Never Bashful with Butter

Let me first start by saying that there are quite a few people out there that say that you can make mozzarella cheese in 30 minutes or an hour. Sure. Its possible.

..But if you’re looking for a quality product, rather than a quick product, I’d go a little more old fashioned on this one. You shouldn’t be making cheese just so you can have something to snack on immediately. You want to enjoy the process. Feel like you’re accomplishing something.. Feel like you’re doing it right, and you want to end up with a product that you can be proud of.

I cant even say that the 30 minute method is good for children, because you have to get the temperature of the cheese SO HIGH that it burnt the palms of my hands, and I work with hot taffy all the time, and I handle hot foods constantly. My hands are still sore (I made my cheese last night) and they were bright red until right before I went to bed, about 5 hours after I finished shaping the cheese.

I can say, its fun. I can onneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comly imagine it will be more fun to make it the more traditional way.
So.. on with the show!

Here is a link to “Ricki’s magic mozzarella” a photo tutorial that I followed. HERE.

This is the most commonly linked website for explaining how to make mozzarella in 30 minutes.
I followed the photo tutorial, because the recipe that I used didnt have a photo tutorial.

Here is the recipe that I used- HERE.

I used the different recipe because I was using Junket rennet tablets, which I had read were not as strong as plain old rennet tablets or liquid.

I wont recommend this method of cheese production. It’s very easy to over knead and overwork the cheese when you’re using the microwave.

That being said, here is a photo of the cheese I ended up with-

Its still tasty, its still cheese. Its just not the texture I desired. Such is life, right?

So tonight I am going to try a different recipe and method all together. I’ll keep you updated, but before I go.. here is a little bit of information I wish I could have found on the internet before I set out making my first batch..

You CAN use homogenized milk. The full fat kind from any grocery store will work. You want to stay away from ultra pasturized though.. If you want a more ‘authentic’ cheese, use nonfat milk and add heavy cream to it and stir it before adding the citric acid. I didnt do that, but it would be interesting to see how different the cheese would be.

Junket rennet is not equal to regular rennet. It has fillers and binders, so really, whatever proportion of rennet is called for- double it for using Junket tablets.

Also, you may have difficulty finding junket tablets in stores. If it is to be found, it will be in the jello pudding dessert mix section. Junket is used to make custard, so it makes sense. If you call a store ahead of time to see if they have it before you make the trip for nothing, Ask them to look there. Do not get off the phone until they go look.

I live in the Pacific Northwest. I found Junket tablets at QFC. I couldnt find it at any other chain grocer or local grocer. I even checked little markets.

If you’re using a tablet form of rennet, such as junket, it needs to be diluted in a small amount of cool non chlorinated water before adding it to the milk.

Most recipes will call for Citric acid. If you dont want to order it off the internet, or you dont want to wait long enough for it to arrive, Look for Sour Salt in the Kosher section of the local grocery store. I called 10 places. All of them said they didnt have it. I went and looked myself and found it exactly where I told them it would be.

Sour salt IS citric acid, so the conversion rate is exactly the same. It comes in a powder form, so dilute it in a little bit of cool nonchlorinated water before pouring it into the milk.

Other recipes call for a starter culture using yogurt or buttermilk. I havent tried that method yet, but I’m going to attempt a buttermilk culture tonight. The recipe still calls for rennet.

Be patient, and don’t disturb the curd. Follow the directions. When it says to let the curd rest before cutting it.. LET THE CURD REST BEFORE CUTTING IT!

So.. just so its printed here.. this was how I made cheese-

Pour a gallon of whole milk into a large pot. Add the citric acid mixture. Stir for about a minute, then dont touch it. Turn the heat up to medium low, then up to medium high, gradually allowing the milk to reach 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Keep tabs on the temperature. you dont want it to get TOO hot too fast.

Add the rennet mixture and stir completely for another minute. Remove the pot from heat, and dont touch it for about 15 minutes. DO NOT TOUCH IT!

Check the edge of the curd. Does it pull away from the side of the pot? Is it solid? is it smooth? Is the whey “greenish” (gross, really.. it is) If you say yes to all of those, then use a long knife and cut the curd into half inch pieces. Use a slotted metal spoon to lift the curd into a colander over a bowl. Drain the curd completely. Squeeze the curd. Let the curd rest for a few minutes.

Put the microwave safe bowl with the curd into the microwave and turn it up to high for about a minute. Press the cheese and drain the whey. Cook again in the microwave for another 35 seconds. Remove the cheese from the bowl and knead it until it cools and the whey is gone. Put back in the bowl and cook for another 35 seconds. Remove from the bowl and knead and stretch like taffy. fold the cheese into a ball, tucking the ends into the bottom center. place cheese ball in a bowl of cold salted water in the fridge for about an hour. Remove from the bowl and wrap in plastic wrap.

The cheese tastes SO MUCH better the next day, even though it is edible after the hour in the fridge.

So.. there you have it!

My mom used to be an artist that created kiln fire clay sculptures of slugs as salt and pepper shakers, kitchen sink scrubber holders, garden plant buddies and various other useful household objects, only they were in the shape of slugs. She sold these products at “Made in Washington” which was similar to “Made in Oregon” only more humourous. Basically everything was slug themed. The only thing that really sold at the local shop were my mom’s sculptures. Everyone loved them… but I couldnt help but think they were just plain weird.

… don’t think that stopped me from joining in. I made a few little sluggies. Totally unrelated to the slug eating mishap, this was when I was much older. It didn’t seem strange that my mom was making these objects. My mom has always been extremely creative if not a little crazy. I was just a young kid and easily embarrassed by my crazy cat lady of a mom, when I should have embraced it and really enjoyed the “strange” things she did year aneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comfter year throughout my childhood.

In a house full of slug shaped doohickies and whatnots, it was hard not to notice how different my family was. My mom would make pancakes with smiley faces on them and was obsessed with Felix the cat, often wearing her Felix the cat slippers outside of the house and into town, I was the kid with the flaming orange hair. There were times I would go run and hide and fall asleep in the back of one of the upper shelves of the linen closet. There was an entire year that my older sister wore a tiny red cowboy hat, even though it was much too small for her head. There are photos of her wearing it in the bath. Srsly.

