A Blog Through the Fog

Okay, folks. You'll have to bear with me this morning. I'm trying to get this done before my tiny tornado wakens. It's early, and I'm still on my first cup of my instant-human juice, so I may not make too much sense. I've already deleted my first attempt at this. This is exactly why, when they were babies, Richard had early morning "duty" with the kids, and I always stayed up late with them. We complement each other well that way. 

Another way we complement each other is that he's an organizer, and someone who always has to be doing something helpful. Give him a job and he feels useful. He's very much like his mom that way. So, he serves as my sous chef when he can. He gathers all my ingredients. Or to be fancy, my mise en place. Can you tell I like watching reality cooking shows? Oh yeah...I've already made sure that "Top Chef: New Orleans" is set to record next month. And more than once, Richard and I have contemplated having him send my name in to Food Network telling them I'm a horrible cook and should be on "Worst Cooks in America." Have you seen that show? They go from barely boiling water to cooking things like duck confit! Holy duck fat, Batman!

Anyway, the point is, I have help in the kitchen. Normally. This week, the food has been made either late at night, or before Richard comes home. So, no help! He has truly spoiled me.

First up we have breakfast. I promised Richard I'd make a savory breakfast. After the awesome cinnamon rolls and sticky buns, we'd had enough sweet breakfasts to last a while. I made this Sunday night to have Monday morning and throughout the week. I turned to a recipe in my torn-out magazine pages I'd had for a while, Melissa d'Arabian's Potato-Bacon Torte. As with a lot of my recipes, I gave this one a tweak. Quite a tweak, actually. I can't exactly afford Gruyere, so I subbed in Swiss. And, it only called for 1/4 cup. Being a turophile (fancy word for "cheese lover"), I piled on the cheese. If you're not as excited as I was to make your own crust, you can buy ready-made crust at the store, and you'll be perfectly fine. I also used red potatoes, as that's what I had on hand. The only thing about this I didn't like was my own fault. I didn't roll out the bottom crust enough, so it was way too thick.

I'm pretty proud of the slicing job I did. This is
probably one of the prettiest presentations
I've done in a while.

While this was definitely tasty, there are some changes I'll make for next time: 
1) Make the cheese half Swiss, half cheddar. I think this will give it more of a cheesy heartiness. We've been shredding some over our slices before heating them up each morning, and it's made a big difference. 2) More bacon! Dividing four slices between the two potato layers makes it a game of "Find the bacon."


Next up was Monday night's dinner. Lemon-herb roasted chicken. These past few years I've been making my mom's to-die-for roasted chicken, using a mix of softened butter, minced garlic & a local "Rooster Rub" garnered from Coates Produce at the WNC Farmer's Market (we always buy from them - they rock!). I take that & rub it all on and in the chicken. Well, I was wanting to try something new, so I scoured Pinterest for ideas. I found a few, then took some of those ideas and made my own. Here goes:

Oil "rub" (make this twice, each in its own bowl):

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp lemon pepper
1 Tbsp minced garlic
1 Tbsp Italian seasoning

1 whole chicken
1 lemon, thinly sliced

Heat oven to 425 degrees. 

Add whatever veggies you like. I added about 3 red potatoes and some carrot chips. Other recipes had celery and different root veggies. 

Place the chicken in whatever vessel you normally use (I use a Pampered Chef stoneware baker). Make the oil rubs. With one, slather the chicken, in and out, making sure to pour some under the skin. Place your veggies in a bowl or zip top bag, along with the second oil rub. Mix well. Add veggies to the pan. Place lemon slices both on AND inside the chicken. 

Cook for half an hour, then reduce oven temperature to 350 and cook for an hour. 

My oven cooks unevenly, and I turned it too late.
So it looks like a girl who fell asleep while tanning.

This was definitely a success. One more roasted chicken recipe in my arsenal!


