Stir Crazy

I have always loved popcorn. I could probably eat popcorn every day. But I'm not a big fan of microwave popcorn. I like the convenience, but don't care for the taste so much. For a few years now, my popcorn popping method of choice looked something like this. I would get out my stainless steel bowl, add some popcorn, oil, and salt, cover the whole thing with foil, and jiggle it over the stove for 3 minutes. Simple, tasty, but kind of a pain.

For Christmas, my mom gave us a Stir Crazy

popcorn popper. I love it! Instead of me jiggling the popcorn around, there's a metal stick that does it for me. And there's no need to get out the aluminum foil or my Nomex gloves or anything else. There's even a place at the top where you put your butter.

The steam escaping from the popcorn melts the butter. The melted butter drips into the bowl and spreads evenly around all the popcorn. So you no longer have to have sections of dry popcorn and sections of wilted, butter-saturated popcorn. I believe that I will never eat popcorn in my house again that does not come out of a Stir Crazy.

Want to know another reason why the Stir Crazy is so cool? Each week, I roast coffee beans for Mrs. BigKat. My coffee roasting method is really quite similar to my old popcorn popping method. Except instead of jiggling the bowl, I stir the beans with a stick. And instead of doing it on a stove, I use a heat gun. And during the winter, instead of hanging out inside a nice warm house, I will have to sit outside freezing my bottom off for 15 minutes. Well, if the Stir Crazy can help me make popcorn, do you think it can help me roast coffee? Apparently so!

Some people have taken a Stir Crazy and combine it with a Turbo Oven (a small 'As Seen On TV', Set-It-And-Forget-It style convection oven) and made a home roasting rig out of it. The Stir Crazy stirs the beans and the Turbo Oven provides the heat (I believe that most people disconnect the Stir Crazy heating element). And from what I've seen, it seems to work pretty well! Now, I'm certainly not going to dismantle my new favorite popcorn popper, just to make coffee roasting easier. So my next job is to scour some thrift stores and see if I can find these 2 units for cheap. Then my days of sitting in out in the cold rain, huddled over warm bowl of coffee beans, while stirring like a madman will be over.

If you want to see a video of the Stir Crazy/Turbo Oven (or the SCTO to coffee geeks), you can check one out here. Notice his awesome cooling rig too. That's next on my list...

Turducken 2.0

Just saw this link. When a regular turducken isn't enough, now you can get your turducken stuffed inside a pig. Sounds like a good idea, but I'm actually waiting for the next version when they stick the pig turducken into a cow.

Pizza Videos

I think we're having pizza night on Friday. Seems like a good opportunity to try to beat this guy's record:

I also saw this video. Nice to know that if I ever get lost in the woods, I'll be able to survive on pizza instead of having to eat bugs or something.

Water Baths

Something I learned while sitting on the potty today...

When you cook a custard using a water bath, the material that you use for your water bath can make a big difference. A cast iron pan can go up to 195 degrees, while a stainless steel pan might only get to 180.

A while ago, I tried making a cheesecake (which is a custard) using a water bath. It tasted fine, but it didn't quite set right. I think part of the problem was that I used an aluminum pan for my water bath. I don't think it ever got up to 185. Next time I'm going to try using cast iron or glass.

Location, location, location

A while ago, I bought a book that I really thought I would like. It's Harold McGee's 'On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen'. I enjoy watching shows like Good Eats and finding out interesting things about the science of cooking. This book sounded like it contained all kinds of great information, so I thought it would be perfect for me.

Well, I got it, and I flipped through it for a bit. And it did in fact contain some great information.

But it was boring.

It felt kind of like reading an encyclopedia. If I was just sitting on the couch and wanted to pick up a book to read, this would not be one of my top choices.

It sat on the bookshelf unread for a long time. Which made me a little sad. Here, I had a great resource that contained a lot of knowledge that I would like to have inside my brain. But I just never felt like picking it up and reading it.

But then, something happened that made this book a bazillion times more useful.

I moved it next to the potty.

This book is a great next-to-the-potty book! If I'm just hanging out around the house, I would never feel like picking up a reference text and looking for an interesting piece of information that I don't know. But if I'm hanging out on the potty for a while, it's a whole different story! I've got nothing else to do...might as well find out why fruit turns brown after you cut it...or how vegetables are pickled around the world...or what the Maillard reaction is all about.

It's perfect because the articles are concise and well written. You think of a subject you want to read about, flip to the page, go about your business...and BOOM! Now you know something new! 

It's a good, thick, comprehensive book, so there's no shortage of topics to look up. I'm guessing that several of the interesting food science facts on Good Eats probably come from this book.

