Let's PAR-TAY, shall we?

My "baby" brother and his wife welcomed a sweet baby girl into the world yesterday evening, so I am excitedly distracted today. Been burning up those phone lines between here and Louisiana!

I do have just a minute to share two recipes for Karla's



The first one is SUPER fast and easy. Perfect to whip up for holiday parties or just to have on hand to indulge in over coffee on a wintry afternoon.

Brown Sugar Shortbread

from Judith Sutton's Sweet Gratitude

1/2 lb (2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temp (NO substitutions or it isn't shortbread!)
1/3 c. granulated sugar
1/3 c. packed brown sugar
1 t. pure vanilla extract
1/8 t. salt
2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour

1. Put a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 325.
2. In a large bowl, beat butter and both sugars with an electric mixer on medium speed until thoroughly blended - about one minute. Scrape down sides of bowl. Beat in vanilla, then beat in salt. On low speed, add the flour in two additions, beating just until incorporated.
3. Turn the dough out into an ungreased 9x13 baking pan and, with your fingertips or a sturdy rubber spatula, gently press it evenly over the bottom of the pan. Bake for 50 to 55 minutes, or until the shortbread is golden brown (edges will be slightly darker). Do not underbake. Let cool in pan on wire rack for 5 to 10 minutes.
4. With a sharp heavy knife, cut the shortbread, still in the pan, into 36 rectangles. Let cool completely before removing shortbread from pan. Keeps in airtight container up to 5 days.

Here's another quick and easy - Monkey Bread! I have signed up to bring Monkey Bread to my Bible study group's Christmas party on Friday, but I am going to go out on a limb and change up my tried and true recipe. Michelle at Scribbit shared her Sticky Buns recipe a while back and I've been waiting for just the occasion to whip it up. But if you need a fast, simple Monkey Bread recipe, I think you'll find this one won't disappoint!

Megan's Mother-In-Law's Monkey Bread:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Ingredients:
2 to 4 cans of refrigerated biscuits
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup crushed pecans
1/4 cup cinnamon
1-1/2 sticks of butter

Mix together the sugars and pecans and cinnamon and put in bowl. Set aside.

Use kitchen shears and cut the biscuits into fourths (if you use bigger biscuits you can cut them smaller). Roll in the sugar mixture and arrange in bundt pan that has been sprayed with cooking spray. (A loaf pan will work if you don't have a bundt pan). Set aside.

In a small sauce pan melt the butter and add the sugar mixture that you rolled the biscuit fourths in. Once the mixture comes to a boil lower heat and cook approx. 2 min.

Pour hot mixture over the biscuits in the pan lifting edges so it can seep down to the bottom.

Place in oven and bake approx. 30 to 45 minutes. When it is done allow to cool a couple of minutes on stove top and invert onto a serving dish. Best when served warm but still good if it cools.

You can vary the ingredients and it will turn out. It's fail proof.



Thank you, Karla, for hosting such a yummy par-tay!!!

It's the simple things, like a well-cooked steak

It occurs to me that I don't talk about The Coach much here on the ol' blog. He is an extremely private person, so I try to honor that by not revealing too much about him on the web that is world wide. You know, because I have a lot of readers and all. But I am going to make an exception today to share this with you about my man.

My husband really is a Renaissance man. Equally at ease with coaching up three hundred pound defensive lineman as he is with shopping for and hanging brand new drapery in our living room, there is simply nothing he can't do. Well, except change dirty diapers. As much as he enjoys some good old-fashioned toilet humor, there's something about coming face-to-face (hand-to-diaper?) with real life toileting that brings him to the brink of vomithood. I can only handle one clean-up at a time, so he gets a free pass on the dirty diaper changing.

Anyway, one area where he really shines is in the preparation and grilling of meat.

(Vegetarian Friends, it's at this point that you may want to tune out.)

Last week, we had planned to celebrate a really big victory for the team with a really big steak dinner. However, in a week filled with the distractions of Halloween and intense game planning, the really big steak dinner plan never came to fruition. He hadn't forgotten the plan though, and called yesterday morning to say he had just received a nice bottle of red wine that needed some rib eye steaks to go with it. Off to the store I went and found some gorgeous rib eyes, marbled to perfection.

I set them up to bathe in our secret family recipe for meat marinade and spent the rest of the day comforting and cuddling a feverish Miss D. Because she was sick, the girls and I stayed home from last night's game, but by the time the last seconds ticked off the game clock, The Coach and I had another big win to celebrate! He skipped the post-game tailgates and hurried home for some quality time with his much-neglected grill wife.