One time, my dad put too much lighter fluid in the burn barrel and when he ignited it, it exploded, singeing off his eyebrows, facial hair and all of his body hair waist high and up, on the front half of his body. He was not injured, just hairless… It took about 6 months to grow back in.

We were a sight to behold. Our traditions were even more… unique.

Holidays in our household were always exciting. Even the little holidays. I remember making walnut shell boats on Columbus day even. Of course, certain holidays were more interesting than others. Valentines day was rather normal, Christmas was even a little boring. It was the Spring holidays that really had fun written all over them.

St. Patrick’s day was a seemingly innocuous holiday, but in the hands of my mom… it was…special.

I’m not sure where the tradition started. I don’t know if the blue milk from Star wars served as my mom’s inspiration, or if she just thought me and my older sister needed more greens in our life. All I know is that on St. Patrick’s day, EVERYTHING was green. ESPECIALLY food. ESPECIALLY food that really SHOULDN’T be green.

The day would start out innocently enough.

Lucky charms cereal. Who didn’t see that coming? My mom would make sure my sister and I were wearing green, so we were safe from the little claw like grip of our classmate’s thumb and forefinger. If we weren’t wearing green, she’d tie a little green ribbon in my pigtails, or she’d pin a little green pin on my sister’s shirt. We always came prepared.
After arming us with our mom-packed lunch boxes, we’d head off to the school bus.

I think half the fun with holidays when I was a kid was the school sponsored goof off party at the end of the day. I went to a small school in a small town. Little funding, and any excuse to let the kids do whatever while the teachers focused on grading papers.. they’d take it. About a week before any classroom parties, the teacher would send a note home with each of the kids asking their parents to provide some sort of snack. My mom was known for her cupcakes, and every year she held her end up and didn’t disappoint. Green cupcakes with white icing and green sugar sprinkles for St. Patrick’s day. The kids were all excited. On days like St. Patrick’s day, no work was really done, just a lot of sitting around and waiting for the party to start, even though it didn’t start until the last hour of school.

But back to those lunch boxes.

The first year I’m sure it was a surprise. The second year I know it was, and for some reason, every year after that I just kept being surprised by it.

Green food.
Everything. Green.

A little thermos with green milk, A little Tupperware with green Jello, a green apple, a green salad, two slices of green bread and a little tub of what I can only describe as “dipping sauce” which was of course, green.

I’ll admit, it was a little embarrassing at first. I wasn’t one of the cool kids, so anything I had or did that was out of the ordinary was usually enough to get myself picked on for the next week or so. I would do my best to hide the green food, at least keeping it out of view of the bullies.

I was not always successful. There was one year one of the cool kids reached into my lunch box, grabbed the baggie with the green bread in it and announced to everyone in the room that “SEE! ANDREA IS TOO POOR TO BUY NEW BREAD! SHE HAS MOLDY BREAD!!” and then smashed it down onto my desk. I still ate it. I’m a fatty like that. hehe..

Underneath it all, my mom wrote a note. Scrawled in my mom’s entirely too pretty handwriting, it usually went something like this-

“Andrea-dandrea-doo- I love you. Enjoy your Martian lunch. (insert random martian sounding name here) assured me it was authentic. have a great day! -Momma”

First I’d like to address the usage of my name in the cute little rhyme she’s got going there.. Only my mom is allowed to call me that. Had this note gotten into the wrong hands, it could kill any chances of ever being cool. I had just recovered from my friends betraying me and announcing to the entire class that my nickname was Sparkie, (dont even make me get into what happened when my mom put that as my given name on my transcripts for art school. SO embarrassing) Luckily no one ever got ahold of any of my lunch notes.

Second.. I’m sure you noticed that she used martian and not Leprechaun. I have no idea why. I really dont.

All I know is that this tradition continued throughout grade school, slowly dying off once I entered middle school.

It was too bad. I had really grown to look forward to Martian lunches, particularly the martian bread and butter. I loved my mom’s fresh baked bread with butter on it, so it was like a special little treat to have it in my lunch. Most other days my lunch had a peanut butter and banana or marshmallow fluff or honey, or jelly, or apple- sandwich.

…But alas, the tradition of martian bread on St. Patrick’s day was no more.

Later in life, when my little sisters were old enough, my mom attempted to bring back the martian bread. Resurrect it, as it were. She called it Leprechaun bread, and she even wrote a little story about it.

…

That was the sound of me digging through my bins to find the only copy of the story still in existence.
For your reading pleasure- here it goes. “leprechaun bread”, by my mom, Susie.
-
Once upon a time, Long long ago, in a tiny village just outside of “your-ville”, lived a colony of tiny Irish men and women. There was one particular family named Schlep. Jim and Ida Schlep, who created this special tiny loaf of what we know as leprechaun bread. This is the story of how it came to be.

Jim was raised in a tiny shanty just outside the tiny village of “your-ville”. He was slight of built and quite short on average. Jim grew into quite a dapper young man and decided that he wanted to become a logger. One day he met Ida, also quite short yet a beauty still with her long auburn hair, which caught many a young mans eye. They wished to marry, but both lacking a dowry, came up quite short financially. One day as Jim was chopping down a tree, he spied a multi coloured strip of light. It was a rainbow!

Now, all the leprechauns new about rainbows and the treasures that awaited the one who was lucky enough to find the end. Jim ran to fetch Ida, and off they went in search of the treasure that waited them. As they reached the end there was a very large pot, but not of gold as we know it, but of golden yeast. Ida, remembering her grandmother’s cooking, knew just what to make of this rare golden substance. They carried it home and began mixing it with flour and salt and milk and soon they had made many tiny loaves of delicious fresh baked bread. Do you want to know why they are green? As it is with the luck of the Irish, Jim had accidentally bumped a jar of green food colouring into the dough. This became the trademark of the leprechaun family and to this day leprechaun bread is still green.

the end.

…

Cute huh?

Anyways, leprechaun bread lasted even less time than martian bread due to disinterest on my little sisters’ part, and my mom no longer makes it.