Now, instead of searching (in vain) for something (anything) interesting in an old issue of 'Cottage Living', I can read about what happens when beer is made or recipes for baked goods written hundreds of years ago.

Makes me wonder if any other books that I own could benefit from a change of scenery...

Roasting Coffee

At lunch today, I roasted some coffee using the Heat Gun/Dog Bowl method. I tried this once before, but this time, I took pictures!

First, the equipment...

This is the bowl I used to roast in. Ok, so it isn't really a dog bowl. It's just a regular stainless steel mixing bowl. The dog bowl that I got is too big for the small amount of beans I used in the roast. But Heat Gun/Dog Bowl is more fun to say than Heat Gun/Mixing Bowl (and you get more useful hits when Googling).

You can see the beans in the bowl in their unroasted, green state. The beans are Guatamala Huehuetenango: 'A classic acidic Huehue flavor profile with berry accents and mild floral aromatics'. Whatever that means...

 

Here's the heat gun I used. The blue thing is my Nomex barbecue mitt (in case I needed to grab something that was hot)

Here's my watch. I use the stopwatch to time the roast. But I think I need to get  a new watch. Part of the minutes don't display sometimes. The other night, someone at basketball went to look at my watch to see what time it was. I had to explain to them that they could use my watch, but it was set to display military time, and I hadn't set it back from Daylight Savings time. And part of the minutes were broken so you kind of had to figure out what number it was trying to say. So they made fun of me.

This is my bean cooling rig. Hot beans go into the colindar. Shopvac sucks air through the colindar and out the bottom of the box. Keep stirring the beans until they're cool.

This is the outdoor cat that helped me. He thinks he's our cat. But he's not.

Now, the roast...

I did this pretty much the same as last time. Start the roast on the low setting for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Here's a picture of me starting to roast the green beans.

After 5 minutes, I switched to the high setting, still stirring constantly. At this point, the beans are smelling nothing like roasted coffee at all. It's more of a grassy smell.

At about 9 minutes, it hit the 'first crack' stage. That's when you start to hear popping noises, kind of like a campfire.

At about 12 1/2 minutes, it hit the 'second crack' stage. At this point, you start to hear sounds kind of like when you pour milk into your Rice Crispies. I let it stay at this stage for a couple of seconds. Here's a picture of the beans right after I turned the heat gun off.

Then it's on to the cooling rig to kill the cooking process. Turn on the Shopvac and stir the beans until they're all cooled off. There's probably a way to cool these beans even faster, but I just happen to like the little box thing that I made.

When you roast coffee, you end up with a lot of 'chaff'. This is chaff.

And in the end, we have freshly roasted coffee!

Mrs. BigKat is going to let the beans rest for a while before trying them out. Hope they taste good!

Good Eats

One of my favorite food shows is Good Eats with Alton Brown. I've not only made a lot of the recipies on his show, but also tried out several of his goofy cooking techniques. Here are some of my favorites:

1) Pulled Pork - I actually made the flower pot cooker from this show. It still ranks as one of my most fun cooking experiences. Not only was it the first time I'd had pulled pork, but I also got to make the cooking vessel using pots I'd bought from Home Depot. Kind of a 'Wow! This is the best thing I've ever eaten!' experience mix

ed with a splash of 'Hey! I can't believe this really worked!' I have since moved on to other cookers, but I will still make sure to brine my pork shoulder any time I make pulled pork. I think it makes that much of a difference.

2) Scrambled Eggs - Seems like a pretty simple dish, right? I mean everyone knows how to make scrambled eggs! Well, apparently, I didn't because when I followed Alton's techniques, my eggs came out a million times better.

3) Individual Peach Upsidown Cake - These are unbelievably good...They're the perfect thing to make during peach season. And they're easy too. Me and Mrs. BigKat will work together to make these. One of us will work on putting the butter, brown sugar, peaches, and crystalliz

ed ginger in the cups. The other will mix up the batter. Everything is assembled in 15-20 minutes. 

Then just pop them in the oven (although our cooking times run longer than those stated in the recipe). Like I said, too easy! Probably doesn't require the crystallized ginger if you don't happen to have it on hand, but it does add a bit of sophistication too them and works quite nicely with the other flavors.

4) Hamburgers - I will always choose to grind my own meat for burgers now. It makes a huge difference.

5) Beef Jerky - Best beef jerky ever! I wish flank steak was not so expensive, or I'd make this all the time. It is seriously difficult for me to stop eating it. It's just that good! I don't have a box fan (I wish I did though! It looks fun!), so I use my ceramic cooker at a low temp to dry the meat. The result is probably a bit different than what you get if you dry it Alton's way, but it still tastes great.