Finally, a little after ten in the evening, we loaded our plates with pan-fried green beans, mashed potatoes, Hawaiian bread, and those gorgeous, glorious steaks. As we blew the dust out of the wine glasses, we joked that eating at such a late hour made us feel like them fancy New York types. And, oh, we were fancy, indeed! He in his wind pants and me in my gray running shorts . . . But the wine was rich, the potatoes were comforting, and the steaks were perfection.

D had long since gone to sleep and AJ snoozed peacefully in her bouncy seat. We talked about the game, the scores from the day, the weather, the future . . . It was the first date we had been on in ages. Our dinner last night reminded me of why I treasure simplicity so much. A great meal in the cozy comfort of our own home confirmed for me that in this season of life, simple is the new fancy.

What's that you say? You were wondering if I could share the secret family recipe for an outstanding meat marinade?

Well, if you are going to twist my arm like that, I suppose I can let it spill.

It's simple.

Combine equal parts soy sauce, vegetable oil, and lemon or lime juice (we like lime). Put the meat in a gallon size freezer bag and pour in the marinade. Let the meat soak for as long as you have . . . overnight is great, but even just a few hours will work. Before the meat is cooked, we like to generously dust the meat with garlic pepper. Works nicely for beef or chicken and is definitely, definitely good eats!

Bit O' Crunchy, October 19: Homemade Baby Food

First of all, I need to make an introduction. This morning I shared with my in-town community of friends for the first time ever about my little home on the web. These friends of mine - awesome, amazing, wonderful, loving . . . I could go on and on. I love them to pieces! I have been hesitant to tell them about this little ol' blog, but the word is out now. So in-town friends, meet my online friends! I think everyone is going to get along just famously.

Last week, seattlebags asked if I had ever shared my own experience in using veggie purees, etc., in making homemade baby food. I got to looking back through the archives, and as a matter of fact, I have not. I guess D was far enough past the baby food stage when I started blogging for real that I just never thought to write about it here.

When D was five months old or so, one of my friends lent me her copy of Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron. Seeing as how I am always on the lookout for ways to pinch a penny, the idea of saving money on baby food by making it myself had me hooked from the beginning. Ms. Yaron takes the idea of homemade baby food beyond the draw of frugality and explains how in making your own baby food, you have absolute control over what you are allowing to enter your tender young baby's system. She advocates organic eating whenever possible, although you don't have to if that won't work with your budget.

Ms. Yaron's book is a wealth of information. So much information, in fact, that I got kind of overstimulated when I tried to really read through it. It made my (self-diagnosed) ADD act up in a big way. Some mommy board friends of mine pointed me in the direction of wholesomebabyfood.com - which, by the way, is even more user-friendly now than it was two years ago when I first found this helpful site.

These two resources were really all I needed to make almost all of D's baby food! (Yes, I do admit to buying jarred baby food for trips out of town because I am lazy like that . . .) But really, it was quite easy. Buy your fresh (or even frozen) fruits and veggies, get a rice/vegetable steamer, dig out the old blender, and locate those never-used-before ice cube trays in the back of the cabinet and you are all set!

One more site to check out . . . On Wednesday, Melissa (of Melissa Garrett ~ a writer's woolgatherings) posted her great success with one of Jessica Seinfeld's Deceptively Delicious recipes. In that post, she makes mention of Mush - a new(ish) blog devoted to "All baby food recipes. All the time." If you want to get fancy with all of this baby food makin,' check their recipes for things like Mango and Fresh Apricot Puree, Butternut Squash Risotto, and California Chicken. Sounds fab, right? A heckuva lot better than decidedly unappetizing jarred version of Turkey Rice and Garden Vegetables or the decidedly unhealthy corn dogs a la Kids' Cuisine (not that I would know anything about preparing one of those for D! Oh no, I've just heard that such things exist . . .).

So that's your Bit O' Crunchy for the week. Good eats!

Menu Plan Monday - August 13th

Well, friends, the sweet days of a mild summer are long behind us now, and as I write, the temperature outside my kitchen window is 85 degrees. In the shade. At nine in the morning.

Needless to say, this Mama is too hot and tired to do much in the way of fancy in the kitchen. In fact, you will see several dinners from last week's meal plan because I just big fat didn't get around to cooking a few nights last week. (Not to worry! D and I still ate - we just went ahead and had Sonic corn dogs instead of that tofu miracle.)

Monday: We'll try again to do the Black Bean, Tofu, Spinach Miracle
Tuesday: Cheese Tortellini and Mushroom Sauce
Wednesday: Dinner out with D's Aunt Mimi (my sister! hooray!)
Thursday: Coaches' wives get together!
Friday: whole wheat spaghetti and leftover peanut sauce from last week
Saturday: chicken nuggets, mac n cheese, corn on the cob
Sunday: Joe's Famous Breakfast Tacos (Thanks Keara and Joe! Welcome back to Texas!!)

