Buttermilk Pie (Inspired by Threadgill's)

I never appreciated living in Austin while I had the chance.

I mean, it didn't help that I was 11 years old and not keen on appreciating much (other than my wicked scooter and the ice cream truck), but still. I lived in Austin. Had parents who loved to eat at the original Threadgill's and I'm pretty sure I pouted every time I was there because they didn't have chicken nuggets or an ice cream truck.

But they had buttermilk pie.

And now, my family has buttermilk pie.

It's a southern thing and now that we're out of Alaska, it's a family thing.

It's delicious, despite my first attempt browning a skin on it waaaay too quickly. The trick is to cover the top of the pie with a bit of foil for the first 30 minutes...similar to tenting a chicken.

Happy eating, ya'll!

Buttermilk Pie

Ingredients:

1 10-inch pie shell unbaked

3 Cups Sugar
 1/4 C flour
1/2 lb (2 sticks) butter, melted
 6 eggs
1 C buttermilk
2 Tbs water
1 Tsp lemon juice
1 Tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350.
Whisk sugar and flour into melted butter, then add eggs one at a time.
Add liquid ingredients.

Pour filling into pie shell (I always seem to have extra filling that I bake in a dish)Place shell on cookie sheeet in preheated oven
Bake for at least one hour or until filling is set in the center of the pie.

If You're Gonna Eat in Texas... King Ranch Casserole

Part of initiating my family to their new lives in Texas includes the culinary aspect of the Lone Star State. This has included a week-long stint at Taco Cabana (until we found our favorite taco stand, mind you), a few chicken sandwiches at the original chicken sandwich joint (you know, the one with the clever cows), and Whataburger. I never said I had super fancy tastes...and eight years in the wilds of Alaska with no Whataburger or Taco Cabana can do a number of awful things to your tastebuds.

King Ranch Chicken

Another aspect of this initiation includes Texas favorites we can make at home. Including King Ranch Chicken. I never had it growing up in El Paso, but once I hit college, I was lucky enough to eat it pretty regularly when I'd go home with friends and visit their families for the weekend. This dish was everywhere. And now it's in my house.

Amazing, really, because I'm not the biggest fan of that jellied, gelatinous goop we like to call Cream of Mushroom soup. It's really just an excuse to dump fat and salt in our food...but it's so good in this recipe.

The casserole went over successfully last night...kind of like a mild, deconstructed enchilada. Without the enchilada sauce of course, and with a lot of cream of salt soups. Ha!

Texas King Ranch Chicken Casserole

Ingredients:

1/4 cup butter
1 medium green bell pepper, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 can (10 3/4 oz.) condensed cream of mushroom soup
1 can (10 3/4 oz.) condensed cream of chicken soup
1 can (10 oz.) RO*TEL Diced Tomatoes & Green Chilies
2 cups cubed cooked chicken
12 corn tortillas, torn into bite-sized pieces

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Melt the butter in a large saucepan and add the green pepper and onion. Cook until softened, about three minutes. Add soups, tomatoes, and chicken and simmer for about five more minutes. Remove from heat.

Spread a layer tortilla pieces along the bottom of a greased 9X13" casserole dish. Top with a layer of the chicken and soup mixture, followed by cheese. Repeat for three layers. Bake for 45 minutes.

Welcome to Katy and Super-Top-Secret Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

WOW!

I'm back.

The break was great and well deserved...(we had baby number 4 and moved back home to Texas, ya'll!!) but I sure missed thinking about food, writing about food, looking at food, and talking about food. Missed. It. So. Much.

The transition to Katy, Texas hasn't been too hard, minus the fact that it's a bit difficult to get into turning on your oven when your house skyrockets to the mid-80s when you do. That means I bake in early mornings and use my grill pan in the afternoons to save my sanity. Oh, and I love my crockpot. True story.

But enough of my reintroduction, eh? Hi. My name is Megan. I took almost nine months off to have a baby and sell everything I own and relocate from Alaska to Texas. And now I'm back!

Let's talk about this week. My oldest returned from his summer visit to El Paso and he started third grade. His lunch lacked a little TLC this week, so I dug out my recipe box (oh, I love my recipe box) and found my husband's top secret chocolate chip cookies. The three older kids (Ages 8, 3, and 14 months) helped me bake and for the first time in a long, long time, I let all cares out the kitchen window and we had a messy, flour-covered blast. It was so, so good for my soul. The kids were happy. The husband liked the surprise when he came home from work and the third grader got a respite from the fig newtons for the two days the cookies lasted. Success.

A little cookie backstory: The hubs spent a few months last year perfecting this recipe based on the old Toll House equation you find on the back of your chocolate chip cookie bag. I never knew there was a baker in the man, but I guess when you think about how picky of an eater he is (read it: highly developed palate) and how awesome he is at math (read it: highly developed recipe swapping ability) it probably always made sense.

He likes a straight butter recipe. I like halving the butter with shortening. He prefers the taste of brown sugar, so he upped that while dialing down the regular sugar. Up with the vanilla a smidge, and be sure the eggs are beaten before you add them. Simple as pie. And probably more delicious.

