The Weather Outside is Frightful

The snow is really coming down out there.  For the first time in his young life, Little Man is having a Snow Day.  No School!!!

Perhaps it's a cliche, but traditions sometime weather the storm for a reason.  When one bakes cookies while it's snowing outside, the house gets even cozier.  The air smells like vanilla, sugar, butter and yummy-ness.

Martha Stewart's incredible team at Everyday Food has come up with this fantastic idea for holiday cookies.  Make your favorite sugar cookie dough recipe, separate the dough and dye each kind a different color.  Roll out the "main" dough into a sheet, add different colored dough on top (with dots, stripes, or whatever you'd like).  Roll again, use cookie cutters, and voila!  For some reason, this exact methodology is not posted on the Everyday Food website even though it was featured in their printed magazine (the last printed issue that's ever going to be published, apparently).  

Happy Baking and Happy Holidays!

It's Never Too Cold For Gelato

Many, many choices...

 In a mind-boggling tangle of chain restaurants and megastores at Colorado Springs' University Village (Panera, Chipotle, BJ's, Costco, Target, Loews, Kohl's, etc.) lies an unassuming gelato shop called Glacier.  This place has the ability to get me to eat dessert many more times than I normally would.  I think about stopping here every single time I go to Costco.  I don't, but I do often visit because I don't want these Boulder folks to regret opening up a Colorado Springs location.

It's so special that I feed this to my kids often, too!  I hate to sugar up the little ones, but this is just so darn tasty.  How could I deny my family the wonderful flavors of Nutella, Pistachio, Straciatella, Lemon Poppy Seed, Bittersweet Valrohna Chocolate, Hazelnut, Coffee, Colorado Peach, Pumpkin, Sweet Potato Pie, Vanilla Bean, or Caramel?

Glacier also sells pints to go which are reasonably priced at $3.99 each.  Enormous gelato and cookie sandwiches are $6.50.  They also have coffee drinks, too, although these are a bit weak for my taste.  But if you're into lots of milk and syrup and little espresso or coffee, then these hot numbers are for you.

If you stick with the ice cream or gelato, you will not be sorry.  It's worth a trip even when it's almost winter in the Rockies.

Slow and Easy Wins the Race

I did it!  I finally broke down and bought a slow cooker!  Then I checked out a bunch of cookbooks and found, much to my chagrin, that this is NOT one-pot cooking.  In fact, you dirty a lot more pots and pans, because you end up sauteeing everything first, then putting it all into the slow-cooker, then sometimes even sauteeing it all AGAIN!  So why do it?

Well, it is nice to be able to have a warm meal ready and waiting for you when you'd like it.  Sometimes you don't want to cook during that hour right before dinner.  And maybe your family has a particular weakness for very tender meat.

This recipe dirties one pot/pan (I traditionally use one of those Le Creuset dutch ovens for all my pre-slow-cooker cooking), one baking sheet, and then the slow cooker.  You have to cook the stuff again after the slow-cooker part, but I just used the same pan again.  If you line the baking sheet with parchment paper, then the baking sheet doesn't get too messy.  This dinner was a huge hit with everyone in the family and I got 2 dinners out of it!

slow -cooked teriyaki chicken - art of the slow cooker, by andrew schloss

1 T vegetable oil

4 lb. boneless, skinless chicken thighs (about 8), bone-in (or you can mix thighs and drumsticks)

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 T finely grated gingerroot

1/4 cup plus 1 1/2 T water

1/3 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup sherry or apple juice

1 T rice wine vinegar

2 T dark molasses

3 T honey

2 t cornstarch

1 t dark sesame oil

2 scallions, trimmed and cut into thin slices

heat the oil in a large skillet over high heat. brown the chicken thighs in batches on both sides, about 3 minutes per side, then transfer to a 5 - 6 quart slow cooker. 

add the garlic and ginger to the skillet and cook over med-high heat until aromatic, about 30 seconds. add the 1/4 cup of water and scrape up any browned bits stuck to the bottom of the skillet. add the soy sauce, sherry/apple juice, rice wine vinegar, molasses, and honey and stir to blend. pour over the chicken, cover the cooker, and cook on high for 2 -3 hours, until the chicken is cooked through. 

preheat the broiler to high.  remove the chicken to a rimmed baking tray lined with parchment paper and broil for 2 minutes on each side.  while the chicken is broiling, pour the liquid from the cooker into a skillet. bring to a boil over med-high heat. dissolve the cornstarch in the 1 1/2 T of water, add to the sauce in the skillet, and stir until the sauce is lightly thickened, about 1 minute. arrange the chicken on a platter and spoon the sauce over top. drizzle with sesame oil, and sprinkle with the scallions. 

Pumpkin Fun

Little Man has a near-Halloween birthday, so we tend to make a lot out of autumn-themed festivities.  One such activity is the carving of the Jack O Lantern.  This year I think we're still going with insect-themed luminaries.  We will unveil those soon along with a Pumpkin Gelato recipe that Major Obvious is making this afternoon.  In the meantime, here are some of our previous pumpkins and a link to the World Wildlife Federation's stencil page (the source of our butterfly jack o lantern this year).