Here are a couple of things I've tried that did not turn out so well:

1) Skirt Steak - I love the marinade he uses. But you can definitely skip the whole putting the steaks right on top of the charcoal thing. If you're dead set on trying it out, for

 goodness sake, make 

sure you use lump charcoal and not briquettes. Otherwise, you're going to be eating a nice pile of ash with your meat. My suggestion, if you're worried about flare-ups, just go with a nice hot cast iron pan.

2) Acid Jellies - These sounded like they were going to be so good. They were very easy to make and looked great coming out of the pan. Unfortunately, they never really developed a sugary crust on the outside. They just were kind of slimy. Too bad.

I have more good and bad experiences. I'll try and put some more up another time.

Birthday Presents

We celebrated Mrs. BigKat's birthday yesterday. Want to guess what I got her? I'll give you some hints...

1) Part of it came from Home Depot

2) Part of it came from PetSmart

So far, sounds like a present any wife would love, right? Did you guess what it is?

Ok, here are some more hints...

3) The thing from Home Depot is a power tool

4) The thing from PetSmart is for a dog

5) We do not have a dog and are not planning on getting a dog

Did you figure it out? Need more hints? Ok fine, I'll just tell you what I got...

6) The thing from Home Depot is a heat gun

7) The thing from PetSmart is a stainless steel dog bowl

It all makes sense now, doesn't it? Ok, so Mrs. BigKat was less than thrilled when she opened her gifts. She was actually a little bit confused. But the next part of the present cleared things up for her a bit.

9 pounds of green coffee beans!

Mrs. BigKat loves coffee. A while ago, I had planned on getting her some sort of a coffee roaster so that she could have fresh roasted coffee any time she wanted. I did a bunch of research and came across what is known as the heat gun/dog bowl (HGDB) method of roasting coffee beans. It seemed pretty easy, so I thought it would make a great birthday present. If I can roast coffee beans for her at home, she can buy green beans from places like Sweet Maria's. Green beans not only cost less, but they store longer. And she can buy all sorts of interesting beans from all over the world. And I can roast them in small batches so that she can always enjoy them freshly roasted, never stale.

I tried my first roast yesterday. It was pretty easy. I put about a cup of beans into the stainless steel bowl. I heated the beans up using the 'Low' setting on the heat gun for 5 minutes. Then I switched to the 'High' setting for the rest of the roast (the total roast time was about 11 minutes or so). The whole time I did this, I was constantly stirring the beans with a wooden spoon. I stopped the roast a little bit into what is apparently called the '2nd crack' stage. To cool the beans off, I tossed them into a cooling contraption I made using a cardboard box, a colindar, and my shop vac (the beans went into the colander which was sitting in a hole in the box. The shop vacwas plugged into the bottom of the box and sucked the air through the beans as I stirred them with my wooden spoon). In the end, I had with something that definitely looked like roasted coffee beans. We don't know how they taste though. Mrs. BigKat is going to give them a try later today (from what I've read, letting the beans rest after roasting for a little while is a good idea). Hopefully, they'll turn out good! The whole process was very easy and fun too. Next time I try a roast, I'll remember to take some pictures and put them up here.

My Sandwich

Have you ever had an idea that you thought might be a pretty good idea, but when you did it, it actually turned out to be even better than you had planned? That happened to me a couple of days ago. We had got Subway sandwiches for dinner. LilKat2 doesn't eat much, so he only got half of his 6" sandwich (a ham sandwich with cheese and mustard only), so the rest went into the refrigerator. That night, I got hungry and wanted a snack. I saw the sandwich, but I wanted something better. So here's what I did.

I heated up a pan with some butter in it. Then I put the sandwich on the pan. I took a stainless steel bowl and used it to smash the top of the sandwich down.

I let it cook for about 45 seconds and the flipped it to the other side. I smashed some more and let it cook for another 45 seconds. Here's what I ended up with:

You know what? My MacGyver-ed panini actually turned out pretty good! I tried it again the next day, but using bigger sandwich rolls. I also sauteed some diced onions, black bell peppers (from our garden), and tomatoes (also from our garden) into a kind of paste (almost like when I make the sofrito for my paella). I smeared this in the middle of the sandwich and it made a very nice addition. But for long sandwiches, I think I need a bigger bowl.

Our Garden

This year, I built a raised bed in our backyard, so that we could plant a garden. The whole thing was roughly 10'x10' (minus a little bit because of the shape). We transfered our Asian Pear tree to one of the corners. The rest was for our garden.
Well, I'm not sure what happened, but somehow, 4 plants took up the whole box. Sure we had some carrots, and a couple of pepper plants hidden in there, but for the most part, the whole thing was 2 tomato plants in the back, and a zucchini plant and a yellow squash plant in the front. Here's the back of the garden. See all that green stuff in the box? That's 2 tomato plants...

