First, the big daddy: a KitchenAid mixer! It’s a 5-quart, bowl-lift, heavy duty model. I’ve just used it a couple of times, but it’s been great so far. It mixes really well, and you barely have to scrape the bowl. AND you just flip it on, and you can go get the next batch of ingredients ready and it just sits there working. It seems powerful too. I was making some banana bread muffins with it, dumped in some mostly-frozen bananas, and it mashed them up pretty easily.

This is a neat little whisk that my wife found a few weeks before Christmas. Unlike your typical wire whisk, this one is pretty firm, and the straight edges are great for sauce pans. It has a 10-year warranty too!

This is a food chopper that my wife received as a gift. Its like a mini food-processor. The container holds just a few cups of ingredients, and the power button is just a pulse (or push and hold). Its just the right size to be handy and not get in the way in our small kitchen.

Next, is the Whirley Pop! Its a pretty simple device to make popcorn on the stove-top. While it cooks, you twist the handle which turns the stirrers inside to keep the popcorn from burning. It makes popcorn really fast, and you can even make kettle corn as good as you get from the Fair (or baseball/basketball games).

Last, but not least, are cookbooks! One is a cookbook for recipes in which all the ingredients come from CostCo. The other is about barbecueing everything from burgers to ribs to fish to octopus (where do I buy octopus???). The third one is all about RIBS! Luckily, I like ribs enough to forgive this book for not having any pictures. (: Good pictures in a cookbook can really convince you to try to make something new and yummy.

Overall, Christmas was a nice holiday. We spent time with family, and had plenty of good food to eat. Oh yeah… I made Tres Leches cake for everyone to try. Only one person didn’t like it (out of like 10-12) due to the ’soggy cake’ texture. Everyone else seemed to like it.

Happy New Year!

As you can see, its just big enough to cook a single egg, and it keeps it perfectly round. Its got a great non-stick coating too.

Cooked the candy mixture up to temperature:

Poured the molds, and inserted the sticks:

Tada! Easy! These are raspberry (looks like I went a bit heavy on the coloring):

I decided to try another batch. This time, they would be cinnamon flavored. I cooked it up, poured it into the molds (using a smaller mold this time), and went to put the sticks in… but they wouldn’t go. The suckers had hardened too much by the time I got done pouring that I couldn’t put the sticks in!

Well, I guess  they’re still edible as hard candies. I think the smaller molds caused the problem because each sucker didn’t hold as much heat. Overall, they also cooled down much faster than the larger, spherical suckers (1-2 hours vs 3-4 hours for the larger). I used the leftover goo/lava to make a few spheres.

This first recipe is the family recipe that I used. Below is an alternate that’s supposed to be good too (it looks like it would make a larger batch).

Ingredients

2C Sugar
1/2C Light corn syrup
1/2C water
1 tsp flavoring (raspberry flavor, bubblegum flavor, cinnamon oil, etc)
1/2 tsp food coloring

Directions

1. Lightly butter the molds
2. Blend sugar, corn syrup, and water in a sauce pan
3. Cook without stirring until candy thermometer reads 300F (hard crack)
4. Stir in flavoring and coloring
5. Fill molds. Insert sticks. The sticks will slowly tip over, so just keep straightening them until they stand on their own

Or, an alternate recipe:

Ingredients

1 C Karo syrup
3 C Sugar
1 C Water
1 tsp each: flavoring, coloring

Directions

1. Stir the sugar, water, and syrup together
2. Cook to 300F, without stirring
3. Stir in flavoring and coloring
4. Pour into molds

Tips

• Be careful. That stuff is HOT! (No! I didn’t get burned)
• When you pour in the flavoring and coloring, it will suddenly boil and splash all over. Be careful.
• Wait for the molds to cool completely to room temperature before opening them.

You can even make flat suckers, without molds, just by pouring them on a pan and putting a stick in them. Mickey Mouse suckers, anyone?

Did you know that Buffalo wings were invented at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, NY? I spent a couple of years in western New York and the food there is wonderful! Of course, I ate plenty of wings, and wings are a lot more popular there than they are here. All the pizza shops in western New York (Pontillo’s Pizza and La Nova Pizza especially) know how to cook some good wings and a “pizza and wings” combo is pretty much a standard order. Bars even have “wing night” where wings are $0.10/each. TEN CENTS A WING! Compare that to Wingers: 12 wings / $11 = $1.09 PER WING!!!

