blog #498 >> White Chocolate Strawberry Cookies

Look! I did something other than play Minecraft!
I made this delicious cookies!
I found the recipe here at the Picky Palate blog.
See, this is why I LOVE Pintrest!
Cheers!
T

blog #495 >> Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year!

Well as usual, I've been extraordinarily busy this Christmas season, and I'm just now finding time to start blogging again. The decorations are all boxed up, waiting to be carried down to the basement, and the new year extreme cleaning regime has commenced! Why make a resolution to do something later, when it can be done now! Therefore I have been a whirlwind of dusters, rags, mops, brooms, and sponges all day! Right now the place is in that complete state of disorder and chaos that comes before the neat tidy organization, when everything is cleaned and cleared out. So, I thought this would be the perfect time to settle down for the night, and catch up on the little blog.

There have been so many things I'd like to post pictures of this month, but unfortunately, remembering to take pictures of the neat things I've made isn't always my forté. Normally, I forget. But here's a quick recap of at least a couple of the best.

For Christmas this year my family had the food theme of "Traditional British Christmas." I love that I come from a family of great cooks, and when we pool together, we can really pull off some awesome parties. Now Britain isn't exactly known for there delicious cuisine, but I have to say, everything we made was positively AMAZING! And we should all be very proud of the spread we were able to dress our table with.
Below is a copy of our Christmas Eve menu:

Appetizers:
Cheesy Pudding
Real Eggnog
Wassail
Shortbread
Mince Meat and Cherry Tarts
Brandy Snaps
Stuffed Tomatoes
Stuffed Mushrooms
Scones with Lemon Curd

Dinner:
Roasted Brussel Sprouts with Bacon
Cottage Pie
Bangers and Mash (Sausages and Mashed Potatoes)
Brown Sugar Ham
Goose
Bread Sauce

Dessert:
Flaming Figgy Pudding
Turkish Delight
Assorted Cookies
Chestnuts

(We even had crackers!)

The flaming pudding was especially fun, and we're all in agreement that we want more flaming desserts next year, just maybe not a figgy pudding.

Here are my ingredients for the flaming pudding. The ingredients needed to rest overnight.

Then you tie them up like so, and let them steam for eight hours. After that, they need to season for at least five weeks. They're quite good if you like raisins. Raisins are definitely the dominate flavor.

(Image below from Vintage Ads.)

And here's a shot of my sister's homemade eggnog. It's so much better than the stuff you buy at the store!

And here are a few of the pictures my three year old niece Ada took with my camera. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos myself, so I have over 50 pictures of Christmas that look like this, and none that are very discernible. But honestly, this is a pretty accurate depiction of what Christmas looks like in the eyes of a three-year-old. Stella, (another little niece) was gathering wrapping paper into piles, and jumping into them like a heaping mound of leaves.

Best Wishes and A Happy New Year!
T

blog #488 >> Homemade Catsup

This weekend my mom gave me a bunch of tomatoes from her garden to make homemade catsup with. I haven't had homemade catsup since I was a little girl, but I've found that I still really love the stuff. It hardly even tastes like regular catsup, it's like a whole different condiment.
This batch turned out fantastic, even though it made twice as much as it was suppose to. (I'm still not sure why.) I was worried that I didn't boil it down enough, but it's only slightly thinner than regular catsup, and it's perfect for dipping. So I suppose I shouldn't worry about it. Last night I made home-fries and a corndog just so I'd have something to eat catsup with. It was not a disappointment.


I also made a batch of my favorite pickled carrots, and I threw the turnips into a shepherd's pie. I tired preserving the eggplant in olive oil. We have so much eggplant this year! But I've never tried it before so I'm hoping for the best. And those are the sunflowers I got from the little flower stand when I was out and about this weekend. They are quite lovely, but I wish they didn't make me sneeze.
Cheers,
T

blog #487 >> Bella Beach

Yes, I know... I'm very late in getting these up, and I've been an extremely lazy blogger. As always, I forgot to take pictures on my vacation. (To be precise, I took four!) And I was waiting for my family members to post their pictures first... so I could go and steal them! (I bet you're glad you watermarked your photos now Carrie!) Now that I think about it, I haven't posted a single blog since I've been back from the beach. There's always that point in which I get so far behind, it's hard to get caught up. I imagine this will be the first of many blog updates to come within the next week.
Anyhow, here are a few pictures of our trip to the beach. My grandma rented a beach house for a week so my entire family could spend some time at the coast. The weather was beautiful and I wish I could have stayed longer.




Some pretty rocks I found, because I'm always picking up pretty rocks.
The driftwood graveyard at the end of the beach.

Cool tree growing over cliff-cave.

Sinking in the mire.

A crab we caught, only we had to let him go.

Tangle of sea cucumbers.

