The Magic of the Mac

Mac and cheese.  We all loved it as kids and let's face it, we still love it as adults.  When you're home late from work and all other food is just to complicated to prepare, mac and cheese is there for you in a pinch.  Bad day?  Mac and cheese will make you smile!  Good day?  Mac and cheese to celebrate!  Honestly, folks, mac and cheese might just be the answer to all the world's problems.


I came across an awesome recipe for mac and cheese from scratch on the wonder that is Pinterest, and I will share it with you today so that you can all make you some delicious tonight for dinner.

The first rule of this mac and cheese recipe is use shells.  Taste wise, obviously, pasta is pasta, but in terms of cooking the noodles and maintaing creamy, cheesey goodness, you need shells to make the magic happen.  Dump 2 cups maccaroni shells into a large saucepan.  Add 2 1/2 cups milk (I recommend something with a little fat in it as opposed to skim, as it keeps things creamy) and set it on the stove to simmer. Do not boil this.  Boiling milk=bad.  Don't say I didn't warn you.  Cook the pasta at a low simmer, stirring occassionally, about 20-25 minutes until pasta is soft, then just turn off your heat.  Don't drain!  Add about 1 cup of shredded cheese (I use a nice sharp cheddar, but you can use any cheese or combination of cheeses your little heart desires), 1 tsp salt, 1/4 teaspoon Dijon mustard (and if you happen to not have real live Dijon on hand, here is a recipe within a recipe for an acceptable substitute: 1 Tbsp powdered mustard, 1 tsp water, 1 tsp white wine vinegar, 1 Tbsp mayo, pinch sugar, mixed well), a dash of nutmeg and a dash or two of chili powder.  You also have the option of throwing in some other tasty things--bacon, ham, broccoli, spinach, chicken, bacon (did I say bacon already?)--to add some pizzazz and colour.  Stir  it all together and voila!  Mac and cheese!  The awesome thing is that you can nom this puppy right now OR you can toss it into a casserole dish, top it with some more cheese and breadcrumbs and bake for 10 minutes at 375 and then nom it.  Either way, it's some delicious tasting stuff.

My Adventures in Carrot Caking, or, Mr Wiggles Gives It Two Paws Up

Recently I decided to clean out the fridge and freezer.  This decision was mostly motivated by the need to stow four loaves of zucchini bread, but also because both my original roommates moved out and I thought it might be nice for new roommate to have some room for her groceries (I'm generous like that).  After tossing a styrofoam tray of burger patties from last year's Labour Day soiree, several bags of Frankenproduce, and much moldy god-only-knows-what in Tupperware and scrubbing mysterious sticky substances from shelves and drawers, things were looking much better.  And I realised that boy roommate had left behind four bags of baby carrots.  Four.  Bags.  Of baby carrots.  Granted, two of the bags were only about half full, but still.  Four bags of baby carrots.

See?  Four bags of baby carrots.


The funniest thing is that I don't ever remember this kid eating a single carrot in the 13 months that he lived in my house.  And yet there were four bags of them in my fridge.  Oh, and if you're wondering about the dark, skunky looking things in the bag on the bottom left, those aren't some swanky special heirloom coloured carrots (carrots do in fact come in purple, yellow and white, but because someone decided carrots looked better in orange, selective breeding makes those pretty rare).

Those would be the fully rotten carrots that made most of the bag slimy and gross.  So not only were there four bags of baby carrots in my fridge, one of them was disgusting and ROTTEN.

So what does one do when left with four bags of baby carrots, one of which contains gross rotten carrots?  Well, first, one disposes of the bag with the offending veg.  Then one makes carrot cake, following these simple instructions:

