Cheesy the Snowman

I was browsing the CRAFT zine blog the other day and came across this post with a cheeseball snowman and I couldn’t get it out of my head!  I knew I had to make one.  I made up my own cheeseball recipe instead of the pickle one she used in the post.  It’s hard to find a decent pickle in this country, and I’m not sure if I’ve ever even SEEN pickle relish here before!

My Version of a Cheeseball Snowman

• 3 blocks (200 grams) cream cheese +100 grams softened and whipped cream cheese, set aside
• 150 grams shredded cheese (I used a cheddar/swiss/something else that was probably Gouda mix)
• 50 grams bacon bits (or fry up your own bacon until it’s really crispy and crumble it up)
• 2 green onions, sliced finely
• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced You can add other various herbs and spices to get it to taste how you like, but the above ingredients are a good start.

Mix all ingredients (except whipped cream cheese) together and mold into one large ball and one small ball.  Refrigerate until firm.

Put the small ball on top of the larger ball, snowman style, and spread the softened cheese over the top until it looks smooth and pretty!

Now comes the fun part!  Use your imagination, but here’s what I did:

• Arms- pretzel sticks
• Eyes & Buttons- Olives
• Nose- Teeny Pickle
• Mouth- cherry tomato, seeded and sliced into a smile
• Scarf & Hat- long strip of carrot (use your veggie peeler) and small slice from the fat end of the carrot and a slightly larger chunk from the thin end

Check out Tasty Tuesday at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam for more yummy eats!

Menu Plan Monday- December 28, 2009

This is the last menu plan of the year! Everyone wonders where 2009 has gone to and I am no exception. It seems like when I was a kid a year lasted FOREVER. Now, time zips by so fast. If it's zipping by at this pace now, I'm probably going to get motion sickness from it when I'm 40! I have been SORTA menu planning but not posting it. I need to get back in the habit. If I ask Martijn what he wants for dinner he just says "I don't know, no one made a menu this week..." I think he's trying to hint at something, but it would be okay if he'd make a suggestion every now and then too!

Chicken in the Turbo- We'll probably do this twice since it's easy and the huge package of frozen chicken is too much for one meal. Served with something green and garlic rosemary potatoes!

Gourmet Night for our anniversary.

Pan Fried Paprika Pangasius- I had this recipe on a menu awhile back but didn't get to it. It still looks good, so hopefully I'll get to it this week.

Chili & Cornbread- I think I'm just going to wing this with some beans, tomatoes, little ground beef and taco seasoning. Unless you have an AMAZING chili recipe that you suggest I try instead.

Do you have anything delightfully delicious you plan on making this week?

P.S.  I’m trying Windows Live Writer out, so if you see strange happenings on my blog please forgive me.  This is supposed to be “easier” but I might just go back to my old ways if I hate it. 

Ugly Roasted Garlic and Onion Soup

The chef for this weeks FNCCC this week is Emeril Lagasse. There are more than 5000 of his recipes to choose from, and I think that 4999 of them either have prohibitively expensive ingredients or ingredients that I can't find here. That's not totally true, but most of the ones I thought looked good had one or two ingredients that were integral to the recipe that I wouldn't be able to get. I'm totally willing to do substitutions, but in most cases nothing I would've subbed would've stayed true to the recipe.

I finally found something that I thought I could handle- soup. What I didn't know was that it was ugly soup. Really ugly soup. There seems to be a reason that this soup didn't have a picture on the website. It's just that ugly. Tricky camera angles and editing have made it slightly less ugly, but I'm really not lying.

Ugly Roasted Garlic and Onion Soup
Recipe from "New New Orleans Cooking", by Emeril Lagasse and Jessie Tirsch, published by William and Morrow, 1993.

Ingredients

4 to 6 large red onions (3 1/2 pounds), quartered
Cloves from 2 large heads of garlic (about 1 cup), peeled
2 shallots (about 1/3 cup), peeled
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons Essence, recipe follows
6 cups chicken stock (I used water and veggie bullion)
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh sage leaves (I used about 1/2 tsp dried)
2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh thyme leaves (I used about 1/2 tsp dried)
3/4 teaspoon salt (skipped this, the bullion powder has enough salt and the reviews on foodnetwork.com indicated it didn't need it)
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup cream (I used evaporated milk to cut down on the calories a little)

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Combine the onions, garlic, and shallots in a roasting pan just large enough to hold them in a single layer. Add the olive oil and Essence and toss to coat. Roast until well browned, about 1 1/2 hours (1 1/2 hours would've left me with smoldering cinders in the bottom of the pan. I did 45 minutes and even then there was a lot of charring. If you want to roast the garlic and onions for 1 1/2 hours then drop the heat).