Here's the front of the garden. The big huge leaves on the left are the yellow squash plant, and the big huge leaves on the right are the zucchini plant.

Now I didn't realize this, but apparently zucchinis grow super fast. If you see a zucchini on the plant, you need to be ready to pick it, even if it's little. We'd start out with these little baby zucchinis, and then all of a sudden...BLAMMO! They'd become BIG! You really had to go pick them within the next day or two. Which was weird to me. I don't understand how they can grow so quickly. I sat out there and just watched them, I think I might actually be able to see the get bigger.

Anyhow, here' s a picture of a couple of zucchinis that we neglected to pick. They got a little big on us...

Burgers

I normally cook burgers in a cast iron pan. My technique is to:

1) Heat up the pan on medium-high
2) Make 5oz patties
3) Season and oil the outside of the patties
4) Put them in the pan for 4 1/2 to 5 minutes per side (with a splatter guard)

It works pretty good. The burgers are nicely browned on the outside and juicy on the inside.

But a couple of weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to cook them on the Weber. I cooked them pretty much the same way as when I do them in the cast iron pan. The results were not nearly as good. The burgers were overcooked and not juicy at all.

That afternoon (seriously, a few hours after I had made the burgers), I watched them make burgers on an episode of America's Test Kitchen. They used a paste made of bread and milk, called a panade, to keep the burgers juicy. The idea is that they want to cook the meat to well done (for safety reasons), but still have a juicy burger. The panade soaks in the juices that are released from the meat and keeps them in the burger. The panade also makes the burgers taste a little more bland, so they added some seasoning to it to add some flavor back into the burger.

I tried the burgers again, but this time with the panade. I also cut down the cooking time a little bit. It worked pretty good! The burgers were juicy and tasted pretty good. But they were not fantastic.

Yesterday, I tried the burgers once again, but with a twist. Instead of using ground beef, I bought a chuck steak and ground it myself in the food processor (something I learned from Alton Brown on Good Eats). I used the panade again (which I call my 'Burger Insurance') with some garlic, steak sauce, salt, and pepper. I also put some of my Raising the Steaks rub on the outside of the patty.

These were the best burgers yet! We invited some friends over for lunch and they said that these were the best burgers they've had in years. I think grinding the meat myself really made a difference.

Now, I suppose that I could have left out the panade and cooked the burgers to medium rare/medium, since I ground my own meat and was not using pre-ground hamburger. But I'm still getting used to the Weber and the hot spots (I really haven't used the Weber much at all since I got my ceramic cookers), and I felt that I needed the Burger Insurance, especially since we had guests over.

Anyhow, here is how I made my burgers:

2 pounds chuck steak
2 pieces of bread
3 tbl milk
2 tsp smashed and diced garlic
2 tbl steak sauce
1 tsp kosher salt
fresh ground pepper
Raising the Steaks rub (could be any rub you like that does NOT contain sugar)

(Note: All of the measurements are approximate, I just eyeballed them)

1) Get your grill going. I used a chimney starter full of lump charcoal (I don't use briquettes) that was nice and hot. I had the bottom vent all the way opened. I only put the coals on one half of the grill. The burgers go on the side with the coals and the buns (if you want them toasted) can go on the other side.
2) Trim your steak of large hunks of fat. Cut up steak into chunks. Put in food processor and give about 10 pulses, until it looks like hamburger.
3) Cut the bread up into small cubes. Put in a large bowl with the milk. Mix with a fork until it becomes a paste. Add in the steak sauce, garlic, salt, and pepper. Mix everything up.
4) Add the meat. Mix with your hands until thoroughly combined.
5) Make 6 patties. Don't pack them too tight. Make a little dent in the middle of the patties, so they don't ball up when you cook them.
6) Shake some rub on the outside of the patties and pat them in.
7) Put the patties on the hot grill. Cook for about 3 minutes on one side, flip and cook another 3 minutes. My patties had some structural integrity problems (maybe packed the too lightly?), so I couldn't move them around a lot when I flipped them.
8) If you want cheese, put it on after the first flip (obviously). I made a little foil tent that I put over the patties with cheese. This helped the cheese melt and brown up a little.
9) Before you put the burger on the bun, put some mayo on the bottom bun. Then grind a little pepper on it. Then put the burger on and let it sit for a minute or two. The juices mix with the mayo and pepper to make a kind of sauce on the bottom.
10) Put whatever else you want on your burger.
11) Eat the best burger you've had in years!