1. Let 4 eggs sit at room temperature for 30 minutes, then beat them.
2. Grease two 9" round cake pans, line the bottoms with wax paper, then grease the wax paper.  Unless you are like me and do not own round cake pans.  Or wax paper.  In which case, just Pam the hell out of square cake pans and have a spatula handy.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
4. Mix together 2 cups flour, 2 cups sugar, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda.
5. In a separate bowl, mix your room temperature beaten eggs, 3 cups finely shredded carrots and 3/4 cup canola oil.  Side note: I highly recommend using big carrots, because shredding three cups worth of baby carrots sucks.  Just ask my fingernails.  You know who appreciated me using baby carrots?  My pets.  The dog got to chase down carrots that jumped out of my hands as they bounced around the kitchen floor and the rabbit got all the nubs.  I'm glad my grated thumbnails were worth their snacky happiness.
6. Add egg mixture to the flour mixture and combine well.  Pour into pans.
7. Bake 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  Cool ten minutes in pans, then remove from pans and allow to cool completely before icing.  This is supposed to be done on wire racks.  Again, something I'm missing.  This is where the toaster oven rack and a stove burner came in handy.

Now the icing.  Here's my secret to making this icing, and a number of other things when the directions say to use an electric mixer: I DON'T!  Mwuahahaha TAKE THAT BETTY CROCKER!  I do everything by hand because I care and it tastes better with love.  Mostly it's because I don't own a mixer, nor do I want to spend the money on one (and no, Mother, this is not a hint to get me one for Christmas.  I'm legitimately happy to do it all by hand.  And check out these guns I get from stirring the bejesus out of icing!  LOOK AT THEM!).  But also because I'm secretly an 18th century housewife and they didn't have electric mixers back then.  So there.

1. Let an 8 ounce package of cream cheese and 1/2 cup (one stick) butter soften.  Throw these in a bowl with 2 teaspoons vanilla and mix until smooth and creamy.
2. Add 5 1/2-6 cups powdered sugar a little at a time, mixing well until the icing reaches spreadable consistency.  Make sure to use it at room temperature, because then it's easy enough to spread with a butter knife.  Which you have to do when you don't have an icing spatula.  Let's just say that without an icing spatula and with square cakes, icing is a creative adventure.

When icing a carrot cake, you need to include walnuts.  I like to do a thin layer of icing on the bottom cake, throw in a few handfuls of coarsely chopped walnuts, then ice the bottom of the top cake and sandwich it together.  Then ice the whole outside and top with more chopped nuts.  Et voila!  It may not look delicious but it tastes DAMN good.

Oh, also, I'm just gonna go ahead and close this post by telling y'all that I have made my own powdered sugar.  I'm that much of a badass.  Now I'm gonna go shopping for all the things I don't have in my kitchen--except an electric mixer.

Yankee Baker's School of Witchcraft and Homeopathy

We remember this guy, yes?

The Weber Grill of Death, and how it tried to sear my flesh with a flare up that was likely seen from outer space?

Remember how it scorched my knuckles?  Today's post is about the remedy I used to treat said burn, and pretty much any burn I suffer in the pursuit of delicious.  And it doesn't involve turning to the medicine cabinet--unless you happen to be an 18th century housewife.  Which I happen to be.  In spirit, at least.

I have always had an interest in medical things, my mother being a nurse, and thought semi-seriously about going to medical school (I wanted to become a sports physician so I could become the trainer to the New Jersey Devils and play with boys' groins!  Er, or something helpful and upholding of the Hippocratic Oath...).  Eventually I decided the time and money to be spent on medical school was rather less than appealing, so I chose instead to pursue history.  Along the way I discovered the medicinal aspects of the past and how dang awesome it is to play with plants--especially when it turns out the quacks of ye olde dayes were sometimes spot on!

NERD ALERT

By the 18th century (the period I consider my area of expertise, seeing as how that's where I've spent the last nine years of my life), there are a few approaches to medicine and treating what ailed you.  Most important to note is the approach that didn't yet exist, and that is germ theory.  While an early version of the microscope was around in 1590, it wasn't yet allowing scientists identify germs, much less make the connection between microorganisms and disease.  The folks of the past being a very practical people, they figured a serious disease must be transmitted by something equally large, a la the theory that an elephant on a rampage will cause you serious injury, while an itty bitty mosquito surely couldn't do you any harm.  This is why we call malaria malaria, literally from the Latin, "bad air."  Mosquitoes live in swampy regions (like my neck of the woods where the English first set up permanent quarters in 1607), and swamps give off bad vapours.  The high concentration of this bad air, they conjectured, must be what causes malaria.  Of course now we know it is in fact the protists genus Plasmodium, transmitted by mosquitoes, that does the damage, but we can see already that our colonial brethren weren't too far off the mark in their assessment: they were on to something when the made the connection between marshy areas and malaria, they just didn't have the correct vector.

