All Rileyed Up

More pix here and here.

Continuing on with MomDot blog party with the hopes that the police haven’t been called in to ruin all the fun…

Today, MomDot wants to know what my favorite holiday recipe, what my holiday table looks like, and what my biggest holiday disaster was. Let’s start with the easy ones: fave recipes are my crumb topping apple pie and sweet potato soufflé. I also like my mother’s lumpia, even though I haven’t been able to eat it lately and mine just doesn’t taste quite as good. Of late, one of my favorite recipes has been gluten free, rice free pizza dough, but that doesn’t scream holiday fun the way a nice bowl of red-coated Christmas caramels does. Just look at how much fun Little No Limit was having at her second Christmas with those babies:

I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

On to my holiday table. Given the above picture, I considered posting a picture of an exam table from Gross Anatomy 101. But, no. Here is what my holiday table looks like:

Kneel before Zod!

As for my biggest holiday disaster was, I recently posted on my first Thanksgiving Day dinner. I’d say that was probably the silliest dinner every, but disastrous? Not sure I’ve got anything disastrous, for Christmas or any holiday. At Little No Limit’s first birthday party, my mother dropped the cake icing side down on our pool table. This was bad both for the cake and the felt on my pool table. There was also the Valentine’s Day dance where my date stood me up. Does that count as a holiday disaster? When you’re in high school, it does. (fyi, it turned out to be a misunderstanding, like in Three’s Company, but still…).

There was also a particularly memorable Christmas when I went into labor and got rushed to the hospital, oh wait… that never happened. Nope. I was due on December 21st and then the doctor suggested we might have the baby early, say, closer to the 15th, but when I passed that date with nary a change to my special lady places, we started thinking I might have a Christmas baby, and come Christmas day, we were all on edge that maybe, just maybe, I was going to have a baby. But lo and behold, The Boy held out until December 30th at which point I had a planned C-section because I hadn’t even effaced and he was a behemoth child. No mistakes with the date, btw, just a little boy who found his Mommy’s internal world the right place to chillax. Of course, I might still call that Christmas a disaster because I had just been informed that the Little No Limit I was expecting was actually The Boy. Yes, I am one of those moms who was told the wrong sex of her child. Disastrous, I say. Disastrous. (not anymore, of course - just at the time).

So anyways, thank you MomDot for these pressing questions that forced my stumble down memory lane, and thank you to Bottlewise and Glow Mama for sponsoring the MomDot Blog Party Day.

“You’ve got to keep your wits about you in cooking and not stop in the middle of things to let your thoughts rove all over creation.”
–Anne of Green Gables, XIII

I went to a tent sale today for Children’s Orchard, which is a store that sells used children’s clothing, toys, accessories, etc. They were doing scratch off tickets and I won my choice of any book under $3.99, which is how I came home with this:

To tell you the truth, I have never actually read any one of the Anne of Green Gables book series. I am very fond, though, of unique cookbooks, and this particular cookbook is written by L.M. Montgomery’s granddaughter. This book will fit in nicely with my Narnia Cookbook, Star Wars Cookbook, Green Eggs and Ham Cookbook, and The Ruby Slippers Cookbook.

So let’s see what Anne has up her sleeve:

Cowcumber Boats. This caught my eye immediately because of the “cow”. This recipe doesn’t actually use cow, but cucumber. It also doesn’t take much tweaking to be The Boy-friendly. And looks like a nice way to get the kids eating fish for a change. Fish. My last battlefront.

Saucy Chicken. You saucy chicken, you. I’ll make this for the name alone.

Diana Barry’s Favorite Raspberry Cordial. I totally expected to read a recipe for an alcoholic beverage in a kids cookbook, but to my simultaneous disappointment and parental approval, it’s just sugar and fruit.

Poetical Egg Salad Sandwiches. More than your average Humpty Dumpty variety, this is Ode to a Grecian Egg.

Miss Ellen’s Pound Cake. Guaranteed to harden the arteries of all ages.

Anne’s Liniment Cake. When I read this title, I immediately thought – what? Muscle massage? After reading the description, it seems Anne made a similar mistake in one of the books. All I can say is, any girl who accidentally cooks with anodyne liniment is a friend of mine. A virtual high five to whoever tells me which one of the series contains this escapade (my money is on Beck).

On my way to the library…

My food sampling week in review:

We tried out a new fruit this week, the horned melon. I’ve been calling it a horny melon because I have a dirty mind and can’t help myself. It kind of looks like a puffer fish on the outside and here is a slightly blurry photo of it cut open:

Wonderful to behold, but I’m not impressed with the taste. It has the consistency of Jell-O with lots of seeds. I think it might be better as a topping squirted/squeezed over a fruit platter. if anyone has any ideas on what to do with this fruit, I’m all ears.