Remove the pan from the oven and set over 2 burners on medium-low heat . Add 2 cups of chicken stock, sage, thyme and salt. Cook for 10 minutes, scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to incorporate any of the caramelized bits from the bottom. (I have a flat top stove, so putting the roasting pan on the burners wouldn't work very well. Instead I poured 2 cups of boiling water over the top and scraped up all the good bits from the bottom of the pan. I then transfered it to a stock pot and did the 10 minutes of cooking there)

Transfer the mixture to a blender and puree until smooth, about 2 minutes (or use your magical wondrous stick blender).

Transfer the mixture to a large pot over medium-low heat (or not, depending on how you do things). Add remaining 4 cups chicken stock and balsamic vinegar, and stir to combine. Bring to a simmer and stir in cream. Serve with French bread.

Emeril's ESSENCE Creole Seasoning (also referred to as Bayou Blast):
* 2 1/2 tablespoons paprika
* 2 tablespoons salt
* 2 tablespoons garlic powder
* 1 tablespoon black pepper
* 1 tablespoon onion powder
* 1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
* 1 tablespoon dried oregano
* 1 tablespoon dried thyme

Combine all ingredients thoroughly.

Yield: 2/3 cup
(Put the rest it in a nice shaker jar)

The Verdict: This was way spicier than I had expected, but not in a bad way. I think if you left out or changed up some of the spices it'd make a really good base for some sort of beef stew.

Martijn thought it resembled Gulash the way it's being served in the Czech Republic and Hungary. He also said it's not ugly, but reminded him of the wonderful goodness that he got served during his holidays there.

Christmas Market in Aachen, Germany

On the 11th I went to a Christmas Market in Aachen (Germany) with one of my awesome friends here. Her parents are from Germany originally which was cool because she explained a lot of the "traditional" things to me that I might not have gotten otherwise. It was a blast, and now I'm going to spam you with pictures!

This is the big sign announcing the market. I mean, it's not like you could MISS the market, but I did like the giant cookies standing on the sides.

These are the roofs of some of the stalls in a TINY section of the market. This thing was huge I'm telling you!

We were right by a huge cathedral. I wish I would've snooped around it a little more and gotten some better pictures but I was distracted by all of the shiny Christmas things.

Here are a couple more with various stalls and people milling about.

Now for some of the goodies INSIDE the stalls!

Growing up we always had an awesome Christmas village. I don't have anything here, but I think I'm going to need to start my own small collection. It doesn't feel like Christmas without. There were some little cheapie pieces and also some pieces that were up into the several hundred euro range. I was drooling, but decided maybe I shouldn't blow our entire mortgage payment on a tiny house that you can't even live in!

There were gobs of ornament stalls. I liked this one because they had them all out in little bowls and they looked so pretty!

The candy stalls smelled SO good. I just wanted to hang a piece of cotton candy from my nose and smell it the rest of the day.

Martijn thinks I took this picture to torment him (he has this THING about roosters), but I thought the colors were fantastic.

I thought this little hedgehog was cool. His spikes are just little branches that have been cut off at an angle. Very clever.

This doily stand was amazing. They had these teeny little lace parasols and I was so tempted to buy one for one of my sock monkeys! I kept my wallet in my pocket though and continued on...

I really should've bought this! I could've used the witch and the cat in some sort of project I'm sure. It totally cracked me up. If I see one next year I'm snapping it up.

This wasn't actually in the market, but in a shop window nearby. I want a Christmas tree full of tiny knit sweaters, don't you?

Visit Unknown Mami for more Sundays in My City (or someone else's as the case may be).

Friday Fragments- December 18, 2009

Not much to this weeks fragments. Every week I say I'll write things down so I can remember them, and every week I don't do it. Anyhow, onto the fragments!

