Best Costume Award

I am a little bit of curmudgeon when it comes to Halloween. I enjoy handing out candy to Trick or Treaters for the most part.I believe that Halloween is good family fun and brings a community together.  I get a kick out of seeing the different costumes on the kids and it might be the only time I actually talk to my neighbors.

There is a small part of me that gets cranky.   I get cranky when I see newborns trick or treating.  Newborn babies are little more than slugs and they have a very limited diet. I can guarantee that the precious bundle of joy is not going to be chomping down on a Babe Ruth or relishing SweetTarts that I am handing out.  I get it if you have other kids you are walking around with, and it makes sense; however when it is just you and a newborn strolling the streets getting free treats I get cranky.

With my predisposition of crankiness towards newborns, it took me buy surprise that one of the best costumes this year for Trick or Treat night was a mother and new born combo. I was blown away by the Log Lady costume.  The newborn was the log.   It was simple, but unique and made sense and made me laugh. (And there were other kids, so it wasn't opportunistic hustling for chocolates.)

 I think it was one of the few times that I had to take a picture, since I wasn't sure if anyone would believe me that there was a Twin Peaks costume out there. Much less the Log Lady.  It is right up there with the year that Old Greg came knocking for Halloween.  It restores faith in the creativity of humanity.  My final thought is, that if you are going to con me out of sweat treats, then at least be creative about it, so it doesn't feel like a con.  Saying "One for Baby and One for Mommy" when it comes to treats makes me want to hand out canned goods or books or tooth brushes instead of doses of cavity starters.  Be creative.

Rocky Road Fudge

It is that time of the year that my house overflows with sweets. One of the favorite sweets my mom makes every year is Rocky Road Fudge.  It is an incredibly easy fudge to make. It literally involves three ingredients, peanut butter, chocolate chips and marshmallows.

I don't normally make the fudge, because my mother will bring it with her tray off Christmas Cookies however this year I have been looking at some dairy free dessert options and this came to mind.  My mother normally uses milk chocolate chips, but that obviously wouldn't work for dairy free. I decided to try doing the recipe with dark chocolate and was thrilled with the results.

Rocky Road Fudge

12 ounces of dark chocolate chips
4 Cups of Miniature Marshmallows
1 Cup of Chunky Peanut Butter

Instructions:
 In a large pot, melts the chocolate chips with the peanut butter over low heat. When the mix is melted and smooth, remove from the heat and add the marshmallows.  Stir until everything is well gleaned and pour into a a greased 9x13 pan and cool in the refrigerator.  When it is cool, cut into one inch squares.

Tastes Like I'm Old

I never really thought much about my age and maturity until I realized that my taste buds changed.  There are just certain things that do no appeal to me now that may have appealed to me when I was a much younger lass.  One of those things is ice cream.  I feel like when I was younger, there were a lot less ice cream flavors than there are now.  I think as a kid it was neopolitan or rocky road, those were the two choices in the household freezer.  There may have been other flavors out there, but those were the only ones that existed in my world, unless it came off of the ice cream truck.

I don't think I realized I reached adulthood with my ice cream until I took my utterly charming yet sarcastic 14 year old niece to The Turkey Hill Experience.  For those people that are not locals,  Turkey Hill is a chain of gas stations that for some reason also sells a wide selection of ice cream, ice tea and lemonade.  They also sell it in grocery stores and I learned by from the presentation, it is accessable all over the country. The Turkey HIll Experience is a small factory like tour that is super kid friendly and for a small ticket fee, lets you eat and drink as much ice cream and ice tea as you want. There are enough activities to keep various age ranges amused.  

One of the most worth while things to do is the pay a little bit extra on the ticket and go into the test lab where they will walk you through how to flavor your own pint of ice cream.  This is where I discovered that I like a mature flavor in ice cream.

My niece, Hannah proceeded to mutter and laugh about how her ice cream was going to be the best one ever and she wasn't going to share.  Then she proceeded to put cotton candy extract into it, and my tastebuds retracted in fear.  If there was one flavor that does not appeal to me as an adult it is cotton candy.  I couldn't even tell you the last time I ate cotton candy. It doesn't exist in my world as a thing that I would want to eat.  As if the flavoring of cotton candy wasn't enough, she proceeded to at cotton candy sprinkles into the swirling white creamy mix, further distancing my inclination to steal her ice cream at a later date.  The icing on the cake  (of in this case , ice cream) was the cake batter icing swirl she added to it.  I don't think electric blue is a natural flavoring and cake batter icing sounds like something that would cause my dentist to whimper.   I am pretty sure that Hannah madeWhen it  the perfect ice cream that would leave me with no desire to ever try it, and that she loved. How I wish I could go back and ask 14 year old me if I would like cotton candy ice cream with cake batter swirl and cotton candy sprinkles. I wonder what my answer would be. 