This week I also found a popsicle mold.

I bought it at Linens n Things many moons ago and then stuck in the cupboard above the fridge and promptly forgot about it. I’m thrilled to have this now, because so many of the in-store popsicles have either soy, which The Boy can’t have or high fructose corn syrup, which no one should, or quite simply, a really high sugar content, also which no one should have.

I make pretty low-key popsicles - half juice, half water (and I’m hoping to change that to one part juice, three parts water). Today’s batch was with 100 percent not-from-concentrate orange juice, and enjoyed, no less, with a foot soak, because that’s how we roll:

Check out Little No Limit double fisting it…

I bought a few yams at South Coast Farms and didn’t know what to do with them. We had a bit of a cold front sweep in last weekend, so I made some soup to warm everyone up. Both of the kids enjoyed it too (with some prodding for the initial tasting). Wish I’d thought to take a picture, but really, it’s liquid. How exciting a photo would that be?

You’ll Need This:

1 big yam or two small ones, diced
1 carrot, sliced
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 chopped onion
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 cups broth (veggie or chicken as you prefer)

You’ll Do This:

Heat oil and sauté onions and garlic until transparent.
Add carrot and potatoes, cook for another five minutes.
Add brother and bring to a boil.
Cover and set to simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Blend contents of saucepan.

Optional steps:
Add to blender two tablespoons of honey or agave nectar.
Serve with dollop of sour cream/tofutti.
Garnish with parsley and toasted walnuts.

Enjoy.

I tried to recreate this recipe with pumpkin in place of yam, and it didn’t turn out quite so good. I guess pumpkins aren’t quite as va-va-va-voom on the taste front as a yam. I am going to try it again with two apples added to the mix. I think that’ll do the trick.

Made some animal friendly, allergen-free-approved sorbet for The Boy and Husband to enjoy.

You’ll Need This:

An ice cream maker.
1 cup fruit juice of your choice (I pureed watermelon, because we had a watermelon that needed to be eaten)
¾ cup sugar
2 lemons, freshly squeezed
2 cups milk substitute (I used hemp milk even though it does kind of make for an unattractive color), the colder the better
1/8 teaspoon sea salt

You’ll Do This:

Mix everything EXCEPT the milk in a blender or food processor.
Done?
NOW you can mix in the milk.
Pour into ice cream maker.
Churn.
Mmmmm…

Here’s an easy vegan, gluten-free, casein-free treat that the kids really enjoyed making.

Ingredients:
1 banana per two people
3 oz. vegan chocolate (not as hard to get as you might think)
Dessert topping of your choice, eg: cookie crumbs, chopped nuts, crushed cereal. As for amount, I just pour out enough to cover a plate:

Step One: Cut a banana in half, impale (stronger word than ’stick’, no?) on a popsicle stick, then freeze:

Step Two: Melt chocolate on the stove top (note my snazzy double boiler). I added a little bit of almond milk because I found the chocolate melted quicker and more smoothly than when I tried it with just chocolate alone. I might have been imagining such things, but that’s nothing new.

Step Three: Dip the bananas in the chocolate until coated on all sides

Step Four: Roll the bananas around in the topping of your choice. I attempted a batch of snowball cookies the other day with corn flour that came out too crumbly, so I crushed them up and used them as the topping (the way I see it, the cookies were telling me they wanted to be crumbs anyway).

(Just know: If you let the kids do it, the bananas come out unattractive, but they have more fun. )

Step Five: Freeze for at least five minutes so the chocolate can harden; ward the kids off from eating the leftover topping; you can continue to freeze the treat as long as you want. We stored ours for a couple days because the kids found they were so rich they only needed a few bites to get full.

Step Six: Enjoy.

With the start of the new school year, I’ve already started receiving the food paperwork. There’s the request to only pack healthy lunches, the list of books about vegetable eating, and the positive results of sitting down to a family dinner – your kids will be smarter, say no to drugs, have more confidence, and win the lottery (I made one of those up – can you guess which?).

I grew up in a house where the family dinner took place every single evening. There were seven people – my mother, father, grandmother, and me and my siblings. We sat down and held hands and said grace before meals, and when dinner was done, we said grace after meals and then prayed a decade of the rosary, except on Sundays, when we said the whole rosary. Ah, Catholicism.

