Aunt Karen's Pound Cake

Now this is less a recipe and more an improvement.

We would go camping at least twice a year when I was younger, and we usually went with some Metz cousins. By usually, I mean it was rare if we weren't camping with my mother's twin brother and his family, and sometimes other brothers and their families came, too.

Now, I have no idea if Aunt Karen came up with this, but I have always associated her with this. Just like I can't not think of her when I eat M&Ms. Or Lorna Doones.

Anyway, this is another dish that reminds me of Aunt Karen, and I don't even know if she's the one who came up with it, or if she's just the one who always brought the pound cake.

The aunts coordinated things pretty well on our camping trips. Maybe synchronized is a better word.

So. What you do, is you go buy a frozen pound cake. A couple brands make them, I think, but I had a coupon for Sara Lee, so that's the kind I got. Make sure to get the butter one, not the lemon one.

Then, you make sure to thaw it. This is where I went wrong. I left if in my fridge over night, then on the counter for a bit, but it was evidently still frozen in the middle when I did this.

You put a whole mess of butter or margarine on top, then pack on some brown sugar.

Then bake.

You can tell my brown sugar was too clumpy, but you get the idea.

Here's where it gets dodgy. I have no idea how long you're supposed to put it in the oven. I put mine in until the brown sugar was melted, and then another few minutes, but it was cold when I sliced it. (I put it in the microwave for about 10 seconds to take care of that.) It also wasn't as moist as I remember.

So. I think the first thing that went wrong is that I didn't cook this by wrapping it in foil and throwing it in a camp fire. The secong thing, more butter. The third thing, more time. Or thaw it better.

But when this is good, it's oh so very good.

Promise.

Shark Attack

Sometimes, you just need a big pitcher of something adult.

Enter Guy Fierri, who seems to like make alcoholic beverages by the gallon.

I bought myself his cookbook after getting rid of his Diners, Drive-ins and Dives book. The cookbook is going to be awesome, even if I might have to have my Brother the Chef make some of the recipes.

So, to go with various appetizers that I was passing off as dinner, I decided to make a pitcher of Shark Attack. I mentally went through my bar and pantry, and realized I had everything but orange juice, grendaine, a lemon and maraschino cherries.

I bought the grendaine, and assinged my friends the juice, lemon and cherries.

I pulled everything out of the pantry to mix together in my glass pitcher, when I realized it.

I didn't have any rum.

Why was the rum gone? Where did it go?

Well, it must have been consumed, for it was nowhere to be found.

I suppose I could have just left out the rum. Or perhaps double the tequila. But I put in vodka instead. Probably not the best choice, but it's the one I made at the time.

I also doubled (maybe tripled?) the recipe because although the directions say to make it in a pitcher, there was actually very little liquid.

Look. Doubled (or tripled?) and it's still a very small amount in the pitcher.

The resulting drink was not bad. Rum definitely would have been better. And less fruit. Seriously, the man goes a little overboard with the solids in the drink. But this is something I would make again.

Queso Blanco Dip

My friends and I love us some cheese.

Seriously.

We were introduced to cheese fondue, and it all went down hill from there.

I think after fondue (complete with the fondue pot, although ours aren't '70s-tastic), our favorite melty cheese dish is queso blanco dip. If a Mexican restaurant has it, we want to try it.

I've tried to make it before, although I didn't blog about it. Probably because the recipe came off a Velveeta box.

Either way, I found this recipe for queso blanco dip, so I knew I had to try it.

(Side note. Queso means cheese. So saying "queso cheese dip" is an redundant as "9 a.m. in the morning " or "frozen ice" or, more timely, "forcible rape". It really bothers me.)

So I went to the deli counter to find the white American cheese since  the recipe said most deli counters have that. I didn't see it, but I asked. They did, she just needed to get the block from the back. I think I confused the poor woman when I said I just wanted a big block. I don't think they have actual knives behind that counter. But when I told her it could be multiple blacks if that helped, she calmed down. And managed to get the weight right on the nose.

The only substitution I made was that I used 2 percent milk instead of the recommended whole milk. I knew that might change the consistency since whole milk has such a higher fat content, but I was not about to buy special milk for this. I don't drink much milk period, and any leftover whole milk would have just been thrown away.

I don't remember how long I put it in the microwave. I kept putting it is for a minute and a time, then stirring. But the time the big glob of cheese was mostly melted, it was pretty runny, like the recipe said it would be. I apologized to my friends, who really didn't mind. Turns out, they like it a little runny so it can coat the whole chip without being too much cheese.

Not the best picture, but seriously yum.

