Good girl, bad poster

I've made pretzels 3 times in 4 days. They win. Congratulations to them.
Last night I made one of the favorite things I've ever made. It wasn't very pretty but I probably could have finessed it and taken a really nice picture but really, I didn't even think about it until half way through my second helping. Do you see a theme? Big girl loves food, big girl cooks food, big girl must eat food right when it's ready. I will try to give you a mental picture. The chicken is coated in seasoned flour and is fried in butter then removed from the pan where the broccoli is added and seared very hot so it gets brown and stays nice and crunchy tender. Then the chicken is added back along with the sweet sour salty savory delicious thai-ish apricot sauce and all cooked together until hot and then served with cold crunchy sour spicy cucumber salad and hot steamy rice cooked in coconut milk and chicken broth. Then you eat a bit of each in each bite and be glad you did.

I have been wanting to make brownies and zucchini bread and mango ginger bread but a very lovely someone my dad knows sent a Mrs. Beasley's muffin basket and now we are overrun with slightly soggy, slightly stale, kind of eh baked goods, but they are baked goods nonetheless, so until someone (me, tonight) throws them away, I can't really add to the pile.

But keep your eyes peeled, that's all I'm saying.

Tonight is ribs and barbecued chicken and french fries and salad. So in case I forget to take pictures, you can dream about it tonight.

Kisses.

Apricot chicken
adapted from another blogger whom I can not remember, I saved it a really long time ago and my system of saving didn't account for having to give credit but thank you!!

All measurements approximate.

Stuff for apricot sauce:
9 apricots, halved
4 tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp ginger chopped
2 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tbsp brown sugar
juice of 1 lime
zest of 1 lime

Stuff for chicken:
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts or thighs, sliced thinly into strips
1 cup white flour
2 t salt
1 t pepper
6 tbsp butter
2 heads broccoli, cut into florets and cut in half

Stuff for coconut rice:
2 cups jasmine rice
2 cups chicken broth
1 can coconut milk
1 tbsp salt

Place all the sauce ingredients in a food processor and puree. The desired flavor is sweet, salty, sour and spicy all at once. If it's too spicy, squeeze some more lime in there and add a little sugar. More fish sauce counteracts sweetness (be careful!).

Put all of the rice ingredients in a heavy pot, bring to a boil and then reduce heat to a simmer and cook for 18-20 minutes.

Combine the flour, salt and pepper in a flat container and drag the chicken strips around in the mixture until all of them are covered. Fry them over medium-hot in the butter until golden brown on both sides. This should take about 5-10 minutes per chicken strip. Once the chicken is fried, remove from pan. Add the broccoli to the hot pan and fry until bright green and lightly browned. Add the chicken and sauce to the pan and cook until heated through, about 5 minutes.

Serve over the coconut rice.

Thai Cucumber Salad

adapted from Bon Appétit August 2001

Makes 6 servings.

1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1 1/2 tablespoons fish sauce (nam pla)
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 sliced, seeded red jalapeño chili
1 garlic cloves, minced
2 English hothouse cucumbers, halved, thinly sliced
! shallot, very thinly sliced
3 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
3 tablespoons coarsely chopped lightly salted roasted peanuts

Whisk first 5 ingredients in medium bowl. Place cucumbers, onion, and mint in large bowl. Add dressing and toss to coat. Season salad to taste with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with peanuts and serve.

My mom would have loved these

My mom loved pretzels. But she did NOT love soft pretzels. She likes her meat cooked to death and her fruit hard and sour. Maybe she was just being ornery. Very possible.
But she would have definitely loved these pretzels, even though they're soft. They're kind of chewy on the outside and crispy on the bottom and soft on the inside and buttery and salty. And they're all gone. No joke, they were out of the oven at 12:05p and it is now 1:03p and my dad and brother are eating the last of them. Granted, there were only 7 and I ate at least 1.5 myself. I think I will probably be making another batch before 24 hours have gone by. This time I will maybe try to make them more pretzelish and less dough ballish, but maybe not. They would make a damn good sandwich this way.

