halloweening with the littles

some shareable ideas we had fun with today in D's little school:

Candy Corn Cookies

How-To:

1. Make your favorite sugar cookie recipe. 
2. Divide the dough into three equal portions.  One portion stays white, color one portion orange, and melt 1-2 squares of unsweetened chocolate to mix with one portion to make it chocolate. 
3. Line small bread loaf pans with parchment or waxed paper.  Fill with chocolate, then orange, then white dough.  My recipe (which is fairly large) filled 3 mini loaf pans.
4. Place dough in freezer for about 20 minutes.
5. Remove from freezer and from bread pans.  Then slice to desired cookie thickness (it will vary with your sugar cookie recipe, but I found that my cookies spread more than I liked unless I kept them about the thickness of this picture). 
6. Cut dough slab into triangles (I had little vultures gobbling up the excess from the edges). 
7. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes (or according to the directions of your own recipe). 

Ghost Bag

I'm all about keeping control when it comes to the combo of paint & kids (despite Kay's more fun example), so I lifted each child (one at a time) to sit by the kitchen sink, painted white on the bottom of their foot, stamped it onto the bag, then swiveled said foot straight into the sink for washing.  It worked well and they reveled in the tickly nature of the task.  And the eye gluing.  There was much consternation in the choosing of eyes.

I also loved these ideas:

Dip Nutter Butter cookies into white chocolate, then make eyes & spooky mouth with dark chocolate...so simple & cute.  The idea comes from KidCuisine.

Jim thought these owls looked creepy, but I loved them (and I guess creepy is the point!).  Kudos to The Custom Cakery for such originality.

And I couldn't find who to give credit to for this one, but loved these stacked sugar cookie pumpkins.  I'm not sure who would need to eat a six-stack of sweetness, but they are so unique & well-done.

I heart blackbeans

50% of my food storage looks like this:

 

And I truly believe my family could happily subsist on the possibilities therein.  Jim has always made phenomenal blackbeans.  But the boy is a flavor master rather than recipe follower.  He works by taste...something I definitely lack the buds to accomplish.  And I'm the main cook around the house, so I've tried a few black bean recipes over the years.  This one is my current favorite.

 

Cuban Black Beans

The cast of characters:
(Doing this Pioneer Woman style {without claiming to even approach her style, that is}!)

 

bacon, onions, red bell pepper, cumin, salt, garlic cloves, fresh oregano, black beans, bay leaves, red pepper flakes, baking soda, chorizo sausage, fresh cilantro 

 
a few pre-cooking tips: 

 

* when you make black beans of any kind, add a pinch of baking soda.  Its alkalinity will allow the beans to keep their lovely black rather than turning to a reddish grey or purple.  Acidity causes th color to turn. 

 

*  As for the chorizo, there are a few different kinds.  I've never found the Spanish style chorizo that the recipe actually calls for.  It's a type that is already cooked.  But I've substituted with two other kinds.  The type in this picture was definitely my least favorite.  I much prefered the flavors of the kind I bought not packaged in sausage casings (it was more like how you buy ground beef).   
 
*  Make good rice to serve under your beans!  Call me a rice snob, blame it on my Asian roots, but the cannery's rice is simply not acceptable.

First, adjust your oven rack to the lower-middle position and heat oven to 300 degrees.

Finely chop 2 oz. bacon (2 slices).  Cook the bacon in a large Dutch oven over medium heat until crisp, about 8 minutes.  

Chop 2 onions and 1 red bell pepper.  Add these to the bacon, along with 1 teaspoon cumin and 1 teaspoon salt.  Continue to cook until the vegetables are softened, about 8 minutes. 

Add 6 garlic clove, minced. 

Also add 2 teaspoons chopped fresh oregano.  Stir and cook until garlic and oregano are fragrant, about 15 seconds.   

Stir in  6 cups of water, scraping up the browned bits. 

Stir in 2 cups of dried black beans (picked over & rinsed), 2 bay leaves, 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes and 1/8 teaspoon baking soda.  Bring to a boil. 

Cover and transfer to the oven.  I put a piece of heavy duty aluminum foil between the pan and lid as extra sealing insurance. 

Bake, stirring every 30 minutes, until beans are tender, 3 to 3 1/2 hours (the recipe calls for less, but it always takes this long for mine...I'm going to try pre-soaking the beans next time).  

Now, this is the part where I failed on the pictures {how does that Pioneer Woman do it??!).  When the beans seem tender, remove the lid and stir in 1/2 lb. chorizo sausage (brown on stovetop beforehand if you could not find Spanish chorizo; if you found Spanish, quarter it lengthwise and slice 1/2 inch thick).  Continue to bake, uncovered, until the liquid has thickened, about 30 minutes.

Discard the bay leaves.  Let the beans sit for 10 minutes.  

Stir in cilantro (yum!) and season with salt and pepper to taste.  Serve over {good} rice.

My bowl of goodness {pre- sour cream dollop, that is}. 

