The evolution of me n' beans.

Beans and me go waaaaay back.
Back to childhood when my nose turned up at the idea of any vegetable that wasn't a potato or corn on the cob. What a sophisticated palette I had. Only verrrrrry occasionally stepping boldly beyond my gastronomical comfort zone by eating an iceberg lettuce leaf with bottled, creamy cucumber dressing. This was as gourmet as I got.
I've mentioned being a picky eater before but unless you had witnessed the full scale archeological type dig I could do to a plate of food, mining for hidden vegetables and other nasty bits adults were always gunking up good grub with, you can't fully understand how far I've come.
My first recollection of beans was at my Grandma Prest's house. I'm not sure how she managed to do it, but she could get me to eat food, that if any other parental type unit had stuck it before me I'd have thrown a fit.
Maybe she never tried to MAKE me eat beans, and hence my curiosity. Parents, you're good people. God knows I couldn't handle the job you all take upon yourselves but here's a new flash from a former kid...MAKING some one eat their peas causes a years long rift between said kid and peas.....I'm just sayin'.....Kids are are not just young people, they're mini adults. I remember being told I HAD to eat my peas when I was 7 or 8, I'm 30 years old and it still pisses me off. I understand the logic behind it, health, nutrition, wasting food...blah blah blah....but me and peas had us a real long acrimonious relationship for a damn long time because of that.
Here's where I balance my Karma and say thanks to the universe for parents who provided me with food when lots of kids had none...they could have given my peas to those kids though...I wouldn't have minded.
So a visit with Grandma, meal time rolls around and out of a can comes this brown sludge that was not only beans BUT sweet.....how odd. Baked beans.....beans are a vegetable and I had a war on vegetables, but they had brown sugar or molasses in them lending not only a lovely shade of brown but a definite sweetness that was whole heartily approved by my childish taste buds. It was like some adult some where had screwed up and made a meal that was more like dessert. It was perfect!
I became a fan of baked beans.
Then the universe laughed in my face and caused me great pain one day after I'd become a fan of baked beans. It was when asked, by some distant relative whose house I was having lunch at "What do you want to eat?"
Ahh....the glory of a question like that, no slapping some food down on the table and saying "eat it" I was being given a CHOICE. THE POWER...SUCH DELICIOUS POWER.
"I'll have beans." I say.
*sigh* You can probably guess where this train wreck of a childhood moment is going......I didn't realize I'd have to specify what sort of beans. I didn't realize the bean manufacturer type peoples would waste their time canning anything OTHER than sweet delicious baked beans.
A few moments later a bowl of something horrible, a wet pile of nasty red giant THINGS that were most definitely not flavored with brown sugar, was placed before me.
"What is this?" I asked, hardly daring to breathe, hardly daring to believe that I was expected to EAT this stuff, hardly daring to believe any one would even BUY cans of disgusting red lumps.
"Kidney beans." I was told.
Well hell.
I didn't say that then, I probably didn't even think it, as I was too busy trying not to bawl, such was my disappointment. I could be a brat at times when I was a kid, I can admit it, but I didn't throw a fit THIS time, realizing this was IT, this was lunch. I was stuck. I pushed them around my bowl, as miserable as a kid can be, before heading back to school. Too depressed to be hungry. I can still remember the disappointment, the horror.....I think those kidney beans scarred me for life.
Fast forward a few years. I've learned a valuable lesson, always specify what sort of beans you want, lest some crazy adult thinks a 7 year old kid would enjoy a bowl of kidney beans for lunch. I learned something else.
My mother can MAKE baked beans, the RIGHT kind. The sweet, delicious, smokey from a bit of bacon, and dark from molasses kind. She just whips up a batch one day as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
Didn't I stand there and watch in awe and amazement as she made them? Didn't I taste them myself and realize that HOMEMADE baked beans kicked canned baked bean's tin can ass?
How gourmet I felt. Helping dump the brown sugar in with the beans after they soaked all night. MAKING baked beans. Making them...imagine that.
I always made mine a little MORE gourmet by dumping extra brown sugar on my bowl of beans after they dished up. Hmmmmm......just had an epiphany.....a bittersweet one...childhood sweet tooth equals adult root canals, methinks.
Me and baked beans enjoyed a companionable relationship for many years. They accompanied me through adolescence into adult-hood until I'm all grown up, I meet the love of my life online.
I move to California, and he proudly takes me out for his favorite meal. Something completely foreign to my Maritime taste-buds. The enchilada combo plate from an Alberto's drive through.
I can still remember when I opened my Styrofoam container and beheld the strange mass of brown and bright red that my husband was salivating over.
Refried beans, enchiladas and rice.
I hadn't a clue what an enchilada was, why any one would eat rice without soy sauce and why beans would be RE-fried???? What sort of world had I tumbled in to. And get this...these beans were NOT sweet!
I ate most of the enchilada, discovered the rice wasn't too bad but steered clear of the beans....for a while. Something happened though.
Pop, pop, pop went my taste buds. I think it was new ones growing. They can grow anything down here, it's all the sun.
Pop, pop, pop.
And anyone who has had a take-out combination plate knows there's no force on earth that can keep the refried beans from getting friendly with the enchilada. They softly cuddle up with the red sauce, they ooze under the tortilla, they embrace the cheese and find mysterious refried bean ways of getting on your fork when you only meant to get rice.
My taste buds grew, new refried bean taste buds that were inhabiting my tongue for the sole purpose of tasting salty, creamy, delicious refried beans.
I thought I was pretty hot stuff.
Willingly sucking down tons of refried beans from combo plates from every Mexican food place with in our neighborhood. I was on a stomach and brain awakening journey. The little kid who cowered from peas and onions was willingly buying them to cook up veggie delights of all sorts, most of it inspired by Mexican food.
Mexican food was like nothing I'd had back home in rural Nova Scotia. I bragged about the refried beans to the folks back there. I took pictures and sent them off, pointing out to my Mom how mature I'd become, eating non-sweet beans, willingly, loving every creamy bite.
I found out the stores around here carried cans of these marvelous beans, you could walk right in and have yourself a can of refried beans for a buck.
I cast less and less a wary eye at new foods my husband introduced me to. My palette expanded even more, my world was flavored with cilantro, chipotle and sour cream.
I made my own enchiladas, something that seemed so exotic and foreign 7 years ago became an easy meal to make in a hurry. Burritos a cinch, I started making my own tortillas and chili gravy was it's crown. It seems like the speeding train of expanding taste buds whizzes by faster every day. New food discoveries enlighten my tongue.
AND the bean evolution continues!!!
I went from refried beans to cans of whole beans, that I could flavour and mash myself. My husband's eyes rolled in ecstasy the first time I threw handfuls of spices in with a can of pinto beans and mashed it up. Beans are now a staple of our diet. Where once I raised an eyebrow over a bowl of beans for a meal I now willingly and greedily accept beans for my breakfast, my lunch and my supper. Not a drop of sugar in sight. No desert-like mash masquerading as beans for me...well.....not often anyways....maybe occasionally I doctor up a pot of pinto beans with brown sugar and onion for a little childhood reminiscence.
Then, just when I thought I'd reached the height of bean brilliance, I went higher.
Dried beans, that I slow cooked all day with spices, turned out to be the most brilliant, mouth watering beans you could ever imagine. I'm not just honking my own horn here. (honk honk honk honk honk honk!) In fact maybe you already know this and are scoffing at my innocence, but let me tell you the veil has been lifted.
Beans I cooked myself kick the ass of canned beans. There's a lot of ass-kicking in my kitchen. Including my own because why didn't I have this realization sooner?
All I can do is live in the now, and raise a spoon to the kid I used to be. The one who only ate potatoes and corn on the cob. Wouldn't I freak if I could see me now from the eyes of the me I was then? How far me and my beans have come.