But I remember it. I even called my sister to see if she remembered martian bread. Of course, she does. Why it was martian bread is still an enigma. My mom doesn’t even know why. I’ve asked her. I guess it just made sense at the time. Funny thing is, when I was little and eating the martian bread, I never question it either. It just seemed to work.

So this morning, when I was unable to sleep, I made a little loaf of Martian/ Leprechaun bread, according to my mom’s recipe. I even made some dipping sauce. (unsalted butter, coarse ground salt, ranch dressing powder, a little sour cream and garlic. VERY good. Its like a creamy garlic spread.)

Now, if there is any left over tomorrow (and thats not looking too promising) Then I’d have to make some green toast. Maybe I’ll make some more martian bread tonight. hmm..

Anyways, there you go.. one of my favourite childhood memories and a strange little tradition that I can assure you, is completely unique to my little cluster weirdo’s I like to call family.

-A.

Today is the Ides of March, and as Shakespeare wrote, I am wary.

For those of you who are not in the know, Shakespeare wrote the play “Julius Caesar” about Gaius Julius Caesar, who ruled over Rome from 49 BC until March 15th 44BC, when he was assassinated by Marcus Brutus (he was stabbed 23 times). In the play, when Julius Caesar sees Marcus Brutus approach him with a knife and then stab him, his last words were “Et tu, Brute?” meaning “and you, Brutus?”

However, in real life, no one really knows what was said. One early greek historian, Mestrius Plutarchus, reported that Julius Caesar’s last words were infact- “Kai su, teknon?” meaning- “And you, Child?”

It really doesnt matter seeing as how Shakespeare only based his play in historical truth, fictionalizing only the dialogue. It would be impossible for the play to be entirely historically accurate, given there is no record of all the words spoken by Julius Caesar.

Considering Marcus Brutus was a trusted member of Caesar’s Senate, Caesar had no idea what was coming. He did noneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comt know of the impending assassination plot penned by his senate, nor did he anticipate one of his trusted friends carrying it out. However, a few days prior to his assassination, he was warned by a soothsayer to “Beware the Ides of March” meaning, be careful on the 15th of March.

According to the Roman calendar (which has been replaced by the Julian calendar) Every month has “Ides”. The Ides of March, may, June or September falls on the 15th. Every other month, the Ides falls on the 13th, which may account for the unlucky-ness of Friday the 13th.

Anyways.. I digress..

Another famous quote from the play “Julius Caesar” is offered up in Act II, Scene I. Often abridged to “A dish fit for the Gods”, Here is the full text surrounding the quote-

Our course will seem too bloody, Caius Cassius,
To cut the head off and then hack the limbs,
Like wrath in death and envy afterwards;
For Antony is but a limb of Caesar:
Let us be sacrificers, but not butchers, Caius.
We all stand up against the spirit of Caesar;
And in the spirit of men there is no blood:
O, that we then could come by Caesar’s spirit,
And not dismember Caesar! But, alas,
Caesar must bleed for it! And, gentle friends,
Let’s kill him boldly, but not wrathfully;
Let’s carve him as a dish fit for the gods…

Pretty vicious, huh?

So, where in most of Shakespeare’s plays he speaks of food, in this- he speaks of death.

Today I speak of food and of Shakespeare, So celebrate your “Salad days” with a Caesar salad.
Its tradition!
-A.

Apple pie. Explained. In detail.

I try to make my foods with fresh and easy ingredients. Sure, some things require more work. Pie is not one of those things.

Truthfully, you can fill a pie crust with anything and have it taste good, so long as the crust is made properly. Amazingly enough, you can screw up a pie crust, even though there are only four ingredients.

Flour
butter
sugar
water

Heres how you do it-

2 1/2 cups flour (+1/2 Cup on the side)
2 sticks COLD butter
2 Tablespoons granulated sugar
Cold water

The night before-
Put your rolling pin in the fridge.

The next morning-

Put the flour and sugar in a bowl. Unwrap one stick of butter and cut it into smneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comall slices, cutting those slices in half. Drop them into the flour. Wash your hands and let them sit under cold water for a few minutes. Dry them off. Using your clean/dry hands, rub the butter through the flour, pinching it and pressing the flour into the butter. Do not fully incorporate the butter. Put the mixture back in the fridge while you wash your hands and slice the second stick of butter the same as the first, reserving a quarter of the stick. Remove the bowl from the fridge and drop the butter slices into the flour. Do the same as before, pressing the butter pieces into the flour, only continue rubbing the pieces until you’ve created a coarse and uneven texture ranging from small like cornmeal up to just under the size of a pea. There should be no loose flour, and there should be no exposed butter. If there is not enough flour- add more by the tablespoon, up to 1/2 cup. If there is too much flour, add the remaining quarter stick of butter and incorporate it just as before.

Now you’ll add 3 tablespoons of cold Cold COLD water. Do not stir the batter. Press the mixture together, using the water to bind the pieces. Do not mix, do not knead, do not stir. you will more than likely need more water. Add one tablespoon at a time, pressing the mixture together between each tablespoon. once you’ve created a ball that is NOT tacky on the outside, but not dry and crumbly, cover the bowl with a COLD damp towel, much like you would for making bread rise, only cold. Set the bowl to the side.

Use this time to mix your filling. If it takes more than 15 minutes to make your filling, stop and put the dough in the fridge until you’re done. My apple pie mixture takes just around 15 minutes to make, so I dont have a problem.

Take your dough ball and cut it in half with a sharp knife. The dough should not fall apart or stick to the knife. (if it falls apart, its too dry, you’ll need to crumble it up and add a little more water. If it sticks to the knife, you added too much water, you’ll need to flour it a lot on the outside before rolling it.)

half of the dough can remain on the side while you roll the one half out. this is the bottom crust.

lightly flour your cutting board, countertop or silicone pad. Take your rolling pin (I prefer a french rolling pin, but use whatever. Before I had my own kitchen and I Lived with roommates who didnt have a rolling pin, I used a glass wine bottle with the paper removed.) out of the fridge, and and roll straight out infront of you. turn the dough 45 degrees and roll again. Continue rolling like this until you’ve rolled to about 1/4 inch in thickness. When the dough gets too large to pick up, lay it over the rolling pin and use the rolling pin to transfer it.

