A little Monday comedic relief

For your comedic enjoyment, this came home in my son’s weekly work folder from school last week:

My husband said that it would have only been better if there had been some fire coming out of the back of the snowman.

Boys.

Apparently it’s chocolate cake day.

As I’ve been noticing from friends tweets and Facebook posts, it is apparently chocolate cake day.  So if you want a quick and simple chocolate cake for a day like today, this Simple Chocolate Cake recipe that I posted a while back on the Recipes blog might just do the trick for you.  In fact, I’m headed to the kitchen to whip one up myself.

Have a fabulously chocolate cakey weekend.

A tale of two Chocolate Pies

I grew up eating my Nana’s chocolate meringue pie at nearly every family gathering.  You know the one.  That creamy chocolate filling and that mile high meringue that was perfectly browned on top? 

My oldest sister has perfected making it.  I, on the other hand, having just started trying, am merely getting by.  I mean, it tastes good… but I still have some work to do on my meringue technique.  The one I made the week before Christmas came out to be a fairly nice and tall meringue and looked like this:

 

It was really quite pretty.  But in the course of the day, my meringue deflated a bit.   Not like flat or anything, just a bit.  It tasted pretty good, but I was not thrilled with the end result of the meringue.  (My man says I’m too nit-picky where my cooking is concerned.  I say that it’s just how I get better.)

Therefore, I am not posting the recipe until I get it down.  I can’t tell you what to do until I’ve figured it out myself. 

However, I did try a pie recipe that I had wanted to try for a few months now.  So many people blogged about it a few months ago that I can’t even really give credit to a particular blog. 

Minny’s Chocolate Pie.  You know the one.  From “The Help.” The one that made “Two Slice Hilly” famous.  Except without that special ingredient that Minny added in the course of “the terrible awful.” 

If you don’t know what any of that means, rent the movie.  I haven’t read the book, but the movie is incredible.  It may end up on my top 10 all time favorites list.  You can also see a video clip here. (Be aware of a little bad language.)

But back to the pie.

Because, really, not many things are more important than pie.

Apparently this recipe is the one that was used to make the pies in the movie and was published in some form of the August issue of Food and Wine.  Or at least that’s what every blog that I read credited.

And I’ll tell you what.  It’s super easy and absolutely delicious. 

Minny’s Chocolate Pie

Ingredients:

Single pie crust
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2 large eggs, beaten
3/4 cup evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
Whipped cream for serving

You will also need:

9” pie plate (I used the shallow glass kind, not a deep dish)
Parchment paper (or foil)
Pie weights or dried beans

Method:

Preheat oven to 350°F. 

Place pie crust in pie plate and crimp edges decoratively as desired.  Prick bottom of crust several times with a fork, line with parchment paper (or foil) and fill with pie weights or dried beans.  Par-bake the crust for 15 minutes or until set.  Remove from the oven and carefully lift out the parchment paper with weights and set aside.  Return to the oven and continue to bake for 5 minutes longer, just until the crust is dry but not browned.  Remove from the oven, but leave the oven on at 350°F.

While the crust is baking those last 5 minutes, in a bowl, whisk sugar and cocoa powder together.  Add the melted butter, eggs, evaporated milk, vanilla and salt and whisk until smooth.

Pour the filling into the pie shell.  Bake 40-45 minutes, until the filling is set around the edges but jiggles just a little in the center.  If you feel the crust is getting too brown in the process of baking, you may cover it with strips of foil or pie guards about half way through. 

Cool completely on a wire rack before serving.  Serve with a dollop of freshly whipped cream.

It can be made ahead of time, cooled completely, covered with plastic wrap and refrigerated over night.

Enjoy.

Oh Sully, Sully, Sully...

SULLY!!!!!

Whaaat? I didn't do it. Not with this face...

Oh suuuuuure you didn't.

Just like you didn't put holes in every other pair of socks that I own.

Maybe I just need to start a series of posts entitled "What Sully Tore Up Today." Blog fodder for years to come, I'm sure.

Sully Says…

“Happy New Year!”

And he also says that we are very excited that the Aggies finally won a bowl game!

*gasp*

I know!

And you know what? We were there. 

At the last minute on Thursday, I texted Mike that I had found some fairly inexpensive tickets online and did he want to go since the kids were already at his mom’s house.  Then he called some friends who then said they would love to go with us and were going to take their kids…. so it ended up being a whole family affair.  Which was an absolute blast. 

We purchased really cheap seats that had nosebleed inducing potential that were part of a Papa John’s Pizza deal and included pizza and drinks.  This was our view:

But then Mike came across some stadium employees who were swapping out upper level tickets to fill up the lower levels.  He did that and then this was our view:

Nice, huh? And it was a totally different game experience with the fans much more dialed in and complete with my son covering his ears most of the time because of the noise.

