S'mores Casserole

Behold! The Casserole of S'mores!



So good it should be illegal
I first tasted this amazing recipe of delicious wonderfulness when a friend brought it to a potluck a few years ago, and I've made it at least a hundred times since then. I've given it as a thank you gift, included it in my holiday baking for friends and neighbors, and last night I made it in lieu of birthday cake by request of the birthday boy himself. Since I was already making a batch for him (using local products such as Adluh Flour, of course), I doubled the recipe and plan to bring a plate of individually wrapped bars to CJ's swim meet tonight to raise funds for our team, the Edenwood Seamonkeys.

This yummy goodness is known by many names: We've called it "mouth heroin", "mouth crack", "breakfast", "lunch", "dinner", and eventually we settled on "s'mores casserole", because Tracy is a genius and as such decreed that if it comes in a casserole dish, it can be eaten as a meal. The original recipe, however, is called S’more Cookie Bars, and was originally published by Nicole Weston of BakingBites.com in 2007.

$3.94 Owl Earrings

Lately, I love owls. Not somber owls. Not stern owls. Not judgmental owls.

Goofy, wide-eyed, cartoony owls.

Last week when I went to the Hobby Lobby to purchase Mod Podge and glitter so that I could tart up an old pair of flats, I spent some time browsing the jewelry aisles. Because that's what you do when you're at the Hobby Lobby for Mode Podge and glitter. I also spent time in the yarn section, the basket section and... oh, hell, all of the sections.

Any-hoot. I made some earrings, for $3.94:

Owl Charms, 2 per package, $1.47

Twist Loop Earwires, 2 per package, $2.47

Jump Rings (already owned)

I love them! I love them even more considering I almost bought the exact same owls - with less cool earwires - on Amazon for $9.99 (regularly priced at $25.99).

French Onion Soup

A few days ago, I tweeted that I felt a batch of French Onion Soup (hereafter referred to as FOS) coming on. And the more I thought about it, the more I wanted it. By the time I left work it was pretty much a foregone conclusion: There! Would! Be! Soup! I only make it two or three times a year, and it's always a big hit in Husbandville when I do. Okay, I like it a lot too, but wouldn't bother making it just for myself.

This is one of the many meals for which I do not follow a specific recipe. When I first started making it I used a recipe that, if I recall correctly, involved a dark beer. It's been over a decade since then; I no longer remember the recipe or where it came from, and I've modified my approach to better suit my own cooking style. This time I kept track of what I did as I cooked, so as to share my "recipe". As with most things I cook, it's a little bit different every time, depending on what I have on hand (cartons of broth versus bullion, for example), but the end result is usually more or less the same.

Before I list out the ingredients, let me give you the following caveat: I made a gigantic batch of soup. The recipe below fed three hungry adults and two children, with enough left over to serve leftover dinner for four the next day (and even lunch the day after that!). What I'm saying is: LOTS of soup. If you're making this for, say, two people, you may want to halve it (and still plan for leftovers).

French Onion Soup

• 10lbs Frenched onions (sweet or white. I personally believe Walla Wallas to be the gold standard, here)
• 1/2 stick butter
• Bread for toasting (I like Food Lion's take'n'bake, but any baguette will do)
• 4 cans Campbell's Beef Consomme
• Beef base (I used Superior Touch Better Than Bullion), bullion, or broth in cans/cartons
• 1T Cornstarch
• White wine (or whatever liquid)
• Kosher salt
• Pepper
• Granulated Garlic (I did not have minced garlic on hand or I would have used it instead)
• Pam spray (butter or olive oil)
• Cheese (I used two bags of shredded Swiss. Gruyere is great on FOS, if you can find it).

First things first: Prep your onions. I cut off the root and stem, slice in half from stem to root, and then peel each half. When they are all cut and peeled, French cut them. Onion prep (the slicing and the caramelizing) is the most time-intensive part of this recipe - it will take a good hour+, but it's pretty fast moving after that. This is what ten pounds of Frenched onions looked like in my big soup pot:


There are many schools of thought on how to caramelize onions. Some people do it in a crock pot, some do it on the stove over super low heat, and so on. I do it on the stove top, over high heat. (Sidebar: This is not for the faint of heart. Searing, burning, and sticking are all real risks of doing it like I do, and if you're new to cooking or unsure of your ability to manage this, use a lower heat and more time until you're more familiar with the high heat method.)

