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!

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.

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.

This past Independence day, I celebrated my freedom by eating hot dogs and various grilled meats with my compatriots. Amongst the smorgasbord of meat, there was a dessert or two and I may have had one or two helpings of each. In particular, I was impressed with my pal Rebecca's holiday themed trifle (see picture above). The recipe for her delicious and adorable trifle is below, but, first, let's do a little Internet research (aka 'Googling') and figure out what the heck a trifle is.