so much more than just a candy cane

One of my favorite things to find in my stocking Christmas morning were those huge candy cane sticks. It has been years since I had one...or thought about them for that matter. I came across them in the store the other day and all the childhood memories of running down the stairs on Christmas morning to see what Santa had brought flooded back. And because I needed to keep my sugar buzz going I would work on this thing the whole day. It was important to get it into just the right shape...you know just in case I had to shank a certain sister for getting too close to my new Barbie. MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Adventures in Tamale Making ~ Part I

Tamales. Every year around Christmas time Husband tells me about how back in El Paso they would all gather at his Abuela Carmen’s house to make tamales. In most Latino families making tamales at Christmas is tradition. It is to them what the Christmas cookie is to us white folk. And like the Christmas cookie there are several different types of tamales. Husband’s Abeula makes the traditional pork tamales and she makes a sweet one too. It is the sweet one that the entire family talks about. I have never tasted one of her sweet tamales but from what I hear it is the stuff of legend. Since Husband and I got hitched this year and don’t have any traditions of our own I decided that we should try to blend the traditions of our respective families. So on Christmas Eve we will have tamales and for Christmas dinner I will make lasagna which is my family tradition (as us Norwegians are known for our mad lasagna making skills). So…yeah…tamales. While I have eaten many I have never attempted to make one. They are a lot of work and I always figured that I would learn to make them from Husband’s family while visiting for Christmas. That isn’t going to happen this year so I am forging into tamale making on my own. And because I am overly ambitious when it comes to food I am attempting four different kinds; two savory and two sweet. I am feeling pretty confident about three of the four as I have recipes for those. It is the third, Abeula Carmen’s sweet tamales, which have me worried. Husband’s mom has asked for the recipe several times and has gotten ingredients, but not how much of each ingredient. Only Abeula Carmen knows that. She makes them like this…a pinch of this and a dash of that…mix it together…and voila the best tamales you have ever eaten. Easy right? So I am going to give the often imitated but never duplicated sweet tamales a go. I have a list of ingredients, no tamales making skills, and no idea what this sweet tamale is supposed to taste like…what could go wrong?

what a brat(wurst)

It is not the Christmas items that start making their appearance on store shelves in August, or the Christmas songs played everywhere you go the day after Thanksgiving that get me feeling all Christmas-y. The thing that really gives me a jumpstart into the ol’ Christmas spirit is the Georgetown Christmas Market. And this year I MISSED IT! It is something I had done with my family for the last 30 years. At first we started going for the overall Christmas experience; the outdoor European market, roasted chestnuts and hot apple cider, St Nicholas, and horse drawn wagon rides all set against the quaint backdrop of a historic mountain mining town. Sure all that stuff is nice…but in the end we went every year for the brats. I am not going to go so far as to say I am a brat connoisseur, but my family is from Wisconsin and brats seemed to be the only meat that made it on to the grill in the summer. I am not talking Johnsonville here…I am talking fresh sausage made by that old German guy who had a deli counter in back of the PDQ in Waukesha. That being said I think it is fair to say that the ones we get in Georgetown are hands down the best. The booth that sells the brats is run by a Catholic church out of Denver…and those Catholics know how to make a kickass brat. It does not get much better than a veal brat boiled in beer and onions, then tossed on the grill for a few seconds to give them a touch of color, served on a pumpernickel bun with sauerkraut and spicy brown mustard (insert drooling noise that Homer does here). Totally worth the 50 mile drive. After 20 years of asking we finally got them to tell us where they got the brats. Even though I could now go and buy the brats anytime I never did. Somehow it would take away from how special the Christmas market ones are. Having to wait all year makes them taste that much better. So if I seem a little bah humbug this year it is because I did not get my brat fix that kicks off the holiday season.

