Sweet Treats for that Gift Giving Time of Year!

Joe reminded me that I should take a holiday treat up to Shriners Children's Hospital when we went to get Hannah Jane's prosthetic fixed.  It was, oh, 9pm the night before when I remembered this on the drive home from Ruhi.  I looked around the store for something already made that would still be a treat, but a plastic box of store bought cookies doesn't exactly scream, "Hey!  You're super special!"  Right?  So I threw together some chocolate popcorn and pretzel mix!  It was soooooooo yumalicious!

If you want your own, you'll need wax paper, a ziplock bag, 2 bags of microwave popcorn, half a bag of pretzels, half a brick of white almond bark, and a few drops of food coloring.

Spread out a nice big area of wax paper and place objects on the corners to keep it from rolling up.  As you can see, it doesn't matter what you use.  Me?  I used a naked baby doll, a bottle of Pamprin, and some glasses.  LOL!  Classy, huh?  Pop your corn and spread it out in one layer on the wax paper, being careful to remove the unpopped kernels.  That's my least favorite part.  If you're not in a hurry, let it cool a bit before removing those piping hot little corns!  Ouch!  And my experience is that if you microwave both bags back to back, the second bag ALWAYS burns a little.  Maybe that's just my microwave, but now I've learned to be patient and let the microwave have a few minutes between bags so that I don't end up picking out burnt kernels too!  Spread your pretzels out as well.    Try to get them super close together without overlapping because the more chocolate that drizzles over the paper, the less that is on your food.  And when you break up the snacks in the end, the chocolate tends to pull off of the food  when there's a lot on the paper around it.

Microwave your Almond Bark according to the directions.  With the amount of food I coated, I used half a giant package and this resulted in 3 gift bags worth of snackage.  Once it's creamy and smooth, you can add coloring if you wish.  I went for a nice wintery blue.  Spoon the mix into a ziplock bag and snip a VERY SMALL amount off of the corner to use as a piping bag.  Give it a gentle squeeze and start slinging it all across your snacks!

Let it all cool and harden and then gently break apart the snacks into reasonable sized chunks and load them into a cute gift bag!

You could go all out and divide your chocolate into different colors and layer it.  You could do school colors for teacher gifts.  You can also melt the Almond Bark in a crock pot and just dump in your snacks and swirl them around before spreading it out on the wax paper.  This deflates the pop corn a little and uses much more almond bark per food content, but I did it with a popcorn and craisin mix for Hannah Jane's girl scout troop and they loved it!  So, you can do a lot with Almond Bark and it's a fairly inexpensive goody to keep on hand during this time of year when neighbors drop by unexpectedly with a little token of holiday cheer and you want to have something to give back.  Enjoy!!!!

Poached Pear Souffle Cheater Style

I saw this adorable Poached Pear souffle cake over here at Tartlett and thought it looked divine.  I wanted to serve these little gems to my guests at our monthly interfaith study circle, but the recipe was really involved and when you have young 3 kids in the house, you need those last few moments before your guests' arrival to go back and clean up after your kids who went behind you while you were cleaning up to recreate their mess masterpieces.  My point is just that anything that needs a lot of work at the last second isn't for me at this stage in my life.

But I love the whole semi-home made thing that Sandra Lee has mastered, so I knew I could pull off the glamor of these little babies without the last minute kitchen duty.  The results were fantastic, if I do say so myself.  Here are my steps to getting the mega-recipe look with minimal effort. 

I bought 6 pears, a box of Betty Crocker Super Moist Butter Pecan Cake mix, and utilized the spices that I already had on hand.  I also let my Granny buy me some cute little ramekins for my birthday.  For 2 months now she's been asking, "what did I buy you for your birthday?"  Meaning, what did you pick out and how much do I owe you for it?

