Oh, Christmas List... Round 2

I really and truly wish I had more to do at work today... but I don't. Thankfully, the rest of the week does not look to be as dull, since I do get a little stir crazy without much to do. So, to waste away a bit of the morning, here's a few more things I'm definitely putting on my Christmas list. While the first installment of my Christmas list was full of fun items, this portion leans a little more towards things that are actually useful...

First up is the Orange Beautiful 2009 "perpetual" calendar which I have decided I really and truly just HAVE to have. With switch-out cards for each day of the week, each month of the year, and each date, this can be used forEVER, or as long as the beautiful letterpressed 140# heavy cover stock cards hold up. SWOON.

In cheery yellow, this would go great on my desk at work... or perfectly match my hopes for our home office color palate. Although currently listed as sold out in their etsy shop... it looks like there are still some available over at Supermarket. 

Another office goody, I've been eyeing one of these Pantone business card holders for ages. Available in a mess of fun PMS colors and sure to keep all of the cards I collect in one place, the organizational color freak in me loves this.

 

Does the fact that I want a little thermal lunch bag a-la-5th grade make me a nerd? Not having to shove my sandwich and baby carrots in my purse makes me not care, and the idea of having something to tote my snacks along in that is NOT a plastic grocery bag makes me happy. Besides, this fun turquoise color is my favorite and would be easy to spot in the three fridge wide mess in my office kitchen.

Oh look, something else in turquoise! This infinity scarf is a chunky knit and can be worn a bunch of different ways depending on the level of bitter cold in Chicago. 

Finally, ever since one of my first issues of Bon Appetit wrote about this snazzy chef's knife, I've been noticing just how much it would help in the kitchen. Considering I'm no professional chef, I know that super expensive knives are unnecessary and out of the question... but this bad boy sells for a mere $20 and is loved by chefs and caterers alike! 

FINALLY!

I have been looking for a site like this for AGES. Seeing as I am a terribly paranoid person about everything under the sun, it should come as no surprise that I am also veeeery paranoid about food and how long it keeps for. If I take meat out of the freezer to thaw in the fridge and it's not eaten the next day, you'd better believe it goes in the garbage. If produce even STARTS to look wilted we won't touch it, and I'd probably be embarrassed to calculate the cost of all the lunch meat I toss if it's not consumed within my little personal acceptable window of time. For two people that give up a Friday night a month to feed the homeless, you'd think we'd be a little less wasteful, but that is unfortunately not the case. In my own defense, I blame a large chunk of my food paranoia on my horribly weak stomach - I have a hard enough time not getting sick from food that is beautifully fresh, there's no room for experimentation with one-day-too-old meat. However, I'm hoping this handy little tool can help curb a bit of my fear, and ultimately save us some food - and therefore, money!

Check it out -

Still Tasty

Most Successful Apple Encounter EVER

OH. MY. Goodness. I'm not sure a dessert more delicious than this exists. Honestly. Well, at least not a dessert that does not involve chocolate, but we all know that isn't allowed in my house because it makes me deathly ill. The best part of this success? I took an existing recipe, did NOT follow it exactly, crossed my fingers... and the final product is amazing. I'm so proud. To make it all even better, three friends at work are sitting over in their cubes as we speak claiming this stuff is heaven on a plate. It's always a little nerve racking for me to share the things I make since I am still a complete amateur when it comes to cooking, so it's even more exciting to have people who's opinions matter to me LOVE it. So, because this was such a hit, I'm pushing all of the other apple recipes that were boring and dull and posting this first.

Perhaps my favorite part of having 50 apples in my house has been that in my search for apple goodness I've stumbled on a bunch of new foodie blogs that I officially love. This particular recipe is from Picky Palate - who has quickly become a new favorite read. I think that a lot of her recipes will allow for some tweaking and experimenting, which I think will continue to help my confidence in the kitchen.

I'm somewhat busy at work... so here's the link to the original recipe... and below is my adaptation, and a summary of what I changed from the original recipe. Go make it. Now.