So we ate. And it was tasty! Definitely better than whatever I made with Velveeta. And I will definitely make it again, and continue not bothering to decrease the recipe amount.

Because it reheats wonderfully.

Seriously! I ate chips and queso for a week. It was delicious. I'm considering making it and using it for a taco night.

Cheesy Bacon Apple Fritatta

I wanted to use stuff up before I went to Mexico. I just have going on vacation and then coming home to a fridge of food I need to throw away. So, I looked through my fridge, looked through my recipes, and decided I could make this frittata, and then package it up for lunch for the week. I mean, I think breakfast caseroles make great leftover, shouldn't a frittata?

So I followed the directions, but remembered what happened with the frittata I made from a Martha Stewart recipe -- it was bland. And not cheesy enough. So I resolve from the beginning to up the chessy-ness.

How it's supposed to look.

And I'm gonna tell you right off the bat, I used regular bacon and skipped right over that "organic" word when it came to the eggs. Seriously. Organic is expensive and I've got grad school student loans. And I substituted cottage cheese for the ricotta cheese, because of the price and because I had cottage cheese in the fridge. (Mom uses it as a substitute in her stuffed shells to help control the cost, so I know it's legit.)

Anyway. I actually baked the bacon the night before, so I went to work on the apple.

I proceeded to follow the directions about everything, adding some butter to the pan to make up for the lack of bacon grease. I added extra cheddar to the dish, but not extra cottage cheese.

I made a couple of mistakes, but I didn't know it until after I pulled the frittata out of the oven.

(This is where I had intended to put the photo of my fritatta, but I seem to have lost it.)

First, I made sure with Martha's frittata that I got the butter way the heck up on the sides of the pan. Since this one started with stuff in the pan, I totally forgot to do that and the egg dish didn't slide out nearly as easily.

Second, The recipe said to make sure the apples and bacon were evenly distributed along the bottom of the pan. So I didn't stir everything together after I put the eggs in. Maybe I wasn't supposed to. But the apples burned, so I think I should have stirred, even distribution be damned.

Third, like I just said the apples burned. That would be the bottom. And the top got brown like it was supposed to. But I'm not entirely convinced the middle was cooked all the way. It might just have been the cottage cheese, but it seemed mushier than it ought to have. I blame that on the high heat for a short period of time. Next time, I'll follow Martha's cooking directions because a broiler didn't cut it.

I proceeded to eat the fritatta for lunch that week. It heated up just fine, but the aforementioned issues didn't make it the tastiest lunch.

If I decide to make this again, I'll try to merge this frittata and Martha's.

Mississippi Sin

I wanted to make dinner for my friends the other night. But I didn't want to spend a lot of money.

And all I felt like making was appetizers.

So all I made was appetizers.

We decided to call them tapas (Spanish little bites), but that's mostly a misnomer since I made a bread full of cheesy dip. There was nothing small about it.

I just makes us feel better.

So, Mississippi Sin.

I have no idea why it's called that. But I thought it looked really tasty.

See? Yummy looking.

I followed the directions pretty well except for two things: My grocery store didn't have French bread, so I went with the Italian (heck, it looked the same), and I didn't want to spend more money than I needed to, so I substituted the beef I use in my cheese ball for the ham since I already had a packet.

Side note about cost savings. I spent about 5 minutes staring at the sour cream in the case because the 8 oz. containers were 10/$10 and a 16 oz. container was $2.39, making buying two small ones cheaper than buying one big one to get the same about of ounces. I was having trouble making sense of that math since buying smaller is rarely if ever cheaper.

Anyway.

So after I mix everything together (using twice the required amount of green onion because I chippoed and froze two together), I turn to the bread. I don't slice some of the bread off the top first because that just seems silly. I just slice diagonally down into it. And after I take that piece out and rip it up to dip in the dip later, I hollow out the bread just a little bit more. I did this for two reasons. First, I wasn't sure the dip was easily going to fit. And second, I wanted more bread for dipping!

I dumped the dip in the bread bowl, covered it up as best I could, and stuck it in the oven until my friends arrived.

It wasn't as warm as I had anticipated when I pulled it out, but it was definitely a warm dip. I'm sure it being in bread was the big difference. We ate it. We liked it!

Even adding beef instead of ham, it looks very similar.

And then the ripped bread ran out, so we started trying to pull apart the bread bowl.

That's where we ran into a problem.

The bread was hard to tear. Obviously, because it had been baked a second time. And the bread right next to the dip was soggy. In a gross way. It looked like it had been sitting in water. Not appetizing.