Now that you’ve got yourself a large flat piece of pie crust, lay it into your clean, dry pie pan. I prefer using metal pans or enamelware pie pans. My absolute FAVOURITE pie tin to use is a vintage one from an old pie house here in the Pacific Northwest. its got to be at least 40 years old, and it works better than some newer pans I have! In my opinion, glass pans do not allow the crust to brown as evenly and are more apt to create soggy crusts. Sure, you can see the crust, but you can see how NOT brown it is. Stick to metal or enamelware on this one.

Lay the pie crust in easy. Dont press it down. Dont fold the pie crust in quarters and unfold it in the pan. Lay the crust over the rolling pin and lay it down. Be nice to it. Talk to it. Reassure it. Do whatever you have to, to keep from damaging the crust.

Once its laid down, let it fall a little into the pan on its own. If it doesnt do it on its own, you probably didnt roll it out thin enough or its too cold. This is what happens when people refridgerate the dough after they make it and before they roll it out. Every recipe I’ve read in commercial books say to refridgerate it, but I go by people who’ve been making pie much longer than anyone who writes those things. My grandma. My great aunts. They learned from their mothers and grandmothers. Did they ever refridgerate their pie crusts? NO. They didnt have time to.

Pies were created to make a quick easy dessert using fruit from the farm. After making a big meal for everyone, they really didnt have the time to let their pie crust refridgerate. They had hungry mouths to feed.

Also, when you press your pie crust against the pan by pushing it, it makes it more difficult to remove from the pan when you’re trying to serve it.

You’ll want to trim the outer edges of the crust. Some people do this before putting it in the pan. I say wait until its in there. You want about a quarter inch overhang OVER the lip of the pan. Put the crust trimmings in the bowl, you can make cookies with them when you’re done.

Now you’ll want to put your filling in. Keep in mind how much liquid is in the filling, and how high the filling is going to be, when you roll out your top crust. If you’ve got a lot of liquid, you’re going to want a thicker top crust so it can support all the vents you’ll need to create, or you might consider a lattice top. If you’ve got a large amount of filling, you’ll want to roll the dough out into a larger piece so you can still have enough extra on the sides to create the perfect edge.

Roll out the top crust just as you did the bottom crust. Lay it on top of the filling just as you laid out the bottom crust. When you cut the extra off the sides of the pie crust, have them be about a 1/4 of an inch longer than the bottom crust overhang. This way you can fold the crust UNDER and create a seamless lip.

Which is what you should do once you’ve cut all the extra off.

Roll the top crust under the bottom crust and then roll it, pushing back under the actual lip of the pie itself, on top of the pie pan. This makes the crust look nicer and also creates a stable crust that is much less likely to break off while slicing, as it would be if you did a top roll. Either pinch the sides in a wavy manner, like I did, or use the tines of a fork to crimp the edges.

To create the vents, use a very sharp paring knife and cut small V’s along the outer edge, lifting the flap of dough and pressing it back towards the outer lip of the crust. In the center, cut an X shape, and then cut each loose flap in half creating 8 points to be folded outward. Either put your blackbird here or cut a round of dough out of your scraps and put it in the center.

Bake at 350 until its done, about 30 minutes.

Thats right. No foiling the edges, no egg wash or milk wash. Why? The temperature is low enough that the pie should cook evenly, eliminating the need for foil. If you’ve got a REALLY HIGH filling, you might consider laying a square of foil over the top to keep it from browning prematurely, but it isnt necessary for most pies.

Egg washes brown faster and create an unnatural crunch on the outer layer of the pie crust. The crust closer to the filling gets less heat, so the crust browns before the filling is cooked. Also, it makes the crust soggier.

Milk washes dont really help much when you’ve got this much butter in the crust. If you used shortening or margarine, it still wouldnt help because the oil would make the milk bead up, creating little soggy milk pockets on the outer dough. gross.

Sure, if you’ve got a really liquidy filling, you might put a cookie sheet on the rack below the pie, to catch any drips. This is actually a really good idea, especially for berry pies. I had a bad mishap with a cherry pie, when I had to take the door off the hinges and scrape and clean the whole thing. Not fun. Burnt pie filling does not smell as good as fresh baked pie, especially a week after you made it.

As for my apple pie filling, heres my personal recipe-

4 large Apples. 3 granny smith or pink lady, 1 red delicious.
2 tablespoons cinnamon
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons homemade butterscotch syrup, or storebought, like the kind you use for icecream

Cut your apples into small skinless slices. Dice those slices into 1/2 inch pieces. In a plastic bag, mix together the cinnamon, cornstarch, flour and sugar, fully incorporating the cinnamon, cornstarch and flour into the sugar. Pour the dry ingredients into the apples and stir. make sure all the apples are coated.

Turn the apple mixture into an uncooked pie crust. Pour the lemon juice over the top, drizzling it over the whole apple mixture. Same with the butterscotch syrup. Drizzle it over the whole apple mixture. Cut the butter into tiny pieces and stick it on top of the apple mixture. Cover with top crust, vent and bake.

The butterscotch is really a shortcut to a dutch apple pie (where you pour the cream into the pie 20 minutes before you take it out of the oven, creating a caramelly- butterscotchy flavour). You dont have to add the butterscotch, but it really adds an extra bit of taste. Keeping the ingredients simple, you could use all cornstarch or all flour. I use half an half, keeping it light. You’ll end up with a thicker filling with all cornstarch, and a thinner filling if you use all flour. I like a semi stable filling.

I’m not sure what the lemon juice is all about, all I know is the pie just doesnt taste the same without it.

So go.. bake the pie. eat it and tell me how good it was.

I know there is a lot of instruction, but its really important to read the whole thing before you make a pie crust, especially if you’ve never made one before, or have been unhappy with your crusts in the past. Its a lot simpler once you’ve made a good crust. It becomes second nature and sooner than later you’ve got it memorized. I learned from my grandmother. This is her recipe.

-A.

I’ve been wanting to do this since I was a kid. Dont ask me why I waited this long. I definately should have done this as often as possible ever since I knew that it was possible.