The next new blog-worthy recipe was last night's. Wednesdays are hectic once the afternoon hits. Yesterday was even more so, as Kiersten had early release and was home by 1. Wednesdays are church nights, so I had to have dinner ready to go by 5, eaten by 5:30. It also has to be package-able, just in case Richard can't make it home in time to eat it, and has to eat it while Kiersten is in choir practice. Keeping this in mind when planning our weeks-long menu, I put this recipe for Spicy Chicken Romano on the calendar. Man, was it tasty. I gotta tell ya, I'm really looking forward to the leftovers from this one. And there were plenty! We didn't have artichoke hearts, so those weren't added. Even though I'm not crazy about them, Richard loves them, and I would have added them for him. I also added an entire box of Barilla Plus Mulitgrain Farfalle. Doing this ensured we'd have plenty for leftovers. It also had us actually eating less than a serving of the meat.  Target didn't have andouille sausage (what they hey, Tar-zhay?), so I got Johnsonville turkey sausage. But you'd better believe I'm going to spice this baby up even more with andouille next time. Kiersten complained that it wasn't spicy enough.  Man, I love this kid. Can you tell I ate lots of Mexican food while I was pregnant with her?

Just look at all that creamy pasta goodness!
Lunch time can't get here quickly enough!

This weekend the kids and I are going to an apple orchard. You can just imagine all the goodies that will come from that trip! Then on Sunday I'll be making Parmesan-crusted pork loin and ravioli with prosciutto cream sauce. More on that next week!

Till then, stay hungry, my friends!

Inspiration from the Teacher's Lounge

Everyone likes freebies, right? Well, teachers are no exception. Put a freebie in the teacher's lounge, and it will get snapped up in a heartbeat. Food, books, magazines, even condiments have been placed on the "come and get it" table in almost every teachers' lounge I've seen.

This week's entry came from a freebie in the W. Henderson HS lounge: Southern Living Magazine. Someone graciously left the September 2012 issue on the table around November. I picked it up, enticed by all the caramel apple-themed recipes. With Thanksgiving being spent in Key West, I knew it would not be used during that holiday season, but I did know it would get used. 

Craving fall desserts, and after getting way too many apples at a produce stand, I knew anything pumpkin would be out of the question. I pored over my apple recipes and decided to pull this gem from that magazine: Caramel Apple Coffee Cake. The day I made this, Richard and I had a late afternoon "date" sans kids. It was heavenly. We trekked to Hickory Nut Gap Farm for their fresh pork sausage and some amazing apple cider, then headed to Biltmore Village. To read more about the weekend, check out my family blog.

This is kept refrigerated, but of course is
best when heated. The Farm Store sometimes
serves & sells it hot, by the cup, so you can drink
while you shop. It is my favorite non-coffee
fall (and winter) drink.

As usual, I got started on the cake after dinner. The prep work isn't that long. The most time was spent cracking pecans. The process took even longer once Nolan saw what I was doing and kept sneaking pieces out of my measuring cup.

My little pecan thief.

Once the shelling was done, I got to the actual mixing and baking part. First you soften the apples in a pan, then make streusel and caramel toppings. Then the cake batter. The batter is then poured into a springform pan, layered with apples, caramel and streusel, then baked 35 minutes; covered loosely with foil, then baked another half-hour. It cools in the pan on a rack for half an hour, then after removing the sides, cools another hour, at least. THIS is where all the time-suck happens. Maybe one of these days I'll actually finish a dessert we can eat the same day! Once it cools, another drizzle of caramel is added. This is what it looked like after the last step:

Apparently, the streusel topping is very thirsty, because when I looked at it this morning, all that caramel had seeped into it! No matter, it was still extraordinary. It's as if an apple crisp and a coffee cake had a baby. I've made a peach cobbler coffee cake that is similar, but this is much better. With the leftover caramel sauce, I made this caramel apple dip I found on Pinterest. It's divine. I have a feeling it will get eaten up quickly, even by my pickiest eaters.

We heated up our servings along with mugs of cider, and enjoyed it while Nolan was napping. It adds an extra layer of satisfaction when you can have a delectable dessert without children yelling.

Welcome, Fall!

Birthday Spectacular

Settle into your seats, guys. This is most likely going to be a long one. I feel like I have a hangover. A post-party hangover. What's even more interesting is that it wasn't really even a party. Kiersten's birthday was last Friday, and in my grand birthday-celebrating tradition, we made it a week-long event, complete with lots of baking and including her favorite menu items at dinner. I also tried my hand at a marbling/tie-dye technique on some stretched canvas to make a sign I knew she'd love. 