But, hey. This is such a good dip, I'm certainly not going to let gross bread prevent me from making it again. Maybe even with the ham next time. I'll just put it in an oven-safe container.

And chunk the bread up on the side.

Conclusion: Use a dish.

Sweet and Spicy Freezer Pickles

To be honest, this is a recipe I've made before. I made it last summer, when I was underemployed. Or maybe it was the summer beofre that, when I was unemployed? Either way, my mother is still bothering me to come get pickles out of her freezer.

I'm posting this recipe not because it's something new, but because people think I'm something special when I say I make pickles. Specifically, sweet and spicy freezer pickles.

I swear, I'm not special.

These things are so easy, anyone you trust to use a knife or stove can make them.

And freezing is SO much easier than canning.

Don't get me wrong, I wish I knew how to can. I wish I had time to can. And when the zombie apocolypse commences and power grids fail, sure I'll lose the pickles. But I'm trying, in the mean time.

Anyway, back to the pickles.

I went to a flea market on July 4, and bought cucumbers. Four for a dollar. I'll take that deal, thank you very much.

I already had nearly all the other ingredients. Heck, I had picked up white vinegar just because, with my coupon, the bottle was less than a dollar. I just needed a couple of jalapenos.

I just so happen to know a guy.

My dad owns John Rauf Mower Service. He also has an amatuer green thumb. So he gorws a bunch of things over at the shop. And by bunch, I mean irises out back and vegetables in pots. This soil has had grass clippings folded into it was 30 years. That's some nitrogen-rich dirt! And there's a significant lack of squirrel on Delhi Pike, so the family actually gets to eat what he grows. In addition to the (I think) six tomato plants, he has been doing pepper the past few years, too. So instead of going to the grocery store, I just head to Dad's to pick a couple jalapenos.

I picked two, since the recipe said I needed two.

When I got home, I realized that I probably had twice as much cucumber as the recipe called for, so I probably should have grabbed another two jalapenos. But I needed to get this done, so I was going to have to make do.

I peeled and sliced the cucumbers. I was not very good at keeping the slices consistent, but that has never bothered me.

I put in a couple spoonfuls of the pre-minced garlic into the bowl to start to meld with the cucumbers while I sliced the onions. 

I used double what the recipe called for as far as onions, but I did try to slice then very thin.

Then I diced up the jalapenos, saving the seeds to dump into a pot of soil I have on my porch (it had zinnias before the squirrels for to them).

Then I followed the directions for the liquid, doubling again. And I added some Tabasco at the end, just a couple of dashes, to make up for the lack of jalapeno. Yes, I know they aren't at all the same thing, but they've both got heat, right?

I mix everything as well as I can in a bowl that barely fits it all.

The pickles!

You let it sit for two days then package them up. I had reservations about the amount of liquid when I first covered them, but the cucumbers broke down enough that everything was eventually immersed. You have to freeze them with the juice/brine, too, so I filled five plastic containers to the brim. I'm sure plastic zip bags are a cheaper way of doing it, but containers stack better.

I don't know how they taste yet because I have yet to take them out of the freezer. In fact, I won't take them out until I run out of pickles in the fridge. Or perhaps I'll take some camping?

Either way, if they aren't hot enough, I'll add more Tabasco. But I'm sure they'll be tasty either way.

PAMA Bay Breeze

I was paging through my behemoth on a Tuesday. The day before my weekly dinners. I kept thinking to myself, "I should make a dessert." But it was hot. And I was tired and didn't feel like baking.


Screw dessert, I thought. I'll make an adult beverage.


I had just bought a pack of small can of pineapple juice (because I had a coupon) that I figured would be good for making alcoholic beverages. I mean, the least expensive containers of pineapple juice are usually those cans you have to pop a hole in, and how are those supposed to stay fresh? I like pineapple juice, but it has more sugar than I want to drink in a sitting. Hence the smaller cans.


So I paging through the behemoth and see all those recipe I snagged from the little booklet around the PAMA pomegranate liquor bottle neck. One of those was for PAMA Bay Breeze. It had the PAMA, pineapple juice and cranberry juice. Well, hells bells, all I needed was the actual liquor!


So I went and bought it. Yes, I know after the other couple of drinks, I said that it wasn't worth buying especially. But it's just so easy! I already had everything else!


I mixed everything in my pitcher before my friends arrived. Then all I had to do was pour.

I'd say I need prettier glasses, but I have no room for more glassware.

We liked it. It needed ice, or better yet lemon-lime soda, but it was good. Just a little too concentrated.


And so much easier than making dessert.