We had a great time for it being our kids’ first Aggie football game experience.  There was face painting, bounce houses and other activities before the game.  I even partook of the face painting experience. 

I had to do something to make up for the horrible Houston hair weather we were having that morning. 

One of the most moving scenes of the whole day came at the end.  Number 67 belonged to Joey V, one of our players that was killed in a car wreck a few days before Christmas.  Another player wore his number for the game and Joey V was honored several times before, during and during this scene after the game.

We still need to take these kids to Kyle Field for a game, but that will come in time.  It’s hard to spend that kind of money when they aren’t really into it.  This was actually a much less expensive option, oddly enough. 

I haven’t said much about Aggie stuff for a while here on the ol’ blog, and I felt like our first bowl win in 10 years was a fine time to do it.  It’s been an interesting year in Aggie life as our days of Big XII football are now officially over.  We are headed to the SEC with a new football coach.  Sure, we’ll take our lumps the first year or so.  And even though I’ll miss playing against some of these Texas teams, I’m believing that it will be a good move. 

Out with the old and in with the new.

Kind of like the new year.

Sully also said for you to have a “ruffulous” 2012.

Christmas Genealogy Paper Chain

I’ll bet you didn’t know that my husband and I teach 1st and 2nd graders on Sunday mornings.

Yep.  Last year we taught along with another friend, but he moved up to another class and this year, we’re on our own.  Which has been a little challenging to say the least as our average class size has doubled since last year.  We went from averaging about 8 each Sunday morning last year to averaging about 16 each Sunday morning this year.  To the elementary school teachers out there, 16 may seem like a cake walk… but we’re not talking about school.  Sunday School is a whole different animal and, admittedly, I am not a teacher by training, vocation or gifting.  So to us, 16-18 each week is HUGE. 

But I digress.

One of the things we enjoy doing with our class is a “Genealogy of Christ Paper Chain.”  We find it to be a really good teaching tool to talk about Messianic prophesy on a level that 1st and 2nd graders can comprehend and the links of the chain act as a visual to link together the old and new testaments of the Bible.

I thought my husband was very creative with the lesson portion of the morning.  He started out by talking about the Old Testament and the New Testament and the difference being that the Old was before Jesus lived on earth and the New was during and after Jesus.  Then he began reading some scriptures and asked the kids if they knew whether it came from the OT or NT and began to work in some scriptures of Messianic prophesy.  He quoted Micah 5:2 which talks about Bethlehem among others which refer to Christ to try to trip them up a little and make them think he was reading from the New Testament so that it would be a surprise that it came from the Old.  Once we were able to establish with the kids that the Bible talks about Jesus in the OT, we were able to talk about how the promise of the Messiah was made all the way back in Genesis and we began to read prophesies about the family that the Messiah would come from all the way back to Abraham.

We know that the details of our lesson probably did not all stick.  But we don’t expect them to.  If those 16 kids walked away from our class knowing that the Bible talks about Jesus in the Old Testament all the way back to Genesis, then we’ve accomplished our goal, in my opinion.

So, back to the genealogy chain… in pictures, here’s what we did:

For our class, I pre-printed all the names from the Matthew 1 genealogy of Christ on colored strips of paper.  Older kids could write them down themselves.  And the Luke 3 genealogy from Adam to Jesus could be used as well.

Because I have to have things very organized for our group of 1st & 2nd graders, I put all the names in order with Jesus on bottom and Abraham on top.  I put them in sandwich baggies as shown below so that after starting with Abraham, each child could just take the next strip of paper with the next name on it out of the bag and the rest would remain in the bag and in order.  The links of the chain may be fastened with staplers or with tape.

Now, when you have 16 1st and 2nd graders working on such a project, there is absolutely no time whatsoever for pictures to be taken.  But with two kids working on it at home, it was a fairly peaceful affair.

 
And when they’re done…

I don’t know about you, but I’m always looking for a fun way to bring my family and especially my kids back to what we are truly celebrating at Christmas time… the birth of Christ.  I hope that this is an idea that might help some of you in your endeavors to do the same thing. 

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Sugar Cookies

In preparation for a little Christmas shin-dig I’m having at my house this week, I decided to make and decorate some Christmas cookies.  Lots of Christmas sugar cookies.

It is no easy task to find the time to undertake such an endeavor with a job outside of my home, two active kids in grade school with homework and projects galore and everything else that a mom has to do.  So rather than try to do it all in one single block of time, I did it in stages.

In a spare 20 minutes I had one day, I made the cookie dough.  And since it needs to refrigerate anyways, I just put it in the refrigerator until I had time to bake the cookies the next day.  After baking the cookies the next day and allowing them to cool completely, I bagged them in zipper plastic bags and froze them until I was ready to decorate them, nearly a week later.