For her birthday breakfast, I made the sticky bun version of the cinnamon rolls I'd made for her first day of Kindergarten.

Look at all that caramel-pecan goodness!

Sticky Buns with Toasted Pecans

Caramel topping:

3/4 c packed brown sugar

1/4 c heavy cream

2 Tbsp light corn syrup

1/2 tsp table salt

 1 c chopped pecans, toasted (one of their magazines had a tip to actually "toast" them in the microwave for 1 minute - genius! I always burn mine in the oven!)

Prepare the cinnamon rolls all the way until you have sliced the dough logs into rolls to be put into the tray.

Sometime in the 2-hour rising period I made the caramel topping:

Boil brown sugar, cream, corn syrup, and salt in a saucepan over medium-low heat, 2 minutes. Pour caramel into prepared pan, then sprinkle pecans over caramel.

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

Once your rolls are ready, place over the caramel mixture. For presentation sake, leave a large space between rolls. I didn't, and they were pretty compact. We weren't looking for gorgeous presentation, though, so ours were tightly packed. Cover with a towel and let rise until puffy, about an hour; remove towel.

Bake rolls until browned, 30-35 minutes. Let rolls rest 5 minutes in the pan, then turn out onto your serving platter.

My mom took Kiersten (and the rest of us) out for her birthday dinner on her actual birthday. Thank goodness for that, because during Nolan's nap on her birthday, I made her cake, and between that and decorating the porch as a surprise for when she got home, I was exhausted. 

K had asked me if I could make zebra striped icing, but I told her I wasn't quite ready to tackle that task just yet. So I decided to surprise her with a marbled cake made to look like zebra stripes. I used the cake recipes from the Williams-Sonoma book Cupcakes for the batters. They had the consistency I needed for the effect I wanted. I had already made these flavors for my aunt's wedding cake last summer, so I knew they were good. I added Wilton black color gel to the chocolate cake batter. Unfortunately, I had gotten distracted at some point and forgot the butter!! Luckily, since it was marbled with the perfectly-made vanilla cake mix, it wasn't a complete disaster. I've determined now that I have to make the chocolate cake again to redeem myself.  I used the Wilton buttercream recipe with their Rose gel color for the icing. The effect of the cake did not disappoint.

I found the zebra print cake board at Walmart!

Birthday dinner #2 was made up of her favorite foods. Unfortunately, she had what we call a non-eating day. Non-eating days are where she doesn't eat foods she normally loves. It's frustrating, as I'm sure you parents can well understand. She asked for bacon-wrapped chicken. I had made it once after finding it on Pinterest, and we loved it. I also made corn on the cob and sweet potato fries. 

The birthday girl's plate.
Yeah, we went all-out with the zebra print.

Now for the craft project, a quote sign for her room. I knew the quote I was going to use ("All You Need is Love" - her all-time favorite song); I also knew that I wanted to use a cool painting technique. The big issue came about when I couldn't find my Cricut vinyl. If you've read my previous post, you know that wasn't really a shocker. So, I was on the hunt for both a painting technique AND a font to use to either hand paint or trace onto the canvas. After searching the 'net for a week, I found a technique AND a font. I wasn't thinking ahead to the blog, so I forgot to bookmark the video I used for inspiration. Basically, take acrylic paints in your desired colors and dilute them with equal parts water. Tape off the edges of the canvas so you have a lip to prevent paint from going over. You then pour the paint onto the canvas in sections and tilt the canvas to get the effect. I used an offset spatula to "push" the paint to the edge of the canvas, which is what was done in the video. Once the canvas was dry, I used the "Happy Days" font from my go-to font site, dafont.com, and printed out my song lyric. I cut it out and traced it onto the canvas, then painted it in using black paint, and then painted the edges of the canvas purple. Once the entire project was dry, I put on a layer of Mod Podge Matte. Her face when she saw it was pretty spectacular. Especially since she actually READ it herself. 

Now to find a spot to hang this!

Whew...Okay. Time to finish taking down all the zebra décor and make the house look like fall has descended upon us. That means a trip up to the attic. Fun part: in 3 weeks we're doing another week-long celebration for Richard. I think I need a nap now, just thinking about it. Maybe I need to hit up Starbucks for a PSL. Whaddya think?

Till next week, my friends!