Pinterest and Other Distractions

Marketing 101 – you really shouldn’t ignore your blog. Yet I’ve done just that. I will try to be better. It really is a commitment, though, isn’t it, hard to fit in around a full-time job and a personal life? I’ve still been cooking on a regular basis (I guess one has to if one doesn’t want to starve), I just haven’t been writing about it.

I have deviated from family recipe making again (just for the time being), and have been busy making recipes I’ve either thrown together myself or have found on the Internet, or more specifically, on Pinterest. I’m proof that sometimes people actually make the recipes they pin (and you thought it was just an urban legend)! Most recently, I made these “Cruncher Bars”, for which the full recipe can be found here www.twirlandtaste.com/2011/01/crunchers-addictive-chocolate-brown.html. Oh, are they yummy—I’m having a hard time sharing these—I want to eat them all myself. In my defense, I only had enough ingredients to make a half recipe—does that make me sound less like Miss Piggy?

The next big family recipe I bought all the ingredients for and that I plan to tackle is something my maternal grandma and mom made every year called fruit soup. It’s a little putzy, which is why I haven’t tackled it yet (other than to buy the ingredients for it).

Until I do that, in my next few blog entries, I will share some of the photos of items I have been making over the last month and a half.

In the meantime, one of the things that has kept me busy is that I have been scanning old family photos onto my laptop, so that both my brother and I will have digital copies of all of our parents’ photos. Actually, I’ve been scanning in all my parents’ film negatives, to be more exact. And because I don’t have a lightbox to see what is on the negatives, I either let what is on them be a surprise and don’t know what is on each film strip until after I’ve scanned it into my computer, or, I try to get an idea of what is on the film by using the flashlight feature on my iPhone and holding the negative over my iPhone’s screen. That, at least, gives me a rough idea before I hit scan of if I am going to get an image of a person or a tree, for instance. It’s a fun surprise, most of the time though, to see the detail of the photo emerge, once the negative has been scanned in. I was delighted to run across several of these family food-related photos, as I’ve been scanning, that I thought I would share.

Since my late March birthday would fall close to Easter some years, my paternal Grandma Mabel often made me an Easter-themed birthday cake. This one has little pastel-colored coconut nests with jelly bean eggs on top. That's me (looking feverish and like I am just getting over the flu) in the blue robe, being held by my dad, while my Grandpa Claus looks on as Grandma presents me with my cake. Isn't the cake fabulous? I just love it!

 

This photo is charming for so many reasons--the backyard patio picnic by the grill and swing set--what a slice of Americana. From the left is my Grandpa Claus, my mom, me, and my Grandma Mabel. Isn't Grandma Mabel's dress fabulous? She made all her own clothes. I just love how colorfully vibrant and mod that dress is.

For some reason, I never got an Easy Bake Oven for Christmas, even though I swear I asked for one every year until I was something like 18-years-old! However, for some other odd reason, I was allowed to buy the miniature cakes, cookies, and brownies that were designed to be baked in the Easy Bake oven. I just had to bake them in the regular oven. I still remember thinking those tiny little desserts were delectably good. Hopefully my palate has become a bit more refined since those days.

 

Here is my beautiful mom, Beata, holding one of the apple pies I had just made. One year, the apple tree my parents had planted on their property really went into hyper-drive and produced a lot of apples. I must have made an apple pie every weekend for eight weeks straight that year. It was a recipe from a Taste of Home cookbook that is packed away in my storage unit at the moment, but some day, I will find it again and share it. I don't know if it was the recipe or the hand-picked apples, though, that made it so good.

Pumpkin Seed Toffee

My boss said there's a saying that every good recipe starts with the words: "Take a stick of butter..." Isn't that that truth!

The same evening that I made Cleta Bailey's Toffee Squares, I also decided to try this recipe for Pumpkin Seed Toffee that I found on the Taste of Home website.

This required that I go out and buy a candy thermometer.

There are folks who say you can tell when a liquid has gotten to the hard-crack stage—something about dropping some of the liquid into cold water, and it will form hard threads. However, I personally thought using a candy thermometer seemed more fool proof.

I will say it seemed like it took FOREVER for that thermometer to hit 300° i.e. the hard-crack stage, but I can be a very impatient person, especially when standing over a liquid that requires constant stirring/whisking. I probably pushed it a little too. I think my gooey delight was really only at 298°, when I decided it was done! (As my former teacher Colonel Woods used to say, "It's close enough for government work," and that is often how I approach cooking. I follow the directions just not always to a tee.)

Maybe that is why my toffee was a wee bit chewy, in my opinion. It was very tasty, in spite of that, though. Also, pumpkin seeds are a good source of Protein, Magnesium, and Zinc—so I would consider this a healthy snack, in spite of the 2+ cups of butter also called for in the recipe. :-)

Toffee Squares

I haven't posted for awhile. I've still been cooking and baking up a storm. I just haven't taken the time to write about it.

At work, we do an auction every year where the proceeds go to a charitable organization Open Your Heart to the Hungry and Homeless. One of the things my unit offers to be auctioned off is two dozen cookies, once a month, for a year. Everyone is my unit takes turns making the monthly cookies. This month was my turn again. Instead of cookies, though, I made bars from this recipe I got from the Pioneer Woman Cooks. Have I mentioned I love her?

The recipe was called Cleta Bailey's Toffee Squares. I guess I must have cut my bars small, because the recipe made more than the two dozen I needed for my auction obligation, so I shared the extras with my co-workers. They were a big hit.

One thing I will say is that personally I'm not a huge fan of pecans. I only like them in certain items, such as in delectably delicious southern pralines. Actually, until recently, I didn't think I even liked pralines, but I traveled with my cousins to Savannah, Georgia, and, well, when in Rome. I decided to give the praline a try. Oh my. It was delicious! The ones I tried were from Savannah's Candy Kitchen. No, they are not paying me to advertise their confections. Their pralines are just that good.

But all that aside, I'm still not a huge fan of pecans, for the most part. However, I decided to stay true to the recipe and use pecans. That said, I think the recipes would be just as delicious with peanuts. I'll let you know when I try it!