As always, many thanks to Laura at I'm An Organizing Junkie for hosting!

Bit O' Crunchy, August 10th: WHOLE FOODS AND GOOD EATS

It's summertime and not only is the livin' easy, but it's also that time of year when your local farmers' market is brimming with all kinds of fresh-from-the-earth goodness. But if you grew up in a family like mine where a salad consists of a head of iceburg lettuce hacked into sorta bite-sized pieces, then it might be a little overwhelming to know what to do with foods that you know are good for you, but you don't know how to prepare.

For today's Bit O' Crunchy, I wanted to spotlight a few of my favorite go-to sites for all things whole food.

One of the most useful sites I have come across is The World's Healthiest Foods. This non-profit organization has collected an immense amount of information on choosing, preparing, and enjoying whole foods. The Healthiest Foods List is an exhaustive listing of "health-promoting foods" that allows you to discover in just one click the growing season, health benefits, shopping tips, recipes, and preparation ideas for 130 whole foods. Amazing! They also have recipes of the week, food of the week, and condition-specific health-promoting menu plans.

Another SortaCrunchy fave is VegWeb. I have been using this website for recipe ideas for over a year. Tons and tons of recipes with helpful reviews! Perfect for anyone who wants to dabble in vegetarian meal planning but isn't quite ready to invest in a new library of cookbooks.

Finally, I wanted to introduce you to Carrien at the real food revolution. This bloggin' mom has just started her real foods blog and it promises to have lots of practical, budget-friendly, and kid-approved ideas on how to get healthy, whole foods into the tummies you love best.

I would love to hear from you on what your favorite whole foods and healthy eating resources are! What whole and healthy foods have you been enjoying this summer?

Menu Plan Monday - August 6th

Hola, mis amigas!

I am so excited to start a brand new week. Over the weekend, I finally started to feel like myself again. Wow - that was one eeeeeeeeevil tummy bug!

Yesterday, the players reported to the stadium to kick-off "fall camp." (For you football-knowledgable ladies, this is what they used to call "two-a-days," because the majority of the days leading up to the start of the football season were days of two practices in one day. For various reasons, there are now only a handful of actual "two-a-day" practices, so that adreline-inspiring term from my youth has been replaced with the less exciting but more accurate "fall camp.") Because The Coach will be out of the house much of the week, and because D is my born vegetarian, our menu is pretty basic and light this week.

Monday: Whole wheat spaghetti and four cheese pasta sauce, veggies
Tuesday: Bean and cheese quesadillas, veggies, fruit
Wednesday: Kids Choice Yummy Peanut Noodles
Thursday: Soup night
Friday: Frozen pizza (yep, I get lazier as the week goes on!)
Saturday: Chicken nuggets, sweet potato fries, veggies
Sunday: Yummy Black Bean, Tofu, Spinach Miracle on spinach wraps, fruit, pudding

Hope everyone's week is cool and tasty!

Menu Plan Monday - July 23rd

*** UPDATED WITH CORN BREAD SALAD RECIPE AT THE BOTTOM! ***



Thanks, as always, to Laura for hosting!

Veggies for the week depend on what looks good at the Farmer's Market Tuesday afternoon. I will be happy to post recipes on request.

Monday: Steak Soup (didn't make yesterday), cornbread

Tuesday: Chicken fajitas, Granny's Low-Fat bean dip, salad

Wednesday: Burgers grilled out, chips, veggies

Thursday: Tex Mex Red Beans and Rice, salad

Friday: Corn Bread Salad

Saturday: Colorful Hamburger Rice, pudding parfaits

Sunday: Just me and D, so probably sandwiches

Hope everyone has a great week!


PER REQUEST, here is the recipe for Corn Bread Salad. I found this in the Taste of Home Ground Beef Cookbook, 1999.

From Sherry E., Camden, Arkansas

Corn Bread Salad
3/4 lb ground beef
1-1/2 c. crumbled corn bread (if you like to use an 8.5 oz mix like Jiffy Cornbread mix - my fave! - then 1-1/2 c is about half of what the 8.5 oz mix will make)
1 15 oz can pinto beans, rinsed and drained
2 celery ribs, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
4 medium tomatoes, chopped

Topping:
1-1/3 c. mayonnaise
2 t. sugar
2 t. vinegar

In a skillet, cook beef over medium heat until no longer pink; drain and cool slightly. In a large bowl, layer corn bread, beans, celery, onion, and tomotoes. In a small bowl, combine the mayonnaise, sugar, and vinegar; mix well. Sppon beef over tomato layer. Spread topping over salad. (Do not toss.) Yield: 8 servings

Haven't made this one yet, but I will let you know next week how it turns out!