Though we diverge on the ingredients a bit, our thoughts on what makes a great chocolate chip cookie (or bar) run parallel. There has to be a perfect balance between the crisp and the chew factors. Crisp on the edges, chewy on the inside...even (ESPECIALLY) on day two and beyond. Make sure there's a bit of savory (salt) to heighten the sweet. Yum.

I first wanted to publish this recipe last year, but he wouldn't let me. But now, I think he's forgotten and after the kids and I turned the cookie recipe into bars, well, it's fair game.

Without further ado...

P.J.A.'s SUPER Top-Secret Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

Ingredients:
3/4 c. sugar
1 and 1/4 c. brown sugar
1 c. butter, room temperature
1 T vanilla
2 eggs, beaten
3/4 t. baking soda
2 and 3/4 c. flour
chocolate chips

The bake:
Preheat to 350 degrees. Combine butter and sugars. Add egg and vanilla to butter mix. In a separate bowl, combine flour and baking soda. Add dry ingredients to wet and mix until just incorporated. (Many a cookie have been sacrificed on the altar of overmixing. Don't do it!)

Bake 10 to 12 minutes per batch, depending on oven.

Do your best not to shove the entire first batch in your mouth when you pull them out of the oven. It will hurt and your family will not trust you with the rest of the finished cookies from that point on. It's true.

Happy baking!

Thursdays with Kermit: Curried Butternut Squash Soup

I know, right?

It started when Full Circle Farm sent me kale a couple weeks ago and dared me to try it. And it was delicious.

So last week, when a large, unassuming butternut squash showed up in my Wednesday pick up, well, I figured Full Circle had issued the challenge. Thrown down the gauntlet, if you will.

"Try this," the farmers seemed to be saying, despite knowing full well that I just don't do squash.

A few minutes on the ol' Internets netted me a couple recipes I was interested in--namely some squash latkes via Hungry Girl. (I still plan to try those--they looked awesome!)

 But my dad had suggested trying squash soup recently and since every time I say I hate something without trying it, I end up loving it...I thought I had very little to lose.

Add to that, the fact that by the time I got around to making this, my squash was starting to look like it was going to give up its fight for life. And I can't have my produce going bad, you see. That would just be a shame.

I've never had Butternut Squash Soup, let alone the curried version, so I had very little to base my experience on. For all I knew, I did everything wrong and this is decidedly NOT an authentic version.

But pay no mind to my worries because, friends, this was delicious. The original version calls for a scant one teaspoon of curry powder which I thought was a little on the small side. I doubled that, and for the second teaspoon, I used Summit Spice and Tea's hotter, earthier Madras curry powder. It's fantastic stuff.

On to the soup, shall we?

Curried Butternut Squash Soup

Butternut Squash, roasted and chopped
2 cups chicken stock
1 teaspoon curry powder
1 teaspoon Madras curry powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
Salt and pepper to taste

Optional:
Sour cream mixed with 1 teaspoon lime juice, as garnish

Directions:
Simple enough. I don't have an immersion blender (hint to my lovely husband hoping to find me an inexpensive Christmas present? Ha!), so I piled the roasted squash and chicken stock into my normal blender and let it work its magic until it was a smooth, creamy consistency.

To ol' Kermit the Pot the soup went, where I added the seasonings and the salt and pepper. Be sure to taste your soup as you season. I happen to love a lot of garlic flavoring--you may prefer more curry. It's all pretty subjective and all about personal taste. Make the soup your own!

Can it get much simpler? When it's warm enough to eat, it's ready! As a bonus, I mixed a scant teaspoon of lime juice with some sour cream I had left over from enchilada night and garnished the soup with a few delicious dollops. Magic!


Happy eating, and many thanks to my friends at Full Circle Farm for another great week of produce!

Slow Food on a Sunday: Roasted Chicken with Pan Gravy

My mom has all manner of baked goods that I claim as hers. Whoopie pies, gingerbread cookies, and those apple free-form tarts she can whip up with her eyes closed. My dad? Well, the man can make a spaghetti and meatballs that rivals even the snootiest Italian joint. He also has those cube steaks with smoky green chiles and smooth melted cheese.

I associate those meals and foods with my parents. I make them these days as a way to connect and sort of  "live in" a memory. But the great thing about growing up is that you get to start claiming your own meals. It's not that I never ate roasted chicken growing up, it's just that I don't remember them. It wasn't their "signature" that I now associate them with. I know my mom now makes a roasted chicken for my grandparents when she's in Vermont visiting, but it's not one of the dishes I grew up with.

So a couple months back, I decided to make the roast chicken dinner mine. And I had no idea how to cook a damn chicken, but I stubbornly maintained my position and went through three rounds of various levels of "suck" before arriving at my method.

Rotisserie chickens run about $9 these days in the great AK. Isn't that ridiculous? Let alone the fact that they were probably pulled from the roaster at 11 a.m. and I don't swing by the incubator to pick one up until 5:30 p.m. That's just sort of gross, isn't it?

When you head back to the meat department of your average grocery store in Alaska, you can find a decent sized roaster chicken for under $5. No, seriously. Half the price of that chicken jerky monstrosity they sell next to the 18-hour old potato salad.

What a pretty, pretty bird!