When I was a kid, my mom loved playing April fools jokes on the family. There was a special trick for each one of us, and every year it was different.. for everyone but me.

I dont know if I was just extremely gullible, but I never realized what was going on until after it happened, and then I forgot about it by the next year, so I was totally clueless.

My mom would spend the whole week preparing.

A dozen eggs.

3 packages lime jello.
3 cups boiling water
Package of toothpicks
Tiny funnel
Duct tape
Paring knife.
Vodka

Can you figure out what it is yet?

I guess my weakness was that I always had hard boiled eggs in my lunch. I loved them. It wasnt strange for me to see an egg in my lunchbox, so.. no problem.

I had no idea that on April 1st, they were Lime Jello filled eggs.

The process is simple.

With the paring knife, tap a small hole in theneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.com smaller end of the egg. Tap a slightly larger, though no larger than a pencil eraser, sized hole in the bottom of the egg.

Stick a toothpick in the larger hole and sorta scramble around the egg to make it easier to remove.

Put yer mouth over the smaller hole on the egg and blow. Blow like you would on a trumpet. This is not the time for loose cheeks. You’ll get a whole bunch of jaw pain if you dont tighten up your cheeks when you blow. The egg should come completely out of the shell.

Repeat with each of the eggs.

You’ll need to rinse out the eggs. Use the funnel to fill them each halfway with hot hot hot water, shake them around and then blow the water out. Do this as many times as it takes for the water to come out clean. I take it a step farther and fill them each halfway with vodka, shake them around a bit, let them sit a few minutes, shake them around a bit again and then blow the vodka out. Then I rinse them one more time to remove the vodka (cant have kids with jello shots now can we?)

You’ll want to let them dry for about a day, maybe two. leave them in their egg carton and put the egg carton somewhere no one will find it, except you.

About 24 hours before they’re needed, you’ll want to seal up the small hole on the egg with duct tape. Make sure this is REALLY sealed. The boiling water can make short order of any adhesive seal, so its important that the seal is tight.

Add 1 cup of boiling water per 1 package of jello. When I did this today, I forgot about this part, and I prepared the jello according to the box. This was a bad idea. The jello didnt set up correctly. Basically you’re wanting stiffer eggs that are easier to remove from the shell and that will withstand a bit of handling. Especially if you’re making them for a kid, because they’ll hold it in their hand and show all their friends. heh.

After you’ve sealed up the small end, and you’ve mixed up the jello, let the jello cool a little. Maybe a few minutes. Dont let it set up.

Set the eggs into the carton with the adhesive side down. use the small funnel to fill the eggs with the jello. Once all the eggs are full, wipe them clean of any drips (the green will stain the little egg shells) and place back in the fridge.

So.. I did this this morning. Like I said, I didnt prepare the jello exactly right, but it still worked. I just ended up with more fragile jello.

Rodney wanted to help me out with the photos.. here you go-

“look ma! No holes!”- small holes are imperative when it comes to passing off the april fool. if you can see the hole right off the bat, then thats no fun!

Rodney make short order of the shell. That fuzzy green looking thing is the membrane just under the shell. Dont worry, its not stuck to the jello, I was just being careful when opening it so I didnt kill the jello underneath.

Rodney wanted to feast on the delicious green jello inside. So much for being careful!

This was really fun. I think it’d probably be even more fun to do as a project with kids, or like my mom did, as an april fool or special treat for kids. if you make the jello right, the eggs have the consistancy of jello jigglers, and are way more cool.

Another thing you can do with completely clean and dried blown- eggs is use them as fortune shells. take little pieces of paper and write fortunes on them, roll them up and stick them into the large end of the egg. I also put a small piece of seed beaded jewelry (it was the only thing small enough to fit in the hole.) I did this once as a party game for my little sisters. It was loads of fun because there were a ton of little girls and everyone reached for an egg and got a little surprise.

So.. there you go. Food experiment number 1. I’m starting off slow. cant start blowing things up just yet!

-A.

I have to admit, when I make dinner, my first thought is Italian food. I LOVE Italian food.

Give me a tomato sauce, give me pasta. Give me cheeses with extremely long names that I cant correctly pronounce.
Give me spicy sausage. Give me olive oil and crusty bread. Just give it to me.

Last night, I was feeling particularly excited about the cheese and pasta part of Italian cooking. I initially planned on making lasagna, as I dont have a pasta machine, and I figured it’d be much easier just to make flat sheets of pasta.

After a little discussion.. I decided on manicotti. All I’d have to do is just make flat sheets of pasta and join them into little tubes. Not too hard.

Before I go on to the creation process, here’s a photo of the delicious result-

Making the pasta was easy. Pasta dough is one of the easiest doughs to create. There is no rising time, no leavening time. You just roll it out, boil it and go. Some people say you should let it rest and you should reneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comfridgerate it. I dont have time for that nonsense.

So… I rolled out my dough and I used a long neck bottle to shape the manicotti tubes. I thought about what the boiling process might do to the delicate tubes, so I boiled them one at a time. Surprisingly, there was little damage. Only four of the 15 tubes split, and that was no problem.

I made my garlic olive cheese filling. Same filling I use when I make Italian nachos, only I used some cottage cheese. Aaron likes cottage cheese.

After I filled the tubes, I let them sit in a casserole dish while I made the sauce. I figured if I was making it all from scratch, why use a canned sauce.

I must say, I made a delicious pasta sauce. I’m not a huge fan of chunks, and I abhor meat sauces. I’ll put tomato sauce on a steak, or pasta sauce on chicken, but I just dont like ground meat. ew.

The pasta sauce was easy. The only problem came when I had an itch on my side, so I put the spoon into the pot so I could use my hand to scratch, and the spoon tipped over and splattered tomato sauce all over the counter and flour. In reality, it was probably only about half a cup of sauce, but.. it traveled well.

Aaron was nice enough to clean it up while I finished dinner.

I poured the sauce over the manicotti tubes. I sprinkled a ton of mozzarella cheese over the whole thing, and added a bit of cheddar cheese to one half of the dish. I sprinkled it with some garlic powder and some extra olive slices and baked it for about 40 minutes.

