My Brother's Birthday Cake

Today was my little brother's birthday and if he didn't live half-way around the world from where I am, I would have made him a chocolate cake with buttercream frosting and added 44 self-igniting candles on top that he'd have to continually blow out, just so he'd get a little exercise. :)

I don't think there can ever be enough chocolate for my brother. When he was a teenager, I remember him polishing off an entire 3.5-ounce bar of milk chocolate every afternoon while watching his favorite show on TV and washing it down with 1 liter (a tad more than 1 quart) of whole milk. Yahaah! This, by the way, was just a little snack between lunch and dinner. And the guy didn't even gain an ounce. Go figure!

Here's the recipe for an easy chocolate cake from the depths of my recipe files. I found it somewhere, but forgot to write down the source. My apologies. The recipe can also be turned into cupcakes quite easily, just adjust the baking time:

Chocolate Cake

(Makes 1 round cake and approximately 14-16 cupcakes; double the recipe for layered cake and bake in two round pans.)

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups flour

1 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

1/3 cup cocoa powder

1/2 cup oil

1 cup water

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 Tbsp. vinegar

Preparation:

Mix ingredients together until moist and well-blended. If making a round cake, bake at 350 degrees F for about 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. If making cupcakes, decrease baking time to 25 minutes. Frost with your favorite frosting.

My favorite frosting just so happens to come straight out of Alice Waters' book, The Art of Simple Food, p. 386:

Simple Frosting

Ingredients:

12 Tbsp. ( 1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 1/3 cups powdered sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract and 1/2 tsp. fresh lemon juice

Beat butter until light and fluffy. Beat in powdered sugar and continue beating until light and fluffy. Add vanilla extract and fresh lemon juice. Beat until smooth.

Variations:

Now you can flavor the frosting with 2 ounces of melted, but not warm, bittersweet chocolate, or with 1/2 tsp. lemon, orange, or tangerine zest.

This recipe makes about 2 cups of frosting, according to Alice enough for a 9-inch cake or 24 cupcakes. Frankly, I can only frost about 18 cupcakes max with the amount because I have a mechanical pastry bag with some fancy tips that use a generous amount of frosting in order to cover the cupcakes. They look beautiful, though. Next time I make them, I'll have to take a picture and add one to this post.

Busy days

Today was a really busy day and on days like that it's a real challenge to put a decent meal on the table.

Since my younger daughter already had to be at school at 6:40 a.m. this morning, the kids had cheesy scrambled eggs with buttered toast for breakfast and left-over chili for school lunch. I cut up an orange and half a grapefruit for them to take to school, too. Water completed their lunch box.

My husband had for breakfast what he calls the "chocolate-banana-flax-flax." It's a smoothie made from two scoops of chocolate protein powder, one banana, two tablespoons of ground flax seeds, one tablespoon of flax oil, and one cup of purified water. It carried him through to lunch at one of his favorite Chinese restaurants.

After driving the girls to school and walking the dogs, I took a shower, had an orange, went to the chiropractor to have my lower back and my osteoarthritic toes adjusted and acupunctured, and went to lunch with my husband at one of his favorite Chinese restaurants. I had a cup of hot and sour soup, an egg roll and beef lo mein, which carried me through the afternoon that I spent on our dear daughters' piano teacher's couch, listening to all the upcoming recital and competition songs. We didn't get home until 5:30 p.m. Luckily, I had found four pork chops in the freezer this morning and started defrosting them.

So for dinner I sautéed pork chops and accompanied them with mashed steamed yams. By the way, I will never bake or boil sweet potatoes or yams in their skin any more. For the last year I have always peeled the yams before cooking, sliced them thinly and steamed for 10 minutes until tender. By steaming, they retain most of their nutritional value and you don't have to hold a hot potato in your hands and scoop out the insides after they're done. No more mess! Check out one of my favorite Web-sites for more information on healthy steaming of sweet potatoes and yams: The World's Healthiest Foods.

So that's it for today. Not really exciting, but it's been a busy day and I tried to do my best feeding my family. I know there's room for improvement. Tune in tomorrow–please!

School Lunches

Now that the kids are back in school after the nice two-week Christmas break, it's time again to think about school lunches. Monday's and Tuesday's school lunches were easy: left-over meatloaf and chili from the previous nights' dinners were tasty and welcome school lunch fare for my kids. I always love it when we have just enough dinner left-overs to pack lunches the next day.

There are plenty of days, however, when I need to pull a fresh idea out of the hat, and I like to challenge myself by cooking up what my husband calls "little designer meals." I've been known to stand in the kitchen at 10 p.m. at night, sautéeing chicken strips, so my kids can have chicken satay with peanut dipping sauce for school the next day. They like that and it makes me happy.

