Recipes from Fish Camp: Sweet Potato Rice Salad

Another year, another fish camp with the family. Which means another chance to try a new recipe! This one went over fairly well, and I took the leftovers home and they were still good a week later. Keep in mind I made a triple batch of this recipe, so check out the asterisk to see about my substitution.

3 cups chicken broth
1 cup wild rice (uncooked)*
2 cups sweet potato, peeled & cubed
1 T. + ½ t. olive oil, divided
⅓ cup red delicious apple
¼ cup orange juice concentrate (thawed, undiluted)
¼ cup green onions
¼ cup raisins
optional: mint sprigs

*Do you know how expensive wild rice is? I only found one size of box, with barely 1 cup, so when I tripled the recipe I used 1 cup of wild rice and 2 cups of brown rice. Tasty and a nice texture.

1. Bring the chick broth to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add rice; cover, reduce heat, and simmer 45 minutes or until liquid is absorbed.
2. Preheat oven to 400F.
3. Combine sweet potato and ½ teaspoon oil in a bowl, tossing well to coat. Arrange sweet potato in a single layer on a jelly-roll pan. (Cover in aluminum foil & coat with cooking spray to make cleanup easy.) Bake at 400F for 30 minutes, turning once.
4. Combine diced apples with orange juice concentrate in a small bowl. Drain, reserving concentrate. Combine 1 tablespoon oil with reserved concentrate; stir well with whisk.
5. Combine rice, concentrate mixture, apples, green onions, and raisins; gently stir in potato. Cover and chill 1 hour. Garnish with mint sprigs, if desired.
6. Eat! 

Don't Fear the Springform

Another holiday, another party, another round of "Diane, this cheesecake is awesome!" Although I've always had a love for baked goods (for more evidence, see Cookie of the Month), it took me a while to attempt a cheesecake. Part of it might be that I was never that wild about cheesecake, having only been exposed to it in restaurants, where it was usually plain, dry, and accompanied by fruits I didn't really like. I have to admit, though, that a big reason I didn't attempt a cheesecake was the pan. That's right, I was intimidated by the springform.

I mean, look at it. It's got some kind of mechanism on the side. If it looks  complicated, I reasoned, it must be tricky to use. I bet the recipes must be tricky, too. Why should I bother to play around with tricky pans and tricky recipes when there are so many cookies and cakes I could make instead?

Well, I finally broke down and got one at the first Pampered Chef party I ever attended. You go to those things and eat the food or sample the wares and feel like you should buy something. I was living in England at the time and had a tiny oven, and the springform was cheaper than stoneware anyway, so I bought one. And lo! It wasn't that hard to use. And guess what? Fresh cheesecake, made with interesting flavors, is pretty damn tasty. I became a cheesecake baking fiend. So I am going to share some of my cheesecake baking tips with you, along with a recipe that never fails to get compliments.

1. Digestive biscuits make a better crust/base than graham crackers. I learned this out of necessity, as  digestive biscuits are native to England while graham crackers are not. They are made from wheat flour and wholemeal, and have a denser, grittier texture than graham crackers. This makes them great for a cheesecake base, as they don't collapse under moisture like graham crackers do. I usually find them in the international section at the grocery store, or at specialty stores like Cost Plus World Market.
2. You can reduce the fat/calorie content by judicious substitution: neufchatel or light cream cheese instead of the full-fat stuff, vanilla yogurt instead of sour cream. I've used all these with success, although you might need to adjust baking times (see number 4 below).
3. I can't stress enough how much a real mixer can make the cheesecake. It's just too hard to get cream cheese blended by hand; a powerful stand mixer will take care of all those lumps. Making sure you let your cream cheese soften before mixing is helpful, too.
4. Don't trust your recipe when it comes to baking times. I often have to leave my cheesecakes in for longer than recipes say to make sure that the center gets set. This time can be 10 or even 20 minutes longer than a recipe's baking time, but cheesecakes are so dense that it's hard to overbake them. Fail to bake them enough, though, and the center will be too gooey. (Not that anyone will complain, it still tastes great, but it's hard to serve a gooey cheesecake.)
5. Experiment with flavors! I've had success with chocolate, Bailey's (or both!), peppermint/candy cane, pumpkin, cranberry, triple berry, M&Ms ... lots of things lend themselves to cheesecake, because the cream cheese base is so bland it mixes with any kind of flavor. I simply Google "cheesecake recipe" to find something new and interesting to try.