I have been playing with more beans than just pinto, most recently black beans.
My favorite usage of dried beans is as follows:

This is a method not a recipe per se.

POT-O-BEANS

• Rinse a big bunch of beans in water and then put them in a big old pot. Your biggest one so that you can make a vat of beans and eat beans for a week. They get better every day.

• Cover with lots of water, and put on the stove. I start mine on high and then turn it down to simmer once they get boiling.

• I throw in a few tablespoons each of cumin, Mexican oregano and chili powder. Do not be stingy with the chili powder. Lately I've been toasting dried chilies in the oven for a few minutes and grinding them up in the blender to make my own chili powder. I use a lot of spices. I don't actually measure but it's a lot. I also will add about 3 dried peppers in there as well, ones that haven't been toasted. They'll get soft and disintegrate and you can pick the skins out later. Or leave them floating in there and call it a garnish. Don't think I haven't noticed that's how fancy pants cooks operate, anything inedible is labeled a "garnish".....sometimes I garnish my plates with my one and only barbie doll.
  
• She adds a lot of class to a bowl of beans...o.k., I kid. She's not classy at all.

• I let the pot of dried beans, spices and water boil and bubble all day until the beans are soft and tender, adding more water to it when ever it gets low. I like them soupy the first day, it's almost like a bean soup. (As they cool, and days go by they will thicken up, the beans, as well as me, absorbing more of the liquid.)

• When they are cooked enough I put a big dollop of oil in my cast iron frying pan. Maybe as much as half a cup. I chop up half an onion (give or take), two pasilla peppers and about 6 or 8 cloves of garlic and frizzle it all up in the oil with some salt. Softening the peppers and onion, infusing the oil with garlic, yummmmers. This part smells soooooooo good.

• Once the pepper mix has been cooked I dump all of it in to my pot of beans, and hopefully I've left enough room for the oil and peppers. ( Sometimes, an emergency "come help me find a place to put some beans" call is hollared to my husband as I realize physics is causing my addition of peppers/oil/garlic/onions to the beans is making the beans overflow in a very unpleasent, stove messing way. Wouldn't be the first time physics pissed me off.) I stir it all up, add more salt to the whole mix and then...step back.

• They're done. All they need now are a spoon and an appetite. (Though they're mind blowingly good with cheese, sour cream, cilantro, corn chips etc.)

Let There Be Light...

Recipe for a refuse lamp:

• Get you a lamp. Preferably one found sitting in the communal trash area of an apartment complex you lived at 4 years ago and you've been using as a plain jane boring lamp since then. (We lived at the apartment complex, not in the communal trash area, though from the amount of furniture discarded there every week you could make yourself right comfortable amongst the trash bins if need be. I swear that trash area had nicer furniture than most people's houses I've been in)
• Gather your guilt and accumulated pile of stuff you can't bare to throw in the trash and decide if you're gonna have it take up space in your house it might as well be as something useful. Things like aluminum coffee pots that got funky inside and are no longer being used since you've upgraded to the stainless steel model of them, a broken coffee cup, a sweet looking steel cut oats can and some corks are all good.
• Ask your Mother-in-law to keep her eyes peeled for a colander for a lamp shade for your kitchen-esque themed refuse lamp creation and then have her actually go one better and score a .25 cent fryer basket from a yard sale and be kind enough to give it to you.
• Don some swank looking safety goggles and then drill holes in everything so the rod of the lamp can fit through and stack it all up on the lamp rod as you see fit. Please note you can do a nice messy job of cracking out the bottom of the coffee mug because a neat and tidy hole won't make any difference, since it's pressed down against oats can lid. Holding your breath while slamming a screw driver down through the bottom of the coffee cup may or may not have been what kept the entire thing from shattering...but don't rule it out. Never rule out the power of holding your breath.
• Bat your eyelashes at your blue eyed husband and call upon his expert handy man skills and assistance in wiring the lamp back together, bending bits of metal and also encouraging you not to run around like a mad woman drilling holes in everything until you're sure they'll all fit on the lamp rod. Thanks to him I don't have half a dozen items with holes in them that don't need em.......
• Get a cute little fluorescent bulb and screw in to your wicked awesome refuse lamp and turn it on with a few soft spoken words and whispered bits of flattery...or you can just hit the switch.
• Bask in the soft light of your creation that cost...well what ever the price of the bulb and two bits of wire cost.