First, I peeled the pears and placed them upright in a large pot, I poured in 4 cups of water and added some cinnamon, all spice, cloves, and vanilla to the water.  No specific amounts.  Just what I like in the amount I assumed would do the trick.  The original recipe calls for whole spices, but my budget only allows for ground  spices so I made it work.  I brought all of this to a boil and then let it simmer for about a half hour before removing the pears.  I kept the liquid on the stove to make the house smell nice when my guests arrived!

I mixed the cake batter according to the box directions.  You could use any batter that suits you, or go all out and use the homemade recipe I linked to above.  Once the batter was made, I filled the ramekins half full (which was too full, by the way) and plopped a pear down in the middle of each.  One of my pears fell over, and one baked on the slant.  I placed all of that in the oven and baked according to the cake batter instructions for cupcakes.

Once everything was out of the oven, I sprinkled the tops with confectioner's sugar and crushed almonds.  So pretty!!!  The moist pear keeps the cake from getting too caky and keeps that custard/souffle texture that the original recipe was aiming for.  If you really want to emphasize that, you can bake it for slightly less time that you need for cupcakes. 

After dinner, each guest received their own gorgeous dessert!  It's so nice to have something pretty, that makes your guests feel like you put a ton of time into it, that really didn't cost you much of your day. 

Pate de Fruit with Apples!

Yes, I know you thought I was done blogging about apples, that I had made every possible apple thing there is to make.  But you were wrong.  I'm back with one more applicious delight!  Apple Pate de Fruit, Apple Pastes, or, as someone at our study circle called them last night, Applettes.  Anyone ever heard of applettes?  She said, "What?  You lived in the northwest and you don't know what applettes are?"  No.  I've never heard of applettes.  I don't even know how to spell them, so forgive me if this is wrong. 

Whatever you call them, they are simply divine.  To die for (in a not so literal sense).  Like sweet nectar melting in your mouth.  I should stop.  Fruit of the heavens.  Okay, seriously.

Were they hard to make?  Not exactly.  Were they intimidating as all get out?  Yup.  And I'm sure my few French friends out there will tell me that I messed things up, but my very American version of this French candy I've never of before turned out so good that I don't even care what the legit French think!  I'm calling it a success beyond words!

I used the recipe here, but let me tell you, some adjustments need to be made.  Really.  Take my word for it.  You can pop over there and see the recipe for yourselves so I'm not going to repost the whole thing.  Here are my adjustments, though, to make your life easier.

~The recipe says to peel the apples, poach them whole, and then slice.  Don't do it.  Slice those babies first because honestly it's unnecessarily difficult to slice soft apples.  I know they look pretty in the pot, but the pretty isn't worth the extra work.

1X1's before I quartered them

~It says to pour it into a 8X8 pan.  I used 9X11 and they were still thicker than I would have liked.  To compensate, I cute the 1 inch squares into 4ths.  Tiny little candies.  The texture of these little delights is such that too big a mouthful of could easily rip out some dental work.  Petite is best.  8X8 would make the candies so thick that no amount of cutting would save you.  In my humble opinion, of course.

the kids enjoyed tossing the candies in the powdered sugar

~The recipe doesn't say anything about tossing your candies in confectioners sugar, but you really should unless you plan to eat them all on the spot.  Well, even if that's your plan, the sugar is just plain yummier.  But it also serves as a bit of a buffer to keep your candy dish from being like your great-grandma's.  You know the dish where you pick up the pic of ribbon candy from the top and the whole bowl comes up with it?  Yeah.  Not good.  A little coat of confectioners sugar will keep them from clinging to one another.

Other than that, I call this recipe perfection.  It has my kids thinking I'm brilliant and made my dinner guests smile.  Can't beat that!  Give it a try and let me know if you come up with any amazing flavor combos!

Apple Days are here Again!

 It's been another good apple years in the Hollow!  The same family that 2 years ago blessed us with box after box of apples from their larger than life orchard offered again this year to let us come pick from their trees.  We took them up on their generous offer and loaded up on apples.  For every one we picked, four fell from the tree. 