WFMW: Texas Sweet Tea

Okay, so I am playing a little fast-and-loose with the title TEXAS sweet tea. I know there are plenty of Texans out there who might beg to differ with me that this is how Texans make sweet tea. So let me just say that this is how we in the SortaCrunchy household (firmly planted in Texas) make us some sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet tea.

(We also don't have a recipe handed down to us from a great-great-grandmother who made the original sweet tea. Our concoction is a melding together of many recipes we have come across; we have tinkered and made it our own!)

Recipe for one gallon of sweet tea:

1 gallon of water (divided; tap will do fine)
3 or 4 cups of sugar (how much do you love your dentist?)
12 Luzianne iced tea bags

In a large pot, bring 2 quarts (half a gallon) of water and all of your sugar to a boil. When the water comes to a boil, remove pot from heat and add the tea bags. Cover and let sit. (I'd say at least half an hour, but we let ours sit up to two hours sometimes.) After tea has steeped, remove tea bags and pour tea into a gallon sized container. Fill with two more quarts of water (to make a gallon - the magic of math and measurements!). Chill and serve over ice. I like a lemon wedge or two in mine to cut the sweetness, but The Coach prefers his straight up.

A gallon makes a LOT of tea, so unless you are having company over for a grill-out, you may want to make just half a gallon. Tea (sweet and otherwise) tastes funny to me after it's been in the fridge for three or more days.

Enjoy!

For more Works For Me Wednesday tips, pour a glass of tea and drop by Rocks in My Dryer!

Menu Plan Monday

Thank you, Laura, for hosting!

Well, The Coach went back to work this morning after a couple of weeks of vacation. We have gotten so much done around here! And by "we," I mostly mean "he!" The man built and installed and replaced and trimmed and cooked (well, grilled actually - but that's cooking, right?) and shopped . . . I am confident he was glad to be back at work today so he could take a break from the past month! Anyway, with the hubby back at work, I am hoping D and I can back into our regular routines as well, and that means an actual menu plan for the week!

We are some grilling fools here in the SortaCrunchy home. Our grill lay wasting away in exile in the garage of some friends of ours while we were in the apartment. Now that it has made its glorious return, we have been grilling three, four, and sometimes five nights a week!

If ya'll haven't had grilled bananas, you are truly missing out. Lay the bananas (in their complete skin) on the grill for a few minutes on each side. When you open them, they will be hot and sweet and need only some brown sugar, cinnamon, and maybe a little splash of vanilla to make them the perfect (and perfectly easy) summer dessert. Yum!

Monday - grilled chicken breasts, Grilled Mustard Potato Salad, mixed green salad

Tuesday - cheeseburger mac, broccoli (baby shower night for Mama! So fast and easy dinner for D and her daddy)

Wednesday - Slow Cooker Tender and Yummy Round Steak, fresh veggies (depending on what we find at the Farmer's Market)

Thursday - Bobcat Bash! (annual fundraiser and catfish fry)

Friday - taco night with all the fixings

Saturday - grilled sirloin steak, Quick Sesame Green Beans, garlic bread

Sunday - steak soup (made with leftovers from the steak this week), cornbread, veggies

Head over to I'm An Organizing Junkie for more great menu plans!

No such thing as a bad chocolate cake

I have so enjoyed all the comments on my SortaWhat, Part Two post. It's really surprising to me just how many mamas lean the "sorta crunchy" way . . . we just don't talk about it. I would love to see those conversations taking place on playgrounds and over coffee instead of being limited to LLL meetings and health food stores.

Anyway, speaking of health food . . . I've got a little recipe to share with you. I realize most everyone is doing their Meal Plan Monday for the week. We are still in packing/moving limbo, so my meal plan consists of going through the freezer and pantry and inventing meals out of what I find inside so we can transport as little food as possible to the new hacienda. But over the weekend, the need to bake consumed me once again, and I turned to this scrumptious recipe I had re-discovered last week.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cake
(from the Taste of Home 2003 recipe collection; recipe submitted by Elaine Medeiros of Wamego, Kansas)

2-1/4 c. all-purpose flour
1-1/2 c. sugar
1/3 c. baking cocoa
1/2 t. salt

1-1/2 c. water
1/2 c. vegetable oil
4-1/2 t. white vinegar
1-1/2 t. vanilla extract

Peanut butter batter:
4 oz cream cheese, softened
1/4 c. creamy peanut butter
1/3 c. plus 1 T sugar, divided
1 egg
1/8 t. salt
1/2 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 c. chopped pecans

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Stir in water, oil, vinegar and vanilla, mix well. Pour into greased 13x2x9 baking pan.