(Place of honor on top of the fridge for my kitchen-esque themed lamp!)

(The cat was exhausted and couldn't stay awake any longer waiting for us to finish our lamping. Either that or she was bored senseless.)

How to Get Fried!

French fries have such a bad rep, poor little oily buggers. Is it their fault they've been turned into fast food dietary demons? Is it their fault that suggesting French fries for a meal is akin to asking if you wanna snort a little whiskey and jump off a bridge into a vat of lard and live there for a week? Becoming little lard fish people that will triple their size in an hour and eventually become one with the lard, where you and the lard will bubble and burp and belch in blubbery bliss forever after.
French fries aint all bad. It's like anything, moderation.
Mod-a-what?
I know, that never sounds fun but trust me I do know about moderation. Just because I don't apply it to coffee, ice cream and chili gravy doesn't mean I don't KNOW about it.
I like to reserve my moderation for the really important things, like bacon, flour and exercise. I'll have a little of each but not too much, I don't want my life to become all about bacon, flour and exercise. Borrrring.
I think French Fries if made with good potatoes and good oil aren't so bad. Not to mention the way I make them uses barely any oil at all. It's pretty dang cool. I start with a half a cup of oil and I end with just barely under a half of a cup of oil, I measured!
I get crispy, yummy French Fries made in healthy coconut oil and I don't have to swallow a load of guilt at the same time with them.
Plus if you're clever (like some people I won't name, ok ...it's ME) you have a big ol' green salad on the side and you end up with a filling meal that's actually pretty good for you!
Some days though we just have a plate of fries. Just so that we can thrill in the complete tastiness of a darn good fry. Saturating our taste buds in salty, crispy, moisty potato delight. And also because we were lazy and too hunnnnngry to wait for anything else and too tirrrrrrrrrrred to whip up a 3 course meal that would fill the belly hole as completely and happily as a plate of fries.
I have my fry making down to a science, I could probably make them blindfolded but I don't want to blog about my experience chopping my finger off and going to a hospital and finding out if cayenne pepper jammed into a bleeding wound really stops it fast. (We read about that and have been curious ever since. It works on wee little cuts but thank goodness we haven't had to try it on any big cuts.)
Anyways I shall share with you my oh so awesome method of preparing perfect fries if you'll promise not to get all up in my face if you use a different oil, different potato or different temperature than I and end up with horrible little carbonized fries instead of golden delicious ones.
Also my disclaimer is that not all ovens are created equal, not all their temperatures the same, use common sense. It's free after all, so use as much as you want.

Perfect French Fries:

• preheat oven to 475 F

• Get a 1/2 cup of coconut oil and put on a big baking pan that has sides so the oil doesn't run off the edge or your potatoes run away.

• melt oil if needed (coconut oil gets solid at cool temps so you might need to pop the pan with oil on it in the oven to de-solidify it. Don't let it get too hot, you're gonna be handling it soon)

• Get 4 or 5 potatoes

• Cut them, ignoring all little potato screams as you gouge their eyes out. I like slightly thick French fries, I haven't tried this method with thinner fries, I imagine the baking time would be shorter.

• Dump the cut fries in to the pan, roll them in the oil, till well coated, spread them out in an even single layer.
  
• sprinkle with sea salt and black pepper
• put on middle rack of oven for 17 minutes (I use a timer that beeps annoyingly and gives me a near heart attack when it suddenly starts beeping cause I forgot I set it)

• The fries will be pale after 17 minutes but will be cooked
• Now to brown them up like a California beach bunny.
• Turn oven to broil and with the fries left in there on the middle rack leave them for exactly 5 minutes or until brown enough to your liking. (yes I realize that sounds funny, exactly 5 or longer...that makes the 5 un-exactly, so what?)
  

• Then remove them from the oven and carefully tip the pan so that the oil pours off into a heat resistant bowl or what ever.

If you want your fries even browner you can put them on a rack closer to the broiler at this point now that the splish splashy oil is gone and give them another minute. Keep a careful eye, some people have been known to start small fires in their oven from forgetting they have something under the broiler, hence the reason SOME people have a timer that beeps when things should be removed.
And voila, perfect French fries with barely any oil left on them!
This recipe makes a nice plateful for 2 people so if you divide the oil that was used between two people it's a ridiculously small amount. See, I start with a half a cup of oil and end up with....
Woohoooooooo, remember the missing oil is divided between two people as well. Alan and I are now jonesing for a measuring device that is heat resistant and more accurate so we can get our geek on in the kitchen and measure stuff more precisely. You don't want to know the amount of time we spent discussing measuring oil.......lets just say it was a revealing amount.....as in it revealed how odd we are. Entire conversations have been had for hours about measuring the oil.......We figured out at the end of it all as conversation dwindled down, silence crept back into the household that it looks like we used approximately 6 or 7 teaspoons of oil. We theorized there was about a teaspoon of oil left in the baking pan, covering the whole thing...we moaned and groaned at our inability to measure that. We sobbed great heaving sobs as we held each other tightly and realized we know the math, we have the oil but just not the means to say 100% for sure how much was used, we decided it was probably 6 teaspoons, that gets divided by 2, so 3 teaspoons per person per giant ol plate of fries......
Psssssst......Sometimes we sneak up on the pretty little French Fries and smother them with chili and cheese and red onions. YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMY!

We Survived the Pancakes....