Caramel Apple Cream Cheese Cookie Bars (renamed much more simply by Lauren, but not appropriate for the readership of this blog) :)

Ingredients:

3/4 stick of butter, divided

1 package of graham crackers, crushed (about 7-8 crackers)

1 roll Pillsbury Sugar Cookie dough, cold and cut in half

12 oz cream cheese, softened

1/3 cup sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

3 large apples, peeled, cored and cut into small chunks

heaping 1/3 cup brown sugar

several generous dashes of cinnamon

1 teaspoon corn starch and/or 1 teaspoon flour

1/4 cup quick oats

handful (about 12) of Kraft caramels, unwrapped

splash of milk

1. Preheat oven to 350. Grease an 8x8 baking dish (I used my trusty square Pyrex). Melt 3 tablespoons of the butter and mix with the graham cracker crumbs in a bowl, then press into the prepared dish. Bake for 8 minutes and remove from oven.

2. Crumble half of the sugar cookie dough over the partially baked crust.

3. Beat softened cream cheese, vanilla, and sugar until smooth. Spread over cookie dough layer in dish, bake for 25 minutes, and remove from oven.

4. Meanwhile, melt the remaining butter in a medium sized pot, stir in corn starch and/or flour until smooth. Add diced apples to the pot, then add brown sugar and cinnamon a little at a time, mixing to combine. Cook over medium heat for 7-8 minutes, until apples are coated and start to soften. Spread mixture over cream cheese layer in dish.

5. Crumble remaining sugar cookie dough over apple layer. Sprinkle with quick oats and bake another 30-35 minutes, until a toothpick comes clean from the center.

6. Melt caramels with splash of milk in a small bowl in the microwave - about 2 minutes stirring once. Stir until smooth and drizzle over cooled bars.

7. If you have any leftovers... cover and refrigerate. :)

YUM...


As a note, here's what I changed from the original recipe:

1. I made a graham cracker crust instead of using crushed up golden grahams cereal.

2. I made 1.5 times the amount of cream cheese mixture than the original recipe since I didn't think the suggested amount looked like enough once I spread it in the dish.

3. I needed to use up some apples!! So, instead of a can of apple pie filling (which may be quicker but honestly just doesn't sound good to me), I made my own with the cinnamon, brown sugar, and diced apples.

4. I didn't have any granola bars, so I substituted the quick oats.

5. I didn't want to buy half and half just for this, so I melted the caramels with milk... I'm sure that didn't make any difference at all in the end.

And as always... a few things I learned while making this:

1. 8x8 is not nearly big enough for something this amazing. I'm seriously tempted to make it again, and double the recipe. Although, the 8x8 was so tightly packed and layered high that the slightly overflowing end result was beautiful.

2. I'm not very good at "drizzling" anything - such as melted caramel. It's always a mess and gets all over the counter, and doesn't end up looking as nice as I would like. In this case, it didn't matter, it was still delicious in the end.

3. I have a difficult time following recipes that list a bunch of different things in one step. When transferring recipes to my blog or recipe book, I often re-write the steps to make more sense for me and to split up what to do with the separate ingredients.

4. Umm... I didn't really learn much else while making this except that I love cheesecake-like desserts, and I apparently also love them mixed with apples and sugar cookie dough. There's not much else to say, really, it was just that good!

So. Many. Apples.

It's been an entire week since we went apple picking... I have baked an apple pie, an apple cake, and a huge batch of apple muffins. Manda and I dipped half a dozen homemade caramel apples last night, and there's 10 minutes left in the oven on my latest undertaking - caramel apple cream cheese cookie bars. We've been eating apples for breakfast and snacks... and I STILL have about a dozen left to find something to do with. Manda really wants me to tackle homemade apple sauce, and I'm thinking about it simply because I think I could probably use up the rest of the apples and make enough to share. We'll see.

I realize I have yet to post any of the recipes for any of the above mentioned baked goods, but I'm hoping after tonight's excursion I can blog about them all together in one big post. That is, if tonight's experiment turns out - I took a formatted recipe and changed it up quite a bit to fit my own taste and available ingredients! Fingers crossed the finished product tastes as good as it looks.

Since it's nearly my bedtime and I am fairly certain I am walking into a crazy week at work tomorrow, I figured I'd post the pictures from our apple picking trip that I finally uploaded this weekend... and then get to bed. Here's hoping I can sleep even though I slept in yesterday and today AND took a nap this afternoon. Ridiculous, I know, but I can't help it when it's so darned cold outside and in the house and so so warm underneath our two down comforters. I spent the weekend so cold I even busted out my adult-sized one piece pjs that my mom got me for Christmas last year. (Yes, I seriously own one piece pjs. And I'm proud of it. I only wish they were footie pajamas.)


Here's a teaser from my first apple undertaking... Dan cutting into his dutch apple pie...


Kadence liked it...

