Superbowl whaat?

OK so the word on the street is that today is the Superbowl - it's not really on my radar too much this year. I did not even know which the teams were playing until this morning. But anyway - in honor of the Superbowl and party-type food, here is a great crock-pot recipe for pulled pork.

3 1/2-4 lbs pork tenderloin
I can condensed French Onion soup
1 cup ketchup
1/2 cup cider vinegar
3 Tbsp brown sugar

Combine all ingredients in slow cooker. Cook on low 6-8 hours or high 3-4 hours. Close to the end of cooking time I use tongs to poke and pull at the pork to shred it and mix it up. Serve on bulkie rolls or hamburger buns. Delicious. Thanks to my Sissy for this recipe!!

Must-Have Cookbooks??

I recently came across this article in my local Newspaper: "20 Essential Cookbooks, a list of the 20 Essential books to build your culinary library, from the James Beard Book awards committee". Interesting!

I started accumulating cookbooks with the intention to build a cookbook library, so this article piqued my interest. I was curious how many of those included on the list I do in fact own. Even though the list was compiled in 2007, so not totally up to date, it's a pretty good list. The answer? I own only six out of the twenty. I guess Gooseberry Patch did not make the list!

How many of these are on your bookshelf?

American Cookery, James Beard

Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico, Rick Bayless

Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook

Classic Indian Cooking, Julie Sahini

Complete Techniques, Jacques Pepin and Leon Pererr

Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking, Marcella Hazan

How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food, Mark Bittman

The Joy of Cooking, Irma S Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker

The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion: The All-Purpose Baking Cookbook

Maida Heatter's Book of Great Desserts, Maida Heatter

Martha Stewart's Hors D'Oeuvres Handbook, Martha Stewart

Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume One, Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck

The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking: Techniques and Recipes, Barbara Tropp

The New Food Lover's Companion, Sharon Tyler Herbst

The Oxford Companion to Wine, Jancis Robinson

Rick Stein's Complete Seafood, Rick Stein

The Silver Palate Cookbook, Sheila Lukins and Julie Rosso

The Thrill of the Grill: Techniques, Recipes, and Down-Home Barbecue, Chris Schlesinger and John Wiloughby

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, Deborah Madison

The Way to Cook, Julia Child

Product Review - Monkey Bread

This is my review of the King Arthur boxed mix for Monkey bread.

If you have not heard of Monkey Bread, it is a delicious creation where cut-up refrigerated dough is rolled in cinnamon sugar, topped with butter and brown sugar, and then baked in a Bundt pan. The recipe is a family favorite, my mom first made this for me when I was in college, and I have been making it ever since. If you follow my blog you know I am always singing the praises of the Pillsbury dough, Pillsbury biscuits are traditionally used to make Monkey Bread and I love the recipe I have as is.

However my hubby got me this boxed mix from Williams-Sonoma knowing how I love Williams-Sonoma cake mixes, and thought it would be fun to make with the girls.

This mix has you make the dough totally from scratch and includes a packet of yeast. I had never used yeast before this, I don't know much about it and frankly I was intimidated by it. To me yeast is for professional bread bakers, and I use Pillsbury or buy bread from a bakery, but I decided to be brave and try it.

Overall this was really labor intensive to make. Don't wake up in the morning and think you are going to bang this out in time for breakfast or even a mid-morning snack. With all the many steps, and the time waiting for the dough to rise, it is hours from start to finish. There are instructions how to make the dough the night before, which I recommended if you do want to eat it in the morning.

For all my worrying, the yeast part was really quite simple, and it was kinda cool to check on my dough and see that it was indeed rising (I did it right!). I actually gave it one more hour past the time indicated on the box, the ambient temperature in my work area may have been a factor, not sure, but I went by size, not time.

The end result bread came out great, cooked well, and tasted delicious. The topping was perfect, I was very pleased (should be after all that work!), and the kids loved it too.

Honestly I would probably not make this again, while the flavor was good, it was not leaps and bounds above the traditional recipe enough to warrant all the added steps and time. For me the whole idea behind using refrigerated dough is that it is quicker and easier, and tastes just as good, so I will probably stick with my good old Pillsbury. But overall it was a success. This mix, given together with a Bundt pan or a cake stand would make a very nice gift.

Catching up with Fall

I did not blog much this past fall, it got to be a busy few months for a while there. So I wanted to catch up on blogging and post a couple of the things that I was working on...

1) Sewing projects - I like to make at least one Halloween costume each year for my girls. This year worked out to be Megan's turn, and she decided she wanted to be a Bumblebee. I was displeased with a lot of the Bee costumes that I saw in stores and the online costume stores, so I decided to make her this super cute and age-appropriate Bumblebee Costume from Simplicity 2304.


Here is my little baby modeling for me - pardon the blurry photos, she is a Bee in motion.







And here is the complete outfit on Halloween night. My other daughter was Snow White (purchased costume).





2) Christmas cookies! I am not going to post the recipes to each cookie, much too long to list, but I will just list the source. Here I present my Christmas cookie assortment 2010.



L-R they are: Candy Cane Cookies (Gooseberry Patch), Choco-Mint Blossoms (Mixing Bowl), Linzer Cookies (Barefoot Contessa), and Peanut Brittle (Every Day Food). I also made Thumbprint Cookies (Betty Crocker Cooky Book), for some reason they were not pictured.

They all came out great! I would probably not make the Linzer cookies again for a Christmas tray. Although these cookies came out great and tasted delicious, they were a little large and wieldy for a Christmas cookie. I prefer smaller bite-size cookies for a Christmas Cookie tray. The heart cookie cutter I happen to have on hand makes a huge cookie. I may try these again for Valentine's Day. Also next time I will try rolling them out a bit thinner.

Yummy Orange Juice concoction

I had this recipe got a long time and I always wanted to make it - finally made it for the family on Christmas Morning - it is delicious! Sorry I do not have a photo, trust me it is yummy. Tastes like a creamsicle. I doubled this recipe, poured it into a pitcher and served it in little retro juice glasses.

1 c. orange juice
1/2 t. vanilla extract
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
4-5 ice cubes

Blend all ingredients together in a blender. Makes one serving.

A non-food home project

Fun project - personalizing your own entry mat.

I had a welcome mat that someone gave us as a gift. We had it for like 2 years then the "welcome" design was worn away from weather and foot traffic. The mat still seemed OK to me though, so I got creative and decided to spray paint my own design back on it.


The original mat - you can kind of still see the word "Welcome".

In Microsoft Word I printed out a big letter on a regular piece of white paper. You can use any style or shape letter you want. For this I used a single letter (B in my case) and made it 72 pt in Times New Roman. Then go to Word Art and choose the word design that is a fine black outline and white letters. This will make the letter look like an outline and will be more like a template or pattern and easier to cut out. Once you print the design out on paper, use an exacto or similar tool to cut out the letter, thus making your own stencil to use.




Pin or tape the stencil in place on the mat. Don't forget the interior parts of the letter, like I had to do with the inside parts of the B. They are seperate peices.





Spray paint carefully, directly above, to avoid paint bleeding under the paper stencil, being only paper it is a bit flimsy. I did 2 coats for the best color saturation. Let it dry and then remove.



Cool! This idea has lots of possibilities. You could get real stencils and make seasonal designs on the mat like snowmen or flip flops, the numbers of your house, a symbol that has meaning to you like a Fleur De Lis, etc. The paint does wear off over time so each time you can do a different design or color, until your mat really can't hold up anymore.