Sculpted food

I love Bundt cakes. They don't have frosting, they must be healthy. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
I saw this pan at Sam's Club and couldn't resist when they put it on sale for after Christmas. Today I made a Brown Sugar Cake with a recipe from Nordic Ware. It was a little short for this pan, I didn't get the cute train running around the base of the cake, but the snow covered trees are still pretty. The cake is moist and spicy with a nice brown color. The new pan is heavy cast aluminum. It bakes very evenly so not even the tree tops are over done! It also came with a plate and dome to
keep it in. Very nice for me, I usually use a serving platter and my large mixing bowl. Makes it hard to make bread or serve a large dish before we are done eating up the cake!

BLT.

Tonight ( two days before Christmas), dinner was very late due to busyness. The kids had burritos and quesadilla, Leigh and I had BLTs. The bread was Leighs buttermilk white, the bacon was some that we smoked this fall. The veggies came from the store, so did the mayo. The beer came from Belgium via Gold Hill Liquor. The sandwiches were very good. I had two. We cooked up the bacon this morning with our pancakes and I think that I have eaten about 1/3 of it today. No more bacon for me for a few days, must... restrain... myself.... but it calls to me ahhhhhh!

David & Cindys Christmas party photos.

The family and I have just returned from David & Cindy's Christmas party, the kids are snuggled warm in their beds.... well they are in their beds at least. Here are some fun photos. First is the picture of the egg nogg fixings that Cindy whipped up. The second is a picture of Leigh and I that my mom took.

Cream Puffs?

Leigh and I decided to try and make cream puffs to take to Cindy's Christmas party this year. We had to make two batches since the first ones did not work out right. We also were going to make pulled chicken in BBQ sauce. Then we found out that Barry and Denise were going to be bringing pulled pork. Leigh being the genius that she is morphed the pulled chicken into small empanadas. They are yummy.

Eggs Benedict, MMMMM.

Breakfast on Saturday was quite yummy for Leigh and myself. I was the muffin toaster and Canadian Bacon warmer guy, Leigh did all the hard stuff like making the poached eggs and mixing the Hollandaise. We use the packet kind since we are lazy, and it is better than going without. Honestly that is about all that I can say about that. It was good.

Crunch, crunch

I figure its about time I posted here.....this week I have been fascinated by crackers. I love to make things that are commercially available, like marshmallows, bread, cookies, bacon, etc. It is cool to dig up old recipes for the way things used to be made, and to make things we like to eat without hydrogenated vegetable oil and preservatives! Anyways, back to the crackers. We watched Flat is Beautiful: Going Crackers, from Alton Brown (Good Eats). He showed recipes for graham crackers, seed crisps and lavash. The grahams were my first try, they were good but difficult to roll out. The directions say to roll by hand, the dough is chilled so is very stiff and difficult to get to an even thickness. Next time I will use the pasta roller. Sorry, no pictures.
I did use the pasta maker to make the seed crisps. The dough is a little sticky and I had to use plenty of flour. They have sesame seeds and poppy seeds along with whole wheat flour and olive oil. I found you must be careful not to roll too thin, the first sheet I managed to crush some of the seeds between the rollers and tear the sheets. After rolling you bake to G.B. and D. (Golden Brown and Delicious!) They were very good with sharp cheddar cheese and wine!
I haven't tried the lavash yet but they are on my list. I would recommend these recipes with a few notes.....I don't think I would try without a pasta roller. You will need to roll to 1/16 of an inch, hard to do with sticky dough and a rolling pin. The recipes specify aluminum free baking powder for taste. I have not tried them with regular baking powder, but with so few ingredients, I think it is essential to use only ones that taste good! I used whole wheat flour I bought this summer at the farmers market that is ground locally. I am not sure where there wheat comes from, but the flour has a wonderful smell and is very evenly ground. Next time I will try some other seeds and flavored salt.


Up next is candy making for Christmas, I want to make some flavored marshmallows and taffy. Sticky and sweet!

Barbecue time in Alaska

Today Chris came over and we had steaks cooked on cotton wood and alder.

During dinner we drank Maredsous 8 (which was so-so) . The steak turned out pretty good but it was medium so a little bit over done. Oh well, we all enjoyed it. The beer did go pretty good with the garlic bread and the sauteed pepers and onions. It had a rather thick mouth feel that stuck to the palate that the onions and garlic cut a bit.

Before and after dinner we had other beers. Before dinner we had La Chouffe and after dinner we had a Delirium Noel. These were both awesome beers, though I think that the La Chouffe was the best of the night. Very crisp, and light.

Duck for dinner

Last Friday we had family over for dinner and Leigh cooked Duck. Most of our guests hadn't ever had domesticated duck before, but they seemed to enjoy it. Out of two ducks we had just a rib left. Leigh used the Alton Brown "Mighty Duck" recipe, she made some more sourdough bread, this time based on the De Dolle export beer yeasts. Valerie made scalloped corn, Cindy made roasted root vegetables, we seriously only had a spoonful of each thing left to put away. After dinner we had some of pumpkin spice chiffon cake. Lots of red wine, the one in the photo is the Bogle Phantom, helped make the evening great.

We like Sour Kraut... Here is some we made. These pictures are a few weeks old but fun none the less.

On the plate is beer bread, made with a Pike beer that I thought was too hoppy, a moose bratwurst from Delta Meats, whole grain mustard (not Leighs but pretty good), and our kraut. You can also see the great beer we drank with it (Thank you David R. for showing us the light).

We pickled our kraut with ground pepper in the brine it is very good, tastes more like a pickle than what you expect. I guess that is the difference between real kraut and the commercial stuff. We have yet to try the stuff that we canned we have been to busy eating up the turkey from three days after Thanksgiving (I worked what can I say).