• I'm incredibly cross that our fairly young seldom driven car that had "nothing" (according to the garage) wrong with it in July suddenly had a €1200 service bill. I'm so not impressed with anything to do with cars here. I think it's a racket run by the mafia and I feel like going to school to be an auto mechanic to fight back. Maybe I should find out about the witness protection program here first.
• I had a blast in Germany last Friday. I'm working on editing my pictures and I'll probably post them on Sunday for "Sundays in My City" which I haven't participated in for way too long.
• I know that women complain about men being absolute babies when they're sick, but I must've found the exception to that rule. Martijn is sick enough that he stayed home from work yesterday (and that means he really feels awful because the man doesn't stay home sick). Instead of laying in bed and moaning and complaining about dying (like I would do), he was apologizing to ME for being a bother. I didn't think that making him tea and pumping him full of Tylenol and Ibuprofen was much of a bother. I do have my fingers very tightly crossed that I don't get sick!
• Saturday of last week, Santa visited the NAWC kids in Eindhoven. Everyone (including Santa I think) had a really good time. There were a couple of shy children, but no one who was shrieking in crying in horror so I think that was good!

• It feels weird that next week is Christmas. We have our tree up, the nativity out, and the stockings hung but I'm missing something to make it be CHRISTMAS! I need to figure out a Netherlands Christmas tradition to start in my little family. I'd love to hear what your family traditions are!

Make sure to check out Half Past Kissin' Time for more fragmented fun!

Crab Salad in Wonton Cups

For this week's FNCCC the chef is Ellie Krieger. She had quite a lot of tasty looking recipes but I finally settled on Crab Salad in Crisp Wonton Cups because I needed something to take along to a NAWC potluck and I had wonton wrappers in the freezer.

Crab Salad in Crisp Wonton Cups
Courtesy Ellie Krieger

For the Wonton Cups:
Cooking spray (Didn't use this, you're already oiling the wrappers, I don't think you need to oil the pans too)
18 wonton wrappers, thawed (if frozen)
2 teaspoons canola oil (I used sunflower oil)
1/4 teaspoon salt (I used my salt grinder and just ground a bit of Real Salt on each)

For the dressing:
1 teaspoon lime zest
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice (I just used all the juice from the one lime that I zested. I figure it was close enough!)
1/4 teaspoons salt (Just ground in salt to taste)
1/8 teaspoon black pepper (You'll be happier if you use freshly ground pepper)
1/2 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons olive oil

For the salad:
1/2 pound lump crabmeat, picked over (Since I'm not a gazillionare I used surimi sticks (aka "krab") and it worked brilliantly)
1 stalk celery, finely diced
1/2 cup finely diced mango
1/4 cup thinly sliced scallions (regular old green onions)
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh cilantro leaves

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Spray 2 mini-muffin (I used regularly sized ones and skipped the cooking spray) tins with cooking spray.

Brush the wonton wrappers with oil, and place each wrapper into a section of a mini-muffin tin. Gently press each wrapper into the tin and arrange so that it forms a cup shape. The wrapper will overlap itself and stick up out of the cup. Sprinkle with salt and bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until browned and crisp. Remove from the tin and allow wrappers to cool.

Meanwhile whisk together the zest, lime juice, salt, pepper, and pepper flakes. Add the oil and whisk until well combined.

In a medium bowl, toss together the crabmeat, celery, mango, scallion and cilantro. Add dressing and toss to combine. Fill each cup with the crab salad and serve.

The Verdict:I used two wonton wrappers for each since I used a full size muffin pan. Lay one down straight and another on top at a 45 degree angle and press them into the tin. I had a lot of salad leftover after I was done filling the wrappers AND I did full sized cups so more filling would fit in them. Also, these were good on the first day, but I think making the salad a day in advance would make them even better! They got rave reviews at the potluck. The only thing I didn't like about this was cutting up the mango. Stupid mango pits.

Daring Cooks Challenge: Salmon en Croute

I failed at getting November's Daring Cooks Challenge of sushi done, so I vowed to get this month's done and I was quite glad I did.

The December 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Simone of Junglefrog Cooking. Simone chose Salmon en Croute (or alternative recipes for Beef Wellington or Vegetable en Croute) from Good Food Online.

