Jalepeno jelly

I've written before about how impossible it is to buy gifts for my stepmom; my dad is equally difficult. This year, he made a special request; although he doesn't like spicy foods, he apparently fell in love with jalepeno jelly at a party some years ago and he asked if I would try making some.

I immediately got to work. I didn't have any pectin, so I searched for recipes that didn't require it. I found this one from Simply Recipes. Unfortunately, I only had about a pound and a half of apples (and they weren't green), but I did have the optional cranberries; I hoped that they would compensate for the missing apples. I reduced the water by a cup (again because of the missing apples; I didn't want it to be watery). I used a red pepper (because it was all I had), but otherwise :) followed the recipe exactly.

I strained the mash through a fine mesh strainer and got exactly four cups of juice. Then I added the sugar and cooked it down. I didn't want to drag down all of my big canning gear, so I used a smallish saucepan to process the two short jars for my dad. The two taller jars were refrigerated and brought to hubby's and my work parties, along with crackers and cream cheese. I'm not into that sort of thing, but the jelly seemed to be a hit.

My dad sent me this picture on the day after Christmas, so apparently the present fit the bill:


In my search, I also found this recipe for hot pepper jelly; unlike my dad, hubby loves super hot, spicy foods, so I bookmarked it to try next time for him.

Christmas eats

Christmas eve dinner

Bread bowls, using Peter Reinhart's hoagie recipe from ABED (best bread bowls ever!) with creamy chicken-wild rice soup

Fresh fruit, green salad, and homemade personalized Christmas ornaments for name plates :)

Christmas morning

BBA cinnamon rolls and a sausage-cheese-egg bake

(based off of this one, halved and baked in an 8x8 casserole dish)

Christmas snack

Hot cocoa (made from this mix) with marshmallows and almond tea bread (made by my dad)

Christmas dinner

Ham from the co-op (made from this CI recipe), au gratin potatoes (made with gold potatoes and half cheddar, half gruyere), broccoli slaw, honey wheat dinner rolls, homemade applesauce, sugared cranberries, and pumpkin custard made by the kiddos for dessert (pumpkin pie without the crust, baked in ramekins)

Hope those who celebrate it had a very Merry Christmas...and Happy New Year to everyone!

Unprocessed with kids: Make-your-own ambrosia

The little guy's class has been having a visitor from our local co-op every couple of weeks. The guest teacher talks to the kids about real foods and healthy choices; she shares a recipe, and the kids get to make and eat a snack made with whole foods. I absolutely love that our messages about food are being re-affirmed in school.

Today, the little guy bounced out of school, gripping this paper in his fingers. He could not wait to tell me: they made ambrosia!

The guest teacher's topic today was long energy sweets and short energy sweets...foods that make you feel good for only a few minutes and foods that give you energy for the day. He compared the short energy sweets to our red foods. :) And then they made ambrosia. He read the recipe to me, and I assured him that we had all of the ingredients in our house. He explained that the pictures at the top were long energy treats: a pear, an apple, a banana, and a pea.

When we came home, the kids immediately washed their hands and got out their kitchen stools. We talked about the fact that we were low on plain yogurt (Mommy uses it in her oatmeal each morning), so we were going to "break the recipe into three," as the little guy put it.

Both kids put 1/2 cup plain yogurt into their bowls. We had a little incident when the little girl tried to add her "dashes" of cinnamon...the cinnamon dashed fairly explosively and I had to scrape a bunch of it out of her bowl. Then they both added a teaspoon of honey and a teaspoon of maple syrup. ("The grown-up has to pour it into the spoon because it's so sticky.")

The kids brought their snack to the table, stirred vigorously, and gobbled up the entire bowlful. This is especially exciting because, along with cereal, flavored yogurts are a favorite that I have found impossible to get out of our house. I was shocked when I first read that flavored yogurts are one of the biggest unprocessed offenders, with lots of added sugar and ingredients that I certainly wouldn't have in my kitchen. I've tried adding homemade fruit jams, vanilla, and honey to plain yogurt, but to no success. Apparently when they make it themselves, it's somehow different...they loved it!

100% whole wheat lunches!

On Monday, I begin making four school lunches each morning because somehow (don't ask me how), my little one heads off to kindergarten this week.

I think the biggest change is going to be preparation... I can occasionally fly by the seat of my pants when making lunch for hubby and myself... And I was able to punt with the little guy's lunch a couple of times last year. But she doesn't eat the pre-prepared organic snacks (jammy sammies, smoothie pouches, applesauce pouches) that I used as emergency back-ups for him. And they prefer such different foods. And then I have to take into account time: I need to put in easy-to-eat foods that they can get through in their super short lunch period. And the little guy is much hungrier these days.

