Kat Cooks the Books

The Hundred and One Dalmatians Brownies

2011-11-25T18:21:00.000-08:00

Have you read The Hundred and One Dalmatians? Not seen the movies - which are, to be fair, relatively close to the story - but actually read the book by Dodie Smith? If you like dogs, or scary-evil villains, or kidnapping stories with skin-of-their-teeth escapes, or if you have always wondered how it is that pets see their humans, then you should read this book, because it has all of those things, and it's wonderful.

If you don't know the story, here's a brief overview:
Pongo and Missis Pongo (usually just called "Missis") are dalmatians, who live in London with their pet humans, Mr. and Mrs. Dearly. Pongo and Missis have the good fortune of having a litter of fifteen (!) beautiful puppies, which is a wonderful blessing, but... how can Missis take care of all of those puppies by herself? Mrs. Dearly solves this problem when she rescues a dog who she found in the middle of the road in the rain. This dog - a brown or "liver" dalmatian - is named Perdita, and we later find that she had also had a litter of puppies, but that they had been sold without her consent. (Her previous owner was, after all, a horrible man who didn't treat her well, and who didn't even let her stay with her husband, Prince. What a jerk!) Perdita was loved by the Dearly family, though, and was happy there, until one fateful day when the puppies disappeared.

In despair, and at their wits end, the Pongos send out word through the Twilight Bark - a network of dogs who pass messages over the entire country by barking information back and forth every night at twilight - about the missing puppies, and find out that they may be among the puppies who have suddenly appeared at Hell Hall, the ancestral home of one Cruella de Vil.

You have, of course, heard the name of Cruella de Vil. This evil, horrid woman was Mrs. Dearly's roommate in college, and saw the dogs when she came calling one day. She expressed an interest in buying the entire litter of puppies (whose coats, she said, would make a lovely coat for her) and was, of course, turned away. But this didn't stop her: not one bit.

I won't spoil the rest of the story for you, but suffice it to say that it includes a daring rescue, some awesome characters (I'm a big fan of the Colonel), disguises and narrow escapes, and lots and lots of puppies.

In honor of Ms. Dodie Smith's masterpiece, I have decided to make Dalmatian Brownies. These are inspired by the book and not mentioned in it, and I'd like to note that, despite the name of the recipe, these (and anything else with chocolate in it) are not okay for dogs to be eating.

Dalmatian Brownies
- Your favorite brownie mix or recipe, with all components
- Vanilla frosting
- About 12 chocolate sandwich cookies - I used Oreos, because I love them

1. Mix up your brownie batter according to the recipe or the box directions. I usually prefer fudgy brownies, but this time I made cake-like brownies. It's all up to you.
2. Place your Oreos into a plastic bag and crush them up, trying to leave some larger chunks in with the small powdery dust, because variety is the spice of life, and it'll give you a good texture contrast.
3. Mix about 3/4 of the crushed cookies into your brownie batter, and then bake according to recipe or package directions. This time, I made the brownies in a smaller (9x9) pan, but I think I'd recommend making them in a larger pan, because they're rather rich to begin with, and don't need to be thick to be delicious.
4. Let the brownies cool completely, and then frost with the vanilla frosting and sprinkle with crushed cookies. Cut into as many squares as you like, though you will probably have to make more than one batch to make 101 Dalmatian Brownies.

Don't they look just like the spotty dogs?

Well... They look enough like them to be a tribute, I think. And they sure are delicious!

S is for S'mores (Cookies)

2011-07-16T19:58:00.000-07:00

Hello, my friends! It's the middle of July, and it's prime camping weather, wouldn't you say?

This beautiful weather reminds me of a really cool book I stumbled across. It's called S is for S'mores: A Camping Alphabet, and it was written by Helen Foster James and illustrated by Lita Judge. (This book is part of the Alphabet Books series, published by Sleeping Bear Press, and you can find a list of all the different titles - from A is for Abraham to Z is for Zookeeper - here.)

S is for S'mores is a great alphabet book, running from Adventure to Beach camps to Canyons and onward, but it's also a lot more than that. For each letter, there is a 4-line poem and a large, friendly illustration of a camping family experiencing their trip. Sidebars on each page describe each letter's terms in greater detail and give really neat background information (the Desert page, for example, describes desert campgrounds, reminds you to make sure to bring plenty of water, gives information on the Joshua Tree, and tells you about Death Valley National Park). These sidebars are interesting for older children, but can be left out for the little ones with no disruption of the book's flow.

These beautiful summer days are the days when I long to be outdoors hiking, canoeing, swimming, or generally enjoying the good weather, just like the people in this book's illustrations. Of course, camping isn't really camping without a campfire, and what's the point of making a campfire if you aren't going to make s'mores with it? But, alas, it's not always easy to find the time to go camping, and it's not always a good idea to light a fire. Sometimes you just have to camp in the back yard, or have an indoor picnic. Which is fun, but... what about the s'mores?

Thanks to Anna over at CookieMadness, you no longer have to worry about having a campfire, since she perfected the most amazing thing.... the S'mores Cookie! (You can find the recipe here.) With graham crackers in the dough and mini marshmallows and Hershey bars on top, it's a perfect, portable, make-ahead s'more that you can enjoy without a campfire.

I had to share these with you all... especially since every time I've made them, people ask me for the recipe. So, here it is! (And thank you, Anna!)

S'Mores Cookies

3/4 cup butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 cup graham cracker crumbs*
1 1/4 cups flour
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
about 1 cup mini-marshmallows
2 to 3 chocolate bars, chopped**

1. Preheat your oven to 375.
2. Cream the butter and sugars until fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and beat well.
3. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, graham crackers, salt, and baking soda. Mix into the wet mixture until well-combined. Stir in chocolate chips.
4. Drop by rounded teaspoons onto a baking sheet, and bake for 9 minutes. Then, pull the tray out of the oven and ever-so-quickly top with 3-4 marshmallows and some chunks of chopped chocolate bar. Return to the oven and bake for an additional 3-4 minutes, or until done. This recipe makes about 3 dozen cookies.

* I find that it takes about 5 whole graham crackers to make 1 cup of crumbs. You can use your fingers, a food processor, or a number of other things to make them into crumbs, but I find the easiest way is to put them into a sturdy freezer bag and roll it with a rolling pin.
** I cut mine into diamonds with a butter knife, then stored them in the fridge until needed. Oooh, pretty!

I'd recommend letting these cool at least most of the way before eating them, because molten marshmallows and chocolate together tend to lead to burned tongues. You can always heat them in the microwave for a few seconds afterward, and make them perfectly melty that way.

Yes, these are a bit time-consuming, and also a little frustrating, what with the chocolate that inevitably melts on your hands when you're adding it to half-baked cookies, but they are absolutely worth the effort! Trust me on this one... or try them for yourself and see. You won't be disappointed.

I've been thinking a lot about summer recipes lately, and I have a few others to give to you. Do you have a favorite summer book or recipe that you'd like to share with me? Email me at KatCooksTheBooks@gmail.com or send a comment to our Facebook fan page! Or comment right here on the blog, and we can have a lovely discussion that way.

Models Don't Eat Chocolate Cookies: Whoopie Pies for Celeste

2011-06-28T20:42:00.000-07:00

Middle school is hard. Just ask Celeste, the main character from Erin Dionne's Models Don't Eat Chocolate Cookies - every day she has to deal with Lively, the oh-so-perfect pretty girl, making fun of her just because she's a little bit overweight. Or maybe more than a little bit... but that's no reason for Lively to moo at her, is it? And while it was really nice for her cousin to invite her to be a bridesmaid, did she have to pick an ugly peach dress that won't look right no matter how hard the seamstress tries to fix it? But at least she has an awesome best friend, and life is pretty uneventful otherwise.

At least, it was. But that was before her best friend Sandra started hanging out with Lively (what?!) and missing their nightly phone calls, and before her aunt signed her up to be in the Miss HuskyPeach contest. Celeste has no desire to be "on a runway for all the world to see. No. No way. Never." But her aunt and her mother won't take no for an answer, so it seems like the only way to get out of the spotlight is to do something drastic: she's going to have to lose enough weight that she's not husky anymore, and then she'll shrink right out of the contest. But can she make herself exercise (gross!) and eat better? And - harder still - is she willing to give up Oreos?

This book is fantastic. It's for older children or even younger teens; though there's nothing inappropriate in it for the younger set, talk of body image might go a bit over their heads. It was also totally appropriate for me, and even though I picked it up because of the food in the title (okay, I admit it), I couldn't put this book down. It had me tearing up at a few points and laughing out loud at others, and at one point, I actually cried out, "oh no!!!" so suddenly that I woke up the cat. While I picked it up thinking, "I know some good chocolate cookie recipes," I had a better idea. I'm completely supportive of Celeste's weight loss efforts, and I made her a low-calorie Oreo substitute: the soda cake whoopie pie.

For those not in the know, a whoopie pie is two cake rounds with a cream filling inside. (Have you seen Oreo Cakesters? Kinda like that.) They're delicious. I decided to make them out of soda cake, which is a cake made out of cake mix and a can of diet soda, which sounds really weird, but it's low-calorie (diet soda having no calories, and cake mix being nonfat as it is, this makes a very low-calorie treat), and quite tasty. You can use any combination of cake flavor and soda flavor, so you can have an orange-soda-vanilla-cake creamsicle soda cake, or a black-cherry-soda-and-chocolate-cake black forest soda cake. (Yes, it sounds weird, but it's so good that my boyfriend couldn't tell it wasn't real cake.) Since oreos are chocolate, I used devil's food cake and diet Dr. Pepper, which gave it an awesome chocolatey flavor. And since cream filling isn't exactly diet-friendly, I used Cool Whip Free in the middle.

Whoopie Pies For Celeste
1 box cake mix (I used Devil's Food)
1 can diet soda (I used diet Dr. Pepper)
Cool Whip Free

1) Preheat your oven according to cake mix directions. Lightly grease a cookie sheet and set aside.
2) Mix almost all of your can of soda and all of the cake mix until combined and the bubbles stop (I used 11 oz. of soda - take a nice big sip and you should be fine. For whoopie pies, you want your batter to be a little thicker than regular cake batter If you're just making regular cake or cupcakes, you can use the whole can). Spoon out drops of batter onto your cookie sheet, keeping a couple inches between each in case of spreading. (Mine didn't spread very much, but your mileage may vary.)
3) Bake for about 10 minutes, or until the batter stops wiggling.
4) Once the cake rounds are cool, put one round upside-down onto a piece of plastic wrap, and top with a dollop of Cool Whip. Add a second cake round, and wrap the whole thing in plastic. Put it in the freezer and enjoy when frozen and delicious.

Final verdict... tasty! Not quite as good as Oreos, but they'll kill your craving. After all, even dieters deserve dessert, right? (Sometimes especially dieters.)

As always, I love it when people leave me comments, either here or on my Facebook fan page, or send me emails at KatCooksTheBooks@gmail.com. As a special incentive, the first person to email me and the first person to comment on my FB page will get a special awesome recipe that I can't seem to find a place for on here, but which is awesome and delicious.

A Bad Case of Stripes: Lima Beans for Camilla

2011-06-22T18:05:00.000-07:00

A Bad Case Of Stripes by David Shannon tells the story of Camilla Cream, who loved lima beans, but never ate them, because everyone knows that lima beans are yucky, and if there's anything that Camilla wants out of life, it's to be accepted. In fact, she tries on 42 outfits for the first day of school, just trying to find the perfect one (too bad none of them were quite right). Lima beans, then, are definitely out.

When she looks in the mirror to judge her latest outfit, Camilla is shocked - she's come down with a case of stripes! Oh, no! And after the doctor clears her to go to school, stripes and all, she finds out that she's even more impressionable than she thought: the pledge of allegiance made her break out in stars! And upon recommendations from her classmates, she's also covered in a checkerboard pattern.. and purple polka dots... and all sorts of things!

Things just keep getting worse for poor Camilla; she can't help but be influenced by 100 different things. When specialists give her pills to clear things up, she turns into a giant capsule. Will things ever get better for her? Or is the real problem that she won't show her true colors because she cares so much what everyone else thinks?

I'm going to make a confession right now: like Camilla, I love lima beans. It's not something that you tell people in polite company, but it's true. They're probably my favorite vegetable. And since I was making some to go with dinner anyway, I thought I'd dedicate them to Camilla. Here's how I make mine:

Lima Beans for Camilla
Frozen lima beans
Salt and pepper
Butter

1) Pour frozen beans into a microwave safe bowl with a splash of water (about 1/4 cup per cup of beans). Cover and cook on high for 2 minutes. Drain.
OR
1) Pour frozen beans into a small saucepan with a splash of water (about 1/4 cup per cup of beans) and cook on medium-low heat for 5 to 7 minutes, until heated through. Drain.
2) Add a small pat of butter per serving of beans - just enough to coat the beans when it's melted. Add salt and pepper to taste.

That's it. Delicious!

This book was recommended to me by a librarian friend of mine (thanks, Libby!), who told me that this book is really popular with her patrons. So popular, in fact, that it was checked out the first time she told me about it, and I had to get it another day. I'm going to recommend it to you, because it's a cute story and a lot of people really like it, but I'm going to add a few caveats. Firstly, it's supposed to be for ages 4-8, but it's awfully wordy for younger kids, and I'm not sure they'd sit still through the whole thing. Secondly... well, it's pretty creepy. If your little one scares easily - or even if they don't - you may want to read through it first and make sure it's appropriate for their maturity level. The illustrations (and even the concept... if you don't eat your veggies, you'll turn stripey and grow a tail?) may be a bit much for those with active imaginations. That said, it's definitely worth a look.

In other news, I got a lovely note and a blog shout-out from the amazing Zoe Toft of Playing By The Book. If you like my blog, you'll love hers - she and her family not only cook, but play, draw, and create with (or about) books! This is kind of how I was hoping my blog would turn out - please check it out!

Paddington Bear's Elevenses

2011-06-09T18:12:00.000-07:00

Oh, Paddington. How lovable can a bear be?

According to the official website Paddington Bear was discovered by Michael Bond in 1956. It was Christmas Eve, and there was one lonely little bear sitting alone on a shelf in a toy store. Well, he couldn't leave him there, so he brought him home for his wife, and started writing stories about him. Over the years, Mr. Bond has written a total of twelve books about Paddington, starting with Paddington Bear in 1958.

The stories, of course, don't feature Mr. Bond and his family; they feature Mr. and Mrs. Brown, who found the (fictional) bear in Paddington Station (hence his name) with a sign tied around his neck that said, "Please look after this bear. Thank you." The sign, as we come to find out, was put there by his Aunt Lucy, who took care of him until she had to go into the Home for Retired Bears, and sent him on an adventure. He traveled from his home in Darkest Peru, as a stowaway in a life boat, and ended up in London, where he met the Browns.

Paddington is a fun, lovable bear who is unfailingly polite. He calls people Mr. and Mrs., and he never raises his voice; when angry, he simply fixes people with a hard stare, and they know that he is unhappy. Of course, life with a bear is not always easy; he doesn't quite understand the way things are sometimes. It might have been useful for him to know, for example, that while it is a lovely thing to go out to lunch, it is not generally acceptable to climb onto the table and get covered in cream cake and jam. Or that, while it is fun to splash and play in the tub, it might be a better idea to pull the plug to drain the water, rather than bailing it out using your hat.

Paddington has a great deal of adventures while living with the Browns, and makes many friends over the years, including Mr. Gruber, who owned an antique shop and doled out wise advice over a mid-morning snack. For this snack - their "elevenses" - Paddington and Mr. Gruber often had hot cocoa and sometimes marmalade sandwiches (because, as Paddington says, "bears like marmalade"). I decided I needed to make some Elevenses, too.

Paddington Bear's Elevenses
Bread
Butter
Marmalade
Hot cocoa (I'm using a mix, but feel free to use the Polar Express Cocoa here for something special)

1) Toast your bread and spread it with butter. Spread some marmalade on top. (Alternately, you can skip the toasting and the butter and just have jelly-bread or marmalade sandwiches.)
2) Prepare your hot cocoa.
3) Sit down, relax, talk to a good friend, and enjoy.

When I think of Paddington, I can't help but be reminded of my bear Henri, who was found sitting alone in a toy wagon outside a small store, getting rained on. Mom and I agreed - we had to take him home, and he's still having adventures with me.

"Bears like marmalade."

I have to admit, I'd never had marmalade before, but it won't be my last time. For those not in the know (and I know you exist, because I've already had people ask me "what's marmalade?"), marmalade is a jelly made with citrus fruit juice and peel. I'm not sure why I'd never had it, since I love oranges, but it'll go on my list of yummy things I should eat more often.

Paddington Bear is a fantastic classic book that I haven't heard enough about lately. I'm going to try to mix the classics in with new books more often, but as a lot of them don't have any food to speak of, the recipes might be more inspired-by than based-on. Do you have a favorite classic book that you'd like to see posted? Let me know in the comments, on the Facebook fan page, or by dropping me an email at KatCooksTheBooks@gmail.com.

Happy reading!

Green Eggs and Ham

2011-05-31T17:24:00.000-07:00

Whenever I tell people that I write this blog, people inevitably ask me if I've written about Green Eggs and Ham yet. I haven't, mainly because the thought of eating green eggs is not all that appetizing, and I needed to find a way that I could make them taste delicious and look delicious, preferably without using food coloring, and also kid friendly. Well, I think I found a way. But first things first.

Green Eggs and Ham was written by Dr. Seuss back in 1960. The story goes that his editor, Bennett Cerf, loved The Cat In The Hat (which itself was written because Dr. S thought that Dick and Jane were boring), but was surprised that it contained 225 words. He bet the author that he couldn't write a book using only 50 words, and the result was our beloved story. (49 of the words, incidentally, are monosyllabic; the only standout is "anywhere.") Now, I just find this whole thing amazing. It's hard enough to write a good story, let alone a good story that can stand the test of time, but to write such a story that only uses 50 words sparkles with genius.

If there are any of you out there who are unfamiliar, the basic premise of this book is that our narrator's friend Sam-I-Am keeps pestering him to try green eggs and ham, a dish that he says he doesn't like. He doesn't want them with any number of dining partners or in any number of locations. "I do not like them, Sam-I-Am!" he protests over and over again. Finally, our hero relents and tries a bite, if only to be left alone, but finds to his surprise that he actually does enjoy the odd dish, and he would, in the future, eat them with a fox, on a box, and so forth. Hooray for trying new things!

Speaking of trying new things, I tried a new recipe for this entry, and I think it came out rather well. After rejecting several ideas, I finally made Green Eggs and Ham Cups, the green coming from pesto sauce that was spooned on top.

Green Eggs and Ham Cups
Ham, sliced somewhat thick (I asked for "kinda thick slices" at the deli and they were perfect)
Eggs
Peppers, onions, cheeses, and other omelette-type fillings, all diced into small pieces
Pesto sauce

1. Preheat your oven to 375. Lightly grease a muffin tin, and insert one slice of ham into each cup, fluting it around the edges if necessary.
2. Add cheeses and vegetables to the bottom of the ham cups, trying not to put too much in.
3. Add one egg to each ham cup. I did this without spilling by cracking one egg into a measuring cup with a spout, and pouring it from there to the muffin tin. This way, I could check there were no eggshells in the egg, and I could easily pour it in without getting egg all over the tin and my hands. (Alternately, you can scramble the egg and pour the scramble-y mixture in. We made a few of each.)
4. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes, until each egg has set.
5. Top with pesto sauce, and serve with toast, sausage, fresh fruit, or any other breakfast goodies. Enjoy!

Right out of the oven and still in the muffin tin, they looked like this:

And then with the pesto, the cross-section of the Green Eggs and Ham looks like this:

I need to make these again soon. So good!

I think these are especially kid-friendly because they're:
a) fully customizable - put in whatever you want!
b) easy for kids to help assemble - putting ham into cups, adding fillers, cracking and pouring eggs.
c) a good way to get little ones to try new flavors and meals while eating mostly-familiar ones.

So, I think this was a good one, but I'd love to know what you think. Do you like Green Eggs and Ham? Or would you do it differently? You can tell me here in the comments, on the KCTB Facebook fan page, or you can email me at KatCooksTheBooks@gmail.com.

Pizza Kittens Pizza

2011-05-13T18:57:00.000-07:00

Kids will be kids, and kittens will be kittens, and not all kids or all kittens like the same things, do they? And what is a Mama Cat to do when her three little kittens put up a fuss? Pizza Kittens is a picture book by Charlotte Voake that addresses that very problem.

First, Mom tries fish sticks... but Joe wanted baked beans! And - oh no! Not SALAD! None of the kittens (Joe, Bert and Lucy) like dinner, and they make a huge mess, and when they leave the table, "What a horrible sight it was!" Dad tries to step in, and he makes dinner the next night. Too bad the kittens don't like peas, either; most of them ended up on the floor! Oh, no! Will the parents ever find a meal that will satisfy all of their picky eaters?

I fear that I've given up the answer to this puzzle by giving you the title of the book - Mom serves pizza the next night, and it was "Absolutely PERFECT!" (Though the last picture shows us one kitten happily leaning back in his chair, about to spill his water, with salad all over the floor around him. Perfection is in the eye of the beholder.) In the defense of the parents, it's not as if they gave in completely; the kittens were required to help clean up the messes they made, they helped set the table, and they still had to eat salad with their pizza. I'd like to think that it was more of a compromise-meal; since they helped out, and they ate bits of dinner during the week, so they had a special Friday-night pizza night.

I also had a special Friday night pizza night tonight! I made it from scratch, and it was quite tasty if I do say so myself. I like the idea of individual pizzas, especially for this, because then each of your picky kittens will get exactly what he or she likes. Also, having little ones help in the cooking (they can help with steps 2, 3, and 5) makes them more excited to eat the meal - a definite plus when nobody wants to eat.

Pizza Kittens Pizza
Crust of choice (I used store-made raw pizza dough)
Sauce of choice
Shredded cheese
Toppings of all kinds

1. Prepare the crust. If using raw dough, as I did, then let it sit out at room temperature for an hour. Stretch it into the desired shape (or shapes! Everyone can get their own!), and then let it sit for 5 minutes before re-stretching. This will let it settle a bit, so it won't shrink, bubble, or grow excessively on you when cooking, which will let your toppings settle evenly. With my dough, I find it helpful to bake at 350 for 5-7 minutes before adding toppings, so it doesn't get soggy. If you use a different kind of crust, make sure you follow the package directions.
2. Add the sauce, and smooth it out with a spoon. Remember, a little goes a long way!
3. Sprinkle cheese on top, and top with desired toppings.
4. Bake for the amount of time dictated on your crust package or recipe; mine cooked for 20 minutes, and it turned out like this:

Yummy! That deliciousness has pepperoni, onion, and feta cheese on top of the mozzarella, which is a fantastic combination. The feta doesn't melt, and it adds a nice saltiness and creaminess.
5. Step 5 is, of course, ENJOY!