Equipment required:
For the Salmon en croute
oven
food processor
rolling pin

Salmon en croute:
Ingredients
Mascarpone or cream cheese 5.2 ounces/150 gr
Watercress, rocket (arugula) and spinach - 0.6 cup/4.2 ounces/120 gr
Shortcrust pastry (recipe below) - 17.6 ounces, 500 gr.Salmon fillet (skinless)- 17.6 ounce/500 gr
egg - 1 medium sized

Directions:
1.Heat the oven to 200°C/390 F. Put the mascarpone or cream cheese in a food processor with the watercress, spinach and rocket and whizz the lot until you have a creamy green puree. Season well.
2. Roll the pastry out so you can wrap the salmon in it completely (approx. 2-3 mm thick) and lay it on a buttered or oiled baking sheet (it will hang over the edges). Put the salmon in the middle. If it has a thinner tail end, tuck it under. Spoon half of the watercress mixture onto the salmon. Now fold the pastry over into a neat parcel (the join will be at the top, so trim the edge neatly), making sure you don’t have any thick lumps of pastry as these won’t cook through properly. Trim off any excess as you need to. Make 3 neat cuts in the pastry to allow steam to escape and make some decorations with the off-cuts to disguise the join if you like. Brush with the egg glaze.
3. Bake for 30 minutes or until the pastry is crisp and browned. To test wether the salmon is cooked, push a sharp knife through one of the cuts into the flesh, wait for 3 seconds then test it against the inside of your wrist; if it is hot, the salmon is cooked. Serve with the rest of the watercress puree as a sauce.

Shortcrust pastry*:
While this is not mandatory to do, I highly recommend making your own shortcrust pastry as it is very simple to do! As mentioned in the notes; please make sure to not add too much water as that is the key to having a successful shortcrust pastry.

Ingredients:
450 gr (15.8 ounces or 3.2 cups ) of plain all purpose flour
200 gr ( 7 ounce) cold butter
pinch of salt

Sift the flour into a large bowl, add the butter and rub in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. If you have a food processor you can use that as shown in the above video.
Stir in the salt, then add 2-3 tbsp of water and mix to a firm dough. Knead the dough briefly and gently on a floured surface. Wrap in cling film and chill while preparing the filling.

For best results make sure the butter is very cold.

*I used frozen puff pastry because it was more simple and allowed me to actually get this challenge done!

The Verdict: This was really very good and suprisingly simple. I'll certainly make it again! I couldn't get my hands on watercress so I used another from the garden cress in hopes that would impart a similar flavor. I also squeezed a bit of lemon juice into the cheese mixture. I think 30 minutes was probably plenty of time for the salmon to finish cooking and I'll probably take it out at 25 minutes next time.

Friday Fragments- December 11, 2009

I'm going to be gone all day tomorrow and I think if I miss another week of fragmenting my mom is going to start some sort of revolt against me so I'm setting this to autopost at 12:01.

The reason I'm going to be gone all day tomorrow is because I'm going to a Christmas market in Germany. I'm SO VERY excited! This will be my first time so I'm going to take my camera and be snap happy.

I finished up my Christmas tree skirt and put it on the tree. I was too impatient to decorate the tree before I took a picture, thus I "Picniked" in some ornaments so the tree wouldn't feel naked and exposed on top. I'm so happy with my skirt, I want to make a hundred more just because it's so fun to see how they come together and look amazing!

This Saturday is looking quite busy. Martijn got wrangled into being a jolly old man for a couple of hours in the morning and then we're going to a new friend's house for delicious authentic Spanish food! Inbetween we need to get our Saturday errands done. Normally I'd just take care of the weekend errands tomorrow so we didn't need to worry about them, but I WILL BE PLAYING!

Do you send out Christmas cards? I feel like Scrooge because I don't and I've gotten a whole bunch from people. Maybe I need to change my Scroogey wayward ways? What do you think?

We celebrated Sinterklaas last weekend. It was supposed to be "scaled down" a bit this year, but I'm not entirely sure everyone got the memo because I felt like I made out like a bandit. I got a salad spinner (which I've been wanting for awhile), a silicone muffin pan, a very snuggly warm blanket and bunches of warm socks among other goodies. It's tradition to attach a funny poem to the gifts and my mother in law wrote poems for nearly EVERY gift... we didn't get home until 2 am! I was happy though because I understood at least 90% of them and the other 10% both Martijn and his dad thought were really way too hard!

The Pineapple Upside Down (cup)Cakes were a hit yesterday. I am quite impressed with the photo I got of them too. One of the guys who had seen the picture before they came over said "Oh, was that YOUR picture on your blog? I thought it was professional." Nope, just me and my little pink point and shoot. It does give me some good pictures if I can get the light just right. Having the light just right here in the land-o-darkness is getting increasingly difficult. I hate it when the sun is disappearing at 3:30 in the afternoon. I'm telling you it's just plain ridiculous!