When it came time for me to make my ice cream, I stuck to things that I knew my husband would like. (Honestly, I was a little ice creamed out from the one sample that I had.  It was good, but it wasn't even lunch time and breakfast wasn't that much of a long forgotten memory yet. I have never been a lets eat ice cream for breakfast sort of person.)  My boring adult ice cream consisted of chocolate and coffe flavoring with chocolate covered espresso beans and peanut butter cups with a peanut butter swirl.  I was informed by my niece that I was doing it wrong and then I proceeded to tell her that her uncle was going to eat her ice cream.  My brother, who was the referee in this adventure just rolled his eyes and made his own very adult flavored ice cream (cherry flavoring, cherry pieces and chocolate covered espresso beans.)

I would definitely be interested in doing the Turkey Hill Experience again, because it was fun. I enjoyed the different things to check out and despite realizing I am old and eat old people ice cream, it was fun to think about different flavor combinations.  Just maybe the next time I will be able to come up with something that her and I can both agree on is awesome.  I just hope it doesn't include any sort of cotton candy or icing swirls. 

Swamp Chocolate

I wanted to like it.  I tried to like it. I didn't want to say anything negative about it, because if I didn't mention it then ,it didn't really happen, but it happened.  I fell prey to advertising.  Part of it was the something new to try to break up the hum drum of a work day and the other part of it was that maybe it would be healthy and wonderful.

I am talking about Super Rebbl Herbs; Reishi chocolate drink. The bottle proclaims it is dairy free, soy free, organic and ethical and made from herbs. I will admit that I did not know what Reishi was, buy my guess was it was sort of like Matcha, which is green tea extract. For those that don't know, let me tell you that Reishi is nothing like Matcha.  Reishi is a type of mushroom.  I drank a dairy free, soy free organic and ethically sourced Mushroom Juice.

I like mushrooms. I like chocolate.  I do not like the two together.  I also discovered that I really don't like coconut milk.  I wanted to see if there was something redeemable about the drink, so I flipped it over and checked the ingredients.  I recognized everything but the Reishi and the Quillaja.  I wasn't sure I even wanted to know what Quillaja was, but I was going to look it up anyway.

According to the various internet searches, Quillaja is a type of bark. Great. I drank a juiced mushroom, some bark flakes, coconut and chocolate puree that declares that it is not intended to treat, cure or prevent any disease.  I wasn't looking to cure, treat, or prevent anything other than thirst and by half way through the bottle I was willing to be thirsty, because chocolate should not taste like that ever.  This drink almost ruined me and my belief that chocolate can make almost everything better.  I don't think they put enough cocoa powder in the drink to wash away the swampy taste the rest of the drink has.

If you like coconut water, you may like this drink.  More power to you. If you receive any of the miracle super powers that seem to be side effect from drinking the magic mushroom juice, awesome.  I on the other hand am going to go back to my drab life of drinking water and back slowly away from anyone that offers me chocolate covered mushroom bark smoothies.  It is all lies and distilled truths.

Very rarely do I write about something I don't like, because there is plenty of negative in the world, but being duped by advertising irritates me. The fact that I drank it also irritates me.  I just want it to be known that chocolate should not ever taste like that. It was swamp chocolate in a bottle.

The Search for DecopageSaurus

Downtown Harrisburg decided to do an outdoor art exhibit that revolved around dinosaurs as part of promoting the arts.  After seeing the first dinosaur, I was hooked. I needed to find them all and capture them. They had a certain amount of charm and whimsy and I think every needs more dinosaurs in their life.

 My friend, Lizzy joined me in hunting this big game and listen to me make stupid Jurassic Park jokes along the way.  I love the dinosaur and enjoy seeing the different spin each artist put on them.  Each one is unique and fun and reminded of the cow parade from a dozen years back. (I miss you hamburger cow).  There are a total of thirty Dino's that can be found and some of my favorites include:

Rockem Sockem Dinos and Sugar Sarus. Choco Saurus and Dine-o Saurus also made me laugh.