 Hannah Jane commented that none of these apples had stickers on them.  Crack me up!  When I laughed she got all indignant and said, "Well I know that people put the stickers on them.  I get that they don't grow with stickers.  I've just never seen so many without them!"  What a funny observation!

Now that the cart was full, it was time to head home and begin the considerable ordeal of turning our apple bounty into something tasty for winter.

Here in our little Mayberry, it is the time of year when men can be seen out and about on their own with bushel of children, simply keeping all the little hands out of the kitchen where mom stands chained to the stove upon which both pressure and water bath canner run at full tilt as her fingers prune from having peeled 200 apples in the last few hours.  It's a beautiful time of year! 

We bought a peeler this year!  Hooray!  can you believe that last time I hand peeled those apples with a little knife the way my Nana used to do?  This gadget changed the quality of my life during apple season.  Seriously, it's value cannot be overstated. 

Scandalously naked apples in seconds!

The long ribbons of peels from the peeler were instantly called eels and the kids ate them with giggles and dramatics!

I keep this blog as my own little cookbook so that I can have an easily accessible record of my favorite recipes (did you think I was keeping it for you?  Oh.  Sorry.) and because I can't lose a recipe under a stack of school books if it's online.  There's almost nothing I can't lose at home.  Seriously.  Nothing.  So I googled myself and my apple pie recipe.  Nothing?  Apple sauce?  Yes.  Apple butter? Yes.  But my apple pie recipe was nowhere to be found.  Total bummer. 

So I went to my favorite canning site, Pick Your Own, and looked at her recipe.  She has never done me wrong, so I assume this is going to be some good pie.  However, in her comments she said that you shouldn't mess with the recipe to lower the sugar because it simply isn't as good.  Well, for me the whole point of canning is a combination of saving money and increasing the nutritional value of what I feed my family.  When I can it, I know they are getting zero preservatives and less sugar.  So yes, I used water instead of apple juice. 

I wanted to be able to run both of my canners at the same time to cut down on how long I had to be heating up the house so I googled a the time and pounds of pressure for apple pie and found that the intense and unnecessary heat of the pressure canner can turn your pie filling into apple sauce.  So, I pressure canned my apple sauce and water bathed my apple butter and pie filling. 

I canned all day and all night.  By my calculation, I worked with those apples for 12 hours total over the course of 2 days.  My fingers were wrinkly.  I pulled a muscle (don't laugh) from bending over hundreds of times in a day to get a new apple from the basket.  But the fruits of my labors were sweet!

Check that out!  The quarts are mostly pie filling, the pints are mostly apple sauce, and the tiny jars are my apple butters with a few exceptions.  It's apple mania, I'm telling you!  The pies won't become too desirable until mid October when we've forgotten how sick of apples we became this week.  The apple sauce is under high demand on cold mornings if I'm willing to warm it up and stir in a bit of cinnamon.  But that apple butter...oh, the apple butter on toast with a cup of tea is just perfect any old crisp time of day in fall or winter (or summer, or spring).  You simply can never have too much apple butter.  It's a taste of bygone times, when great grandmothers bestowed gifts more precious that jewels upon their extended families in the form of jarred goodness.  Jarred food that had been prepared without thought of sugar content, reckless with calories, and with heaping cupfuls of love.  That's the taste of apple butter. 

Okay...if your mouth is watering now, scroll back up to the link and make your own apple butter.  You will not regret it.  And if you are blessed with a neighbor like ours, or an apple orchard of your own, what are you waiting for?  Get to canning!

Breakfast cookies? Yup!

Sounds too good to be true.  Right?  Whe I saw this over on the Once a Month Mom, I had two thoughts.  One, it's just another trick to get us to feed our kids complete junk first thing in the morning.  Might as well buy Fruit Loops or something.  Or two, it taste so bad my kids will never eat it.  I don't know about you, but all of these "kid friendly" healthy recipes find no favor with my kids.  The whole sneaky chef thing has backfired in this houe on more than one occasion.  So we have junk food once in a while and we eat health food most of the time and we call it all exactly what it is.  So the thought of a healthy breakfast cookie automatically sounded like a bad idea.