I'll be honest, in an effort to create my own roast chicken method (because it's not really about measurements, it's more about just doing) I scoured the internet. I made friends with all manner of Food Network You Tube channels. I argued with Ina Garten and must have called Tyler Florence all manner of names when he put bacon in the equation.

My first chicken was cooked through, but had pale, anemic skin that fell off anyway because I cut into the bird two and a half seconds after I took it out of the oven. (Big no-no.)

On my second attempt, I paid close attention to the skin and tried to get that amazing buttery brown crispy awesomeness all at the expense of making sure the meat was cooked thoroughly. (Gross. Just gross.) I let the early browning of the skin make me jumpy and when the skin started to burn just a bit, I panicked and pulled the whole bird out. Way. Too. Early. Nothing kills your beautiful chicken skin like two minutes in the microwave to un-pink the breast meat. But, nothing kills your family's enthusiasm to come to the dinner table like a bout of bacterial stomach trauma. Choices....choices.

I borrowed a few "turkey" techniques I picked up a couple weeks ago when we hosted the Gracie Barra MMA Team for an early team Thanksgiving...namely the butter/herb/skin combo and the art of the tin foil tent.

On to the chicken...

Sunday Roast Chicken

Ingredients:
Roaster chicken (all manner of neck, gizzards and other such freaky stuff removed...a great job for your squeamish 7 year old if you're feeling prankster-ish)
1 stick of butter, softened
Greek seasoning (I get mine from Summit Spice and Tea, but you can jam together your own combo of parsley, marjoram, Greek oregano, and rosemary based on what you have on hand)
Salt
Pepper
1/2 of a medium onion, rough chopped
6 cloves of garlic, rough chopped
Lemon, halved and sliced into chunks (peel on, though I lost about a quarter of my lemon to said 7-year old as a reparation fee for making him grab the chicken neck thingy. I'm not really sure he'll ever get over that experience.)
White wine or water
2 cups of chicken stock

Directions:

Heat your oven to 425 degrees while you wrestle with your chicken. (Careful, they're ruthless about slipping out of your hands toward the garbage disposal.)

There's no such thing as too much butter...

Make yourself an herb butter by combining your softened butter, about 3 or 4 teaspoons of your seasoning, some salt and pepper. Additionally, make a small dish of salt and pepper and a little more of your seasoning and set aside.

Sprinkle some of that salt/pepper/seasoning combo inside the cavity of your washed and thoroughly dried bird and then stuff it full of the lemons and onions and garlic.

Take your chicken camping!

At this point,  I use my hand to separate the skin from the breast meat and make room for a butter rub down. It's kind of awkward at first and I feel like I'm violating this dead animal somehow, but it really makes a difference when you try to push your butter mixture beneath the skin and smooth down. So go ahead and push that herb butter beneath the skin and spread it as far down along the breast meat as you can. Get good and messy and quit being so girly about your dirty hands underneath some chicken skin. Next, smooth the butter all over the chicken. Yes, a big buttery rub down for the little guy before he goes into the oven. He'll thank you for it.

If you don't know how to truss your chicken, it's basically applying an Americana (yes, shameless jiu jitsu plug here) to the little wings and bending them back onto the bird. From there, tie the drumsticks together with kitchen twine or even some natural looking yarn you might have on hand. (Hey, at least it was white yarn and not lavender. Judge me not, dear reader!) Sprinkle salt and pepper all over the outer skin one last time and wish him well. He's got a long road ahead of him.

Get your roasting pan ready and add wine or water to the bottom of it to help the drippings from burning. (This is pretty important and I'll tell you why a little later.)

Birdie goes on to the roasting pan breast side down for 15 minutes in a 425 degree oven. At the 15 minute mark, pull your bird out, lower the oven to 325, and flip the bird using tongs or kitchen towels or an uncoordinated combination of both. (Guilty.)

Pitch a tent. (Or a fit if you choose to ignore me.)

This is the point in the process where we learn from my mistakes! Make a cute little tent (a folded piece of aluminum foil) for your chicken. No, seriously. It slows the breast meat from cooking/browning too quickly and thus forcing your hand with either burned skin or microwaved chicken. Trust me. Tent the little bugger.

Back into the hot he goes with his cute little tin foil hat for at least an hour. My bird took about 1 hour and 15 minutes. The thermometer in the breast should read 160 when you pull it out.

"It had to be roux..."

Learn from yet another of my mistakes, friends, and don't hack into your chicken right away. You know what happens if you do? You unleash hell in the form of chicken juices everywhere on your counter and floor. Like a veritable chicken dam bursts and sends all the moisture that's supposed to get reabsorbed into the meat all over the place. It's not pretty. Don't rush the resting time.

All aboard the gravy train!

While the chicken rests, grab about a half cup of the chicken fat from the drippings and throw it in a sauce pan. Toss in about four tablespoons of flour and heat over medium flame. Don't rush this part. Please, please, please don't rush this part or you make the mistake I did last night and you end up with beautiful gravy that has the slightest hint of smoky flour. (Sigh.)