 Despite might best efforts of running back and forth across second street, I was not able to find all the dinosaurs.  I found 29 out of 30.  The only one that we could not find was DecopageSaurus. There is a map on the website that gives the locations of all the dinosaurs, but sadly Deco was not in its assigned location.  I wasn't sure if maybe it wandered off or perhaps it might have melted in last nights thunderstorms.  I don't know.  Decopage and rain are natural enemies. I do know that I will probably spend a little more time down town this summer looking for my missing dino and hoping he didn't go extinct in the rain.   

 Please enjoy Rubber Duckasaurus until DecopageSaurus can be found.

Cook Book Challenge Slacker

I am slacking in my cookbook challenge. It isn’t that I am not using the cookbooks, but more that I am not writing about what I am doing.  This is going to be a somewhat long post of me playing catch up on the cookbooks that I have used in the effort that it will keep me on track.

I have a sweet tooth. I have discovered this. I did not think that I did, until I really looked at my cookbooks.  I was pleasantly surprised by my Cookies cookbook.  I found a recipe that took me a little bit out of my comfort zone, because it used fresh cranberries. I like cranberries. I like cranberries juiced and mixed with vodka.  This recipe involved chocolate, and in my mind the tart of the cranberry and the rich taste of chocolate would balance each other out into something passable. What I did not expect from the Cranberry and Chocolate Squares was that it would turn out so decadent. The recipe was easy, and because of this I made the bars three times and have probably given myself a cavity on the richness of it.  This recipe I will do again. I will also lie to myself and say that I get an acceptable amount of Vitamin C in my diet from eating a whole pan of chocolate cranberry bars.

Just to prove that I don’t just own cookbooks that have to deal with baking, I thought I would utilize a chicken cookbook that my friend, GAT gave me.  It is probably one of the more embarrassing cookbooks on my shelf, mostly because I don’t participate in the program.  It is a Weight Watchers Everyone Loves  Chicken cookbook.  There is nothing wrong with Weight Watchers, and it works for lots of people, I however have never partaken of the program. I just wanted chicken recipes.  Leafing through the pages I discovered little tidbits of information, such as Hunter Style Chicken and Chicken Cacciatore were the same thing. I flipped through the book several times, before I decided to make the Hunter Chicken.  I love mushrooms, my husband not so much. He says they taste like feet and have a way of permeating a meal, because of this mushrooms were omitted and while it was a good meal, it was missing something and that something was most likely mushrooms.  I am undecided if I will ever try this recipe again. It was a nice change from the sweets, but did nothing to dazzle the taste buds.

Lastly I utilized the Recipes from the Raleigh Tavern Bakery. This book was a gift from my mother in law from some of her many travels.  She had brought me a cook book, along with some rather delicious gingerbread cookies.  The cookies were the size of a small child's head. That could be a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one, since the cookies were huge. The cookbook had a quaint historic feel to them, and seemed simple enough.  Deciding on trying an oatmeal cookie did not turn out as well as one would hope. In fact it made me wonder if I had any sort of baking ability at all, since they did not tantalize the taste buds in the slightest. There was molasses in the cookie, which I think added to the weirdness factor. There was also a point in making the cookies, which it seemed like there was something missing, either an ingredient or an extra step somewhere, because it didn’t seem to come together. I think this is the first time in my adult life, that I have made cookies that no one was the slightest bit interested in eating.  I almost feel like my cook books are going to be taken away from me, because of this kitchen failure.  It is now getting closer to the holidays and I have to wonder if I should experiment on the influx of company or if I should stick to tried and true recipes that won’t kill people.  Jury is still out and I have too many of 63 cookbooks to get through before the end of June.

It Isn't Really a Pudding

In the conception stages of coming of with this self challenge, my friend Lizzy  knowing full well what it was going to entail, gave me a cookbook.  I would be really angry about the cookbook, if it wasn't something that I thought was really interesting and had thought of purchasing before.  Cooking for Geeks is probably one of the most intense cookbooks I have ever own. I do not mean intense as in the skill to be required to accomplish the recipes. I mean intense as in the amount of information that is skillfully shoved into every single nook and cranny of this book.

I feel like my IQ increased just by looking at recipes. Every recipe is skillfully explained on what to expect and why it does what it does.  I figured that since I had mastered chocolate pudding, that Chocolate Mousse (page264) would be more of the same.  I was a fool, but now I know better. Mousse is not a pudding. Anyone who tells you differently, needs to shut their mouth.  It is a plebeian concept to believe that mousse and pudding are the same.  Pudding is a dense collaboration of taste and flavor, while a mousse is a light and airy symphony of the senses.  Okay, that might a little bit of an exaggeration, but I think I made my point.


