absolutely can not live without. . . not because it blew my mind the first time that I made it. . . just because it's good. It's real food, the kind of food that my mom would have made when I was growing up - if she had cooked more, and if my dad would have been willing to eat stew.

The recipe actually comes from a cookbook that my elementary school compiled when I was in third grade, courtesy of Mrs. Norma Nix. (Her son was a year above me and a real jerk - which did not keep Maria from having a huge crush on him in high school.) I never got around to making it, though, until a few years ago. . . when I was going through this phase of romanticising life on the prairie and wishing that I had been a pioneer. . . spending long days outside and evenings in a flannel nightgown by the fire. . . with a garden out back, a cold cellar, and thirteen children running around barefoot and dirty with the puppy dogs in the back yard.

Chuck Wagon Stew
1 tsp. sugar
1/4 c. flour
2 lb. cubed beef
2 Tbsp. shortening
2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 tsp. chili powder
1 bay leaf
2 tomatoes, peeled and quartered
1 (10.5 oz.) can beef broth
6 small potatoes
6 small carrots
6 small onions
3 or 4 stalks celery (I never use this because celery is gross)
1 c. frozen peas (And I have never once remembered to buy peas, so this always gets omitted too)

Combine sugar and flour. Coat beef and brown in shortening. Add seasonings, tomatoes, and broth to meat. Cover and simmer 1 to 1 1/2 hours or until tender. Stir in vegetables, omitting the peas. Cover and cook about 30 minutes. Add peas. Cover and cook about 15 minutes.

Aside from the time that it takes to cook, this is a really EASY recipe - translation, you don't have to chop the veggies which equals awesome in my book. Ha. I'm such a lazy cook.

Any good food blog should begin with a favorite recipe from your grandmother!



Of course, this wasn't my original intention. Originally, I was going to go on about the time that Sarah and I made pain au chocolat and filled up an entire 1000+ square foot apartment with smoke just because we used the wrong pan.



*Here's a helpful hint. . . be sure to use the right dish for the job. It could make the difference between a happy chocolate filled evening and a smokey chocolate filled evening.*



But, since I couldn't find that recipe in my trusty recipe box (Believe me, you don't want to see what the inside of this looks like.), I decided that I should ramble a bit about my grandma. That's really where the love of food begins, if you think about it. . . or at least where it began for me. I have so many fond memories of sitting around her house in the morning drinking coffee milk and eating Little Debbie snacks for breakfast - both treats that had no place in my mom and dad's house. As an adult, I've spent a good deal of time in antique shops and thrift stores rejoicing when I find a recipe box just like my mom-mom's. . . or that goofy Corning Ware with blue flowers because that's what she has stacked in her cabinets. I'm not even going to go into how expensive those stinking melamine Texas Ware mixing bowls are. It's funny because no matter how many retro pieces of kitchenware I buy, my food never does come out tasting like hers. That being said, as I was going through the recipe box looking for that pain au chocolat recipe, I came across my mom-mom's Pineapple Cake Filling recipe. It's a shame that no one bothers to make good cakes anymore. This has always been one of my favorites and is apparently something that's fairly universal among the older crowd. One of my good friends at the library, Mary, went on and on about how good her Pineapple Cake Filling recipe was one day, and I started to laugh when she was telling me the recipe. It's this exact one that my grandma makes. That being said, if your grandparents are still around, you probably have this one tucked in your recipe box too. . . but, for those of you that have lost the recipe or were never fortunate enough to have it. . . you're in luck. I'm going to copy mom-mom's recipe card word for word, so you don't miss anything!



This is for a 3 layer cake & top. I don't use icing.

Pineapple Cake Filling



1 large can crushed pineapple

1 cup sugar

1/2 stick butter

1 1/2 tbl. cornstarch, disolved in 1/4 cup water, cook until mixture starts to boil & thicken. Cool before using. If you have too much, you just eat the rest. It's good.



She also included the recipe for Coconut Filling even though she knows that I hate coconut. Nice, yeah? So, you get an extra recipe just because. . .



Coconut Filling for 1 Cake



3/4 cup sugar

1 tbl. corn starch . level spoon

1 cup can milk

1 egg yoke cook until thicken add 1 teaspoon flavor & coconut. I don't measure the coconut. Add what you like.



And that's that. To be fair, my grandma's not really a poor speller. . . Did I mention that she was cajun and that French is her first language? And she's pretty old and senile. . . ha ha ha. . . but I love her.