Hannah Jane went to Lowes with Joe and the boys and I stayed home yesterday, so I mentioned the breakfast cookie to see what they thought and they totally wanted to make it.  Why not?  If it stinks, we'll toss them and will have enjoyed the time cooking together.

I did change the recipe a bit.  I took out the wheat germ because, well, that's just a no go in this house.  I took out about half of the sugar as well.  You can click that link I tossed out earlier to see the original recipe.  I'll give you mine.  My version makes enough to feed our family of 5 twice.  I threw half in the freezer and I'll just set them on the counter to thaw overnight before we want to eat them next.

Ingredients:

* 4 cups rasisin bran
* 1.5 cups flour
* .5 cup brown sugar
* 1.5cup yogurt
* .5cup oil
* 2 egg
* 1 tsp. salt
* 1 tsp. baking soda
* 4 tsp. vanilla
* 2 cup dried cranberries

Just smoosh the flakes in a ziplock.  The boys particularly liked this job.  Little Brutes!
 

Then you mix all of the ingredients in a bowl and spoon the mix into  blobs onto a cookie sheet.  Bake them at 375 for 10 minutes and you've got breakfast wonders.  The kids absolutely loved them, and were totally full after just 2 cookies.  If you've ever eaten with my kids, you know what a big deal that is.  Hunter regularly eat 4 eggs all by himself in the morning and then still whines about being hungry.  These are some hearty cookies!
 
Try 'em out, change them up, and let me know what you find makes a perfect breakfast cookie!

Independence never tasted so sweet!

I realized that I've been posting some foodie things over at my other home on the web and neglecting to send them over here as well.  Were you feeling neglected?  Here's my fave new treat for the 4th that I'm copying from over on At Home with Momma Skyla's!  Enjoy!

Apparently this town of ours has issues with doing fireworks on the holiday itself.  This marks maybe 3 years here and we've never ever gone to see them on the actual 4th.  I think.  Last year I had my wisdom teeth removed the day before and with the painkillers, I can't exactly say anything for certain about that holiday.

Anyway, it crept up on me this year.  We were leaving a friend's house after dinner a couple of nights ago and she asked if we wanted to join them for the fireworks show on Friday.  What?!?!?  Friday?  I have absolutely nothing cool planned for the kids!  Ack!

But then I was wasting time on facebook and saw a little gem in the sidebar.  A small ad which asked, "Do you support American products?" and had a picture of a red white and blue strawberry under it.  Now, I never click on fb ads.  Never ever.  So I can't give credit to the site that posted it because I have no idea what the company or group was.  But I did decide to rip off the idea and post it here to share.  Sorry advertiser!  We're doing this my way and you're not even going to get to spam me over it!

On the way home from the library we stopped at our friendly neighborhood hole-in-the-wall grocery store and paid far too much for these 3 simple items:

 Strawberries

 blue sprinkles

And White chocolate chips.  That's it!

I assume you are supposed to use a double boiler for chocolate, but until yesterday I hadn't even taken the time to google what a double boiler is.  Now I know.  But I still won't use one for chocolate because I have this fabulous mini crock pot that came as a little surprise gift inside of my larger, dinner size crock pot.  It's adorable!  And perfect for fondue and chocolate melting.

So I just melted the chocolates, dipped the berries, rolled the tip in sprinkles, and voila!  So stinkin' adorable!  I laid them out on a piece of wax paper to cool and firm up a bit only to realize (after I had made enough that it was too late to do anything about it) that I had laid the paper upside down and the food was in fact no cooling on the wax side.  I panicked!  How supremely devastating would it be for something so cute to get uglified as I tried to peel it off of the wrong side of the wax paper.  I held my breath and gently tested a cooled berry and much to my relief it peeled up like a dream.  Pfew!  Now I'm wondering what the point of the waxy side is when things like this peel right off the rough side.  Who knows?  I'm just glad it all worked out.