Oh Christmas List, Oh Christmas List...

...it's never too early to start one!

I can't help but start my holiday drooling a little early this year, with all the blogs I follow, among others, tempting me on a DAILY basis. Here's some things I am already lusting over...

The One Line A Day Journal, for people like me who wish they were avid journal keepers, but... are just not. This trendy little book has a teeny little section each day for the next five years!


This aaaaadorable little salt and PEEP-er shaker in one would look so much snazzier on my dining room table than the current plain white set looks -


Orrr... maybe I'd rather this owl pitcher, which would compliment any table and sit pretty in the hutch when not in use.


Finally, tell me this necklace isn't (quite literally) screaming my name?! -

Clearing out the graveyard

Over the last year, little random things have happened here and there that have often made me stop and wonder about the history of our little house and all of it's past tenants. I always wonder why anyone would paint over an entire window (in the pantry), or put drywall and siding over several others (2 in the living room alone). I wonder who's idea it was to paint a bunch of potentially gorgeous natural wood molding glossy white, saturate a beautiful built-in hutch in even more white, and cover a brick fireplace in - you guessed it - white. I'm curious about how other owners had furniture laid out and what kinds of decor they had. But the thing that sparks the most imagination is a little area we will probably never use, and that I avoid at all costs due to it's scary track record. If you've read this blog you've heard about it before...

The crawlspace.

Or, as I like to sometimes refer to it - The graveyard.

Now I'm going to let my readers that I can count on one hand in on a little secret. It's a secret that we haven't done a very good job of keeping, and one that Dan's parents seem to love bringing up to watch me squirm. Ready? Here goes...

We found a bone in the crawlspace. A knee of some sorts, to be more precise. Want to see a picture? I thought so.


Our poor friend Dusty was the lucky guy that found this wonderful piece of "history" complete with hair still on the bone and everything, while in the crawl space doing some electrical work for us before we even moved in. I've resisted blogging about it simply because I think it is DISGUSTING, but seeing as Dan loves to show it to people when they come over and I plan to utilize it somehow in our Halloween party decorating, I figured it's about time I post it here. Unfortunately we have no idea what (or better, who) the knee belongs to, but thankfully Vince was able to confirm that the structure of it shows it is clearly NOT human, thankyouverymuch.

There's more to the story of the graveyard, though. Let's not forget about the cat that died in the crawlspace, and the other small animals and rodents who's rotted skulls we have found in there. Really.

All of this being said, it was clear that it was about time we do something about the crawlspace so it could stop being a death trap for all the little furry creatures in the neighborhood. We did talk about having the space professionally done after Garfield died in there, but $2,000 is just not the kind of money I want to spend on a space in the house that isn't even livable. So, we decided to tackle it ourselves! Bring on the long weekend and Dan's desire to be productive, we asked Mr. Lawler to come over and help and next thing you know we're all crawling around in there and stapling up insulation to warm up the front porch a bit... and believe it or not, I quite enjoyed myself helping.

Thankfully, I had 50 apples to do something with so I managed to get out of the first leg of the project by working on an apple pie. By the time I climbed in to help, the guys had removed 3 huge garbage bags of debris from the space, plus this, which we plan to keep around -


Pretty cool, huh? Yet another little piece of the house that makes me wonder about the people that lived here years ago. Was this something from an old owner's business? Just a piece that someone saw and bought because they liked it? Does it have any significance? Either way, we think it's neat and I plan to google the heck out of it the next time I'm bored at work.

After Dan closed up all the little holes of access to the outside world with cinder blocks and put down a plastic vapor barrier tarp I was happy to climb in and help with the insulation, and I'm glad I did! It turns out our house is a little older than we thought, which I learned when Dan pointed out walls covered in old newspapers, yellowed and dirty, but still readable! I got a kick out of looking at the headlines from the early 1920's and found myself wishing I could go shopping with the prices listed in the ads. Wishful thinking!

Look! The Cubs used to be good... in 1920.


A look at fashion advertising...



Clothes for $1!!


Boxers for 19 cents!!


Apparently malted products were all the rage...


And an article about the price of pigs "jumping" 10-15 CENTS, which I found amusing just because of all the swine flu news these days -


While all of this is fun and games, I do want to acknowledge the actual work that was done in the crawlspace in between my picture taking. Besides family pictures from holidays, I do believe this is Mr. Lawler's first (awfully happy!) appearance on the blog!