Deliciousness. What more can I say?
So here's your homework for this week: Read this book, make a Pizza Kitten Pizza, and tell me what the best combination of toppings you've found is. Can you beat my pepperoni, onion and feta?

As always, you can leave your answers in the Comments section, or email me at KatCooksTheBooks@gmail.com, or come onto the Facebook fan page and leave me a message there. Are you a fan yet?

Frankenstein Makes A Sandwich

2011-05-04T16:30:00.000-07:00

"Not again!" you are no doubt thinking. "You already taught us how to make three different types of sandwiches!" Well, yes. But this blog is as much about the books as it is about the food, and if you need a reason to get excited about sandwiches, this is a good one.

The full title of this book, including the subtitle, is Frankenstein Makes A Sandwich, and other stories you're sure to like, because they're all about monsters, and some of them are also about food. You like food, don't you? Well, all right then. (Is that not the coolest title ever? I love it when books talk to me as if they can hear me answering their questions.) In brief, it's a book of poems written and illustrated by Adam Rex, all of which feature monsters - Dracula, The Creature From The Black Lagoon, Bigfoot, and so on - and many of which feature food. And all of which, I might add, are awesome.

Our book opens with a forlorn-looking Frankenstein's monster looking through an empty cabinet. The text lets us know the story: "When Frankenstein / prepared to dine / on ham-and-cheese on wheat, / he found instead / he had no bread / (or mustard, cheese, or meat)." Oh, no! Poor guy! The poem follows him going to the neighbors to borrow some ingredients, but - alas! - he is a monster, and they got spooked, and threw their garbage at him. Rather than being upset, though, Frankie realizes that the neighbors have made a mound of food, which he takes and makes into a sandwich. Mmmmm, dinner!

As the book progresses, we learn that "The Yeti Doesn't Appreciate Being Called Bigfoot" (and "Bigfoot Can't Believe You Called Him Yeti Just Now"), we find out what's in "The Lunchsack of Notre Dame," we watch as everyone is too scared to tell Dracula that he has spinach in his teeth, and we're invited to watch as The Phantom of the Opera keeps trying to write a new song, but he just can't get other songs out of his head. And, of course, "The Mummy Won't Go To His Eternal Rest Without A Story And Some Cookies."

Take a look at the artwork on the cover here - beautiful!
(Or, for a better look, here: http://amzn.to/l6x5vO )
Every single image in the book is just as well done, and if that wasn't enough, each monster's poems (which are each written in a different style) are illustrated in a different way - some pen and ink, some line drawings, some colorfully and intricately painted. It really is worth a look or three.

Mr. Rex has also written a book called Frankenstein Takes The Cake, in which we meet the Bride of Frankenstein and the couple's assembled friends and family as they celebrate their wedding, again told in poetry. I highly recommend both these titles, both for kids and adults. Due to them being monstery, they're listed by SLJ as Grade 2 to 5, but I think the poems would be a good way to get some younger kids away from being afraid of The Unknown, too - much like Caspar The Friendly Ghost, but sillier.

I was introduced to Adam Rex's work by Christy Meisler (the guest chef who made us last week's Owl Ice Cream!), in the usual way. That is, she put the books in my lap and said, "read this!" As always, she was right about these books, and all thanks go to her. And so would a sandwich, if we still lived in the same state.

Frankenstein Sandwiches
Bread, rolls, or wraps
Lunchmeat
Cheeses
Various sandwich vegetation, such as onions, lettuce, peppers, or tomatoes
Condiments

1) Choose a bread, roll, or wrap.
2) Choose a combination of fillings.
3) Spread any and all condiments onto your bread, and then fill with a large pile of various fillings.
4) Enjoy!

Okay, so this is a bit silly, particularly as the point of this sandwich is that it includes absolutely everything, kinda like a Dagwood sandwich, so giving an ingredient list is like giving a list of colors you can paint with, when everybody knows that the sky's the limit. The Frankenstein Sandwich is a platform on which to experiment with flavors, textures, and deliciousness! My sandwich, seen above, included buffalo-style chicken breast, Swiss cheese, onions, and blue cheese dressing. (So good!) I often sprinkle some dried oregano on my sandwiches, which gives them a deli-esque flavor. I'm also a big fan of roast-beef-and-turkey-with-red-onions-and-cheddar-and-pesto-on-a-hoagie-roll, and a friend's mom made me a delicious brie and pear on ciabatta not too long ago. Sandwiches are a thing of beauty and creativity and deliciousness, and I really should eat them more often. Perhaps while reading.

So tell me, dear bleaders: What would your monster sandwich be? And what would you read while eating it?

Gruffalo Owl Ice Cream

2011-04-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

Dear Bleaders,
We're back!!! Please see the "Reborn" post for a full apology. As a way to jump back into blogging, I'm going to post this recipe and photo that was sent to me by the fantabulous Christy Meisler, who sent this to me several months ago. She's an awesome friend and a great librarian, and I can't thank her enough for this idea (and recipe... and photo.. and book talk!). Thank you, Christy! You've got me blogging again! All of the words below are hers.
-Kat

In the picture book The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler, a little mouse meets several animals who think mice are tasty. He tells each of them he's meeting his friend the Gruffalo, a scary monster who eats foxes, owls, and snakes. When each enemy flees, Mouse chuckles, "Doesn't he know? There's no such thing as a Gruffalo!"

...Or is there? Is the joke on Mouse after all?

The book combines fun rhyming text with adorable illustrations. Mouse tells the owl that the Gruffalo's favorite food is "owl ice cream," so I decided I had to try making that.

Owl Ice Cream:
1 scoop chocolate or vanilla ice cream
2 slices banana (eyes)
2 chocolate chips (pupils)
1 candy corn (beak)
6 slices peach (wingfeathers)
Sliced almonds (feathers)

The result tasted as good as it looked -- I think peaches, bananas and almonds taste great with chocolate ice cream! For a healthier version, you could use frozen yogurt, with blueberries instead of chocolate chips, and a whole cashew instead of a candy corn.

Reborn!

2011-04-28T15:44:00.000-07:00

Dear Bleaders,

I'm sorry I've been missing for so long. I've been working at a bookstore and...well... experimenting with recipes is expensive and time consuming, and I've been short on both time and money. But things are looking up, and... well... I missed you! So I'm back.

The blog will be up and running again shortly. Please stay tuned... and please forgive me for disappearing! As always, ideas, comments, and emails are always welcome and appreciated. You can reach me at KatCooksTheBooks@gmail.com, or on my Facebook fan page.

Kat

Candy Witch Candy Corn Cookies

2010-10-20T19:58:00.000-07:00

The Candy Witch was written by Steven Kroll and illustrated by Marylin Hafner. It's one of the books that I remember reading again and again as a kid, even though it's obviously a Halloween story.

Our story focuses on Maggie Witch, the youngest of the Witch family. Everyone in the family liked to cast good, helpful spells for the people of the town. To quote Mr. Kroll, "Mama Witch flew around turning garbage into fruit trees. Brother John changed pillows into purring cats. Papa Warlock liked giving bald men hair." But Maggie's good deeds - making flowers bloom, filling empty fridges with food, putting candy in people's pockets - largely went unnoticed.

Poor Maggie! She just wanted somebody to pay attention to her. So, having tried so hard to be good with no results, she now tried a new tactic - mischief! Eric found mice in his lunchbox. Bill's milk got turned into a flower. Patty tripped over a cow on her way to the school bus. (I love how random this is.) And then, to top it all off, Maggie waited until late at night, when all the trick-or-treaters had gone home... and she made all their candy disappear!

Maggie lurked near the school the next day, waiting to hear everyone commenting on what she had done. But what she heard was crying, and with that, she realized that she had done an awful thing! Oh no!! How could she make it up to everybody? Our little Candy Witch had an idea. She set up a huge candy festival in the center of town, with more candy than anyone had ever seen in one place. Not just what she had stolen, either, but also piles of Hershey kisses and caramel apples and jelly beans, and she made it so the fountains spouted lemonade! What fun!! And finally, everyone was happy - including Maggie.

What a sweet story! (No pun intended.) And there was so much candy in it that I just had to pick something to make for it. Now, candy corn isn't specifically mentioned in this story, but when I think Halloween Candy, I think Candy Corn. Of course, rather than trying to make actual candy, I decided it would be more fun to make candy corn cookies.

The idea for these isn't mine; it's Betty Crocker's. Her recipe and instructions are here, and mine are here below. I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe (also below, and, as usual, from the AllRecipes website here), but if you have a favorite, or you want to use pre-made or from a mix, go for it - just skip to step 3. Just as a note: this recipe is rather confusing in just words, so today you get a special photo shoot of the food in progress! Hooray!!!

Candy Witch Candy Corn Cookies
3-3/4 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup butter or margarine, softened
1-1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
Yellow and red or orange food coloring

1. In a small bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
2. In a larger bowl, cream the butter and sugar until soft and fluffy, and then add in the eggs, one at a time, and the vanilla. Finally, stir in the dry ingredients, a little bit at a time (so it doesn't get flour all over you and the counter), until fully mixed.
3. Divide the dough into three equal portions. Take one of the portions and push it into the bottom of a rectangular pan, forming an equal layer. I used a plastic reusable throw-away lunch container (like Glad-Ware, but I'm pretty sure it was store brand).
4. Use a few drops of food coloring to turn one of the remaining portions orange, and layer it evenly over the white layer. Color the remaining dough yellow, and layer it evenly on top. In the end, it will look like this:

Beautiful! Now, chill this for two hours.
5. After the dough is nice and chilled, preheat the oven to 400. Remove the dough from the container, and cut slices as close to 1/4 of an inch as you can get. It will look like this:

6. Now, take your slice and cut it into triangles, as shown here (sorry about the glare):

Each of these triangles is a piece of candy corn. Some will have yellow tops, and some will have yellow bottoms, but really, nobody's going to notice. As you transfer each of these pieces to the cookie sheet (or wax paper, or tin foil), try to soften the corners a little bit, so they're not quite so sharp.
Your finished cookie sheet will look something like this:

Squee! How cute are those? I may have put them slightly too close together on the sheet there, but they don't spread too much, so I was alright.
7. Now, bake these beauties for 6 to 8 minutes, or until the edges are just starting to turn golden brown. My finished cookies looked like this:

And I am rather proud of them. Don't they look much more impressive than the actual work involved? I love it - hope you do, too.

Skippyjon Jones Nachos

2010-10-16T16:45:00.000-07:00

Skippyjon Jones is a Siamese kitten who lives with his mother, Mama Junebug Jones, and three sisters. There he was, jumping on his bed one day, minding his own business, singing a little song, when he suddenly noticed himself in the mirror, and was very surprised at what he saw. "Holy Guacamole!" he said. And then, in his best Spanish accent: "My ears are too beeg for my head. My head ees too beeg for my body. I am not a Siamese cat... I am a chihuahua!"

So, of course he had to put on a Zorro-inspired costume and go off on an adventure, into the closet-turned-Mexican-village. Of course, his mastery of the language is limited to a few simple words, and the fact that putting "-ito" at the end of words makes them Spanish, but that doesn't stop our hero (now called El Skippito) from volunteering to save the day. You see, a mysterioso band of chihuahuas named Los Chimichangos were being tortured by a giant Bumblebeeto Bandito! He kept stealing all of their beans (from black beans to jelly beans), and wouldn't give them back. Oh no!!! Can El Skippito save the day?!

Skippyjon Jones is the first (award-winning!) book in a series of five, starring Skippyjon, the kitty-brainchild of author and illustrator Judith Byron Schachner. The other books have Skippyjon in ancient Egypt (via the litter box), digging dinosaur bones, and on Mars - of course, all with the Los Chimichangos gang for company.

These books are awesome read-alouds, especially since there are lots of songs and rhymes thrown in. And if you don't feel like reading a book 15 times to your little one - GOOD NEWS!! They each come with a CD audio book!

I also love the illustrations in these books, particularly the two pages that say: "First they had a fiesta. Then they took a siesta." I love that each individual member of Los Chimichangos has his own distinct size, personality, and fur-coloring (since they're all actually bean bag toys, there are several pink, orange, and polka-dotted dogs. My favorite is the green chihuaha with a pink flower pattern), and that Mama Junebug Jones generally wears an apron and is a patient, loving, and generally awesome cat. All in all - awesome characters, great stories, and generally a lot of fun. Highly recommended.

And so! For Skippyjon Jones, who is not exactly Mexican but likes to think he is, I have made nachos, which are not exactly Mexican, but pretend they are. (Yes, I know the origin of nachos. They were created in Mexico by Ignacio "Nacho" Anaya. But my nachos aren't exactly traditional, as I tend to be pretty white-bread.)

Skippyjon Jones Nachos
1 bag of corn tortilla chips
Shredded cheese or queso sauce
Salsa
Optional additional toppings, such as:
Seasoned taco-style beef, steak, or chicken
Sour cream
Jalapenos
Guacamole
Refried beans
Pico de gallo

1. Spread tortilla chips into a single layer on a microwave-safe plate or a cookie sheet. Sprinkle (or pour) an even layer of cheese onto each chip. If using jalapenos, this would be the time to add them, one slice per chip.
2. Heat the chips in the microwave (if on a plate) or the oven (if on a cookie sheet) until cheese is melted.
3. If on a cookie sheet, evacuate melty chips to a plate. Now is the time to add your additional toppings, starting with the heaviest (such as meat or beans) and ending with sauces.
4. Dig in and enjoy!

On a totally different but still blog-related note, I wanted to let you know that we have FIVE Halloween recipes ready to go! Keep checking back - I'm trying to work on a Monday-Thursday update schedule.

PS - if you look closely in the first photo, you can see my own kitty-face hanging out on the floor. Bonus!

Captains of the City Streets: Chicken A La King!

2010-10-11T19:40:00.000-07:00

Happy Monday, my friends! Do I ever have a special treat for you guys tonight. For tonight, we have a meal made by Guest Chef Theone - she who made both potato latkes AND chestnuts for us last December. She has been telling me that I have to write about Captains of the City Streets by Esther Averill since I started this blog, and for some reason I just never have, so she just finally gave up and made it for me. Thank you!!
Theone is right about a lot of things, including that everybody who even somewhat likes cats should read this book. It's awesome.

Captains of the City Streets, a chapter book by Esther Averill, is a part of the Jenny's Cat Club book series. Originally written in the 1972, it follows a series of books that were published as early as the 1940's; the entire series was reprinted in 2005 by the New York Review Children's Collection.

The two main characters of the book, named Sinbad and The Duke, are both tramp cats by choice, not wanting an owner or any responsibilities, or any neighborhood obligations to fulfill. They ventured into a place called “Little Old New York,” a place with no food source for stray kitties, in order to find a steady home to give them room to practice their boxing skills (their skips and shuffles need work). There, they find an abandoned shed, but almost give up on their new home for lack of food before stumbling into both a kindly human who feeds them, and then the Cat Club, which is held nightly in his back yard, and which comprises some pretty awesome characters (a cat who can play the nose flute? Where else can you get that?!).

Sinbad and The Duke first met fellow tramp cat Patchy Pete at The Tramps' Last Stop - the southernmost point in New York where they're guaranteed a hot meal. Cookie is the (human) chef at the restaurant, and he is so kind that he takes the time to count the number of strays that come to his back door, so that each gets his own plate of dinner leftovers. For Sinbad and The Duke's meal, they are treated to Cookie's fabulous Chicken A La King, which Theone has made for us tonight.

And so, without further ado, I give you.... Guest Chef Theone!!!

Hi Kat!

Here's the recipe & photos for chicken a la king from "Captains of the City Streets" (possibly my very favorite children's book of all time). I'm not sure where I got the recipe; it might have been one of those good experiments. Hope everyone enjoys!

Captains of the City Streets' Chicken A La King

You will need:

1 15 oz.can of mixed vegetables

1 large cooked chicken breast, chopped finely OR 1 12.5 oz can of chicken (your choice)

3 Tbsp. butter

3 Tbsp. flour

2 1/2 cups of milk, cream or a combination of both (cream being the preferred dairy product of Sinbad & the Duke)

salt & pepper, to taste

biscuits, rolls or bread

1. Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat

2. Add the flour & whisk madly for 2 or 3 minutes, making sure the flour does not burn

3. Add the dairy a bit at a time, making sure to whisk it into creamy wonderfullness.

4. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the white sauce starts to thicken.

5. Turn the heat way down.

6. Add the meat, veggies & seasonings & turn up the heat until everything is heated through.

7. Serve over a bread of your choice. I prefer biscuits a la Pillsbury because they're so easy, but any old bread will do. Toast is also a nice choice, and faster.

(Rolls a la Pillsbury)

Bon apetit!

Theone

Thanks, Theone. Your beautiful food, coupled with the fact that you took the time to make this for us, in addition to the fact that you actually put the book with the finished product (why do I never do that? I totally should do that!) is seriously amazing. You're the best guest chef ever.

Stone Soup

2010-10-07T17:00:00.000-07:00

Stone Soup is a traditional folk story, and in various cultures, you can find it as "axe soup," "button soup," or "nail soup." I've chosen to write about the version written by Marcia Brown, which was a Caldecott Honor book in 1947. (In the interest of honesty, I think I should note that, while the story itself is good, the images are not to my personal taste.)

In Ms. Brown's version, the story goes like this (I'm paraphrasing, of course):
Three tired soldiers were walking home from the wars, and were very tired and very hungry - they hadn't eaten in days. They came upon a village, and begged for some food and shelter, but the peasants were wary of strangers, and had hidden all their food away. When the soldiers asked around, they were told that there just wasn't anything left. "Sorry!" they said. "We gave everything extra we had to the soldiers who came before you, and all our beds are full of people already, and there's nothing left anywhere, so you have to leave now. Too bad!" Then they stood around and looked as hungry as they could.

The soldiers talked to eachother a bit, and told the townspeople, "we had no idea that nobody had any food. What a sorry state of affairs! We'll have to make stone soup and feed you all. Um... do you have a really big pot we can borrow?" The townspeople were amazed. Make soup out of stones?! That would be a wonderful skill to learn! Of course the soldiers could borrow a pot! The town's largest cooking pot was set over a fire, and in went the stones and plenty of water.

So the soldiers stirred the stone soup, and one turned to the others. "It's a shame nobody has any salt and pepper," he said. "Stone soup is always better with salt and pepper." "Well...." said a townsperson. "I suppose I might have a bit I can spare. And in it went.

"This is good," one soldier said. "But it's a shame there aren't any carrots around. Stone soup is awesome with carrots." "I might have a carrot or two," said a peasant. He dug up a few and dumped them in. Another peasant was able to scare up a cabbage or two, while another had a few extra potatoes. And so on, and so on, until the pot was full and the soup was ready.

A great table was set, and everyone sat down and enjoyed the soup and was amazed that the soup had been made from water and just a few stones.

I always liked this story because it's about what great things can happen when people pitch in just a little bit. This particular version also has a trio of very tired, and also sneaky, soldiers (who, by the way, each got a comfortable place to sleep).

In case you feel like making your own Stone Soup one day, here's my favorite recipe. Feel free to throw in whatever veggies you might have laying around, too.

Stone Soup
1 pound ground beef
4 cups chicken stock
4 cups water
1 onion, chopped
1 2oz. packet onion soup mix
1 16oz. bag of frozen mixed vegetables
1 15oz. can tomato sauce
3/4 cup dry elbow macaroni

1. Brown the ground beef in the bottom of your biggest soup pot. Drain the fat.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients, through the tomato sauce, and cook over medium heat for 15 minutes.
3. Add the macaroni and cook until it's done (about 10 minutes). Season with salt and pepper to taste.

My version of stone soup is taken from an AllRecipes.com recipe (Hamburger Vegetable Soup). This is pretty tasty with saltines or with crusty bread, and it also freezes well. Of course, it's just a baseline recipe, and you can add whatever else you like in there as well. This time, I added half a can of diced tomatoes, and it was pretty tasty.

Curious George Monkey Treats

2010-10-04T15:56:00.000-07:00

Curious George, the curious little monkey! For any of you who might be unfamiliar with this awesome monkey, he is he creation of husband-and-wife team Hans Augusto and Margaret Rey, and comes all the way from the jungles of Africa, where The Man With The Yellow Hat caught him and took him home. (As a side note, the Reys have a very interesting history - read about it on Houghton Mifflin's website, here.)

George is a nice little monkey, but a very curious one and he - like many children - doesn't ever mean to cause trouble. It just sort-of follows him. Like the time he saw the Man With The Yellow Hat using the telephone? He had to push the buttons, too! Wouldn't you? He didn't know that he'd be calling the fire department and setting off an alarm.

He starred in seven original adventures (though the original Curious George is still my favorite). George has always appealed to my sense of what I wanted to do but I couldn't because I'd get in trouble - and I love that it's not always a happy conclusion. Sometimes George is good at what he tries to do, but sometimes it's harder than it looks and something bad happens. It's somehow more realistic that way.

So, in honor of Curious George and the Reys, and for the curious little monkeys in your life, I give you:
Curious George Monkey Treats
bananas
peanut butter (I like chunky, but creamy is lovely, too)
chocolate chips

1. Peel a banana, and cut or break it in half (not longways, as that would be slimy).
2. Spread peanut butter over the top of the banana.
3. Press chocolate chips into the peanut butter.
4. Eat.

This treat is alternately called Bugs On A Bed, and is a variation of Ants On A Log, which has celery instead of banana and raisins instead of chocolate chips. I remember when I learned to make this 20+ years ago. Good times. Just look how tasty these are!

You have no idea how long it took me to choose a good Curious George food. I've been debating on it off and on for months, and looking at recipes for two solid weeks now. "And this is what you came up with?" you say.

Well...I knew I wanted to do something banana, because Curious George is a most-excellent monkey. I thought about: banana bread, banana pudding, bananas foster, banana cookies, chocolate-dipped bananas, banana ice cream (a la Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey), banana cream pie, and banana smoothies. Some ideas were okay, others were boring and predictable, and the one I really wanted to do - bananas foster over ice cream - was probably not to the taste of my target demographic - the little ones who relate more to the monkey than to the Man With The Yellow Hat. This is a recipe that they can enjoy making as well as eating. So, I guess this was my wake-up that I can't just make things that I want to eat.

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome, and please feel free to email me at KatCooksTheBooks@gmail.com.

Strawberry Girl Strawberry Bread

2010-09-14T17:26:00.000-07:00

I first read Strawberry Girl in Mrs. Basista's fourth grade class, and when I started this blog, I knew I had to make something to celebrate this awesome book. (Maybe partly, again, because of my love of all things Berry.) I'm giving a little more background for this one than I usually do, just because I feel like I should.

Strawberry Girl, written by Lois Lenski, is the 1946 winner of the Newbery Award. Ms. Lenski was a prolific author, and may be most famous for her books about children of various regions and cultures in the U.S., including Bayou Suzette and Corn Farm Boy. She also wrote several picture books and several historical novels, as well as being an illustrator for the first few of the Betsy-Tacy series (which we discussed last fall). I remember reading Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison (one of the historical novels) several times as a kid.

Strawberry Girl is one of the regional novels. It's set in Florida, and the characters pride themselves on being "Florida Crackers" - basically, poor farming families. The book features two main families: the Boyers, including Berthenia (Birdie), who is the title character, and the Slaters, including young Jefferson Davis (Shoestring). The Boyers are relatively well-off and have recently moved to the area to grow and sell strawberries, sugar cane, and anything else that will grow. Birdie wants to be friends with everybody, and wants more than anything to be a Strawberry Girl, selling her berries on a street corner in the nearby town. The adult-me wants to say, "wow, dream big!", but I remember being a kid and thinking how much fun it would be to grow and pick and be able to be proud of my own strawberries, so I must have gotten cynical in my old age.

As a side note, I have on several occasions attempted to grow my own strawberries. It never worked very well.

Anyhow. The Boyers' closest neighbors are the Slaters, who really don't have much of anything. They aren't farmers so much as squatters, and they don't raise their cattle so much as let it run wild. This doesn't lead to friendliness between the families, since Mr. Slatter isn't too happy about Mr. Boyer fencing in his land. No love lost between the dads in this book, which is really too bad, because the moms seem to hit it off pretty well. And Birdie and Shoestring could totally be BFFs, given the chance.

The things I remember from the 1994 reading of this book were how much I liked the main character, the desire I had to grow my own strawberries, and the description of a road made out of logs as a Corduroy Road. My friend Manna remembers mainly that the book is written in a strong dialect that's a little hard to understand. Neither of us remembered Mr. Slater being an alcoholic or the bits with animal cruelty (which really just stand to show you how much of a jerk Mr. Slater is - it's not like they're glorifying it). So, just be aware that, if you're giving this book to your child, there are a few things in there that aren't all sweetness and light. But I still recommend that you give this story to your kids, though, because it's an awesome book, and you really don't remember the unhappy parts. At least, I didn't.

So! For Birdie, who is the best Strawberry Girl ever, I have made this awesometastic Strawberry Bread. I found the recipe at the AllRecipes website, listed as Strawberry Spice Loaf, and all credit goes to HMBOLAAF, who posted it. (I just added vanilla and extra berries.) Thank you!

Strawberry Girl Strawberry Bread

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups white sugar

1 tsp. salt

1 tbsp. ground cinnamon

1 tsp. ground nutmeg

1 tsp. baking soda

1 1/4 cups vegetable oil

4 eggs, beaten

2 16-oz. bags of frozen strawberries, thawed

2 tsp. vanilla

1. Preheat the oven to 350, and grease and flour two 9x5 loaf pans (I actually made one large and two small loaves instead of two large ones - if you do that, be sure to adjust your cooking time).

2. In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and baking soda. Dump the bags of strawberries into a (different!) large bowl, and squish them up with a fork, your fingers, or a potato masher to break them up a bit. Add the oil, eggs, and vanilla into the strawberries, and mix well.

3. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients, and pour in the strawberry mixture. Mix thoroughly until everything is combined, and pour into the loaf pans.

4. Bake the loaves for one hour, or until a toothpick/butter knife in the center comes out clean.

I've been told that this bread tastes like apple cider donuts, without the apple and with strawberries. I've been describing it to people as "like banana bread, but with strawberries and without bananas." It's also really good with some whipped cream and additional strawberries on top.

So good! I know the color looks "off" here, but it's not. It really is that odd reddish color. You could add some food coloring if you wanted it to be more vibrant, and I meant to do that, but totally forgot. I bet it would be good with some pecans or walnuts mixed in, too.

Also, I know this post is more about what I thought of the book and less about the book itself, but I wasn't sure what else to say about it. What do you think - have you read it? Would you recommend it? And what would you talk about for this book, if this was your blog?

City of Ember Roasted Potatoes

2010-09-09T16:36:00.000-07:00

Imagine this: There's a city underground, deep enough to be cut off from the rest of the world entirely. It was built years ago by people known only as The Builders, who supplied the city - Ember - with everything it could possibly need: canned food, clothing, a generator and power grid for electricity, a plumbing and sewer system, a greenhouse for growing fruits and vegetables - everything the city's people could need for 200 years.

But that was 241 years ago, and now, decades after the day when residents were supposed to return to the surface, the plans for Ember have been lost. Supplies are running low, and the generator is slowly dying. Ember is in fear of the day when the lights don't come back on after a blackout, when the shelves are bare, and when the plants stop growing.

Imagine, too, that you have found the Builders' plans, that you know that it's time to get the residents to the surface world, and how to do it, ending the years of darkness and uncertainty. But nobody will listen to you. After all, you're only 12 years old.

That's what happened to Lina Mayfleet in The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau. She, along with her friend Doon and 2-year-old sister Poppy, has to decide whether to follow the Builders' instructions and escape from the city, or give up and let Ember die? Tell me... what would you do?

I seriously love this book. I saw the movie randomly on tv one day and loved it, and then found out that there was a book version (which came first, naturally), and it's even better than the movie (of course)! Better than that, even? There are four books in this series, and my library has all of them! I made the ultimate sacrifice and re-read City of Ember for you, my dear friends, and I even have Book 2 (The People of Spark) on my coffee table for later. (I left books 3 and 4 at the library this time - no need to be greedy.)

Anyhow. It's not like I'm obsessed with this book, but it is one of the few that I've brought to people, put in their hands and said, "Read this. I'm not kidding." There's just something about it that makes me highly recommend it to just about everybody.

So, back to Ember. Food, naturally, was pretty scarce in the city, since they only had what they little remained on the storeroom shelves and what they could grow in the greenhouse, which was, with plumbing and lights being unreliable, not all that much. But there was one thing they could always count on, and that was potatoes. Lina had potatoes for almost every meal, and while I'm sure she was probably sick to death of mashed potatoes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner... that really doesn't sound all that bad to me.

I love potatoes. I'm like Bubba from Forrest Gump - I'll take them any way I can get them. Boiled, baked, mashed, fried, potato soup, potato stew, potato dumplings, potato bread... but today I'm sharing with you one of my all-time favorite potato recipes. It's easy as heck, and tastes really good, too.

City of Ember Roasted Potatoes

Red potatoes, about 2 or 3 per person*
Olive Oil - about 1 tbsp. per person (use as much as you need to lightly, evenly coat the potatoes)
Spices**

*NOTE about the potatoes: There are many varieties of potatoes, and they're good for many different things. Russetts are good baking potatoes, and yellow potatoes (like Yukon Gold) are awesome for mashies, but for this, I like good ol' red potatoes. For one thing, they're solid enough that you don't have to worry about them getting mushy, and for another, you don't have to peel them! Plus, they're yummy. But you can substitute other potatoes if you want.

**NOTE about the spices: You can use just about anything here. I assume Ember's people would have just used salt and pepper, and this recipe are great with just that. You can also do some with rosemary and dill, or with Italian seasoning, or with garlic powder and dried onions (or real garlic and onions!), or go really funky and use a little bit of dried salad dressing mix, like one of those Hidden Valley Ranch pouches (just make sure that you don't use a whole packet for just a few potatoes, because that may be overwhelming). They also make spice blends just for this, in the pre-mixed-spice-pouch section of the store. Really, anything's good. This time, I used dried diced onions and garlic powder, which is why they look "chunky." I used a bit much... but it was so good!

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Wash and dry the potatoes, and cut them into biteable chunks. I generally cut my red potatoes into 6 to 8 pieces each, but whatever size you like is fine.
2. Put the potato pieces into a bowl and add the olive oil; mix well, until evenly coated. (This also works with a large ziploc - add the ingredients and shake to coat). Add the spices of your choice and mix again, until the spices are evenly distrubuted.
3. Pour the potatoes onto a cookie sheet in an even layer. Pop the whole thing into the oven, and cook until the potatoes are cooked through, stirring/flipping the potatoes about 30 minutes in. When they're done, they'll have a light crust on the outside, and the inside will be warm and soft. This usually takes me about an hour and 15 minutes, but I check at 45 minutes and again at 1 hour, just to make sure they're not getting burned.

I'd like to give attribution for this recipe, but I remember my Mom making this when I was little, so it may just be one of those things that Moms know how to make and pass it along. (My Uncle Hawk also makes a mean roasted potato, to be fair - it's not just Moms.)

One of the things I like about this recipe is that I also cook my chicken at 350, and that takes usually 35-45 minutes (depending on the size of the chicken breasts), so if I time it correctly, my dinner comes out of the oven at the same time! I'm a big fan of that. (Take it out, let it cool for a few minutes while I microwave some veggies, and eat!) Alternately, you can roast the potatoes in the oven at 400 degrees for about 30-45 minutes. They taste about the same, so it all depends on what temperature you're cooking other things at, or personal preference.

As a side note for those who didn't see my side note - yes, that is a different location, and totally different plates! Also, a new camera, so it won't take me 5 minutes to get a good shot. Hooray!

Quick Notes

2010-09-09T11:26:00.000-07:00

Hello my friends!!
It's been a busy busy summer. I finished my last two classes of grad school, took two 1400+ mile long road trips, and am completely relocated to Florida. A lot has changed, but things are going well right now, and I finally have time to get back into doing what I love - reading, cooking, eating, blogging.

You may notice a few changes on the blog -- please let me know what you think! (I'm not sure what possessed me to make everything blah-green when I started this up, since that's not really the most appetizing of color schemes.) I like this much better.

I've heard that there have been some issues with commenting, and I apologize for that - I have no idea what the trouble was. We've been set to Everybody Can Comment, and there should be no waiting period before comments show up, but if we continue to have problems, we may have to make some bigger changes. If there are problems, please let me know, either via Facebook or email (katcooksthebooks@gmail.com). You can also write either of those addresses, or use the comments here, to tell me what you think, suggest a story or food for me to review/cook, tell me how awesome I am, or just to say hi. I love getting email.

The other consideration is whether I want to get my own domain name. I'd like to, but Blogger doesn't allow the use of their software on outside websites, so it means that we'd be moving to a different program - what do you guys think about that?

So, we're back in action. And yes, there WILL be a recipe posted tonight. Cross my heart and hope to burn my cookies if I'm telling lies.

Candyfloss Chip Butties

2010-06-19T17:41:00.000-07:00

If you're like me, this title makes very little sense. Let me explain.

I was randomly shelf-reading in the library the other day, and I happened across a book called Candyfloss. "Aha!" I said to myself (quietly - I was in the library, after all). "I can make cotton-candy-flavored yumminess to go with this book, if I like it!" Candyfloss being the British term for what I would call cotton candy, in case you didn't know. (I did know, for some reason, though I've never been outside the U.S. - did Willy Wonka talk about candyfloss? Or do I just really like food-related facts?) Between the title and the fact that the front cover photo is a girl wearing polka-dot socks, I had to give this one a try. I love both socks and polka dots.

So, I took out the book, and I read the book, and I really really liked the book, but there is so much talk in said book about chip butties that I just have to make them instead. It would be a travesty not to. (What the heck is a chip butty? We'll get there.)

Candyfloss is a book by Jacqueline Wilson, who just so happens to be such an awesome author that she not only has won scads and oodles of awards, but was actually granted the title of Dame Jacqueline Wilson in 2008. Long story short, if you have not heard of or read any of her books, I'd recommend getting your tush in gear and getting to the library to read at least one to see how you like it, because she's got the Awesome thing down pretty well.

Candyfloss is a chapter book about a girl named Flora, who everyone calls Floss or Flossie, and who lives with her family in England. She has a pretty good life - she even has the most popular girl in the school for her best friend! On weekdays, she lives with her mom, Mom's husband Steve, and her half-brother Tiger. On the weekends, she visits her Dad, who lives above the cafe he owns, where he makes wonderful chips, and chip butties.

(A chip butty, oh patient reader, is a sandwich with chips - french fries, not potato chips - inside. I've done some research online and found that, to those who have had and enjoyed chip butties, a recipe is about as useful as one for me would be for a peanut butter sandwich. But, since I did a peanut butter sandwich recipe for Thanksgiving, I think this one's okay.)

Our story begins on Floss's birthday. As one of her presents, her mother tells her that the family will be traveling to Australia (hooray!!) for six months (um... what?). After thinking long and hard about it, she makes a tremendous and scary decision. She is going to live with her father full-time, while the rest of her family leaves for Australia.

The question is, how is this going to work out? Dad isn't used to having his daughter full-time, or ironing school uniforms, or cooking healthy meals, and Floss isn't used to living in a tiny bedroom, and smelling like fried food all the time, and not having much of a place to play. And Floss's best friend isn't used to it, either - she doesn't seem as much fun to be around as she used to. But the new girl, Susan? She looks like she might be more fun.

I'm not going to give anything else away, because I don't want to ruin it, but I am going to say that it's a shame the illustrator's name isn't on the cover of the book, because he deserves massive kudos, too. His name is Nick Sharratt, and he has drawn a picture for every single chapter of the book, that appears on the page before the chapter starts, that illustrates some of the main points of the chapter. It doesn't give it away, exactly, because you don't know what the illustrations are referring to, but it does get you hooked enough that you want to jump into the next chapter.

On the whole, I really liked Candyfloss. There were things I disliked about it - it was pretty unrealistic, for one, and the friendships between a few of the characters seemed a little overly dramatic, but I did enjoy it, and I'd recommend it, particularly for the 5th grade girly-girl set. I also loved the many descriptions of food, from birthday cake to candyfloss to chip butties. And speaking of those...

Candyfloss Chip Butties
Sandwich rolls
French fries (I used frozen), cooked according to directions
Butter

1. Slice the rolls horizontally, or use pre-sliced rolls, like hamburger buns. I used Bulkie rolls, which are common in New England but rarely seen in other places. Any good sandwich roll will do.
2. Butter the halves of the roll.
3. Pile the french fries onto the roll, and close to make a sandwich. Eat and enjoy.

I'm using the directions given in the book here. I looked things up online, and I hear that white bread is the most common bread used for the chip butty, but my heroine ate hers on rolls, and so that is what I did.

On the whole, it wasn't bad, but I don't think this is a meal I will be making in the future. I couldn't get over the no-protein thing. But it did remind me of the Fat Sandwiches I used to eat when I was an undergrad student at Rutgers, where chicken fingers and french fries and mozzerella sticks all made a home on one hoagie roll. Ah, memories.

Reading Rainbow Bars

2010-05-18T10:06:00.000-07:00

Butterfly in the sky! I can go twice as high! Take a look, it's in a book - Reading Rainbow! Okay, how many of you immediately started singing that song when you saw the lyrics? I knew it wasn't just me.

I was thinking about Reading Rainbow the other day, and all the awesome stories I remember because of it. Perfect the Pig, Imogene's Antlers, Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain, Sam the Sea Cow... I get so excited when I hear a line from those books because I remember the first time I heard them, and the voice I heard them read in. (Say it with me, now! "A feather... that would change the weather.")

So, for the few people out there who have never experienced Reading Rainbow, please let me explain. It was a television show that was produced from 1983 until 2006, hosted by LeVar Burton (who was also the executive producer), dedicated to promoting the love of reading for kids. Each episode would have Mr. Burton talking about a specific topic, such as teamwork, or experiencing rites of passage (like losing a tooth), or being different (having to wear glasses), or.... well, anything. And then a story that works within the theme would be read, usually by a celebrity - including, by the way, such awesome names as Bill Cosby, Gilda Radner, Julia Child, and Jerry Orbach.

[Edit because I forgot to include...] And then at the end of each episode, Mr. Burton would say that there were lots of other great books out there - "But you don't have to take my word for it!" and three lucky kids got to tell about a book they liked that could be found at your local library. I used to want to be one of those kids SO BAD. I'm not exactly sure why, but it seemed glamorous and exciting.

I love this show. I loved it long after it was socially acceptable for me to be watching children's television or reading picture books, and if it was on right now, I'd be watching it as I write this. I'm going to have to start saving my pennies, because I just looked it up on Amazon to find that episodes are available on DVD! I even started watching Star Trek TNG because LeVar Burton was on there. (Well... plus, it's an awesome show. But I didn't know that at the time.)

Anything that can inspire such a love of reading deserves an entire freakin' cookbook, but as my time is limited, I am going to give you one very awesome recipe instead. This is my mother's recipe for Rainbow Bars - I'm pretty sure it came out of a magazine or off the can of condensed milk, but don't be fooled by its humble beginnings. This is an awesome cookie bar, and I can't think of anything that would better deserve it.

Reading Rainbow Bars
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 stick butter
1 can (14 oz.) condensed milk
1 1/2 cups flaked coconut
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups M&Ms

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Melt the butter in the microwave and pour it into the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish. Pour in the graham cracker crumbs and mix with the butter until well-blended. Then press the crumbs into the bottom of the pan to make a solid layer of crust.
2. Pour the condensed milk over the crust and spread as evenly as possible. Top with the coconut, chocolate chips, and M&Ms, in that order.
3. Press the toppings into the condensed milk with your palms. The tighter you make this, the less likely it will be that the finished product will fall apart when eating, which is the #1 complaint I've heard about Rainbow Bars - don't skip this step! It will make your hands messy for a minute, but it'll make things easier to eat in the end.
4. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes. The coconut will be lightly browned, and the condensed milk will be bubbling right up between the chocolate and all that yumminess will just melt right togehter.
5. This is the hardest part of the whole recipe - wait for the bars to cool completely before cutting, or you run the risk of them breaking apart and being a big gloppy mess. A delicious gloppy mess, but still. As you can see from the photo, I didn't wait until they were completely cool - mostly, but not completely, so the edges are ragged.

There are lots of variations to this recipe - substitute butterscotch chips for the M&Ms, and they are Magic Bars or Magic Cookie Bars. Adding walnuts to Magic Bars makes them 7-Layer Bars. I've also used peanut butter chips or some combination of the above... but Rainbow Bars are my favorite, perfect for my favorite tv show.

So, tell me! What's your favorite episode?

Poky Little Puppy Strawberry Shortcake

2010-05-03T16:17:00.000-07:00

The Poky Little Puppy was written by Janette Sebring Lowrey in 1942, and illustrated by Gustaf Tenggren. It was one of the first Little Golden Books ever published and was, as of 2001, the best-selling children's book of all time. (Incidentally, somewhere around here I have a copy of the list as of 2001 and the list as of a few years later - Harry Potter really shook some things up!) It is also a personal favorite of mine.

Anyhow. For those of you who are unfamilair, or who haven't heard the story in years and years, this is the tale of five puppy siblings, who disobey their mother and go digging under the fence to see what's in the wide, wide world beyond their home. Off they run, "roly-poly, pell-mell, tumble-bumble," toward adventure. But one of these puppies - the Poky Little Puppy - lags behind his siblings because he's so curious and distracted by everything. He is also the last one to get back under the fence at the end of the night, which is lucky for him, because his siblings have all been sent to bed without dessert for being naughty, and he gets all of the rice pudding for himself.

The next day, the same thing happens - off they run, "roly-poly, pell-mell, tumble-bumble," into the wide, wide world. Their mother is again very disappointed in her offspring, and the puppies are again sent to bed without any dessert. All, that is, except for Poky (which I always assumed was his name, even though I realize now that it's a descriptor and not necessarily a name at all - but you never know. After all, how many cats have I met named Brownie?). Poky comes home after the rest of the puppies have gone to bed, and eats all the chocolate custard by himself.

On the third day, the puppies again venture out into the wide, wide world beyond the fence and run, "roly-poly, pell-mell, tumble-bumble," and have a grand old time. When they get home and see their mother disappointed, though, they fill in the hole they dug and get to share the dessert she's made - strawberry shortcake. All, that is, except for the Poky Little Puppy. He not only gets home too late for dessert, but he has to squeeze through the slats of the fence, because the hole has been filled in.

Now... I don't know exactly why, but I've always felt bad for Poky. I shouldn't, really. He disobeyed and couldn't keep up with his siblings, and he ate 10 servings of dessert over the past two days, but the lack of strawberry shortcake always made me sad. The book even tells you that he was "feeling very sorry for himself" at the end of it all, and maybe that made him a better puppy, but he was just curious, right? Poor guy. Maybe because I love strawberry shortcake so much, but it just seemed like a cruel punishment. An injustice that needs to be rectified.

So, it may be late by 68 years, but here, Poky, is your shortcake. I hope it was worth the wait.

Poky Little Puppy Strawberry Shortcake
1 pint of strawberries
2 tbsp. of sugar
Whipped cream
Biscuits**

**NOTE** Biscuits are the traditional foundation for strawberry shortcake (well... besides shortcake), so that's what I've used here, but angel food cake is also a nice foundation. The foaminess sucks up the strawberry juice quite nicely.

1. Prepare biscuits according to recipe or package directions. I used Bisquik to make mine, though Pillsbury does make some great ones in a tube if you're in a hurry. For the traditionalists out there, Alton Brown has an awesome recipe listed here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/southern-biscuits-recipe/index.html . I have been wanting to make this recipe for a while now, but finals week is not the time to dive into something like a new biscuit recipe. (If you are using angel food cake, I would recommend waiting until it's time to serve and then slicing it into good-sized chunks, to avoid getting crusty edges.)
2. Wash and hull the strawberries, and slice into a bowl. Add the sugar and stir; let this mixture sit at least an hour or until it's time for dessert. Fun fact - the sugar will draw out the strawberries' natural pectin, which will make a syrup as this mixture sits. This will take about an hour, but you can make it a few hours ahead of time, if you like. If you're short on time or haven't read ahead in the recipe, please remember that strawberries are quite awesome without any syrup at all, so you're in luck.
3. To assemble, cut a biscuit in half horizontally. Place one half of the biscuit in a bowl, and top with the strawberry mixture and whipped cream. Repeat with the remaining half of the biscuit, more strawberries, and more whipped cream. Top with a berry for garnish, if desired.

Fabulous. I love it. I could eat this every day of my life and not get bored.

I usually cheat and make biscuits a la Pillsbury, but this time I made them a la Bisquik - admittedly, not the same as homemade, but they look homemade, don't they? And they are pretty tasty.

Mmmmm.... I know they're done, because the bottoms are golden brown and delicious. Plus, the house smells awesome.

As a final quick note... I need to stop apologizing for not writing, but I am sorry, really. Perhaps I shouldn't have taken on this project while I'm still in school... but for some things, you just don't want to wait to get started.

FunnyBunny Carrots

2010-04-03T21:26:00.000-07:00

This book isn't exactly Easter, but it is pretty good, and it is about bunnies, and I really like it, so here it is.

P.J. Funnybunny (the star of It's Not Easy Being a Bunny, written by Marilyn Sadler and illustrated by Roger Bolien) "was very sad." He didn't want to be a bunny anymore. It was crowded at home with all his brothers and sisters, and his mother made him the same dinner every night - cooked carrots. Besides, having such big ears is a hassle, don't you think?

So P.J. leaves home and decides to be a bear instead. But hibernation gets boring after a while. Maybe... a moose? A skunk? A pig? A beaver? Darnitall! None of those are fun, either! Who knew that everyone had problems? Things look so sunny from the outside looking in!

Poor P.J. Funnybunny. He can't seem to find the right place to belong... maybe - just maybe - being a bunny isn't so bad after all.

This book is the first in what is now a series of books, starring P.J. and his family (his sister, Honey Bunny Funnybunny also has a few titles). I love the illustrations, especially. I'm not sure what it is about them, but they're fun without being overly silly, and they're right up my alley.

So! I've decided that, even though P.J. decided it's not so bad to be a bunny after all, he deserves a slightly different kind of carrots for dinner. How do these sound?

FunnyBunny Carrots
1 lb. baby carrots
1/4 cup orange juice
3 tbsp. brown sugar
2 tbsp. butter
pinch of salt
pinch of cinnamon

1. Place the carrots in a shallow saucepan, and cover with water. Boil until tender. Drain the carrots and return them to the pan.
2. Pour the orange juice over the carrots and bring to a simmer; cook for 5 minutes.
3. Add the remaining ingredients and stir until it is all melted together. If the sauce is too thin, let it cook a bit longer, but it should get a bit thicker as it stands.

You may want to let this cool down a bit before enjoying.

I got this recipe from the AllRecipes website, under the name "Orange Glazed Carrots." I think P.J. would approve of the orange taste, which gives a nice fresh taste to the carrots.

Country Bunny Hard-Cooked Eggs

2010-04-02T21:31:00.000-07:00

In my research about children's books for Easter, I came across several mentions of a book called The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, written by DuBose Heyward and illustrated by Marjorie Flack. Intrigued by the title, I did a little research and found a book that I wish I had when I was a kid. And since this book dates back to 1939, it's possible that I did have it, but I think I would have remembered this one, so I don't think I did.

As a special sidenote, I just wanted to let you know that the DuBose Heyward who wrote this book was the very same gentleman who wrote Porgy, which he later helped to adapt (with Mr. Gershwin!) to the musical that became known as Porgy and Bess. Not exactly relevant, but cool. What is relevant, however, is that this is a story that Mr. Heyward used to tell to his daughter, Jenifer - it says so right on the cover. The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, as told to Jenifer. Awesome.

And!! The Marjorie Flack who illustrated the book is, in fact, the same Marjorie Flack who wrote The Story About Ping and won the Caldecott Honor for her illustrations in Boats on the River in 1947. So this book, my friends, is awesome before we even get started.
But let's get started.

The story starts out by letting us in on a very big secret. You know how there's an Easter Bunny, and he travels around the world giving candy and hiding eggs? Well... that's a lie. There are really FIVE Easter Bunnies, and the name isn't so much a name as a job title - one must earn the respect of Old Grandfather Bunny, who lives at the Palace of Easter Eggs, and prove to be the wisest, kindest, and swiftest bunny possible, for it is he who chooses who gets to be an Easter Bunny.

Now, when she was a little brown bunny, young Cottontail told everyone that she would be an Easter Bunny when she grew up. Everyone scoffed - "You?" they said. "A little bunny from the country? You won't be as fast as the jackrabbits! You'll never make it! You're just a girl!" (I'm paraphrasing, just so you know.)

Well, little Cottontail grows up and gets married and suddenly finds herself with 21 baby bunnies to take care of (surprise!! No, really - there's an illustration of 21 baby bunnies in bassinet at the same time, and the book even tells us that it happened "much to her surprise.") - but while she puts her dreams on hold for a little while, the dreams that really matter in life never fade away entirely, and when she, now going by the name Mother Cottontail, hears that one of the Easter Bunnies is looking to retire, she brings her brood of well-behaved children with her to the Palace of Easter Eggs to see if she has The Right Stuff.

I love the feminist slant of this story, especially as it was very unexpected from a book written in the 1930's (though there is a bit much housework that Mother Cottontail does, her children help - both male and female). And I love the underlying theme here - no matter who you are, what color fur you have, whether you're a rich jackrabbit or a mother with 21 kids... you, too, can achieve your dreams. Just don't give up.

I've decided that I'm not going to tell you the rest of the story, because I want you all to read it for yourselves, and because just getting to the Palace itself is enough reason to want to jump right into coloring some eggs. But before we color, we must cook. And here we go.

Country Bunny Hard-Cooked Eggs
white eggs - as many as desired
ice
water

Here's a fun new method of cooking your eggs prior to the dying process: in the oven! This results in a "creamier" tasting egg.

1. Make sure that one rack in your oven is in the middle, and another is at the bottom. Heat your oven to 325.
2. Put an empty cookie sheet or sheet of aluminum foil in the bottom oven rack, in case of breakage. Egg is no fun to clean up, particularly in molten form.
3. Lay the eggs directly on the oven rack, and cook for 30 minutes.
4. Carefully remove the eggs from the oven and put into a bowl of ice water to halt the cooking process.

There are two issues with making your eggs this way, however. For one, the eggs are a bit harder to peel than boiled eggs. For two... well..

Grill Marks! I actually think that's kinda neat, though. So - your call.

Well, you can always go for the old stand-by: boiling.
1. Put the to-be-cooked eggs in a pot, and add enough water to cover them by an inch or two. Put the pot on the heat.
2. Once the water has reached a boil, cover the pot and turn off the heat. Let the eggs sit for 10 to 15 minutes, and then move them to an ice water bath to stop the cooking process.

I got both of these cooking methods from Alton Brown's uber-awesome cookbook, I'm Just Here for the Food. He also has a method for steam-cooking eggs - snazzy!

Once your eggs are cooked and cooled... as the Klingons say, "Today is a good day to dye." As you can see, I got a tie-dye kit this year - So Cool.

Oh! And I totally forgot to mention that I now have a fan page on Facebook. Search for "Kat Cooks the Books" and become a fan!

Matzo Ball Moon Soup

2010-03-28T19:18:00.000-07:00

Mmmm.... Passover...

A friend of mine (hello!!) asked me very nicely, "are you going to be making any Passover recipes?" Hmm... it is coming up, isn't it? Being a shiksa, I had to look up some good Passover books, and I found a great picture book called Matzo Ball Moon, written by Leslea Newman and illustrated by Elaine Greenstein.

In this story, young Eleanor is excited because Passover is on its way, and her grandmother (Bubbe) is coming over to make matzo ball soup for the whole family!! She is so excited - and so is Bubbe, who loves making the soup. The whole family loves to watch her cook, and they keep coming in to watch... and to sneak a matzo ball or two before dinner. No big deal, right? Bubbe made plenty!

Unfortunately, so many people decided to "just try one" that when it's time for dinner... oh no! There aren't enough to go around! But Bubbe is a loving grandmother, and she takes one for the team, and goes without, enjoying more than anything watching her family enjoy her cooking. After the Seder (the ceremonial Passover dinner), Eleanor looks up at the moon and sees it as a "big, bumpy, lumpy, yummy-looking matzo ball" - one for Bubbe!

It's a cute story. I like it! And because of it, I was able to make you this:

Matzo Ball Moon Soup
1 10-oz. package of matzo (I used Egg & Onion Matzo)
1/4 cup butter
3 eggs
1 onion, minced
1 1/2 tbsp. parsley flakes
salt and pepper to taste
2 1/2 oz. matzo meal
6 cups chicken broth, or more, depending on how brothy you like your soup (I used 10 cups)

1. Crumble the package of matzo into small pieces, and place in a bowl. Cover with water, and allow to soak for a few minutes, until soft. Drain the excess water. Meanwhile, put a pot of water on to boil.
2. In a large saucepan (and I mean a large saucepan - mine was too small and it made a mess), melt the butter and add the now-soggy matzo. Stir continuously until it's dry and a little bit brown.
3. Remove the mixture from the heat and stir in the eggs, onion, parsley, and salt and pepper to taste (I didn't add any salt because my broth was very salty, and it was tasty). Add matzo meal until the mix stays together. Roll one golf-ball-sized ball from the mix and drop it in the now-boiling water, and keep an eye on it.
* If it falls apart, add some matzo meal to make the mix stay together.
* If it doesn't float after a few minutes, add an egg to loosen the mixture, and just enough matzo meal to hold the mix together.
* If it floats, your mixture is perfect, and you can move onto step 4.
4. Put the chicken broth into a pot and bring it to a slow boil. Roll the mixture into golf-ball-sized lumps and drop the balls into the soup. When they are floating, the soup is done.

This is a tricky recipe. I got it from the AllRecipes website, listed under "Oma's Fabulous Matzo Ball Soup," and for some reason, I didn't expect it to take as long as it did. Of course, a recipe always takes longest the first time you do it, because you don't know what you're doing - but still, the website says it takes one hour, and it took me almost two! Also, I cut the AllRecipe's recipe in half, and it still made far more matzo balls than I expected it to - supposedly enough for 5, but really enough for 10.

In any case. This is some very tasty soup, and I may, if I have time, make it again someday. I will definitely recommend this recipe to any who are willing to invest the time (it's worth it!), and I also recommend the book. Enjoy - and Happy Passover!

Mary Poppins's Ceiling Scones

2010-02-21T18:55:00.000-08:00

I am ashamed to admit that I never read Mary Poppins, by P. L. Travers, until just this week. Sure, I've seen the movie dozens of times (and after reading it, want to watch it again), but I never got around to reading it. I never even thought of reading it, in fact, until I saw the Mary Poppins Cookbook on the shelf at the local library (I was looking for Herb, the Vegetarian Dragon, which was - alas! - checked out. Maybe next week). And then I realized - I'd never read the book that the movie was based on! How unlike me!

So, quick-like-a-bunny, I ran over and - what luck!! - it was on the shelf. Hooray! So I've been reading it, and I gotta tell ya. It's pretty darn good. For the one person out there who is unfamiliar with this story, please allow me to explain. Mary Poppins is a nanny in Britain in the early 1900's, who travels to Cherry Tree Lane in chapter 1 of the book, to be employed by the Banks family. Ms. Poppins is no ordinary nanny, however - she is able to slide up banisters with ease, talk to animals and the weather, jump into chalk pictures on the sidewalk, and generally do things with ease that most of us would think impossible.

I have to admit, though, that this may be the first time I haven't thought the book was amazingly better than its movie, probably because the movie is so ingrained in my head, and the book is vastly different. Firstly, the characters are very different in the book - there are four children, not two; Mr. Banks is a very nice, though busy, man, rather than a stuffy one who doesn't seem to care about his family; and Mary Poppins herself is a brisk, nosy, perpetually-annoyed kind of character, rather than the sweet one played by Julie Andrews.

Secondly, the magic that one can imagine in, say, the Harry Potter books, isn't written in such a way as to pull the reader in. Travers writes in a matter-of-fact way, as if it would be odd for us to question what was going on. Which works! But then you lack the wonder that should rightfully be there when one sees a woman suddenly producing a floor lamp from an empty bag. You have to supply that yourself.

Also, Bert isn't present in the book very much, and he's one of my favorite characters. And there is no such thing as supercalifragilisticexpialidocious in this book. But there is a midnight visit to a zoo, along with stars being pasted into the sky straight off gingerbread cookies, a dancing cow, and a dog friendship that transcends the social classes. There is also, my friends - and I'm so excited about this! - a tea party on the ceiling.

Mary Poppins takes her charges, Jane and Michael (the babies being otherwise occupied) to have tea with her uncle, Mr. Wigg, who has the unfortunate blessing of being filled up with laughing gas on his birthday, whenever it happens to fall on a Friday. He was such a sight, bobbing up in the air like that, that the children were affected as well, and the three of them were unable to return to the floor in time for their tea. Always being one to make the best of a situation, Mary Poppins moved the tea party up to the ceiling, instead, where it was served while the group floated about.

But what would a tea party be without tasty things to snack on? So, in honor of the Mary Poppins tea party, I give you:
Mary Poppins Ceiling Scones
NOTE: There are two ways to make these: by hand, and with the food processor. I used a food processor, and it took all of 4 minutes to form the dough, so that is the way I'm going to give the directions to you. If you want the other directions, go to www.allrecipes.com and search for "Simple Scones," as that is the recipe I'm using here.
1 stick butter, frozen and cut into chunks
2 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup white chocolate chips
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 tsp. almond extract
1 egg
1 tbsp. sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 400. In a food processor, add the butter, flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Pulse until the mixture resembles cornmeal.
2. Add the chocolate chips and pulse a few more times, to chop them up a bit.
3. In a small bowl, stir the sour cream, almond extract and egg until well blended. Add this to the food processor and pulse until the mixture starts to form small dough balls.
4. Turn out the dough onto a lightly-floured surface, and pat into a circle about 7 or 8 inches in diameter, and 3/4 of an inch thick. Sprinkle the circle with the 1 tbsp. of sugar, and then cut into 8 pieces with a butter knife. Arrange on a baking tray, leaving an inch or so of room between the slices.
5. Bake for 15-18 minutes, until the scones are golden brown and delicious. Let sit for at least 5 minutes before serving. These are tasty both warm and cold.

I set my scones onto a round pizza dish, so they would fit in the same circular way that I cut them from (just with spaces between the pieces). It looked like this when I took it out:

Not too shabby! Well... a little shabby, but they're supposed to have a rustic look to them, right? Here's a close-up of one piece.

Mmmm!! The almond extract is light but present and adds a lovely flavor, and when you bite into a piece with a white chocolate chip, it really brings out the extra nutty yumminess. These are also unlike other scones that I've had, in that they are moist, rather like a dinner biscuit instead of a drier, crackerier taste.

Not to tootle my own horn (or the horn of the author who posted the recipe on allrecipes), but I think these are worthy of a Mary Poppins Tea Party. And if she would like to come by, I am more than willing to share.

EDITOR'S NOTE:
Friends, I have made a mistake. In my haste to try to be fair to Ms. Travers and respectful of her work, I neglected to give you a fair recommendation of this book. My honest opinion is that, while it may be worthwhile to read this if you have grown up watching Disney's Mary Poppins, and see how you like it... don't read this to children. It was written in 1934, and as such, has some really horrible-awful offensive things in it that were okay back then, but aren't anymore. For example, they find a magic compass and travel around the world, visiting "savages" in Africa and a village in China, among other places. In the interest of honesty, I feel that I must tell you, it's rather disturbing.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatball Calzone

2010-02-19T19:15:00.000-08:00

In 1982, history was made. An event so historic, so amazing, that it probably helped form the idea for this blog a year before I was even born. In 1982, the world first was able to read Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs was written by Judi Barrett and illustrated by Ron Barrett. Firstly, the illustrations. I love these even more having read Molly Bang's Picture This: How Picture's Work （she analyzes lines, colors, shapes... trust me, it's enlightening), but I've always been drawn to the illustrations in this book. I remember flipping through and looking at all the pictures before I was able to read.

The story itself is crafted by our narrator's Grandpa as a bedtime story, and features the far-away town of Chewandswallow. This city is normal in most respects, except that, instead of rain from the clouds, residents get orange juice. Instead of snow, hamburgers and fries might fall from the sky.

There are a few small problems with this - firstly, you don't know what kind of food will fall, or when. And secondly, you don't know how much you'll get. For a long time, residents are ok with this. The weather report would tell you what was for dinner, and sanitation workers would collect uneaten food for the wildlife. Life was idyllic.

But then, the weather stopped being so friendly. One time, they had snowdrifts of cream cheese and jelly sandwiches, and everybody ate themselves silly. Another time, nothing came down but overcooked broccoli all day. And then, the food wasn't just bigger in quantity - it started getting bigger in size, too! The school was squashed under a giant pancake! Meatballs would roll down the road and cause destruction! A giant pickle fell right through somebody's roof! Things were starting to get dangerous... and the residents of Chewandswallow had to decide what to do about it.

I've already ruined so much of this book that I'm not going to tell you what happens. I'm sorry, but you're just going to have to read it.

Anyhow. In honor of this wonderful book - which, incidentally, is one of those that, when people find out I write this blog, people tell me that I have to do something with - I have decided to make a calzone for you today. Okay, yes, I was going to make spaghetti and meatballs. But I did spaghetti with the puttanesca, and it's somewhat predictable. I like to throw a wrench in the works sometimes. So, calzone.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatball Calzone
1 package of prepared pizza dough (this can be found in the frozen section, the biscuit-dough section, or sometimes in the bakery, depending on the store)
1 can of your favorite pizza or pasta sauce
1 lb. of prepared meatballs (fresh or frozen)
1 cup of shredded cheese (I used "Italian Blend")
1 small tub of ricotta cheese
Olive oil

1. Bring the dough to room temperature and roll it out flat. If you have gotten your dough from a tube, it will be a giant rectangle; prepared fresh or frozen dough in blob-form will probably roll out to a rounder shape. Either is ok. After it is rolled out to the desired size, let it sit for about 5 minutes (this will help it settle and it won't tear as easily later).
2. Preheat your oven to 350 and heat up the meatballs in the microwave; I used prepared, frozen meatballs, with 16 meatballs to a pound, and heated them according to the package instructions. After they have been warmed up, cut them into roughly bite- or two-bite-sized pieces.
3. Mentally divide the dough in half. On one half, spread a thin layer of the pizza sauce. Sprinkle on the cheese, then top with the meatballs. Scoop ricotta from the tub and drop at random intervals over the other toppings.
4. Once your toppings have been added, fold the un-topped half of the dough over the toppings, and pinch the crust together to make one large mound of goodness. Brush on a little olive oil (I actually used olive oil cooking spray) to promote browning, and cut a few slits in the top of the calzone so it doesn't explode.
5. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes (you'll know when it's done, because it will be golden brown and your house will smell amazing). Let it sit for a couple minutes, then slice up and enjoy. You can use the pizza sauce you didn't use inside the calzone for dipping in.

Here are a few photos for you. This is how it will look when it's just out of the oven - perhaps not the prettiest thing ever, but still.

When sliced, you can see the layers inside. Oooh, that's good stuff.

And then plate it up. See the puffy ricotta clouds? Yum!

One final note before I let you go. Firstly, thanks for sticking with me during my long absences - I am in the middle of a practicum and a class, and I'm loving them both, but it leaves very little time for me to cook. Secondly, mostly what I cook for this blog is very unhealthy, by virtue of it being fun, so I'm going to *try* to make things slightly less bad for you than they are.
And lastly - yes, that is my hand in the first photo. And my lovely plaid pajamas. You're welcome.

The Soup of Desperaux

2010-01-27T16:29:00.000-08:00

"The world is dark, and light is precious. Come closer, dear reader. You must trust me. I am telling you a story." So begins the epic tale of Desperaux Tilling, an extraordinary mouse with an extraordinary story. The book, written by Kate DiCamillo (of Because of Winn-Dixie fame), is titled in full: The Tale of Desperaux, being the story of a mouse, a princess, some soup, and a spool of thread.

The story will sound a little confusing when I try to explain it, but bear with me here, it's worth it. First, we meet Desperaux, a young mouse with huge ears and big dreams, who is much more interested in reading books than eating them - a desire that sets him even farther apart from his peers than his physical differences. He lives in a castle, in the walls with the other mice; Princess Pea and her father live in the main part of the building. After reading stories about knights and chivalry, Desperaux decides he needs to meet the princess - and the two worlds collide.

In the course of the story, we also meet Miggery Sow, a servant girl who wishes she was a princess; Roscuro, a rat with a broken heart; and Cook, a cook who would love nothing more than to be making soup again, but for the fact that it has been outlawed. I'm not going to give away too much of the story, because in order to explain it, would have to give away the whole plot, but I will say that soup, in the end, is once again legal and enjoyed; and most of the characters, if not all, live happily ever after.

I fear that I am not doing this book credit by my description, but hopefully my Desperaux-inspired meal will do it some justice. Because soup is a prominent part of the story, and because our hero is a mouse, I have decided to make a cheddar and broccoli soup for you today.

The Soup of Desperaux
5 tbsp. butter
1/2 an onion, diced
1 tsp. minced garlic
16 oz. bag of frozen chopped broccoli
2 14.5-oz. cans chicken broth
1/2 lb. processed cheese, like Velveeta, cubed
1 cup milk
1 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 cup cold water
1/3 cup corn starch
Shredded cheddar cheese (optional)

1. In a stock pot over medium heat, melt the butter. Add the onion and garlic, and cook until softened, which will take about 5 minutes.
2. Add the broccoli and the chicken broth, and over medium-low heat until the broccoli is cooked, which will take about 15 minutes.
3. Add the cheese cubes, stirring until they are all melted into the mixture. Stir in the milk and the garlic powder.
4. In a small bowl, mix the water with the corn starch; add this mixture to the soup and stir until thickened, and serve in a bowl, topped with cheddar cheese if desired. It is especially good with some crusty bread on the side.

This recipe is adapted only very slightly from the Broccoli Cheese Soup recipe found on the All Recipes website.

Betsy Who Cried Wolf: Shepherd's Pie

2010-01-07T15:52:00.000-08:00

As a special treat, I am posting this for you from my vacation retreat in Florida! Hooray!

I really need to stop apologizing for everything, but I really am not meaning to go so far between postings. It's a New Year's Resolution that I will get more posts up than I have been. Let's see how that goes.

Gail Carson Levine, author of such awesome books as Ella Enchanted, came out with her first picture book in 2002, and I - being behind the times - just discovered it. It's called Betsy Who Cried Wolf, and it's all kinds of awesome. In this variation of the classic folktale, 8-year-old Betsy has just graduated from Shepherding School, and she has taken the Shepherd's Oath. "She was going to be the best shepherd in Bray Valley history," we are told. "And any wolf who tried to eat her sheep had better watch out!"

There was only one wolf left on the mountain at this point, and he - Zimmo - knew that the odds were against him, and he had to be smart. He had to use his sneaky wolf brain. So what he did was (and this is really very clever), he showed himself, and let Betsy blow her whistle - but he was hidden by the time the townspeople came up to help. Betsy got a lecture. Later that day, he came out and Besty blew her whistle - but again, Zimmo was hidden when the townspeople came to help. The townspeople thought that maybe Betsy wasn't ready to be a shepherd after all, and they made her go take a refresher course at the Shepherd School.

When Zimmo again comes out, and Betsy blows her whistle, nobody comes to help! - but she is determined to show that she can take care of her sheep. But when she gets up to throw her dinner (shepherd's pie) at him, she realizes how skinny he is, and gives him the pie to eat instead. Then later, when she needs help with her sheep, Zimmo helps her out, and they become friends. Eventually, he takes the shepherd's oath, too, and gives up his wolfy ways.

Shepherd's pie is not a pie in the way that most people think of it - that is, there is no bottom crust, and the top crust is mashed potatoes, and I usually make it in a square casserole dish. But it is very tasty, not too hard to make, and doesn't even cost that much in ingredients. Of course, the variations you can make with this are endless. Many people make their's with a tomato base, but mine - at least this time - doesn't have that.

Betsy The Shepherd's Pie
4 large potatoes, peeled and quartered
2 tbsp. butter
splash of milk
salt and pepper to taste
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 medium onion
1 lb. ground beef
3/4 cup beef broth
2 tbsp. flour
1 1/2 cups frozen veggies - I used peas here, but carrots and corn are also good

1. Boil salted water and add the potatoes; cook for 15 minutes or until fork tender. Drain, add the butter and milk, and mash, adding salt and pepper to taste. Alternately, use leftover or otherwise pre-made mashed potatoes. Set aside.
2. Preheat the oven to 375. In a large skillet, heat the oil. Dice the onion and add that to the pan, cooking over medium heat until the onion is translucent (about 5 minutes).
3. Add the ground beef to the pan and cook until brown. Drain the fat, and add the beef stock, flour, and vegetables, stirring until the flour is dissolved. Cook over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes.
4. Fill a 2-quart casserole with the beef mixture, then layer with mashed potatoes, being careful to get all the way to the edge of the pan with the potatoes. Cook in the oven for 20 minutes.

Because the pie is covered in potatoey goodness, it will look like this when you take it out:

And then the slices... well, they're hard to get to look nice. My best piece looked like this:

which is not the most appetizing-looking meal on the planet, but once you taste it, you won't care.

Fun side note: if you use lamb instead of beef, this dish is called Cottage Pie. If I spent my days taking care of sheep, though, I'd probably prefer the beef for dinner.

Chestnuts Roasting

2009-12-21T15:20:00.000-08:00

Hello, my friends. I have some good and some bad news.

First, the bad news. I was not, as I hoped, able to make sufganiot today. This is my own fault, because I neglected to realize that the dough needs time to rise, and there just wasn't time to make them. I'm sorry. I will write about Hanukkah Moon shortly, however, and again I will try to make them at some point, though it's already past Hanukkah for the year. I'd promise, but my promises don't seem to make it to the end lately, and I do hate breaking promises (though I don't do it intentionally).

Now, the good news. Guest Chef Theone, the one who helped with the potato latkes, has made us something very very special today. I'm talking, of course, about a Christmas tradition that I've never actually taken part in - roasting chestnuts. You can read about the joys of roasted chestnuts in Dickens' A Christmas Carol (in the scene where Tiny Tim says, "God bless us, every one!"), but I know that's not exactly children's fare, so! I'm going musical today, instead.

In 1944, Mel Torme and Bob Wells wrote "The Christmas Song" during the hot hot summer months. The story goes that Mr. Wells was trying to think cold thoughts in the hot days, and had written down "chestnuts roasting... jack frost nipping... yuletide carols... folks dress up like Eskimos" in a notebook near his piano. When Mr. Torme saw this, he suggested they turn it into a song, which we all know and love today. You know, the one that starts out, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire! Jack Frost nipping at your nose..." The one that I have heard at least twice on television commercials from the other room while I'm typing this up for you.

Well, Theone may have been influenced by Dickens, or perhaps she liked the song a lot, or maybe her mother used to make them when she was a child (I'll have to ask), but in any case, she made us some awesome chestnuts! Since I can't explain things as well as she, who does this every year, can, I'm going to quote for you. Until you see the **below, these words (and pictures) are Theone's.

Chestnuts Roasting
Most American recipes use the boiling method & that's just foolishness. This is the British/English method.

Please stress to your readers that:

1. Sharp knives are involved, so this is not a good recipe for kids to be involved with. Ever.

2. Chestnuts have a slight anesthetic quality, so it's necessary to exercise good safety precautions (otherwise it's entirely possible to grab the corner of a hot cookie sheet & not realize it, thus resulting in painful burns while saying, "my god, i didn't feel a thing")

3. You *WILL* stab yourself, so remember to be up on your tetanus shots & practice good wound care. Also, go slowly.

4. If you do not cut an "x" into a chestnut, it will explode. Seriously. Kapow. The skins are pretty thin, so there's no excuse to be lazy.

Roasted Chestnuts

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

2. Place chestnut, flat side down on a stable cutting surface.

3. With a small, sharp knife (preferably with a blunt/broken tip), cut a large "x" into the curvy side of the chestnut. The bigger the "x", the easier it will be to peel later on. Repeat for all chestnuts.

4. Place cut side up on a cookie sheet or cast-iron pan & roast for 10-30 minutes. Cooking time will depend on the size & age of the nuts. Nuts will be done when the nut-meat is soft and the "x" has peeled back.

5. When warm, peel.

** Thank you, Theone!!! Again, you are awesome.
And P.S.! Let's all give a huge congratulations to Theone, who has just earned her Master's Degree in Library and Information Science (the same one I'm working on, but she did it faster.) CONGRATULATIONS, THEONE!!!!!!

Polar Express Cocoa

2009-12-19T19:24:00.000-08:00

Have you ever read The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg? You haven't?? You need to!!

Polar Express is the story of a man, who is telling about one Christmas Eve when he was a young boy. He lay in bed, deep in thought. It's about Santa Claus. See, his friend had insisted that Santa didn't really exist - but he must exist, right? That couldn't be true. Our hero was listening for sleigh bells. But it wasn't sleigh bells that brought him out of the house at night. It was a train, called the Polar Express, that he climbed aboard with other children, to take him to the north pole, where he found a "huge city standing alone at the top of the world, filled with factories where every Christmas toy was made."

It was our narrator who was chosen to be given the very first present that Christmas, by Santa Claus himself! This is quite an honor, of course, as only one child a year gets to be the first child to recieve a Christmas present. Knowing he can have anything in the whole world, he chooses a sleigh bell from Santa's sleigh. Unfortunately, there is a hole in the pocket of his bathrobe, and by the time he gets home, the bell is gone - but! It's ok. Santa has left the bell with the rest of his presents. The best thing about the sleigh bell is that, while the narrator and his little sister can hear it ringing, his parents can't. Only those who truly believe in Santa can hear the bell ring. The book concludes by saying that, "though I've grown old, the bell still rings for me as it does for all who truly believe."

This is a great story (the movie was an interesting take on the book, which I think I would have liked much better if it wasn't in creepy CGI), made even better by the descriptions the author uses, and by the beautiful illustrations. My favorite description, of course, is that of the hot cocoa that the children on the train are given to drink, which was "as thick and rich as melted chocolate bars." Mmm.... I had to come up with something for that.

Polar Express Cocoa
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
4 cups milk
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 cup mini marshmallows
1 tsp. vanilla
pinch of salt

1. In a medium saucepan, heat the water, sugar and cocoa powder over medium heat until boiling; let it boil for two minutes.
2. Add the milk, chocolate chips, marshmallows, and pinch of salt (it brings out the other flavors), and heat until everything has melted together - don't boil it at this stage.
3. Add the vanilla and stir to combine. Pour into mugs and enjoy! This makes about four servings.

This recipe is (slightly) adapted from one that I found on the AllRecipes website, listed as a comment to another recipe - I'm not sure who to credit here, but the commenter whose recipe I've taken is listed as Elizra.

I really like this one - it's thick and rich and... well, tastes like melted chocolate bars. The marshmallows melted into the cocoa as it's cooking add a nice thickness and richness of flavor that it otherwise would be lacking.

A Note on Hanukkah Books

2009-12-18T15:09:00.000-08:00

My friends - success!!! I have found a book that features Sufganiot!! I'm excited. However, I don't have access to a deep-fryer until Monday, so this recipe will have to wait until then. In the meanwhile, if you'd like to pick up Hanukkah Moon by Deborah de Costa and flip through it, you'll be all prepared.

There are lots of holiday stories out there... just, most of the ones I've found either deal with the meaning behind the holidays (no food) or else feature potato latkes. I promise, I'm not trying to ignore Hanukkah.

Some good titles I've found that I won't be writing about (with and without food involved) include:

Mrs. Greenberg's Messy Hanukkah by Linda Glaser (also, The Borrowed Hanukkah Latkes, which features the same characters - so cute!)

Zigazak! A Magical Hanukkah Adventure by Eric A. Kimmel
Moishe's Miracle: A Hanukkah Story by Laura Krauss Melmed
Hanukkah at Valley Forge by Stephen Krensky

Runaway Dreidel! by Leslea Newman (which is set to the same cadence as The Night Before Christmas)

Also! The American Girl series has a new girl (Rebecca) - their first Jewish character. And The All-of-a-Kind Family series by Sydney Taylor features a Jewish family... though, I haven't read these since I was a kid, so most of what I remember of their religion is the Purim celebration, and I thusly can't tell you which books to pick up off the top of my head for this particular holiday.

Lemony Snicket's Christmas Latke

2009-12-18T11:30:00.000-08:00

Aaaaaaaaaaaand, we're back! My many and varied apologies for the huge lags between posts - but finals and projects and starting to work and Christmas shopping... Well, you know how being busy can be. Now, on with the show.

Hanukkah, oh how little I know ye. How little a lot of us do. And that's the point of The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story by Lemony Snicket. As the book begins, we meet a potato latke (a potato pancake usually made at Hanukkah) as he is being fried in oil - the traditional method of preparation. As the title suggests, the latke is screaming, and he jumps out the window to escape. Unfortunately for him, leaving the safety of the kitchen means that he has left the safety of the Hanukkah celebration, and he finds himself in a Christmas-centric world, where nobody - rather, nothing - understands him.

AAAAAAAAAUGH! No, he's not a big hash brown! AAAAAAAAAUGH! No, he shouldn't be served with a Christmas ham! AAAAAAAAAUGH! No, he doesn't want to smell like peppermints like the candy canes do! AAAAAAAAAUGH! No, he doesn't want somebody to write a carol about him! He eventully finds his way into a Hanukkah celebration and stops screaming finally - as he is being eaten. A somewhat happy ending.

The book serves as a reminder to those who know the story (and a primer for those who don't) that Hanukkah is not "Jewish Christmas." It has its own traditions and symbols, and gifts aren't a huge part of the celebration for most Jewish families. Also, since the book is a Lemony Snicket, it is pretty darn awesome.

Now, here's my story: I grew up in a town with a fairly large Jewish population, so every December in elementary school, my classmates' mothers would come to school and tell us the story of the holiday. I loved Hanukkah day at school! Not because of the storytime, or the gelt, or that we'd spend half a class playing dreidel, though that was all fun. No, I loved those days because the class moms would bring in potato latkes. I'm fairly sure that none of those moms will ever read this blog, but just in case they do - thank you for the latkes!! I tried once or twice to make them by myself, but I'd never been able to make them taste right, until I tried the recipe I'm sharing with you now.

This recipe is Steven Gold's recipe, that won the James Beard Foundation's Third Annual Latke Lover's Cook-Off in 1997. I made these yesterday with my friend and guest-chef Theone, who not only did a bulk of the work, but let me use her kitchen AND her camera! Theone, you are awesome.

These latkes are different from the more traditional grated potatoes because you use the food processor to make the batter, which is then more pancakey and less hashbrowny, and fully delicious. Latkes are traditionally served with applesauce or sour cream.

Latkes Who Can't Stop Screaming
2 large russet potatoes (about 1 lb.)
1 medium onion (about 1/2 lb.)
1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk
4 tbsp. self-rising cake flour OR 4 tbsp. all-purpose flour with 1/2 tsp. baking powder and 1/4 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. kosher salt
Vegetable oil for frying (about 3/4 a cup)
Sour cream or applesauce (optional)

1. Thoroughly wash the potatoes and cut them into quarters. Peel the onion and cut that into quarters, too. Using a food processor with a coarse shredding disk, shred the potatoes and the onion (this will turn the onion to mush and the potato into long strands). Put them into a clean bowl.
2. Put the chopping blade into the food processor, and put the potatoes and onions through the machine again, pulsing 4 or 5 times, until the potatoes are finely chopped. Add the egg and pulse until the mixture is combined.
3. Put this entire mixture in a large mixing bowl, and add the flour and salt, mixing until the flour disappears. Meanwhile, set a medium saute pan over medium-high heat and pour in enough oil to cover the bottom of it about 1/4 inch deep. The oil is hot enough when a drop of batter sizzles as it enters the pan.
4. Once the oil is hot, spoon the batter into the pan to your desired latke size - I think we used about 2 tbsp. per latke. Flatten and shape the batter quickly with the back of a spoon.
5. When the edges of the latkes are golden brown and crisp, flip them over. Cook until the second side is brown, then remove to paper towels to drain. If you're making a large batch, you can keep them in a warm oven until you're ready to serve. Otherwise, eat and enjoy!

As I said earlier, latkes are traditionally served with applesauce or sour cream. Ours, as you can see from the photo, were eaten with a very tasty sour cream, as dinner, though they are traditioanlly a side dish.

My friends, we have a slight issue. You see, while Christmas food references in children's literature are wide and varied, the only Hanukkah books I can find with food in them feature latkes! I know that Sufganiot (jelly donuts!) are also traditionl Hanukkah food, and I'm trying to find a good book that features them, but if anyone has any suggestions - please let me know!!

Dear America: Indian Pudding

2009-11-22T19:48:00.000-08:00

It isn't pretty, but it smells divine and tastes pretty darn good. This, my friends, is Indian Pudding.

But first things first.
The book we're going to talk about today is A Journey to the New World: The Diary of Remember Patience Whipple, Mayflower, 1620 by Kathryn Lasky, which is part of the Dear America series. Dear America, for those who are not familiar, is a series of books written as if they were diaries of young girls living at various points in American history, from the Pilgrims to the Vietnam War. Scholastic also publishes the My Name is America series for boys; the My America series, in which characters write multiple diaries; and The Royal Diaries, which chronicle the lives of girls who would grow to be powerful (royal) women, from Cleopatra to Anastasia. They are all written for ages 9-12.

This is my first Dear America book, and I think it's pretty good. Out of curiosity, I read the reviews on Amazon, and while I know that's not the most authoritative source, it isn't bad for finding out what people think. For the most part, reviews on this book are positive except for the "antiquated language" (though I don't think the language should be much of a problem for most readers) and the fact that people found out after the fact that this book is fictional. This part confuses me. It's a part of a series that you find in the fiction section of a bookstore or library. But I guess not everyone knows the series or they may not get the book that way... Anyway. If you know from the start that this is historical fiction, you should be okay.

So. This book is the (fictional!) diary of a 12-year-old girl who sailed to Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620. She details her life on the boat, her friendship with another girl her age, getting to shore, the expedition parties to find a good place to build a settlement (she didn't get to go, but her father did), meeting Samoset and Squanto, and the first year of living in the colony. While the harsh truth is sugarcoated to a point, our heroine (who goes by "Mem," short for "Remember") does talk about death quite a bit - some friends or friends of the family and Mem's own mother - and of being hungry all the time, working to the point of exhaustion, crops not coming up, and the like, as well as the more mundane aspects of life, like boredom and the excitement of getting a present when you don't expect one.

My only issue with this book comes from the over-the-top political correctness. Mem is fascinated by Native Americans, wants to see them and talk to them, even goes out to meet Samoset without consent from her parents and dreams of going swimming like the native children do (which is forbidden by her society, because too much contact with water is believed to be dangerous). She admires the Wampanoag people with a sort of cultural respect that just wasn't there in the 1620's. Not that this is a bad thing - it's just odd in this placement.

Anyway. Mem talks about food mostly in the sense of growing it, but she does also mention cooking a few things, including pudding made with cornmeal and cranberries - what we today would call Indian pudding. This she cooks for Samoset and again for Squanto, and is nicknamed by them Miss Pudding because of this. So, in honor of the fictional Miss Remember Patience Pudding Whipple, I give you... Indian Pudding.

Mem's Indian Pudding
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. salt
3 cups whole milk
1 tbsp. butter
1/2 cup maple syrup
3 tbsp. packed dark brown sugar
2/3 cup dried cranberries or raisins
2 large eggs
1/3 cup of light or heavy (whipping) cream

1. Position a rack in the middle of your oven and set it to preheat at 300. Grease or cooking-spray an 8x8 or 7x11 inch pan.
2. In a large pot, whisk together the cornmeal, spices and salt until combined. Whisk in the milk gradually until it is all blended. Turn on the burner to medium-high heat and whisk the mixture constantly until it is boiling, being careful not to let it scorch.
3. Once the mixture is boiling, reduce the heat to medium and stir constantly for two to three minutes, until it gets thick. Immediately remove the pot from heat and stir in the butter, maple syrup, brown sugar, and cranberries, whisking until combined.
4. In a large bowl, lightly beat the eggs with a fork. Very slowly - a spoonful at a time - add the cornmeal mixture into the eggs, whisking constantly. You have to do this a little bit at a time or the eggs might scramble from the heat, and that's not good. Once it's all mixed together, pour the mixture into the prepared dish and bake it for one hour.
5. After the hour is up, pour the cream over the top of the pudding and tip the pan so the cream sloshes to cover the entire dish. It will soak in, don't worry. Bake this for 15-20 minutes more, until the pudding comes out solid but somewhat jiggly.
6. Let the pudding rest for at least 15 minutes before spooning it out and eating it. I topped mine with homemade whipped cream, but vanilla ice cream would be nice, too.

This is what it looks like when you first take it out of the oven:

That's right: it's not pretty (in fact, when I took it out of the oven, the pudding skin on top had set but the mixture underneath was bubbling a little, making it look like something was alive inside my dessert). But by this point, your house will smell like gingerbread and you won't care what it looks like. I had it for dessert tonight with homemade whipped cream (we had to buy the whipping cream for the recipe anyway -why not?), and it was delicious. It might not replace pumpkin pie on your dessert table, but it's good enough that I will most likely be making this again at some point.

I got this recipe from the All-American Dessert Book by Nancy Baggett, published in 2005. This book is great.

I hope you enjoy this blog post, since I've been looking forward to writing it for a while. I know the Thanksgiving countdown isn't working like I wanted it to, but I'm going to stop apologizing because I'm doing my darndest to get everything up, and I have a few great recipes (and great books!) coming.

And lastly. It has come to my attention that, while I've been bugging you all to email me and tell me what you think, I haven't actually told you what my email is for a while. (This is one of those facepalm moments.) It's KatCooksTheBooks@gmail.com.

Tappleton Liverwurst

2009-11-20T14:44:00.000-08:00

My friend Christy said, when I complained that my last post was the lamest blog post ever, "you're allowed one lame recipe." But I'm breaking that rule and posting another lame recipe. But it's only so I can tell you about this book!

Thanksgiving at the Tappletons' was written by Eileen Spinelli and illustrated by Maryann Cocca-Leffler in 1992, and re-illustrated by Megan Lloyd in 2004. In the original book, the Tappleton family is human; in the remake, they are wolves. I like both versions, but I'm leaning toward wolves on this one. Since this is a picture book, I'm going to spoil the entire plot, I'm warning you right now.

We meet Mrs. Tappleton and she is getting the turkey ready for the oven on Thanksgiving morning. The milkman comes and, while she reaches for the holiday egg-nog, the turkey gets knocked off the counter and through the open door. She chases it down the steps and away but - oh no!!! - the turkey falls into the lake and is lost forever. Mrs. Tappleton decides that there will be enough other things for dinner, and puts the empty roasting pan in the oven. Meanwhile, Mr. Tappleton goes down to the bakery but - oh no!!! - they're sold out of pie. So he buys two empty boxes tied up with string, thinking that there will be enough for dinner that lack of dessert won't matter. Similar fates befall the sister's mashed potatoes (put in the blender to be extra-smooth, and exploded all over the walls), and the brother's salad (the components of which he fed to the school's bunny rabbit the day before).

When the rest of the guests arrive, they are as hungry as an elephant. The roasting pan comes out of the oven but! - no turkey! Oh no! They're as hungry as two elephants! The bowl of mashed potatoes comes out but! it's empty! Oh no! They're as hungry as three elephants! So they pull out the salad and pull the tin foil off but! - no salad! Oh no! They're as hungry as four elephants! So they untie the strings from the baker boxes but! - no pie! Oh no! They're as hungry as FIVE elephants!

After laughing about the fates that befell the various Thanksgiving dishes, the family decides that they are thankful to all be together, and they eat a festive meal of what they have in the fridge: liverwurst and cheese sandwiches, pickles, and applesauce.

Tappleton Liverwurst
2 slices of your favorite bread. I used the end of a loaf of French bread, cut in half.
Slices of cheese
Slices of liverwurst
Various condiments, such as mayonnaise

My aunt actually made this sandwich because she likes liverwurst and I do not, but here's the procedure:

1. Find two slices of bread and spread on condiments as desired. We put mayonnaise on both bread halves, then layered cheese on one side and liverwurst on the other. Stack together and enjoy.

You can tell this sandwich is very happy to be included here, as he is sticking his tongue out at us all.

Peanut Butter Pilgrims

2009-11-18T15:25:00.000-08:00

First, apologies for no posts yesterday, and more for the lame recipe today. I had a big project due this morning, and while I think (I hope!) I did well on it, I just didn't have time to make something yesterday... and today, I'm just plain tired. But I will get to all the recipes, I promise.

Anyway. Today's sandwich is an excuse to write about Peanut Butter Pilgrims, a Pee Wee Scouts book by Judy Delton. As a kid, I was a huge fan of the Pee Wee Scouts. The series (there are 40 books, written for ages 4-8) stars Molly Duff, a little girl who is a proud member of the Pee Wee Scouts, which is a co-ed scout troop akin to the Boy or Girl Scouts - they do good deeds, earn merit badges, and get through everyday life with humor. The books are illustrated by Alan Tiegreen, who also illustrated Beverly Cleary's Ramona books, which is a great bonus. I always loved his work.

In this particular story, Molly and the Scouts make baskets to fill with canned food for a food drive - Molly's basket is way too tight, and she has to re-do it, but she gets her Basket-Weaving Merit Badge in the end. Then they all go to a turkey farm, and get to meet and pet turkeys; Scout Sonny falls in love with a turkey with two black tail feathers and somehow manages to get his mother to allow him to adopt the bird, who he names Tiger. Tiger, by the way, gets treated like a dog throughout the book; he's led around on a leash, and Sonny earns a merit badge by building him an enormous birdhouse.

The book progresses through some other fall-time fun before it's announced that the Scouts will be presenting a Thanksgiving play.. in front of the whole town! The mayor will be there!! That. Is. Huge. Molly is terrified! She's going to forget all her lines, and everyone will laugh! The mayor himself will laugh at her!! This is a very big deal.

Of course, everything works out in the end... Molly is a big hit and the mayor himself congratulates her on her fine performance. But, because of the visit to the turkey farm, and because Tiger was in the play with her- she's spent so much time with him! - she just can't bring herself to eat turkey. So, she has a peanut butter sandwich. And mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce and stuffing.

Peanut Butter Pilgrim Sandwich
2 slices of your favorite bread
Peanut butter of your choice

1. Spread the peanut butter evenly on one slice of bread, then cover with the other slice of bread. Cut into pieces and enjoy.

Yes, yes. This is easy. But allow me to add an insight that I find to be fascinating. Alton Brown says that "squishable spreads go on squishable breads." I put my peanut butter on hard or soft bread, but I take it the other way around - crunchy peanut butter goes best on toasted breads. And peanut butter sandwiches are always always always better when cut on the diagonal.

Pilgrim Cat Cornbread

2009-11-16T17:07:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving!!!
Today marks the start of the Happy Fun Enjoyable Thanksgiving Food-And-Book-O-Rama! Hooray! Every day until Thanksgiving, I will be posting a new recipe from a holiday-themed book. I have 10 recipes ready and standing by, and 10 days in which to make them (excluding Thanksgiving itself), so I will do my best to post one each day.

There are several great Thanksgiving-y books out there that I did not pull from - of course, how could I get them all? Many of the ones I did not choose have Thanksgiving pageants or costumes or visiting relatives as the main story, and the meal spoken of in them is usually the typical turkey-and-stuffing fare. I chose a few books with typical dishes - like today's cornbread - but I did my best to get some of the more off-beat fare, because not everybody eats that stuff, and most of us already know how to make it, or at least where to find a recipe. But without further ado or distraction, I give you...

Pilgrim Cat by Carol Antoinette Peacock
Pilgrim Cat is a picture book that follows a young girl, Faith, who sets sail on the Mayflower with her family; as the boat is about to leave the dock, she sees a cat jump on board. The cat, later named Pounce, is a welcome stowaway, as he is an excellent mouser, and Faith adopts him as her own, making sure he is safe in the rough weather and has a home when they reach Plymouth. All is going well, despite the town's hardships, until Pounce disappears - oh no! With the help of a friendly Wampanoag, Faith finds Pounce nested in a hollow log with kittens, and we learn that - surprise!! - Pounce is a girl cat. The feast follows, and everyone is happy.

I really liked this book. The story begins with an introduction where the author explains what is fact and what is fiction, and though the hardships are sugar-coated, it is historically accurate in age-appropriate way. The illustrations, by Doris Ettlinger, are beautiful watercolor paintings. This is one of two titles that I chose from the stacks (and at this point I will admit that I read every Thanksgiving picture book that happened to be on the shelves at BPL when I was there last Friday) where the food is traditional Thanksgiving fare. Now, traditional feasts, I have learned, are not just turkey and stuffing - in fact, there was no turkey listed in the one eyewitness account available from the first Thanksgiving - but I was not about to make eel pie for you all (SO sorry), and I am not willing to go hunt up a deer, so you're getting cornbread. And a very tasty cornbread it is!

Pilgrim Cat Cornbread
1 1/2 cups cornmeal
2 1/2 cups milk
2 cups flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil

1. Preheat the oven to 400. Grease a 9x13 pan, or two round cake pans. In a small bowl, mix the cornmeal with milk and let sit for 5 minutes.
2. In a larger bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. Stir in the cornmeal mixture, eggs, and oil, and whisk for 5 minutes (this adds air and makes the resulting bread much lighter).
3. Bake for 30 to 45 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the bread comes out clean.

Seriously, this cornbread is delicious. I put some butter on it, and I ate a big slice in about 30 seconds flat, without even trying to speed-eat. I got the recipe from the AllRecipes website, where it is listed as Homesteader Cornbread.

I hope you enjoy this one. Be sure to check back tomorrow for another fun dish. I'm not sure what it will be yet.

Random Things

2009-11-16T15:14:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone! I'll be posting the food in a minute, but I wanted to address a few things first.

*Thing One: It has come to my attention that some people stop reading a post once they come to the recipe, and I wanted to let you know that, given my penchant for rambling on and on, there is MORE texty goodness under the recipe, and occasionally my dorkiness even shines through in the instructions themselves, if you're into that sort of thing.

*Thing Two: Why, yes! I do take requests! If you haven't seen what you requested here yet, please don't lose faith in me, it'll be up soon. Also, there is a difference in my head between a request (which I will definitely make) and a suggestion (which I put on my to-make list and may eventually get around to), so if you really want me to make something please let me know and I'll get to it ASAP.

*Thing Three: I love email! And I will write you back, I promise! And comments! I've been told that a few people have had trouble posting comments, and I don't know why that is, but I set things so you can post without logging in (it will show up as Anonymous), so please keep trying. I love comments - it lets me know people are actually reading this.

I think that's it. :)
Kat

Gecko Treats

2009-11-12T19:38:00.000-08:00

I walked through the library like a hot knife through butter - smooth and easy. Coupla books caught my eye - wouldn't ya know it? Had a detective in 'em. Gecko. Say what you will about the lizard, he knows his detective work like he knows his bugs.

Okay, so I'm not all that hardboiled.

I found Bruce Hale's Chet Gecko series of books by random chance in my local library, and they are awesome. The series, which currently has twelve books, follows Chet Gecko, hardboiled 4th grade private eye, who just so happens to be a lizard. They are very film noir, reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane, Raymond Chandler and the like. They make me want to re-read The Maltese Falcon. For those out there who still don't know what I'm talking about, here's a few of lines I wrote down when flipping through the books:
"I followed a lead as thin as a dragonfly wafer."
"She was as stiff as a grasshopper popsicle."
"In my time, I’ve tackled cases stickier than a spider’s handshake and harder than three-year-old boll weevil taffy."
Did that help? If not, go on YouTube and search for "film noir." I'm sure that even if you haven't read the books or seen the movies, you'll know the cliches.

Moving on.
The Chet Gecko titles are fun: The Malted Falcon, The Possum Always Rings Twice, Key Lardo, Farewell My Lunchbag, The Big Nap. The only one I've had time to read through so far is Trouble is My Beeswax, but I assure you that I will be reading the entire series. They're that good. I love the writing style - I can hear the piano music and the Sam Spade narration in my head when I read. The plot-lines are fun, they're not girly (which I've found to be an issue lately - too many girl books!), and the names of the characters are great stupid puns: Noah Vail? Natalie Attired? Sweet! AND!! Chet Gecko eats pillbug crunch bars and wolf spider lasagna!

Now, author Bruce Hale has made a Detective Handbook and Cookbook that I have not yet been able to get my hands on, so I didn't want to make any of the specific things that Chet eats in the books, because I don't know what's in the cookbook. I decided to make some generic buggy treats for Chet, in the hopes that I don't repeat what Mr. Hale has already done. Somehow, it seems different to me than using the Anne of Green Gables cookbook for raspberry cordial. So, I made some chocolate covered spider legs instead, and I think they'd be pretty good as an after-school snack.

Chet Gecko's Chocolate Spider Legs
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup butterscotch chips
2 to 2-1/2 cups chow mein noodles
Milk

1. Pour the chocolate and butterscotch chips into a microwave-safe bowl and zap on half-power for 30 seconds. Stir. Repeat this process until the chips are all melted.
2. If your chips are melty but not liquidy (more like a paste), you can add a tablespoon of milk and stir to integrate, repeating until smooth; I needed to do this twice to be able to get a fully-melted and not pasty bowl of chocolate.
3. Stir in 2 cups of chow mein noodles; add more noodles as necessary so there isn't excess chocolate pooling at the bottom of the bowl.
4. Using a spoon, drop piles of the noodles onto wax paper and allow to dry.

This is a simple one, but yummy. And versatile! Don't like butterscotch? Use peanut butter chips, or all chocolate, or white chocolate, or Andes mints! And you can mix in other things with the noodles, too - peanuts! Raisins! And you can swap out the noodles for other things, if you want... The possibilities are endless. White-chocolate-cranberry-chex? Sure! It won't look like spider legs, but it will be tasty.

Here's a photo of one piece - I made them pretty big (unless my hands are very small... no comment). I know they're not actually spider legs, but having told myself that I was making chocolate spider legs, I found myself a little grossed out by them toward the end.

Marilla's Raspberry Cordial

2009-11-09T20:30:00.000-08:00

Dear friends, I had a stroke of inspiration today. It was a beautiful day outside, much warmer than it has been lately, and I was thinking about lemonade, and how in days not even 100 years ago, lemonade on a warm day is about as refreshing and enjoyable as things could get. And I wanted some. But I didn't want just lemons, I wanted lemons and berries (I love berries), and that reminded me of a recipe that I read recently. So, in honor of the beautiful weather, I give you Marilla's Raspberry Cordial, from L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables.

Anne of Green Gables is the story of Anne Shirley, who is a very lively 11-year old girl who has an imagination as big as the sky, and who can never be perfectly happy because "nobody could who had red hair" (which is her lifelong sorrow), but she tries her best, and sees the world as a place full of wonder and exciting things, even though she knows that she will likely never have any of these things because she is an orphan, and she speaks in very long, run-on sentences that make one understand exactly the kind of energy that she has because you end up breathless just reading them.

In the first two chapters of the book, we find out that Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, a brother and sister of both around 60 years old, have sent away to adopt an orphan to help around the house - but they wanted a boy, and got Anne instead. They decide to keep her anyway, and Anne gets into scrapes and small adventures around the town and with her "bosom friend" Diana. In one memorable scene, Anne has gotten permission to serve Marilla's Raspberry Cordial to Diana before tea time, and serves her currant wine by mistake. Diana goes home, drunk, and giggles all the way, ultimately getting Anne banned from Diana's house, much to Anne's dismay.

In the Anne of Green Gables Cookbook by Kate MacDonald (granddaughter of author Lucy Maud Montgomery), the recipe for raspberry cordial is, as in the story, non-alcoholic, though in popular vernacular a cordial is an alcoholic beverage - so, look out when you go out to a restaurant and order one.

This recipe falls into the category of Deceptive. In theory, it is quite simple. It doesn't even look that impressive once it's done (though it is delicious). In practice, it was one of the messiest, most frustrating things I've made in a long time. But if you have an afternoon on your hands, it may be worth a try.

Marilla's Raspberry Cordial
1 lb., 3 oz. frozen raspberries
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 lemons
4 cups boiling water (or more, to taste)

1. In a saucepan or small pot, cook the raspberries and sugar over medium-low heat until all the sugar is dissolved, about 20 to 25 minutes.
2. Mash the mixture and pour it through a strainer, discarding the pulp (the pulp, once you get all the flavor out of it, will be a sickly mauve color).
3. Add the strained juice of two lemons. Stir in the water, and allow the drink to come to room temperature.
4. Chill, serve, and enjoy.

I did my best. I strained and stirred and discarded pulp... perhaps it's the way I did it, but it took a really long time, and I still ended up with seeds in the drink because I'm fairly clumsy. Maybe 10 seeds instead of the 500 that would have been in there, but still. And berry juice all over my favorite too-big-and-baggy sweatshirt. And a seed stuck to my forehead. Sigh.

It's funny, come to think of it. I started this project thinking it would be the most wonderful thing in the world, and it was a lot more work than I'd bargained for. Does this remind anyone else of some of Anne's escapades? And in the end, it's very tasty - there's no way to get that taste without actual raspberries - a beautiful color, and smells like raspberry heaven. I'm not sure if I'd make it again, but there is a definite possibility.

Boxcar Beef Stew

2009-11-08T21:10:00.000-08:00

The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner is another one of those classic books that everybody has heard of, but I never read as a kid. There's a huge series of these books - according to Wikipedia, 121 of them - but only the first 19 were written by Ms. Warner. The first book was published in 1924, but like all good classics, it doesn't seem dated much - no more than the Little House books are.

The books follow the story of orphans Henry, Jessie, Violet and Benny Alden, who run away from an orphanage and from anyone who tries to send them to their grandfather, who they believe to be cruel, though they have never met him. I won't spoil what happens, because this really is one of those books that people should read for themselves.

The siblings set up house in an abandoned boxcar in the woods, and Henry does some odd jobs for a local doctor, so they can get money for food. They set up a fire pit in woods near the boxcar and, between a few handouts of too-small vegetables and some money that Henry earned, were able to cook tasty things for dinner, like stew. I left the turnips out of my stew recipe, because I am not particularly fond of turnips, but they are specified in the story, so do what you will.

My friend Christina - the one we can all thank for the If-You-Give-A-Mouse-A-Cookies - recommended that I make a beef stew like the Boxcar Children had. She is full of good ideas! Thank you!!

Boxcar Beef Stew
2 tbsp. vegetable oil
2 lbs. stew beef, cubed
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 cups water
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. dried parsley
2 bullion cubes, crushed
1 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. corn starch
4 medium potatoes
3 whole carrots or a small bag of baby carrots
Other veggies as desired, like peas or green beans

1. In a 6-quart saucepan or pot, heat the oil. Coat the beef in flour (I put the beef and the flour into a lunch-bag-sized paper bag and shook it to coat it) and brown it in the pan. You may have to work in batches, but it'll be worth it, since this is the only time to get that nice brown texture on the outside of the beef.
2. Once the meat is all browned, add the water and spices (through corn starch, above), and bring to a boil. Cover the pot, reduce heat and simmer for about an hour and a half, until the meat is tender. NOTE: If you don't want to bother with all the spices, use a beef stew spice pouch that you get in the grocery store. It's about 50 cents and tastes pretty similar.
3. Peel the potatoes and cut into fork-sized pieces; my potatoes were cut into 8 pieces each. Cut the carrots into one-inch pieces; baby carrots can be cut in half. Once the meat is tender, add the potatoes and veggies and cover. Let this simmer 45 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.

This recipe is easy, but time consuming. But, let me tell you, this was so worth the time, I can't even tell you. I had this for dinner, and it's supposed to make 8 one-cup servings, but maybe because I was hungry, or maybe because it was tasty, I ate at least two cups of it.

Here's a better view of my dinner, because I know you're all so curious. It was so good! And I re-read the book while I ate, making it all the better.

Alice's Eat Me Cakes

2009-11-02T23:43:00.000-08:00

Oh, Alice. How many mishaps will you get into? Won't you ever learn that eating something that has been sitting around in a strange place may be a bad idea?

I love love love the way that Ms. Alice, of In Wonderland fame, gets to eat and drink her way through the fantabulous place in which she finds herself. I love that she finds a jar of marmalade when she's falling down the rabbit hole - even if it was empty - and the chocolates as prizes in the caucus race, and don't get me started on the Mad Tea Party. But my favorite thing of all was the Eat Me cakes and Drink Me bottles.

One of the most fun things about Alice in Wonderland, I think, is that there is very little description given, but we get amazing mental pictures, anyway. You know, there is no physical description of the Mad Hatter or the March Hare at all? Or, for that matter, of Alice - the blond girl in the blue dress and pinafore that we associate with Alice are partly due to the illustrations of Sir John Tenniel, the original illustrator, and partly Disney's fault. Alice Liddell, the inspiration for the title character, actually had dark brown hair.

So, because the cakes have no description, excepting that they have Eat Me "beautifully marked in currants," I've decided that I could do pretty much whatever I wanted with them. And since it's Wonderland, how about something a little different? It could be anything! What sounds good today? Hmm... chocolate, always. And how about, oh, I don't know.... orange frosting? Why not?!
Also - because I don't have currants, and am not particularly fond of them anyway, I'm going to use craisins. They're pretty, and tasty, and go well with orange, both in color and in flavor. One last note: I'm aware that "cakes" in the time that this book was written may very well refer to "tea cakes" which are actually scones or cookies, rather than cupcakes, but... it's Wonderland! My apologies for the not-the-best photo, but my penmanship in craisin-form leaves much to be desired. I'll practice for next time.

Alice's Eat Me Cakes
1/2 cup butter
1 cup water
2 (1 oz.) squares unsweetened chocolate
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups white sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup sour milk (or, milk with 1 tsp. white vinegar mixed in, and left to sit for 10 minutes)

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Put cupcake papers into muffin tins - this recipe made me 31 cupcakes.
2. In a microwave-safe bowl, microwave chocolate, butter and water in 30-second bursts, stirring after each time, until chocolate is smooth. Allow this mixture to come to room temperature.
3. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, salt and soda. Pour in the sour milk and soda and mix. Mix in the chocolate mixture, and pour into the muffin cups.
4. Bake at 350 for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. Frost with the frosting of your choice - I prefer Orange Buttercream - and decorate!

Orange Buttercream
1/2 cup butter, softened
3 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar
Pinch salt
2 tbsp. orange juice
2 tbsp. light corn syrup
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. orange extract
Food coloring

1. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter, 3 cups of the sugar and the salt until smooth. Add the orange juice, corn syrup, and the extracts, and beat until well mixed. Add food coloring as needed to make it whatever color you like - even with the juice, it's a pale, creamy color without coloring.

You can use a stand-mixer for this, but it's hard to get everything all the way on the bottom of the bowl that way. I like to use a hand mixer, because it's quick and easy, and fresh-made frosting tastes so much better than the stuff you buy in a can!

So, today's recipe blog is a two-fer, and I really like this one. I'd make it again... maybe with polka dots, next time. Because it makes so many cupcakes, I thought I'd show you roughly what size one cupcake is. And - double bonus!! - you get to see my hand, too!

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-31T16:50:00.000-07:00

Hello, everyone.
I have read no less than a dozen Halloween books, and flipped through stacks of picture books, and excepting the two (well, one and a half) recipes I've already posted, I can find NOT ONE book that has anything for the holiday excepting store-bought candy. There are some great Halloween books out there, don't get me wrong, but they're all either about costumes or about candy, so... sorry, my friends. I'll try harder for next year. Suggestions are welcome.

Francine's Bat Wing Brownies

2009-10-29T18:30:00.000-07:00

Arthur the Aardvark is one of the most fun kid lit characters I can think of. He's a little bit of a goody-two-shoes, but for a picture book character, he's a lot of fun, and definitely not boring. And because the series of books was out for about two decades before the television series started, I think I can use these on the blog. I will not, however, be doing anything with Dora the Explorer.

Anyhow. Arthur's Halloween, written and illustrated by Marc Brown, is the story of Arthur, an aardvark who is afraid of Halloween. He doesn't recognize anybody in his class - even the teacher has been replaced by a giant robot! - and nothing is the way it should be. And why on Earth would anybody want to touch eyeballs, even if they are just peeled grapes? Arthur doesn't even want to go trick-or-treating, because it's too scary.

It all turns out okay in the end when Arthur and his sister meet a "witch" and find out that she's really just an older woman whose house is in disrepair because she can't take care of it easily. He's such a nice aardvark, he even promised to come help her around the house on the weekend. I love a happy ending.

Before all this, though, while they're at school, Arthur's friend Francine brings in a special treat, that Arthur is too nervous to enjoy - Bat Wing Brownies and Blood Punch! The Blood Punch in this photo is just cherry Kool-Aid, but the brownies... now, those are special.

Francine's Bat Wing Brownies
1/2 cup of butter, melted
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Grease an 8x8 or 9x9 pan. If you want to make a larger pan of brownies, you will need to double the recipe; this isn't one of those where they say to use a small pan but it can fit in a big pan and be thinner, as they aren't that thick to begin with.
2. Mix together the melted butter and white sugar. Add the eggs and beat well. Add the rest of the ingredients, and mix that together. Pour into the prepared baking pan.
3. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the edges are firm.

To make them into bat wings, I contemplated a cookie cutter to get a real bat wing shape, but I figured that Francine's poor hard-working parents would have enough to do without cutting brownies into individual bat shapes, so I found another way. I cut the brownies into rectangles and then bisected the rectangles to get two right triangles. I then put a dot of decorator's gel on the inner points for spooky red bat eyes. Serve with Blood Punch and you're all set!

The Happy Golden Popcorn Balls

2009-10-29T15:39:00.000-07:00

Halloween is just around the corner, and I have been remiss in not providing holiday-related goodies. So in the next three days, I'll see how many I can pop out, and I promise to plan ahead for Thanksgiving.

Now, I have been trying my best not to only write about sweets, but since this holiday abounds with candy, and I can't very well put up a recipe about peeling grapes and calling them eyeballs, healthiness will have to wait a few days.

One of the things I like about Halloween is the popcorn balls. My sources tell me that popcorn balls are not a Halloween-only thing - when the Ingalls family makes their popcorn balls, it's at Christmas time - but I only ever see them in the fall, usually with wrappers illustrated with spiders, besides the fact that they're in the treat bags of the kids in It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, so they count as Halloween in my book. And that, children, is a run-on sentence.

Speaking of books, popcorn balls play a big part in the Christmas traditions of the Ingalls family in Laura Ingalls Wilder's These Happy Golden Years. This book was not my favorite of the Little House series, because I liked the young and impulsive Laura, and this one has her teaching at a school and getting ready to marry Almanzo, but that didn't stop me from reading it a few times. I loved this book series, particularly Little House in the Big Woods.

The book, the eighth in the series, was set in the 1880's in or around what is now DeSmet, South Dakota; it's a semi-autobiographical series, based on the author's real life but not necessarily true all the way. In the spirit of this, I made mostly-true popcorn balls; that is, I didn't use the molasses that the book specifically says that the Ingallses used, because I don't like the flavor of molasses all that much. I used a recipe that makes the popcorn more caramel and less treacle instead, though I did pop the popcorn on the stove-top like Mrs. Ingalls did when she made them with Laura, Carrie and Grace.

Laura's Popcorn Balls
4 tbsp. vegetable oil
2 cups unpopped popcorn
1/4 cup butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
2/3 cup sweetened condensed milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1. Add 1 tbsp. of oil and two unpopped popcorn kernels to a large pot or saucepan, and heat over medium-high until the kernels pop. Add a 1/2 cup of kernels to the pot and cover. Shake the pot over the burner in a back-and-forth motion constantly until all the kernels have popped (by this, I mean you'll be scraping the pot over the burner, as it needs to stay near the heat). Move the popped popcorn to a large bowl and repeat with the remaining kernels until all the popcorn has popped. NOTE: If you don't want to pop the popcorn on the stovetop, use three bags of unflavored or natural microwave popcorn.
2. In a small saucepan, heat the butter, brown sugar, and corn syrup over medium high until melted together, and bring to a boil. Add the condensed milk and simmer until the mix gets to the "soft ball" stage of candy making, or roughly 240 degrees on a candy thermometer. Stir in the vanilla.
3. Pour the mixture - which is now caramel, by the way - over the popcorn and stir with a spoon to coat. Once the mixture is cool enough to touch, butter or cooking-spray your hands and roll them into balls, in the same way that you would pack a snowball.

NOTES: Two cups of unpopped popcorn makes a very large amount of popped popcorn, and I needed three large bowls to hold it all, which I poured the caramel over as evenly as I could divide it. You can cut down on the popcorn if you want your popcorn balls to be more caramelly. Also, please note that if you leave the popcorn alone until it is fully cool, it won't be very easy to roll into balls, but it is still quite tasty as caramel popcorn. This recipe made me 25 4-inch popcorn balls and a zip-top freezer bag full of caramel popcorn.

These are awesome. If you don't want caramel popcorn, there are lots of marshmallow-based popcorn ball recipes out there, too.

A Series of Fortunate Puttanesca

2009-10-28T18:30:00.000-07:00

I admit, my title is somewhat misleading, as there is no series involved here. But how else was I to explain both the dish and the title in one fell swoop?

The first book in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events was published in 1999, making it a bit too new for me to have read as a kid. Also, since I don't have children or younger siblings, and am not working in a school yet, it's not like I have other people in the house who would be reading the book. It wasn't just laying around for me to pick up. But given my love of children's literature, after I saw at least five children reading this series within the span of a week, I had to read it. And yes, as a would-be (will-be!) librarian, I have every reason to have read this title, but this happened roughly seven years ago, when I had no reason at all.

In any case, I read The Bad Beginning (the first book in the series), and really enjoyed it. And then when a friend of mine asked me if this blog was desserts-only (I do have a sweet tooth, don't I?), I sat down and thought about food from books that isn't coated in sugar. The first thing that came to mind was, "hey! Didn't Lemony Snicket make puttanesca?" Indeed, he did.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with these books, let me sum up. In the 13 books of the series, orphans Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire go through, as you would expect, a whole series of unfortunate events. Some parents dislike these because they're so unhappy, and people do get hurt and occasionally die... but, even from reading the back cover of the book, you can tell that the author takes a fun look at even the sad things in life. Some of the issues that the children face in book 1, for example, include "itchy clothing, a disastrous fire, a plot to steal their fortune, and cold porridge for breakfast." (This marks at least the third appearance of kid-lit porridge.) I appreciate that the horrible things in life are taken in stride with the generally annoying, and the children do seem to get through everything in good spirits.

In this book, the three orphans are forced to make dinner for the nasty, greedy Count Olaf and his theater troupe. Given little money and no supplies, they looked up recipes and found one for puttanesca, which is, as Klaus explains, "an Italian sauce for pasta. All we need to do is saute olives, capers, anchovies, garlic, chopped parsley, and tomatoes together in a pot, and prepare spaghetti to go with it."

I love that the author explains what the hard words mean ("capers, which are flower buds of a small shrub and taste marvelous"), so readers can learn something new without having to use the dreaded dictionary. When I was a kid, I hated to be told to go look up a word I didn't know; it would ruin the flow of the story, and I'd more often than not skip over a word and guess at the definition.

Anyway, I admit that I personally dislike olives, capers and anchovies, but this blog is not just for me, and the magic word here is "puttanesca," which my uncle loves - serendipity to have found the reference! So, thanks again to Uncle Hawk, who not only made this, but ate it so I didn't have to. And to top it off, it's his very own recipe!

Baudelaire Puttanesca
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 tin anchovies
1 3.5-oz. jar capers
1 can whole olives
1 28-oz. jar crushed tomatoes
1/2 jar tomato sauce, any variety
2 tbsp. garlic
herbs to taste

1. Open the tin of anchovies and chop the fish into very small bits. In a large frying pan, add the olive oil and the chopped anchovies, as well as the liquid from the anchovy tin. Drain the liquid out of the jar of capers and add the capers to the pan. Drain the olives and add them, too
2. Cook over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes, stirring often and breaking up the anchovies and olives if you like.
3. Add the tomatoes, tomato sauce, garlic, and whatever herbs you like (oregano, basil, or parsley would be nice) and cook for 5 minutes, then reduce to low and simmer until ready to serve.

As I said, this is my uncle's puttanesca. He doesn't usually cook from a recipe, so I watched over his shoulder while he made it, and wrote it all down. I have the following notes for you:
* If you like, you can chop the olives into pieces, or use chopped olives to start out with. Uncle Hawk says he enjoys the olives whole, because then you get a whole bite of olivey goodness instead of just a small piece.
* Depending on how salty you want your sauce, you can add the juice from the caper jar and olive can, or add one of those instead of the liquid from the anchovies.
* The amount of tomatoes and tomato sauce also depend on whatever mood you happen to be in that day. The less sauce you add, the thicker the sauce will be; tomatoes add chunkiness that tomato sauce does not.

Since this is cooking and not baking, this recipe can be a great jumping-off point for your personal likes and dislikes; add mushrooms, or chicken pieces, or take out the capers if you like. If it were up to me, I'd take out the olives, capers and anchovies and add peppers, onions, broccoli and carrots, but that makes this dish a primavera and not a puttanesca, so it doesn't go quite as well with the book.

Charlotte's Web: Wilbur's Ancient Jelly Roll

2009-10-28T13:59:00.000-07:00

Wow... that jelly roll looks dusty, doesn't it? Old, and dusty and leaking? Well, it had just been made when the photo was taken, but if it looks old, that's ok, too.

We've all read E. B. White's Charlotte's Web, haven't we? Who couldn't love Wilbur? He's awesome! And he gets so excited when he eats - hey, just like me! Even slops sound good with the descriptions we're given. On one memorable occasion, our piggy friend eats "leftover pancakes, half a doughnut, the rind of a summer squash, two pieces of stale toast, a third of a gingersnap, a fish tail, one orange peel, several noodles from a noodle soup, the scum off a cup of cocoa, an ancient jelly roll, a strip of paper from the lining of the garbage pail, and a spoonful of raspberry jello."

Is it me, or does that sound oddly appealing? It's like a combo platter - a little breakfast, a little dinner, a little dessert... The ancient jelly roll always sounded so fancy to me, and when I had jam to use up (see the previous post about Bread and Jam for Frances) my friend Allen reminded me that Wilbur had one at slops. Perfect! (And thank you, by the way.)

I contemplated cotton candy cobwebs, and placing doughnut pieces and an orange peel on the plate for the photo, but I think the powdered sugar "dust" worked well enough to imply the age of it. There's no need to put garbage with the food, after all, since we will be eating it later... though this project does make me want to make Templeton's Smorgasbord at some point, and I know that's mostly garbage. Now, if I can only find a good way to make half a funnel cake.

Anyway. I got this recipe out of the New York Times International Cook Book from 1971, which was actually owned by my great-grandmother before it was passed along. My aunt and uncle actually cooked this one up for you, so all thanks are due to them for its yumminess and photogenic-osity.

Wilbur's Ancient Jelly Roll
3 tbsp. butter, melted
4 eggs
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp. sugar, plus extra for rolling
3/4 cup sifted flour
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tbsp. confectioner's sugar, plus extra for dusting later
3/4 cup jelly or jam

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Brush a jelly roll pan (a cookie sheet with edges) with half the melted butter. Line the pan with a large sheet of wax or parchment paper, letting it hang over the sides of the pan. Brush the paper with the remaining melted butter.
2. Break the eggs into the bowl of an electric mixer. Add the salt and 3/4 cup of sugar. Beat until stiff "or until the mixture forms a ribbon and falls back on itself when the mixer is lifted from the bowl." (I took that directly from the book, as I wasn't sure how to say that in any better way.) Fold in the flour and vanilla.
3. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and spread it smooth with a rubber spatula.
4. Bake for 15 minutes.
5. Sift together the confectioner's sugar and white sugar. Lay out a clean dish towel or cloth and sprinkle the sugar mixture over it. Once the cake is done, when it is still warm, loosen the cake from the pan and lift out using the parchment or wax paper; turn it out on to the towel and peel away the paper.
6. Sprinkle the cake with sugar and quickly - but gently!! - roll it up like a jelly roll with the towel inside. Let this cool for 15 minutes.
7. After the wait time is up, carefully unroll the cake and spread the jelly as evenly as possible on top. Roll the cake back up (without the towel inside) and let it cool completely before cutting. Lightly sprinkle with confectioner's sugar "dust" and decorate in any way you like. There are times like these when I sincerely wish that I had a feeding trough to serve out of. Yes, sometimes I'm a little strange.

Our cake didn't crack, but if yours does, please remember that whipped cream makes a lovely topping that hides many flaws, and the roll is supposed to be ancient anyway. And if all else fails, I bet it would be really good in a parfait.

I have a confession to make. I have never had a jelly roll before, and I didn't think I'd like it as much as I did. I found this to be very tasty, and it wasn't too sweet. I think it would be especially good with whipped cream, since that would add a creaminess that I love in desserts that just wasn't present here.

In my research, I found a recipe that would fix that problem by making the following addition: before spreading the jelly, spread a layer of a mix of 8 oz. of cream cheese beaten with 1 cup confectioner's sugar and 1 tsp. vanilla. Then spread the jelly on top of that and roll it up as planned. I'd love to try this, but I have a whole list of other recipes to make, besides the Christmas cookies that are already starting to fill the freezer, so I'm going to rely on you, faithful friends, to try it out and let me know what you think.

Jam for Frances

2009-10-26T15:07:00.000-07:00

First and most importantly, my apologies for not having posted for several days. Life has been a little busy, but things should be back to normal now. So, on with the show!

Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban, illustrated by Lillian Hoban, is one of my all-time favorite books. For the uninformed, this is the story of Frances, a young badger, who only ever wants to eat bread and jam. Her mother makes her a lovely soft-boiled egg, but she doesn't like the way it's wobbles on the spoon. Or the way sunny-side-up-eggs look at her. Or how sunny-side-down eggs "just lie on their stomachs and wait." (This book is the reason that I never remember that sunny-side-down eggs are actually called "over easy.")

Frances may not eat eggs, or string beans, or veal cutlets, or anything else, but she will eat and enjoy some bread and jam, and sing about how happy it makes her, too. At least, at first. As the book progresses, and her parents only ever give her bread and jam, she realizes that she would like the option of eating other foods, and learns that she does enjoy things like spaghetti and even hard boiled eggs.

But before we get to the food-tolerance lesson part of things, she is a jam-loving, jump-roping badger. And this jam is for her.

Jam for Frances
2 cups of sugar
1 large lemon
1 1/2 pints of strawberries
1 small package of blackberries (about a cup)

1.Put a small plate in the freezer for later. Take the zest off the lemon and put it in a saucepan. Be careful to only get the yellow zest and leave behind the white pith. If you can, use a zester or a grater, as large chunks of zest will not be tasty in the end product.
2. Juice the lemon into the pot, and pull out all the seeds. This should leave you with a hollow-ish, naked lemon. Note: it doesn't really matter which order you juice or zest in the end product, but I juiced first and the lemon was slimy and the rind had a lot of give, so it made zesting difficult.
3. Add the sugar to the pot with the lemon juice and zest, and cook over very low heat for about ten minutes, or until all the sugar has dissolved into a syrup. It will look, at first, like there is not enough liquid, but it will be ok. Stir often; it will help.
4. While the sugar and lemon is cooking, cut the tops off the strawberries and cut them in halves (large berries can be quartered). After the ten minutes are up, stir in the strawberries and blackberries.
5. Cook the berry mix over low heat for about 20 to 25 minutes; the berries will have given up a lot of their juice, and the mixture should be slowly bubbling. Keep the berry mix cooking until a few drops on a very cold plate (the one from the freezer) gel right away.
6. Put into canning jars right away, and either seal in a warm-water bath or put in the fridge and enjoy. It makes about two cups of jam.

This is a soft-set jam with no added pectin. I like pectin-added jams and jellies, which are firmer, like the ones you buy in the store, but I wanted a totally natural jam for Frances, like her mother might make for her. The I adapted this one from an Ina Garten recipe that I found on the Food Network website. And if I may toot my own horn for a moment... holy crap, it's really good.

Captain Underpants: Stinky Taco Surprise

2009-10-22T16:44:00.000-07:00

The Adventures of Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey is, let's be honest here, an awesome book. I took it out of the library to read for my Children's Literature class and strongly recommended ("insisted" is such a negative word) that my aunt and uncle read it, too. Despite initial hesitation - scatalogical humor is not to their taste - both of them read and enjoyed the book. I caught my aunt laughing out loud when she saw that our main characters - George and Harold - were having Stinky Taco Surprise for lunch. (And they both loved the Flip-O-Rama pages.)

I had to make Stinky Taco Surprise. There was no question. So I needed to figure out exactly what would be in such a dish that made it so stinky. (Yes, my friends, these are the questions that keep me awake at night.) Onions, of course. But that's not enough. What else smells so strongly? Bad fish? Unsafe for consumption. Feet? That doesn't even make sense. Garlic? In tacos? Well, maybe, but not what I was looking for. At last, I had it - stinky cheese!

I made the tacos the usual way, but instead of cheddar and lettuce, I used red onions and smelly blue cheese. And they were wonderful. I guess that's the surprise - smelled iffy, but tasted great (okay, that's a cop-out. I seriously considered adding bacon as a surprise but it just didn't need it).

I have to say, I feel silly telling you all how to make tacos. Like you don't already know. And obviously, this can be customized to suit your personal tastes.

Stinky Taco Surprise
1 lb. ground beef or turkey
1 package taco seasoning, and whatever else it says on the package you need (such as water)
Taco shells - the one pound of meat made me 6 average-sized tacos
1 onion, sliced
Blue cheese crumbles
Additional toppings, such as lettuce, tomato, or pico de gallo

1. Brown the ground beef and drain; prepare taco seasonings as directed on the package. (Note: I usually make my own taco seasoning, since it's cheaper and has less sodium to do it that way. If anyone is interested in that recipe, let me know and I'll post it.)
2. Fill the taco shells with taco meat and add onion slices, blue cheese crumbles, and additional toppings. For the photo, I used pico de gallo because it's pretty and I enjoy it, and it was my dinner after I took pictures. If you think it's easy explaining that "I can't eat right now, I need to photograph my food first," chances are that you haven't done it recently.
3. Enjoy with whatever side dishes you like. I had Spanish rice with mine, and it was very tasty.

As a variation, this would be quite tasty as a Frito Pie.

I suppose this post was not so much the recipe for stinky tacos as the idea to make them, but that's ok. Not everything I do will be exciting. Indeed, much of my life is rather dull.

On a somewhat-related topic, I'm wondering what people think of giving Captain Underpants to students. I have always been of the school of thought that, if you give a person a book they enjoy, then they will enjoy reading, and that's a good thing. Even if you personally don't like the book, you realize that other people do and that's that, right? For example, I am the biggest anti-fan of Twilight, but if I see a student returning the book, I'd chase them down and give them New Moon.

I recently learned that a classmate of mine has a different philosphy; she doesn't allow her students to read Captain Underpants or Shel Silverstein poems or anything like that, because they're not valuable academically. "If you let your kids read Shel Silverstein," she told my class, "they'll never want to read any real poetry." I didn't say anything because it confused me to no end. What do you think?

Little Red Hen Bread

2009-10-19T13:20:00.000-07:00

"Hey, everyone!" said the Little Red Hen one day. "I have some grain here. Who will help me plant the grain?"
"Not I," said the dog.
"Not I," said the pig.
"Not I," said the goose.
"Not I," said the Kat. "I'm kinda in the middle of a project here."

"The grain has grown into wheat!" said the Little Red Hen one day. "Who will help me harvest the wheat?"
"Not I," said the dog.
"Not I," said the pig.
"Not I," said the goose.
"Not I," said the Kat. "I'm just getting over a cold, and it's wet and muddy out."

"The wheat must be milled into flour!" said the Little Red Hen one day. "Who will help me mill the wheat?"
"Not I," said the dog.
"Not I," said the pig.
"Not I," said the goose.
"Not I," said the Kat. "Seriously, can't you just buy a bag of flour like a normal person?"

"The flour must be baked into bread!" said the Little Red Hen one day. "Who will help me bake the bread?"
"Not I," said the dog.
"Not I," said the pig.
"Not I," said the goose.
"Aww, what the heck," said the Kat. "I have this great recipe for honey wheat bread I've been wanting to try out..."

Little Red Hen Honey Wheat Bread
2 tbsp. white sugar
3/4 cup warm water
1 tbsp. active dry yeast
1/4 cup milk
1 tbsp. vegetable oil
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. honey
1/4 cup water (may not be needed)
1 egg, beaten

1. In a small bowl, dissolve the sugar into the warm water. Make sure the water is tepid-warm, not hot, not cool. Stir in the yeast and let it sit until it appears creamy and bubbly, about ten minutes. (This is called "blooming the yeast," by the way, and what it does is wake up the freeze-dried yeast so it starts to make bubbles. Skip this step and you have flatbread, which is all well and good, but not really what we're after here.)
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine the yeast mixture with the milk, vegetable oil, whole wheat flour, 1 cup of the all-purpose flour, the salt, and the honey. Mix well.
3. Add in the remaining flour, half a cup at a time. If the mixture is crumbly and will not hold together, add the water a little at a time until it forms a ball. You don't want sticky, but you don't want it to crumble, either.
4. Either use an electric mixer's dough hook for about 5 minutes OR turn the dough out on to a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic-y, about ten minutes.
5. Oil or no-stick-spray a large bowl and place the dough in, turning it over so it gets oil on all sides. Put the bowl in a warm place and cover it with a slightly-damp cloth for about an hour or until the dough has doubled in volume. (Note: the oil and the damp cloth keep the dough from drying out on the outside. The world won't end if you skip this, but it tastes better if you don't.)
6. Grease a loaf pan. Place the dough on a lightly-floured surface and punch it down. Form it into a loaf and set it in the pan, covering again with a damp cloth to let it rise for another 40 minutes. Preheat the oven to 400 so it's ready when your dough is done rising.
7. Brush the loaf with the egg (this will help it to brown - butter would also work). Bake it for 30 minutes, covering with tinfoil mid-way through if the top is getting too brown.
8. Let the loaf rest for a few minutes before cutting into it, as it may otherwise not set right.

This bread is pretty tasty as-is, but if you want to sprinkle, say, some sesame seeds on top before baking, that would be a nice addition as well. You can also use this dough to make rolls, which would be nice, but be sure to adjust your cooking time.

Hmm... I have all this bread now, and nothing to put on it...

Besty-Tacy Unfrosted Cake

2009-10-17T12:26:00.000-07:00

I've had my first real request for this blog: from the Besty-Tacy books, could I replicate Mrs. Kelly's unfrosted cake? Well, I tried.

First off, I went to the library and got Besty-Tacy and Besty-Tacy and Tib by Maud Hart Lovelace, the first two books in a series that I'd never read before. Having read the first two, I'm really surprised I'd never read them before, because they're right up my alley. (While I was there, I also picked up Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield, which I had also never read. How did these slip past me?)

Anyway, after I read the books, I found that the only real description given of the cake is that it's unfrosted and good to take on picnics. I was thinking to myself, what kind of cake would be good without frosting and not too crumbly to take on picnics? Maybe lemon cake.. but lemons weren't readily available to people in Minnesota at the turn of the century. Apples, on the other hand, were all over the place. I found a good apple butter cake recipe with a brown sugar and cinnamon topping and middle, and thought that, perhaps that was just the thing.

I'm not sure how accurate this recipe is to the time period, but it is a good solid unfrosted cake. If this doesn't fit your mind's-eye picture of what this cake should be, let me know and I'll try again, but for now...

Mrs. Kelly's Unfrosted Cake
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 cup chopped nuts (I used pecans)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup apple butter
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 cup wheat germ or rolled oats
1 cup sour cream
2 eggs, beaten

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Spray or grease one 9x13 inch pan or one bundt pan.
2. Prepare the topping by mixing together the brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and chopped nuts. Set aside.
3. Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
4. Blend together butter and sugar; add eggs and beat well. Add the apple butter, vanilla, and wheat germ or rolled oats, and mix to combine.
5. Add the sifted dry ingredients alternately with the sour cream, mixing well after each addition.
6. Pour half the batter into the pan and sprinkle half the topping over the top. Pour remaining batter and top with remaining topping. (Note: If you use a bundt pan, you'll want to reverse the layers, so the topping is on the bottom when baking, which is the top when you flip the cake out.)
7. Bake for 40 minutes.

