Frenzied Daddy

Never take 40 or so vanilla wafers (generic is ok), mash them into crumbs, add half a stick of butter and some sugar and press into a pie dish, then bake at 350 for about 9 minutes.

Never, ever, slice three ripe bananas on to the top of the crust. Never, ever, dump a cup or so of fresh blueberries onto the bananas. And don’t ever slice up another cup of strawberries and put them on top of the blueberries.

Whatever you do, don’t take a package of pudding mix and mix it with a little less milk than the directions say (2.5 cups rather than 3) and pour it over the fresh fruits. Don’t put it into the fridge until it more or less solidifies, at the same time taking a tub of cool whip out of the freezer.

Don’t smear the thawed cool whip over the set pudding.

No, don’t do any of that. Make the kids do it.

(ps, don’t dunk the left over nilla wafers into the cool whip to test its thawedness. Nope.)
(pps, no I don’t really consider banana cream pie to be a serving of fruit)

So, I’m cooking dinner. The kitchen window looks out over the deck, the back porch, and the grassy knoll we call a back yard. It’s lovely. Not quite weed-infested, but it will be before autumn. The TT is amusing herself by letting Perrin out onto the porch and picking him flowers and trying to get him to eat them.

She comes into the kitchen ( she comes through the back door, through the adult’s room, through her room, through the hall, through the living room, and into the kitchen) with a bright yellow flower from the yard. She presents it to me like it’s a treasure. Of course, it is a treasure. It’s also a dandelion. “Oh, honey, what is this? Thank you”… She tells me it’s a flower. “Ok, this particular kind of flower is called a dandelion. Can you say dan-de-lion?” (drmrffleon). “That’s great. ”

In all honesty, I’m trying to get the cheese grated, the spaghetti noodles cooked and the sauce properly tomatoey. I’m not totally focused on accepting her gift and giving her a learning moment.

She runs back out the door ( all the way through the house ), runs back outside, and I stir the sauce as I watch her bend down and pick a single flower and come running back into the house, into the kitchen. She breathlessly presents me with … I don’t know what sort of weedy looking flower it is; it kind of looks like baby’s breath, but stringier.

“Oh honey, this is lovely. I’ll put it here with the dandelion. I don’t know what this one is called though.”

“Daaaaa-dddd-dd-d-dddy, ” she announces, “It’s a flower. Can you say ‘flower’ ? ”

“flower?”

Jaden’s Steamy Kitchen‘s post on how to improve the quality of your meat with a handful, no, two handfuls, of salt has hunger inducing photos of delicious looking steak.

The secret is salt. And like Alton Brown, she recommends Kosher (or sea) salt. Because when you put this much salt onto a piece of meat, you don’t want to taste the iodine. Basically, take your hunk of cow (or buffalo, or pig, or chicken) flesh, and cover it in enough un-iodized salt that you cannot see the color of the meat. Turn it over, and do it again. Let the salt sit on the meat for one hour for each inch that the meat is thick. One and a half inches thick? Let the meat rest for ninety minutes.

Rinse the meat extraordinarily well and pat very dry. Then cook.

Jaden also includes some diagrams of what she believes is happening; basically, the salt sucks the water out of the meat, creating “wet salt” on the surface of the meat. Then, because some of the salt has dissolved into the water that was sucked out of the meat, and there is no salt in the meat, osmosis takes the salt back into the meat. Her explanation of how the salt turns the proteins in the meat from “tight-assed stuck up” to “totally relaxed, fun loving” is priceless.

She even encourages you to mix some spices in with the salt, so they get pulled back into the meat like Christina Aguilera’s entourage.

It sounds absolutely nummy, but because of weight watchers, I may have to avoid her tip of topping freshly cooked beef with garlic butter.

We’re on Weight Watchers again. While it’s $17 a month for one person, it’s saving us that much in milk alone. Generally, we go through 4-5 gallons of milk a week. And when milk is more expensive than gasoline, that’s a lot of money. I get emails from Weight Watchers with recipes, and yesterday I made this:

Summery Ratatouille
Combine 6 large tomatoes, chopped; 4 medium zucchini, thinly sliced; 2 large onions, thinly sliced; 2 bell peppers, seeded and chopped; 2 garlic cloves, minced; 1 large eggplant, chopped; 2 teaspoons dried basil; 2 teaspoons dried oregano; salt; and ground pepper to taste in a slow cooker. Cover and cook on high until tender, 4-5 hours. Makes 6 servings, 1 cup each.

When I told Miss B that we were having Ratatouille for dinner, she said she didn’t want to “eat a poor little cute fuzzy rat.” I just raised my eyebrows at her. Then when Ms B asked, and I told her the same thing, she said “I’m not eating rat.”

Just what do these people think I feed them, anyway?

So, finally, I went up and put everything in the crockpot. I had an “nearing expiration” bag of spinach and tossed that in, and with it about a cup of red wine. And told them that the next person who asked what was dinner, I was sending to the kitchen to stir the “Rat Stew.” Nobody asked. When dinner was ready, everyone except Miss K had a bowl. It was “ok,” but needed salt. It went well with the grilled cheese sandwiches. I doubt I’ll make it again.

I wonder how they’ll take to this?

Pineapple BBQ Flank Steak
Peel and shred 2 medium sweet potatoes and place them in the slow cooker. Lay a 1-pound flank steak, well trimmed, on top. In a large bowl, combine 1 small onion, finely chopped; one 8-ounce can crushed pineapple in juice; 1/2 cup reduced-sodium chicken broth; 1 teaspoon ground dry ginger; 1/4 cup reduced-sodium jarred barbecue sauce; 1 tablespoon honey; 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard; salt; and ground pepper to taste. Pour this mixture over the steak. Cover and cook on high until the steak is tender enough to shred, using two large forks, about 6-7 hours. Makes 4 servings, about 1 cup each.

These recipes can be found here.