Melt the butter, add all the onions, crank the heat, and stir constantly. Once the onions start to soften, add a big pinch of salt. Continue stirring. Should the bottom of your pot start to get uncomfortably dark and crusty, deglaze with wine (or broth/water/whatever), and continue cooking, but don't let it get so dark that it's close to burning.

What you're looking for here is a rich dark reddish brown color, but you don't want seared crispy edges. The softening and collapsing of the onions takes the bulk of the time, and once the color starts appearing, reduce the heat just a bit (keep stirring!) and watch closely.Burning can happen quickly here if you're not careful.

The darker your caramelizing the better for FOS, really, but I was hungry and thus gave up about here:

See how the volume of onion has reduced? Switch to medium heat; add a pinch of salt, a few grinds of pepper, and a liberal sprinkle of granulated garlic. Ordinarily I would add a couple of tablespoons of minced garlic from a jar, but I had run out. Stir to combine, cook for a minute or two.

Add all the cans of Consomme. At this point I added hot water about to the level the onions were pre-cooking, and two big scoops of beef base (even if I were making half of this recipe, I would still use all four cans - I would just use less broth.) Then, because I like a little bit of body to my soup, I mixed the cornstarch with some wine and added it in, too. When the soup comes to a boil the cornstarch thickens it just a bit.

So let's pause here to taste what we've got. Adjust for any seasoning you think you may need. More beef base? More garlic? Maybe more salt or wine? Add it in now, and taste until you've got what you want. Let the soup simmer over low heat, and while that's happening, turn your attention to the bread. Slice it, lay the slices out on a cookie sheet, spray with Pam. A sprinkle of garlic, salt, and Parmesan won't hurt, but aren't necessary. Stick them under the broiler (watch carefully!), remove, flip, repeat. Like so:


Most FOS soup recipes are going to instruct you to ladle the soup into individual oven-safe bowls at this point. I'm not, and I'll tell you why: Because it is a bitch to deal with. It just is. Moving multiple bowls full of molten liquid on to a cookie sheet, into the oven, out of the oven... I did that all of once, and never will again. The burns did heal nicely, though, thanks for asking. Anyway.

Turn off the burner under your soup, and set an oven rack to a position which will accommodate your pot. Gently drop slices of toasted bread on to the surface of the soup, being careful not to submerge. When the surface is covered with bread, proceed to cover the bread with cheese. No big clumps at a time or you risk it sinking, but the surface of bread can really handle a truly startling amount of cheese, if you add it evenly. Carefully move your pot into the oven, and broil until the cheese is brown and bubbly, and then ladle it into individual serving bowls. Here is the finished product:


Hooray! Soup! This took me 1.5 hours, from start to finish. You guys, it was really good (if I do say so myself).
For leftovers: I refrigerate the soup in this same pot. To serve I return it to the stove to heat through, then repeat the bread/cheese/oven step.

Pics Or It Didn't Happen: I Still Make Stuff

Wow. It's been nearly a year since my first "I Make Stuff" post. How can that be? I don't even know. But the Internet never forgets, kids, so here's what I've worked on in 2010:

In March, I made a pair of mittens for myself. I had been stalking admiring the ones made by mom blogging rock star Angela over at FluidPudding and finally worked up the courage to give them a try. They were scary because I had never made anything with terrifying words like "thumb gussets" or using the "magic loop method", which frankly all sounded like dubious sexual acts and/or contraceptive methods. I only managed to get a photo of them (the mittens, not the sex acts) while in progress, but I made another pair later in the year, so you'll get to see those later in this post. They are called "Bella's Mittens", because the pattern was inspired by mittens worn by the Bella character in the Twilight movie. Don't hate, y'all - the pattern is gorgeous.

In May, I thought I'd give felting a try, finally. I spent much time and energy trying to decide on a mix of complementary colors, and in the process learned that I am really bad at it. I did not know that about myself.

And then suddenly it was summer. If you're a parent too, you know that summertime for parents is the exact opposite of summertime for kids. This is because there are no buses or hot lunches and it's eleven million degrees outside and everybody has to be driven to seventeen different places a day, and yet I still had to go to, oh I dunno, work. It's the summer days where my office is truly a vacation, people.