No seriously, these were Pancakes that didn't kill us. JOY!
I didn't get cutesy and make my valentine's day breakfast for my sweetums and I into heart shapes.
I could have, I made super hearty pancakes with batter so thick I could have formed it into balls if I wanted to.
Maybe I should have made pancake snowmen. 3 dimensional snowmen would have been a cool Valentine's breakfast but I'm thinking it would have been a little too big for one meal. I suppose I could have made just one, one nicely rounded, foot high pancake snowman and we could have shared....but digging into the soft belly of anything, even a pancake snowman isn't the way to start a Valentine's day (or any other for that matter)
I'm quite satisfied with the thick blobby pancakes that we had and that they didn't kill us.
My husband said if it was going to be our last meal that as far as last meals go it was a pretty good one. They were more than good they were delicious, perhaps it was the possibility of getting sick that made them ever the more sweeter...?
Did I not mention yet the questionable ingredient I added to my mix?
Not arsenic or cyanide as my husband guessed. He's funny that way, happily chowing down on his breakfast with thoughtful pauses while he savors a bite and finally announces in a weird little British accent "I do not detect any hints of arsenic."
When I was making breakfast I was on auto pilot, which is never a good thing when you're cooking. Thinking all the thoughts one usually thinks when performing a semi mindless task I've performed many times before. Crack an egg in to the bowl but think about whether aliens are real. Scoop up some flour and a couple of teaspoons of baking powder but the mind is reviewing the proper way to shift gears in a standard transmission. Stirring the whole mass of batter and wondering why on God's green earth they'd keep a show like Battle Star Galactica on the scifi channel BUT NOT the Dresden Files. You know, all the usual mind wanderings a person has.
So when it came time for the liquid portion of the pancakes my eyes spied the jar of raw (un-pasteurized) heavy cream that had been in the fridge longer than I could remember.
It didn't rot!
We'd already had a delightful scientific-esque moment one day a few weeks ago as we marveled at how the heavy cream had gotten heavier. Thicker and sort of cheesy smelling. Both of us bravely stuck a finger in and tried it, both of us remained in perfect health so we just put the jar back in the fridge to see what it would do.
See, that right there, that's the difference between me and the food network cooks. When I'm making something I don't just cook to fill the belly and make a pretty plate, I wanna see what something does. In this case did this elderly heavy cream kill my sweetums and I?
If you've been holding your breath waiting to see how this turns out go ahead and suck in a little oxygen, we didn't die. I made pancakes with questionable heavy cream and not only did we not die, we enjoyed them and didn't even get sick.
You can't ask for a better Valentine's than that now can you?
Oh, wait, actually we can. We toasted the evening, ourselves, and life with almond champagne at the end of the day we survived, having had killer pancakes that turned out to be un-killer!

The pancakes are my standard mix I use around here and occasionally throw something extra in to. Not always something as strange as the cream. You're probably all grossed out now and could care less about the recipe but here it is. My recipe is adapted and modified greatly from one I found on Quaker Oatmeal's website. You can go see the original if my version doesn't float your boat.

Incredibly Heart-y Pancakes
(Good for Valentine's day and the day after.)

1 cup of 100% whole wheat stone ground flour
1/4 cup of ground flax seed
1/2 cup of rolled oats (I usually use a nice heaping 1/2 cup, loves me oats!)
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/4 teaspoon of grey sea salt
1 1/4 cup of milk, water, kefir or what ever liquid blows your bubbles on the day of making (ie: antique cream thinned with water)

(Optional Add-Ins, please note for me these are not optional they're must haves and all at once)
A handful or more of salted, roasted pecans
a handful of golden raisins
and a nice amount of grated nutmeg, like a teaspoon (I never measure)
Also a sprinkling of poppy seeds until you feel you've got enough.
and one glug of dark rum, (a nice option instead of vanilla)

Mix all together, reveling in the thick hearty batter that you could probably use to spackle any holes you have or glue some bricks together. Fry in a medium heat, lightly greased cast iron skillet. Let them get good and toasty brown, flip and give the same attention to the other side. Be wary of the fact they're so thick that they may need more time then you're used to with pancakes.
Eat with a little dollop of REAL butter, homemade orange marmalade, saigon cinnamon, honey and optional molasses or maple syrup. All of which can be used one at a time or all together.

(I preferred my homemade orange marmalade and cinnamon on my pancakes)

This recipe makes one humongous massive pancake (if you're into the sort of thing and have a skillet big enough) or approximately 5 or 6 medium sized pancakes. Cripes, I hate this sort of thing. Cause what if your medium size and my medium size differ, so maybe it would make 8 medium sized for you cause your medium seized is a 3 inch in diameter pancake.....my brain hurts.
Please note these are very hearty pancakes. They stick to your ribs, fill your belly and will not leave you hungry. I usually can only finish one and a half in a siting cause they're so filling. Yummmmmmmmmm!

(honey drizzled on my husband's pancakes)

The Universe, Baklava and Me.....

(A simmering pot of sugar, water, honey and vanilla.)

There is always the possibility that the universe is conspiring against me.
Case in point, when I lived at home my Mother NEVER told me about baklava. I never heard the word mentioned, we never ate it, it literally did not exist for me. (I suppose one could argue that was my Mother conspiring against me and not the universe though...hmmmm)
Then I meet my darling husband and he rips the fabric of my known universe wide open with a casual name dropping one day. "We should go eat at that Mediterranean place, ohhh and we should remember to have Baklava for desert."
"Bakla-what? Who? Is that a friend? Do I know this Bakla-whosit? Why are we inviting them for desert?"
Turns out Baklava was a treat that Alan said was divine and that we most definitely had to get it, even more so now then before seeing as how I'd never had it.
Enter the universe, screwing me over once more.
Turns out the Mediterranean restaurant no longer had Baklava on it's menu. So no Baklava for me. I suspect, though have yet to prove, that the restaurant on a universe inspired whim decided to stop serving the rich, honey nut desert 5 minutes before I walked through the door.
Universe - 2, Me - zip
(not that I'm keeping score.)
Well time goes by and eventually I do get to have a taste of Baklava from a neat little road side diner type place. I suspect that it wasn't anything to write home about as I can not remember any epiphanies, light bulbs going off in my head, angelic choirs of angels singing or even a return visit to the diner place for more. I remember there was baklava and that's it. It was good but not enough to confirm the descriptions I had read online though. Mouth watering tales of honey oozing, flaky pastry layered, rich, buttery nut filled baklava.
Universe - 2, Me - .5
Well years go by, I mean literally YEARS go by and suddenly it's last year. And right out of the clear blue my husband's relatives give him a GIANT platter of baklava for his birthday! I mean wow, did they have a psychic moment? Did they know how high a pedestal we'd placed this mysterious desert on? Did they know my husband considered this one of his all time favorite sweet treats? Did they know I'd had pitifully limited exposure to this honeyed treasure? Had I whined one too many times in their presence that evvvvvvvvvery one in the fricking universe got baklava but me. Maybe.