Anyway, I need to prepare. Today, I spent four hours of the afternoon making some 100% whole wheat lunch box goodies: Hamelman's toast bread, KAF's whole wheat blueberry muffins (for him), KAF's whole wheat chocolate chip muffins (for her, made with a little less sugar and less than half of the called-for chocolate chips), and KAF's whole wheat chocolate chip cookies (for all of us, made with half the called-for chips, in tablespoon sized for this weekend and teaspoon sized for lunches).

I've started making a lunch schedule, too, which hangs next to our weekly dinner plan. Wish me luck!

The biggest unprocessed challenge: Snack time!

We knew going in to this month of unprocessed eating that snacks would be the hardest part. We are accustomed to having snacks when we get home from school, after the kids go to bed, all day long on the weekends. :) But all of these snack foods: crackers, pretzels, chips, nachos, candy are now forbidden. The only one of our usual snacks that we could still have is nuts - almonds, pistachios - and dried fruits.

Because of this, hubby and I have both been snacking a lot less, which I know is good for us. But still, there are those afternoons when lunch was too small or too long ago, or it's just been one of those days, and you need a little something.

I have experimented with several different crackers:
Wheat thins - they were okay, better with cheese. We ate them all, but I wouldn't make the recipe again.

Then I tried homemade ritz crackers. Hubby thought the flavor was spot on; I thought they were okay. After a night in a covered container, they were really soft, which I didn't like. Again, we finished them, but I wouldn't make them again.

Finally, today, I had homemade cracker success. I made whole wheat calzones last night using one of KAF's whole wheat pizza dough recipes. The calzones were delicious: leftover spinach-homemade ricotta mixture from the cannelloni, plus organic chicken sausage sauteed with onion and sweet peppers, and fresh mozzarella.

I made 9 or 10 calzones, but still had a little pizza dough left. So following this KAF recipe for pizza crackers, I rolled the leftover pizza dough really thin and let it rest while I preheated the oven. While that was happening, I heated up some olive oil with garlic and salt and pepper (since I was already making garlic bread for tonight's dinner). I brushed the garlic olive oil on the pizza crust and baked the crackers for 12 minutes. Unfortunately, that was too long, and most of the sheet got too dark. However, the pieces that didn't burn were absolutely delicious. I will definitely make these again!

I also tried this recipe for buttermilk-whole wheat crackers (can you tell that I've been in a cracker mood?). I did vary the ingredients a bit, based on what I had on hand: 250 g white whole wheat flour, 70 g ground golden flax seed, 1 tbsp sugar, 3/4 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp kosher salt, 5 tbsp EVOO, 3/4 c buttermilk. I followed the same process as in the recipe, but again I brushed the crackers with the garlic olive oil and then sprinkled sesame seeds over the top.

The other winning after-school snack is popcorn - either regular, with butter and garlic salt, or this recipe for kettle corn. The recipe is absolutely delicious and really quite easy, although it does contain some regular granulated sugar; I'm curious to try one of the honey or maple syrup-sweetened popcorn recipes that's floating around out there.

The kids, unfortunately, don't really like to snack on dried fruits or nuts much. The little guy's favorite food is a giant sugar-laden blueberry muffin from the grocery store. A while before we went on this challenge, I banned those muffins, and we've gone back to mommy-made muffins. His favorite when he was a toddler were muffins based off of this garden harvest cake from Cooking Light. I use all white whole wheat flour, reduce the sugar by a bit, and eliminate the nuts (he hates them); I bake them in a muffin tin for 24 minutes. He loves these muffins: for breakfast, for lunch, for snack.

I also made mini-whole wheat banana mini-chocolate chip muffins for a breakfast snack this past weekend; they were a huge hit. I used my favorite banana bread recipe, subbing in all white whole wheat flour, reducing the sugar, eliminating the bourbon and the nuts, and adding a few mini-chocolate chips.

We also tried these healthy cookies, disbelieving that a cookie with no sweetener and no flour could really be good. With the exception of grinding up the almonds, the kids did it all. The cookies were...okay. We ended up eating them all, but no one could eat more than one in a sitting. We won't make the recipe again, but it was fun.

Lastly, we bought these smoothie pops and are experimenting with them. Our first try was vanilla yogurt plus a little orange juice concentrate: a big success!

Unprocessed: Week one reflections

We made it through week one! Here are some reflections, challenges and positives:

Challenges:

• Illness: A stomach virus hit our house last Monday (the second day of our unprocessed challenge)...of course that throws a wrench in everything. Meal plans had to get adjusted, the little guy wasn't eating anything, everyone was exhausted. But we still stuck to it, rearranging our meal plan, but not falling back on any processed foods.
• Snacks: This was an expected challenge: lunches for school when we ran out of leftovers, lunches for the weekends, after-school snacks, dinners when I had parent-teacher conferences late at school. I've come to rely on egg salad on homemade bread with fruit and veggies. The hubby's lunch on Friday was pretty scant: homemade wheat thins with cheese and fruit. We've been doing well with skipping our after school snacks, and when we were desperate, I've made kettle corn. We definitely need to continue to work on this area.
• Related to my egg salad sandwiches...I used my homemade mayo, but wasn't a huge fan, so by the end of the week, I did use a tiny bit of store-bought mayo and mustard. I need to try another mayo recipe this week.
• Canned foods: Wow, I really had not realized all of the crap they put into canned foods. I think of our meals as healthy when they use canned beans. Checking out the can this weekend, I saw corn syrup (why?!), salt, chemical preservatives, and other stuff. Ew. Luckily, my canned tomatoes, while including salt, don't include anything else except tomatoes.
• Weekend events: We had some fun activities planned for this weekend, and weren't sure how we'd handle the whole unprocessed thing. On Friday night, the little guy's school hosted a family pizza/popcorn/movie night in the gym. We weren't sure what to do about dinner. In the end, the hubby decided to "cheat," and he and the kids ate the pizza; I brought some plain yogurt, fruit, and homemade granola. Worked pretty well. On Saturday, we went to a pow wow. We all ate a little lunch before we left so we wouldn't be starving when we got there. But we couldn't pass up the fry bread food truck, so hubby and I hoped/pretended that the fry bread was made with all unprocessed ingredients. ;-)
• Snow! We timed this challenge with the spring so we would have more energy and also could rely on grilling. Instead, winter came back with a vengeance. So much for our meal plans of grilling chicken (Wednesday) and chef salad (Tuesday). These were replaced by pancakes and a spaghetti freezer meal. This upcoming week, too, is going to be too cold and snowy for grilling or spring-time food.

Happy news:

• In many ways, this hasn't been nearly as challenging as I feared. I've realized that our dinners were already pretty unprocessed, so there haven't been that many adjustments. In our soup dinner, the only thing I had to make that I haven't always made was the noodles; in our spaghetti meal, it was the noodles and the salad dressing. But I'm in the habit of making so many other things from scratch, so it wasn't that bad.
• I am so glad that I keep back-ups and make extras for the freezer. Some things have really caught me off-guard: on Sunday, I was making chili. I had already purchased dried beans to replace the canned, but had completely forgotten that the recipe calls for two cups of chicken broth. I always use the jarred stuff. Luckily I had a baggie with two cups of stock in the freezer!
• I have been so impressed by my hubby's commitment. This has been my project from the beginning: my idea, my planning, my organization. But on Monday morning when the little guy was sick, and I was staying home, and no one was really up for making a meal, my hubby could have easily decided to cheat and grab a bowl of processed cereal; instead, I looked up, and there he was, pulling out the frying pan and making some scrambled eggs for himself.
• So far, I've had two Sundays of being at home, which I think is completely necessary to working full-time and being successful at this challenge. Yesterday, after grocery shopping, I made a huge batch of noodles and whole wheat rolls for the week, in addition to our chili dinner and a birthday cake for my friend. I was in the kitchen for most of the day. Not sure I could do this otherwise.
• My first several experiences making homemade pasta were not good, and I kind of regretted asking the hubby to buy me a pasta maker for Christmas several years ago; it felt like a waste of money. But happily, I have found a great egg noodle recipe, easily adapted to whole wheat flour, and it only took me 50 minutes to roll out, cut, and freeze a pound and a half of pasta for the week (not including the 5 minutes to mix up the dough and the 30 minute rest time).
• Giving up candy has not been nearly as traumatic as I expected. I actually started a week early, so I wouldn't be trying to keep the family on track while battling my own food demon. But I haven't really had any cravings.
• My hubby seems to have had an easy transition to giving up pop, too; he's been having a cup of coffee during his normal afternoon pop time, and he hasn't complained at all or been crabby.
• I was worried about losing desserts because we're accustomed to having it almost every night, but we've just kind of naturally drifted out of the habit.
• I'm glad that we're having conversations about food as a family: where food comes from, what companies do to it, what's healthy for our bodies, why companies use things that aren't good for us to make food taste "better." More about the kids in tomorrow's post.
• Finally, I have found a lot of resources to give me ideas about adapting recipes and making things from scratch. In addition to Eating Rules, I have found 100 days of real food, and I've also found that just searching for a recipe plus "unprocessed October" gives me a lot of links to other people who have tried to do this same thing.

Well, there you have it: far more happy things than challenges. In general, week one went really well, and hubby and I are already talking about which changes we want to make permanent....On to week two!

Day one and plans for the week

Phew, day one of going unprocessed draws to a close.

This morning, as I contemplated getting out of bed, I thought about the meals we had planned for the day when suddenly I realized that our normal Sunday morning breakfast contained one of those secret processed foods! Eeek! We usually have steel cut oatmeal on the weekends, made with milk and water, combined with raisins and apples cooked with brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter. Milk...seemingly innocuous, is (when you think about it) actually quite processed between it's raw stage and what we buy at the grocery store. I came downstairs and told my hubby what I'd realized. He looked at me with one eyebrow arched and said, "Abby, that is not why we're doing this. Maybe we should say 'minimally processed.' We are not eliminating milk from our oatmeal; we're eliminating chemicals and other bad stuff from our lives." Oh, yeah, that's right.

So for breakfast, we had our normal steel cut oatmeal. I even left the brown sugar coated apples (at hubby's request), although I will continue to use maple syrup when I'm just making oatmeal for me.

For lunch, I had leftovers from last night's tater tot hot dish - the unprocessed part, covered with mashed potatoes instead of tater tots. It was delicious.

Then I got busy in the kitchen. This unprocessed thing takes a lot of planning and a lot of time. :) I started by making these wheat thins from KAF, as written up on Smitten Kitchen. Hubby and I are both concerned about having some unprocessed snacks in the house, so that we don't cave in to a craving in a weak moment. They were relatively easy to throw together, using my food processor to mix everything together and my pasta roller to roll out the dough. As Deb suggested, I made a double batch. And they were...okay. I'm hoping that they're better tomorrow, and I'm positive that they'd be better with cheese than just plain. I bookmarked this list from the Kitchn of other homemade crackers to try.

For snacks, I had part of a banana and some almonds. Hubby had leftover garlic bread with eggs.

For dinner, we had chicken noodle soup with fresh pasta, with grilled cheese sandwiches. This is where the mega-planning comes in.

I made this oatmeal wheat bread from KAF, subbing in white whole wheat flour for most of the all-purpose, and multiplying all of the ingredients by 150% to fit in my large pullman pan. This bread is mostly whole grain (oats and whole wheat flour) and uses honey instead of sugar, and it was completely delicious. We used a little less than half of the loaf for our grilled cheese sandwiches tonight. I'll use some for the little guy's lunches this week. The rest of the loaf will be used for eggs-in-a-nest on Thursday for hubby and the kids when I'm at parent-teacher conferences.

I made a large batch of chicken stock (recipe tomorrow), with three pounds of chicken. I used 8 cups of the stock for tonight's soup, and froze the other 5 cups. I used half of the chicken for tonight's soup, and saved the other half ~ part for tomorrow night's fried rice, and part for Wednesday night's chef salad.

I made 4 eggs worth of fresh pasta, subbing in white whole wheat flour for most of the all-purpose. I used 6 ounces in tonight's soup, and froze two other batches of 6 ounces for future batches of soup.

It was a busy day, but makes me feel better about the week ahead. It also makes me feel like I can make it through this month, as long as I have a full day in the kitchen each weekend. :)

Pizza rolls

I've talked before about hubby's love of frozen processed foods. One of his favorite things to do is to walk through the frozen food aisle in the grocery store and drool over the frozen foods...in the hopes that I'll say, "Oh, I can make those!" It worked for taquitos. :)

On Super Bowl Sunday, hubby really wanted pizza rolls, so I decided to try them.
There weren't as many recipes as I thought there'd be, and most of them just used regular pizza dough and seemed like mini calzones, or used wonton wrappers which didn't seem like the right consistency. But then I found this article, which described the process of perfecting the pizza roll.

I made the dough as described, using my pasta roller to get the dough nice and thin. For the filling, I used our normal homemade pizza sauce, mixed with pepperoni and mozzarella cheese. I plopped a bit of filling every couple inches on the pieces of dough, used a pizza cutter to separate them, and then pinched them together.

We tried them both ways, fried in oil and baked in the oven. Do I even need to say which tasted better?

I'm not a big fan of fried foods, but even I couldn't stop eating these. These took forever and were kind of a pain to make, especially for how few the recipe made. But they were delicious, and I know hubby would be thrilled if I ever made them again!

Showers of food

Photo credit: Asha Thao

One of my good friends from work is having a baby. At my old school, this meant all of the ladies in the school got together in the school library for a little informal baby shower. But apparently high schools are too big for that kind of thing, so showers are done by department...which kind of left me in charge. This is not a good thing, as showers are not my forté. I have been lucky enough to avoid having to host a shower up until this point; my strategy is usually to delay volunteering until someone else offers. :) I barely tolerated my own showers. I am not good at the formal thing, nor the cutsie thing, nor the everything-matching thing. I don't enjoy the games or the piles of presents. I don't think of the little details, like having everyone write out a little piece of advice for the mom-to-be.

Luckily another friend in the department offered to co-host, and she is an excellent party hostess. She has a beautiful house, complete with matching serving dishes, :) and is really good at all of those things I mentioned above. But she doesn't like to bake. She took care of the cutsie, I handled the food...it was a match made in heaven. :)

Yesterday afternoon, twenty past and present teachers gathered to gossip, eat, tell baby stories, and wish our friend well.

Photo credit: Asha Thao

The mom-to-be requested chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. I tried Dorie's cocoa and buttermilk birthday cake with a chocolate ganache frosting from the best chocolate cake ever. The cake didn't seem quite done at the suggested time, but I should've pulled it out of the oven anyway; it was a little overdone, dry and crumbly. The one thing on my list that I didn't have time for was a Swiss meringue buttercream to decorate. Oh well, the flavor was still good and the cake was a hit...practicing my decorating skills will have to wait.

I also made lemon bars from my America's Test Kitchen Family cookbook and NM's truffle brownies. The lemon bars were extremely lemony (6 lemons' worth of zest and juice), and they were quite tasty. I was disappointed with their stamina, though: they didn't hold up well to being transported and moved around. NM's brownies were amazing, as always.

One of my favorite new recipes that I tried were these soft frosted sugar cookies from Tracey's site that I have been drooling over for months. They were even better than the ones from the store, which are a guilty pleasure of mine. And they were so cute!

My other favorite new recipe is these turkey and spinach rolls, which have been on my to-try list ever since Andrea posted them nearly two years ago. I can't believe I waited so long to try them. They were so easy, and soooo delicious. And such a good base for so many other cute sandwich creations. I used the soft dough from ABED that I always use for buns, with half white whole wheat flour. I rolled it out into a giant rectangle as though I were making cinnamon buns, and then spread it with Boursin cheese, spinach leaves, and a couple different kinds of turkey. Then I rolled them up and sliced them, cinnamon bun style, put them on a baking sheet covered with parchment and stuck them in the fridge overnight. The day of the party, I just had to take them out and let them come to room temperature and then bake them for 25 minutes. Everyone who tried them loved them, and people commented on how much easier they were to eat than other party sandwiches. This is definitely a repeat recipe.

English muffins and mini-pizza-snacks

I've loved all of the recipes I've tried from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day, in a large part because they're all so easy: mix up some dough, shove it in the fridge, bake the next day. I've been wanting to try his English muffin recipe, but unlike the recipe from BBA, in which the English muffins are shaped sort of like buns, in ABED, the muffin batter is more similar to pancake batter and thus requires muffin rings...which I didn't have. :(

Flash forward to the beginning of this year, when my friend Melanie emailed me to tell me that Santa had left her a new set of rings...but she'd just gotten herself a set. She offered to send the extra set to me, and I was just thrilled.

It didn't take me long to break them in; hubby absolutely loves English muffins!

The dough is mixed together: honey, olive oil, warm milk, bread flour, salt, and instant yeast, and then placed in the fridge.

When I pulled the dough out of the fridge the next day, it was bubbling like crazy. Right before baking, I dissolved some baking soda in warm water and gently folded into the dough. Meanwhile, I turned on my electric griddle, set to 300º.

The rings are coated with cooking spray and cornmeal, and then placed on the griddle and filled with 1/3 c of the dough/batter. It was so much fun to watch them turn into English muffins before our eyes...I think that's my favorite part of making English muffins: you get to see the bread making action up close and personal!

We used these to make mini pizzas / pizza snacks, which were staples in both hubby's and my home when we were growing up. We have very different philosophies: hubby's family used cheddar cheese, chopped ham, onion, and green peppers. My mom always made mine with a little pizza sauce and mozzarella, much more like a real pizza. Luckily English muffins are small enough that everyone can make one that fits their needs.

Hubby and I loved these muffins....the kiddos were sadly not as impressed with the pizza snacks, maybe because they're accustomed to pizza with homemade crust on a regular basis. The rest of the muffins have been used for breakfast, with eggs, and I'm sure this recipe will become a new staple around here.

Thanks, Mel! :)

Cooking with kids: pigs in a blanket

In my final Mellow Bakers' post, I talked about how excited I was to be finished with my bread baking challenge(s). Finally, I'd have time to experiment! To bake on a whim. Hubby noticed tonight that I've been doing just that: making fun little desserts again, baking a spontaneous batch of rolls for a quick lunch, cooking for fun.

So, on a whim, yesterday I picked up a package of beef lil' smokies. When we got home from our museum adventures today, I mixed up a half-batch of PR's BBA white bread (with a little white whole wheat thrown in). Because it was already 3:00, I helped the dough a bit by letting it rise in my slightly warm oven.

Once doubled, I measured out 9 two-ounce portions which I rolled into balls. I used my rolling pin to roll out the rest of the dough into a big sheet of dough, about 1/8" thick. I used my pizza cutter to cut out one-inch strips, and then trimmed them to about 1 1/2". And this is where the kiddos came in: they rolled each strip of dough around one of the lil' smokies. As they rolled, they talked to their sausages, "Good night, little piggie. Time to go to sleep! I'm rolling you up into your little blanket!" And then they sang good night songs. Good times were had by all.

I let the pigs in a blanket (and the rolls) rest on their baking sheet for another 45 minutes or so, and then baked them in a 350º oven for fifteen minutes. Because I was brushing the rolls with melted butter, I brushed the piggies, too.

These were a huge hit! And unlike many bread baking projects, they actually had a pretty quick turn-around time. They're so tiny that they only needed to cool for about three minutes before the kiddos (and hubby) started gobbling them up.

Spiced cinnamon roasted almonds

One of my very favorite treats, one which I look forward to all year long, is the cone of cinnamon roasted almonds at the State Fair.

Two winters ago, I got a craving for those almonds, and the State Fair was still six months away. I started browsing for recipes, and I tried a bunch. Some didn't ever get crunchy, some were too cinnamony, some were not quite sweet enough for me. Finally, I found this recipe on Smitten Kitchen. I wasn't sure about the cayenne, since I'm a pretty big weakling when it comes to spice, but I tried it (with just a tiny bit of cayenne)...and we fell in love. I must've made these almonds a half-dozen times last year: we brought them to friends' Christmas and New Years' parties, we brought jars into work to share, and of course we ate a bunch ourselves.

This summer, when we went to the State Fair, I ordered my usual paper cone of cinnamon almonds...and we were all disappointed; we've gotten so accustomed to the more interesting flavors of our normal recipe.

Recently, some of hubby's coworkers asked for the recipe, so K and S, this is for you! :)

Spiced cinnamon roasted almonds
adapted from Deb at Smitten Kitchen, who adapted them from Elizabeth Karmel

1/3 c (85 g) dark brown sugar
2/3 c (160 g) white granulated sugar
1 heaping tsp (5 g) kosher salt
1/8-1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (use the larger amount if you like a little kick; the 1/8 tsp is barely detectable)
1 tsp (3 g) ground cinnamon
1 egg white
1 tbsp water
approx. 1 1/2 pounds whole almonds  (I keep adding almonds until all of the egg white and sugar mixture are gone, usually about 1 1/2 pounds (711 g). I used 586 g, or about 20.7 oz, of whole almonds this time because it's all I had; I had a little of both the egg white and the sugar mixture left over.)

1. Preheat the oven to 300º. Line a jelly roll pan with foil.
2. Mix the sugars, salt, and spices until no lumps remain.
3. Whisk the egg white and water until slightly frothy.
4. Add almonds to the egg white and stir to coat the almonds. (I usually add them in three or four batches until all of the egg white is used up.)
5. Use a fork or a slotted spoon to pull the almonds out of the egg white and drop them into the sugar mixture. Toss the almonds until they're evenly coated. (Again, I usually do this in several batches until all of the sugar mixture is used up.)
6. Spread the almonds in a single layer on the pan.
7. Bake for about 30 minutes, stirring once about half way through. (If you steal a bite when they're done, be aware that first, they're very hot and you'll burn your mouth! and second, they'll still seem a little soft. Don't worry; they'll get crunchier as they cool. If you bake them until they're crunchy immediately, they'll end up tasting slightly burnt.)
8. Cool and then pour them into jars.

Makes 3 - 5 pint jars. (With 580 g of almonds, we got 3 1/2 pints plus an embarrassing number that were eaten off the pan while they were cooling. With a full 1 1/2 pounds, I usually get about 5 jars.)

The three players: egg white, sugar mixture, whole almonds

Almonds, ready to go into the oven

Almonds, just out of the oven

Ready to share!

Homemade cheese hoppers, take 2

I posted my Emeril Twitter avatar recipe on Wednesday: cheesy snacks that I hoped would taste like homemade cheese hoppers (a.k.a. Annie's cheese bunnies or other commercial cheesy snacks). While my hubby and I enjoyed them, they were way too overly spiced for the kids.

The very next day, Deb at Smitten Kitchen posted a recipe for homemade goldfish...how could I resist?

These were so incredibly easy to throw together, especially since Deb gives weights, so all I had to do was dump everything into a bowl sitting on my scale: all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, grated sharp cheddar cheese, salt, onion powder, and butter. I threw the bowl full of ingredients into my food processor, let it mix for about 90 seconds until it formed a ball, and tossed it into the fridge for a bit.