The Carniceria

Not too far from our house, there's a carniceria that I've been wanting to check out for some time now. I always wonder what kind of meats the sell there. Well, today was my day to find out. Mrs. BigKat was out with PrincessKat, so I took the boys with me.

We walked up to the front of the store and could see the tortilla machine cranking out fresh tortillas. That was a good sign. Once we got inside, it was easy to find the butcher, just walk straight to the back of the store. As we headed to the back, I heard something that I didn't quite expect:

Loud rap music with really bad words!

I was a bit surprised. I think that's officially the worst language that my children have ever been exposed to. Lots of N-'s and S-'s and other things. Much different than Safeway music. Fortunately, it didn't seem like the boys really noticed. They were too busy holding their noses because of the 'bad smell'. You know what the 'bad smell' was? It was the tortillas that they were making up front. How they could convert fresh tortillas into a 'bad smell', I have no idea. It smelled pretty good to me! I started browsing the meats while my boys looked around with one hand on their noses.

There were a lot of pounded flat beef cuts. Not a lot of pork, though. I asked the guy if there was any pork shoulder, and he said no. They had a big pile of carnitas in the cooked meat section, so I asked for some of that. He walked over and gave me a sample. And when I say sample, I mean a hunk of pork the size of my fist. Now how come they can't give out servings like that at Costco! I tried it and thought it was pretty good, so I ordered a pound. The guy puts the meat into a box. Then he says 'Hey! I have something else for you!' and puts this fried object into the box with the carnitas. He pulls another one out and hands it to me. I take a bite out of it. It tastes like a humongous pork rind. I ask him what it was that I just ate. He tells me it's a pork belly. That's right, I basically just took a bite out of a piece of 1 inch thick, deep fried bacon. I had a couple more bites of it, but couldn't finish it. I honestly can't imagine how anyone could eat a whole piece of fried bacon the size of a spare rib.

Well, I went to go pay for my stuff and found the boys at the candy display (without their hand on their noses. I guess they'd become accustomed to the smell). They were looking for something that they could buy. I decided that I'd be nice and get them something. But it seemed like 90% of the candy display (which wasn't very big) was gum.

 

'Dad! Can I get this?'

'No, it's gum'

'How about this?'

'No, it's gum'

'Dad! What's this?'

'Gum'

'How about this?'

'Gum'

 

I finally found some little chocolate bars at the top, so I got one for each boy. We also picked up a stack of tortillas and went home.

Mrs. BigKat and I ate the carnitas and tortillas for lunch. The carnitas were pretty good. Not great, I think I can make better pork on my barbecue, but still pretty good. But the tortillas were fantastic! I kept eating the meat just so I'd have something to put on the tortilla (which I really shouldn't have done. I ate way too much for lunch). And the stack we got was huge! It costed $1.50, and I think there were probably at least 60 of them. Definitely going to have to go there next time we make any kind of mexican food.

Anyhow, I guess there's not really much of a point to this story, other than it's kind of fun to be able to find such interesting places right near our home. Makes me wonder if there's anything else in our town that I'm missing out on.

Aeropress

For Mother's Day this year, I got Mrs. BigKat a new coffee maker. I had read about it on CoffeeGeek.com. It's called the Aeropress by Aerobie.

Now I know what you're thinking. Aerobie? Isn't that a frisbee thing? Yep! If you go to the Aerobie website, they have 11 products. 9 of them are things that you can throw in the air, 1 is a yo-yo, and 1 is a coffee maker.

So why would anyone want to buy a coffee maker from a frisbee company? Well, because it makes really good coffee, that's why! It's a very simple machine. First you put the whole thing on top of your coffee cup. You put in a little filter, add ground coffee and hot water. Then you press this plunger on the top and it presses your coffee drink into your cup. You can drink it as is for an espresso-like beverage or add water for a more coffee-like drink. Cleanup is quite easy, you just rinse the thing off. And the coffee it makes is quite good! I couldn't taste any burnt, bitterness, or yuckiness that I normally associate with coffee.

I got Mrs. BigKat's from Amazon.com along with some extra filters (although the Aeropress itself comes with a few hundred filters already). She still uses her espresso machine and press pot. But if she wants to make a quick single cup of coffee, it's a good option for her. She's also been using it for her iced coffee drinks.

Cold Pizza

I saw this trick on America's Test Kitchen and I think it's great. If you have a slice of cold pizza that you want to heat up, instead of putting it in the microwave or the oven, try this instead.




First, heat up a nonstick pan on medium to meduim-high heat and put in the slice of pizza.






Next cover the pan, and let it cook for 5 minutes.

When you're done, hopefully you'll have something that looks like this:

The hot pan will get the pizza crust nice and crispy. And with the lid on, the cheese will get good and melty. Mmmmmm.