I made all of the icing one morning when I had a spare 15 minutes and then covered it and set it aside until later that evening when I could get around to it again.  That evening, I colored all the icing and decorated one batch and finished up the other two batches the next day. 

Taking it in little chunks like that really helped me to not feel overwhelmed by the task I had put before myself.

I saw an idea recently that intrigued me, so I decided to monkey with my tried and true sugar cookie recipe.  I removed 4 ounces of butter and replaced it with 4 ounces of cream cheese.  The outcome…. delicious!!  The cream cheese adds just a little zip to the flavor that I felt gave the sugar cookies a whole new dimension.  My updated Cream Cheese Sugar Cookie recipe is posted over on the recipe blog.  Just click on the link.

>>>Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies

In the midst of all the baking, freezing and decorating, I set some of the cookies that would eventually become ornaments on racks on our kitchen table to thaw so that I could decorate them while sitting down in a chair.  I was in the other room when I heard my husband yell, “NO SULLY!  BAD DOG!”

I came back into the kitchen and saw that something was missing.

He was really sorry.  Sorry that he got caught, at least.

Lesson learned.  Sully is now big enough to get his front paws on TOP of the table and reach food that is sitting there.  A far cry from where he started. 

I made Christmas trees, ornaments and stars all using techniques that were new to me that I learned from the brilliant Bridget over at Bake at 350.  While mine are not as good as hers, I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out for the most part.

Merry Christmas, y’all !!

Today at A Martha Heart...

Today I'm over at A Martha Heart. I share a very insightful creative writing assignment that my daughter brought home from school and think about about a few "What ifs" that came to mind as I read it.

Enjoy "the kite."

A new adventure with Tomatillo Jalapeño Jam

I got the most wonderful gift from a dear friend when we hosted a fall gathering of friends at our home right before Halloween. She brought me a paper lunch sack loaded with jalapeños from her garden.

As I stood there and stared at these beautiful gems I wondered what on earth I would do with them all.  Then it struck me that I could make jalapeño jelly.  So then the search began for a recipe.  The search was pretty short.  I scanned the internet and then realized I had a cookbook in my possession that may have just what I was looking for.  And it did.  More on that in a moment.

I also had to wrap my mind around the idea of canning.  It was a thing that struck fear into my heart.  I don’t know why as I have watched my mother successfully can everything from peach preserves to pear halves my whole life.  Even still, it always seemed to be this mystical magical thing that only women who survived the depression and the dust bowl should know how to successfully accomplish.

I mean, what if I don’t do it right and everyone gets food poisoning?

But, I decided to put on my big girl panties and give it a try.

The recipe I found came from Lisa Fain’s new The Homesick Texan cookbook.  I have followed Lisa on Twitter for quite some time and have always enjoyed her blog.  So when I found out she was coming to the Le Creuset store in Dallas to sign her new cookbook, I absolutely had to take the opportunity to go and meet her in person.  (Missing a World Series game in the process, y’all.)

And I’ll tell y’all, she is just as precious in person as she seems in her book and on her blog.  And her grandma, the one she talks about in the book and whose hands are pictured in it… she was there.  I spent several minutes talking to her and she reminded me ever so much of my Nana. 

All that to say that if you have a cook in your life, her cookbook, The Homesick Texan, is a perfect gift.  Or a Le Creuset dutch oven would work nicely also. (Especially since I scored one for 40% off that night and handed it to my hubby and said, “Merry Christmas to me!”  He may or may not have rolled his eyes.)

In her book is a recipe for Tomatillo Jalapeño Jam.  I really liked the idea of using tomatillos and the addition of some additional spices like clove and allspice to this jam really got my attention.

 
Since I was trying to make enough for some Christmas gifts, I multiplied the recipe a couple of times and learned a very valuable lesson in the process.  You CAN multiply a jam recipe too many times.  I think I had too much liquid and therefore it initially did not set up properly.  But I cooked it just a tad bit more the next day and added just a little bit of unflavored gelatin and that did the trick. 

And you know what?  The canning part of the whole thing was not a huge deal.  In fact, it was kind of fun to boil the jars, remove them from the water and wait to hear the pop of the lid sealing.  I don’t know how it happens, but it does, and it’s as cool as all get out to tap the top of that jar and hear it go, “PING.” 

So now I have some awfully good tasting gifts to give for Christmas.  I think two jars will go to the kids’ teachers and the others to my cousins. 