Here continues our manicotti porn-

I can see making this a meaty dish with a meat sauce, or layering chicken in there somewhere.
I can see adding portabella mushrooms to the dish and making it even MORE delicious. I wish I would have thought about that before I made it, cause I totally would have done that.

I wish Aaron hadn’t finished off the leftovers this afternoon. I’m totally jonesin for some manicotti right now.

There are a few parts to this dish. All of which were homemade.

Pasta, Sauce and filling. Of course, if you dont feel like making the pasta, I’m sure storebought manicotti shells would work fine, as would storebought sauce, if thats what you’re into.

Thing is, I was on a mission. A mission to prove to my husband that I make great pasta. Even from scratch.

So.. I used an easy generic recipe for the pasta-

3 Eggs
2 Cups all purpose flour
1 Teaspoon olive oil

Pour the flour into a bowl, make a well in the center. Add the eggs and olive oil, mixing with a spatula from the center outward, incorportaing the eggs and oil into the flour.

Once you’ve formed a dough, roll out on a floured work surface with a floured rolling pin (or use a pasta machine) Work the dough a few times, folding it and rolling it out again.

After a few go rounds, roll the dough out to a little less than a 1/4 inch thick and cut into strips or
4×4″ squares (about) Using a long neck bottle as your mould, form your manicotti tubes by sealing the edges with egg and using pressure.

boil for a few minutes and stuff with filling of your choice.

My filling-

1 Cup whole milk ricotta
1 Cup cottage cheese
1/4 cup garlic powder
20 or so jumbo black olives, sliced (one standard sized can)
1 Cup grated whole milk mozzarella
1 Cup shredded fresh whole milk mozzarella

Mix well. Stuff into manicotti shells OR use as ravioli filling OR as a cheese layer in lasagna. either way is DELICIOUS.

After I stuffed my filling into the manicotti, I let them sit in a 9×13″ casserole dish while I made the sauce.

My sauce-

1 standard sized can Tomato sauce
1 standard sized can Tomato paste
1 fresh roma tomato, diced
3 garlic cloves, finely minced
1 large carrot, finely grated
1 medium onion, finely chopped
a handful of rough chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
3 tablespoons dried oregano
1 tablespoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried parsley
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2- 1 Cup grated parmigiano reggiano
1/4 cup olive oil

In a large sauce pan, heat the olive oil at medium high heat. Saute the onion and garlic. Allow to caramelize, about 5 minutes. Add the tomato and the carrot and saute another 30 seconds. Add the tomato sauce, tomato paste and turn the temperature down to medium low. Add all of the ingredients except the parmigiano reggiano.

Cook for about 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally. If the sauce begins to bubble, turn it down slightly.

About a minute before you remove the sauce from the heat, add the cheese. Stir well.

Pour over stuffed manicotti. (you might have some extra left over depending on how saucy you like your pasta.)

After you’ve poured your sauce over your manicotti, sprinkle another cup or two of grated mozzarella cheese over top. Add a half cup of grated cheddar if you want as well. Put a few slices of black olive on top, sprinkle with a light dusting of garlic powder and bake for about 35-40 minutes at 350. For the last few minutes, turn the broiler on so the cheese bubbles. Watch carefully and do not allow to burn!

You should have enough pasta to make at least 15 manicotti shells. You may have a little stuffing left over, and you’ll probably have some pasta sauce left over. The cheese stuffing mixture lasts about a week in the fridge. the pasta sauce lasts a little longer than a week. But come on, who doesnt love pasta? You’ll probably end up like me, and make something the next day with it.

so delicious!

-A.

My apartment complex is holding insurance inspections today. Basically, this is one of the 6 times a year the management office holds you hostage in your house for 8 hours waiting for them to arrive (and sometimes they dont) or you’re at the mercy of 3 trolling maintainance men and a member of management wandering through your private business.

I know I dont have to be here when they get here, but I just dont like people wandering in and out of my house. We pay to live here. Its bad enough they threaten to tow your car if its parked in the lot more than 5 days, and we have to be completely certain we leave with a reciept when we pay rent, as they’ve claimed we havent paid numerous times. (Thank God we’ve always asked for reciepts, we’ve never missed rent. EVER.)

So.. I woke up early today. I felt the need to wake up, make the bed, take a shower and have my house marginally cleaned before they come trouncing through.. Call me crazy, but the last time they did inspections they came into my apartment when I was in the shower. I didnt hear them neverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comknocking and apparently they didnt hear the shower running, because one of them came RIGHT ON IN while I was standing in the shower, shaving my legs. Luckily it was a woman, and I didnt scream, I just backed behind the solid half of the shower door. I knew who she was, I’ve had a few conversations with her about my artwork before, so.. I dunno.. it bugged me and I would have raised hell if it had been a dude that opened the door. She ran out of the room and appologized profusely. I never said anything to the office, but like two months later she was sent to a new property and we got new management. New CRANKY managment. New cranky management that forgets to contact maintainance for over a month when we found a hole in the floor of the shower. Long enough for the hole to get much bigger. The only reason they actually ended up contacting maintainance was because I waited outside the leasing office until a maintainance guy came up and I asked him to talk to her and I explained the situation. The next day they fixed it, but we were without a shower for another week.

Ok.. so enough bitching about my apartment. The whole reason I even mentioned it was because I did wake up early enough this morning to make a few batches of cookies. Heck, before noon even.

As I was saying, I made cookies this morning. I’ll try to figure out the recipe later, but they’re basically amaretti cookies. Ground almonds, almond extract, powdered sugar, granulated sugar, flour, butter, egg whites… yeah. thats pretty much it.

I’m a big fan of throwing stuff in a bowl and seeing how it goes.

So.. thats how the first batch was created. I threw some things in a bowl (I really wanted to finish off the bag of almonds I had, so that was my inspiration for making amaretti cookies)

After baking, I dipped them in chocolate, smeared it around a bit, drizzled some white chocolate on top and let ‘em cool a bit before taking a bite.