I warned you earlier about some white wine or at least a little water  in your roasting pan and burned drippings is what you're trying to avoid. Burned drippings + too high heat while making the roux = smoke flavor city and not in the good "mesquite barbecue" sort of way. And trust me...I'm a Texan. I know good smoke flavor when I sees it!

As the roux darkens and thickens, take your chicken stock and slowly add it as you constantly stir. Constantly. Lumpy gravy is so old fashioned and unnecessary! You have to find your own perfect consistency here and it's all a fine balance of adding stock and reducing until you get there.

One final word of advice: do not attempt
to balance a heavy roaster against your
cardigan while cleaning the kitchen.
Chicken grease stains are almost guaranteed!

By now, your chicken's ready to be hacked apart. There are plenty of good resources on You Tube to show you just how to carve a bird and I had to watch the one from Cook's Illustrated about fifteen times before I got it right and didn't just hack the drumstick off like some crazy cavewoman. It's a great thing to know.

Easy right? Be warned, though, recovering from a meal like this is no easy feat. You're so busy with timetables and moving your food to the table that when you finally pick your head up and start clearing dishes, you might have a heart attack when you see the sorry state your kitchen is in. At least that's the case in my house. Lucky for me, P stopped off at the store and got my favorite Gnarly Head Old Vine Zin...which made everything better. Even clean up duty!

Happy eating!

Thursdays with Kermit: Farm-to-Table with Full Circle Farm

It was 4 degrees outside when I opened this box.
Amazing, right?

Some days, being a blogger is a lot of fun.

There are weeks and weeks where I swear nobody but my mom (and even that's not always a given) reads this thing and knows I exist.

But then every once in a while, someone in the food community reaches out and makes a connection. Whether its a story idea, a chance to try a service or product, or even a discussion about a new food-related technology, when I make connections with other food lovers or food companies, its a thrill.

Full Circle Farm recently revamped it's delivery services here in Alaska and wanted me to give it a try. In a galaxy far, far away a long, long time ago I had two CSA boxes delivered to me mid-winter. I lasted two boxes mostly because the produce was half-frozen and nearly decomposed by the time I got it to my table. I don't blame the company, really, that's just the reality of delivery options a few years ago. But it wasn't really budget smart and with the new, strange vegetables staring at me from the dark, cardboard depths, I lacked the motivation to try new things. New recipes. New vegetables. Neither really interested me back then.

Fast forward a bunch of years (and one food blog) later.

I love cooking. I love being brave with new food.

 I hate the fact that much of the produce available at those huge super stores are GMO franken-fruits that look spray painted and don't EVER spoil. (WTH is that about? An apple is supposed to rot eventually, right?)

 Full Circle has a new array of boxes and sizes to fit everyone's unique needs and now feature "Green Groceries" like chocolate, coffee, artisan cheese and breads, and sweets you can add to your weekly orders. Oh yes, I was curious.

This is week one for us and I nabbed our box in blistering Anchorage winds. My first thought was of frostbitten carrots and wilted lettuce. (Unfounded fears, really. All of my produce was amazing.) I started small. We got the seed order (for one to two adults) just in case it was too much produce for me to handle--if it was full of stuff my family didn't eat or I didn't know how to cook it would be such a huge waste.

And in case you're wondering, this week's produce included: new potatoes, green beans, a pomegranate, D'anjou pears, pink lady apples, lacinto kale, carrots, and sweet dumpling squash.

They even have a feature that lets you select what NOT to put in your box. Are you curious what some of mine are?

Well, no beets (I swear I taste dirt when I eat them), turnips (I just don't get the point of these poor tubers), and okra (slimy, fuzzy little beast that I mistake for a jalapeno at first, fast glance. Ack!)

It was the kale that caught my eye initially in this first box. I've never known what to do with the hearty winter green (or any green that looked like you might need the jaws of a Bull Mastiff to chew through). It always looked so...exotic and bitter. And it wilts pretty quickly in my experience (you know, that one time I bought it for juicing puposes and didn't touch it for the first six days...at which point it decomposed into a stink bomb in my fridge. Eww.).

On a  whim Wednesday night, I sauteed a bit of the kale with some butter and wine and garlic to assuage my fears that kale is a bitter, beastly monster that is going to foul up my kitchen and my stomach.

News flash:

Kale is FANTASTIC with butter and garlic! (I'm sure it's fantastic all on its own, but I'm working in baby steps here.) Even P thought it was fantastic as we finagled over the last few bites.

Right before the booze.

I was so impressed, I decided to invite kale on a date with my favorite green kitchen accessory, Kermit. Yes folks, I made soup. Again. I'm sure the month will be over soon and you'll miss my soup posts, so enjoy them while November lasts!

I had it in my mind that I had some Italian sausage links left over in my fridge from a pasta dish earlier this week. I set about grabbing up all sorts of ingredients and arranging them on the counter, and when I went to grab the sausage, I chose that exact moment to remember the sausage sandwiches P made us for lunch Tuesday afternoon. Dang.

Lucky for me, I'm a hoarder and I found about a cup of diced prosciutto from yet another pasta meal not too long ago. (I love cured meats. I love pasta. Fact and fact.)

And believe it or not, all of the ingredients were leftovers of some sort or another. I didn't have to leave the comforts of my house and  brave the 9 degree weather to buy anything.