Naturally, I had to figure out how to make my own. Luckily, they’re pretty easy: cook the wings, then drench in sauce!

Deep frying the wings isn’t hard to figure out. They’ll start to float and stick together when they’re done. Set on paper towels to get some of the grease off. I like to cook them until the skin is just a little crispy — very tasty!

The sauce starts with equal portions of Franks Red Hot sauce and melted butter. Mix together well. Now microwave it for about 30 seconds to warm it up. Next is the customization. I never measure my ingredients, and my sauce comes out a little bit different each time. Add some ketchup to make it “saucier”. Add some honey to make it slightly sticky and sweet. Add a touch of garlic and anything else that sounds good…

Get a well-sealed container put the wings and sauce in, and shake to coat the wings.

Lately, the hot sauce is a bit harsh on my stomach. (Am I getting old?) So, I’ve been making barbeque-sauced wings, and honey-sesame wings. I’ve also started baking my wings in the oven — it cooks them quite well, and hopefully its a little healthier. They take about 45 minutes at 400F. Its also easy to clean up: just line your cookie sheet with aluminum foil, then you just have to throw that away.

A barbeque-wing sauce is mostly barbeque sauce and some butter to thin it out a little. You can add your own flavors as well. The honey-sesame sauce is just a chinese food spice packet from the grocery store. Any other flavors I should know about? (:

Ingredients:

2C Bisquick mix
2/3C Milk
2/3C Cheese (cheddar, grated)
1/4C Butter (melted)
1 Tbsp. Garlic
1 Tbsp. Chives

Directions:

1. Mix Bisquick and milk until moist
2. Add cheese to mix
3. Spoon onto baking sheet, and brush generously with melted butter and garlic and chives
4. Bake at 450F for 8-10 minutes, until the tops are lightly browned

I spent some time searching around. I was considering making some chicken wings, shrimp cocktail, chicken quesadillas, or a few other things… but I always like making new recipes and I hadn’t quite found that perfect something. So, on the day of the party, I was frantically searching for something tasty to make, and I found it. It was a fruit salsa and cinnamon chips! Its pretty quick and doesn’t take much work to make. The recipe is here: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Annies-Fruit-Salsa-and-Cinnamon-Chips/Detail.aspx

I wrote down all the ingredients that I would need to buy, and went to the store. After we got back and began working on it, we realized that I had forgotten to write down the strawberries! And, the strawberries are a pretty large part of the recipe.. But, neither strawberries or raspberries are in season so we hadn’t bought fresh raspberries because we were going to use a frozen berry mix that we had in the freezer. It worked great! It was a mix of raspberries, blueberries, and black berries.

Fruit Salsa and Cinnamon Chips

Ingredients

2 kiwis, peeled and diced
2 Golden Delicious apples - peeled, cored and diced
8 ounces raspberries
1 pound strawberries
2 tablespoons white sugar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
3 tablespoons fruit preserves, any flavor

10 (10 inch) flour tortillas
butter flavored cooking spray
2 cups cinnamon sugar

Directions

1. In a large bowl, thoroughly mix kiwis, Golden Delicious apples, raspberries, strawberries, white sugar, brown sugar and fruit preserves. Cover and chill in the refrigerator at least 15 minutes.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
3. Coat one side of each flour tortilla with butter flavored cooking spray. Cut into wedges and arrange in a single layer on a large baking sheet. Sprinkle wedges with desired amount of cinnamon sugar. Spray again with cooking spray.
4. Bake in the preheated oven 8 to 10 minutes. Repeat with any remaining tortilla wedges. Allow to cool approximately 15 minutes. Serve with chilled fruit mixture.

Tips

• As I mentioned above, I forgot to buy strawberries, and used a frozen fruit mix instead. The one I used had raspberries, black berries, and blueberries. I let it thaw about half way before mixing with the other fruit.
• Refrigerate the mixture 10-15 minutes before serving. It lets the juices from all the fruit mingle together.
• I used 2 tablespoons each of raspberry preserves and apricot preserves. I microwaved them for 30 seconds to melt, and then stirred that together with the sugar, and then put the fruit in and folded the fruit into the sauce
• FOLDING is important! Don’t mash your fruit by stirring it. Yes, folding is like stirring, but its kind of just like bringing the stuff in the bottom of the bowl to the top.
• We made 3 cookie sheets of tortilla chips, and the ones we liked the best were the ones that were a little crisp, but still a little soft in the middle. They break where you bite them, and not just shatter like a potato chip. 10 minutes in the oven is just about the right amount of time.