I don't even know how and when this all started. When I went to school, there was no school lunch program. The only thing you could purchase in school was milk or chocolate milk. Everyone bagged their snacks and lunch, and that usually meant a piece of whole fruit for a snack and sandwiches for lunch. My mother liked to pack sandwiches using the hearty, whole grain bread better known as "Vollkornbrot" in Germany. You can purchase that type of bread, vacuum-packed and imported from Germany, at many places here. The other day, by the way, in my favorite grocery store, I overheard a woman telling someone how tasty that bread was and her husband chimed in saying, "and it's as hard as a brick!" Well, I'm getting sidetracked here, but there is some truth to what he said. You have to have teeth to eat that kind of bread.

Back to school lunches. When my older daughter was in first grade, "selling" her on taking a home lunch to school took a few marketing skills and some willingness to compromise. Of course, I wanted her to eat home lunch every day, but she loved the idea of pushing a little tray through the lunch line and choosing what she wanted to eat. In my opinion, there were too many overcooked, starchy and sugary foods available, but it didn't matter to her. She wanted to eat the way most of the other kids were eating. So we compromised. Every week I allowed her to pick up to two school lunches and the rest of the time she was to take a home lunch. She circled the two lunch choices on the school lunch menu every week, so I knew on which days to prepare home lunch, and on which days not. This method worked for us, not only with our older daughter, but also for her younger sister, until they approached middle school age.

At that time, they had both grown tired of the French toast sticks, hot dogs, and corn dogs and preferred food from home. I happily obliged, and even though it's challenging at times to create an appealing and nutritious lunch day in and day out, I know exactly what my kids are eating. They still have their lunch accounts at school, too, and will occasionally ask if they can get an a la carte item, such as a bag of chips or an ice-cream sandwich. I always say, "yes," to those requests because I know what they have in their lunch box and believe that always being denied some unhealthy foods will make those items even more desirable. I'd rather my kids get an occasional "fix" and avoid overdosing when unhealthier food options are suddenly available.

I should create a category on the blog just for school lunches because it's nice to have some tried and true combinations to fall back on. We've always called our older daughter the "long-neck" (that reference goes back to all the Littlefoot movies we watched when she was young) because she's definitely our "leaf-eater," preferring vegetarian food options most of the time. Her sister, on the other hand, has been labeled the "sharp-tooth" because it's all about meat for her. She needed a lot of training to eat her greens!

It's a Chili Morning

I just returned from dropping the kids off at school and, after having driven for almost a half hour, the car still didn't get warm. It's a frosty morning with a clear sky, -2 degrees F, but it feels like -14 degrees according to the weather service. The sunrise was beautiful. As I looked to the east and my younger daughter commented on how the orange glow of the rising sun made her feel even colder as she looked at it through the barren branches of the trees we were passing, I felt a shudder going up and down my spine, too, and thought it's a chilly enough day to have chili. Dinner is saved!

Now I have to say that I didn't grow up knowing what chili was. My mother never cooked it. I remember once ordering chili at our family's favorite Argentinian steakhouse simply because it was on the menu and I was curious about it. But the server gave me a long look, and asked, "Chili?" as she crinkled her nose, so I reconsidered and settled for a filet mignon, a choice she happily approved of.

Then I moved here and everyone seemed to really love chili. Still, I had no clue what it was (something with beans?) or how to prepare it. That's when I discovered a little brown package in the grocery store's spice aisle that contained assorted chili spices and a number of recipes for preparing chili printed on the back. I read it and knew I could follow those directions. Bingo. Chili from a bag. We made chili like that for years. It tasted okay.

But then came the time for true chili revelation. As I power-walked my way to a slimmer waist on the treadmill one day, I watched FoodNetwork's Ellie Krieger prepare a healthy chili. It sounded good and seemed easy to prepare–I was all over it. THAT recipe became the new standard in our house for what chili could truly be. The only change I made to her recipe is that instead of using ground beef, I have always used ground bison/buffalo. It is a good chili recipe, quick and easy to prepare. Click on the link to see the recipe for yourself. It's what I'm gonna cook tonight!

Perfect Brownie Memories

Just returning from a happy place: the memories in my head, left there a while ago by the most delicious, moist, almost fudgy chocolate brownie my niece made for Christmas. It was densely studded with chocolate chips and every bite had a delightfully smooth texture and was a chocolate flavor explosion–very satisfying for the serious chocolate afficionado. Served with a scoop of fine vanilla bean or mint chocolate chip ice-cream, it made you feel as if you'd gone to heaven and come back. Happy memories. Yum. 

This makes me wonder, actually, if the recipe is a big secret or if she'll part with it…? I will most certainly have to check on that!