(Pouring the hot syrup over the freshly baked Baklava. Mmmm)

Anyways imagine our shock and pleasure to see this golden platter of goodness. We immediately consumed multiple pieces (I wont say how many, a lady never reveals a number) on the spot. That night after carefully carting our beauteous platter of sticky sweets back home we consumed more. Ohhhhhhhh the pleasure, finally unlimited access to a wealth of delicious, buttttttery sweeeeeeeeeeeet, flakkkkkky layers of pastry and nuts. It was so goooood.
Universe - 2, Me - 7.5
Take that Universe, in your face Universe. How do ya like me now Universe?
Then I got covered with spots. Lots of spots. Like a rash. Huh..
Ewwwww I know, who wants to go from buttery rich to a rash.
I didn't think anything of it. Who would suspect the Baklava? Not me. The Universe wasn't reallllllllllllllly conspiring against me...right? So we ate more...the rash remained. Eventually, in a Sherlock Holmes like intuitive moment, as I was serving us up yet another piece of Baklava from the never ending platter I had a notion. What the heck was causing this rash? Why was the Universe suddenly blessing me with such a pile of unsolicited Baklava after all this time? I had a thought, a horrible thought, a sneaky quick sliding, a quick fear that'd been hiding, flip to the forefront of my frontal lobe type thought.
What was IN Baklava? Exactly? I always assumed it was a super, uber complicated thing to make so never even looked at the list of ingredients. So I looked, curiosity doesn't always kill the cat, in this case it killed the rash.
CASHEWS!
DAMN YOU UNIVERSE!!!! *shakes fist at the fabric of reality*
There were cashews in the lovely platter of Birthday Baklava from last year. I unfortunately am sort of allergic to cashews. I quit eating the Baklava, rash goes away and.....
Universe - 274856, Me - 7.5
Well fine, what do I care anyways. I decide to boycott the universe and Baklava and forget about the whole damn thing. Then another year rolls around, THIS year. Another platter of birthday Baklava! Alan's joy was contagious, he really loves this stuff. We'd almost forgotten about last year...about the cashews. But my paranoid nature saved me once again as I looked at the ingredients BEFORE consuming any Baklava. Cashews again....grrrrrrrr. So Alan got Baklava and I got zip, nada, none. I had to make do with homemade chocolate chip peanut butter cookies, ice cream and iced coffee. Pbbbbtttt! Sure it was great but it wasn't Baklava.
Universe - 749739057503, Me - 7.5
I'm starting to get pretty pissed off at the Universe then. I'm also starting to think up long, complicated revenge fantasies against the Universe. But it's hard to concentrate when Alan's delighting in yet MORE birthday Baklava and I'm trying to wrap my brain around quantum mechanics so as to really be able to stick it to the Universe.
When my inner Sherlock Holmes siren went off again I almost ignored it, so wrapped up was I in sub atomic particles and string theory. But then I said to myself "No, self pay attention here. If your inner Sherlock Holmes has something to say the least you can do is pay attention."
I like to try and do as I say so I did.
Inner Sherlock Holmes whispered sweetly in my mind that I ought to look up a recipe for Baklava.
What the heck, why not.
HALLLLLLLLLLLLLELUJJJJJJAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Baklava didn't have 5 million mysterious ingredients. It didn't have a complicated preparation and cooking procedure. Hell a Baklava recipe made quantum mechanics look like....er....well...quantum mechanics.
Sugar, honey, nuts, butter, vanilla, water, cinnamon and phyllo dough.
I was in shock. I found a recipe on a site I go to often because of all it's reviews for recipes so I knew at least a few hundred people had already tried this particular Baklava recipe and had deemed worthy of 5 out of 5 stars. Baklava recipe here.
And quicker then you can build a sub atomic universe ass kicker I had homemade Baklava sitting on my kitchen counter, cooling down from it's time in the oven. Filling the air with warm fragrant honey scents.
Was it good.
*laughs softly* Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh yessssssssssssssssssssss, it was good. It was better then good. It was "where have you been all my life?" good. It was "take that, you conspiracizing Universe good"
It was gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood.

Universe - 749739057503, Me - INFINITE to the 7th degree

I win.

( A slice of homemade Baklava.....ohhhhh...oh my...)

Because I can't leave well enough alone I am already tailoring the Baklava recipe to our own tastes. Using coconut oil instead of butter, no sugar but more honey etc. A healthier treat that will still taste decadent and be easy to make. I will add my own custom recipe on here when I've got it hammered out. It might mean making endless batches of Baklava and tasting them over and over, one right after another but...I can do it. For the good of the recipe and sharing it with friends I can end my life long dry spell of no Baklava and embrace the never ending slice of golden flaky heaven.