Soft Pretzels
adapted from someone's blog who thought these were as close to Auntie Ann's as you could get and was definitely wrong (no offense, they're just not)

1 1/2 c warm water
1 1/8 t active yeast
2 T brown sugar
1 1/8 t salt
1 c bread flour
3 c flour

2 c warm water
2 T baking soda

Kosher salt, to taste
2-4 T butter, melted

Sprinkle yeast on lukewarm water in mixing bowl; stir to dissolve. Add sugar and salt and stir to dissolve; add flour and knead dough until smooth and elastic. Put the dough in a bowl with a little melted butter and turn dough over to coat, then cover with plastic wrap and let rise for one hour.
Prepare a baking soda water bath with 2 cups warm water and 2 T baking soda in a pie plate or shallow wide dish. Whisk until dissolved.
Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
After dough has risen, punch down and pinch off handfuls of dough and roll into a long rope (about 1/2 in or less thick) and shape. Dip pretzel into soda solution and place on baking sheets covered with parchment. Allow pretzels to rise again about 20 minutes. Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Brush with melted butter, sprinkle with salt, and enjoy!

Hippie Jam

My parents used to be hippies and lived on a commune in Boulder Creek, CA. Most of their friends now are people they met there and a lot of them still have at least a little to do with the place which, incredibly, is still in existence. They still have hippies in that part of the world. When these people come to visit they will often bring jam and honey which they make there. It's incredibly good but neither of my parents are big jam eaters so it tends to hang around for awhile. Then three things happened at once. Martha Stewart published this recipe as her "cookie of the month," I was in New York and had bought some sparkling sugar because I have always wanted to make something with it, and I came to stay at my parents house where the jam is. Not "at once" exactly but in close and coincidental fashion.
These cookies take a long time to make and also coincidentally, I have pretty much nothing but time right now. Lucky for these cookies because normally it is not my style to do tedious and time consuming cooking with many steps. They aren't hard but they just take a long time, blah blah, everyone always says that. I guess because it's true. Doesn't really make it sound less annoying though.

Oh p.s., the place my parents lived is called Camp Joy. Doesn't seem that funny to me but somebody I once told that to still tells me it's the most hilarious thing ever. Perhaps it's amusing to you?

Jam Sammiches
that's not what Martha calls them

2 1/2 cups cake flour (or substitute all purpose flour using 1 cup minus 2 tablespoons for every cup)
1 t baking powder
1 t salt
1 1/2 sticks butter
3/4 c sugar
2 egg yolks
1 1/2 t vanilla
1 T heavy cream, plus more for brushing
1 c jam of your liking
sanding sugar

Mix together flour, salt and baking powder. Cream butter and sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in yolks and vanilla. Add half of flour mixture and mix until combined, then add cream and mix, then add the rest of the flour and beat until well incorporated. Shape dough into 2 squares and wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 3 hours or more.
On floured parchment, roll dough into a 1/8" rectangle. Repeat with the other piece of dough. Refrigerate both for 30 minutes.
Spread jam over one piece of dough and top with the other. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
Cut out cookies with a cookie cutter (about 2 1/2") and place on parchment lined baking sheets. Brush tops with cream and sprinkle with sugar. Refrigerate for 1 hour. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake the cookies until golden, 16-20 minutes. Transfer to wire racks to cool.
I baked the scraps too, what the hell, better than throwing them away.

Mexicasian

When we went camping recently we got some chicken wings from Vallarta that were very suspiciously huge but so incredibly delicious. I suppose they're probably steroided and fed bird seed until they're the size of turkeys, but somehow it's not so offensive when they're Mexican because haven't the Mexicans been growing and eating chicken for thousands of years? Apparently yes because these wings are friggin delicious. Somebody knows what they're doing. They come all spiced and ready to go so I just grilled them. Seven giant chicken wings for $5. That's the recipe.

I did make the soup to go with them, however, and it was fantastic. I was a little skeptical after I had put it all together and it looked a little boring. Don't worry. Let it cook all the way until it's done and you will be very happy. It's the easiest soup I've ever made and pleases the part of me that only likes asian foods. Normally I HATE sundried tomatoes but it sounded so crazy that I decided to give it a chance and it totally works in this because it doesn't have that stupid annoying flavor, just tastes like slightly chewy reconstituted tomatoes. Yum.

Red Lentil Soup
adapted from Marcia's Kitchen

4 T olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 c red lentils
3 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 inch knob of ginger, minced
3 oz dried tomatoes, chopped (not packed in oil)
6 c chicken stock
16 oz can coconut milk
kosher salt, to taste
ground pepper, to taste
sour cream or creme fraiche

In a large pot, heat the oil over medium high and add the onions. Cook for a few minutes until slightly softened and add the carrots and celery. Cook for a few more minutes and then add the lentils, garlic, ginger and sundried tomatoes. Cook a few more minutes until all is fragrant then add the stock, coconut milk, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to low and simmer for about 30 minutes.
Garnish with sour cream or creme fraiche.

The guitar my dad is MAKING! (update)

I hate chocolate chip cookie posts

Everybody knows how to make chocolate chip cookies and everybody likes them different. Today I melted the butter instead of creaming it and it was good, so there you go. My aunt Mary is here and she loves chocolate chip cookies so I made these for her. Somebody had sent us the NY Times big fancy wait 3 days recipe. Yuck. I never had a worse ccc.


Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 sticks butter
1 c brown sugar
1/2 c sugar
2 eggs
2 t vanilla
2 1/4 c flour
1 hefty teaspoon salt
1 hefty teaspoon baking soda
walnuts, broken
pecans, broken
chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Melt the butter and add the sugars. Transfer to a bowl and add the eggs and vanilla and mix to combine. Add the flour, salt and baking soda and mix until just combined and then add the chocolate and nuts. Let rest for about 10-15 minutes. Drop spoonfuls onto parchment lined baking sheets and bake for 10 minutes. Cool slightly and transfer to cooling racks.

Salads good and not so good

Last night I made some really delicious chicken parmesan with spinach fettucine and homemade tomato sauce and I didn't take one single picture. It didn't even occur to me until I was thinking about cookies, so about 2 minutes after the dishes were done. What a dummy. So, yeah, it was great and it looked really pretty. Trust me.

I did finally make the pasta salad the night before. I should have stuck with the original plan, caesar with chicken and pasta. What I made was okay but not great judging by the response from my eaters. Pretty much total silence. I got one 'That was really good, thank you' at the end but that was from a very polite lady (not related to me). And when my brother tried it yesterday he didn't even finish the little bit he took. Yes, I noticed. It looks good though, right? Especially in the before picture.

Here is one that will not disappoint. It's not pretty, so don't take it's picture, but it's delicious. Obviously it can be adapted with whatever you like, but the last 3 ingredients are key. I always use pineapple as the base and then add mangoes or peaches or whatever seems good. Here's how I did it this time.


Ginger Lime Fruit Salad

1 pineapple, cut smallish
1 white nectarine, cut same size
1 yellow nectarine, cut same size
2 pluot, cut same size
green grapes, cut in half
lots of candied ginger, minced
juice of one lime

Toss all together being careful not to mush it. I make the whole thing in a big tupperware and eat it all day long. It's only good for about 2 days, but I've never had a problem with that.

Stinkface

My mom is coming home from the hospital today, yay! No more hospital food. Sorry. At least for now.
When I'm at my parents house I eat totally different food from when I'm in real life, so here I am waiting for the hospital bed to get delivered and for my mom to come home and I'm starving so one of my Malibu but not real life snacks is Matzoh with cream cheese and salt. Yum, try it it's so good. Get Moonstrips if you can, they have onions or something in them. Like an everything bagel. So there's some lightly salted (eh) matzoh here and no cream cheese. The other day when I was here cleaning out the fridge getting ready for my mom to come home I didn't throw away this garlic hummus that I had bought awhile ago. I don't know why I bought it or why I didn't throw it away because I don't even like hummus really! And it's a little expired ew!! But the other choice was butter and I'm on a health kick today, so I went for the rotten hummus.
But the point is... this is not the cracker that I ate. This is the photo cracker that I had to make after I already ate the real one and was done. And then guess what I did with the photo cracker. Took a photo of it ;)
And now my face stinks cause it was really garlicky. Stinkface.

Swimmer, I love you

My brother sent me this link to what Michael Phelps eats in a day, which everyone has been talking about but for some reason everyone stops at breakfast. Get a load of lunch and dinner! Who can eat a whole pizza and then a pound of pasta too in the same meal?! That's an entire bag or box of pasta.
So I was reading the menu to my parents and got to the end and commented that there are pretty much no fruits or vegetables in his diet at all except for the lettuce and tomato on his three breakfast sandwiches. Granted that probably adds up to two whole tomatoes, but it doesn't really sound like champion food. So my mom said how so many nutritionists must hear that and want to get their hands on him. And I said, It makes me want to be his cook! Nothing in the world would thrill me like watching someone eat like that. And I cooked it for him! Hmm, marry a swimmer, eh? And have a bunch of swimmer babies? Sounds expensive.

Pickles and salt

We should be going home from the hospital soon. I'm going to go stay in Malibu and I want to make a pasta salad which started out wanting to be just rotelle and chicken and caesar dressing. I used to get that from a place in West LA called Sainsbury's which was the first place I ever saw de-seed the pomegranates for you way back before POM and Trader Joe's and all of their mothers started doing it. It's a pretty good little market.
But now the pasta salad is turning into rotelle with chicken and caesar dressing with broccoli and tomatoes and salami and mozzarella and olives. I am also thinking of making deviled eggs and pickled eggs and pickled cucmbers. I'm curious if it's just my tastebuds that make me crave vinegar and salt and sour or if there's something more biological going on. I'm hungry.

No more!! (Winnebag-o man! you feel me?)

Ok, seriously, I can't do this anymore if this picture thing keeps happening. Somebody must have a better way.

Hospital food

My mom got moved to a different ward after she had surgery on Wednesday and they gave her green Jell-o! Isn't that a cliche, they really DO THAT?

Last night, after she had dissed the tomato soup lunch, she dissed the pizza dinner and wanted Taco Bell instead. Ha! Bean and cheese burritos. Unlike Eskimo Pies, those are something she's actually been fond of for quite some time.



Dinner on Tuesday was vegetable lasagna with "garden" salad and peach tower??

No food after 6:30am on Wednesday (which I was not here to photograph, but it was oatmeal and raisin bran) even though her surgery was scheduled for 3pm and they didn't end up starting until 9pm. Breakfast again I didn't witness because I live an hour away and it's at the crack of dawn so forgive me. Because she hadn't been in this room to order the day before, she got "Hospital's Choice!" As soon as they brought lunch we all poo pooed it and decided we were getting stuff from Whole Foods and then seconds later decided maybe we should at least try it cause how bad can tomato soup really be, it's like pizza! (Dad and I, not Mom) It was not bad enough to not eat and when the rice was dumped in, it became Dad's lunch. Mom wanted cheddar cheese and lettuce on a pretzel roll from whole foods with no anything else (ew) so I got pretzel roll with swiss cheese and mustard and tomato and no pickles (last minute bail out) and it was pretty good except for the yellow mustard and mealy tomatoes :D

And then. Just as I was leaving last night. They brought more cheese pizza! Hooray! I ate half of it and my dad ate a quarter and my mom wouldn't eat any and she wanted Taco Bell bean and cheese burritos instead. She has pretty cute and hilarious taste, doesn't she?

p.s. I hate the way this picture upload thing is, does anybody please know how to do this? It can't be this hard and annoying, can it? Help.

Ice cream and pain killers, please!

My mom's eating an eskimo pie. Her second one of the day. She's pretty much sleepy or asleep most of the time, but when my dad called today and said he was going to the store and asked if we wanted anything she struggled to the surface to yell out 'Eskimo Pie!' I can't tell you what a thrill that gave me. I have a friend who is a single fellow and occasionally decides to buy food for his house and it is one of my giddiest things to hear what he bought. You know how most people have regular things that they usually get every time? Not this guy. He lets the Ralphs Fresh Fare lead him where it may. He even saved the receipt for me once cause he knew how much I liked it. Aw.
So I've been hanging out at the hospital for many days and have done mostly not noteworthy eating and cooking of no kind so that's why the lull. But then one of my friends pointed out the fascination of hospital food and I realized that yes! Every time the tray comes I am out of my chair before they even put it down so I can see what we got. It's like on the airplane, even though I know I'm not gonna eat it I have to get it anyway just so I can see what it looks like. The best part is that my mom orders the food a day before and she can never remember what she asked for so it's a double surprise that I get to see what she thought she might be able to tolerate from the pathetic choices and then what it actually is. I will say, the cheese pizza yesterday was delicious and if she would have been asleep I would have eaten it.
I might be cooking something tonight and watching the olympics and then tomorrow I'm going to start documenting the hospital meals so you can all (Robin and Sugie) share in the fascination. So get ready! Yee haw

We're campers!

Done camped. Sunday we spent shopping for supplies and arranging and packing to the point of sore leg exhaustion. Monday I woke up at 4:15am to be ready for a 6am meet at my house to load the truck and go. We were on the road just before 7 and 7 stops and 8 hours later we were at Courtright Reservoir. Eric had been there before and said it was awesome but I was really skeptical because there are no bathrooms and we were planning to camp "on the side of the road." Yeah, no thanks. We ended up pretty much on the side of the road but just far enough away that shlepping our shit in was a huge exhausting pain in the ass. Fortunately, when you're camping you're all giddy and high, like, 'Who cares, I'd rather carry all this stuff really far than be near people, yeah this is gonna be great!' And it was actually. We got a sweet spot right between pine forest and sandy beach. Perfectly sunny and shady and breezy and scenic and all.
The boys fished a lot and I swam in the lake and read and cooked and napped in the sun. And did dishes and drank beer and lit fires. And I got a flip flop tan, YAY!

Monday lunch: I had hollowed out a big round sourdough loaf and packed it full of meats and cheeses and pimiento olives and pepperoncinis the night before we left and then pressed it under some heavy stuff in the cooler. We stopped in McKinley Grove and ate it and drank really cold cans of Corona and Adam said it was the best pie he'd ever had because he doesn't like sugar.

Monday dinner: Marinated carne asada on the mini-Weber with corn tortillas, chunky avocados with tomato and lime juice, red and green salsa, pico de gallo and a variety of hot sauces. The boys ate 2 or 3 rounds of that and then realized we could add cheese and melt them on the grill so then we started over and had 2 or 3 more.

Tuesday breakfast: Eggs scrambled with potatoes and onions with bacon and bacon fat fried toast.

Tuesday lunch: 2 panfried wild rainbow trout caught by Adam and Eric

Tuesday dinner: A free for all of hot dogs, grilled cheese, chicken wings...

Wednesday breakfast: Toads in a hole with bacon and hot sauce

Wednesday lunch: Chicken wings (from Vallarta already marinated big fat wings, so good, highly recommended. I will be eating them again very very soon)

Wednesday dinner: Grilled rib eyes, smashed potatoes with butter and sour cream and sauteed green beans

Thursday breakfast: Banana pancakes with butter and syrup

Thursday lunch: In-n-out

Add to that some crackers, chips, roasted marshmallows, nuts, Sunmaid raisin bread, peanut butter, jelly and honey and you get the idea. Not too many food pictures but really, when you're cooking camping there's enough to deal with without having to find your camera too, right?

It looks like I'm retarded, but...

When I'm posting something and I do the preview I put all the pictures where they should go and then it turns out the preview is entirely inaccurate and therefore, completely useless, why even have it at all. If I wanted to wing it, I wouldn't hit preview. So the fact that the picture are making my stuff all stretched out in the wrong places is out of my hands. Okay.

My dad is making a guitar.


He's not posing for these! He was really doing that, moving his whole body around with the thing, he didn't even know I was there. Friggin' awesome. I played FRIG in a scrabble game today. I won't say I beat the pants off my two opponents, but only because they were related to me.

Burritos and cookies

Tonight I made what I thought were pretty delicious steak burritos. Congratulations to me. I meant to cook them on the grill but then we had no charcoal so I went for the grill pan instead. I cooked the steak in a separate pan so that the juices from each other wouldn't stunt the others searing. I put the cheese on the tortillas and then put them in the oven to melt and we had one crispy batch (this oven does this to me every time) and one soft batch. My awesome brother put the crispy inside the soft and even though it sounds like Taco Bell, Taco Bell wishes, okay?

Hopefully you can imagine what it would have all looked like when it was put together or you can make it and take a picture yourself. I like my food hot. And as soon as possible.

Grilled Steak and Onion Burritos

1 1/2 lb skirt steak
2 red onions, chopped into big wedges
2-3 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
juice of 1 lime
2 T wostershire sauce
2 T bourbon
1/4 c olive oil
2 t cumin
1 t chili powder
1 t black pepper

flour tortillas
jack cheese, grated
2 cans vegetarian refried beans
kernels cut from 2 ears of white corn
salsa
sour cream
avocados
juice of 1 lime
cherry tomatoes

Put the first 10 ingredients in a big ziploc bag and put in the fridge to marinate for a few hours. Take out of the fridge about 20 minutes before you want to cook it. Heat a grill pan and a skillet or 2 grill pans or 2 skillets with olive oil to very hot and put the meat in one and the onions in another. Discard garlic. Season both pans with salt. Cook each on high heat until they are done to your liking, for me they took about the same amount of time, a bit longer for the onions while the meat rested and then was sliced. Mix onions and meat together.
In the meantime, grate cheese onto the tortillas and warm in the oven until the tortillas are hot and the cheese is melted. Put beans and corn in a sauce pan and heat. Dice the avocado and quarter the cherry tomatoes and season with salt, pepper and the juice of a lime and mix gently. Serve the tortillas and cheese along with the meat and onions, avocado smixture, sour cream, and salsa. Do or do not do some or all of this, to your liking :)




For dessert I made the Double Delight Peanut Butter cookies which, if you have ever looked at a food blog, you probably know about. They were indeed the best peanut butter cookie I have ever had but they won a contest for a million dollars. How good should a cookie be to win a million dollars? I think it's unfair to the cookie, it's intrinsically bound to fail. So forget about the million dollars and just pretend it's a peanut butter cookie, which, quite frankly, I could generally do without, but these are quite a pleasure.