And now, one such Googled recipe that gets great results with a relatively simple instructions.

Cranberry Cheesecake with Walnut Crust

1½ cups graham cracker/digestive biscuit crumbs

½ cup finely chopped walnuts
¼ cup butter, melted
1 can (16 oz.) whole cranberry sauce
3 packages (8 oz. ea) cream cheese, softened
¾ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup flour
3 eggs
8 oz. dairy sour cream
2 t. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 325F. Combine crumbs, walnuts, and butter. Firmly press crumb mixture into the bottom of a 9-in springform pan. Bake until golden, 5 or 6 minutes; remove from oven. Cool slightly. Spread with cranberry sauce and set aside.

Reduce oven temperature to 300F. Use mixer to beat cream cheese, sugar, and flour until smooth. Beat in eggs, sour cream, and vanilla until well-blended. Pour evenly over cranberry sauce. Bake until a knife insert1 to 1½ inches from edge comes out clean, about 1 hour [or longer, if necessary--D]. Turn off oven; leave the cheesecake in over with door ajar until top is firm to the touch, about 30 minutes. Cool on a wire rack about 1 hour. Cover and refrigerate until cold, about 4 hours. Just before serving, remove cheesecake from pan onto a serving plate.

Serve and receive compliment!

Recipes from Fish Camp: Breakfast Fruit Toppings

Breakfast at fish camp usually involves pancakes or french toast 5 days out of 6, so it's important to have a variety of toppings so boredom doesn't set in. Maple syrup is tasty, but fresh fruit toppings are so much better for you, and are relatively easy to make. I try to make these once a week at home; at fish camp I just multiply the recipe by factor of A LOT. Here is the basic recipe:

1 cup fresh fruit (blueberries, peaches, apples, pears, raspberries, anything that's good cooked)

1 tablespoon All-Fruit (ie, those fruit spreads that are sweetened only with juice)

Some combinations I've made: fresh blueberries with blueberry All-Fruit; fresh peaches, apricots, or apples with apricot All-Fruit and cinnamon; fresh peaches/apples/pears with raspberry All-Fruit. If a fruit isn't in season, I've used canned (peaches and pears); you could also use frozen berries, but rinse them in cold water first, to reduce the amount of meltwater you get.

Put the fruit (peeled, pitted, cored, and/or chopped, as needed) into a microwavable container with the jam. Microwave about 20 seconds at a time, stirring every time, until mixture is juicy and warm. Serve over pancakes, french toast, or waffles.

These recipes are for an individual serving, so multiply accordingly to serve more people. When I make a large batch, as I do at camp, I cook the fruit and jam over the stove instead of in the microwave, because it's faster.

And what do I do if I have a fresh fruit that doesn't cook well, like strawberries or bananas? Well, then I go to my freezer and get a couple tablespoons of non-fat whipped topping, which adds less than 40 calories to the breakfast. Yum!

Cookie of the Month: Meringue-Topped Bars

You may have noticed there was no Cookie of the Month for May. I didn't mean to skip it; my stomach said, "Yes, yes, yes, give us more cookies for May!" But my summer clothes said, "No, no, no! We will not fit unless you lose that winter insulation you so cleverly accumulated to keep warm!" So I managed to lose six pounds in the last six weeks by avoiding all sorts of sweets and logging my calories in a food diary: mission mostly accomplished. Plus, I discovered a strategy: band mini-camp was this week, so I could sample one cookie and send the rest in with Boy to feed the trumpet section.