Ratting Myself Out on Ratafia

If you have more bottles of cheap wine then you expected what do you do?
I mean AFTER the whole bathing in chardonnay and sauvignon blanc deal. After you realize you could cook with them but it would take a while to use it up. Drink it? Well yes that's always an option but when you have other more delightful wines or spirits to choose from how on earth will you ever use up the cheap wine? Two dollar *o.k.* wine over 10 year old Tawny Port...I don't think so.
The thing about a 2 dollar bottle of wine that tastes *o.k.* and is pretty dang nice for cooking is that it's soooooo cheap. You could do something wild and crazy with it and if it doesn't work who cares? It's only two dollars! Hell I spend more then that on shoe laces every month.
You might have guessed by now that we found our selves with a couple of spare bottles of 2 dollar white wine. We had bought it as ingredients to make our Vin De Noix, and ohhhhhhhhh my don't get me started on the Vin De Noix, I'll save that for another post. Let me just tantalize your mental tastebuds by saying it's Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm-nastical.
But as it happened I miscalculated how much cheap white wine we needed to make the Vin De Noix and wound up with leftovers.
Muaaah ahhh haaaaaaa (my evil laugh, sounds better in person)
I decided to experiment. Whilst researching how to go about the whole Vin De Noix process I ran across something called Ratafia. Which has a funny name but intrigued me with it's description and use of...wine. They didn't specify cheap wine but that's what I made ours with. Ooops let the cat out of the bag huh?
We made Ratafia! My Mom is rolling her eyes now as she reads this cause I was the girl who screeched in loud piercing tones that I would NEVER EVER drink....boy...er...umm.....I changed my mind. Hee hee
Anyways the Ratafia is basically an infused wine deal. There's loads of information on the internet. To be honest I wasn't expecting choirs of angels to sing or anything when it was done and we tasted it.....but.....I might have heard a trumpet or two!!!
My bottle of cheap white wine was infused with a cup of super ripe nectarine pieces, several pieces of candied ginger, a vanilla bean, 1/4 cup of vodka and 1/4 cup of sugar and left to meld together in secret tastebud hypnotic ways in my fridge for three weeks...er.............shoot........my guilty conscience wants me to admit that we *sampled* it after one week and ohhhhhhhhhhh my it tasted good enough to *sample* again. You like that photo of our sample? Pretty huh?
We left half of it alone to wait out the rest of it's three week sentence, resigned to the chilly depths of our fridge to do more of it's magical melding.
But for now I can give it two enthusiastic thumbs up! Mmmmmm, better then a liqueur that can get too syrupy. This was sweet, fruity, refreshing and...dare I say it? Cheap!

A Recipe for Confessing....

Confession is good for the soul....
So they say, though I doubt it's as good for the soul as chocolate or coffee....or...(hang on to yer britches people) Coffee AND Chocolate...hummina hummina
So anyways believe it or not I wasn't a rebellious teenager. *gasp* are you shocked? Or perhaps not so much. The only two times I've been grounded in my life were for wearing mascara when I was 13 and for lighting a match in my bedroom. Ohhhhhhh what a rebel eh? Anyways my point being I didn't do any horrendous teenage acts of rebellion that had my parents chasing me round the country side, that involved authority figures (except for getting kicked out of school, one time for a fight I barely participated in) never went cow tipping, parking or soaped any windows. I never smoked, except when I was 4 and I took a drag off my father's girlfriend's cigarette and it was NASTY. I never stole (cookies, ice cream and chocolate and chocolate related paraphernalia do not count.) And the only deliberately malicious thing I ever did was start a rumor that 2 guys in my class who I detested in grade 9 were having a secret love affair with each other. That was pretty satisfying, though now I feel a little bad because what if they really were secretly gay and I destroyed them emotionally by starting the rumor, and also I don't think there's anything wrong with being gay so I've felt a little guilt over that one for a long time. Anyways the rumor didn't really take off but I felt satisfied that I'd done something to express in a creative way my dislike of these two, macho idiotic jerks. I can't remember why I thought they were jerks but I must have had a good reason. Like maybe they were breathing the same air as me, when you're a teenage girl in the 9th grade that's reason enough. Oh shoot, while I'm confessing I used to kick this one other guy in high school, I'm a tad passive aggressive I am now realizing. Him and his buddies all sat in a hall way and stuck their legs straight out as if they owned the place, as if they had the bloody right to be quietly rude to every one who walked by making them have to step over their legs. Funny thing is, I always *tripped* on his legs....*snicker* oh my how clumsy of me to always accidentally kick him. I quit doing that though when one day he *accidentally* raised his leg higher and *accidentally* tripped me as I was *accidentally* kicking him, wouldn't want an accident to happen would I? So I found a new hobby, er route through the school.
My point?
There is no point, I'm confessing, it's supposed to be good right?
I thought I'd start off with the heavy duty stuff like bruising some poor guy's legs every day at lunch time with my sneakered feet and end with stealing 97% of the delicious, mind blowing squares that were too damn good to share with people at the baby shower I brought them to.
It's my cousin's fault. (hee hee)
She lusted after those squares as much as I did, one little nudge in the direction of greed and gluttony was all it took. Actually I don't remember who suggested it. All I have is a faintly chocolate and coffee infused memory of arriving at a baby shower, hosted at my cousin's house.
People frown upon bringing tequila or twister to a baby shower where I come from so my Mom and I settled on a classic. Super, uber rich Arrowroot squares. (a family favorite recipe)
I had to hold that plate full of sinful goodness on my lap all the way to shower during the car ride...if I accidentally stuck my fingers under the plastic wrap and a bump in the road jostled my arm into hastily flinging a chunk of square into my greedy little mouth, can I be blamed? Hell no.
One taste was all it took to fill my dazzled mind with thoughts of sweet thick coffee frosting layered over chocolatey heaven. Do you really want to know how bad I had it? Do you reallllllllllly? I haven't a fricking clue who's baby shower it was I was going to, not a clue. I was all like "Baby? What Baby?"
I carried that plate of loveliness into my cousin's house with more care then I've ever held a kid, if some kindly relative smiled hello and asked "What ya got there dearie?" I growled, maybe drooled a little.
Thank goodness my cousin was there, she saved me from having to wrestle Auntie so-and-so or other cousin whats-her-face to the kitchen floor. My cousin in all her genius saw the potential of that plate of arrowroot squares to be OURS. And only ours, as arrowroot squares were so obviously meant to be.
With a little diversionary tactic that consisted of loudly saying "I'LL JUST PUT THIS PLATE OF SQUARES ON THE COUNTER OVER HERE!" Then we oh so cleverly slid off one or maybe two of the teensy tiniest squares from the whole batch onto another plate. See how clever that is????? All the relatives would each think the other relatives had gotten to the squares before them! Brilliant! While off we made with the loot, down to my cousin's bedroom, where we shut the door and proceeded to scarf down sickeningly vast amounts of Arrowroot squares. Hummina Hummmina Hummina. Oh man, if one of something is good then you KNOW a dozen of it is heaven.
The baby shower...it's a sugar induced high like blurry memory. I don't even remember going home, I remember when we shut the bedroom door and started in on that plate of stolen sweets and then....nothing.
Hmmm, I feel a sort of tickling sensation on my right foot....is that my soul? Feeling better after all this confessing?
It's not as satisfying a sensation as I expected...damn.
If you have the urge to make your own Arrowroot Squares let me tell you this.....if you can find a way to some how steal them from yourself or deprive others from enjoying them they'll taste ever the more sweeter. I'll have to ask my Mom where we even got the recipe. The original called for Arrowroot cookies to be crumbled up in the base but me dear Ma and I always used chocolate chip cookies. The name Arrowroot Squares has stuck for us though.