Make sure you don't cook the pizza for too long though. The first time I tried this, I didn't set a timer and the crust became quite black. If you do burn the crust, take the pan outside before you take the lid off. That way all the smoke will stay outside of your house and won't set off your smoke alarms.

Working at Home

Why I like working at home: Reason #119

I just had an afternoon snack consisting of a Diet Pepsi and a slice of bacon. Try getting that from a vending machine!

Playing with your food

Coffee

I don't like coffee. I really can't understand why anyone would choose to drink coffee when there are so many other good beverages out there. A little while ago, I wanted to see what it was about coffee that people liked so much. I have a Thursday morning Bible study that meets at a coffee shop, so one time, I decided to order myself a small cup of coffee. Oh man, was that horrible. It was like I drank a hot cup of burnt with a heaping spoonful of bitter mixed in. One of the guys that was there drinks coffee every day. I asked him why he drank it, and he said it was because he liked having a warm beverage in the morning. He didn't really like the taste, which is why he has to put sugar and cream in it. He's masking the bad taste of the coffee. Which is very puzzling to me. Why not start with a liquid that tastes good? Then you wouldn't have to cover up the bad taste. I guess it would make a little bit of sense if it was just something that a few people did. But almost everyone drinks coffee! Why do so many people drink this horrible beverage every day? And pay money for it?

Well, you know who else likes coffee? Mrs. BigKat. She drinks coffee every day. It started out when she was in college. Her friends would go to a coffee shop, so she would go with them. She didn't drink coffee and didn't know what to get, so she would get herself mochas. And to this day, that is her primary drink of choice. But again, the idea is to put good tasting stuff (milk and chocolate) on top of the coffee to get rid of the yucky coffee taste. Last year, I got her several coffee related items. I got her a burr grinder, a french press pot, and an espresso machine. Me being me, I had to do a lot of research on the items before I purchased them. And boy, did I learn a lot. I went to CoffeeGeek.com to do mose of my research. And I found out that there are people that are CRAZY about coffee. There are people that will spend a thousand dollars on coffee related items in order to get the perfect cup. If you ask them what grinder to get, some of them will tell you that you need to get such-and-such model that starts at $400 and even then you may end up wanting to upgrade soon. Some of them order beans from all over the world and roast them at home so they will be as fresh as possible. Now for someone to be that crazy about coffee, I couldn't imagine that they were drinking the same horrible liquid that I drank at the coffee shop. There had to be something else to it.

I started helping Mrs. BigKat make her espresso drinks. I followed the advice given on CoffeeGeek to help me out. And every time I made a shot for Mrs. BigKat, I'd make one for myself to try out. Now, our setup is not the most expensive setup in the world (but it was by no means cheap either). So the results are not as consistent as you might get with better quality machines. But with some practice, I was able to start getting rid of some of the bad flavors, so that some actually interesting flavors came through (although, there's still a bit of sourness that I can't seem to overcome. My feeling is that it has something to do with the water temperature).

Well, recently Mrs. BigKat has found a local place that roasts their own coffee and delivers it to your house. So now she gets these interesting fresh roasted coffees to try out. She's really been enjoying her espresso machine, but I told her that she should try making it in her press pot. That way it might be easier to experience the flavor of the beans because some of the off-flavors that she's been getting from the espresso machine wouldn't be there. It took her a while, but last night, she finally did it. She made a cup for herself and had enough left over to make half a cup for me.

Wow! Now that was a good beverage! No burnt tastes. No bitter tastes. No sour tastes. No yucky tastes at all! It tasted like the nice smell that coffee puts off, mixed with some other complex, interesting flavors. I had no desire to add anything that would tone down its flavor at all. I'm starting to understand why all the people on CoffeeGeek love their coffee so much. I'm looking forward to having another cup this evening.

But my original question still remains, just modified a bit. Why would anyone pay to drink yucky tasting coffee when it's possible to make really good tasting coffee?

Yobaby

So whenever any parent feeds this to their baby, they pretty much have to say "Can you say 'Yo Baby Yo Baby Yo'", right? I mean, who doesn't do that? It's seems automatic. Not saying it would be like saying 'Yes, I am serious' and not saying 'and don't call me Shirley' afterwards.

 

Am I right?

Christmas Part 6: The Cinnamon Rolls

Mmmmm...cinnamon rolls...Who doesn't love cinnamon rolls? Mrs. BigKat likes to have something special to eat on Christmas mornings, and in the past we've had cinnamon rolls. You know, the kind that come in the big tube from the grocery store, which are fine. I mean, they're nice and hot and covered in icing.