On to the soup...

Prosciutto and Kale Soup

Ingredients:

2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 small onion, chopped finely
1 medium waxy potato diced into small cubes(Yukon is what I had)
A few handfuls of washed, chopped kale leaves
4 cups of chicken broth
Bouillon cube
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup dry white wine (I had Pinot Gris on hand)
1/2 tsp dried rosemary
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

I started with the alliums and the potato. In your soup vessel, saute the garlic and the onion, along with the potato, in the butter for a few minutes until the garlic and onion turn clear. Toss in the prosciutto and slowly add the wine and rosemary. Simmer for about two or three minutes to soften the wine. Add your broth, enough water to make you happy and a bouillon cube if you think your base is a little weak.

I added the kale at this point and covered. It simmered on a low, roiling simmer for about 30 minutes to ensure the potatoes were cooked through. They were. I seasoned to taste, lamented the fact that this was the third awesome soup that I had no fancy, crusty bread to eat with, and got on with my life.

It was fantastic.

The majority of the box didn't last long, I'm afraid to say. I ate those pears pretty hastily. The boys got Pink Lady apple slices with their waffle breakfast yesterday. The boys AND I took down the beautiful carrots before any other veggie even made it out of the box for inspection. (Oops.) The potatoes and green beans are slated for Sunday's roast chicken dinner, and the pomegranate is just waiting for some inspiration. The two funky looking squash, well, I'm looking into ways to stuffing them with sausage and bread crumbs. Wish me luck.

So, go forth and make soup, lovelies! And a million thanks to the farmers and folks at Full Circle for doing what they do. Could you imagine a life without farm food? More on that later.

Happy eating!

Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes with Chai Buttercream Frosting

With a capital C.

Can I get a heck yeah?!

If that title alone didn't get you jazzed about this post, you better check your pulse, m'friend. 'Cause we're talking Cupcakes with a capital C!

(Unless you don't like pumpkin, and then, well, it's ok. I forgive you, even.)

We stay on a pretty even straight-and-narrow when it comes to baking around here. Chocolate chip cookies for P and the boys. Ginger Crinkles for me. Peanut butter cookies for me and P. I rarely venture off just because I'm a big ol' chicken and I have night terrors about eating an entire batch of cookies by myself because my family has shunned them. (My fears are kind enough to constantly look out for my vanity. Sweet, right?)

But I stumbled across a recipe for pumpkin muffins that piqued my interest. Partly because my husband is a fanatic about pumpkin pies but mostly because I had a ton of canned pumpkin in the fridge from a failed attempt at pumpkin pancakes earlier in the week. Something had to be done use up that poor, neglected pumpkin.

We don't need no stinkin' stand mixer!

Something, indeed. From the land of one and a half-ton pumpkins, comes something truly worth that blessed squash's orangey goodness.

 I adapted the recipe into cupcakes by upping the sugar a bit and tinkering with the airiness of the crumb with the pain-in-the-butt mixing process.

(OK, it wasn't that bad. But I'm more of a dump-and-go sort of girl, so alternating ingredients as I mix them is definitely a step toward fussiness in my opinion.)

As ever, my constant kitchen companion Boo was my faithful helper, jabbing chubby toddler fingers into the batter and swiping my mixers fresh out of the bowl. I love that kid.

On to the cupcakes...

Pumpkin Pie Cupcakes with Chai Buttercream Frosting

Cupcakes:
1.5 cups all-purpose, unbleached flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1.5 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon each of ginger, clove, and nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1.5 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup canned pumpkin

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin tin with paper liners. Yields about 18 cupcakes.

Double sift flour, baking soda, spices, and salt into a medium sized bowl and set aside. In large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars well with a mixer. Add eggs one at a time and mix well before adding next. Add vanilla and mix well again, allowing the batter to expand slightly.

Here's where we get the extra work for the extra payoff:

To your butter/egg/sugar mixing bowl, alternate 1/3 of your flour with 1/3 of the canned pumpkin into the bowl. Repeat two more times, making sure you end with the last of the flour mixture. Add batter to individual tins, about 2/3 full. Bake 18-20 minutes and allow to cool completely.

Icing:
2 tablespoons of strongly brewed chai tea, cooled completely
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
4 cups confectioners sugar
1/4 cup cold milk

Combine ingredients and mix on high for 2-3 minutes. Spread on cooled cupcakes.

Happy eating!

Thursdays with Kermit: Split Pea Stew with Ham

Kermit the Pot with the early trappings of a fantastic green soup.

Just so we're clear, the Kermit part of my Thursday is NOT the soup. I didn't puree Kermit and make green soup. I swear!

Kermit is the name of my beloved, avocado green Dutch Oven. My makeshift soup pot I've just happened to have been hanging out with the past few Thursdays.

See, I am home with the tiniest tribe members on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Tuesdays, I'm still feeling a tad industrious and I'm usually cleaning. By Thursday, chances are I'm stressed out from the office job and couldn't care less if the toilets need a good scrub or what state the cat box is in downstairs. I just want comfort food and Jane Austen movies on the DVD player.