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For a bonus post, I have Scotch Eggs: a hard boiled egg wrapped in sausage, rolled with bread crumbs. They're quite delicious, (I skipped the bread crumbs, but I'll add them next time.) I served mine with Irish Soda Bread. I realize, that's not a culturally proper combination, a bit like mixing Sweet n' Sour Chicken with Sushi, but they do taste great together, so I hope it will be overlooked.
Enjoy!
T

blog #484 >> Dilly Beans

Earlier this week I made a batch of dilly beans with the green beans from my parents' garden. I LOVE dilly beans, but this batch got all shrivelly. I think I might have over processed them. I suppose they'll taste alright though. I can't wait to open a jar.

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And as a bonus post, I've been working at taking pictures with my telescope this summer, so hopefully I'll have some great telescope pictures to post soon. I'm still trying to master the manual focus on my camera.



Cheers!
T

blog #479 >> Bacon!

(Image from Plan 59)

I did not intend to write a bacon post today. But it was meant to be. This morning I woke up and went to bacon heaven! There are several reasons why I will never be a vegetarian. Steak is reason #1 and bacon is reason #2. You see when you grow up raising your own livestock for meat, (we raised turkeys) there's never any shock about what you're actually eating. You're very close to your food, and that's okay. You become used to the fact that animals are edible, and not only edible, but quite delicious as well.

Here we have Chester and Bacon. A few months ago my brother and sister-in-law raised a couple of pigs and I bought 1/6 of a share. Now the pork is ready and my little freezer is full to the brim with meat. I have pork chops, pork shoulder steaks, ham hocks, bacon, and all kinds of pork!



This morning I tried the bacon for the first time, and WOW! It's some of the best bacon I've ever had! With its brown sugar glaze, this thick sliced bacon is like eating a smoky, bacon-y steak. Chester turned into some fine pork!

(bacon cookbook recipes here.)
(image found here.)

blog #478 >> A Really Big Tongue

This weekend I embarked on a culinary adventure. I tried cooking tongue aka lengua.

I recently got "Grandma's Wartime Kitchen" from the library, and it ended up being a really fascinating book. I've enjoyed it quite a bit. Not all of its recipes are practical for today (most are), but it does have authentic recipes which are really interesting. I love reading the comments and introductions they give for each section. It talks about the rationing and the meat shortages during WWII and that everyone ate lots of beef livers, hearts and tongues. (It also has... a recipe of sugarless cake, and butterless butter.) Anyhow, I wanted to try a couple of the recipes, and the more research I did about tongue, the better and better it sounded. I knew Saturday would be my only chance for awhile to get out to White's Country Meats, so I picked one up.

The first thing I thought when I saw that tongue was, "Whoa! That thing is HUGE!" I had no idea beef tongues were that large! It's 13" long! That's going to make a lot of taco filling, sandwich filling, etc. etc. etc. which is good, because I'm still not sure what I'm going to make with it. I think I'm going to try several different things. Today, I made tongue tacos. Here are some of the recipes I've been looking at. I love reading the comments.
Beef Tacos de Lengua at Simply Recipes
Tongue and Mustard Sandwiches at All Recipes
Tacos de Lengua by the Hungry Texan
Boiled Tongue at All Recipes

For my tacos I kept it really simple. I just fried the cubed tongue with a little butter with taco seasoning and served it with grated cheese and greens. It turned out remarkably delicious! It tastes a lot like roast, a really tender roast.


After washing and scrubbing the tongue.

Boiling the tongue for 4 hours with onion, garlic, celery, bay leaves, pepper corns, salt, and spices.

Pealing the tongue.

Chopping the tongue.

The final product! Tongue tacos!
T

blog #475 >> Summery Stuff

Here's a blog post devoted to catching up on the things I've gotten behind on.

Today, I finally got a chance to make pickled garlic with the giant elephant garlic head one of my clients, R/K Polka Band, brought in for us at work. I love that couple. They are so sweet. They say they have 18, 50 foot rows and they sell them at the farmer's market and local produce stands. They said they had one head of garlic that weighed 3 lbs! They also offered us a garlic chocolate chip cookie recipe... but I think I'd want to try one before I made a whole batch.

Looking back, I should have saved a clove for garlic bread.

And I had quite a bit of leftover brine, so I thought I'd try making some pickled carrots too.

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And here is the playdough I made for Ada for her birthday. It turned out fantastic and it was a huge hit. I got the recipe here. I made four half batches and it still made a lot!

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My dad also got out his theater pop corn popper and made pop corn for everyone on the 4th of July. It was such a treat! He needs to get it out more often, plus it's a lovely old popper.

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Charlie, my sister's 5 year old son, also had a birthday on the 4th of July. He had a super hero party, and as you can see, it was extremely exciting. She made all the kids super hero costumes that were super awesome! You can buy them here on her etsy store: etsy.com/shop/BabyDear. You can get the party set or individual sets. Your kids will be fighting crime and flying around the house before you know it.





Cheers!
T