But what to make? I thought about making Pfefferneusse, because the name sounds cool and I wondered what cookies with pepper would taste like, but then I looked at the recipe and it said "chill several hours or overnight" and I didn't have time to deal with that. What did I have time for? Bar cookies sounded about right—no shaping or rolling to deal with—so I browsed the section of my trusty Better Homes & Gardens cookbook and discovered this interesting recipe for Meringue-Topped Cookies. Topped with meringue? I like meringue fairly well, and I've never tried making it, so this could be fun. I dove right in:

1½ cups all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup butter or margarine (I used Smart Balance butter blend sticks, easy to measure)

¾ cup packed brown sugar

3 eggs (divided)

1 teaspoon vanilla

¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

¾ cup granulated sugar

6 oz semisweet chocolate pieces/chips or two bars English toffee (I used chips)

Stir together flour, soda, and salt. For crust, beat butter for 30 seconds; add brown sugar and beat till fluffy. Separate egg whites from egg yolks; set whites aside. Add egg yolks and vanilla to beaten mixture; beat well. Gradually add dry ingredients to beaten mixture, beating constantly. Spread in an ungreased 13x9x2-inch baking pan. (The dough is rather gooey, so it's easiest to do this by hand.) Bake in a 350F oven for 10 minutes. When you take it out it should be golden brown like this:

In the meantime, wash your beaters (and your bowl, if it's part of a mixing stand). For meringue, combine egg whites and cream of tartar; beat until soft peaks form. (I discovered high speed works better; "soft peaks" looks something like super high bubbles.) Gradually add granulated sugar; beat until soft peaks form.

For this part I was sooooo glad I have my KitchenAid 5-quart stand mixer, which is my favorite favorite kitchen mini-appliance, essential for making cheesecakes—or really, anything that needs blending, now that my wrists and elbows are old and tender and don't like working so hard to mix things up. My trusty KitchenAid made short work of the meringue, and soon I had fluffy white peaks, just like you would see atop a lemon meringue pie or just plain meringue candy.

Next, sprinkle chocolate pieces (which I used) or chopped toffee over hot crust. Spread meringue on top, getting it into all the corners. Bake 30 minutes more or until golden brown.

When mine came out of the oven it looked like this: golden brown and a little crispy. If you've ever had plain meringue candies, you know they are a little golden on the top, a nice crispy exterior with a chewy interior.

You are supposed to cut the treats into bars while they are still warm, or else they will harden and make cutting difficult. I let them cool about 10 minutes, so they weren't too gooey, and made easy cuts like you see here.

And the result? As you can see from the picture, we have a standard bar base, a little bit of gooey chocolate, and a layer of crispy/chewy meringue. This little corner was the only one I tried, and I thought it was just as well I wasn't keeping the rest around. With sugar in the base, sugar in the chocolate, and sugar in the meringue, it was extremely sweet. That doesn't have to be a bad thing, but in this case you have a very lightweight cookie with a very sweet taste. The bar base isn't very thick—it was a challenge to spread it out enough to cover the pan—and meringue has a very light texture. So this little cookie was extremely sweet without being very filling at all. And since it was actually one of the highest-calorie treats in the cookbook's cookie section, at 158 calories per serving (only the brownies surpassed it), this could be very very very dangerous. I ate one cookie and while it was extremely sweet, it felt like nothing in my tummy.

As for how the cookies went over? I'm not sure. Boy said they were acceptable, but instead of feeding them to his section they went to bribe the drum majors. We'll see next month if this proves to be an effective strategy, I guess—or whether they'll need Pfefferneusse to bolster their nefarious plans.

My rating for Meringue-Topped Bars: nom nom (two of five noms).

Cookie of the Month: Irish Lace Cookies

Last month I initiated this new feature on my blog with the Lemon Snowflake cookie, the very tasty treat I had been given for Christmas. When it was time to come up with a recipe for this month, I thought since it was almost St. Paddy's Day, and I'm just a wee bit Irish, that I would look for an Irish cookie recipe. After searching around and discarding numerous regular-cookie-dyed-green recipes, I found this traditional recipe for Irish Lace Cookies. It's pretty simple:

½ cup butter, softened

¾ cup firmly packed light brown sugar

2 T. all-purpose flour

2 T. milk

1 t. vanilla extract

1¼ cup old-fashioned rolled oats

Cream the butter with the brown sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy and beat in the flour, the milk, and the vanilla; then stir in the oats.

