what is THAT? and why do I want it?

I saw the weirdest thing at the grocery store and just HAD to have it:

Yup, that’s right, it’s “Old Recipe” Red Velvet Milk.  Is this an autumnal tradition I have been missing out on lo these many years?

As you might guess, it tastes pretty much like liquid cake batter.  Not bad, and better yet when combined with Bailey’s and Kahlua.  It’s sort of a pretty shade of pink, too.  But I think one carton of the stuff is enough for me; when this one’s gone I’ll give the Mint Chocolate variety a whirl instead.

goblin grog and spider bites

I haven’t gotten über-excited about Halloween this year, aside from a little decorating.  I haven’t even got a costume, let alone any party plans.  But I am happy to say that I have whipped up a couple of yummy All Hallow’s Eve treats which I will not be sharing with any children under any circumstances.

First, some Goblin Grog (aka a slightly-adjusted-version-of-Emeril’s-Tin-Can-Margarita [And can I just say that, although I'll go ahead and link to it, I hate the Food Network website. It is so super slow with its darn pop-ups! Is it too much to hope that an FW exec will read this and take it to heart?])

I have to thank Target for its awesome 90% off after-holiday clearance sales, which allowed me to pick up orange rimming salt and cool little spiderweb wine glass coasters last year for like 10 cents each, without which I may never have been inspired to attempt homemade margs.

If you’re wondering why my grog is orange instead of green, that would mainly be because I didn’t have any triple sec and used orange juice instead.  Also, I made them once before with that little alcoholic addition and they were crazy strong, so it was all for the best for me to have a somewhat watered-down version.

Unfortunately, though the grog was quite popular with my girlfriends, I thought I should serve something a little tamer to the college kids who came to my house on Saturday night.  Andy and I had volunteered to participate in a “Host Home Dinner” for the Navigators’ Main Event conference held in Kansas City, and though I was nervous about hosting eight strangers in my tiny little house, I think it went pretty well.  They were all from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln and it was very cool for me to hear a bit about their lives.  I doubt that any of them would stumble across my blog, but if any happen to be reading this, I just want you to know it was a pleasure to have you all over!  Come back any time

Anyway, they only got to drink boring (though yummy) Newman’s Pink Lemonade, so I tried to make dessert a little more fun by channeling Bakerella and her spiders.  I baked up a chocolate cake, crumbled it, mixed in a can of frosting, rolled up some balls and let them chill overnight.  I had wanted to get some black pull-and-peel licorice but my tiny Hy-Vee just wouldn’t cooperate, per their norm.  But I did find some chocolate licorice, which seemed like  a better choice anyway, since I could just cut them up and then have all-brown chocolate spiders.  Well, these things always sound great in theory, but as it turned out, dipping the little suckers in chocolate and attaching Christmas sprinkles for eyes and fangs is rather time consuming.  And cutting licorice into thin little pieces and trying to get them to stick is very time consuming.  And when you have 40 goofy little balls to do, well, you get the picture…  I did finish dipping them all and attaching faces, but I gave up on the legs after the 4th spider or so.  Happily, my very polite company had no complaints and dug right into eating some legless spiders.

But when they headed out after dinner, I was determined to go back and bestow limbs upon the leftovers. And then after about 10 minutes my determination faltered and they got less leg-ified, and more stump-ified.  However, I am still very proud of my little herd of arachnids, including the good…

…the bad…

…and the ugly!

Here’s hoping your Halloween is happy! (And also alluringly alliterative.)

fun, fancy-free and frozen

Now that we are officially into the fall season, I thought I would recap one of the delights of my summer: popsicles!

Inspiration for my icy craze came from the ever-delightful Simple and Delicious magazine. I mean, just look at this cover:

Who could resist that???

Step 1 was obvious – I needed to go buy some popsicle molds. This was surprisingly difficult. My first trip to Wal-Mart was sorely disappointing. They had slushie makers and tons of “homemade” ice cream packets, but I only found two lone molds, neither of which were impressive. One was in the shape of Crayola crayons, and one was a bomb pop. I might have settled for either of those if they had been of decent size, but they seemed tiny. So I determined to try elsewhere. My local HyVee, again, had TONS of summer items…but not a single popsicle mold! I started getting a little angry. Was corporate America trying to sabotage my summer? I thought it through carefully and came up with one more store I was willing to try: Bed, Bath & Beyond. I mean, they have everything, right? Well, yes, actually, this time I was right! They had perfect little molds that just made my day, and for a very reasonable price. I believe they started out at about 4 bucks, though of course I used 20% off coupon. This gave me four traditional-looking pops of pretty good size. I thought the little straws for slurping up the melty leftovers was a pretty cute idea, although in reality it didn’t end up working so well. Andy was quick to complain when it dripped on his hand.