Well, this year, Mrs. BigKat decided that she would like to have some homemade cinnamon rolls. She has a bread book that has a cinnamon roll recipe in it that she's been wanting to try out. We also saw Alton Brown do cinnamon rolls on one of his shows. Mrs. BigKat decided that, since I love working with bread dough so much, that I should be the one that got to make them.

Now I have to back up a second. Remember in Christmas Part 3 when I mentioned that I used to be afraid of candy making? Well, the same thing also applied to bread making. Anything you could say about the candy thermometer, you could also say about yeast. There were too many crazy concepts in bread making that I didn't understand: blooming, proofing, kneading. It just made me very uncomfortable. I could try to follow all of the steps, but if it didn't work out, I would have no idea what went wrong. It would be like if the recipe said to put flour in a bowl, jump up and down 3 times, and then moo like a cow. I could do that, but if it didn't work, how would I be able to fix it? I could try jumping 4 times, or maybe jumping faster, or maybe try making duck sounds instead. But it would all be just guessing.

But again, Alton Brown helped me out a lot here. He did a show on bread making as well as a pizza show that helped me understand what happens when you make bread. And now that I have an understanding of the science behind it, I really enjoy the whole process. It took a little practice to get the hang of it. But I really got into making pizzas which provided me with a lot of good dough making experience. Now, I love it. If there is an interesting looking bread recipe lying around, I want to make it. I actually now prefer making bread to cooking barbecue! That doesn't mean that I'd rather eat bread than eat barbecue. But I just find the whole idea of taking flour, water, yeast, and salt and creating a delicious loaf of bread out of them to be amazing. Anyhow, back to my story...

Ok, so it's Christmas Eve and I have to start the cinnamon rolls. I didn't get started until around 10pm because I had some gifts to wrap after the children went to bed. But this was fine. The dough needed a couple of hours to rise after it was made, which meant that I could get everything ready and in the refrigerator by a little after midnight. That wasn't too bad. I could handle that. I decided to use Alton Brown's recipe since we still had the show on Tivo. And everything went very smoothly. When I took the dough out of the mixer, it looked exactly like Alton's dough on TV. Great! I put the dough in a bowl, covered the bowl with plastic wrap, and let it sit.
Now, here's where one of my favorite parts about bread making happens. The yeast starts to do it's thing and fill the dough with gas. So when you start out, you have this compact little blob. But after a while, it turns into this big, puffy blob. Every time I see my puffy blob that's way bigger than when it started out, it just makes me happy. Kind of like the first time you saw your sea monkeys start swimming around or when the celery you left in a cup of food coloring started turning blue. Just a nice feeling of wonder and accomplishment. Very much different from the feeling of defeat and disappointment that comes when the dough is the same size as when it started.

Guess which one I was feeling when I came back at midnight to check on the dough...

Yes, the dough was still a little compact blog. Didn't rise at all. And I quickly realized that I had used the wrong yeast. I used Active Dry instead of Rapid Rise. I knew something was wrong when I didn't have to bloom the yeast. But I was sure that that's what Alton was using. I mean, he took it from a packet and not a jar. And he actually said something about how he preferred it to Rapid Rise. So I just trusted that it would turn out ok. Well, it didn't. And now I was left with a choice. Do I just call it a day and go to bed? Or do I try and start a new batch of cinnamon rolls at 12:30 AM? Easy choice, right? Of course it was an easy choice! I cleaned up my mess and got started on a new batch of cinnamon rolls...

I finished the dough at around 1pm and went to bed. I set my alarm for 3:30. That would give the dough a couple of hours to rise. Then I could go downstairs, roll out the dough, and get it into the refrigerator to let it sit.
Well, the next thing I knew, LilKat1 was waking me up at 6AM. I don't know what happened to my alarm. I must've just shut it off, but I don't even remember it making any noise or even waking up at all. We went downstairs and I turned a Christmas show on for LilKat1 while I got started on my cinnamon rolls.

 

It was pretty fun rolling out the dough. Here's what it looked like as a big log:

And here's what it looked like after I cut them up into little rolls:


I know, they're not all the same size. That's ok, the people in our house aren't the same size, so it works out fine.

I put them in the refrigerator to let them sit overnight. The only problem was, overnight had just finished. So I just let them sit until 11AM. It was only about 4 1/2 hours, but it would have to do.
The next step was proofing. I put them in the oven with a big pan of boiling water under them and ended up with this:

Then I cooked them:


And then applied the icing. Which left me with these:

Now here's the big question. Was it worth it? Was it worth all the effort, the frustration, the lack of sleep? I was actually pretty nervous as I took my first bite. If these were bad or just even ok, I was going to be VERY disappointed. I cut off a nice sized bite with a good bit of frosting and gave it a try. And do you know what?