Despite my pre conceived notions as to how this would go down due to previous pudding experience, I was pleasantly surprised. The version of mouse I made was the egg white version, which came out extremely light and airy. The taste was rich, but not thick the way that pudding can achieve.  I felt like I was a much classier person by serving a delicate chocolate mousse after dinner, than when I serve pudding.

I am very much looking forward to making more recipes out of this book and feel like this is one of those perfect books to give some one that doesn't understand cooking. The logical approach that follows through this cookbook, breaks down cooking in to simple concepts of cause and effect.  I very much would recommend a person to acquire this book for any cookbook collection, as it is useful in reference as well as recipe.

And That is What Fennel Tastes Like

Chocolate Fennel Pudding

 I blame my mother for a good amount of my cookbooks, and I think that she would be alright with that sort of blame.  I don't think that the blame that I have multiple books on how to prepare food to sustain my life is going to leave her with too many sleepless nights. In fact, I think she would be rather proud that I am not living off of Ramen Noodles and hot tea.  

When I was in the early stages of living on my own for the first time, my offered me some cookbooks that she had no use for, and I took them. Then I never got rid of them, because I have problems getting rid of books in general.  In the mix of books that my mother gifted me were three Food & Wine cookbooks.  They are also one of my favorite cookbooks, which means I had to go out side of my comfort zone to find something that I had not ever made or modified.  That something ended up being Chocolate Fennel Pudding out of the Quick from Scratch- Herbs & Spices Cookbook.

I want to believe that anything in chocolate is wonderful. I really want to believe that. I feel a little bit like XFiles when I say that.  However, fennel might be pushing that theory.  I do no like fennel, anise, black liquorish, horehounds or anything else of that ilk.  I want to like fennel, because it is used in Indian Food and Indian Food make me happy, and tastes like an explosion of awesome in my mouth every time I have it. My sense go in to overdrive, and the rich heady flavor of Indian Food makes me believe that peace can be found in a bowl of sauce and rice. I sincerely want to have affection for  fennel, which is why I tried this recipe. As a side bonus, I have never made a pudding from scratch, which sounded a little bit like alchemy according the the recipe.

I didn't know you could do such things with just cream and eggs and chocolate. It was amazing. It was fabulous. It actually turned into pudding, which had me hopping around my kitchen like a deranged rabbit celebrating that my stove top pudding actually looked like a pudding, in all of its pudding glory.  The final test was how did it it taste. Can I love fennel?  This question could only be answered with a spoon. Bravely I dipped my spoon into the hot pudding and tasted it. It wasn't bad. It didn't kill me. I could eat it warm and ignore the fennel aftertaste. Scooping the pudding out of the pot, I concealed it in a container and put it in the refrigerator.  Pudding is meant to be cold.

Pudding is like alchemy. Once the pudding cooled, it revealed its true flavor.  Holy Fennel, Batman!  It was like a black liquorish nightmare. It was strong in flavor and overpowered the mighty chocolate flavor.  Fennel was not happy being a byline to chocolate and stole the limelight of the pudding. The flavor of fennel demanded to be front and center like a prima donna. I couldn't consume it in pleasure, the force of the fennel was too strong for me.  Thankfully my husband, who is immune to the fennel stepped up and saved me from the pudding of doom.

While I was not able to conquer the fennel in this round, I was able to made a pudding, which I have since duplicated minus the fennel. It was a delight.  I am pleased to with this new ability, and some what ashamed of the amount of pudding I intend to make in the future.

Turkey in Mole

Wedding gift 3 years ago!

I am under the belief that almost everything made in a crockpot can be turned into a burrito.  You just have to widen your perspective as to what a burrito can be.  The possibilities are endless.

The William Sonoma Slow Cooker Cookbook that I got as a wedding gift has some of the best burrito filling recipes I have ever tried.  Normally I only one recipe out of this cookbook and it is for the Chili Verde.  The Chili Verde is a fabulous recipe and it is one of my top five burrito fillings.  However, because I have used this Chili Verde recipe before I could not use it for The Challenge.  

We used Chicken. Shh!

Turkey Breast in Mole looked delicious and Mole is not something I make, mostly because it is supposed to take hours.  Slow Cooker takes hours to cook, so it seemed like a perfect match to create a Mole with in.  I feel like crockpots are perfect for the weekends. It allows me to make something hearty and filling without having to spend a huge amount of time fussing over prep work and dishes.

