use real butter

Recipe: peanut brittle

Here now, I don’t have a recipe for you in the typical step-by-step today. I have been cooking, just not documenting as lovingly as usual because it’s been hectic lately and a fraction of my daylight hours have been devoted to snow worship… Not to mention the ramp up of the ARP (ass reduction plan) leaves me pretty hungry and somewhat spent, so not a lot of patience for shooting intermediate steps. But my body is adjusting quickly and I’ll be back on it soon enough. My endorphins are flowing, my muscles are rock hard, and that waistline is shrinking. I shit you not, kids. Hyperactivity has its benefits.

After my run and bike the other day, I prepared a lunch of kale and fettuccine in homemade tomato and garlic sauce and it truly rocked my world. I don’t quite understand people who go on those ridiculous fad diets – eat carbs, don’t eat carbs, eat fat, don’t eat fat, eat meat, don’t eat meat. Moderation in all things, eh? And if you’d get ye lard butt of ye couch, perhaps it wouldn’t really matter if you had that Slice of Yum.

carbo loading?

Hmmm, what else… after I made the mac nut brittle, I gave it all away. I like to make sweets, sample them, and then get rid of them. Sort of a relative ass reduction plan (rARP) because you make all of the people around you fat so that you appear relatively slimmer. It’s a joke. A joke! I wanted to make peanut brittle – the buttery kind, not the glassy kind. HolyBasil mentioned that her mom used to make it. So on a lark I looked up a recipe last night and within the hour had a batch of this:

chunky brittle and stretchy brittle

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Recipe: turkey meatloaf

My first introduction to meatloaf was at the cafeteria in elementary school. It was brown, or rather gray and smothered in an equally nasty looking gravy. Honestly, it didn’t taste bad. It didn’t taste good either. We didn’t dig on meatloaf at my house. Not that we didn’t like it, we just didn’t know what the hell it was or how to make it. Ah, the joys of growing up Chinese in the American South. Meatloaf always maintained cafeteria status for me because that’s the only place I ever saw it. Eventually I learned what was in meatloaf when I got to college. Probably one of the best things I came away with from one ex-beau was the use of chili sauce and red currant jelly instead of ketchup for the sauce. Now, I like to use ground turkey instead of beef as a healthier take on meatloaf. I prefer turkey thigh meat if it’s available because it’s not as dry as breast meat.

pouring worcestershire sauce into the mix

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Recipe: macadamia orange brittle

The word brittle conjures up so many meanings. Brittle bones, brittle failure (okay, that’s a term in mechanics, but important for all sorts of materials studies), brittle personality. I’ll admit that when I hear the word brittle my mind immediately turns to brittle-ductile transition zones in the Earth’s crust. And yet my favorite meaning of brittle is the confection of a delicious nut meat suspended in the matrix of a caramelized sugary goodness, broken into delightfully dangerous shards that melt and crunch in your mouth. Swoon.

There are two camps of people when it comes to caramelized sugar. Those who love it and those who hate/fear it. I’ve been in both camps – twice. It was pretty easy to master at sea level although I did brick my fair share of pots of hot crystallized sugar when I got a little too cocky (read careless). What a bleeping mess. But in general it was a cinch to make. Then I moved up here, as in several thousand feet up. Caramelizing sugar became a little more finicky and I fell into the hate/fear camp. My pastry course at CSR helped with my “issues”. The introduction of acids like cream of tartar or lemon juice, and the addition of corn syrup helped to stabilize the mixture as it boiled to amber loveliness. Back into the love camp.

orange zest adds a subtle floral overtone

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