It was DEFINITELY worth it...

Next, Christmas Part 7: The Song

Christmas Part 3: The Candy

When I was little, I enjoyed dessert making. I used to bake a lot of cookies. That's mainly because making cookies from a recipe was not too hard. You just do whatever the directions says and, soon, you end up with a bunch of cookies. Just mix some stuff up in a bowl, spoon out some blobs, and then bake said blobs according to the instructions. Nothing real complicated. There might be some butter creaming involved at the beginning, but that's about it. And even if you're off a little, what you end up with is way better than Chips Ahoy. I would even venture into pies and cakes once in a while. I liked recipes that had easy to follow instructions as well as some room for error. And no complicated techniques. Just mixing and scooping.

So when I'd see cookbooks with pictures of interesting looking candies, I'd take a look to see if it was something that I could do. But the mere mention of a candy thermometer destroyed any hopes I had of even attempting it. I was very much intimidated by the candy thermometer. Candy making just seemed like some crazy mad scientist ritual with terminology that didn't make any sense. What in the world does hard crack mean? And what would happen if the thermometer got fogged up and I couldn't tell if it's on soft ball or hard ball? What if the temperature shot up too quickly and I was too slow to do anything about it? It all seemed way too...dangerous. I didn't want to deal with it at all, even if it meant not being able to make my own caramels.

Looking back at it now, I think that my main problem was that I didn't understand the science behind basic candy making. If I had, I think I really would've enjoyed it. Well, thanks to my favorite food show, Good Eats, I've learned a little bit about what goes on when you cook a sugar solution. And, you know what? It's really fascinating. And knowing things like what will happen to my candy if I let it cook too hot or if I don't add corn syrup makes me a lot more comfortable. If something goes wrong, I'll probably be able to figure out what to do about it next time because I understand what's happening when the candy is cooking. Also, using modern recipes that say '240 degrees' instead of 'soft ball' makes me much more at ease. So now I know what bazillions of other Christmas cooks have known for years. Candy making is really easy, and it's pretty fun too.

This year, I made 2 different candies. One was the chocolate marshmallows that I had made earlier in the month. They turned out really well, so I made a bunch more. The other candy that I made was my toffee. A long time ago, a guy that I worked with brought some toffee in that his wife had made. It was some of the best candy that I'd ever had. Kind of like Almond Roca. But way better. I asked him if he could get the recipe for me, and he did. It took me a while before I actually tried making it (afraid of candy thermometers and all). And even when I did try it, it took some modifications to the recipe for it to come out right. Anyhow, what I have now is a recipe that I make pretty much every year at Christmas time. I make big batches of it and give it out to our friends. Everyone seems to love it, so I keep making it.

Here's the recipe in case you're interested:

1 cup unsalted butter

1 1/3 cups sugar

3 Tbl water

1 Tbl corn syrup

1 cup chopped walnuts

11 oz Hersey milk chocolate

1 cup finely chopped walnuts

1) Line a 13"x9.5"x2" pan with aluminum foil. Set aside.

2) Melt butter in a large saucepan.

3) Add sugar, corn syrup, water. Cook on medium high, stirring occasionally, to 280 degrees.

4) Take saucepan off burner. Quickly stir in chopped walnuts (NOT the finely chopped ones), and spread into the pan that you lined with aluminum foil.

5) Let pan cool about 10 minutes.

6) While you're waiting for the pan to cool, melt the chocolate. I do this by breaking it up into pieces and putting it in the microwave. Microwave it at half power in 1 minute intervals. Check after each interval to see if the chocolate is melted.

7) Lift cooled candy out of pan and place on flat surface.

8) Spread top with half of melted chocolate. Sprinkle with half of the finely chopped walnuts.

9) Place a piece of wax paper over the candy. Put an upsidown cookie sheet on top of the wax paper. Carefully flip the whole thing upsidown so that the cookie sheet is right-side-up with the candy in it.

10) Spread the rest of the chocolate on top of the candy. Sprinkle the rest of the finely chopped walnuts on top of the chocolate.

11) Let sit in a cool, dry place or refrigerate until chocolate has firmed.

12) Take a big knife and cut it up into squares like a checkerboard.

Tips:

Make sure you use butter, not margarine.

Pyrex pans work well.

You will need a candy thermometer.

Don't store in refrigerator.

If the toffee is too hard, you probably cooked it too long.

If the toffee doesn't have a nice carmelized taste, you didn't cook it long enough.

280 degrees has worked well for me, but you can move it up or down a bit to suit your tastes.

 

Up next, Christmas Part 4: Heroscape Deals and The Crazy Lady at Fred Meyer's