I've stated before I'm pretty much the only soup eater in the house at the moment, but I'm optimistic that one of these days, I'll hit a home run with Kermit that will get the entire gang on the soup bandwagon. One of these days.

About a month ago, I was at the grocery store and bought a bag of split peas. I have no clue why. My mom makes the BEST split pea soup and maybe I missed her and maybe the fact that they only cost $1.09 for the pound struck a nerve with my broke self. Who knows. Point is, I had them. And remembered them. And combine that with the fact that a guest brought over and entire cooked ham last weekend, and well, ingredients for a perfect split pea party...and Kermit's the guest of honor.

I searched high and low for recipes and they all seemed too fancy. I remember my mom's soup as being low-maintenance. None of this "herb bouquet" nonsense or the need to blend the damn thing with oven mitts and a face mask for protection against scalding hot splatters from the blender. No way.

I tried to decipher what the hell a ham hock was with no success. Was it that ginormous ham bone in the bowl with the gelatinous goo hanging from it? Aren't ham hocks the round things my dad used to throw at the dogs, who would subsequently yak it up on the living room carpet a few hours later? (Sorry. TMI. Guilty as charged.)

Mom's made plenty of batches of the stuff with no mystery hock in sight, so I rough chopped as much ham as I felt I needed and tossed it in. So there. It's my soup. I'll toss the disgusting ham jello in there if I feel like it! (But I don't, so no worries.)

This soup is perfect for days like today in Alaska. It's snowing  heavily. I don't have to go anywhere until later this afternoon when it's time to rescue the second grader from the giant snow pile known as elementary school. And I'm hungry. Hungry and in need of a "food hug" from Kermit.

I call this a stew only because it's not pureed. The onions remained onions, the peas remained peas. No minced garlic clove was liquefied in the making of this soup. It's rustic whereas the traditional version has to be passed through a sieve a few times. (Annoying, right?)

On to the soup...

Split Pea Stew with Ham

2.5 cups of rinsed and picked over split peas
5 cups of water
1 small onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons of thyme
Bay leaf
1 tsp salt (more or less, to taste)
Pepper, to taste
Ham hock (seriously, it always goes back to the ham hock) or 2 cups chopped, left over ham

Is this the hock? Or is this the bone?
Darn you, mysterious meat pieces!

I rinsed the peas and looked for stones. Once we were clear of any filling-shattering abnormalities, I tossed the peas into Kermit, doused them with water and started the stove on medium. While the water and peas heated, I chopped my onion and garlic and put them in the hot tub. To that, I added the bay leaf, ham, and thyme, some salt and pepper. You're going to need to season to taste again once the soup has cooked.

I left the soup on the stove in a light simmer for an hour and twenty minutes before checking on it. (Have you met my children? You'd understand how I could forget a simmering soup that long.) It was perfect. No blender needed. Crusty artisan bread? Sure. But remember who you're talking to here...I'm a sandwich bread sort of girl with Fred Meyer butter. And it still makes me happy.

Happy eating!

Thursdays with Kermit: Cannellini, Pasta and Chicken Soup

Funny how I’ve changed over the years.

I used to really scoff at soup unless it was tomato, the hour was noon, and there was a grilled cheese sandwich on a nearby plate. I just didn’t have time for soup. I am a pretty high-energy person and always moving and soup, well, it requires dexterity and patience to get more in your mouth than on your shirt and that’s just not me.

But then my friend Cecile and I wandered into a deli one lunch hour and we ventured into the Matzah ball soup zone. To this day it’s my go to when I’m sick or really just need some salty, brothy comfort. I loves me some Matzah ball soup. Really.

I also have a love affair with a chunky Basil Tomato bisque down at City Market when I’m feeling adventurous and crazy all in one (I can’t navigate the slim streets of that neighborhood in the snow without endangering old people and runners).

My mom has made this amazing Kermit-hued ham and split pea soup that I’ve loved since I was in college and I beg her to make it (and her whoopee pies) each time she visits.

See? Soup is growing on me!



Cast of characters, including the hard-to-describe shape of ditalini pasta.



And recently, a new service I subscribe to (e-mealz.com) called E-mealz suggested a soup for a weeknight dinner and I was intrigued.

But not foolish. My family does not consist of soup converts. Yet.

I took the recipe (what little I could remember) and set about on a brisk Thursday afternoon to create something close to it. It was a recipe for Chicken and Cannellini Soup but I’d forgotten the particulars. (After much googling, I know now that tomatoes are usually added , but I didn’t and now I like my version better, anway!)

Instead, I came up with my own hybrid, which I have also nicknamed “Immunity Soup” with all those A+ ingredients.

So without further ado…

The no-fail, unofficial, make-it-you- own guide to Cannellini, Pasta and Chicken Soup.

First, grab your favorite soup pot. Isn’t that such a vintage, homey feeling word? Soup pot. I love it. I do not, however, own a soup pot. I own an avocado green Dutch oven made by my own patron saint of the kitchen, Paula Deen. Soup pots be damned.

• I roasted a chicken a month ago and had plenty of stock left over after boiling the carcass to within an inch of its already deceased life. I grabbed a couple 3-cup frozen baggies of that. (But note that I am not above dumping in some water and a bouillon cube if need be. I am not proud!)