I know this is a longer and more detailed recipe than usual, but it isn't difficult, and I think it's worth it in the end. This recipe did come out pretty sweet, so I think you could cut down on the sugar in the topping and still have a good dessert-quality cake.

I hope I did Mrs. Kelly's unfrosted cake justice. I considered making Everything Pudding, but I didn't want to deal with the cleanup, so we're going to leave that one out.

Chicken Soup With Rice

2009-10-16T16:39:00.000-07:00

It's been so cold outside lately that I thought a nice warm bowl of soup would be nice to warm up with. And what better way to start off the chilly season than with Chicken Soup With Rice by Maurice Sendak?

If anyone is not familiar with Chicken Soup With Rice, I urge you to head on over to YouTube and watch the animation of it, with the story sung by Carole King. Basically, it's a little boy who sings about the months of the year and how his favorite dish - chicken soup with rice - fits into the grand scheme of things. In June, for example, chicken soup with rice is used to perk up wilting flowers, and it (in bowls, of course) decorates a Christmas tree in December.

I had originally thought to make this a nice, neat, relatively healthy recipe, until I looked at the pictures in the book again and talked to a few friends who told me that chicken soup with rice is wholly unacceptable unless it was creamy chicken soup with rice. It doesn't look especially creamy in the illustrations, but I suppose that's open to interpretation. And it tastes pretty good that way, though, yet again, it is not healthy. And it has a few more ingredients than I usually use. But who wants directions to make a salad, anyway?

Chicken Soup With Rice
2 tsp. olive oil
3 cups chicken meat - 4 thighs or 3 breasts should do
1 stalk celery, chopped
1/2 onion, chopped
2 cups uncooked brown rice (note: don't use minute rice! It mushes into the soup)
1 tsp. chicken boullion powder
2 (14 oz.) cans chicken broth
1 1/2 cup water
1 cup butter or margarine
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
6 cups milk, divided
Salt and pepper to taste

1. In a large pot (one of those big spaghetti pots), heat the olive oil and sautee the chicken. After it is cooked, remove it from the pot, cut the chicken into soup-sized chunks and set it aside. I used chicken thighs because that's what I had on hand.
2. Put the onions and celery into the pot and sautee until its soft and partially translucent. Add the broth, bouillon, water, and rice, and heat on medium until boiling, then reduce heat to low and let it simmer for 30 minutes. Remove from heat.
3. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter or margarine. Slowly add the flour, stirring often, to make a roux.
4. Add 4 cups of milk to the roux, 1/2 cup at a time, while constantly stirring. Add this and the chicken to the rice mixture and return the rice mixture to the stovetop over low heat.
5. If the soup seems too thick, add some or all of the remaining 2 cups of milk. Season with salt and pepper to taste and allow to simmer for at least an hour, stirring every 15 minutes.

This soup will be pretty thick - almost like a stew. I didn't add either of the extra two cups of milk, and I don't think it needed it. It's creamy, kinda like a pot pie filling. As I said, my use of minute rice backfired a bit, since they dissolved a bit into the soup, but it's still delicious. I would celebrate a snowman's anniversary with this soup.

Oh, and one more thing. No matter how good it smells, let it cool down before you eat it. I burned my tongue.

Ice Cream For Samantha

2009-10-16T08:19:00.000-07:00

When I told some friends that I was going to be writing this blog, the one of the first responses I got was, "Are you going to write about the American Girl books?" As a kid, I loved the American Girls - four books to a series, each series highlighting a girl from somewhere in the United States at some point during its history. They were interesting, and fun, and those of us who grew up with them, love them.

When I started reading them, the girls were Samantha (from 1904), Molly (from 1944) and Kirsten (from 1854). Then Felicity came out (from 1774), and it was a huge deal. (Well, to me, it was.) My sisters and I had several of the books, and we got the catalog that had the dolls in it, even though we never had the dolls. The company has now grown exponentially, and there are books about the friends of the original girls, books about girls I've never even heard of, and books about modern girls, and dolls you can customize, and self-help for pre-teens, and... gah! So much! American Girl, I love you, but how am I supposed to catch up?

Anyway. In several of the books, the authors mention cooking; Molly makes Boston brown bread, Kirsten makes St. Lucia buns, and so on. In Happy Birthday Samantha, our title character has a birthday party with pink peppermint ice cream. It shows up at the beginning of the story, at the party, but the batch is ruined by the annoying neighbor-boy, Eddie. Samantha goes to visit family in New York City, though, and she finally gets her ice cream there - again, pink peppermint. It's her favorite.

So, in honor of Samantha's birthday (which is in the spring in the book, but let's not be too picky, here), I made some pink peppermint ice cream. This recipe is adapted from the French Vanilla ice cream in the Ben & Jerry's cookbook.

Pink Peppermint Ice Cream
2 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups heavy or whipping cream
1 cup milk
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 drops red food coloring
Enough crushed-up peppermints to make about two cups

1. Whisk the eggs in a mixing bowl until light and fluffy, 1 to 2 minutes.
2. Whisk in the sugar, a little bit at a time, and then continue for about a minute after all the sugar is added.
3. Pour in the vanilla, cream, milk, and food coloring, and whisk that together until everything is blended.
4. Transfer into an ice cream maker and freeze according to your manufacturer's instructions.
5. About half-way into the freezing time, add the peppermints. If you crushed them like I did (in a zip-top bag, with a hammer), you'll have pieces of all different sizes and a fair amount of peppermint dust that should blend right in.

Samantha has her ice cream frozen into molds, but there wasn't room in the freezer for a bunch of molds, and I wasn't sure how it would take to a mold made for jell-o, besides my being lazy, so I just put it in a large tupperware and scooped it out as needed. Judging by the trouble I had getting a good photo, that's probably a good thing - this is a very soft ice cream due to the high sugar content.

I am lucky enough to have family who not only indulges my odd quirks of needing to randomly cook something from a story, but also has the fun kitchen tools I need to make things like ice cream on the spur of the moment. If you don't have an ice cream freezer, run a Google search on: "how to make ice cream" and you will find methods that don't need the ice cream freezer, such by using two zip-top bags or two empty coffee cans.

And yes, I will make both St. Lucia Bread and Boston Brown Bread at some point in the future. And just about anything else. If anybody has any requests or comments, please feel free to leave a comment, or send me an email at katcooksthebooks@gmail.com.

And lastly, thanks to my aunt, who crushed the peppermints with the hammer for me while I was whisking the rest of the ingredients together. You're the best.

If You Give A Mouse A Cookies

2009-10-13T13:59:00.001-07:00

Yes, I know... "A Cookies" is grammatically incorrect. "But it works, mate."

If you haven't guessed already, these treats are from the classic If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, by Laura Joffe Numeroff, and illustrated by Felicia Bond. In this story, for those who have not yet read it, a young boy gives a mouse a cookie. But of course, you know what's going to happen if you give a mouse a cookie, right? He's going to want a glass of milk. Naturally; who wouldn't? But our mouse doesn't stop there. The progression of requests - a domino effect that makes the little boy in the pictures exhausted from running around all day - gets siller as the book goes on, and ends - spoiler! - with the mouse wanting another cookie.

I love the logic in this book, warped as it may be, and that it's a never-ending circle of silly if you, the reader, are careless enough to get it started. I love the happy little mouse, and the look on his face when he realizes that he needs a haircut. And his little overalls always give me a little squeak of enjoyment when I pick this book up, probably because I always forget that he wears overalls.

(Ms. Numeroff and Ms. Bond have also teamed up to bring us If You Give a Pig a Pancake and If You Give A Moose a Muffin, among others. I'd love to gush about how I enjoyed them, but to tell the truth, I haven't read them yet. They're on my list, I swear.)

For these mouse cookies, I've chosen to use a recipe given to me by my friend Christina, which she calls "Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies," or simply, "Those Awesome Cookies That My Friend Makes." (Yes, she got them from her friend. I have no idea where this recipe originally came from.) Christina said, when I asked if she minded my using her recipe, "Good choice! Those will be perfect for that book." But she did add the stipulation that, in the photo, there is a glass of milk, thus staring the vicious mouse cycle. (I gave him the straw, too. I couldn't help myself.)

If You Give A Mouse A Cookies

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda

3/4 tsp. salt
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups light brown sugar, firmly packed
2 large eggs, at room temperature (take them out of the fridge a few hours before, or use the warm water trick we discussed in the Amelia Bedelia cookies post)
1 tbsp. vanilla extract

12 oz. bag of semisweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and set aside.

3. Using a mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

4. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla and mix to blend.

5. On low speed, add the flour mixture, a little at a time, until just blended--do not overmix! Stir in the chocolate chips.

6. For mouse-sized cookies, I used a small ice cream scoop (a melon-baller size) to drop dough onto cookie sheets. You can use a larger size for larger cookies without making any changes to the recipe.

7. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until the edges of the cookies are golden brown.

I've been nibbling on these cookies as I write this, and I find that, like the mouse, I keep wanting more.

Sal's Blueberry Cobbler

2009-10-11T18:12:00.000-07:00

It was only a year or two ago that I learned that Robert McCloskey, author of Make Way for Ducklings (which is the state book of Massachusetts, by the way), is a sort of regional flavor. McCloskey wrote eight books and illustrated 10 others, and statues based on Make Way for Ducklings are a must-see when in the Boston Public Gardens. My mother read us his books at the same time as Dr. Seuss's, so I always assumed that everybody knew him... and yet, any time I ask somebody who isn't from New England if they've read his work, they say, "who?" Which is a cryin' shame, if you ask me, because these books are a treat.

But this post isn't about Make Way for Ducklings at all. In fact, it's not even based on a recipe from a book - it's inspired by a book. Ok, I know that's kinda cheating. But after you taste this, I think you'll forgive me.

Blueberries for Sal is a story about a little girl named Sal and her mother, who go blueberry picking on a hill. Sal's mother tells her to put the berries she picks in her bucket - "plink plank plunk" - so they can save them for winter. On the other side of the hill we find a mother bear, who tells her cub to eat as many berries as she can to fatten up for winter. At one point, Sal and the bear cub each end up with the wrong mother, which is very scary for all involved, but - spoiler! - they're all ok in the end. Sal and her mother go home and make jam. But as I said, I didn't make the food in the book, since I'm saving jam for another story. I made blueberry cobbler instead. With bears in it.

Sal's Blueberry Cobbler
4 1/2 cups berries (I used all blueberries; it goes well with the theme)
4 tbsp. sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 1/2 cups butter (that's 3 sticks)
Handful of bear-shaped graham crackers

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. In a large bowl, mix berries and sugar. Set aside.
3. In another large bowl, mix flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Cut in the butter into this mixture with two knives (or squish with your fingers! Wash your hands first).
4. Press half the mixture into a 9x13, or two 8x8, pans. Cover with berry mixture, then crumble remaining crumblies on top. Sprinkle bears on top, or push them into the cobbler so they're swimming in gooey deliciousness.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 30 to 40 minutes, until berries are bubbly and topping is golden brown.

I found a version of this recipe on allrecipes.com, under the name "triple berry crisp," which obviously uses more than just blueberries. I love that it has both a top and a bottom crust, because the crust is half the fun of a cobbler. There is a lot of butter in this, so don't fool yourself that this is healthy because it has fruit... but for a special occasion, and for a taste like this, a lot of butter is ok.

And look how happy the bears are! If I could swim in a pool of blueberry goo, I'd be happy, too.

No-Frills Cheese Balls

2009-10-10T17:51:00.000-07:00

One of my classmates in my Children's Literature class has been telling me to read Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes for a few weeks now, and I finally went out and picked it up at the library the other day. I'm usually pretty wary of a book when people say that it's "one of my favorite books ever," mostly because it's rare that I'll actually enjoy it with such high expectations set. But this book is an exception. I love it. The story is great, the characters are believable and fun, and the illustrations add a lot to the story. That's one of the ways you know it's a great picture book: do the pictures take over the story and make the words unnecessary? Can the words stand alone without any illustrations at all? If the reading experience is richer with both pictures and words, they did a good job.

Anyway. The story in Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse is fairly straight-forward. Lilly is a young mouse with a personality the size of Texas (a bit like Eloise or Olivia), and she loves school. She loves her classroom and her building and the way the chalk squeaks and the way everyone gets their very own desk, and mostly she loves her teacher, Mr. Slinger, who is the coolest teacher ever. Without spoiling too much, I can tell you that Lilly is mean to her teacher and feels awful about it. Along with an apology and a note from her parents, she brings her father's famous No-Frills Cheese Balls with her to school and gives them to Mr. Slinger. Because she is sorry, all is forgiven. And cheese balls don't hurt either.

I got the impression that the cheese balls were crunchy snacks, not soft balls rolled in nuts like you see at holiday parties. I couldn't find a recipe for crunchy cheese balls, so I adapted a recipe for cheese straws to suit my needs.

No-Frills Cheese Balls
1/2 cup butter, softened
4 cups shredded cheese (I used a mix of cheddar and Monterey Jack)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup water (may not be needed)

1. Preheat oven to 400. Bring the butter and cheese to room temperature.
2. In a large bowl, cream the butter and cheese until it's a smooth mass.
3. Gradually beat in the flour and salt.
4. Add water slowly, as needed, until the dough is sticky and holds together.
5. Roll dough into 1-inch balls and place on a lightly-greased or parchment-paper-covered cookie sheet. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until the tops are just brown. They will continue to cook for a few minutes out of the oven, so you don't want to make them perfectly golden brown in the oven, or they will be overdone in the end.

The taste of these cheese balls is remarkably like Cheez-Its. The original recipe said that a little cayenne pepper sprinkled on top would be a tasty addition, but considering that Lilly is a very young mouse, I decided to leave it off my version. She might not like it spicy. Besides, I wasn't sure if pepper would count as a "frill."

I had it in my head, with this blog, to start out with relatively well-known books and authors, but even if every single person asks me, "what's that from?", at least I know I'm spreading the word on a great book (and the cheese balls taste awesome, let's be honest). Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse isn't exactly obscure, but it isn't (yet) a classic, so I was on the fence about posting this one. Let me know what you think, though, because I have so many great ideas from books that people may not have heard of, either that have been recommended, or that I found on the shelf at the library, or that I've read here or there.

And incidentally, if you haven't read any of Kevin Henkes's books, I envy the fun you're going to have when you read your first one.

Butterbeer

2009-10-09T17:36:00.000-07:00

Yes, my friends, the time has come. As promised in my header, I have made butterbeer, and I am passing my recipe on to you. (Speaking of the header - like it? My aunt made it for me. Thank you!!)

For the uninformed, butterbeer is a drink that's enjoyed in Harry Potter's world, and is available at parties and in the town pub. It seems to be mildly alcoholic, as it warms you up even when the drink is cold, and it could potentially make Hermione do things she wouldn't otherwise. House elves love it. J.K. Rowling has described the drink as "a little bit like less-sickly butterscotch," but the books don't give a heck of a lot of description on the drink, so it's up to the imagination of the chef. I always envisioned it to be a butterscotch-like drink, not exactly a soda, but not really a beer. Sweet, but not disgustingly so.

The first thing I did was look up "butterbeer" and see if it's a real drink, and it turns out that, historically, it is beer served warm and mixed with sugar and butter. This doesn't sound at all like what I imagined butterbeer to taste like when I read the Harry Potter series, so I looked at some fan sites and found alternate recipes, including some that used root beer, butter and sugar, and some that used club soda and butterscotch syrup. I read through them and got some ideas, then went out and got my ingredients and experimented.

I find that my favorite recipe is very simple, as follows:

Butterbeer
1 12-oz. bottle of cream soda (I used IBC)
2 tsp. butterscotch sundae syrup
1 Werther's Originals candy

1. Empty the cream soda into a glass.
2. Stir in the butterscotch syrup to dissolve.
3. Drop in an unwrapped candy and let it dissolve.
4. Chill and serve; or, for a hot butterbeer, microwave for 15-20 seconds.

That's it. Stir it up a bit before drinking, since the syrup will settle to the bottom if left for several minutes. It's very creamy even without any milk products directly added, and the color is a much more opaque apple cider color than cream soda alone. To be blunt, it's beautiful. I could stare at it for a while and be happy.

My friends, you have no idea how long this recipe took me (Well... let's be honest. Maybe an hour?). I used cream soda. I used apple cider (it sounded good to me, and it was, but it was unnecessary). I contemplated ginger ale. I tried with just the syrup, with just the candy. You get the point. I even made my uncle try a bunch of the variations because I know my sweet tooth is much harder to please than most people. What I'm saying is, I hope you like it, because, while it is simple, I'm not just resting on my laurels here. Butterbeer is serious business!

Also, while I initially made this as a cold drink, it was pointed out to me that butterbeer is generally served warm, so I stuck mine in the microwave, and let me tell you - I can't decide which way I like it better. It's like butterscotch hot chocolate, without the chocolate.

While my version is non-alcoholic, I assume that butterscotch schnapps would be a tasty addition, or substitution for the syrup (I've never had it and don't know the consistancy of schnapps, so I can't venture a guess, but I do love the word schnapps. Schnapps!). Or maybe some rum would go well. I'll leave that to you, or for another day when I just happen to have all the ingredients on hand.

Amelia Bedelia's Tea Cake

2009-10-05T16:47:00.000-07:00

Like I said, I love Amelia Bedelia. I promise every post won't be about her cooking, or even involve unusual foodstuffs, but I couldn't resist this idea.

In Amelia Bedelia Helps Out, also by Peggy Parish, Ms. Bedelia is asked to make a tea cake for tea at Miss Emma's house. (It is unclear who Miss Emma is, because our heroine works for Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, but I assume she's a friend of the family.) This book is also special because Amelia Bedelia is working with the company of Effie Lou, her neice. I know it's not the point of the book, but I can't help but wonder what the heck "Effie" is short for. I wondered when I read it, and I'm still wondering now, and I've yet to come up with any ideas. It's distracting me from the task at hand.

Right. The task at hand.

In the book, Amelia Bedelia is asked to make a tea cake, but she has never heard of it, so she improvises. She mixes batter for a regular cake, and empties a tea bag in with the spices. I also added nutmeg, and the resulting flavor is somewhat like chai, which I love. The loose tea leaves in the batter give the whole cake a faint but noticible tea flavor, and though the black flecks resulting are not pretty, they don't do any harm.

Also. Despite the fact that illustration clearly shows that the tea cake is a layer cake, I've made the executive decision to make my version a pound cake, because I personally think that pound cake works better with tea both in taste and in the fact that it doesn't crumble as easily and mess up your white cotton gloves and lacy dress. (That is what you wear to a tea party, right? I haven't been to one since I was four and the tea wasn't so much tea as it was water in a plastic pot.) I did keep the pink frosting, though, and added sprinkles for that festive touch.

I adapted this recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens Complete Step-By-Step Cook Book from 1978. If you plan to pick this book up, I'd like to tell you that the food tastes much better than the photos lead you to believe. One more note before we proceed: You will definitely want to use an electric mixer for this cake, as there is a lot to mix, and creaming butter by hand is no fun (trust me, I've done it).

Amelia Bedelia's Tea Cake
1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine
4 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 tea bag (I used vanilla caramel black tea)
Pink frosting and sprinkles (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 325. Grease the bottom and sides of a 9x3x5 loaf pan. Bring the butter and eggs to room temperature. (Note: My great-grandmother always said this gives the eggs room to expand. I'm not sure what that means, exactly, but she always did it by putting them in a bowl and pouring warm water over them, and letting them sit a few minutes.)
2. In a bowl, beat the butter at medium speed with your electric mixer until creamed and fluffy, pushing the butter through the beaters with a rubber spatula if necessary.
3. Gradually add the sugar, beating until light and fluffy, about six minutes.
4. Add the eggs one at a time, beating about a minute after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
5. In another bowl, stir together the flour, salt, nutmeg, and the contents of the tea bag. Add this gradually to the wet mixture and beat until blended.
6. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and smooth out the top with a rubber spatula; the cake will dome on its own.
7. Bake in the center rack of your oven for 60 to 65 minutes, or until a toothpick in the center comes out clean. Cool at least 10 minutes in the pan before taking the cake out.
8. If desired, frost with pink frosting and decorate with sprinkles. Enjoy with milk or tea.

Additional notes: Though I followed AB's advice and dumped in a tea bag, I have to wonder what the cake would have tasted like if I brewed the tea first and added it in with the wet ingredients. I'll experiment and post a note if I can come up with a tea-cake-with-tea-in-it recipe that I like.

Amelia Bedelia's Chocolate "Chip" Cookies

2009-10-04T17:55:00.000-07:00

I freakin' love Amelia Bedelia. From the time that she dressed the chicken by making it a little suit to wear, she was my favorite. And I love the way she fixes everything with food... though, you'd think that, since she's such a wonderful cook, she'd know that "trim a steak" doesn't mean to decorate it with ribbons and lace.
Anyway.
My favorite of the Amelia Bedelia books is Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping. At the end of it, she makes what she calls Chocolate Chip Cookies - chocolate cookies with potato chips in them! I can't help it. I've always wanted to make them. And so, 20+ years after I first heard about them, I finally did it.
I found a few potato-chip-cookie recipes online, but nothing like what I pictured Amelia Bedelia's cookies to be like - chocolate cookies with potato chips - so, I made my own recipe, which is loosely based on one in the family recipe book. Here it is:

Amelia Bedelia's Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 package (12 oz.) semisweet chocolate chips

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, cut into chunks

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp. sugar

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

2 tbsp. unsweetened Dutch process cocoa powder

1 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

2 individual-size bags of potato chips (I used kettle cooked - plain flavor, please!)

1. Preheat oven to 325. Lightly grease cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.

2. Combine the chocolate chips and the butter in a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on high for 30 seconds; stir. Repeat as necessary until the chips are melted and mixture is smooth.

3. In a different bowl, beat the eggs and the vanilla until blended and frothy. Add sugar; beat until thick and light. Add the chocolate and beat until well blended.

4. In a third bowl, mix flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. Add to the wet ingredients and beat until blended. Crush the potato chips into smallish flakes (not powder), and stir in. The dough will be soft and sticky.

5. Drop by tablespoons onto the prepared cookie sheets. Bake for 14-18 minutes or until cookies are firm to the touch. Cool on cookie sheets for two minutes, then transfer to cooling racks to cool completely.

As odd as this sounds, these cookies are amazingly addictive. I love them. I hope everything else I make tastes as good as I thought it would when I first read about it.