Double Delight Peanut Butter-Honey Cookies
Adapted from an adaptation of the Pilsbury Bake-Off Million $ Winner

Ingredients:
1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup creamy natural peanut butter (no added sugar or oil)
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon honey
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Filling
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1/2 cup creamy natural peanut butter
1 tablespoon honey

Coating
2/3 cup finely chopped peanuts
6 tablespoons turbinado sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions:
In a medium sized mixing bowl, sift together flour, baking soda and salt.
In a large mixing bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat together peanut butter, butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar and honey, until creamy, about 1-2 minutes. Beat in egg and vanilla until well combined. Reduce mixer speed to low and gradually beat in flour until well combined. Place dough in freezer for 15 minutes, stir, and freeze for an additional 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare the filling: Sift confectioners' sugar into a medium sized mixing bowl. Using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat confectioners' sugar, peanut butter and honey until well combined. (I mixed this with my hands. Waaay easier.) Shape mixture into 18 small balls, and place on a plate. Place plate in refrigerator until ready for use.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Cover 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Make the coating by stirring together peanuts, turbinado sugar and cinnamon, in a small bowl, until well combined.

Remove bowl from freezer; shape dough into an 11 inch x 2 1/2 inch log. Slice dough into 18 equal pieces. Take each piece of dough, flatten with your hand, place a peanut butter ball in the center, and wrap dough around ball. Roll ball in your hands to shape better. Roll balls in peanut mixture, to coat completely; place on prepared sheet pan and flatten slightly with your hand.

Bake at 375 degrees F for 13-15 minutes, or until edges of cookies are golden brown. Cool 4 minutes on sheet pan, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

Makes 18 large cookies

Peach Mango Upside Down Cake

I made this up! And it came out good! My mom said it was "the best." She might be a little kennel blind though. And she loves peaches and dessert. And she hasn't had anything good to eat since the last time I was here two weeks ago. But it is pretty good.


Peach Mango Upside Down Cake

5 T butter
3/4 c brown sugar
peaches and mangoes, peeled and cut into chunky slices

4 T butter, melted
1/2 c sugar
2 eggs
1 c sour cream
1/4 c milk
1 t vanilla
1 1/2 c flour
2 t baking powder
1 t salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and butter a pan approximately 9"x3".
In a small saucepan, melt the butter and the brown sugar. Bring to a boil and cook until the sugar is dissolved. Spread the mixture in the bottom of the pan and cover it with the fruit. Mix the melted butter and sugar together and then add the eggs, sour cream, milk and vanilla until combined. Add the flour, baking powder and salt and pour over the fruit. Bake for 30-35 minutes until a tester comes out clean. Let rest in the pan for 2 minutes and then run a knife around the edge to loosen the cake and invert onto a plate. Allow to cool for 10 minutes so you don't burn your mouth on hot sugar.

Poor old Tucks, goin' campin'

You can tell by how there are no white old lady hairs on Tucker's face that it's been a really long time since we went camping. She was just a pup then, but we're headed back to the Dinkey and I can't wait. See in that naked picture of Eric? That's snow! It was summer and it was hot and there was snow everywhere. I am so excited. No Cal or Katie this time but Wemer and Adam and maaaaybe Thomas? Maybe. It's pretty hard to imagine his prissy ass camping, although according to him he "loves camping." I actually doubt he's ever been camping and it seems he only loves it right up until when you invite him to go and then it all gets a little unclear. But he's fun when he's drunk and hasn't washed his hair in a few days, so maybe we can talk him into it.
Adam's going to catch us some trout and I'm going to fry em in cornmeal. Last time I made banana bread and we got excited and put slices of it in the grilled cheese sandwich irons with cream and then drizzled the hot cake in maple syrup. Cream and maple syrup? Yeah, somehow when I'm camping I'm more well equipped than I ever would be in regular life. That was a real stand out moment.
I've been making shopping lists in my head for days. I'll do all the shopping on Sunday and then lay awake all night thinking about how I should pack the cooler on Sunday night and then we'll leave Monday. I'm also trying to remember what you wear when you're camping. Maxi dresses, I hope.