• I poached a few tenderloins of frozen chicken and tore them into small pieces. In the end, I had about two cups of chicken pieces from about four or five frozen tenderloins.

• I cut up some onion and about three large garlic cloves pretty finely. If celery is handy, I’ll cut up some of that, too. When the chicken is poached and picked, I’ll put a glob of olive oil in the soup pot and sauté these three (or two, whatever) til they start to submit. And go translucent.

• Add your stock (enough plus water if you’re low).

• Add your chicken.

• Open a can of white kidney beans and rinse them. I use a half can, you can use more. It's your soup. They're your beans. Get crazy with the Cheese Whiz.

• If I have small pasta (I happen to love Ditalini, small mini tubes) I’ll add a small handful, but not too much. I learned the hard way with my first batch of this that it grows when cooked. And crowds the soup with too much pasta and beans. And then it’s not even soup anymore and just a watery pasta bean thing that makes a mess.

• To all of this, I season with whatever I happen to feel that day. Rosemary. Salt. Pepper. Basil. Season salt. It’s up to you.

• I’ll juice half a lemon and add it early. Simmering will soften the flavor, but I find the lemon adds an awesome depth to the mild salty flavor.

• And finally, I tend to have spinach handy in the fridge and I love to tear up plenty of handfuls of that and throw it in.


• Put your cover on and simmer on low to medium heat (do not boil) for about 35 minutes. If you have parmesan cheese (grated, not powder), sprinkle it on top as a garnish.



The food snob in me would love to say “be sure to serve with a crusty artisan bread and boutique butter” but the realist in me will tell you that I actually slathered grocery store butter on some sandwich bread and it was pretty damn amazing with my soup. So there.





Happy eating...and happy SOUP days.



Prepping for Winter

I know, I know. It’s Halloween.

Gooey, lovely vanilla beans.

I should be posting Halloween food and related merriment.

But most likely, by the time you read this, I will have a belly ache. I will have pilfered through my son’s candy buckets in search of the good stuff—the mini Twix, the tiny Almond Joys.—for the past three hours and I’m likely drinking Alka Seltzer through a straw with the back of my hand to my forehead conjuring up my best Scarlet O’Hara.

So as I write this a few days in advance, I am thinking about winter and how to best prepare for it. I’m not talking the utilitarian, ingenious canning, either.

I’m talking Christmas, people!

Each year I get caught a week or two out from the grand day with very little to show for it when it comes to our close friends. We love these people. We see them (sometimes) daily, but for some reason I don’t connect them with Christmas (and that awkward moment when they have a brightly wrapped gift for you and you’ve got nothing but panic and embarrassment to offer).

Fear not, brave reader!


After one of my many refills. I love to
bake. Can you tell?

Last year my mom casually mentioned seeing homemade vanilla extract on a blog somewhere. That’s the language we communicate in—blog. We’re pretty much fluent in Pioneer Woman and Smitten Kitchen.

It happened to be the one nugget of information that didn’t slip through my goldfish brain that month and I secured a rather large jug of brandy and a bag of fresh Madagascar vanilla beans (thanks, Summit Spice & Tea!) that next week and set to steeping.

 I loosely followed a recipe here or there (and for your reference, here’s a great one) but basically I gave my sweet beans a boozy bath in a dark place for seven weeks and they gave me the best tasting baking accoutrement since brown sugar. It's pretty hard to mess this process up, despite my best attempts at it. The result?



Dang! That stuff is tasty.

I bought a large apothecary bottle at the vitamin store (yes, they have those and I still follow the Hulk's stellar advice like the good Hulk-a-maniac that I am). I  funneled the newly minted extract in because I thought homemade vanilla out of a Ziploc storage container just didn’t look right. (It didn’t.) And I haven't bought vanilla extract from the store since...mostly because I dont' have to (that made a huge amount of it) and totally because I don't want to.

To put it in perspective,  I had six vanilla beans and large (with the handle, even) jug of brandy. I used a big round plastic storage container with a lid (found in the grocery store right next to the plastic sandwich bags that I'm probably killing the environment with). Final ingredient was the top shelf of my messy, messy closet. Your alcohol can vary..some choose vodka. Others bourbon. I just happen to think brandy lends itself well to the task and who on earth wants to eat a vodka cookie? Wait. Don’t answer that.

(And yes, I know the clear alcohol does a bang-up job of extracting the flavor. I was really kidding.)

This year, I had P buy more brandy (because my license had expired and I fool myself into thinking I might still get carded). I bought the beans and ordered a dozen 2-ounce apothecary bottles. Voila! Christmas magic for me and my beautiful friends.

You should try it. Your cookies (and your lucky friends) will thank you. I might even thank you if you give me a cookie!

Happy eating (or brewing, as the case may be)!

The Art of Marriage...and Brownies

There are so many pieces of advice that people give when you get married.

 I've been wanting to talk about one in particular for a long, long time and how I struggle with it every day...people joke about how hard it is to combine stuff--but what about combining different palates onto one dinner table? Two sensibilities into one dessert?

That, I'm finding, is the hardest part of marriage. I miss tomato and pineapple pizzas. I miss cherry cobblers. Oatmeal and raisin cookies.

