Rainy Day S'mores (or s'mores for when Daddy is at work)

If I had to pick two things that made me think of summer, it would be hot dogs and s'mores.

I know, I'm a walking cliche, but that's okay. After a long, long, long day of shopping and fruitless cleaning and cooking and yet more fruitless cleaning, the marshmallows were staring me down. I actually hate marshmallows, unless they are covered in graham crackers and melted chocolate, and have achieved the golden puffy runny toasted goodness.

At any rate, I wanted s'mores, and having fixed Impossible Cheeseburger Pie, only with homemade biscuit mix, I did NOT want to fire up the grill and waste the charcoal on thirty seconds worth of toasting. No, sirree, bob. That would be ridiculous.

So, I googled inside s'mores, and found that ask.com recommended heating the marshmallows on the graham cracker for four minutes at 300. I could not see this toasting the marshmallow, only melting it. The caramelization of the marshmallow is sacrosanct. It must brown. It must, or it is not a s'more, it's just marshmallow goo that ruined a perfectly good piece of chocolate. (My intense hatred of melted and not toasted marshmallow means that microwave s'mores are NOT an option.)

Here's how I did it, so the marshmallow wasn't a total loss:

Preheat oven to 300.
Line cookie sheet with foil, to minimize scraping of marshmallow goo.
Place four graham cracker halves on sheet, top with one large marshmallow.
Place in hot oven for one minute, but put 6 inches below the broiler.
After one minute, turn broiler on. Quickly break a Hershey bar in four pieces, and place one on the four other graham halves. Remove from oven when you smell toasted marshmallow.

Try to get a picture of the gorgeous, perfectly toasted marshmallow-y goodness before children descend on you like locusts.

Another great tropical traditions product!

I'm sitting in a hotel room, down at Wildwood, New Jersey. The baby crashed, hard, at 8 pm last night after a LONG afternoon of playing and walking on the boardwalk. So, she made up for her early bed time by getting up at 4 am. The sun is peaking over the horizon, now as I'm typing this, and we are going to get out again and see what trouble we can get into. But first, we are having the coconut, banana and chocolate chip loaf I made before we left with the HUGE bucket of coconut chips tropical traditions sent me.

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I'm not going to detail out the recipe right here, right now, as my vision is blurry from lack of sleep, but it's a pretty simple idea.

Add two cups of chocolate chips and two cups of delicious Tropical Traditions coconut chips to your fave banana bread recipe. Divide into pans (One more pan than the original recipe calls for) and bake.

Yummy yum yum. It's so good! Yes, I am cheap enough that I baked breakfast bread to take with us so that we didn't have to buy breakfast. It works.

I know you are just DYING to know where to get these thick cut, organic, delicious coconut chips, right? Well, you got to the tropical traditions website, of course! The course coconut chips would really be wonderful in granola. I think I'll make some when we get home- but for right now, Tropical Traditions is offering one lucky reader a huge two pound bucket of coconut chips for a giveaway!

Woohoo! How are you going to win this?

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You must be 18 or older, resident of the US to win. Giveaway ends 5/20/11. I have to be able to get a hold of you, so leave me some method of communication, please!



Disclaimer: I received a free product to review, and I only recommend products I like. I was under no obligation to write anything.

Well, it's apparent I have NO class.

It's not just the fact that I've taken to randomly stalking Dear Crissy in the hopes of winning the standmixer that I've wanted since I was born, but it's now completely and totally apparent that I have no taste in food, either.

Which really sucks, because I imagine myself a novice foodie.

I have to say something, though. Four year old cheddar is NOT a treat. It's like eating expensive sour feet. It's crumbly and bitter and it really does taste old.

I'd rather have the Wegmans extra sharp Vermont. That's right. The generic. The stuff that's about three bucks a pound. It's creamy, it has just the right bite, and would you know, I don't have budget guilt about eating it.

Unlike the expensive treat we had last night.

SO not worth the money. Not even a little bit. Eight solid dollars a pound for cheddar that's older than at least two of my children, and I regretted every crumbly, funky bite.

Lesson learned, I think. Until next time.

Pancaking

Despite my firm belief in NEVER using baby talk with your children, I still have a nasty habit of inventing words. Or turning nouns into verbs, depending on the situation.

"Let's go pancaking" used to mean a trip to the diner, but as each mouth in the house gets older, that bill gets higher and higher. Plus, now everyone knows my mother works there, so I'm afraid someone's going to spit in my food. Ok, not really, but they do stare at me a lot. It's uncomfortable to eat when people you don't know are looking at you funny. I'm hoping they think, "man, that apple fell FAR from that tree."

One can hope.

But anyway, any more when we pancake, (yes, it's a verb now) it involves a thick stack of homemade pancakes with whole wheat flour, eggs, a splash of oil and sugar, and a heavy dash of organic vanilla.

My recipe goes (something) like this...