As you can see, the very small amount of flour produces a very gooey dough. You drop it onto the sheet in spoonfuls, and bake 10 to 12 minutes in a preheated 350F oven. After you take them out, you end up with something that is very flat and a little bit crispy:

Now, I pulled the recipe from the internet (usually a good source of recipes) and read through the comments. Many people had observed that these cookies were really difficult to remove from the cookies sheet, but a couple said they had used wax paper and had no trouble at all. So I topped my super-big fancy cookie sheet with some wax paper and plopped the cookie dough on top. Ungreased sheet, the recipe said. Bake until golden, the recipe said. Thus I did, and I got the following:

You probably can't tell from the picture just how devilishly the cookie is sticking to the wax paper, but it was so bad it resisted all attempts to scrape the cookie off, let alone "quickly turn the cookies upside down and roll them into cylinders." I ended up with bits of paper in my cookie, so I put the sheet back into the cooling oven to keep the cookies warm, and then scraped off crumbs a bit at a time. I took the crumbs and molded them into something resembling a cookie cylinder, and you can see the pathetic results below.

Now, these ugly-looking not-quite-cookies were actually very tasty: as you might expect, they had a strong, buttery caramel flavor from the butter and the brown sugar. But they were definitely not worth all the trouble I went through. I suppose I should try again and use a stone baking sheet instead—then I could scrape away until I had every single crumb—but April is coming soon and it's time for another new cookie. I wonder what's good for Easter...?

Final rating: nom nom (two of five noms)

The Word Nerd Wonders: What am I eating?

It's no secret that I'm a lazy cook. It's not that I don't like to cook, but the fewer steps involved in preparing a meal, the happier I am. This doesn't mean a dish has to cook quickly; I don't mind keeping an eye on the stove while something simmers or visiting the oven regularly to baste chicken, but those are things I can do while multitasking. Chopping and peeling and fileting require time and focus (it's not good to multitask when a knife is involved), plus extra dishes, and thus I do my best to avoid them.

My favorite way to cut down on cooking effort is to get meat that is pre-trimmed and pre-sliced (or cubed). Handling meat is slimy and messy and maybe-bacteria-laden, so I'd rather just take a package of pre-cubed meat and dump it in the pot. I'm not being lazy, I'm just being hygienic! This is especially crucial when I make a favorite recipe I have for pork-and-squash stew. It's really best to use fresh vegetables, so I already spend close to an hour chopping up onions and carrots and peeling and dicing potatoes and butternut squash when I make this. I really don't want to spend extra time trimming and cubing pork as well.

So on the rare occasions I make this tasty-but-time-consuming dish, I look for pre-diced pork. And one day I was at the grocery store and couldn't find it, so I asked guy working the meat department, "do you have any of that lazy-person's, er, diced pork for stew?" And the guy looked at me and said, "You mean Pork City Chicken? I think we have some over there."

I froze. PORK CITY CHICKEN? I forgot that I needed to find it for dinner; why the hell was it called PORK CITY CHICKEN? I asked the guy, and he said "that's just what we call it." (Sigh. I was hoping the butcher was a closet etymologist, but you can't find everything at Kroger.) So I picked it up and added it to my cart. PORK CITY CHICKEN, the package actually said. I took it home and began preparing stew. PORK CITY CHICKEN, the package taunted. It made no sense. It was pork, but if that was the case, why did it appear as a modifier to "City Chicken"? What was the "city" doing there at all? Did it mean something like "chicken-style pork," and if so, why not just say so? Since I didn't have to spend a lot of time with the pork, I soon stopped obsessing, looking at the mound of potatoes and squash I still had to peel.

Still, every time I bought meat for the stew it preyed upon my mind: PORK CITY CHICKEN. I made it just last week, so now, for your edification and mind, I have finally looked into the possible meaning of PORK CITY CHICKEN. While the origin hasn't been confirmed, the term "city chicken" became prominent around the time of the Depression, when chicken was more expensive than lesser cuts of pork or beef. Thrifty cooks would purchase these cheaper cuts and prepare them in a way that imitated chicken: cubed and breaded, or ground and made into the shape of a drumstick. According to the food timeline site I visited, recipes for "city chicken" seemed to be most prevalent in the Midwest, especially Pennsylvania, with appearances in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois.