Here they are-

For the second batch of cookies, I had run out of ground almonds, so I added lemon extract and grated lemon rind to the mix. They were a little flatter, and the texture was a tad bit different. And besides being a completely different flavour, they were pretty simular.

I spread a dab of orange cream cheese icing on top and drizzled them with the last of the white chocolate I had.

So.. here they are-

The lemon cookies were really small. Once the icing hardens up a bit I’m going to bag them up and bring them to my upstairs neighbour. She makes candles and every once in a while she’ll bring me one. Usually they have lemon scent in them… I asked her if she likes lemon and she made this really happy noise and said that lemon is her favourite. So… maybe she’ll like these cookies!

Now I’m just waiting for the office people to show up. They travel by golf cart through the lot, and I’ve seen it zip by like 4 times since 9 this morning (when inspections started) so… who knows, they’ll probably come here right when I give up on waiting and decide to take a nap (I’m sleepy!) I hate it when that happens.

Ok, so I figured out the recipe-

Here’s the recipe as best I can recreate it-
(I threw everything into a bowl, this is the closest I can come to the measures. I wasnt working off of a recipe.)

2 Cups cake flour
1/2 Cup Granulated Sugar
1/2 Cup Powdered Sugar
1/2 Cup Roughly Ground Almonds
1/4 Cup Heavy Cream
1/4 Cup Butter
1 Teaspoon Pure Almond Extract
1 Egg
1 Teaspooon Baking Powder
Dash of salt
Extra flour

In a large mixing bowl, sift together the sugars, the flour, the baking powder and the salt. Cut in the butter. Work the butter into the flour/sugar mixture by hand until the entire mixture looks like fine bread crumbs.

Mix in the almonds.

In another bowl beat together the cream and the egg with the almond extract.

Pour the egg mixture into the rest of the ingredients, using a paddle or flat spoon to join the ingredients together without stirring. The dough will be sticky. Once the dough has come together, add small amounts of extra flour and knead it together until the mixture is slightly more solid and less sticky, but still slightly sticky. (probably an extra 1/ 4 cup of flour.)

Pinch off small pieces of the dough and roll into balls about 1” in diameter. Place them about 1” apart on a non greased cookie sheet and flatten them slightly with the bottom of a glass. Bake at 300 for about 10 minutes or just until the bottoms are light golden brown. (the tops will not brown, so keep a careful eye on them. They burn easy)

Once the cookies are cool, dip them in melted milk chocolate letting them harden on a piece of waxed paper. Drizzle with white chocolate. Enjoy with a tall glass of milk.

-A.

A lot of people ask me what I do with all the cupcakes that I make.

Usually I make small batches. I’ve learned to photograph small batches and make them appear as larger batches. Sometimes I make full batches and I give the extras to my neighbours or my relatives or my friends. Sometimes I have large parties and I bake tons of goodies in advance, and bring them out of the freezer so I can give them to my guests.

And sometimes I just feel like experimenting, so I make a full batch of batter, separate it into a few bowls and mix in separate flavours.

I could have been more adventurous today. I didnt feel like it. I wanted to make something special for my husband, and he’s been hinting around that he’d like me to make him some rootbeer cupcakes with the rootbeer extract my mom just gave me.

I didnt want to make a full batch of them, just incase they were gross (which they werent, oddly enough) so I poured a third of the batter into a bowl and used that for the rootbeer cupcakes.

I poured another third into another bowl and used that to neverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.commake banana lime cupcakes. More banana than lime, but still slightly citrusy.

With the remaining third, I added in a little marachino cherry juice and some cherry extract. Pretty good I must say.

So, using one simple batch of “cake” batter (that I made using my favourite french vanilla cake recipe) I omitted the vanilla and added the flavouring at the last minute just before pouring the batter into the papers.

Heres what I came up with-

Banana lime cupcake.

I added in some mashed bananas and a little banana extract. Also, I sprinkled some lime jello powder into the batter as well as on the icing.

Cherry cupcakes!

This was by far my favourite. The marachino cherry juice made this cake very moist, and I only added a tiny bit of the cherry extract so it wouldnt taste too WILD CHERRY to me. I hate WILD CHERRY flavour.

Rootbeer Float cupcakes.

Pretty strange. I’ve only thought about making rootbeer cupcakes, never actually having made them. I’ve gotta say, they’re surprisingly good. The rootbeer extract is dark enough that the colour they ended up is from the flavouring alone, no added food colouring. They were a bit dry, but still good. The vanilla icing added that little bit of “Float” to it.

Here’s the cherry cupcake trying to seduce you..

The cool thing is, even though I made a full batch, I ended up with only about 4 cupcakes in each flavour. One for me, one for my husband and two for the freezer for later. It works out perfectly.

-A.

Just like most robots, Rodney has an appreciation for the arts.

So when it came down to picking his favourite cookbook (and mine, for that matter) he chose this cookbook solely because the illustrations inside are done by Andy Warhol.

It just happened to be a complete fluke that the recipes inside were pretty damn good.

When the label on the front said “complete” Rodney and I both assumed that it meant “as complete as the author felt it should be, and they really didnt think about it much at all” Just like most cookbooks. I have plenty of “complete” cookbooks, but none of them are anything like what I would consider “complete”

This one however, totally takes the cake. This book has EVERYTHING that I can think of. Its amazing. Its also old, so instead of having ingredients like “prepared puff pastry” it actually refers you to another page where it tells you how to make puff pastrneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comy. There is no mention of anything premade. Everything in this book is from scratch, and with whole and pure ingredients. Its awesome.

Originally Rodney and I were going to make Cream taffy…

But the last sentence of the directions frightened Rodney, as he has no “men friends” and thought it awkward to mention such things in the directions for a candy.

We picked out a recipe for honey taffy. Not only was it simple, but it looked tasty, and I happened to have all the ingredients in my pantry, so I didnt have to make a special trip to the store, which is a bonus. Plus, I’d never made taffy past the “pour it on your girl scout enemies stage” (dont ask) so.. I figured it would be a learning experience…

However, Rodney got a little sleepy, so he slept through the creation process. Good thing too.. I stood infront of the stove stirring the mixture for a good hour trying to get it perfect.

