Day 10: A Fruit I Dislike and Why

Is cantaloupe a fruit? I'm going to call it a fruit since it shows up on so many fruit platters. Also, honeydew melon.

I don't like either of them and I can't really tell you why - they just don't appeal to me. I don't like the texture, the flavor, any of it.

I do like watermelon, if that's any consolation. In fact, at King Soopers you can buy watermelon "fillets", so I do. And then I munch on it all afternoon. It's a great snack. Yum. Now I wish I had some watermelon, darn it.

Foodie Walk

It dawned on me as I left work on Thursday that for the first time in weeks, I had absolutely no obligations for the next three days. 

None.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.

That's exceedingly rare during 9HealthFair season for me to have time off with no plans.  So, of course, what did I do?  I made plans for us to join some fellow WriMos for a "free" Foodie Walk.  Apparently, the Downtown Business Association sponsors a Foodie Walk every month, and though it's the same seven stops, the theme changes each time.

The walk turned into more of a shopping trip for us.  The sample of food were okay, nothing knocked my socks off, but I did find something to buy at three of the stops.  At the first stop, I bought a vanilla lotion bar.  Not even remotely edible, but I've been eye-balling it for a long time and my hands are a dried-out mess.  I know the lotion bar will help.  At the spice shops, we found some spices that we just *had* to have.  Jay managed to get me out of the Olive Oil shop without buying anything.  That, in itself, was a miracle, because I really, really loved the flavored olive oils and the garlic one almost came home with us.



Habanero Sugar (can you say Aztec cookies?)
Raspberry Sugar (I have no idea why I NEEDED this)
Ghost Pepper Salt (Jay's stepping up his hot sauce)

Ground Jalapeno Chiles (Jay's hot sauce is going to kill someone)
Tandoori (I don't know, Jay says it's good for chicken)
Madagascar Vanilla Bean Powder (shh...birthday present for the Bionic Cowgirl)
Piri-Piri Style Spice (again, not a clue, but Jay assures me it's good)
Vanilla Lotion Bar (not edible, but necessary for my hands)

 

 

Yes, that's my husband copping a grope on the statue :)

So our "free" Foodie Walk ended up costing us about $30, but it was fun anyway.  We might even do it again next month.

Depressed Food

The Ashinator isn't having the best of weekends.  In fact, the last two weeks have been kind of rough.  And it sucks moose tit (thanks for that one, Mrs Mom).

I'm the mom, so I'm supposed to be able to fix it, but I can't.

So, instead I took to the kitchen.  Isn't that what everyone does?  Ok, not everyone.  When I was Ash's age, I did the whole depressed not-eating.  But now I'm old and fat and everything should be fixed with food.

I went to my favorite cooking blog, Cooking Classy, and found something easy to make.  And it included chocolate, which we all know is perfect for depression.

This is what her yumminess looks like.  Mine, not so much.

I read the directions and it sounded easy enough, so I bundled Ash up and dragged her to the store with me.  I needed to buy:

• square pretzels
• Hershey's hugs
• M&Ms

But I ran into a snag with the pretzels, so I bought regular pretzels and hoped they would work.

Linin' up the pretzels

Topped them with hugs

Warmed the pretzels/hugs up in the oven,
pulled them out and topped with M&Ms.

They didn't look anything like the ones over at Cooking Class.  Really, you should go check hers out, because they are beautiful.

Next up, I'm trying her recipe for Funfetti Popcorn.  That involves a double boiler on my end, so wish me luck.

Betty Crocker and Her .45

A couple of weeks ago, RCC and I ran to Wally World to pick up a couple of things.  It dawned on me that some people might think it odd that a forty year-old, fun-sized woman would be walking out of the store with a baking sheet in one hand and two hundred rounds of .45 ACP in the other.  However, it is totally and completely me.

Ever since I posted about the coolest cupcakes I've ever seen, a certain blog friend who also happens to be a Facebook fried has developed a nasty habit of posting more cupcake recipes on my wall.  And, sucker that I am, I keep trying them.  So when she-who-won't-be-named posted a link to Ice Cream Cupcakes, I had to try them.  The picture that really reeled me in was this one...

Photo: apumpkinandaprincess.com

The directions looked GunDiva-proof so I gave it a go.  I bought some Devil's Food Chocolate Cake and some Blue Bell mint chocolate chip ice cream.  The problem is, though, that it's very difficult to just barely fill the cupcake pans - it just doesn't look like enough.  So instead of having a nice, thin cupcake to top with ice cream, we had cupcakes.