Don't miss out on all the fragmented fun over at Mrs 4444's Half Past Kissin' Time.

Pineapple Upside Down (Cup)Cakes

This week's chef is Duff Goldman, The Ace of Cakes guy. In honor of his awesome cakes, the assignment this week was to make and decorate a cake. I may be good at a lot of things, but cake decorating isn't included in that list. I almost skipped this week, but then I decided I'd cheat and make something that was pretty on its own- Pineapple Upside Down (Cup)Cake! I browsed around online for a good recipe and came to the conclusion that they all made way more than I wanted or used boxed cake mix. I finally stumbled over Coconut & Lime's recipe and decided it had to be the one!

I used vanilla sugar instead of liquid vanilla and sugar since I figured it would probably achieve the same result. Maybe more vanillaey, but good. I also used maraschino cherries for a punch of color. My cupcake pans seem to be a little more shallow than US ones, so I got 12 cupcakes instead of the 10 that the recipe says. I also needed to get a little creative in getting the pineapple rings to fit. The recipe suggests cutting out a wedge, but that still didn't give me enough room to use my cherries so I cut the rings in half and then sliced part of the inner circle out.

I don't have a verdict yet, the guinea pigs are Martijn's dinner group tonight. I did sample the corner of one though and it wasn't too shabby. I'll update the post later once the guys taste them!

Christmas Tree Skirt- in progress!

I've been busy working on my Christmas tree skirt. I'm SO pleased with how it's turning out that I can't help but give you a sneak peek!

I think most members of my family have a tree skirt like this, but the original pattern had a ruffle around the edge. I decided to rebel* and do prairie points instead. I AM IN LOOOOVE! I still need to make the ties and sew the backing on but I feel giddy with joy about how good it looks. Thanks to my Grandma M for the fabric to make it.

*Apparently rebel (reb-uhl- the person who goes against tradition or whatever) is spelled the same as rebel (ree-bel- as in the ACT of being a rebel). I kept thinking they must be spelled differently, but they're not. I need to keep things like this in mind when I'm complaining about how confusing Dutch is.

Cauliflower Soup and Parmesan Crisps

It's turned into soup weather, so when I was browsing Dave Lieberman's recipes for the FNCCC and came across the Silky Cauliflower Soup with Parmesan Crisps recipe, I decided it was a must make! I pretty much did the entire recipe as written, so I don't have much witty commentary to insert throughout.

Silky Cauliflower Soup with Parmesan Crisps
Courtesy Dave Lieberman

Ingredients

For the Soup:
1 head cauliflower
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 quart low-sodium chicken stock
1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the Crisps:
1 cup shredded Parmesan
Chopped chives, for garnish (I realized I didn't have any chives and didn't want to run to the store so I used green onions instead)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Remove the leaves and thick core from the cauliflower, coarsely chop, and reserve. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan or soup pot over medium heat and add the onion and garlic. Cook until softened, but not browned, about 5 minutes. Add the cauliflower and stock and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer, cover, and cook until the cauliflower is very soft and falling apart, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and, using a hand held immersion blender, puree the soup, or puree in small batches in a blender and return it to the pot. Add the Parmesan and stir until smooth. Season, to taste, with salt and black pepper. Keep warm until ready to serve.

Meanwhile, make the Parmesan crisps:

Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Spread the shredded cheese over the foil in 1 even thin layer. Bake about 10 minutes until golden brown and crisps. Remove from oven and let cool 5 minutes. Break sheet of crisp cheese into large pieces and garnish each soup bowl with a couple shards and a pinch of fresh chives.

The Verdict: Martijn said "I'm not sure if this soup was worth all of the effort you put into making it." You see, it wasn't bad at all, but it really wasn't anything remarkable either. The Parmesan Crisps were a bit of a disaster too. They stuck to the foil and didn't add that much to the soup. Since it already HAS Parmesan in it, I think you'd be better off just skipping the crisps and eating it with oyster or saltine crackers.

All that being said, I think this would make a wonderful BASE for a soup. The texture was lovely and I think it would be really good if you added in some other goodies like potatoes, broccoli, ham or maybe even some clams.