Arrowroot Squares


Lightly grease an 8"x8" pan and prepare your self mentally for a sweet mind altering experience.

In a bowl:
30 small crunchy chocolate chip cookies (or the cookie of your choice)
crumble these up leaving some dime size pieces and chunks. you don't want them too fine.

In a pot combine the following and cook on medium heat, constantly stirring for 8 minutes:
8 tbs. of white sugar
2 eggs well beaten
1 tsp of vanilla
4 tbs. of cocoa
1/3 cup of butter
1/2 tsp of salt

After 8 minutes dump the mixture over the broken cookies and stir up, then dump it in to the 8" pan and press down firmly.

Icing:
In a bowl combine:
1/3 cup of soft butter
1 1/2 cup of icing sugar
1 tsp of vanilla
1 tbs. of cocoa
Some super strong coffee


Mix this together and add the very strong coffee till you get the right frosting consistency. For the coffee I usually use a couple teaspoons of instant coffee in a bowl with a little bit of water, so its super dark strong. It doesn't take much of this strong coffee liquid to get the frosting smooth and creamy.
Then you frost the squares and enjoy. They get firmer when they cool, yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmers!

The only other thing I can add to this ramble down memory lane and recipe sharing is that it's seriously a damn yummy square and also I hate calories. (actually make that I F$#%ing hate calories)

A little Cheesey...

I used to think cheesecake was some bastardized version of wonderful regular cake with something as odiously disturbing as cheddar cheese added to it. Don't get me wrong , cheddar cheese is a beautiful thing, just not in dessert. I mean come on, CHEESE cake, what was I supposed to think? Plus I was like 6 so give me a break.
Of course when I dared utter these complaints in my childish ignorance I was bitch slapped, metaphorically speaking, in to shape by nobody.
I recall two life altering cheesecake moments from when I was a little girl. Strangely enough each was with a Grandmother. I remember visiting my Grandma Shirley and we'd some times go for jaunts in to town. All I can recall of this one particular jaunt was harsh fluorescent lighting, cafeteria style tables, a lunch counter with glass fronted area, you slid your tray along the counter and pointed at what you wanted.
Grandma got cheesecake, it looked rather ordinary. brown bottom with white stuff on top and brown crumbles to top it off. It wasn't neon red or ice cream so I'm sure I wasn't too impressed. It was a dessert though so I was more then willing to give it a try. My love affair with all things sweets started waaaay back.
Can you see it? A little frizzy red headed girl at a cafeteria table with her Grandma, sliding a fork through a dense, moist layer of cheese cake, scooping up the dark buttery graham crust and having an epiphany. Right there, right there in the middle of the cafeteria at Wool-Co!
It wasn't just good, it was LIFE CHANGING! When you're a little kid cookies are the height of culinary genius for your wee under-developed taste buds. Sometimes pie if you were feeling crazy, always ice cream and anything you could get in a brightly colored packages at the check out counter and had words like Gummi, Fizzy, Gooey or Sour in the title.
If I'd been given my choice of dessert that day, oh how my heart falters at the thought, if I'd been given my choice I might have picked a sundae, an ordinary, uninspiring sundae from a cafeteria. But my Grandma Shirley she picked cheesecake! Oh it was AMAZING! I can't remember much else but the feeling of glorious silky, thick creamy, slightly tangy wonderfulness. Nothing fancy, no fruit or chocolate or anything to muck up the purity of it. JUST cheesecake. I was a changed girl leaving that cafeteria.
Cheesecake wasn't something we had often when I was a kid, actually more like never. For all I know that might have been my first and last bit of cheesecake for a long time to come. But I never forgot it.
The next memory of cheesecake is a little sharper, a little brighter. I suspect it was my second experience with cheesecake, so I was older and ever so slightly more prepared. Of course how prepared can one be when it comes to cheesecake, it's like holding a bright shining star in your mouth and feeling the glory of the universe for an instant. Even if you did that a thousand times could it ever be dimmed, could you ever be truly prepared?
This time I was with my other Grandma, Grandma Prest. Perhaps it was even during the visit when my family were luxuriating in homemade root-beer at home while I was away for a week or two for a summer holiday with Grandma.
I remember it was her birthday and the sun was super bright. I remember that people were coming over, I haven't a clue if it was 2 or 200 but I remember the busy feeling of *company's coming*. Grandma was making dessert in the kitchen. I can see her at the counter putting ruby red slices of fresh strawberries all over a...... glossy white cheesecake. I don't remember the agonies of waiting for a piece, thank goodness things like that do fade in time. I don't remember who the company turned out to be, I don't remember finally getting a piece of the cheesecake. I just remember the tart sweet strawberries and vanilla creamy cheese cake and rich crumbly graham crumbs combination that was even MORE heavenly then the cheesecake from Wool-Co.
I don't think I asked for the recipe. I wish I'd been sophisticated enough to realize I could maybe MAKE this glorious dessert for myself and got the recipe out of my Grandma. I remember going on and on and on and ON to my Mother about this amazing strawberry cheesecake that I got to have at Grandma's. Since our family budget didn't run to cheesecake when ever we wanted I was probably torturing her with descriptions on the cheesecake I got to have and she didn't. Of course...if this WAS during the fateful summer of the best root beer I never got to have then perhaps she got her JUST DESSERTS, so to speak. hahahaha
At some point during my teenage years my Mom got a cookbook from my Grandma Prest. I was well in to my infatuation with desserts then. Some girls save up and buy makeup I bought chocolate chips. Well this one time I was flipping through the cookbook and found a recipe for cheesecake that seemed familiar. The thing that both of these mind blowing childhood cheesecake experiences had in common was the TYPE of cheesecake they were. Unbaked. No eggs, just cream cheese, whip cream and sugar. Oh Mama.
I saved my pennies, and I worked damn hard for them pennies too! House cleaning at a Lady's house every Saturday and I bought myself the ingredients for the cheesecake with some of my earnings. Look I wasn't a total bi-otch about it, I shared, for the most part, with my family.
The first cheese cake I made I topped with slices of bananas. The bananas were pretty good.....but the cheese cake....
HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH!
There were angels singing and the skies opened up bathing in me in golden light when I tried my first bite of that cheesecake. Well, maybe not exactly but I'm pretty sure there was a lot of "MMmmmmmm MMMMMMMmmmmmmmmm MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM"
IT WAS PERFECT! The cheesecake part I mean, you can top it with anything you want but the cheesecake is the essential part. And this recipe was EXACTLY what I was looking for. It was easier to make then I could ever imagine and it started a whole new world of flavors for my family. It was easy to get them addicted to things like that. Sure I spent my hard earned dollars buying cheesecake supplies....ONCE...muahh ahhh ahhh, but after that they WERE addicted, not so subtly hinting "make that cheesecake, what do you need for it?"
A funny thing, this is the only cheesecake recipe I've ever made. It's that good. It's like my husband, why would I stray to another? I hit on the perfect thing first time up to bat so why would I mess with perfection?
Oh, I'm sorry. Were you wanting the recipe? Hmm, all that lead up and nada, zilch, nothing. Just the cold empty cruelty of me denying you your own cheesecake perfection? Don't freak out, I'm not one of those *family secret* kind of gals. Here's the recipe and enjoy. I don't have the name of who originally made this cheesecake but if I ever find it I'll include it here too. I have changed it a wee bit from the original anyways. You can too, sometimes lime pie filling on top, some times lemon, sometimes fresh fruit. Yummers. Customize to your wee precious heart's delight!