And here's Dan stapling up the last row of the insulation -


Stay tuned... I'll be filling the blog with apple recipes galore later this week!

3-day weekends should be standard

Columbus Day is officially one of my new favorite days. In the past, I haven't had this wonderful random fall day off, but this year I did and it was glorious. While we still did plenty of laying around and relaxing, I also felt like we were incredibly productive over the 3-day weekend. "Productive" being a term I use loosely, seeing as I consider spending a long afternoon apple picking and outlet mall shopping "productive" since we both needed some new clothes and why wouldn't a gigantic bag of apples be considered a good thing?

Either way, our long weekend left me with so much to blog about I couldn't manage to pick just one thing last night, and ended up not blogging at all. Hopefully tonight I can get a couple of posts up, and then throughout the week I'll be able to post all of the apple recipes I've already tackled and a couple more I plan to try out while I'm holed up inside.

In the meantime, here's Yelp reviews for Oriole Springs Orchard in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin, which is where we ended up going on Saturday. I LOVED the experience and loved the price even more. $18 for a GIGANTIC bag of apples, and huge pumpkins for $3 each! My original plan for Apple Holler would have cost us more than $18 just for parking and admission, and that's before the $40 we would have dropped on a bag of apples. So, I'm glad we did a little research and went to Oriole Springs instead. As the Yelp reviews state, Oriole Springs is "no-frills apple picking", and for us that was perfect. No hay rides, no corn mazes, no throngs of children running around. While all of that may be fun, it was more than we needed and the money saved alone made the smaller, quieter orchard worth it. Besides, just 1 block up the road from Oriole Springs is Harvest Time, which had cider in quart containers that are shaped like adorable teeny milk jugs, and we were able to grab brats and hot dogs for lunch there as well. YUM.

The 10 pound bag was cheaper than the 5 pound!

On our last trip to the grocery store I decided to buy potatoes, as I sometimes do when I'm feeling domestic and want to mash some up from scratch. Maybe it's because I tend to crave my favorite ever mashed potatoes on a regular basis, but this time it was mostly because the big huge 10 pound bag was under $2 and I decided that was the perfect excuse to finally try my hand at homemade baked potato soup.

While I spent quite a bit of time searching through my favorite foodie sites looking for recipes, I quickly noticed that every single one varied and the finished product was really going to come down to personal taste. So, armed with a couple of recipes for reference, I sort of... just started throwing things in a pot and crossing my fingers. Seeing as I made this while chatting with Mr. Lawler, Ryan and Dan hanging out in the kitchen, I realized how natural I'm beginning to feel in the kitchen... chopping and stirring while trying to stay out of the way of Dan's lunch making, having a conversation and filling drinks. Those little "I'm an adult and I own a house" moments hit me once in awhile... and I love them.

So, an upfront apology to Aunt Claire for the lack of exact measurements here... but I am confident that if I can throw all of this stuff into a pot and come out with a hit then anyone can! :) Lots of notes added to my ingredient list below to explain a bit about what I did...

Baked Potato Soup
(This makes a BIG pot... I brought tupperwares full to my parents and Mr. Lawler and still had 4-5 servings left at home for myself and Dan.)

8-10 small potatoes (my potatoes were probably equal to maybe 4 large baking potatoes)
1/2 stick of butter
1/3 cup flour
1 large white or yellow onion, chopped (I used about half this much as we are not huge fans of onion)
4 cups milk (I use 2%)
1 cup heavy cream
1 can chicken broth (I'm sure you're supposed to use the low sodium kind, but I sure do not)
6 pieces of bacon, cooked til crispy and crumbled, drippings reserved (I would have preferred more like 10 slices but the rest was used with lunch)
1 bag shredded cheddar cheese (most of the recipes I saw called for 1 cup... I used the entire bag. Hey, I never said this was a healthy soup)
1 small container sour cream (I think the container I buy is about 1 cup)
Generous handful of instant mashed potato potato flakes (this "secret" ingredient was swiped from a copycat of the Houlihan's recipe. I think this helped thicken the soup up a bit, but not sure it was at all necessary.)
1 cup or so of chopped green onions
extra cheese and bacon crumbles for topping, if desired
coarse salt & pepper to taste