Menu Plan Monday- November 23, 2009

Last week was fine, but I had a lot of leftovers so I didn't get to a couple of things. I'm only going to plan three recipes this week and have enough leftovers incase we need them, but not so many that they can't be eaten before they go off!

click the banner and "Menu Plan Monday" for more menu planning ideas

Salisbury Steaks with Mushroom Sauce

Cauliflower Soup & Melt Sandwiches- I didn't get to this last week.

Crockpot BBQ Ribs- Didn't make these last week either!

Fragmented Freewrites- November 20, 2009

Is it really already Friday? I wasn't really participating in the world on Tuesday and Wednesday so it feels like it should only be mid-week! Make sure to check out everyones fragments by clicking on the FF link at the bottom of the post. Thanks, as always, to Mrs4444 for being such a gracious host to such a bunch of hooligans!

• I can't be the only one not going gaga over the new Twilight series movie, can I? I was so not impressed with the books and the thought of having to experience it in film sorta makes me want to gag.


• I'm going to dinner with a group of friends tomorrow in Utrecht. I'm pretty stoked! I know the company will be good, so hopefully the food will be good as well. It's crazy expensive to eat out here.


• My mother in law sent over a huge load of food to put in the freezer yesterday, for which I am very thankful. I was also very thankful that I'd been working on going through what was already in the freezer the past couple of weeks so I had ROOM for the food she sent!


• I cried at my therapy appointment this week and left feeling better about a couple of things than I had in ages.


• How is it that my glasses get so filthy? I mean, it's not like I smash dirt on the lenses or anything, but the way they look sometimes you'd think that I spent a lot of time grinding that dirt in.


• On Sunday, we're having a turkey dinner for Thanksgiving to show off "how it's done" to some people who haven't had the experience before. It should be interesting also to see how other families do it (our host is doing her family's traditional menu).


• Saturday next week, we'll be having the NAWC Thanksgiving Dinner. My mother in law also found some turkey for cheap in Germany and invited us over. I'm so psyched. Turkey is so expensive here so this is a mega-wild-fantastic treat.


• I'm getting my cute little pink camera back tomorrow. I feel giddy! I've been using my old Canon, which I LOOOOVED. But, I've been spoiled. It doesn't fit into my pocket like my little Nikon. And the zoom on my Nikon? Holy moley! It will be great to have it back, sans the broken battery door.

More Q & A!

Time for another answer to the Ask Me Anything questions!

Brainella asked: If there was one kitchen appliance you could buy (say someone would just GIVE it to you), what would it be and why?

You know the story about "If you give a mouse a cookie... he'll ask for a glass of milk... and then he'll probably ask for a straw... and when he's done he'll need a napkin..." and on and on and on? Well, some of the kitchen appliances I might like would cause this sort of chain reaction! Sometimes I would really like a real oven but If I got a real oven, I'd need a bigger kitchen, which really would necessitate a new house. I suppose you get the picture! Honestly though, my little combi oven is pretty perfect for 98% of the things I'd want to do and the other 2% isn't worth having to move into a bigger house with a bigger mortgage!

I'd also really LOVE to have a bigger freezer. Everytime we go to IKEA and look at their fridges I curse at them for having a model bigger than ours that has a bigger FRIDGE section but not a bigger FREEZER section. I don't need more room in the fridge! Gimme freezer space! Since they don't make a fridge like I'd want, we'd need a stand-alone and my apartment doesn't really have space for a stand alone freezer. Unless we hung an elaborate platform and pully system from the ceiling. I'm not sure how that would affect the resale value of the property though, so I think I'll stay away from drilling giant holes into the ceiling for now.

So if I'm shooting for something realistic, I'd probably say a red KitchenAid. Though, at the prices they cost here I'm not sure how realistic that is either! If I did get one though, I'd get the grinder attachment. Then I'd buy a turkey farm so I could make ground turkey. Oh, and sausages. Really good breakfast sausages!

P.S. I still have 11 days to go on NaBloPoMo and I'm so not interesting enough to come up with content on my own, so PLEEEEEEEASE ask me more questions on the post linked below!

Mini Yorkshire Puddings

I can't believe we're already 12 weeks into the FNCCC. I think this is probably one of my favorites so far! The chef this week is Danny Boome. I chose to make the Mini Yorkshire Puddings with Roast Beef.