Lemon Cheesecake
INGREDIENTS:
For Crust:
1 cup of graham cracker crumbs
2 tbs white sugar
1/4 cup of melted butter
For cheesecake:
1 package of cream cheese (8 oz.)
1/2 cup of white sugar
1/8 tsp of salt
1 tsp of vanilla
1 tsp of lemon juice
1 small container of cool whip
Lemon Topping: 1 package of Jello lemon pie filling, just follow directions on the box.

DIRECTIONS:
Mix graham crumbs, butter and sugar and press in to 9” square pan, bake in pre-heated oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Remove and cool.
Soften cream cheese to room temperature, resisting the urge to just eat it on crackers and skip the whole cheese cake thing...Stir the softened cream cheese with sugar, vanilla, lemon juice and salt in a bowl till well combined. Fold in the whip cream, dont forget to take it out of freezer before hand so it will be soft enough to fold in. Spoon cheesecake mix on to cool crust. Keep in refrigerator while you prepare the lemon pie filling. When the pie filling is ready, pour hot over the cheesecake and let cool. It’s yummiest if you have the will power to leave the whole thing in the fridge a few hours till it’s good and chilled and set up!

This recipe is one I've played a lot with, you can use lower calorie ingredients, you can make homemade lemon or lime pie filling, home made whip cream etc. Replace regular ingredients with organic. You get the drift, it's super simple and super delicious EVERY time I've made it!

Drunken Cookies

Please note that tis not me or my sweetie inebriated in this video but the cookie who came to life. How bizarre. I think it's all fine and well for cookies to talk but I really don't think they ought to be running around getting drunk, it's not seemly you know.

A classic style peanut butter cookie got totally *pimped out* and the results are my uber peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. So good they talk back!

Uber Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
(makes 12 cookies, or 2 really decent cookies)

1/2 cup of salted, smooth, organic peanut butter
1/2 cup of organic coconut oil
2/3 cup of brown sugar
1 organic egg
1/4 tsp of sea salt
1/2 cup of stone ground whole wheat
1/2 cup of spelt flour
1/4 cup of ground flaxseed meal
1/2 tsp of aluminum free baking powder
3/4 tsp of baking soda
a handful of salted roasted pecans
a BIG handful of chocolate chunks from a block of chocolate
We prefer the Scharffen Berger Bittersweet 70% Cacao

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F, Mix the ingredients together adding as much chocolate and nuts as you prefer. This makes a stiff cookie dough that needs to be man handled in to cookie shapes. Bake in the oven for about 11 minutes, don't overbake and ENJOY! Particularily mind blowing when frozen and nibbled on cold with a glass of French Roast iced coffee....

These cookies are not only brain alteringly delicious BUT...take a breath....they're healthy, satisfying and did I mention freaking taste-tastic?
(please note these cookies are so miraculous they can be known to come to life and talk. Just saying, fair warning is fair warning!)