But you may recall that I made a condensation sleeve for CJ to take to camp, in June.

And I vowed that 2010 would be the year that I got the jump on Christmas knitting, so naturally I started with birthday and hostess gifts instead. I ended up making two of the rainbow bags for Renee's birthday (which, TO BE FAIR: December) and the purple one for when Rachel and Thom moved to Maryland.

Also in June I got the bright idea to hand knit by hand with my own hands a set of grocery bags for everybody's favorite vegetarian bunny huggers (our dear friends Tracy and Aaron). I figured: How hard could it be? Turns out: Pretty hard. Not that the pattern itself was all that hard, it just took forever to make four of them and by the time I was done I was so very, very, done. I finished the fourth bag on October 17. You may have already calculated that the duration of time spent knitting these bags is equal to that of a metric shitload. Of time. At least they're pretty.

And then it was later in July, and whoa! Jonesy and Donna were having a baby shower in twelve days. Twelve days to knit a baby blanket? CAN DO.

Meanwhile, the grocery bags were ongoing, and I was losing my mind, so I started knitting warm washable hats for the homeless. See, my friends are really good people, and they gather up food and go feed people who need to be fed on Thanksgiving day, in a local park. We call it Thanksgiving in the Park. The hats were sent along, except climate change hates us, hates us ALL, and it was nearly 70 degrees that day. So nobody really wanted a hat. Sadface. Thom and Rachel took them back to Baltimore, though, to give away up there. I hope they are getting used. Meredith models one of the hats:

OMG, Christmas knitting! Teacher gifts! Friend gifts! Crap! Now I'm behind, but I'm still knitting grocery bags! September sidebar: The Bella Lana Reversible Cable scarf, holiday gift for Meredith's primary teacher Mrs. P. I'm told she liked it!

In October, the grocery bag project was ongoing. Still. Forever. Teacher gift #2: A set of Bella's Mittens, this time for Mer's dramatic arts teacher. Purple and dramatic are totally her. She likes them, and is thankfully not allergic to 100% wool (I was worried).

It's still October! It's still holiday knitting! I'm still knitting grocery bags because they take forever! With my hands, by hand! Also Ginny really liked the yarn color I was using for Mrs. P.'s scarf, so I bought some in worsted and made a Very Braidy Ginny Cowl for Christmas. It looks really great on her, if I do say so myself.

And then it's October 31, I'm finally done with the grocery bags (hallelujah!), and my cousin and his wife welcome a beautiful baby girl. My cousin Brent is the first baby I was really around with any regularity, when I was a kid. He holds a special place in my cold shriveled heart, and now he's someone's DAD. OMG. This blanket was pretty difficult, at first, but I eventually got the hang of it. I started it on her birthday, and finished it December 6. I think it turned out great, and just look at sweet baby Claire!

The last project of the year was a last minute, weekend-before-holiday-break scarf. Mer came home from school on a Friday and said "My teacher says you’re very talented, and could you knit a scarf for J (her 6 year old)? It should be greens and white stripes. Thanks." So that’s what I did over that weekend. Mrs. P. later clarified that she meant for Meredith to ask what I would charge in money dollars to make such a scarf. I couldn't possibly, though.

So that was the knitting in 2010. If history is any indication, I probably won't post about knitting again until 2012. If you want to follow along in real-time, you should friend me on Ravelry.

Monte! Cristo! Sandwiches!

On birthdays, the person whose birth is being celebrated gets to choose what dinner shall be. It can be anything: Dining out, take out, fast food, or something I cook. This year, CJ chose mom-made Monte Cristo sandwiches.

Stop right there, because I know what you're thinking. Entire sandwiches coated in egg, deep fried in oil, and then served with sugar and a side of jam? Have the crash cart on standby! Jesus take the wheel! Somebody call FLOTUS! But all things in moderation, kids. I make these maybe once every couple of years. There's also this thing about how three years ago, when last I made these, I lifted one out of the pan and hot oil ran down the inside of the tongs into my hand. Hot oil. My hand. That kind of thing will stay with you.

Anyway. I didn't take a lot of photos, but I did snap a couple of progress photos to share the recipe with you. I'm pretty sure I learned how to make these from my mom.