I did make a few sans sprinkles because honestly, once you hit a certain age of maturity you can suddenly;y taste all the chemicals that make something a brilliant color and things like sprinkles become intolerable.   Something decadent like a chocolate dipped strawberry loses a bit of its elegance.  But for the kids, and for the sake of completing the patriotic color pallet, I went for half and half.  Sprinkle half for those 4 foot and under, no sprinkle for those with a more sophisticated (meaning old) taste. 

I can't wait to take these little cuties to eat out under the fireworks on our picnic blanket with our friends.  I don't think they've ever eaten something so festive for Independence Day!  Hooray!

Fantastical Salmon Pie

So, I made this way back at Naw-Ruz, but forgot to post the recipe.  Ooops!  I was sending off months worth of photos to the printer tonight and saw that I'm fabulous at remembering to photograph my favorite recipes, but not so good about blogging them.

Lately, with 2 kids in soccer, home schooling, and directing the band and choir, I barely find time to breathe - let alone cook.  So I've been happily doing the freeze ahead, once a month cooking thing.  Which is way convenient, but I must admit to missing the taste of freshly prepared food.  But how lucky I am to live in the age of giant freezers in the garage, because during soccer season my family would starve if I hadn't cooked my heart out in the pre-season.

But since I'm going all the way back to Naw-Ruz here, I have something great for you!  Fanastical, even.  Okay, so Joe didn't like it.  But we decided he doesn't like it because the word pie makes him think warm fruit and ice cream, which doesn't really go with fish.  Resulting in a mental block when it come to something called salmon pie.  I tried calling it quiche, but turns out he hates that too, so we're a no go.  So I saved it up for company at theNaw Ruz party and they all loved it!  So I'm sharing despite Joe's resistance.

I got the recipe from a cookbook at the library called Grandma's Casseroles.  Of course, there was no publishing house or author listed (I'm guessing this was a locally compiled book) so I have no idea who Grandma is or how to give her credit.  So, I didn't invent this, but I did change it up a bit.  I'll give you the original as well as my adaptations.

Ingredients:

1	can (7-1/2 ounces) salmon packed in water, drained and deboned (I used fresh salmon the our neighbor gave us after his Alaskan fishing trip!  Lucky me!)
1/2	cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4	cup sliced green onions (I left these out so the kids might consider trying it)
1	jar (2 ounces) chopped pimientos, drained (Left these out too!)
1/2	cup low-fat (1%) cottage cheese
1	tablespoon lemon juice
1‑1/2	cups low-fat (1%) milk
3/4	cup reduced-fat baking and pancake mix
2	whole eggs
2	egg whites or 1/4 cup cholesterol-free egg substitute (I just used the whole eggs again.  Didn't seem to hurt things at all and much less fussy)
1/4	teaspoon salt
1/4	teaspoon dried dill weed (skipped this b/c I was all out)
1/4	teaspoon paprika

So here's the deal...

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Spray pie pan withcooking spray. Combine salmon, Parmesan cheese, onions and pimientos in prepared pie plate; set aside.
2. Combine cottage cheese and lemon juice in blender or food processor; blend until smooth. Add milk, baking mix, whole eggs, egg whites, salt and dill. Blend 15 seconds. Pour over salmon mixture in pie plate. Sprinkle with paprika.
3. Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until lightly golden and knife inserted halfway between center and edge comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes.  
   
   Those are the book's instructions.  I found that it took a full hour and a half for this sucker to bake through.  But boy, oh boy was it worth the wait!  I loved it!  The boys ate it for dinner, then breakfast, and again for lunch and were bummed when it was all gone. 
   
   Like I said, I made it for our Naw-Ruz party because one of the Baha'is is a fish eating vegetarian (pescatarian???) and he always gets left out at potlucks. He loved it! Hooray! I'm thinking next time there's a party I'll try making mini pies as finger foods by pouring into the mini muffin cups the Taylors gave us.  Doesn't that sound fun?