1 C white lily flour
1 C white whole wheat flour
3 T sugar
1 t salt
2t baking powder
whisk together

add in

2 eggs
1 C milk
1 T vanilla
2 T fat (melted butter or veggie oil)

Mix. It's really thick, and here's when it gets iffy...I add milk until it's the consistency I like. I like pancake batter to be fairly thin, and if pushed, I'd say another 3/4 C to a full cup of milk.

Preheat an electric griddle to 350. If you don't have one of these, get one. Tomorrow. Easily one of the best presents I've ever received, you can cook anywhere from three to five pancakes at the same time, and you all eat together. It's truly amazing.

I add 2 T of oil to the griddle and then swirl a tablespoon of real butter across the top. The aroma of the butter melting into the oil is lovely, the oil helps the butter not burn and smoke.

ladle each pancake on to the griddle and allow to cook until there are bubbles all the way in the center of each cake, flip, and place a small pat of butter on the top of each. Cook another minute, allowing the butter to melt in...

Stack, and repeat with the rest of batter. Cook the whole batch of batter, pancakes are easy to reheat on hectic mornings. Just let them cool in a row and tuck them into a freezer bag.

Vichyssoise and Bad Parenting

Today, I'm a bad mom.

 It's been one of those weeks. I came down with a horrible stomach bug on Saturday. (I won't horrify you with the details). Suffice it to say, three days later and I still feel like Mr. Lovinangels somehow managed to run me over with his dying Bronco. I've managed with the kids, in some bizarre fugue state, my shiny floors covered in chalk and tiny foot prints, my children in varying states of disarray.

Fortunately, it's nice out, so they think that this has been the best weekend EVER. Miss TweenAngel had a half day today, and the kids spent the afternoon enjoying the last official golden day of summer buried in the miniature tent fortress daddy spent yesterday building, and they are happier than pigs in, well, you know.

I misjudged the amount of food we had on hand.

This is never good.

 At the end of searching through the cupboards, and a considerable amount of cursing, (remember, the kids were outside)  in a vain attempt to locate the package of chicken I knew we had, we wound up to doing meatless Monday.

Now, I have guilt.

Why, I'm not sure.  I think it may have something to do with the fact that we just ate the whitest supper in the history of the world. I'm hardwired to believe that white=bad. It may also be that I didn't CHOOSE to eat vegetarian tonight, I was forced to because of poor planning. That may be it. Or it may be because I just fed my kids potato soup for dinner.

Potatoes=Bad. Yummy, but pathetically lacking in nutrition. Now, granted, the soup was phenomenal, really gorgeous, and loaded with veggies other than potatoes, pureed to a fabulous silky smoothness and topped with cream. The little buggers were in heaven.

I served it with homemade, crusty dinner rolls, also made with white flour, from leftover dough from my cancelled Saturday night dinner.

 I'm going to parental nutritional hell. To make it worse, and to cover my poor planning, I've taken to calling the soup by it's French name.

Vichyssoise. Should mean fattening empty calories disguised as soup.

Do you think the kids will be mad when I nix dessert in favor of sliced raw veggies?

And I digress...What's for dinner?

One day, many years ago, when Mr. Lovinangels and I were young, and broke, and hungry, I went into the kitchen to see about some food. I had exactly five things in my refrigerator- italian sausage, cheddar cheese, milk, potatoes, and beer.
Did someone say soup?

The recipe has morphed, time and time again, as we quickly learned never to be THAT broke, and that planning meals is a positive thing. This is the final product, the one I send to potlucks, etc.
I have to say, this is the one thing my family has asked for over and over. It's not a fussy recipe, either, as long as you follow the basic theory. Of course, you could do it without the sausage, or even the beer, but why would you want to?

4 tbsp butter or oil
1/2 C flour
1 capful of cajun seasoning.
1 lb bulk sausage, or remove sausage from casings.
half a bag of hash browns o' brian
1 quart of chicken broth
1 quart of water
1 bottle good quality dark beer (if you are insisting upon using light, please find a different recipe)
1 good couple of glugs of milk.
half a pound of nice, white, sharp cheddar, shredded.

Melt the butter or heat the oil in the soup pot, add sausage, breaking up with wooden spoon, until cooked. Add flour and continue stirring, until a blonde roux has formed around the sausage.

Shut off the heat if you have a gas stove, and pour in the beer, stirring constantly. Turn heat back on and stir, stir, stir, until the beer begins to thicken.
add the hash browns, seasoning, stock, and as much of the water as you need to just cover the hashbrowns, then pour in the milk, just enough to color it creamy. Continue stirring until it's nice and thick, and taste. Season with salt and pepper and lower heat, to a nice simmer. Now, begin adding the cheese, slowly, one handful at a time, allowing each handful to melt almost completely before adding the next. Taste after the third handful, and adjust seasonings. You can add all the cheese or a portion, and then let it set for a couple of minutes so you don't burn the roof of your mouth off.
Serve with more shredded cheese to pass.