Monte! Cristo! Sandwiches!

• Pepperidge Farm Buttermilk White bread
• Sliced Swiss cheese
• Thin-sliced honey ham
• Thin-sliced turkey (I used to buy Boar's Head expensive deli meats, but you know what? Oscar Mayer works great.)
• Eggs (It always ends up needing more than I thought. I used 10, should have used 12.)
• Oil for frying
• Seedless red raspberry jam
• Powdered sugar
• Toothpicks
• Candy thermometer

Assemble your sandwiches! One slice of bread. One slice of cheese. Five slices of ham. Five slices of turkey. One more slice of cheese. One more slice of bread. What you have now looks a lot like a boring old sandwich! But wait, there's more!

Make two diagonal cuts across the sandwich so that you have four triangles. Now: Three toothpicks per triangle. No more! No less!

Crack your eggs into a bowl, and beat them well. Pour a few inches of oil into your pan (use one with high sides, please), affix your candy thermometer, and set about heating your oil to 360 degrees.

Checklist: Is your oil hot? Is the bowl of beaten egg directly next to it but not on the heat? Is your pile o'sandwiches directly next to the egg? Congratulations! Let's cook our sandwiches!

Add a sandwich to the egg, turn it all around to coat, drip off the excess, and carefully place it in the hot oil. The size of my pot allows me to cook an entire sandwich (four triangles) without letting the oil drop below 350, but ymmv.

Turn them once (I like to use tongs. Yes, still.) and fry until you've achieved allover GBD. Remove to whatever your drying rig may be (I put down a cutting board, cover it with a kitchen towel, and cover the towel with a layer of paper towels. People smarter than me use a rack over newspaper on a sheet pan.) and rest until they are no longer too hot to handle (but not too cold to hold).

Now it's time to serve. Arrange your sandwiches on a plate, and then dust them with powdered sugar. Add a side of raspberry jam (I like to use a monkey dish (as pictured) but I won't tell anyone if you want to just plop some on the plate.

Now, recite the following to each diner as they receive their plate:

There are three toothpicks in every sandwich. Three. No more. No less. Count each toothpick as you remove it, verifying that there are indeed three toothpicks per triangle. Not more. Not less. We will not be going to the emergency room tonight because you have impaled the roof of your mouth on a Toothpick of Carelessness. Understand? Good. Enjoy.

Condensation Sleeve

It's officially summer even though it's not officially summer, because it's stupid hot outside, the a/c struggles to keep up, and both kids are happily going about their summer camp experiences.

Sidebar: Big thank yous to everyone who offered suggestions about what to pack for lunch in the comments, on Facebook, Twitter, and LiveJournal, and wherever else that post propagated. So far (day two, heh) so good.

The challenges of packing for a full day of feeding a hollow-legged preteen are numerous. Not just what sorts of food, but but the right way to transport and store it, as well as how to keep it fresh and edible in a non-climate-controlled environment. We bought an insulated lunch container, and then set about tackling the problem of keeping the contents of said container cool.

Rather than purchase those freezer gel thingies (because they kind of freak me out), I thought: Why not just refill a drinking water bottle, and freeze it?

The only reason I could think up was condensation - as the ice in the bottle melts (Tim pointed out that the gel thingamabobs would do the same thing, anyway, so why bother buying them?) , the condensation on the outside would get the food items wet. Ew.

Not a big deal, in the grand scheme of things, I know, but why endure a tiny problem that could be solved via knitting?! :D

Condensation Sleeve

Materials

• Worsted weight cotton yarn (I've used Lily Sugar & Cream and Red Heart Eco Cotton)
• US 7 (4.5mm) DPNs (I use four)
• Tapestry needle
• Stitch marker

Directions

First, we're going to knit the base of the sleeve, starting from the center and increasing out until the area is large enough to cover the bottom of a 16oz water bottle.

R1: Cast on 7 stitches, divide across two needles

R2: Join, place marker between stitches 1 and 2 to help keep track, knit one round.