1. Bake potatoes in a 350 oven until easily poked with a fork. Or, prick them a bunch of times with a fork and put them in the microwave for 10 minutes if you're impatient and don't WANT your soup to take hours, like me. Allow potatoes to cool, then slice in half and scoop out the insides into a bowl. Mash up a little bit with a fork, but leave some chunks! Discard skins.
2. Melt butter in a large pot over low heat. Add chopped white or yellow onion and saute until soft - about 5-7 minutes.
3. While onions saute, cook the bacon in a separate pan until crispy. Drain on a paper towel lined plate and crumble when cooled. Discard grease and scrape the little cooked bits into the soup pot with the onion and butter.
3. Add flour to onion and butter, stir and cook until combined.
4. Add milk, 2 cups at a time. Increase heat to a low-medium and simmer.
5. Add chicken broth and heavy cream.
6. Mix in potatoes. Simmer and stir occasionally about 15 minutes while soup thickens and warms.
7. At this point, the rest of the cooking is left up to taste and personal preference on thickness. I mixed in a couple dashes of the instant potato flakes to thicken it up. Added a cup of cheese, then decided to add the rest of the bag. Tossed in the container of sour cream and started adding salt & pepper pinches at a time and tasting for flavor.
8. Mix in bacon crumbles and green onion. Continue to simmer until soup is at desired thickness, adding more milk if needed.

A few things I learned while making this recipe:
1. Flavor takes TIME. I'm (clearly) a pretty impatient person, so this is difficult for me, but I definitely learned with this that if you just let stuff sit and simmer for awhile the flavors will meld together and strengthen as they sit.
2. It's interesting relying on actual solid ingredients and not seasonings like garlic or oregano to complete the taste of something. But, the end result of something "from scratch" is so much more satisfying than something thrown together with a bunch of spices.
3. Mild cheddar is just that - mild. Next time, I'll try sharp.
4. I'm sure this soup is horribly unhealthy... but could easily be tweaked to be a little bit better. The heavy cream could probably be eliminated all together if wanted, obviously there is no real need for an entire bag of cheese, and low-sodium chicken broth and low-fat sour cream are simple substitutions. I will also probably knock down the amount of flour used if I make this again as I think the 1/3 cup is assuming you use an entire large onion.

Perfect fall recipe, and a perfect way for me to gain some cooking confidence! I'd love to try chicken with wild rice soup next...

Easiest Banana Bread

Fall is here and I am kicking it into high gear with trying out new recipes and baking up a storm. I'll be following up this posting later on today with my first homemade soup experience, which I'm happy to say was a success!

For now, I'm posting my recent favorite way to not waste the bananas that get a little too brown. This banana bread is so easy I am posting the recipe from memory. I just made it (again) last night, so it's fresh in my mind... and in my stomach since I ate a hefty slice for breakfast. :) The simplicity of this recipe makes it perfect for throwing together on a Sunday evening, and since I'm the only one that eats it - I've got breakfast for the week!

Banana Bread
3-4 ripe bananas
1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup sugar (can be reduced to 3/4 cup if desired)
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg, beat
1 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
1-1/2 cups flour

No mixer needed! Use a wooden spoon to mash the bananas with the melted butter. Mix in the sugar, egg and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture, mix to combine. Add the flour last and mix. Pour into a greased loaf pan and bake for just under an hour in a 350 oven. Cool on a rack.

A few things I've learned while making this recipe:
1. The grosser the bananas look, the better your banana bread will taste. I let them sit out until they are nearly black and Dan wants to throw them away, then stick them in the freezer until I'm craving this banana bread. I just let them thaw on the counter in a bowl and then snip the ends off and squeeze all the mushy pieces into the bowl.
2. Three bananas works just fine, 4 makes for a more dense, moist, chewy loaf. YUM.
3. Baking this for an entire hour overcooks the bottom and sides, but 50 minutes results in a perfectly brown outer crust. However, 50 minutes also leaves you with an almost TOO moist middle. Next time, I'll go for 55 and call it a day.

Happy Anniversary!!

Guess what Friday was?!? Well, for Dan and I it was an exciting day... our one year anniversary since we closed on our little piece of the world - 9-oh-6! That's right, we have officially been homeowners together for one full year.

I'm going to keep this short and sweet and say a big THANKS to everyone who has helped us shape our house into our home. From Jeff helping demo the kitchen to my mom putting together bookshelves, from our dads installing cabinets to Manda destroying old picnic tables, from Dusty rewiring ALL of the electric in the house to random strangers helping squeeze furniture through the door, from my dad scooping a dead cat out of the basement and everything in between... we couldn't have done it without our friends and family, and for all of that, we thank you.

Love,
Kelly & Dan