Everyone at the party enjoyed the fruit salsa! I really liked the mixture of fruits, and I was surprised by how tasty the juices were. The cinnamon chips were a big hit too. This recipe could be used as an appetizer, a dessert, or even just a snack any time. Try this one!

Oh, and if you’re looking for some other appetizer ideas to try, here are a few things that other people brought to the party:

• mini shish-kabobs: grilled steak and sausages with a red pepper mayonnaise mixture on the side
• grilled asparagus in a creamy cheese sauce
• bacon-wrapped breadsticks
• fresh baked bread
• sauteed mushrooms
• fritata with artichoke hearts, potatoes and goat cheese
• tuna pudding on rye bread
• fresh fruit and vegetables

Recipe below…

Pumpkin Whoopie Cookies

From http://www.culinaryconcoctionsbypeabody.com/2008/09/28/i-was-doing-so-good/

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 TBSP cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground fresh nutmeg
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed
1 cup canola oil
3 cups chilled pumpkin puree
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare to baking sheets lined with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and spices. Set aside.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk to sugars and oil together. Add the pumpkin puree and whisk to combine thoroughly. Add the eggs and vanilla and whisk until combined.
4. Sprinkle the flour mixture over the pumpkin mixture and whisk until completely combined.
5. Use a small ice cream scoop with a release mechanism to drop healing TBSP of the dough onto the prepared baking sheets, about 1 inch apart.
6. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the cookies are just starting to crack on top and a toothpick inserted into the center of a cookie comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let the cookies cool completely on the pan while you make the filling. They will look more like mini cakes then cookies, so don’t panic about that.

Maple Syrup Cream Cheese Filling

3 cups powdered sugar
½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
3 TBSP maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter until smooth with no visible lumps. Add the cream cheese an beat until combined.
2. Add the powdered sugar, maple syrup and vanilla and beat until smooth. Be careful no to overbeat the filling, or it will lose structure.

To assemble:
Turn half the cooled cookies upside down. Pipe filling (about a TBSP) onto that half. Place another cookie, flat side down, on top of the filling. Press down slightly so that the filling spread to the edges of the cookie. Repeat until all the cookies are used. Put the whoppie pies in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes to firm before serving.

Tips

• I mixed the ingredients for the frosting, but before adding the maple syrup, I split it into thirds. With one-third, I made the maple, another third was cinnamon, and the last was plain. The plain was the most popular, followed by cinnamon, and then maple. The maple flavor wasn’t very strong, just people didn’t dare to try it. Also, the maple thins the frosting, so the top cookie squishes it out easier.
• Make sure you bake the cookies long enough. You’re going to have to handle them, so if they’re too soft they’re just going to break apart. I think I ended up baking for 12-15 minutes. The toothpick test is the best way to tell if they’re done
• Keep your cookies small and round. They’ll be easier to match up for stacking one atop the other.

“I made ‘em extra schloppy for ya!” (lunch lady from Billy Madison)

A few recipes below…

Sloppy Joes #1

This recipe is from my wife’s family, and is a good one for sloppy joes. With a few tweaks and additions it could be a great one.

Ingredients

2 lb. Hamburger
2 onions, chopped
1 can Tomato soup
1/2 C. Heinz ketchup
2 Tbsp. Brown Sugar
1 1/2 tsp. Chili Powder
1 1/2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp. Salt
1 1/2 tsp. Dry Mustard
1/2 tsp. Curry Powder

Directions

Brown hamburger, drain off excess grease/juice. Add all the ingredients. Simmer for 15-30 mins before serving.

Tips

• I made these last night, and the spices didn’t quite cook together, so it probably should have simmered for longer
• Adding a little water (and then boiling it off) may help the spices combine
• We once added some barbeque sauce to alter the flavor — good.