So there's my answer: "city chicken" means cubed mock chicken, so PORK CITY CHICKEN is "city-chicken-style pork," only with fewer letters on the package. Since Kroger is mainly local to the Midwest, someone there decided to use the old term, even though it's been nearly 80 years since the Depression. (Maybe they knew this latest downturn was coming, although chicken is now cheaper than pork, so I'm not sure that makes sense.) In any case, I have solved this "fowl" mystery, am ready to start "bacon," and hope you enjoyed coming a-loin for the ride.

In praise of blueberries....

I'd thought of several things to write about today: the letter J, how I have too many things to do this month, how I might go stark raving MAD if the weather doesn't get warmer, how irritating it is when someone makes an appointment with you and then doesn't show up or even call, how the cats are trying to sabotage me ... but I got distracted. Right now, I can only think of one thing:

How did I ever not love blueberries?

They're sweet with just the right hint of tartness. They're firm and round and squish with a burst of flavor when you crunch them between your teeth. They're tasty raw and fresh, and they're just as tasty baked into something warm that makes the house smell great when you bake it.

When I was younger, I wasn't a fan of blueberries. I wouldn't spit them out and gag, but I wouldn't seek them out, either. If I had a choice at Thankgiving, I'd pick apple or pumpkin or maybe even peach before I'd take a slice of blueberry pie. I'd go picking with my grandparents, and while they threatened to weigh my grandpa before and after entering the blueberry patch, those fresh berries would be safe from me.

With age comes wisdom, I suppose. (Getting older is good for something, at least!) Now I love blueberries any way I can get them: dried in my cereal, frozen and then nuked with my oatmeal, fresh by themselves, baked in pies, crisps, cakes. When I go to the store in the depths of winter and see a big old pound box of fresh blueberries staring at me, I forget all about global footprints and local cuisine and I grab that box of berries that came all the way from Chile. Fresh blueberries! In winter! I must have them!

And so I did today: raw and tasty on my cream of wheat, and baked into a tasty crumb cake I made this morning for my no-show guest, to disguise the smell of last night's fish dinner. I had a piece, and it was tasty and delicious. And low-fat, so I will share the recipe:

2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup stick butter, softened
1 t. vanilla
1 large egg
1 1/3 cups flour
1 t. baking powder
1/4 t. baking soda
1/8 t. salt
3/4 c. lowfat buttermilk (or take 1 T lemon juice and add milk to make 3/4 c.)
1 cup blueberries
3 T. sugar
3 T. flour
1 T. stick butter
1 t. cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350F. Coat a 9-in pan with cooking spray. Beat sugar and margarine until smooth; add vanilla and egg, beat well. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add flour mixture to creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour mix. Stir in blueberries. Pour into pan.

Combine 3T sugar and remaining ingredients into bowl; mix with fork until it resembles coarse meal. Sprinkle over batter. Bake at 350F for 40 minutes or until wooden pick in center comes clean. Cool and EAT. Yum.

Photo of the Week--2/9/09

Budapest is a very lovely city, as you can see from this shot atop Buda hill. The Danube may not be very blue, but it was beautiful, with the fall foliage throwing little accents of orange and red into the landscape. What I remember most about our trip to Budapest, though, was the food! Goulash, paprikash, palacsinta (meat-stuffed pancakes) ... lots of warm, spicy sauces and tasty noodles and dumplings. Boy was 7 at the time, rather inured to travel, and not very adventurous when it came to food, but after a few days in Hungary he was asking, "Can we live here?" Mmmm, I'm salivating just thinking about it....

A Coda on Pie

So last week I wrote an Ode to Pie in celebration of the Thanksgiving week. Yes, I said, "Thanksgiving week," and I suppose I should explain for those of you who are unfortunate enough never to have experienced the annual pie massacre my family calls "Thanksgiving."