Step 2 – fill ‘em up! I started off pretty easy, by simply freezing some Minute Maid Cherry Limeade I already had in the fridge (and wasn’t too crazy about). Surprisingly, it tasted much yummier as a
‘sicle. I tried to jazz a couple up by adding in lime juice and chunks of lime. This backfired, as limes get real bitter real fast. If you want to try this at home, go ahead and add a bit of the juice, but stay away from the chunks.

I got slightly more creative with the second batch by attempting to create an orange julius pop. I took some regular oj and mixed in a couple tablespoons of powdered milk and a teaspoon or so of vanilla. These were decent but not terribly impressive – mostly they just tasted like orange juice. I haven’t tried it yet, but I think mixing some oj concentrate with slightly thawed vanilla ice cream might be a better option.

I also tried my hand at “breakfast pops” by mixing up a normal batch of smoothies (random combo of bananas, frozen berry mix, milk, oj, plain yogurt, and occasional ground oats or peanut butter). I thought these were pretty awesome, though there was always a fear of dripping all over myself as I was rushing to work, trying to eat one. Megan and Andy, my lovely taste-testers, thought they were ok, but both thought the addition of pb overwhelmed the other flavors. I just like to throw some in to make the smoothie a wee bit more substantial.

I had a big winner with my Vietnamese coffee pops! Cold-brewed coffee + sweetened condensed milk + freezer = heaven. I mixed a little cocoa powder into one for a mocha variation, which was, of course, scrumptious.

Eventually I made my way back to the source of my inspiration, and went to the store, long shopping list in hand, to hunt down the ingredients for some really fancy ‘sicles.

I ended up making the Blueberry Fizz Pops and the Cool Watermelon Pops. The watermelon ones were by far the most eye-pleasing of any of my creations.

However, they were a pain in the butt to make. For one thing, I couldn’t find watermelon cherry Kool-Aid mix (used watermelon-kiwi instead) or watermelon juice blend and didn’t bother buying limeade, for another, this recipe makes wwwwaaaayyyyy too many for a couple with no kids. I halved it and still ended up filling the freezer with dixie cups. Secondly, they took a little more time and effort than the other varieties. Thirdly, they didn’t taste that amazing, although of course I made so many substitutions that I can’t really claim to know what the original version would taste like.

The overall winner in terms of taste and ease were the blueberry fizz pops, by a landslide. They were scrumptious, although again I must admit to subbing fruit punch fizzies for grape ones (cuz that’s all my Hyvee had) and some plain yogurt for the banana (because I didn’t realize we had already eaten the last one until after the other ingredients were already in the blender).

So there you have it, a plethora of popsicles! Now I guess I’ll just have to cross my fingers in the hope for a little Indian summer to come my way so I can feel justified in making more!

light and flavorful summer salad‏

For many years I have had a subscription to Simple & Delicious magazine, and I have to say, although there have been a few flops, they have provided me with the impetus to create many, many quick and scrumptious meals. The following recipe for Fresh Tomato & Cucumber Salad is no different, although I have to say that making the dressing, while certainly not difficult or even particularly time-consuming, does require more ingredients than you might normally look for in a “simple” recipe.

Ingredients
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon minced fresh basil or 1 teaspoon dried basil
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon minced fresh mint or 1/4 teaspoon dried mint
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon coarsely ground pepper
4 plum tomatoes, seeded and chopped
2 medium cucumbers, chopped
1/2 cup Greek olives, sliced
2 cups torn mixed salad greens
3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
Directions
In a small bowl, whisk the first eight ingredients; set aside.
In a large bowl, combine the tomatoes, cucumbers and olives. Drizzle with half of the dressing; toss to coat. Arrange salad greens on a large serving plate; spoon tomato mixture over top. Sprinkle with cheese and pine nuts and drizzle with remaining dressing. Yield: 6 servings.