The next part was the most time consuming: rolling the dough thinly, cutting out the shapes, and punching out eyes with a wooden skewer. I used my duck, butterfly, and cat mini cookie cutters. This recipe made three trays of treats, about 120, which cooked in 12 minutes in a 350F oven.

They were crispy, buttery, and cheesy. Most of the first tray were already gone by the time the other two trays were done cooking and cooling. This is definitely a make-again recipe...Sorry, Emeril!

Twitter chef avatar fun: Emeril's homemade cheese hoppers!

Margaret picked our March chef for our Twitter avatar fun...I was really excited to see that it was Emeril Lagasse. One of my favorite Christmas gifts this year was this cookbook that my kids (via my hubby, of course) got me. I've never cooked anything from Emeril before, but I was excited to have a kids' cookbook by a known chef. We own Pretend Soup and Salad People from Mollie Katzen, both of which we love, but I've found that a lot of other cookbooks geared toward little kids favor simplicity over quality and produce either tasteless or taste-bad food.

The first recipe I made from my new cookbook (There's a Chef in my Soup!) was cheesy star snacks.

One of my kids' very first snack foods was Annie's Honey Bunny Grahams. If you haven't experienced these, they taste like Teddy Grahams and look like little bunnies. We used to hop-hop-hop them across the table to the little guy when he was very small, and somehow he named them Hoppers...they've never lost this name. (In fact, while writing this paragraph, I actually had to go searching on the web to find the real name.) We still snack on normal Hoppers (the graham kind) and Cheese Hoppers (the baby girl's favorite).

This name is engrained in our family community...One of our good friends was at work and a coworker of his had a box of Annie's on her desk. He saw them and said, "Oh, can I have a few Hoppers?" I'm sure she looked at him like he was crazy.

Anyway, when I saw that Emeril had a recipe for cheesy star snacks, I knew I had to try them in the hope that they'd be homemade Hoppers.

Hubby and I found them addictive; eventually, I had to send the remainder to work with him so we'd stop eating them...but they didn't taste like our Hoppers...way too overly spiced for the kids.

Cheesy snacks (aka Cheese Hoppers)
adapted from Emeril Lagasse

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup finely grated sharp cheddar cheese
2 tsp baby bam (Emeril's spice mixture made of: paprika, salt, dried parsley, onion powder, garlic powder, black pepper, dried oregano, dried basil, dried thyme, celery salt)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp dry mustard powder
4 tbsp unsalted butter, cold, cut into pieces
2 tbsp cold water
1 egg white

1. Mix flour, cheese, spices in a food processor fitted with the metal blade.
2. Add butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
3. Add cold water and pulse (or mix by hand) until mixture becomes a smooth dough.
4. Form dough into a disk, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
5. Using a lightly floured rolling pin, roll dough to a 1/8 inch thickness.
6. Cut the dough using tiny cookie cutters (about 1 inch). Gather up leftover scraps, reroll and recut.
7. Place cut out shapes on a baking sheet and paint with egg whites.
8. Bake in a 375F oven for 15 minutes.

Emeril includes a note at the end to experiment with different herbs and different cheeses. If I were to make these again with the children in mind, I would cut out the spices (or at least seriously reduce them) and just use cheese.

Caramel corn (January: Thomas Keller)

Several of the people who I know from various baking challenges started changing their Twitter avatars each month around a certain theme. Kayte (Grandma's Kitchen Table) invited me to participate in the avatar baking for 2011. Each month, one of us chooses a chef. The rest of us cook or bake one of that chef's recipes and change our twitter avatar accordingly. I'm so excited to participate! I think there are only a couple chefs from whom I've cooked before, so I can't wait to be introduced to new chefs, new recipes, and new cookbooks!

Anyway, Kayte's pick for January was Thomas Keller. I had never heard of him, but it seems that many people received his cookbook Ad Hoc for Christmas. I searched online and found a bunch of recipes that sounded really amazing. I'm especially excited to try his oh-so-simple recipe for roast chicken later this month!

But it was something like 4F outside yesterday, and I didn't want to leave the house to buy any ingredients, so I picked a simple recipe for which I had all of the ingredients on hand: caramel corn!

 my assistants, popping the popcorn

The recipe calls for 1 cup of unpopped popcorn, but I didn't feel like there was enough caramel for all of that, so I ended up making a double batch of the caramel. The first batch was awesome! So tasty, in fact, that hubby, baby girl, and I ate almost the entire batch while I was making the second batch of caramel. The second batch of caramel didn't turn out (totally my fault; I didn't cook the caramel long enough), so it tasted more like corn drizzled with sugar syrup . . . never fear, we ate it anyway!

Thomas Keller's Caramel Corn
adapted slightly from NYMag

1/2 - 1 cup popcorn kernels, popped
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/4 cup water
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp salted butter

1. Place the sugar, corn syrup, and water in a large saucepan (I used my dutch oven) and heat over medium-high heat. Stir constantly for a couple of minutes until the sugars have disolved and the mixture begins to boil.
2. Let mixture boil (without stirring) for five minutes or until the caramel turns a light golden brown.
3. Add baking soda and butter to the caramel and stir until the butter is melted.
4. Coat the popcorn with the caramel. (This process was challenging for me. The original instructions tell you to dump the popcorn into the pan and stir to coat, but I found it challenging to get everything evenly coated. The second time, I tried dumping the popcorn onto parchment-lined baking sheets and drizzling the caramel over them, but that didn't work very well either.)
5. Set aside to cool. (Ha ha. Ours was eaten long before it was cool!)

Happy New Year, everyone! Can't wait to see what delicious things are baked in 2011!

First canning adventures: Zesty salsa!

Last summer while learning to bake bread, I also spent a ton of my time reading food blogs, and I read about some other things (besides bread) that I really longed to try: making my own butter, making homemade yogurt, and canning . . . something, anything.

Apparently this is the summer to realize my cooking dreams!

Left: canned salsa
Center: homemade yogurt & granola
Right: cultured butter with 40% rye

I've been following Andrea's (Family & Food & Other Things) canning adventures with Tigress' Can Jam for a long while, and the descriptions of the canning process fascinate me. I love making things from scratch and knowing the exact ingredients of the things I feed my family. Canning just adds a whole new level.

Then a few days ago, we happened to be at a farm supply store and all of their canning supplies were on sale! I couldn't resist. I got a pot with rack, set of canning supplies, and the Ball Blue Guide to Preserving, all for only $25! Can't beat that.

I figured I'd stick them in the basement and give them a try early next summer. And then we found ourselves at the farmer's market this weekend, and I thought about all of the extra tomatoes that I had at home, so we bought a few more tomatoes, a bunch of peppers, and some cilantro, and came home and made SALSA! Salsa has to be one of my hubby's all-time favorite foods, so even though our kitchen was a disaster and I was constantly yelling out for help, he was fully in support of this project and happy to be my faithful assistant.

I chose the zesty salsa recipe from the Blue Book, and although the book says not to vary the recipe at all, I did cut the recipe based on how many tomatoes we had (75% of the original) and subbed in a few different ingredients (mainly types of peppers) based on what we had at the house ~ and added a little extra cilantro because we love it.


Zesty Salsa
(adapted from Ball Blue Guide to Preserving)
7 1/2 cups chopped, peeled, and cored tomatoes
4 cups chopped and seeded peppers (lady slippers, anaheim, pablano)
3 1/2 cups chopped onions (red and yellow)
1 1/2 cups chopped and seeded hot peppers (jalepenos, hot banana)
1 Tbsp minced garlic
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
2 1/4 tsp salt
1 cup vinegar (cider and red wine)

I first chopped everything up for the salsa. In hindsight, I should have started the pots simmering with the bottles and lids then; I didn't anticipate how long they would take to come to a simmer. But then I realized that I had the wrong size lids, so I had to run out to the store to get the right size anyway, so it ended up being better that I hadn't started the pots.

When I got home, I washed the jars and lids and then started all three big pots: one with the salsa, one with the jars and lids, and the canning pot. I was very careful not to let the pots get above 180 F and was thankful for my Thermapen (although I also kept reminding myself that people have been canning since long before instant-read thermometers so it was probably okay not to be too obsessive).

Once the salsa and jars had been simmering for 10 minutes, I started the canning process (with my faithful assistant). Hubby lifted each jar carefully out of the pan and put it on a towel, and then I ladeled in salsa.

He used the jar lifter to take out each lid and place it carefully on the jar. I wiped the threads of the jars clean with a towel and lightly screwed the bands in place.

Then hubby used the nifty jar lifter to place them into the canner and lowered the canning rack. We need to work on this step, as we had a hard time getting the pint jars to fit securely in the rack and a couple of them kept tipping over, which was a little stressful.

We covered the pot, brought it to a rolling boil, and set the timer for 15 minutes. Once the timer beeped, we let everything rest for 5 minutes, took out the jars, and left them alone over night. I heard a few satisfying pops! which was exciting.

This morning I checked the lids: there was no give and I couldn't pry them off. I took the bands off and cleaned the bottles and now we have several months worth of bottled salsa ready to go!

Of course, we also popped one open so hubby could give it a try: he loved the various pepper flavors and said he was sad that he's lived with store-bought salsa all this time. I really enjoyed this salsa with chips as well. More importantly, though, my first canning adventure was a success!