You see, every year my mother prepares for the descent of locusts family members into her house by baking pies. (Sweet, tasty pies!) And every year, the number of pies is close to 40. This year it was 41. Last year, I believe it was 38. Whatever the exact number, it's a lot of pie.

But we have a lot of people visit throughout Thanksgiving week. If family fly in from out of town, sometimes they arrive on Tuesday, so we have to eat pie. We definitely get people coming up on Wednesday night, so we have pie with the usual dinner of homemade soup. On Thanksgiving proper, we don't usually get the bird until 2pm, so we might need a piece of pie to tide us over until then. After digesting for bit, we usually need to top things off with another piece of pie; after all, there are so many yummy flavors available. This year on Thursday we had something like 30 people in the house for Thanksgiving dinner and pie, so lots of pie was needed.

Friday is an almost exact repeat of Thursday (pie, turkey dinner at 2, more pie), except we usually have a few more people attending. Again, lots of pie needed. Then we have the stragglers who stay through Saturday, finishing up the soup and the jigsaw puzzle that's taken over the dining room table, and of course it wouldn't be family time without more pie. (Really, people, there's something like 10 flavors to try!)

So anyway, that leads to this little coda. When I left my mom's house on Saturday, she told me to take a pie. Actually, she told me to take two: apple and pumpkin, of which there were a few extra. No problem. After all, pie for breakfast is no different than a "breakfast pastry," except it has more real fruit and tastes better. So we've slowly been working our way through the pies, and last night Boy and I went out to dinner because TSU was out of town. We went to his favorite restaurant, and he requested their tasty chocolate chip cookies for dessert. I gave him a skeptical look and said, "But there's still pie at home." When he complained that there wasn't any pumpkin left, I corrected him and said there was still a piece, I had just moved it into the apple pan. He frowned and gave this response:

"But Mom, that's not dessert pie."

!!!! Only in my family, I suppose.

This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for ...

... my family, my health, yeah, yeah, sure, I'm grateful for all that stuff. But as I was baking cookies last week, I realized what I'm really thankful for: GADGETS!

Gadgets are cool! Gadgets are fun! Gadgets make life easier! "Gadgets" begins with a G! (Whoops! Word Nerd isn't returning until next week!)

Here's one that I just discovered a couple of weeks ago. Now, in general I love my DVR (aka TIVO) and you can have my remote when you pry it from my cold dead hands. I not only use the satellite service to record and playback TV shows, but also to listen to XM Radio. They have two classical music channels with little or no commercials (or even talking), something sorely lacking on regular radio in my area. Since this is a radio channel, they broadcast a still picture with the music, and the "info" button shows the title, composer, and performer of the piece. Now, because it's a still picture, after a few minutes the TV goes into "screensaver" mode, blank except for a DirecTV logo that bounces around the screen. The bouncing logo can be fun; Boy and I like the game from "The Office" where you wait for the logo to hit the corner perfectly, although TSU thinks we're nuts. But a few weeks ago, a miracle happened:


The bouncing logo is now a box with all the title/composer info, so I don't have to find the clicker if I want to remind myself if a piece is Brahms or Schubert or one of those other guys I forget about. Hallelujah!

So I'm listening to classical radio as I begin baking, occasionally glancing over to get title info, and I come upon another favorite gadget. I luuuurve my KitchenAid mixer, which has a certain sleek mechanical beauty to it. More important, it saves my increasingly tender elbows and wrists from overwork as I make a double batch of cookies (4 cups of flour is hard to mix) or a tasty cheesecake (it makes quick work of lumpy cream cheese). It's heavy, but its motor could probably power a small lawnmower. It's perfect and I'm so thankful I have it this time of year.


Last, there's this tiny little kitchen gadget I love for making cookies: this doohickey that ejects whatever goop you might scoop with it. It's perfect for making rolled cookies; much easier than the "two-spoon" method and much cleaner than pinching dough with your fingers (I hate getting dough under my nails). Nope, with this baby I just scoop some dough, squeeze the handle, and with a satisfying "snick!" I have just the right size ball of dough to roll (and dip in sugar). Even if I didn't like eating cookies, I'd bake them just to use this gadget.