I am willing to admit to two mistakes made in the execution of this meal if it will help others to avoid doing the same:

1) I forgot I had bought fresh lemons, so I used the bottled juice instead, and man, was that dressing tart! Especially when combined with a bite of olive. It was still delicious, but next time I will definitely try to use fresh juice instead of the concentrated stuff, or at least water it down a little.

2) I bought fresh pine nuts (which, by the way, are crazy expensive) and attempted to toast them in the oven at 375⁰ for 10 minutes. That worked, but some ended up a little scorched, so next time I’ll try it at 350 or even 325. It’s not a whole lot of fun to throw food away when each tiny morsel feels like a big chunk out of your paycheck!

But, mistakes or not, I loved this salad and would definitely whip it up again in a heartbeat.

30 meals in 8 hours – or something along those lines

Back in August I attempted a nifty little project known as once-a-month cooking. It is quite an experience – and, frankly, quite a bit of work – so I don’t know if I can whole-heartedly recommend the full process, but it was definitely worth trying once, and I’ve had quite a bit of success doing it in small doses in the meantime.

The idea behind OAMC is pretty straightforward: make a plan for a significant number of meals to eat in the coming month, buy enough food to feed an army, then take one day out of your busy schedule and spend pretty much all of it cooking and freezing.  The beauty of this is that if you are, like me, way too tired/lazy to think of whipping up a home-cooked meal after you get home from work, essentially all you have to do on any given evening is yank something yummy out of the freezer and heat it up.  Way better than going out for fast food or eating yet another frozen pizza.

I relied almost exclusively on onceamonthmom.com (an absolutely excellent site) to guide me through this process. I used her menu for August, with some adjustments. I don’t like peppers or refried beans, so I took the recipes for Taco Rollups, Zesty Chicken Burritos and Italian Stuff Peppers out of the plan entirely. I also don’t like onions, so I just left them out, although I did go ahead and run with the onion soup mixes. I’m adventurous like that.

The two other major changes I made were to cut the amounts for everything in half, since I didn’t have a buddy to do this with the way the plan calls for, and I also opted not to cook it all in one day, because it just seemed overwhelming. I wasn’t sure I could manage it without have an anxiety attack or letting my house burn to the ground in a fit of rage.

The grocery shopping, though time-consuming, wasn’t too bad until I got to the meat section of the list. Buying 3 pounds of frozen salmon filets pained me. Five dollars per pound seems a little crazy for a product that is a looooong way from being fresh. But I hardly ever buy fish and I know it’s good for you, so I bit the bullet. The chicken breasts, ground beef, and beef roasts weren’t quite so outrageously priced, but it added up to buy them all en masse.  When all was said and done, my freezer was stuffed to the gills and whimpering.

It occurred to me that the disadvantage of doing most of the shopping in one fell swoop is that some items are more perishable than others and need to therefore get cooked fairly quickly. Thus, I dived in on Tuesday by whipping up a batch of Berry Baked French Toast. I chose to go ahead and bake it since I needed something for breakfast anyway and I couldn’t have fit it in the freezer even if I’d wanted to. It was easy and quite yummy, the only problem being that my bread was several days old already and pretty dang crunchy.

I finished all of the other recipes over the next few days.  Tuesday night I did all the prep for the French Dip sandwiches, so that the next morning all I had to do was grab the crockpot liner out of the fridge, pop it in the base, plug it in and turn it on. Have I mentioned how much I L-O-V-E crockpot cooking?

It seemed weird to cook several pounds of plain frozen chicken breasts in the crockpot, but it took a minumum of effort, tasted fine and we didn’t end up with salmonella.  Sounds like a thumbs-up to me!

Can I just say how brilliant I think those Homemade Pop Tarts are? It never would have crossed my mind how easy they are to do yourself, and with the ability to fill with anything your little heart desires, preservative-free… divine!

For two people, even a half menu which omits a few items was really way too much food for one month, but we did eventually eat all of it.  It’s hard to say if our poor freezer will ever fully recover from its mistreatment.

               

 Our favorites meals were:

Homemade Pop Tarts
Berry Baked French Toast
Ham & Potato Pockets
French Dip Sandwiches
Country Captain Slow Cooker Chicken
Island Chicken

So if you too have issues with getting a healthy, home-cooked dinner on the table after a long day, you should consider giving once-a-month-cooking a whirl!

If you want more awesome freezer-friendly recipes, you should also check out these books by (I think) the originators of OAMC: