Saturday, March 26, 2011

Geek Love

Awwww. You guys. I'm not writing, and you're still reading. That's really inspiring to me. I'm sorry, and thank you.

We've been breaking this last couple weeks...I did that massive two week cooking day. And then Cousin needed some catch up time. And then she needed more catch up time. I'm not sure what they are eating. I think I'm going to cook next week...And I'll probably be using this Rachel Ray menu, as forwarded by the Lovely Susan. Or maybe a week from the Once-a-Week Cooking Plan: How to save the world and balance the budget in two hours a week. Or whatever that grandiose title was.

Tuesday I cooked for a different crowd. Bookclub! Yay! We read Water for Elephants so as to be better prepared to go see Edwa...I mean, Robert Pattinson in the movie next month. Also, Reese - whom I want to be when I grow up.

Though really, I just love the book. I think this is my third bookclub discussion on it. It's beautifully written, gives such a rich picture of circus life, and I love Rosie the Elephant to death. She is so stinkin' charming. The first time I read it, I also read Geek Love - another circus story. It's much, much, much darker and with a magical realism bent. But I think Geek Love makes a better post title. So there.

Anyway, we had "circus" food. Kettle Corn, Pigs in a Blanket, apples with fancy caramel sauce, and Strip and Go Naked Punch (in honor of Rosie, the lemonade drinking elephant).

Lovely Dawn sent me this caramel sauce recipe. It is insanely good. So good that you forgive it for having the dreaded corn syrup. So good that you will skip lunch the next day so you can use the calories to eat the leftovers with a spoon and cashews sprinkled on top.

Caramel-- oh, high heat, that's why it's taking so long!

Much better.


Um, Kettle Corn. Popcorn still mystifies me. I just kind of pour some oil and some popcorn in my Whirly Popper and pray. But since I was having guests, I thought I should be intentional about it. But not intentional enough to make sure I had the right oil. I know olive oil is the wrong oil, but my other choice was Crisco. Like, solid Crisco. So I blobbed it in there with the sugar, salt and corn as the recipe (which clearly didn't intend the oil to be solid) directed. Oops. It burned. Yeah, saw that coming, didn't you? I did it again and this time I melted the Crisco first. Much better.

Pigs in a Blanket....did you know that Pillsbury now makes just a sheet of crescent roll dough??? AWESOMENESS! No annoying lines that we don't need! So I cut the sheet into teeny-tiny crescent roll shapes to put on my teeny-tiny cocktail sausages.

The four year old wrapped them for me and I baked them at 350 until they were brown and puffy. Then I served them with a really hearty brown mustard. Yum.

And the punch. Um. Yum. It shouldn't taste so good: 12oz frozen lemonade concentrate, 12 oz water, 24 oz beer (the cheaper the better), 12 oz vodka (the nicer the better).  Sounds terrible, yes? It's so not. It's so good that you will drink lots. It goes down smooth....and leads to inappropriate behavior. You're on your own with that.

1 comment:

  1. Ah...Strip and Run Naked. I have a story about that drink. It involves drinking 2 32oz. glasses of it and then needing some details provided the next day as to what happened the rest of the night.

    I should make those while my sister-in-law is visiting. Hmm...

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