So, if you’re still reading this and are interested, here is the recipe (used with Lisa’s permission):

Tomatillo Jalapeño Jam
copyright 2011 The Homesick Texan Cookbook, page 36

Yield: 1 pint

1/2 pound tomatillos, husks removed, chopped
2 jalapeño chiles, seeds and stems removed, finely diced
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup lime juice
2 teaspoons lime zest

Special Equipment:
1 pint-size jar or 2 half-pint-size jars
(I recommend the latter)

1.  Sterilize the jars and lids in either a pot of boiling water or dishwasher.

2.  In a pot, add the tomatillos, jalapeño, vinegar, sugar, ground cloves, ground allspice, ground cinnamon, lime juice, lime zest and 1/2 cup of water.  Bring to a boil and then turn the heat down to a low simmer, stirring often, for 45 minutes or until it’s thick and syrupy.

3.  Pour the jam into the jars, then cover with the lids and fasten with the ring.  Let it cool and then refrigerate.  The jam will become more solid after a few hours in the refrigerator and will last for a month, refrigerated.

 

{Side note: For those of you who are like myself and love to use a thermometer for things like this, I did some research in my On Food and Cooking book and found that the temperature should reach 217°-221° F “which indicates that the sugar concentration has reached 65%”.  The author, Harold McGee, also suggests that “a fresher flavor results when this cooking is done at a gentle simmer in a wide pot with a large surface area for evaporation.” Page 297.}

Enjoy!

Homemade Butter. Just like the Pilgrims?

Well, maybe not *just* like the pilgrims did it, but homemade butter nonetheless.

Our school has a tradition in each grade.  My son is in 1st grade this year and the big tradition for them is the Thanksgiving celebration and feast.  During the party portion of the day, also known as the whole first half of the day, the kids are split into small groups and they rotate from station to station.  These stations include teepee stories, snacks, bracelet making, necklace making (of the macaroni variety), bows and arrows (as we pray against any impalements) and finally butter making.

Which is where I come in.  Because, you know, I’m an expert on making butter.

Or not.

Regardless, it was certainly fun.  And exhausting.

But more about that later.

You may be wondering how on earth one might make homemade butter.  Well guess what… we’re just going to subtitle this post here today as “Butter Making 101” and I’ll try to give you a lesson.

Start with clean baby food jars.  I know that the lids aren’t on these, but you need the lids.

Fill them about half way up with heavy cream.

You may add a little salt if desired.  Then tightly screw on the lid.

When you are doing 46 of these for your son’s entire first grade at school, it will look something like this:

And finally, begin to shake.

Your child will start out very excited to be on this journey of making his or her own butter.  They will smile and giggle as they shake. 

Your child might even break out into song.  Like:

“Shake – Shake - Shake!

Shake – Shake - Shake!

Shake your butter!

Shake your butter!” 

Or:

“You know you make me want to shake! 

Kick my heels up and shake!

Throw my hands up and shake!

Throw my head back and shake!”

Things will be all nice and rosy until about two minutes later and the children all of the sudden wilt into little moaning whining puddles that used to resemble happy children as they complain and ask, “Is it done YET?”

That’s where your big strapping arms come in. 

Yeah, I know.

So as you shake, at first you clearly hear the liquid sloshing around.  Keep shaking.  Then you hear less and less and the jar is completely white and you can’t see a thing in there. Keep shaking. Then all of the sudden, you will clearly be able to see in the jar and it will look like a single mushy mass. Keep shaking just a little more. Then that single mushy mass will separate and become a butter ball and buttermilk.

Now before I began this project today, someone told me to keep the cream cold and that it would work better if the cream was cold.  These kids and the adults helping to chaperone them (okay, more the adults than the kids if I’m honest) shook these little jars for 10-13 minutes.

A different someone during the day said that they thought it would work better if the cream were more at room temperature.  So that got me to wondering.  And I did a very scientific experiment. 

I left a jar out on our countertop for a little while (that’s a very specific and scientific measurement of time, right there).  Then set the timer as my daughter shook it up.  It took her 3 minutes flat.

I think I’d be going with closer to room temperature if I ever did this again.  Because after two and a half hours of shaking cream into butter for a bunch of soft 1st graders who couldn’t shake their jars more than 1 1/2 minutes, my arms were killing me.  I mean, who needs a Shake Weight when there’s baby food jar butter to be made?

I left the school, went home, immediately took some Advil, put huge ice packs on my arms and began looking into cryotherapy. 

(As of this writing, it is in the evening of the same day and I have warned my husband that I do not intend to lift a single thing tomorrow.)

Let me give you just a little piece of advice.  If your son’s first grade teacher asks you to be in charge of the butter making station for the Thanksgiving celebration, just politely say no.  Your arms will thank you for it later.

In all seriousness, it was a blast and I really enjoyed getting to impart a little bit of food science to them as I tried to describe the butter making process on a 1st grade level.

If you have some cream and a small jar around, I suggest trying this with your child some time.  They might just appreciate that butter that they use on their toast or corn on the cob just a little more if they know how it’s made.

 

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