—

Sloppy Joes #2

This is the recipe that my mom makes.. well, sorta. I don’t know if its written down anywhere, and I don’t quite remember it. You’ll have to use your imagination. (: I’ll see if I have this recipe written down somewhere, or get a copy soon.

Ingredients

Ground beef
Chicken gumbo soup
ketchup
mustard
brown sugar
??? I don’t remember

Directions

Cook the ground beef, and drain off grease/juices. Mix all ingredients, simmer, then serve.

Tips

• The chicken gumbo soup has rice in it, so that’s a little different than usual
• The flavor is usually on the sweeter side. I don’t mind that though.

—

Sloppy Joes #3

This is a recipe I found, and have been meaning to try. So if you try this one, let me know how it turns out in the comments.

Link: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2008/03/sunday-supper-sloppy-joes.html

Ingredients

1 pound ground beef
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon vinegar
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1 cup finely chopped celery
1/2 cup diced onion
1 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons flour, or more
6 sandwich buns

Directions

1. Brown the beef in a skillet over medium heat; pour off fat.
2. In a small bowl, mix together the brown sugar, vinegar, and mustard. Add this mixture to the beef along with the celery and onion, and ketchup. Stir together to combine.
3. Sprinkle flour over mixture and stir to mix well. If mixture is still not thick enough to your liking, add a bit more flour until it is. Serve on buns.

Have a favorite sloppy joe recipe that I should try? Share it in the comments! And remember to always make them extra sloppy! (I just like saying that)

What does “roasting” mean? It just means to bake. Only, you bake a cake, and you roast meat!

I found the Good Eats episode on YouTube (2 parts):

First, you’re going to need a whole chicken. I picked up mine on sale a few weeks ago, and then froze it. At the beginning of the week, I moved it to the refrigerator to thaw (unthaw? they both mean the same thing…) it so that I could cook it this week.

Get out your cutting board, knife, boning scissors, etc., and open that chicken up. With other roast chicken recipes you’ll see the chicken roasted as-is (whole), but I like the way Alton opens it up. It should cook much quicker and more evenly that way. Here’s roughly how to do that: (from the video part2 above)

1. Cut along both sides of the backbone, and remove it
2. Open the chicken up (breast-side down), and cut/pull out the ‘keel bone’
3. Turn it over (breast up), and press down a little to get it flat

Now, mine looks like this:

Next, it’s time to season it. Today I’m using Famous Dave’s Country Roast Chicken rub. For whatever seasonings you choose, here’s the idea:

• Sprinkle the underside, and rub it in. Turn the bird over
• Find or cut a few openings in the skin and put some seasoning in there, and rub around with your fingers
• Sprinkle some seasonings over the outside of the skin

Now, you’ll need your roasting pan. If you have a rack, you can put the chicken on the rack, if not, you can use a bed of vegetables like Alton does in the videos above. The vegetables are called mirepoix. What’s a mirepoix? It’s carrots, celery, and onions that sit in the bottom of the pan and give the chicken some aromatic flavoring. You can then use the mirepoix as a base for gravy. Here’s mine all prepped:

Its in the refrigerator now, just waiting to be cooked. That will come in a few hours.

[Now, I'm finishing this a few days later]

I cooked the chicken at 350F for almost an hour. Alton Brown uses just the broiler, but when I tried that it didn’t cook the meat through enough. I did finish mine in the broiler for a few mintues to give it more of a tan.

I also made some mashed potatoes, gravy, and green beans to round out the meal. My gravy needs some work. The chicken was very good though. It was juicy, and the spices were just right. I forgot to take a picture of the cooked bird as a whole, but here was my plate about 3 seconds before I devoured it:

What’s next? Maybe I’ll try a turkey soon. It is almost turkey season now…

Details below…

As you can see from the picture, I use:

• Betty Crocker Pizza dough mix (just add 1/2 cup water!)
• Ragu Pizza sauce
• mozzarella cheese
• olives
• pepperoni

Tips:

• Cook your pizza on the very lowest pizza rack, at 450F.
• I cook it 10-12 minutes — just until the cheese starts to brown.
• Don’t use too much sauce, or the crust may come out soggy. I use almost half a jar per pizza. Its enough for a thin layer over the whole crust.

You could even make a barbecue chicken pizza. Or an alfredo-sauced pizza. Or… ?