Oops...not quite like I'd anticipated

RCC came up with a solution...mash the hell out of them...

If only they had fallen on their own

After they cooled, we scooped the softened ice cream on top.  Maybe if we'd let the ice cream soften a bit more it would have spread out and we would have gotten the pretty ridges that A Pumpkin and A Princess got on hers.  But we didn't, so ours just looks like a mushed cupcake with a scoop of ice cream on top.

Not quite as pretty, but still look yummy.

I used Wilton's Stabilized Whipped Cream recipe to make the whipped cream, and that was by far the most difficult part of the whole thing.  I added some green gel food coloring and a bit of vanilla to the whipped cream, so at least it was pretty.  After the fact, RCC suggested that next time we use Creme de Menthe for the flavoring.  Doesn't that sound amazing?  Also, one batch of whipped cream didn't go nearly far enough; it'll take a quadruple batch to cover all the cupcakes.

Starting to look really, really yummy

Since it's a waste to make something like this and not feed it to people, I used Momma Fargo's visit as an excuse to make them and then held her down and force fed her several.

Forcing Momma Fargo to eat the cupcakes.
I had her in a wrist lock.

Kidding, I'm not nearly bad-ass enough to hold down Momma Fargo.

OS - just for you and she-who-won't-be-named - they were fantabulous. Mint-chocolate orgasm in my mouth.  I had two.  Or three.

Momma Fargo and I were multi-mint-chocolate orgasmic that night.

This Is How We Roll

We made our last six dozen tamales yesterday. Since we had a lot of the pork left, we started again (last batch this season, I swear!).  Deejo and Junior didn't get any of the previous batch because those were destined to be Christmas presents. Poor Junior was stuck at work, so he didn't get any fresh-out-of-the-pot tamales, but we froze a dozen for him to enjoy later.

We didn't even bother with plates when the tamales came out of the pot. Nope, we just grabbed a handful of forks and passed them around and dove in. Love Ashinator's photo bomb, but when we were done with our "afternoon snack", we all felt like that.

Cheesy Pictures

I normally wouldn't take up two days' worth of posts for one subject, but we got such cool pictures that I had to share them.  And I'm still completely amazed at how easy the whole project was.

We started off by breaking down two heads of garlic into individual cloves...

Then it was a family effort to peel all of the cloves...

Asset ended up chewing on her clove, so we left that one out of this beautiful bowl...

RockCrawlinChef put them in a pan of vegetable oil and set them on the stove to simmer and roast...

We opened our big block of curd...

Got our ice bath ready for the completed bococini (also very handy for cooling off burning hands - the gloves only protect from so much heat)...

We broke down the curd from the big block to little manageable curd and mixed in some coarse salt...

Added some hot water and began working the curds...

And if, say Nebalee GunDiva someone was to screw up, it was easy enough to pull the curd out of the hot water, pack it onto a plate, strain the water and have another go at it...

A quick check on the roasting garlic...

Finally, the curd begins to cook in the scalding water (along with our fingers) and becomes workable cheese...

Pulling the cheese is a lot like pulling taffy...

A small bit of cheese is squeezed and twisted off of the cheese to form the bococini...

And then it's immediately dumped in the ice bath to help firm it up...



Our not-so-perfectly-round bococinis all nestled in a zip-lock to await their final packaging...

The garlic's all roasted and ready to be strained...



We poured the oil, sans garlic, back into the jug with the other oil so the flavor could infuse throughout and let it sit for a few hours.  The cheese got packed in water in the fridge to chill and finish firming up.

To package them as gifts, I put three in each jar...



Added the roasted garlic and thyme...



And a pinch of red pepper flakes...

Added the garlic-infused oil...

Capped them and voila! Christmas gifts for my co-workers...

I *Can* Cook

Though to hear my kids tell, not well.  Whatever.  They wouldn't eat anything but macaroni and cheese and Ramen noodles anyway.

When Mrs Mom and her husband and the BrownEyed Cowgirls visited last weekend, I stole RCC's chicken parmesean recipe and attempted it all by my lonesome.  Lest you all say you don't believe it, here is the photographic evidence.

Okay, so I'm not a food photographer; it doesn't look as good as it tasted.  I surprised even myself pulling this off.  I told RCC over and over again not to worry about it, I couldn't screw it up too badly (even though I didn't truly believe that I could do it without screwing up).  You know the phrase, "fake it 'til you make it"?  Yeah, that's exactly what I did.

I've always made RCC make this before, but since he taught me how to do it, I can now do it whenever I feel like it!