It's not that I can't bake them, it's that it is absolutely no fun sometimes to splurge by yourself. You want to impress, get those "oohs and ahhs" and you want to feel like you made someone's day. (I make my own day all the time...just ask the checkout girl at Barnes and Noble.)

My husband was most likely the model for the character Stoic in "How to Tame Your Dragon." He's solid. He rarely stumbles or wavers in his stances--whatever they are. He's my rock. He's also the man who orders the exact same drink from the exact same coffee cart (preferably from the exact same barista) each morning. He'll never order anything other than a Grilled Stuft Burrito from Taco Bell. He hates tomatoes. He doesn't enjoy any sort of fruit (other than the occasional apple) in his desserts. He likes what he likes and that's what he wants.

And then there is me. I never do the same thing the same way two times in a row. Never park in the same place twice in one week. Never order the same coffee drink more than once or twice every few days. Rarely get my hair styled the same way twice in a row. That's me. The eternal seeker. Him? He sought and he found and he's happy right where he is.

One of my love's most favorite desserts is a good pan of chewy brownies. He went through the pains of baking from various boxes and finally settled on the Duncan Hines brand Dark Chocolate. Don't. Stray. From. Path.

Do you know how hard that is for me? A few weeks ago I took his beloved Duncan Hines brownie mix and poured a delicious peanut butter fudge frosting all over them. (I found the fantastic idea from Southern Plate.)

It went over like...well, let's just say it didn't go over. The boys and I ate ourselves silly on the peanut butter fudge. But P, well, I messed with two things: peanut butter (by making it taste fudgey) and brownies (by making them taste peanut butter fudgey). He was gracious and tried to be enthusiastic, but the fact that they survived the night mostly untouched spoke volumes.*sigh*

Crestfallen is the best word to describe me. (Crestfallen...and bloated from all those damn brownies I ate by myself.)

Don't get me wrong, he is a very supportive eater of all things baked. I was just looking for that "wow" moment where I impress him...and all my crazy kitchen  adventures just seem to fall short. (I'm starting to think my blog should have been named "crazykitchen" instead.)

And here's the point in the story where I finally impressed myself. (That's fun, too!)

I wanted brownies. I was stranded at home with the minions while P went to church to put in a good word for our bunch. I had no brownie mix...but what I did have was my grandmother's recipe cards with a King Arthur Flour recipe cut and taped to a faded index card. I tinkered a bit and came up with the most outstanding brownies I have ever tried. No fake sugar taste. No high fructose corn syrup. No preservatives. All chocolate. (And more chocolate.) It had a crust, by goodness, that was salty and sweet and the tiniest bit crunchy that I loved.

Did I mention they were fantastic? I even impressed P, regardless of the fact that he thought they could have been a little more "chocolately." (Yes, hard to please, but I love him anyway!) I started to have hurt feelings that they didn't bowl him over...but then, suddenly, I didn't care. I had won myself over, and every now and then...well, that's all that matters. Yay me!!

Super Easy Brownies (if only to impress yourself)


(adapted from King Arthur Flour and Challenge Butter recipes)

1 c. flour
1.5 c. granulated sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 stick of butter, melted
3/4 unsweetened cocoa powder
3 eggs
1/3 c. oil
2 tsps. vanilla
1/2 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 350. Grease an 8 or 9-inch square pan well.

In a large bowl, combine flour, sugars, cocoa, and salt. Stir in the melted butter, oil, eggs, and extract. Spoon evenly into prepared pan and bake 35-40 minutes until brownies begin to pull away slightly from the edges.

Happy eating!

Violet Beauregard Jam (Blueberry Ginger)

I've mentioned on Twitter that I'm all amped up about this year's Alaska State Fair for some reason. I'm entering my son's artwork, some jams, and maybe a buttermilk pie of my own and I cannot wait.

Alternately, it's just about rhubarb season around here at the farmer's markets and I always seem to come home with armfuls of the stuff. Last summer I posted a recipe here for the Strawberry Rhubarb Jam, which I made again this morning. I love it.

I also stepped out a bit and tinkered with a Blueberry Ginger Jam that I'd like to enter at the fair. So far, I'm pretty impressed with it, but it's hard NOT to be impressed with syrupy, sweet goodness as soon as you're done boiling it. We'll see how it stacks up to a multi-grain English muffin in the morning, after a night in the ol' ice box to cool it's heels.

In the meantime, if you have access to fresh blueberries, give it a whirl.

Violet Beauregard Jam (Blueberry Ginger)

(I know, I know, but I couldn't help but sing the Oompa Loompa song and think of the girl with the gum addiction as I squeezed the hell outta these blueberries. Seems so fitting, doesn't it?!)

3 cups blueberries, rinsed and mashed roughly
3.5 cups of sugar
1 T lemon juice
2 T finely chopped crystallized ginger
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1-3 oz envelope fruit pectin


Combine berries, ginger, lemon juice, and pectin in large saucepan or dutch oven over medium-high heat. Bring to slow bubble. Add sugar, and return to rolling boil for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Allow to cool at least 5 minutes before transferring to prepared jars. Enjoy!