Fridge Cleaning Continued

Today's breakfast was another meal to clean the fridge. I found 3/4 lb. of fresh asparagus, already washed and trimmed, 5 eggs, and a little grated cheddar and decided to make a frittata. I didn't think the meal would be anything special, and it wasn't, but, nonetheless, it was pretty tasty.

Ingredients:

3/4 lb. fresh asparagus, cut into chunks

a little chicken broth

a little olive oil

couple dashes of kosher salt

5 eggs beaten with 1-2 Tbsp. water

2 handfuls grated cheddar cheese

Here's what I did: 

I first cut the asparagus in chunks, about 1 1/2 inches in length, and sautéed them in a little chicken broth and olive oil over medium heat. I seasoned the asparagus with a little kosher salt, and when the asparagus was sautéed enough to be al dente, I spread it evenly on the bottom of the pan, added the beaten eggs and sprinkled a couple of handfuls of grated cheddar cheese on top.

When the bottom of the egg mixture was set, I moved the pan into the oven and broiled it until the top was set, too. The frittata made four servings and everyone at the table liked it. Another successful meal from the top of my head. : )

A Fridge-Cleaning Meal…

… has got to be the meal du jour! I will have to take a peek to see what's in the fridge, probably move a couple of containers out, around and maybe even, gasp!, open. We'll see how much of what there is to make a meal and, with an ounce of inspiration and a dash of creativity, I may come up with something.

I'll be back. Stay tuned.

For BREAKFAST I found an apple, an orange and a banana and added them with a cup of purified water to the Vitamix and turned into a smoothie what used to be my mom's favorite fruit salad combo. It lacked something in flavor, probably because the water diluted the flavor of the fruit too much, but at least it was healthy, and with almost 10 g of fiber in it, it will not just clean out the fridge… : )

For LUNCH, well, everyone sort of had what they liked: a sandwich (turkey & avocado on oatnut bread), leftover bison patties with coarse-ground mustard and salad greens, whole grain crackers with cheese, lentil soup.

DINNER was almost exciting: I found a 2-lbs. mix of ground meat (beef, pork and veal) in the fridge, half a bunch of fresh parsley, a 1 1/2-lbs head of cabbage and 4 ounces of gruyère. So, the first thought was to make stuffed cabbage rolls, but since they're supposed to be better reheated the next day, I scrapped that idea and settled for meatloaf and a cabbage gratin. Both were great. I didn't make my usual recipe for meatloaf, but instead consulted the Joy of Cooking. Their classic meat loaf contained fresh parsley and turned out to be great. Here's the recipe adapted from the Joy of Cooking, p. 722:

Classic Meat Loaf

2 lbs. meat loaf mixture (equal parts of ground beef, pork and veal)

1 medium-size finely chopped onion

1 cup quick-cooking oats

2/3 cup ketchup

2/3 cup finely chopped fresh parsley (I used Italian parsley)

3 large eggs, slightly beaten

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Knead everything together, either with your hands, or, if you're like me and don't like to get your hands into the meat mixture, with a European-style potato masher (see picture to the left), until everything is well blended. Put into a 9x5 loaf pan and bake at 350 degrees for 1 1/4 hours.

I served this meat loaf with a cabbage gratin from the same cookbook, refer to page 355. My husband doesn't care much for creamed cabbage because it always begs for salt and more salt to make it tasty. So, since I had a nice chunk of gruyère cheese left, I opted for the cabbage gratin, thinking that all the added cheese would take care of the bland taste of cabbage and make the dish more flavorful. I was right! Even the kiddos loved the dish. So here's the recipe for those who don't own a copy of the Joy of Cooking:

Cabbage Gratin

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and butter a 2-quart gratin dish and sprinkle the bottom with grated parmesan cheese to cover.

Bring to a boil about 4 quarts of water with 1 1/2 Tbsp. salt and add and cook for 5 minutes:

6 cups of shredded cabbage (about 1 pound)

Drain cabbage. Whisk together in a large bowl:

2 large eggs

1 cup of milk or light cream (I used 1/2 cup heavy cream and 1/2 cup whole milk)

1/2 cup grated Gruyère cheese

1/4 cup all-purpose flour (I totally forgot this ingredient–didn't miss it!!)

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds, toasted (totally omitted, because dear hubby doesn't like caraway)

1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom

Add the drained cabbage, pour into gratin dish and cover top with:

1/4 cup grated Parmesan or Gruyère cheese.

Bake until golden on top, 40-50 minutes.

The meatloaf and cabbage gratin were great–easy to make and flavorful. To round the meal out, we added a baked potato for those who needed more sustenance. All-in-all, a great fridge-cleaning day!