I'll be honest, I can't figure out why these are called "puddings." I suspect it's another case of British vs. American English. Kinda like the word "pants." If you're American you wear your pants proudly, and if you're British you can laugh at all the Americans proudly going on about their underwear! Anyhow, onto the recipe!

Mini Yorkshire Pudding with Roast Beef
Courtesy of Danny Boome


Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs, at room temperature
2 cups milk, at room temperature
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus more for greasing (All of the comments on the FN website said to use oil for greasing the muffin tins, so that's what I did)
1/2 pound thinly sliced roast beef
1/4 cup prepared horseradish (I used a 1:1 amount of horseradish and sour cream)
Chives, cut 1-inch long for garnish (I used dried chives in my horseradish sauce)

Directions

Whisk together the flour and salt in a large bowl. In a separate bowl beat together the eggs, milk and butter. Make a well in the flour and whisk in the wet ingredients gradually until fully combined and smooth. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow the batter to rest for 1 hour at room temperature.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Grease (I used about 1/2 tsp of oil in the bottom of each muffin cup) 3 mini nonstick muffin tins. Place the tins in the oven to heat up for at least 10 minutes. Give the batter a quick stir and pour it into each muffin cup filling halfway leaving room for them to rise.

Place in the oven and do not open for 30 minutes (start checking at 20 minutes, the first batch I did was rather well done, even at 25 minutes). They should rise after 30 minutes and be golden all over. Remove from oven. Top with a thin slice of roast beef and a small dollop of horseradish on each pudding (I made a sauce with the sour cream, horseradish and dried chives instead of just plain horseradish). Garnish with sprig of chive. Serve immediately.

The Verdict: I went one step further and made some onion gravy to go along with this. We both thought this was an absolutely fantastic recipe! The serving size says 6-8, but I think you could add some zeros on the ends of those numbers. The batter makes GOBS. I'll probably cut it in thirds next time and still have enough for two days worth. I don't think they'll get as puffy with whole wheat flour, but I think I might try half and half sometime down the line and see how it goes.

Get out!

To the bug that has decided to take up residence in my body:

I didn't invite you, but you decided to come in and make yourself comfy. I wish I could say that I appreciated your gifts of a stuffed up head and all over body aches but I really don't. I really wish you would leave. Quickly. Please clean up all your crap and get outta here!!!

Your unwilling host,
mub

New Mirrors for the Hall

My mother-in-law has been giving me some crafty goodies over the past little while. Sometimes I have a good project in mind right away, and other things I have to put away and mull over for awhile. This was one of those "mull over for awhile" projects, but this weekend I had a stroke of inspiration!

I plan on hanging them in my hallway, but I haven't figured out a good arrangement for them yet.

It's just clothespin halves, some hot glue, silver paint, and mirrors!

Menu Plan Monday- November 16, 2009

Minus not getting to the Paprika Fish from last week (because I lost the recipe and was too lazy to find it), I did pretty well. The white asparagus and blue cheese tart* wasn't bad, but I'd chop up the asparagus next time since it was really hard to serve. I decided to add the Eggs a la Paloma to the "make again" folder. Next time I won't bother cooking the eggs separately because that was time consuming and it is an otherwise quick to prepare meal. I made a couple of weekend meals that weren't on the menu but we liked enough to make again too. I call that success!

*Recipe is in Dutch but if you'd like me to translate it into English let me know and I'll e-mail it to you.

click the banner and "Menu Plan Monday" for more menu planning ideas

I'm hopeful that I won't need to buy many groceries this week as I'm plodding through clearing out the freezer!

Monday is Martijn's dinner group, so I'm just going to have leftovers (and a clean kitchen to mess up on Tuesday!).

Mini Yorkshire Pudding- This is my FNCCC recipe for this week. I hope it doesn't turn into a disaster!

Cauliflower Soup & Melt Sandwiches of some variety

Bourbon Chicken and Fried Rice

Crockpot BBQ Ribs

Going out to eat with friends! I'm looking forward to this bigtime.

A few how-tos!

In an effort to come up with something witty and brilliant to post about today, I was browsing through last year's archives of around this time... and I still got nothing.

Last year I posted a nice picture I drew. This year I won't expose you to the horrors of my drawing skills. Instead I'm just going to post links to previous how-to posts. Maybe it'll give me the kick in the bum I need to FIND MY MOJO!