For extra punch, try this flavored sour cream:   

        1 cup sour cream
        1 Tbsp minced fresh cilantro  
        1 1/2 tsp. fresh lime juice
        1 garlic clove, minced
        salt and pepper to taste 

We're table eaters in this family.  BUT...this is one meal I prefer to enjoy curled up on the couch for ultimate comfort.  And, even my no-leftovers leanings will sway for this because it's one of those dinners that truly tastes even better on the second day. 

spt: comfort food

I was excited for Lelly's challenge this week & instantly knew the ultimate Scott family comfort food. Black beans. And I just happened to come across a spectacular version of Cuban Black Beans last spring. That I've been anxiously awaiting Arizona cool down to make.

But...

I do the bills at my house. And if you chance a peek at the passenger seat of my car, brace yourself for a shock of unopened mail and disarray. Order is not my forte. And that is how my power bill (which is supposed to be happily on automatic bill pay) came to be overly overdue. To the degree that my power was turned off yesterday, noon-ish. This coincided with a neighbourhood outage, so I didn't figure it all out until it was too late to be redeemed that day. So we remained powerless until 4:30 today. Far too late for my slow-cooking, flavor-punched favorite beans.

And yet...

I happened to remember that I snapped this picture of a bundt made last week. Oatmeal cake. Favorite of Amy. And Jim. And I find great comfort in such sweetness. I *almost* photographed my thigh or hip for proof. But, nah. I'd rather you make & enjoy in innocence of the possible outcome.

CAKE:

1 ½ c boiling water
2 eggs
1 c oatmeal
1 ½ c flour
1 c brown sugar
1 tsp soda
1 c white sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
½ c shortening
1 tsp salt

Pour boiling water over oatmeal and let sit. Cream sugars and shortening. Add two eggs, mixing well. Sift flour, soda, cinnamon and salt into mixture. Stir. Add oatmeal. Bake in bundt pan at 350.

TOPPING:

½ c melted butter
1 c pecans chopped
½ c brown sugar
1 c coconut
¼ c canned milk
1 tsp vanilla

Stir ingredients and put on top of cake. Broil in oven to toast the topping.

baking breakthrough

Yesterday I Wal-Mart'd (bad in & of itself) with 4 littles, made dinner for 3 families, and dealt with countless other chaos....

but why do I count it as one of my best days ever?

I made 6 perfect pie crusts.  

Baking is my thing, but pie crusts have been my forever nemesis.  I patch, do-over, curse, and cry when it's pie crusting time because I have a deep-set fear born of many a failure.  Last fall, Cyn tired of my pastry lamenting and all of us girls got together for a demo.  In which I learned that my mother can make perfect pie crusts.  By feel.  And under her watchful eye I managed to do a decent replica.  But then Christmas came and I set out enthusiastically to crust on my own.  And realized I lack the inate feel-ability my Cyndee posesses.  Apparently it isn't genetic.  Because my crusts were awful, unrollable masses of dough that I ended up piecing and pushing into the pan to make sad excuses for pie.  

But those days of fear have ended.

Because yesterday I made SIX perfect crusts.  They rolled beautifully, flaked beautifully, browned beautifully smooth.  The key:  not using my hands at all.  While hands work wonders for bakers like Cyndee, mine definitely lacked the skill.  America's Test Kitchen (my favorite cooking source) uses a food processor to make crusts.  So does Martha.  Lacking a full-size food processor, I've never tried that method, but I do have a mini processor (only $30-40).  So that's what a tried.  One crust at a time. 

Small triumph, you may say, but triumph is triumph and fearless pie making will forever be welcome in my kitchen.  

showing off of flaky layers
a Grandma Jones pass-down tradition:
leftover pie crust sprinkled with cinnamon & sugar, then baked

 

chicken pot pie - perfect October dinner

8 Random (food) Things About Me

Tagged by Annalisa, I think I might have food on my mind this morning...

1.  I love Thai food. A few years ago Jim and I went to a restaurant called Thaifoon. I was beyond excited to find a dish on the menu called Evil Jungle Princess. Seriously. Evil Jungle Princess! At that point it honestly didn’t matter what was in the dish. I had to order such a thing.

2.  It was a wickedly spicy red curry. But I smiled the whole time I ate.

3.  I discovered a spicy curry dish at Pei Wei that seems to be a tamed down Evil Jungle Princess.

4.  I crave it frequently.

5.  I recently found a recipe for Chicken Tikka Masala, an Indian dish that I learned to love at a place Ras introduced me to (remember those days?!). I made it yesterday, and it was so delish. The recipe definitely delivered.

6.  But I did feel bad for my dinner exchanging partner whose family definitely didn’t enjoy the Indian spices.

7.  But then she promised me her leftovers, and that evened out my feeling bad in a warped sort of way.

8.  I also recently tried a recipe for Chinese barbecued pork. Heavenly.

 

I tag Mandi & Megan.
(my lovely hermanitas)