Although there are other little utensils I enjoy, I'm going to stop here with my list of gadgets for which I'm grateful. Gigi, however, would like to add she is thankful for the gadget we call the "Flat Rat." It's a little hunk of fur with a leather head and tail, and she loves to chase it so much she's been fetching it back to me as I write this entry so I can throw it over and over. Sigh. A cat-slave's work is never done. Maybe I should invent a gadget to chuck cat toys....

And now, a commercial interruption...

I'm still looking for a "G" word to explore, I have a cool picture/post about basting quilts and writing I'm thinking about, and I should have another haiku review soon. But now, I'm too crazy busy to spend much time on the blog. This was my schedule last night:

4:30—Take Boy to the orthodontist
5:30—Go to high school and pick up/order scrip for fundraising
5:45—Pick up pizza on way home for dinner
6:00—Don't eat pizza, but go to TKD instructor's meeting
7:00—Duck out of meeting and go to band rehearsal (late)
10:00—Get home and eat rewarmed pizza for dinner.

And here's today's schedule:

morning—make double batch of cookies for craft fair bake sale
afternoon—make poster thanking businesses who allowed us to post signs; stop at grocery store to pick up milk and posterboard
???—squeeze in some writing? I do have an assignment due by the end of the year.
3:00-5:30—help set up at craft fair
5:00—duck out early to place craft fair signs near freeway exits
6:00—help officiate at TKD testing

So instead of cogitating on the letter G, or the parallels between basting and writing, I will be making gingersnaps. Sad for you, Dear Readers, who need a little amusement in their day (extremely little); but Happy for me, who will be required to perform quality control on said gingersnaps. (Hmmm, G is for Gingersnaps? I will think as I bake.)

And if you're in the Plymouth-Canton area Saturday, please stop by and do a little shopping at our holiday craft fair. It supports the wonderful Plymouth-Canton Marching Band, who were National Finalists once again this year and placed 11th in the country!

Boobie chicken!

I like to cook, which is a good thing, because I live with two males who really like to eat. (I also like to bake, which is a bad thing, because I really like to eat.) Unfortunately, I get conflicting directives from my hungry males. Boy would prefer to eat the same four things every week if he could get away with it. The Spousal Unit (heretofore known as "TSU") likes to try new things. I refuse to make two separate meals, but I'm willing to leave off sauce off half of a recipe to placate Boy. (If I leave it on, he'll just scrape it off, and this way there's more sauce for me.)

I've been feeling sorry for Boy this week, though. Not only does he have to get up before 6 am to get ready for his 6:30 bus (and I'm sure feeling the same pain), he's got marching band for three hours after school. Tuesday was only a half day of school, so there was almost six hours of band practice, most of it outdoors in 90-degree heat. So I was feeling sympathetic, and asked him yesterday what I should make for dinner. My only requirement was that it use chicken, and not be "Chicken Stuff," a recipe he really likes but TSU finds bland. "Make that chicken with the cheese on it," he replied.

I puzzled over that for a minute. He was referring to a recipe I'd tried a couple of times that bakes chicken, topped by a thin slice of Canadian bacon and mozzarella. It's okay, but I found it overly salty for my taste. So I thought I'd experiment. I adapted a recipe I have for breaded chicken, and I thought I could put cheese slices on Boy's portion, and goat cheese and fresh tomatoes on the grownup's portions. (I looooove goat cheese, and baked with tomatoes is one of my favorite variations.)

So I had the chicken baking in the oven while I rooted around in the fridge for the cheesy toppings. Slices of Swiss, no problem. Goat's cheese? Major problem. I knew I had some, but I forgot it had been opened. Now it was not so much goat's cheese as penicillin-producing science experiment. Fine, I could adapt. I had more Swiss slices, or, to make things more interesting, I used pepper jack. I took my cherry tomatoes, sliced them in half, placed a couple on each chicken tenderloin, and topped it with the cheese before returning it to the oven for a few minutes. The result tasted pretty good. (Although not as good as it would have with the goat's cheese. Sigh.) Its appearance, however, was a little bit peculiar:


And so I have invented "Boobie Chicken"! Let me know if you want the recipe.