more cupcakes...these ones are pink

Today felt like a good day to make cupcakes. I found a recipe for pink champagne cupcakes a while back and had been wanting to give it a go. It is a pretty straight forward recipe so I was not anticipating any issues. I ran out this morning to get the ingredients one of them of course being pink champagne. The store did not have the kind that I wanted so I buy a brand I am unfamiliar with. The recipe only called for 2 cups and I am hoping it is drinkable because I am going to end up to drinking the rest of it. Lucky for me the bottle decided that that would not be necessary. I have opened hundreds of champagne bottles with nary a problem. While in my possession this bottle took a five minute car ride and spent the next two hours sitting on the counter in the kitchen. So I’m a mixin’ and a beatin’ all the cupcake stuff together and I get to the ‘alternately add flour and champagne’ part. I turn and grab the champagne bottle, tear off the foil, and while grasping the neck of the bottle with my left hand I apply pressure to the cork with my right thumb. Now normally this is when the cork comes out with a loud pop and no geyser of bubbly goodness. But today I got that geyser of bubbly goodness…the one that sprays 80% of the kitchen and over the bar into the living room while I yell “SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!” and leaves me with just under the 2 cups needed to make these damn cupcakes. Sigh. So after a half hour of clean up I get on with the cupcake baking. They turned out pretty tasty and are a nice shade of pink. I hand colored the sparkly sugar on top…that was a pain in the ass.

Snow Day

It is dumping in Colorado…DUMPING! So much snow that it has made the news up here. Seeing those reports and reading my friend’s statuses on Facebook really have me homesick. As most know I can take or leave snow in most cases but as I have mentioned here before I LOVE a huge snowstorm. Now some of you may be thinking that late October is too early for a blizzard but we are talking Colorado here. Anyone who has lived there most of their life kind of expect this type of storm this close to Halloween. We are a people who grew up planning our Halloween costumes around our snowsuits. I love the anticipation of it. You hear about it on the news a day or two ahead of the storm. The prediction of amounts are higher than usual…maybe 12”. But as the storm draws closer the amounts grow higher 16-20”. I would always find myself hoping for more. Once there was more than 10” of snow on the ground I would head to the store for supplies. The makings for hearty soups or chili, hot chocolate, and brownies. All the good stuff needed for a snow day at home. My favorite storm over the last 5 years happened in March 2004. March happens to be Colorado’s snowiest month. The storm hit on a Tuesday morning and by noon I closed the office and sent everyone home. An hour later I arrived home to a 4 foot drift in my driveway which you can see in the center of the picture below. My driveway was a little over 75 feet long and I had to shovel away all that snow before I was able to get the Xterra into the garage. Why not just plow right through it like you see in all the winter SUV commercials? I thought about it…but did not have enough space to get up enough speed to plow through 4 feet of heavy wet March snow. We got 36” of snow that day; all of which I had to shovel alone. I awoke the next morning to 24” of more snow. Back into the snow gear and back out to shovel. I missed 3 days of work and had my faithful companion Murphy by my side. The Murph loved the snow. She spent the hours I spent shoveling hopping through the snow and chasing snowballs thrown by the neighbor kids. Damn I miss that dog! So to my friends in Colorado I hope you are enjoying the snow day.

Pancakes

As promised Boyfriend took me out for pancakes this morning...and boy was I needing those pancakes. He took me to a place called Chase's Pancake Corral up in Bellevue.

Chase's has been around for about 50 years and is the type of place where the staff knows the names of all the regulars. It is a tiny little place that is always packed. We went around 11am on a Monday and still had to wait 20 minutes for a table...but it was worth it.

Boyfriend had the banana pancakes with coconut syrup. They tasted like being at the beach...you know the way cocoa butter smells yummy...like that plus bananas. I went with the blueberry because I always go with the blueberry. I also had bacon. I love bacon...I mean I really LOVE bacon.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...still thinking about bacon.

at least I know he would be able to feed himself if I died

Boyfriend and I went to Costco last night to pick up a few things and he could not leave the store with out the jumbo 28 count box of Corn Dogs. I guess I can't give him too much flack because just minutes later I found a 6lb bag of Gummy Bears I could not live with out. It is a very good thing that we are in the gym twice a day...