Family dinners are much harder to pull off these days, now that I’m the one running the family, partly because Husband’s work schedule is erratic and partly because I am a lazy bum. It’s not like we never sit down together, I just don’t emphasize it as part of the daily routine. For a while, it wasn’t a big deal to me, but now that the kids are getting older, I feel a need to give them something to remember, a time the whole family can count on being together. Plus, I want them to be smarter, say no to drugs, and have more confidence.

Libby’s Vegetables and Sara Evans have launched Get Back to the Table Month, to help slackers like me get the family dinner up and running. The website includes coupons for Libby’s canned veggies (my kids like the sweet peas), recipes, and shopping and kitchen tips. You can also submit your own tips to win a chance for dinner with Sara Evans backstage at one of her shows – talk about a family dinner that your kids will never forget.

So, time to get cracking in your kitchen. Make a casserole. Bake a meatloaf. Throw everything in a crock pot and let it do the work. And when in doubt, heed the advice of this parking spot:

Taken at the parking lot at The Camp in Costa Mesa

I have several fresh herbs in my fridge right now: basil, oregano, thyme, Italian parsley, and rosemary. I bought them all for dinner last night (as mentioned in my previous post). The fresh herbs made all the difference in the meal.

I love mincing fresh herbs because they are so aromatic, especially rosemary. I just read Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman and she wrote such evocative descriptions of the herbs, I might have salivated while reading. Or maybe I just have a drooling problem. Possibly both. Have you ever had your mouth numb from Novocain and discovered that you were drooling and no one bothered to point it out to you because they liked seeing you make ass of yourself? Not that I have any personal experience with such a thing. How did I wind up talking about this? Back to the herbs.

When I was younger, I did not cook with many herbs. The recipes I used generally had an inexpensive grocery list but the herbs to season them seemed to double the cost. And that was money I was not willing to part with. I realize that if I had just coughed up the money on the first recipe, I’d have had the herbs for all future recipes, but I just didn’t want to do it. Instead, I seasoned everything with Tony Chachere. I love Tony. He was, and is, good to me.

When I moved to California, my brother in law had never heard of Tony and fell in love with him over a burger at a Labor Day BBQ. Years later, for one of his birthday gifts, I gave him a canister, an empty shaker, and the ingredients for Tony Chachere’s All Purpose Creole Seasoning, which was given to me by a church friend who hailed from Lafayette. For my wedding gift, she gave me a recipe box with a variety of Creole recipes. This one is by far my favorite:

Tony Chachere’s All Purpose Creole Seasoning

26 oz free flowing salt, like Morton’s
1 1/2 oz ground black pepper
2 oz ground red pepper
1 oz pure garlic powder
1 oz chili powder

Mix well. Enjoy.

To season seafood:
Take half the mixture above and add the following:
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp sweet basil
1 tsp bay leaf

Mix well. Enjoy.

Friends came over tonight. Wine was had, jokes were made. I fed seven adults. I made a garlic spinach appetizer, spanokopita (layer after layer of phyllo dough…), stuffed grape leaves, and vegan moussaka, which is not moussaka at all, but a veggie and mashed potato casserole.

The spanokopita and grape leaves were (not meaning to brag, but—) the bomb. Everyone loved them.

However, I started cooking at one o’clock and still hadn’t managed to have everything ready in time because there were bouts of cleaning and kid-interaction interspersed in the cooking time. After everyone had eaten the appetizer, spanokopita, and grape leaves, the moussaka was still cooking. So I cut down the time of the baking. And therein lies the problem.

Impatience.

Why didn’t I just let it cook the allotted time????????

I could have just told everyone, look, sorry, but dinner will be late. Enjoy everything else I made. But nooooooo, I had to jump the gun and serve the moussaka too early (it was supposed to cook for 1:30 hours, and I pulled it out at 1:10). As a result, the eggplant was not cooked well enough. Truthfully, though, the whole dish had a bland taste to it, and I don’t think it had anything to do with the cooking time but the combination of spices (or lack thereof). And what a disappointment. Everyone was so excited by all the other dishes and then I had to end on the GROSS BLAND DISH.

I did get to save myself partly with the almond shortbread cookies for dessert. But still, the taint of the bad not-moussaka dish ruined my confidence for the night. Throughout the entire post-dinner and enjoyable conversation with my friends, all could really think was “did they all think the not-moussaka was gross?”

Of course, no one complained and as they said goodnight they all thanked me for the wonderful meal. I can only hope that the memory of the spanokopita, grape leaves, and almond shortbreads live on, and the moussaka is never again remembered.

And out of curiosity, who does not enjoy Spaceballs or Three Amigos? I just learned that one of my friends HATES them.

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