Month: December 2015

New Recipe-Hasselback Potatoes Gratin à la Serious Eat’s J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

I intended to look up a scalloped potato recipe for tonight’s dinner with the whole fam-bamily, but got sidetracked by Facebook… Uh oh? No! The first things I came across was a New York Times Food link to one of one of my favorite food site people- J. Kenji Lopez-Alt from SeriousEats.com.

Hasselback Potato Gratin (“These Might Be the Best Potatoes Ever”)
Look at this glorious photo and click on it to link to theSeriousEats.com recipe (or click here: SeriousEats.comHasselbackPotatoGratin)

These were easy to put together with the cheese grating delegated to The Girl and potato peeling to The Husband. All I needed was my super-sharp chef’s knife (recently sharpened by my dad, thanks, dad!) to get super thin slices from my russets. Then I tossed them in the cream, salt, pepper, thyme, and garlic.

Here they are, half cooked at 400 degrees for thirty minutes, before they got shoved in a box and carted up to one of the in-law’s house:

(pretend that this is a picture of the half baked potatoes, use your imagination)

And here’s the nearly gone and mostly empty dish, the only pic I could snap of the potatoes that could net the least amount of ridicule from extended family:


These were DELICIOUS! These were unbelievably easy to prepare, travelled well half-cooked (unlike my extended family, LOLOLOL!!) and were gluten-free for the family members with Celiac to whom we wanted to show some kitchen love.

Put this recipe for Hasselback Potato Gratin on you list of new things to try next year.

Ballast Point Spirits- $1 Billion Purchase Nets More Than SoCal-Style Beer

The recent One Billion Dollar purchase of Ballast Point Brewing may have been just a blip on your local new, but here in San Diego this was Big News. San Diegans were either puffed with pride over the price tag, or horrified at the prospect of a local favorite becoming watered down for the national tastes. Ballast Point’s Sextant Oatmeal Stout is the first beer that I liked- up until I tried a stout, I thought that I just didn’t like beer… it turns out that I don’t like hops.

IMG_9787Constellation Brands Inc. not only bought some choice brews, but included in this deal are the Ballast Point Spirits- four of which are available in cans… yow! Conveniently canned mixed drinks include Fugu Bloody Mary, Three Sheets Rum & Ginger, Three Sheets Rum & Cola, and Old Grove Gin & Tonic.

This could seriously alter my adult beverage drinking opportunities!

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Handy guys deserve a good drink.

We tried the Old Grove Gin & Tonic. Could a classic mixed drink work in convenient pre-packaging? Yes. We highly recommend it. Got a little Pre-Holiday home repair going on? This is a fine occasion to serve a drink to the guy who can take apart a Roomba while doing other home repair, too. Just not too much, at least until the vacuum is fixed.

 

The Force Awakens… Thirty-Eight-Year-Old Memories

 

When I was ten, my brother and I went to the movies to see the first Star Wars. We weren’t big theater-goers in our family, so this was a great treat. We were completely blown away, having never seen anything like that before on the big screen. Plus, I was only ten and hadn’t racked up too many “wow” moments… so relatively speaking, this was definitely a wow-able moment.

I’ll never forget a couple years later, sitting with junior high friends at lunch while a friend mentioned that there were two more Star Wars movies coming out! I can’t speak for the average kid, but this was huge news to the super-awkward completely clueless types like me. She probably didn’t realize how big a deal it was to tell us that (spoiler here, people) not only was Darth Vader Luke Skywalker’s father, but Leia is his sister. Put this into perspective- 1979 was a dark time for the casual fan- with no constant barrage of trivial information available to us via the intertubes. Either you read original Star Wars books or you had inside information. And when pressed, this pretty humble lunch mate admitted to us how she had such awesome inside info… Mark Hamill was a family friend. Luke Skywalker was her source. Talk about instant Cool Points!

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(from PopCultcha.com)

I still don’t go to the movies very often. Thirty-Eight years later… can you imagine how much fun it was to sit in the movie theater with not only The Husband, but The Boy, The Girl, and The Boyfriend and watch another big screen Star Wars movie?

It was All That And A Tub of Popcorn.

Star Wars- Listening Doesn’t Count

Ever take long family trips in a car? Remember when those in-car screen systems became available? I’ve heard the stories from friends about listening to princess movies ad nauseam while driving across the country; anyone in the car measuring an age in double digits had to tough it out or suffer sharing that space with crabby kids.

We came late to the vehicle video party. We arrived there, finally, when our friend with a car dealership found a used SUV that had every option we wanted … and one we didn’t. I really didn’t want that DVD player, but the deal on the car was too good to pass up. In the end, we told the kids that they could watch shows only on long drives, and that system worked pretty well.

The Husband and I would load up on DVDs that we could stomach hearing since the headphones were perpetually broken or missing. Best of Bugs Bunny, Guys and Dolls, and Princess Bride, were part of our on-board entertainment… great shows that were already burned into my mind’s eye. And the Star Wars movies. All of them, memorized, too. Or so I thought.

With the latest Star Wars movie release, The Boy was completely happy to oblige his mamma in a six movie marathon to lead up to our Force Awakens matinee tickets. Two minutes into watching the first prequel and I realized that I had never actually seen any one of these new movies- I’ve only heard them all. From the front seats of that SUV. I had next to no idea what these stories involved.

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So this weekend, for the first time, I watched all the first three stories- the second set of three movies released, for those of us who remember the original trio of movies as the real first three Star Wars movies. Not bad! I hope the seventh movie lives up to all the hype surrounding it.

 

IMG_9846We still have the SUV and the old DVD player still works. I think the last time it was used was several years ago. The Boy and his friends watched a bunch of original, black and white Three Stooges shows- slapstick and pre-adolescent boys are a great match. I wonder if we will ever find or fix the headphones? Probably not, I want to hear the shows, too.

Eggnog Sugar Cookie Bars

Eggnog-Sugar-Cookie-Bars-4-2
InsideBruCrewLife.com

I had high hopes for these bars. Wouldn’t you love a recipe that promises the flavor of a sugar cookie with all the ease of a brownie or a bar? This version from InsideBruCrewLife.com popped up on my Pinterest feed at just the same time that I wanted cookies to eat during a Star Wars marathon with the family. How convenient for me!

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With no egg yolks, cream of tarter, corn starch, cream cheese or sour cream, this very basic assemblage of ingredients were gathered (under the supervision of two-thirds of the household’s pets). Also adding to the ease of directions- no refrigerator rest time, no smushing with glasses dipped in sugar. I changed only a couple things by omitting the rum flavoring from the cookie dough and icing, and using less sugar in the icing.

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click for WilliamsSonoma.com’s link for this good nutmeg grinder

Eggnog Sugar Cookie Bars
(as inspired by InsideBruCrewLife .com)

  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 cup eggnog
  • 3 cups flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg- use freshly ground nutmeg for out of this world flavor!
  • In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg. Set aside flour mixture.
  • In another bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg, mix until combined; add eggnog, mix.
  • Add flour mixture to wet mix and stir until combined, but do not over mix.
  • Press dough into greased 9″ x 13″ baking dish and bake for 15 minutes. Let cool before frosting
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My nutmeg grinder… love it!

Overall, I’d say that we like these cookies. They definitely were super easy, and fast to prepare. They are not a substitute for a really tender yet crisp sugar cookie, though. Sometimes you have to go through those extra steps and use those slightly different ingredients to get exactly what you want. It will be worth it.

Eggnog Icing
Cream together until very light and fluffy one stick of butter and 2 1/2 cups of butter. Slowly add 1/4 cup eggnog and add 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg.
Makes more than enough to frost the above recipe