Finally I succeeded, and after mixing, heating, stirring, kneading, pulling and cutting the taffy, I wrapped it up in little waxed paper squares.

…Around which time Rodney decided to join me. I felt a little like little red hen, Rodney only wanted to be around when the taffy was made, he didnt want to help with any of the process.. but I figured hey, he’s a little robot.. he’d probably mess it up anyways.

Closeup!

Wanna bite?

Hey Rodney, where’d your candy go?

hahaha…

Seriously though, this taffy was pretty good. I dont think I’ll make it again though. I’ll probably attempt another type of taffy. There was just something about the overwhelming honey flavour that made my mouth water.. and keep watering.. and water so bad that it actually affected my ability to chew. A mouth full of saliva isnt exactly a good thing sometimes.

Anyways… Taffy pulling isnt too hard either. The whole key in any sort of candy making is to get the cooked mixture to the correct temperature before removing it from the heat. I added a little lemon extract to the mixture. When you’re making taffy its best to add the extract after you’re finished cooking and while you’re kneading. That way the flavour isnt able to burn off like it would had you poured it into the pot. Another tip… when pulling taffy, wear some sort of latex or vinyl powder free gloves. Just put them on and spray them down with a little cooking oil, and you will feel a little heat (because you’ve got to pull the taffy when its still hot) but at least you’ll have finger prints when you’re done. I was sort of doubting whether or not I’d have any after playing with the taffy all morning. My hands were beet red for a good hour afterwards. They’re all better now.

I imagine you could make this with some sort of Tea instead of the added water (I wish I would have thought of that last night, I would have done it myself!) and you’d make yourself some pretty awesome homemade cough drops.

So there you have it. Rodney and the honey taffy.

Taken from “Amy Vanderbilt’s complete cookbook”

1 Cup sugar
3 Tablespoons cornstarch
1/8 Teaspoon salt
2/3 Cup Honey
1/2 Cup water
2 teaspoons Lemon or Vanilla extract

Mix together the sugar, salt and cornstarch in a large high sided pot. When combined, turn the heat up to medium high and add the water and honey. Boil over medium high heat until the mixture reaches 265 degrees or forms a hard heavy strand when dropped into a glass of cold water.

Remove from the heat. Grease a silicone baking pan or a glass platter. Let the taffy sit for about 20 minutes, until cool enough to touch. Pour the flavouring extract over the mixture. Knead the extract into the taffy, lifting the sides and bringing them up and over the center.

With greased hands, begin kneading and pulling the taffy. Continue doing this until the mixture looks milky and turns a light caramel colour. Finally pull the taffy into a long strip and cut into 1″ long pieces with a pair of greased kitchen shears. Let cool on waxed paper or wrap in squares of waxed paper.

The flavour settles in over 24 hours. The taffy will be much harder than commercial “salt water” taffy, but it softens enough to be chewable after a few minutes in your mouth.

I liked it, I just think it made my mouth water too much.

If you’re a fan of honey, or you’re looking for a nice old fashioned treat, Give this recipe a try.

-A.

Today was beautiful. Its days like today when I wish I had a real back yard, with dirt that I could dig in without fear of being arrested or something. I want so badly to have my own garden again.

I decided today that I would make myself a lunch that I could eat out on the patio. A picnic, so to speak. Only, its just me eating, since its a week day and my husband is at work, and I didnt want to go through the trouble of packing a bag and throwing out a blanket and whatnot.

So I just grabbed a TV tray and a kitchen chair, and set it all out on the patio.

I prepared my lunch simply.

Grilled cheese sandwich, Fried chicken strips and carrots. Yeah, I had an apple too, but I was too busy eating it to take a photo of it. I was so hungry I was shaking, so.. the apple really helped.

I am a huge fan of chicken. I think one of the only reasons I cant be a vegetarian is that I love chicken so much.

Ever since I was young, my mom has perfected her recipe for chicken breading. There is a science to it. If you add too much spice, you burn your breneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.comading before the chicken is cooked. If you add too much flour, you end up with a bland breading. If you dont dip it in the right binding agent, the breading wont stick to the chicken.

Until the golden age of weight watchers, when my mom decided that boiling chicken was the “one true way” to cook a chicken *bleh* My mom was a fan of frying. We always had a pot of oil on one of the back burners. It was a quick and flavourful way of cooking just about any food. Especially chicken.

I guess I learned from my mom. I love me some fried chicken. The only difference is, I take it off the bone before I fry it. (I guess chicken strips just werent ‘en vogue’ back in the 80’s.)

So here you have it. Photos of my leisurely spring picnic lunch.

And thats it. Today’s lunch. Easy, simple. Delicious, and definately not what I was expecting to make today. But I guess you roll with the punches when its so beautiful outside. I feel like frolicking barefoot in the grass. I probably will… once the neighbours stop smoking on their patios. ugh.

This breading is a mixture of family recipe and self discovery.

I’m a huge fan of chicken, so it makes sense that I would want my chicken to taste the very best it possibly could.

So here you have it. Depending on the quantity of chicken you’re wanting to bread, and the size of pieces, you’ll need to alter this recipe. I always make too much, but you can put it in a ziploc bag and freeze it for up to 4 months.

For 4 chicken breasts cut into thin strips or chunks, here is what you will need-

1/2 Cup flour
1/4 Cup Krusteaz pancake mix
1/2 Cup Panko bread crumbs
1/4 Cup Johnny’s seasoning salt (lawry’s will work, as will any prepared “chicken” seasoning powder. Johnny’s is better though!)
1/4 Cup Garlic powder
1 Tablespoon Mrs. Dash original seasoning

Mix it all together in a bowl.

Cut up your chicken, dip it in a little egg white, roll it around and press it into the bowl with the breading, set it on a plate. Repeat for each piece of chicken.

Deep fry or pan fry until the internal temperature of the chicken is at least 165. Drain on paper towels.

Trust me, this is a great breading for all sorts of food, not just chicken. If you’re breading fish with this recipe, rub the fish down with a little lemon juice before dipping it in the egg.

And while I personally dont enjoy chicken fried steak, I imagine this would be a delicious breading for that as well!

-A.