Carribbean Menu

Sorry the Prague and Dresden post is taking so long. There are a lot of pictures and I'm trying to be cute and clever with them, and it's not something that comes naturally to me. So I struggle, and I give up, then I come back determined and the computer has to be restarted. Then I get distracted and decide my time is better spent napping. Then I have to give two fuzzy headed boys haircuts. Then Silas throws up on me. OK, so that's not an entirely accurate order of events, although all those things have happened in the past few days.

Of course planning a tropical luncheon menu took some time away from my blogular duties as well. Again, time spent on something I can eat seems much more important these days.

So, because I'm too technically challenged to offer much else, here's what we ate for lunch today, and recipes so you can make it yourself, if you are, you know, nuts.

Appetizer: Plantain Chips with Fruited Guacamole
(also delicious with plain old tortilla chips, if slicing plantains 1/16 of an inch thick and deep frying them aren't your idea of a good time)
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
3 Serrano chilies, finely chopped
1 t coarse salt
4 avocados
2 T lime or lemon juice
1 pear, peeled and diced
3/4 cup red seedless grapes, quartered
3/4 cup pomegranate seeds
Mash together the first 6 ingredients. Fold in the grapes and 1/2 cup pomegranate seeds. Garnish with the remaining seeds.

Plantain chips
Score the skins of a couple plantains and pop them in the microwave for 30 seconds or so. This makes them easier to peel. Chop the ends off and remove the peel. Slice the plantain as thin as possible, 1/16 inch is recommended, so use a mandolin if you have one, or try a veggie peeler. Although I had good, if variable, results with a chefs knife. The thinner you get them the crispier they will get. Fry them in an inch of veggie oil that's been heated to 375 F, flipping them over, until golden brown, about 1 minute. Drain on paper towel. Season with salt, lime zest, an a little cayenne. Or plain salt, if you forgot to get limes, and you are hoping you might get your kids to eat them.

Main course: Chili Chicken Skewers with Cilantro Pesto
Toss chunks of chicken (four breasts worth) in
1 t brown sugar
1 t chili powder
1 t salt
1/2 t black pepper
1/2 t cayenne
Thread onto skewers and grill in a couple T of olive oil until chicken is cooked through- 10-15 minutes. Serve with pesto as a dipping sauce.
Combine 1 cup of cilantro
2 T peanut butter
1 T lime juice
1 clove garlic
1/4 cup olive oil
in a food processor or blender.

Side Dish: Sweet Potato and Banana Mash
Boil 8 cups of cubed sweet potatoes in salted water until quite soft. Drain and return to pan to dry for a few minutes.
Off heat add and mash 1 banana
2 T honey
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
1/4 cup orange juice
Salt and pepper

Dessert: Coconut Pudding Parfaits
Whisk together 1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup cornstarch
1/4 t salt
Add 4 cups of coconut milk (2 cans) and cook together, whisking until thick and smooth. Refrigerate overnight. Layer together with diced mango, pineapple and macaroon crumble.

Macaroon Crumble
Preheat oven to 350 F, combine
1 1/2 cups sweetened flaked coconut
2/3 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
3/4 t salt
4 T butter
cutting in the butter until crumbly clumps form. Spread on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, pressing down slightly. Bake for 20 minutes, cool, and crumble. Store airtight.

Recipes

So I gave this address to a couple friends here in Ireland, which I think is good because it will give me more motivation to post things. You know, people who see me in person on a regular basis can harass me that I haven't posted anything in a week.
And I told them I would post a few recipes for them here. So at the risk of turning this into an all-recipe-all-the-time blog here's a couple. The chicken goujon's (I think that's what the Irish call chicken breasts or strips) that I made for Silas's b-day picnic, and a lemon and raspberry scone I made for a coffee morning this morning.

Ritzy Chicken Strips
3 chicken breasts, cut into about 4 thin strips
3/4 cup all purpose flour
pepper, salt, and paprika
2/3 cup crushed Ritz crackers
2 egg whites
1/2 cup buttermilk (I use the thin-ish homemade yogurt, so half yogurt half milk would prob. work too)
3 T veg. oil

Heat oven to 450 F.Mix flour and spices together and dredge chicken strips. Set aside on rack. Add cracker crumbs to remaining flour. Heat oil in large glass baking dish. Whip egg whites to soft peaks and add buttermilk. Dip each strip into egg mixture then into flour and crumb mixture. Set on rack. Place strips in baking dish and roast for about 15 minutes. Flip strips over and roast for another 10 minutes until chicken is cooked. Serve with ketchup, barbecue sauce, honey mustard, etc.

Lemon Raspberry Scones
2 cups barley or spelt flour
1 cup unbleached bread flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1/2 cup butter, cold
1 large egg
3/4 cup buttermilk (or yogurt as above)
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 T lemon zest
1/4 cup raspberry preserves

Optional glaze
1/2 cup icing/powdered sugar
2 T lemon juice
1 t lemon zest

Preheat oven to 375 F. Combine all dry ingredients and cut the butter in using a fork or pastry blender until the mixture resembles crumbs. Whisk the egg, milk, juice and zest together. Add all at once and stir lightly with a fork until moistened.
Scoop about 1/4 of the dough onto a baking sheet making a rough circle. Spoon half the jam on top, swirling and spreading as necessary. (You may need more jam). Spread another 1/4 of the dough on top, sandwiching the raspberry filling. Repeat with the rest of the dough and jam.
Bake for 25 minutes. Cool for 15 minutes before glazing.

Note: Not sure how readily available barley flour is in the rest of the world but I can't find it here. I weigh out 4 oz of barley per cup required and throw it in the blender for a couple minutes. It doesn't make the worlds finest flour, but it seems to for everything I've tried in so far. I really love the flavor it gives to baked goods, it's a great whole grain, and is a good source of B vitamins, magnesium, selenium, etc. Look here for the run down of why you should be eating more barley! But if the whole making your own flour is too much, you can substitute spelt flour instead which you can get at health food stores here.

Stay tuned for more yogurt containing recipes. Since Linda bought me a yogurt maker last time we were home I always have these five little pots staring out at me from the refrigerator. So far we've made a batch (2 quarts) about once a week. Yeah Lactobacillus acidophilus!

Learning Tower in Action

My Mom and sister found this thing called a learning tower and kept talking about how great it would be. Except it was something like $170 for it everywhere we looked. So, using the magic of the Internet, Mom found an exploded drawing of it and when I was home last week we made three of them. All it takes is a sheet of plywood, some dowel rod, and some screws, or if you want it to be collapsible for easy transport across an ocean those tricksey little metal inserts and bolts that are used in knockdown furniture everywhere and require the nerves of steel of my father to drill a 1/2 hole in the side of a 3/4 inch thick piece of plywood.

Anyway, last night Silas was recruited to help make his birthday brownies. (Recipe posted below, yeah there is lots of sugar and chocolate in them, but they are 100% whole wheat and have 1/2 a cup of spinach in them.) In a few more years he won't want to make his own birthday cake, but for now he thinks it's great fun and I still can't think of a better birthday present than eating brownie batter. From the confines of the learning tower, he stirred the cocoa, flour, butter and sugar, cracked the eggs, dumped the chocolate chips in, and spread the batter into the pan, tasting every step of the way. Although he declared the cocoa powder, salt, and flour, were "spicy."

I went on to frost them after Silas was in bed, even though Orrin said you aren't supposed to frost brownies. I think if it's a birthday cake, especially for a two year old, you have to have frosting. Although, true to last year, Silas didn't eat any birthday cake or frosting. I guess he had his fill from the bug cakes at the island last week.

Whole Wheat Spinach Brownies

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup frozen spinach, thawed, (finely minced in food processor or use handblender as below)

2 cups packed brown sugar

3/4 cup cocoa

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon espresso powder (optional)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

4 large eggs

1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly grease a 13 x 9 pan. Melt butter and add sugar stirring to combine. Return to heat, or microwave until hot and bubbly to dissolve more sugar, which gives a shiny top crust to your brownies. Use a hand blender to puree the spinach if it is stringy. Stir in cocoa, baking powder, salt, espresso powder and vanilla. Cool until it feels like comfortably hot bath water. Whisk in eggs, stir until smooth. Add flour and chips stir until incorporated. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 30 minutes until tester reveals wet crumbs but not raw batter. Cool and rack and cover when cool. Brownies are much better after sitting overnight to soften the bran in the flour, if you can wait!

And I thought all he could cook was the worlds best popcorn

Tonight, we had this for dinner. Except it was black sole (farmers market) instead, and we didn't have leeks, and no cauliflower, but green beans (bush baby and fire tongue) from the garden, all 15 of them.
But Orrin made dinner all by himself. I found the recipe; Orrin requested "something that descibed as delicious, but easy enough that your husband can make it," but then I was sitting in the living room knitting and occasionally putting mega blocks together to make a train or airplane until Orrin called us for dinner.
It was scrumptious, but I think I'm in line for dish duty now, because that is our usual swap.

Exotic (sort of) Baking

Did you know you can make your own bagels? And pocket pita bread? I didn't. I mean I guess I figured you could, but I'd never really heard of anyone making them and never really thought about it much. But back a couple weeks ago, when I was sick and had intense cravings for all things doughy, I sought out some bagels in this town, and was sorely disappointed. So I flipped through the pages of "The Best Recipe" book and found a recipe for bagels. It called for high gluten flour, which I didn't have. I know that the Irish flour is made from some different strain of wheat that makes it extra low in gluten anyway. It makes great pie crust but not great bread.


But I did have a sack of wheat gluten from the time I made seitan. So I replaced a half a cup of the flour with the wheat gluten and this is what I got:

They tasted as good as they looked. Yeasty and doughy, crispy and chewy, toasted and smeared with cream cheese. They were perfect. Really. Best bagels I've ever eaten. I made them again last night but they didn't turn out as well. I didn't "retard" them long enough in the refrigerator and I ran out of all purpose flour so I threw in a little whole wheat. I may have shorted them on the gluten too. They are still better than anything I can buy here, but not as good as my first attempt. Anyway, so here is the recipe for anyone that wants to try it.

4 cups high gluten flour (or 3 1/2 cups flour and 1/2 cup gluten)

2 teaspoons salt

1 T barley malt syrup of powder (I used rice syrup and it worked fine, maybe honey would work too?)

1 1/2 t dry yeast

1 1/4 cups lukewarm water

3 T cornmeal for dusting baking sheet

Mix flour salt and malt together in stand mixer. Add yeast and water and mix for about 12 minutes until dough is smooth and stiff. Divide into 8 portions, roll into smooth balls and let rest covered for 5 minutes. Roll each ball into a rope about 11 inches long. Overlap ends by 1 inch and insert your hand in the hole in the middle and roll the overlap together between your hand and the work surface until sealed. Place the bagels on a cornmeal dusted tray and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 12-18 hours for retarding. (This gives the dough a change to ferment and allows the bagels to brown nicely thanks to the Maillard reaction). About 20 minutes before you want to bake the bagels remove them from the fridge. Adjust oven rack to the center and heat the oven to 450 degrees. Fill a large pot with 3 inches deep of water and bring to a boil. Submerge 2 or 3 bagels at a time for 30 seconds and remove to wire rack with a slotted spoon to drain. Transfer to baking sheet and bake until golden brown and crisp, about 14 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool.

The other recipe is pocket pita bread. I used spelt flour, just in an attempt to add some variety to our diet. Here's the recipe. It is from King Arthur's Whole Grain Baking Book. (Much as I love this book, the whole wheat chocolate chip cookies are disgraceful)

1 cup unbleached all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon instant yeast

1 cup warm water

3/4 t salt

1 1/2 t olive oil

1 1/2 cups whole spelt flour

Combine all purpose flour and yeast in a bowl with the water. Stir until smooth, cover and let rest for 10 minutes-2 hours. Sprinkle salt over the dough stir in oil. Add 1 cup of spelt flour and stir until dough gathers up. Add more spelt if necessary but try not to make a dry dough. Knead the dough until smooth, 8 minutes. (best to knead by hand as spelt gluten is delicate) Grease a bowl, place dough in and cover to rest for about an hour. Preheat oven to 500 and place baking stone or sheet in the oven. Divide dough into 8 pieces. Flatten to a 6 inch circle using a floured rolling pin. Load to pitas at a time onto the hot stone. Bake for 3 minutes then flip over and bake for another 2 minutes. Stack the warm pitas together and wrap in a kitchen towel to keep them soft.

A couple f my pitas didn't go into "full balloon" so they didn't have much of a pocket. I think this is because I don't have a bakers peel or stone so my transfer to the oven was less than graceful and a couple of the pita's ended up draped over the edge of the overturned baking sheet. So they didn't all look great, but they wonderful stuffed with garlicky creamy hummus, crunchy cucumber, juicy tomatoes, and bitter parsley.

Fun with Flour

My first humble attempt at making pretzels. I didn't use a lye bath, but I did boil them in salt water with baking soda. I found some nice big salt crystals which were perfect for sprinkling on top. I also tried a couple with sesame seeds on top, and one with currants in the dough (bottom right). They did come out nice and chewy, but the result was more like a honey whole wheat bagel with salt on top, than a pretzel. I think a portion of that was due to the whole wheat; they didn't rise as high and weren't as light and fluffy inside. But I'm fairly certain that the lye bath would have given them a more pretzel-like outer crust. Stay tuned for further attempts and my quest for food grade lye.

Silas, a pretzel connoisseur, didn't turn his nose up at my pretzels exactly, but he far preferred his flour on the floor. I mixed up a big batch of play dough this morning and Silas played with it for a good hour and a half. I went to all the trouble of making it different colors and I think he would have been just as happy with white. I was rather proud of myself for having the the idea to use the sugar-less Kool-Aid we had (inexplicably, hauled all the way from Minnesota) stuffed in the back of the cupboard. And for brown, cocoa powder. It took me a long time to figure out what the smell of the sweet grape-y purple and the chocolate brown reminded me of. Tootsie pop!

Finally, we're having quesadillas for dinner tonight. I'm too lazy to go to the store and buy a package of tortillas but not to grind my own flour. The King Arthur Whole Grain Baking book has a little paragraph about how great (nutty, sweet, tender, flavorful) the tortillas are made with freshly ground flour. I have a bag of wheat berries for sprouting so I weighted out the amount needed for the recipe and tossed them into the blender for a few minutes. Bam! Flour! I haven't baked them or tasted them yet, but so far so good.

Mandelbrot Veggies

For the past week or two our evening meals have consisted of a pile of starch covered with toppings of some sort. Now, there has been a good variety in the contents of these stacked piles. For example, pasta of various shapes, rice, couscous, bulgar wheat, quinoa, covered with assorted meats, beans, and veggies and accompanying sauces. The results are usually tasty, nutritious, we can usually get Silas to eat some portion of the meal, and it has the added benefit of having only two pots to wash after dinner is over.

But there is something lacking in this heap of a dinner. Can you tell my feelings by the way I describe food as a heap or a pile? I think it may be the midwesterner in me that feels like a dinner place should be divided up like those molded plastic picnic plates, a section for the main course (meat or protein), a section for the vegetable, and a section for the starch (potato or bread).

So tonight I cooked up a three section meal. Sausages in a cider-onion sauce, buttermilk mashed potatoes, and broccoli from outerspace!!




Ok, actually it's romanesco. A relative of broccoli ad cauliflower. Isn't it gorgeous?

It's like the fractals Mr. Rajca tried to explain to me in high school and I thought were the most amazing thing since the periodic table. The man at the market told me it would turn Orrin into a Romeo if I fed it to him, but he went to sleep as soon as Silas fell asleep (7:30pm) tonight. So I conclude that the veg. was too much for him, smaller doses next time. Actually I think he is getting sick.

Anyway, the stuff tastes just like broccoli so far as I can tell. Maybe a little bit firmer in texture, and a little milder. But basically the same taste, nearly identical nutritionally, and at least 3 times as beautiful.

On an unrelated topic, here's a picture of my craftiness for the day. It's a mei tei baby carrier I made for a friend's baby shower in December. I'm most proud that after spending weeks wringing my hands, not wanting to start it, trying to figure out what I was doing, I made the whole thing in one afternoon and evening. Ok, note that it is nearly midnight. Still, less than 12 hours, and look what I made! I'm a little worried that she is going to think it is too hippy-ish, but too bad.

I still have to tell you about our trip to Dublin last weekend and the exciting, awesome, amazing time we had with my cousin Lindy.

Cookie Monster

In the last post I mentioned that Silas was eating the butter cookies that we made for Halloween. But I neglected to mention that Silas actually helped with the making and decorating of the cookies. So here is the phographing evidence of how, Little Red Hen fashion, Silas was totally entitled to those cookies.

Must. Concentrate. On. Mixing. Must. Not. Sample.

Ok, maybe just one little sample when no one is looking. And in case you are wondering, I came up with this all on my own. Never once seen Mom do anything like this. Nope, nope, nope.

(Bonus points to anyone who spots the three hazards Ruth Yaron would have written big ol' warning labels about in the middle of the post)

Mom was watching me like a hawk with the frosting though. I barely even got to lick any off my fingers. I don't think she cared for my stabbing method of icing the cookies, either.

Buttermilk Pie Crust

Ok, I know I just posted about making a quilt. And now I am writing about pie crust. I am not becoming Amish.

Although, I once told a guy a went to school with that I was Amish, and somehow; maybe it was the plain clothes, straight long hair, and goofy taste in music, he believed me. Most ridiculously of all, he asked me to knit him a pair of socks from "our" sheep, so I bought a pair of cotton socks to give to him. I guess if he can't tell the difference between an atheist and an Amish, he can't tell the difference between cotton and wool.

Oh well. Pie crust.

Ok. So, I thought I made a prety good pie crust. Despite my supreme lack of patience, which comes in very handy when making pastry, patience that is, not the lack of, I had pretty well figured out a cream cheese crust that seemed to come out well 7/8ths of the time. 1/8th of the time it came out crumbly and difficult to work with, but somehow also kind of tough when it was baked.

I have been promising Orrin an apple pie for a couple months now. It is his favorite pie. Kind of insipid if you ask me, but ok, apple pie it was. Silas and I went out to the orchard last week and picked up a big box of bramley apples. We've been eating a fair number fresh, putting to test my Grandpa's adage not to eat anything unless you are hungry enough to eat an apple. And finally yesterday I spotted a few that were starding to get bad spots. I figured I couldn't put off the pie any longer. I pulled out The Pie and Pastry Bible and flipped to the cream cheese recipe.

Egads! The cream cheese was covered in various shades of slime mold. All butter crust it is.

Hang on, I also have a jug of buttermilk that was about to go bad. Maybe I should have titled this post "How To Make Pie When All Of Your Ingredients Are Spoiled." The book had a variation of the butter pie crust which replaced the typical water and cider vinegar with an equal amount of buttermilk.

I made the crust yesterday and today I made the pie. It took me all day, off and on, to peel and slice the apples, macerate the apples with sugar, reduce the apple juice, roll out the crust, fill the crust, chill the pie, and bake it. But my goodness, it was worth it.

This crust is the best I have ever made. I am sorry to eat it because I want my triumph to last forever. And yet it is so tender and flakey, like a crispy little croissant, I'm having a hard time not shoving the whole pie down my, well, pie hole.

So I'm sure you are all dying for this fabulous recipe and here it is. This makes two crusts. You can freeze one, or make two immediately, you will want it. I will say that I do not adhere to Ruth Beranbaum's crazy ass hand method of making pie crust which involves putting it in a ziploc bag and rolling it and some weird kneading technique. I just cut in the butter into the dry ingredients then add the liquid and mix it all together until it forms a cohesive lump.

14 T butter
2 1/4 c. pastry flour or bleached all purpose
1/4 t salt
1/4 t baking powder
8 T buttermilk

Fill it with whatever your heart desires.

Silas is cute, but I am spoiled.

Just when I was beginning to be proud of myself for accomplishing so much without even getting out of my pajamas, I was forced to get dressed to go to the grocery store. Stupid ginger. I was making salmon cakes from the fish we bought at the Cork market on Saturday. I could substitute onions for scallions, and leave out the cilantro and jalapeno. But the ginger! The ginger is a must.

So my beloved pj pants, with the bleach holes in the legs, which Silas has begun the poke at and say "dickle, dickle, dickle," were finally replaced by jeans at 5 pm. Silas was strapped in the stroller, and we all walked up to the Super Valu. Oh, the perils of the grocery store when you are hungry. Never has a packet of dried oxtail soup looked so tempting. Somehow we managed to buy only what was on the list, plus one small hazelnut chocolate bar for the walk home.

Upon our return we grilled the sea bream fish from the market with a tomato basil salsa. The salsa was good, but I still can't quite get the hang of cooking a whole fish. No, the cooking is ok, the serving of it is where everything gets a little mangled. Bones and skin and fish falling all over the place. You can't just pick the fish up and gnaw on it like you would a piece of fried chicken or ribs, or other tricky to eat foods. So we'll keep trying, I guess. But I won't be serving it for guests anytime soon.

Silas has been really discovering more and more about his body and the world around him. It's really fun to watch. He's been trying to climb into everything. Last night he kept trying to climb into Orrin's big bowl of popcorn. This morning, he kept trying to put his foot into little tupperware containers and slide around the kitchen. While we finished making the fish cakes, he climbed into the bottom drawer in the kitchen and sat among the rolling pin, pastry blender, wire whisks, and spatulas. In the drawer, he discovered the paintbrush I use for basting, and proceeded to "paint" the cabinets and floor. He's so cute when he tilts his head to look at things upside down.

So, I should tell you a little bit about the market. It's an open air, European style, market with fresh fruit and veggies, butchers, fish mongers, olive stand, chocolatiers, and bakers. Coming to Ireland as a vacation, I would have been completely in love with this place. "Look organic figs! Oh, fresh prawns and scallops! Let's get some chocolate truffles!" The smells, the sights, the crowds of people, the accents, I would have been charmed. I should have been charmed, yesterday. But instead, I said, "Well, that was underwhelming." Yes. I am a complete brat.

Before we went to the market, we stopped at Ballymaloe Restaurant for lunch. It was a splurge, but it was really, really, good. Part of the draw for the restaurant is that he vegetables come from the Ballymaloe Farm itself, and the remainder of herbs, meats, and cheeses are sourced locally from family farms. Silas was even well behaved through the two and half hour long lunch. He did try to poke holes in the Irish linen table cloth with a dessert fork, and ate several spoonfuls of chocolate ice cream, but I can actually say that lunch was fairly relaxing. Who would have thunk, relaxing! in a restaurant! with a one year old!

Stitches and unraveling

Well, the sewing machine still works. And here's proof:

Orrin was kind and thoughtful enough to have procured a transformer so I don't fry the motor over here. And he and Silas took the whole thing apart and oiled it for me. Silas really liked pushing all the buttons and turning the knobs. Looks just like a toy to him.

unfortunately, this means that any problems I have with sewing are 100% user error. I hate not having anything to blame but myself. And since I haven't sewn anything since I made Silas's Halloween costume and Rachel and Trey's wedding quilt (it's not as bad as it sounds, it's worse, their wedding present was only slightly over 3 years late), the user errors were frequent. And me without my seam ripper. Thank goodness it was only a small baby quilt, and I decided to tie it rather than actually quilt it. I rather impressed myself in that I completed the whole thing in less than 3 days time. Although, when you work in crappy job mode, things generally do tend to go faster. I had a deadline though, to have it completed by the baby shower tomorrow night, so I didn't really have much choice. If only I could crank out all craft projects as quickly. *sigh*

And I know, Baby Ellis, I still owe you a quilt. It's next on my list. Then Lucy and Josh's- you don't mind waiting three years either, do you?

The picture reminds me though that I should start looking for halloween ideas for this year. Or maybe I should confirm that there actually is a Halloween over here.

This afternoon I am going to the horse races with American neighbor lady. She claims it is "such fun." To which I wanted to reply, "It will be amusing or diverting, not such fun" (I actually couldn't find a website that included that line as a memorable quote, can you believe it?). Anyway, I'm excited. But I feel like I should have an enormous ridiculous hat to go to the races. Instead, I'm going in capri pants and a stripey polo short lifted from Orrin's closet. But I have my cute red sneaks on, so you can tell it's a special occasion!

Oh, and I'm trying out some yogurt culture Linda bought for me while we were home. I'm making soy milk yogurt with it. I hope it turns out ok. I'm not too good at the whole, "making sure everything is sterile". Everything was clean, but sterile? Meh. We shall see.

Tonight, I have to call the insurance company to see about getting the roof assessed for hail damage on the Minnesota house. Tennis ball sized hail. Yikes! The roof isn't leaking as far as I know, but it would be nice to get it repaired if it is damaged. Then there are loads of other paperworky type stuff to be dealt with this week. But as is typical, I am putting it off until it can't be put off any longer. Which actually may be pretty soon since I was up until 3 am last night making mental lists of the things that need to be taken care of.

Ok, enough of this pointless rambling.

When life gives you incisions, make scotcharoos

Just try to pretend this post was up a week ago or so...

I used to think they were just called rice krispie treats. They were the standard rice krispie based cookie in our house growing up. It wasn't until later that I was exposed to the marshmallow rice krispie treats, that I realized how many people lived the unenlightened life- scotcharoo-less. For anyone still in that sad state- these things are equal parts sugar, corn syrup, and peanut butter, mixed with krispies and topped with melted chocolate and butterscotch chips.

I've never done a scientific study on the curative effects of scotcharoos but I do know that the daily dose of them provided by Grandma Lois, Aunt Susan, and Cousin Laura, following my appendectomy greatly speeded my recovery. Or at least made the hospital stay more bearable.
Thus, I was charged with creating the healing elixir for Rachel following the birth of Ellis. Now, I've been making these bars as long as I can remember but it is no easy task in Germany, or at least in Bammentaul, Germany.
Rachel had acquired something she thought was golden syrup, peanut butter is available, and sugar of course. But the real problem was the cereal. The only rice krispies to be found were in the fun sized variety packs, and only 1 out of six baxes were krispies. So I opted instead for coco krispies. I figured that way I didn't have to hassle with a chocolate topping.
Well, they weren't exactly scotharoos, we dubbed them german poopy bars. Somehow, and I don't quite know if it was the syrup, (which ended up being more like a combination of honey and molasses) or that I didn't make quite enough sauce for the cereal. Somehow they didn't really hold together.
It didn't stop us from devouring them of course, and making a second batch to figure out what I did wrong.