R3: Increase every stitch (14 stitches)

R4: Knit

R5: Distribute 4 increase stitches (18 stitches) across round (approx. every 3rd stitch)

R6: Knit

R7: Distribute 6 increase stitches (24 stitches) across round (approx. every 3rd stitch)

R8: Knit

R9: Distribute 8 increase stitches (32 stitches) across round (approx. every 3rd stitch)

R10: Knit

R11: Distribute 10 increase stitches (42 stitches) across round (approx. every 3rd stitch)

R12: Knit

Here's what the base looks like at this point:

Any photo can be clicked to embiggen

Now we'll start working on the body of the sleeve with Round 13:

R13: K3, P3

At this point, repeat Round 13 until the sleeve is long enough to accommodate your bottle of ice. Bind off, and don't bother blocking!

Here's the finished product:

Here's the happy camper with his new mohawk, showing Condensation Sleeve enthusiasm:

Wheat Meat

Not too long ago, I noticed @carrier talking about something called seitan on The Twitter. Further investigation revealed that she could explain the entire recipe in under three tweets, which to me indicated one thing: Easy - and hey, I like easy! So even though I had no understanding of what the taste/texture should be, I knew I already had all the ingredients on hand, so I might as well try to make some...

And I did! And it didn't seem to be a miserable failure! So then I made some again. And again. And gave some to Tracy. She liked it! That's important, because she's a vegetarian, so it has to be good, right? Anyway, it's become a staple around our house, and folks be wantin' to know how it's made, so here you go.

Seitan

All photos can be clicked to embiggen

• Whole wheat flour
• Water (not pictured)
• Vegetable broth, canned/boxed (not pictured)
• Flavorings: Steak sauce, Soy sauce, various seasonings (in this case: Garlic, pepper, mustard, thyme)

Dump a bunch of flour into a bowl - I use a giant stainless bowl that fits pretty much exactly in one side of my sink. Add enough tepid water to make a kneadable dough:

And then knead. I generally knead for about ten minutes, and I do it right in the same bowl I've been mixing in. If you have a bread machine or a mixer with a dough hook, I'm sure you're already using them by this point, but me? I mix and knead by hand, because I don't have those things. I like it, though - there's something satisfyingly old school about kneading dough by hand. Anyway, after kneading, the dough will look something like this:

Now, fill the bowl with water, because it's time to soak.

...and walk away. Just walk away! The original tweets from Carrie said to soak it for two hours, but I tend to soak it for a minimum of two hours. Which is to say, I just deal with it when I get back around to it. So, go do whatever for awhile. Here are some ideas, from things I've done while seitan soaks: Naps, videogames, showers, rescuing family members from state parks, other naps...

Where was I?

Oh, right. Soaking. So, after you've soaked the dough, it's time to rinse it. You'll find that the dough has relaxed and softened...

...and basically now you're going to squish and squeeze and otherwise manhandle the dough until the water is more or less clear. Fill the bowl with water, manhandle awhile, dump the water out, refill... in other words: Rinse, repeat. What we're doing here is washing away as much starch as possible, to leave behind only the gluten. Wash, wash, wash. This takes long enough that my A.D.D. kicks in and I become convinced that it will never ever be done, so, eh, about fifteen minutes. Here, we're about halfway done with the rinsing. Notice that the mass is reducing in size. It's gonna do that.

By the time I give up and stop rinsing, the mass has reduced by at least half, and what's left is stringy and spongy, and for me evokes-memories-of-brain-dissections-in-high-school, or a bigass lump of chewed gum. I'm pretty sure I've never managed to get it all the way 'clean', but whatever, it's close enough:

Now, the liquid. Again, I don't measure much: I used three cans of generic vegetable stock and the same amount of water. Then I dumped in half a bottle (or so) of steak sauce, a bunch of shots of soy sauce, maybe a tablespoon or so of minced garlic, and ten-ish of shakes of ground mustard, ten-ish shakes of thyme, and about 20 twists of pepper. I know, it's frustrating not to know exactly how much, but it really honestly doesn't matter. The only thing that I find you gotta have is the stock and two sauces - the rest is just whatever seems like it'll work. I bet a couple of bay leaves would be nice, but I don't generally keep them on hand these days. The point is, you want a strongly flavored liquid, because you want to infuse that flavor into the protein. Stir it all together, and bring it to a boil:

Now, squeeze as much water out of your seitan dough as you can. Here is where you have a decision to make. Slice it and throw it in the pot? That's what I do:

...or you can also roll it in cheesecloth and tie it off in a sausage shape before tossing it in the pot (for a more dense and solid texture), or maybe even just drop the entire thing in. Whatever strikes your fancy.

Now, we boil. A low boil, for 30 minutes:

When the timer goes off, fish it out with a slotted spoon. Congratulations, you've made seitan!

I put it all into a container with a tight-fitting lid and put it in the fridge, where I use it over about two weeks. Once it's completely chilled, it can be manipulated in a number of ways: I typically grate it, for a ground beefier texture, then I use it in place of beef in spaghetti sauce, tacos, queso, or wherever else I might use meat. Last night I even sliced it into chunks and tossed it into vegetable soup.

I like not depending so much on meat, all the time, and I like making what essentially amounts to somethin'-outta-nuthin'. I especially like that the kids totally accept it in their normally meaty meals, without complaint.

Wheat meat: Try it!

The Other White Meat

I don't generally dig on swine. Don't look at me like that, all "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE BACON PROM, BLAINE?" I don't think I need to tell you I love bacon, because so do you. Bacon tastes gooood.

Bacon is its own food group in my book, so it is exempt from my "Pork? Meh." attitude. Because: Pork? Meh. I think pork loins are far too expensive for what they are, the texture of ham oogs me out like you wouldn't believe, and often I just find the whole pork experience a little... gamey.

What I was really aiming for, anyway, was a cranberry delivery device. Cranberry and turkey together are done to death over the winter holidays, and early April is just too soon thereafter, as far as I'm concerned. But I really wanted cranberry, and it seemed like pork would bear the cranberry tang well, so:

Pork Chops with Red Wine Cranberry Sauce*

Click to embiggen

• 4 boneless pork chops
• 1 small onion (to be minced)
• 1 can whole berry cranberry sauce
• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 2/3 cup red wine (shiraz, in this case)
• 3 T olive oil, divided
• 2 T buttah, divided
• granulated garlic
• salt and pepper
• asparagus

Yeah, that's refrigerated mashed potato in the background. Don't judge.

Asparagus Directions

Preheat oven to 400. Wash, trim, and dry the asparagus, then lay it out flat on a baking sheet. Drizzle it with about a tablespoon of olive oil, roll it around to coat, then season with salt, pepper, and a little granulated garlic. Stick it in the oven for 10 minutes, or however long it takes to roast to how you like it. I like mine to be pretty crunchy.

Click to embiggen

Red Wine Cranberry Sauce Directions

Dice, mince, or otherwise disassemble the onion into small pieces. Heat 1 tablespoon butter with 1 tablespoon oil, and then cook your onions until they are soft, translucent, and smelly in a good way rather than smelly in the offend-your-eyes way. Add the wine, broth, cranberry, a pinch of salt, and a few grinds of pepper. Boil this until it reduces to the consistency you like. Some rosemary might be nice, here, but I didn't have any, so whatever.

Click to embiggen
Pork Directions

Heat 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon oil in a large nonstick pan. Salt and pepper your chops, then arrange them in the pan so they are all lying flat. Honestly, would you just leave them alone? You don't need to wiggle them around all the time, press down on them, or poke/prod/flip and re-flip. Just let them be while they form a nice caramelized crust for about 5 minutes or so, and then flip them over for another 5 (I like to see 145 degrees on the instant thermometer in the thickest part of the chop). Take the chops out of the pan to rest for a good ten minutes. Be patient. No cutting until the chops have rested!

Click to embiggen
While the chops were resting, I microwaved the potatoes. Because really, if I can avoid peeling, boiling, and mashing potatoes? You bet your sweet potatoes I will.

Here's the final product, on the plate:

Click to embiggen
CJ refused the sauce, but did "gag down" four whole pieces of asparagus (due in large part to me telling him it would make his pee smell funny (he is a 12 year old boy, after all) and by reminding him that I still hadn't made up my mind about whether or not I would let him go to a pool party at a girl's house. And since we're now on the topic of my 12 year old son being invited to a pool party at a girl's house, can I just say: oh! em! eff! gee!).
*It is my sincere hope that any mention of "cranberry sauce" will evoke memories of the childhood "cranberry sauce song" earworm for my paternal cousins. More cranberry saaaaaaaaaaaaauce!