Happy Carving!

Lunchbox Treats - Pound Cake

Is lunch complete without something sweet?  No.

Original Pound Cake - King Arthur Flour 

Ingredients:

2 cups (4 sticks) butter
2 to 2 1/4 cups granulated sugar
8 extra large or 9 large eggs
4 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
3 tablespoons brandy or sherry
2 teaspoons vanilla, almond or other flavoring

Directions:

To lighten the cake, separate the eggs before you begin. After creaming the butter and adding the sugar, beat in just the egg yolks. Beat the whites separately until they form stiff peaks, and fold them in after all the other ingredients have been combined.

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

In a large bowl, cream the butter until very light. Add the sugar gradually and then the eggs, one by one, and continue beating until the mixture is very light and fluffy. (An electric mixer can be most helpful and effective here.)

When you cream butter, it may seem at the beginning as if you're just mashing it flat. But if you persevere, you'll begin to see it get "fluffy." What you're really doing is adding air. When you beat the butter with sugar, it becomes even fluffier, evidence of more air. And when the eggs are beaten in, the fluffiness is at its peak. That's why this part of the mixing is so important. The more air bubbles you can beat in at this stage, the more air bubbles there are to expand in the heat of the oven. Baking powder or soda can do part of the work of leavening, but the more air bubbles you can get into a batter manually, the finer and lighter the texture of the finished cake.

In a separate bowl, blend together the flour, baking powder and salt.

Pour the milk into a third small bowl, mix the brandy and vanilla, or whatever flavoring you're partial to.

Alternately add the wet and dry ingredients to the butter/sugar/egg mixture. Pour into a lightly greased tube pan, or two 5 x 9-inch bread pans, and bake for about 1 hour or until the top surface of the cake springs back when you press on it gently with your fingers.

Dirty Dozen

Ok, ok, we get it.  We're supposed to buy organic everything.  We're supposed to buy locally-sourced everything.  But that's exhausting and food is supposed to be FUN.

So is there a crib sheet that tells you when you're really supposed to buy organic?  Thankfully, there is!  More importantly, if you want to buy non-organic fruit or veggies, this list will tell you where you can take some shortcuts if you can't find organic or if your wallet just can't handle the prices. 

Environmental Working Group has published a list of produce that tells you what produce you really should buy organic and which ones aren't so pesticide-ridden, even if they aren't organically-grown.  You can download the guide here and they even have it in app form if you want to just download it to your smartphone.  If you want the app, just type in "dirty dozen" in the App Store.

For those of you who cannot be bothered to click on hyperlinks and want to end the suspense right now, here are the 12 foods that you should buy organic:

Apples
Celery
Cherries
Grapes
Lettuce
Nectarines
Peaches
Strawberries
Spinach
Cucumbers
Blueberries - domestic
Potatoes

Naturally, I was horrified to discover that foods that I buy for my family all of the time (apples, peaches, bell peppers, blueberries) I often buy non-organic.  Whoops!  Oh well, time to attempt improvement and just move forward.

Aspen Eats

We've recently moved to Colorado Springs!  Major Obvious had Labor Day off, so we headed to Aspen for a family getaway.  When asked, "What are you going to do in Aspen in the off-season," our response was an emphatic, "EAT!"

Yogurt parfait at BB's Kitchen

And wow, did we eat.  We loved breakfast at BB's Kitchen, where Little Man dove into a yogurt parfait, "This is delicious!"  Sweet Pea had a Belgian waffle with fresh berries, Major Obvious had some kick-ass Huevos Rancheros, and I had the decadent and toothsome Lobster Eggs Benedict.  Mmmm, that Benedict was really something.  There were homemade English muffins, huge pieces of tender lobster, loads of asparagus spears, and a perfect amount of dreamy Hollandaise.  Can you tell that I miss it?

A great lunch can be had at Ajax Tavern, which is located at the gondola base of Aspen Mountain.  Kids can have white cheddar pasta or enormous cheeseburgers while grown ups partake in regular or little plates.  Some fun little plates include lamb short ribs or truffle oil fries (those fries, incidentally, do NOT come on a little plate, but in an enormous cone).  I can heartily recommend the Lobster Roll, which I shamelessly had only hours after my Lobster Eggs Benedict.

Dinnertime is well-spent at Rustique, the country French bistro that Jacques Pepin supposedly visits when in Aspen.  (I suspect that he hangs out in the kitchen and makes little things with the chef instead of actually just eating there like a mere mortal).  The menu at this cozy place has great classics like frog legs (Little Man's favorite), escargot, cheese souffles, artichoke gratin, and mussels.  After eating such delicacies, we barely had any room in our stomachs, but manned up for the super-tasty homemade ice cream and sorbet.  With one of the best wine lists in Aspen and tempting tidbits such as warm, crusty bread and foie gras, it's a miracle we made it out of there alive.  The wait staff is extremely friendly and attentive.  They are ready with answers to questions or will enthusiastically cheer you on as you crazily order the entire menu.  They also have a lot of information about the area and will point you towards great sandwich venues, places for kids to have a great time, etc.