"Tie" Dyed Eggs- Please don't make fun of me for my typo, I just now realized what I did. I think I need to republish that post with the CORRECT spelling of dyed. Sheesh, how embarrassing. In any case, I think this would be fun to try with blown eggs to use for Christmas tree ornaments.

Brewing Vanilla Extract- If you do this project TOMORROW you will probably have a decent vanilla in time for Christmas baking... but just barely.

Ribbon Blankie- I mentioned this the other day in my Diaper Cake post. They're pretty fast to whip up and nice to have on hand for gifts.

Pillowcases- These are quick to whip up and darn cute if I do say so myself.

Button Wreaths- I ought to make some red, white, and green wreaths like this for Christmas... but maybe I ought to scratch some things off of yesterday's list before I go jumping into another project!

If I wasn't so tired, I'd probably have just motivated myself into doing something! Have a great weekend everyone.

Fragmented Freewrites- November 13, 2009

Time for Fragments!

I have a million and twenty-seven half-started projects that I really ought to work on.

• Mr Jummy is depressed because Mrs. Yummy still hasn't come to fruition.
• My Christmas tree needs a skirt. My grandma generously donated fabric to make one, but now I need to generously donate some effort to get it made.
• I still have three sock monkeys that don't have eyes.
• I have two HUGE cross-stitches that have been languishing in my cross-stich box.
• This giant stack of felt is begging to be made into some awesome ornaments or decorations of some kind.
• I have some really awesome papers that I want to do -something- with, but I haven't figured out what yet.
• I can't even discuss the clothes projects that I have fabric and patterns for. It's hard to fit a pattern on yourself. I need to make a dress form of myself, but I don't know where I'd even store it!

I'm pretty sure I need to approach this the same way as you would approach eating an elephant- one bite at a time. I think I'm going to bat my eyelashes at my cute husband and see if he's willing to assist in the Yummification project. We started it together, we should finish it together!

*****

I need to take a load of things to the thrift store. I have had them bagged up and ready to go for at least 6 weeks! The worst part of this is that we're there practically -every- weekend. I have zero excuses! In fact, I shall make it my goal to take it when we go tomorrow!

The packages that the pieces of "special" cheese used to have little red strips that you could pull on and then it would rip the plastic. NOW they have gotten rid of that and replaced it with shrink plastic that is impenetrable. I'm thinking of staging a protest.

Thus ends this week's Fragments. Thanks again to Mrs 4444 for hosting us!

Wordle Wordle Wee!

I'm feeling rather uninspired regarding a post today so I went to Wordle and "wordled" myself the Dinner in a Pumpkin recipe from the other day.

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

Now, go forth and create your own! Then you should leave me a comment with the link so I can feel inspired by your awesomeness since mine is lacking today!

Original image is here.

Diaper Cakes

It seems as if everyone and their cat is having a baby in the next few months or has just had a baby, so I thought I'd share some photos of diaper cakes I've made in the past. Maybe it will inspire you (well you can pretend for my sake, okay?) to make something fabulous of your own! You don't need to spend a lot of money to make these wonderful. Use what you have and scout the discount stores to find little goodies to put on them.

We'll start off with the first one I ever made. As you can see, my very expensive looking cardboard tray covered with aluminum foil makes a great platter! I tended towards the pastels on this one and used "after dinner" mints in the bottle as a treat.

For this one, the platter is slightly more sophisticated: an old deli tray from Sam's Club that we scrubbed off. I stole this yellow ribbon from my mom's stash. If you looked hard enough you could probably find a picture of me as a kid wearing a hairbow made of the same exact stuff.

Since I was leaning towards a slightly brighter color scheme, I put flavored Tootsie Rolls in the bottle to give it a little extra pizazz.

Did you know that Papa Murphy's will give you an extra pizza tray if you ask? Proof is right here! I found this cute little "Got Milk?" baby set at Big Lots! for not a lot of money and used it as my color inspiration and theme. There are probably pictures of me with a navy blue hairbow too.

Lastly we have my most recent creation. This one was a little harder since I made it here in The Netherlands and didn't have access to the store of Mom and everything is just so expensive here. I found little metal tray 2 euros which I then covered up with this little ribbon blankie. The friend I made this for didn't want any bottles since she was planning on getting some special ones, so I found this cute little frog that was folded out of towels. I need to learn how to make these for myself cause I thought he was mighty cute!

What do you like to do for baby gifts?