In a mixing bowl, beat cream cheese, peanut butter, 1/3 c. sugar, egg, and salt until smooth. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop by tablespoons over cake batter; cut through batter with a knife to swirl the peanut butter mixture. Sprinkle with pecans and remaining sugar.

Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack before cutting. Refrigerate leftovers.


What? That doesn't sound like health food, you say? Au contraire, my friends. It has peanut butter in it and peanuts are an excellent source of protein, ya know. And did you see that it has vegetable oil? Oh, it is surely health food indeed. If nothing else, it's great mental health food, particularly if you are self-medicating from the stress of a move coupled with the tireless demands of an already-needy-two-year-old who is teething those awful molars.

(As the cake finished cooling on the rack, I discovered The Coach hunkered over the pan in the kitchen - in the dark. He stopped forking cake in his mouth long enough to say, "this is awful . . . you probably don't want to eat any of it. Don't worry about it . . . I'll take care of it . . .")

Pregnant Lady Bakes

No menu plan this week . . . and maybe not for a few weeks. The month of June will be devoted to an in-town move for the SortaCrunchy household, so things are going to be a little bit crazy. I found some great tips and tricks from Laura at Organizing Junkie that I fully intend to use!

Anyway, last Friday night I found myself overcome with the urge to BAKE! The Coach loves peanut butter cookies (and there literally does not exist a cookie that I don't love) so I decided to whip some up. I searched through my wildly unorganized recipe files and simply could not find the peanut butter cookie recipe I usually use.

(This particular recipe was given to me by my mother-in-law years and years ago when The Coach and I were newlyweds and I baked up some cookies for my darling groom for the first time. Hard as rocks. And just about as tasty. He lovingly suggested that perhaps I should "call Mom and ask for her recipe." Once I finished licking my wounds, I made her recipe and they were really good!)

But alas, that recipe is currently Missing In Action, so I did what every super mod bakerina does in such a crisis . . . I googled "best peanut butter cookie recipe!" And I discovered this gem of a recipe that The Coach has not only requested become our permanent house recipe for peanut butter cookies, he also wants me to send the recipe to his mother!! Love it.

Anyway, these are really, really fabulous. We both could not stop eating them. They are gone now, nothing but some peanut-y crumbs as trace evidence of their existence. I am going to post the recipe as it was written, with my notes to the side.

2.5 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 lb. (2 sticks) salted butter (I never have salted butter on hand, so I used two sticks unsalted and added 3/8 tsp of salt to the recipe)
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup crunchy peanut butter at room temp
2 large eggs
2 tsps. vanilla extract (I am lucky enough to be able to keep Mexican vanilla on hand. Oh dear LORD that is some powerful stuff.)
1 cup roasted salted peanuts

Preheat oven to 350. Grind peanuts in food processor until they resemble bread crumbs, about 14 pulses; set aside. Line two large cookie sheets with parchment paper. (I don't have any parchment paper - shame on me! not a real baker, I suppose - but I baked these on my nonstick cookie sheets and they came out fine)

Whisk flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in medium bowl; set aside.

Beat butter until creamy. Add sugars; beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes, scraping down bowl as necessary. Beat in peanut butter until fully incorporated and then eggs, one at a time, then vanilla. Gently stir dry ingredients into peanut butter mixture. Add ground peanuts; stir gently until just incorporated.

Scoop into balls with about 1.5 Tbsps. dough per scoop and drop onto parchment about 2 inches apart. Press criss-cross design into the top of each ball using a fork dipped in cold water. (I, of course, added the requisite sprinkling of sugar to the top of each cookie)

Bake 10-12 mins until cookies are puffed and slightly brown along edges but not on top. Cookies will not look fully baked! Cool on sheet until set, about 5 minutes; transfer to wire rack to cool completely. The ground peanuts add a lot of flavor and surprisingly, do not add grittiness. I don't like peanuts in cookies as a rule, and I don't like crunchy peanut butter, but I love these cookies. When my mom makes them, she likes to make a glaze of powdered sugar with a little milk and a small amount of creamy peanut butter and drizzle it over the finished cooled cookies.
(I followed her baking instructions and it took about 10.5 minutes for them to reach perfection in my oven. I also didn't make the glaze, but that sounds delish, too!)

Again, these are so, so good. Enjoy!