Roma tomatoes from the garden.

Using fresh tomatoes and peppers from my garden made my kitchen smell like salsa. I love salsa.  I also love chocolate, but have never had the ingenuity to combine the two together.  I am pretty sure that a mole is where you take all your favorite ingredients and combine them together into something that defies explanation.

We substituted an onion for a poblano. 

The assembly of everything was not difficult in the slightest, but it did take more dishes than anticipated. Once all the sauce ingredients were sautéed, they then went into a food processor.  My food processor is a jerk, and has a million pieces to it, and if all the pieces aren't put together, then it won't work.  It easily fills the top rack of the dishwasher.   Despite the jerk ways of my food processor, the mole sauce smelled and looked delicious.

This was awesome. 

Tossing everything into the crockpot, I turned it on and tried to forget about it for 5 hours.  It was not easy to forget about the mole, since it was incredibly aromatic. It was spicy and sweet, with a salty tang in the air. It was a beautiful smell.

Shredding the meat into the sauce made me think of everything a enchilada could be if it tried really hard.  If you flip a few pages in the William Sonoma Slow Cooker Cookbook, they had the same idea with using this Turkey Breast In Mole as a filling for enchiladas. I was incredibly pleased with this recipe and will be using is again in the future.

Channeling the Dead or Orange Crush for 6

My favorite cookbooks are the ones that make me feel things along with feeding me good food. At the moment I feel like I have good momentum with this  challenge having knocked out 5 out of 58 cookbooks. I just have to convince myself that I can't afford to slack off and I can complete this challenge. The moment I think I am ahead, is the moment I fall behind, and start procrastinating. The little voice in my head starts whispering doubts and discouraging me when I start to hesitate.  If I hesitate, it is almost as good as quitting.  Fortunately I am not doing this challenge alone.  My good friends Lizzy is doing this challenge with me and my good friend GAT has just jumped aboard also.  I am pretty sure that all things can be accomplished with a little bit of help. I am really excited to read about the next cookbook from Lizzy and GAT and if you are interested in reading their take in this madness, please check out their blogs at HaveYouReadIt and CookingWhileSloshed.  

The cookbook that I used you are not going to find in a book store. You will not find it for sale anywhere. The cookbook I am talking about is nothing more than a hand composed notebook from Jon's grandmother who has passed on. If you are following along on Library thing to the books that I am covering, it is simply titled Jane's Cookbook.   I have never met my husbands grandmother, she passed on while he was a teenager. However, I do feel like I know her. I know her through the stories that I have heard about her, and the going through stuff in a forgotten attic. I am now getting to know her a different way, by going through one of her cookbooks. In a way it is like channeling the dead, because I now know that she had a deep love for seafood and entertaining, and that is something I don't think I would completely understand until reading the cookbook. There is crab or shrimp in almost everything.  There are few and far between chicken recipes and I think that roast beef was just myth when I go through the cookbook. 

I have come to love the very distinct hand writing and willingness to try just about anything.  This sense of adventure and loving to cook certainly shines through when my husband is in the kitchen. The only thing that doesn't look like it got passed along to him was a love of seafood, which made this cookbook a little bit difficult to utilize.  I, however have found a recipe that I could try right away and book marked another for a future adventure. (Yes, I will someday write about Chocolate Elephants, but today is not that day.)

The recipe that I tried was titled Orange Crush.  After a busy Saturday of shopping, wedding and out to eat with my husband, all I wanted to do was sit back, have a refreshing libation.   Not thinking about anything but following the recipe, I pulled down a mixing bowl and started to pour the ingredients into a large mixing bowl.  That probably should have been my clue. One: A person should not need to get out a large mixing bowl if they are making drinks for two. Twenty, yes a mixing bowl is needed.  Two: A mixing bowl would be over kill. I discovered rather quickly that the recipe for Orange Crush was really meant for 6 people, and that I had a lovely refreshing drink that I was not going to finish in one sitting. If I did I would be overloaded of vitamin C and probably a bit drunk. 


After pouring my husband and I both a drink that tasted like fresh oranges and had a fair amount of orange liquor in it, I quickly decided to pour the rest into a pitcher for the fridge and have it for breakfast. A person can only drink so much orange juice, even if it does contain liquor. I am also not entirely sure what the difference is between a Screwdriver and an Orange Crush, other than the fact that you float Champagne on the top. I would certainly make this recipe again, but probably not for just Jon and me.