Pumpkin Pie Pancakes

Oh my word!  How long has it been?  Wait.  Don't answer that.  Looking through my photos I can see that I'm far better at photographing food than actually getting around to posting recipes.  But I'm here now and you're going to love, love, love this breakfast recipe.

I grabbed some random magazine to flip through while I waited in the car for the boys to get out of speech last week and found a recipe for pumpkin pancakes.  Sounded good, but some of the ingredients were odd or weren't already sitting in my cupboard so I ditched the whole recipe and went with adding pumpkin puree and pie spice to my favorite pancake recipe and changing white sugar to brown sugar.  The results were prized by the kiddos!

Ingredients
2 c. flour
2 tbsp. brown sugar
1 tbsp. baking powder
3 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1/2 tsp. salt
1 egg
1-1/2 c. milk
1 c. canned pumpkin

So, with a full cup of pumpkin puree, these are super thick and won't fim up all the way through.  I love this!  Like a flash of pie in the middle of breakfast.  If you don't like the squish, you have 2 options.  You can cut the pumpkin by half to thin them down to typical pancake consistency or you can nuke them in the microwave for a minute.  That will zap all the pie-like goodness into cakey pancake texture.  I liked the squish.  The boys liked the squish.  Hannah Jane did not.  

I tripled this recipe and spent the morning at the stove flipping up enough flapjacks to freeze ahead for those mornings that no one fees like getting up and cooking fancy.  Joe usually makes the kids pancakes every weekend, but with all the job craziness he hasn't been sleeping well and therefore not getting up early enough to please their royal highnesses with pancakes.  When I offer to make pancakes, they scoff.  Dad make's them gigantic, whereas I like to make silver dollar size suckers that are easier to flip.  Mine are less impressive, I suppose.  Anyway, now that they've had these babies, no one complains about mom being the pancake maker!  

I intended to save the extra servings for weekends when they are accustomed to getting pancakes, but they asked for these every morning until they were gone, and I indulged.  So they're gone now, but you can bet your bottom dollar that we'll be making more up soon!  Hope ya like 'em!

Freezer Cream Cheese Chicken

Okay...when you dream about blogging recipes you know it's been too long.  I'm still feeding a Once A Month Cooking (OAMC) need.  It's been the best darn thing ever!  Never having to freak out over what's for dinner?  What a blessing! 

My latest find for a easy freezer recipe is Cream Cheese Chicken.  I adapted the recipe that I got here just a touch to make it more to my liking.  If you want official, check out the source.  If you want Skyla's New and Improved (well maybe not improved but easier), keep reading.  Before, there was a lot of moving things to and from the crock pot and hassle like that.  I don't know about you, but I don't want to fiddle with dumping out a hot crock twice for one meal.  So I took a chance and eliminated that step and put it all in at once.  It turned out just fine.  And I'm much more likely to make it when it's less hassle.

You'll need:
1 .7-ounce envelope Italian dressing mix
1/2 cup butter
2 pounds boneless skinless chicken breast
1 10.75-ounce can cream of chicken soup
1 8-ounce package cream cheese

I doubled all of this and it fit just fine into the cooker.

*Cut chicken into thin strips.
*Melt butter in microwave.
*Toss chicken, dressing mix and butter into the cooker and stir to make sure chicken is coated. 
*Let that cook for an hour or so and then add everything else to the cooker.
*Stir every half hour or so as the cream cheese is melting and turn off after 2 hours.

I split this doubled recipe into 3 bags for our family of 5. 

On cooking day, defrost on counter for the day, microwave until hot and melty.  Instead of serving over pasta or rice like the original recipe suggested, we'll have it over a bed of steamed broccoli.  That results in less meat and more veggie per person, but with all the heavy cream, I doubt anyone is going to walk away hungry.

Hope you like it!  I sure do!