When it came to treating ailments, 18th century physicians were looking more at individual symptoms rather than diseases as a whole, and had a couple methods to help them with their prescriptions.  First is the notion of temperaments: symptoms were classified as being either dry or wet and hot or cold, and the appropriate treatment would be the opposite so as to counteract the effects of the symptom.  For example, a fever is clearly a hot, dry symptom, so it needs a cool, moist treatment.  These are qualities ascribed to white willow bark, so clearly this is an effective treatment.  And it worked.  For realsies, homeopaths today still prescribe willow bark tea to treat fevers.  Except they do it today knowing that willow bark contains salicylic acid, the main ingredient in aspirin. 

My personal favourite 18th century guide to curing your ills is the doctrine of signatures.  Essentially this boils down to if it looks like what hurts, it'll fix what hurts.  My favourite example of the doctrine of signatures is clove oil.  How many of you have gone to the dentist and had clove oil applied for toothaches (my hand is up--two dry sockets after wisdom tooth extraction)?  There's something in the essential oils of cloves that makes it a marvelous anodyne, and going WAY back to the BC times, folks were chewing on cloves and using clove oil to treat toothaches.  Why?  Because a clove has a crown and a root.  Just like a tooth. 

Of course a lot of remedies were discovered via trial and error or by observing other cultures during the contact periods of the early colonial days.  When the Spanish Jesuits entered Peru in the 17th century, many of them were struck down with the quaternary fever (aka malaria.  I just like throwing out fancy words to you).  The Andean natives had a treatment for it, a tincture made from the bark of the cinchona tree.  And it worked.  The Jesuits brought the bark back to Europe with them to treat cases of malaria, earning the plant the secondary--and easier to pronounce--name of Jesuit bark.  In 1820, the active ingredient of Jesuit bark was isolated and identified: quinine.  To this day, pure quinine remains the sole effective treatment for malaria.  Scientists have attempted to create synthetic versions, but nothing so far has proven as effective.  So drink your gin and tonics, folks, and add a twist of lime to prevent scurvy while you're at it.

Okay, most of this as just been me showing off and revelling in my own nerdiness.  Now we get down to the good stuff: A Receipt for Calendula Paste for the Treatment of Burns, Receipt Being an Archaic Word for "Recipe."

Calendula, or pot marigold, is in fact a member of the marigold family and looks rather like the little fellas you plant in your garden.  The big difference though, is that calendula is the ONLY marigold with medicinal properties, the most significant in the life of this Yankee Baker who occasionally thinks grabbing the handle of a cast iron pot with her bare hands because she can't find the pot hook, is that it treats minor burns (also small cuts and scrapes--should have tested this on my sister as she was going through her awkward phase and came home almost daily with skinned knees from tripping over her own feet).  I have a box full of a variety of dried herbs, some of which may be featured here at later dates, all useful in the treatment of common ailments, including fever, insomnia, cough, sinus congestion, sore throat, headache, and the theme of the day, burns.  What you want to do, if you find yourself with a small burn in the kitchen, or backyard because your grill wants to roast you, is first run the burn under cold water.  No use making a calendula paste if you're still cooking.  Cool the burn sufficiently, then put a few pinches of your dried calendula into a mortar.  Add roughly an equal number of pinches of white sugar and a few drops of water, just enough that you can grind the flower petals and sugar together into a paste.  Shmear the paste over your burns and let it work its magic.  Sometimes I'll slap a Band-Aid over the paste to keep it in place.  The calendula paste will relieve the pain of the burn and also minimise or prevent blistering.  Remember, this is only for MINOR burns.  If you are badly burned, please for the love of sweet baby gee seek professional medical care.

And there you go.  An old timey cure for burns.  Aren't you glad you read this blog?

In Which I Add Snazz to My Blog

Okay, I've mentioned it in a number of posts and now I've FINALLY done it.  PICTURES!!  When power is out at work, the only way to distract yourself from realising it's about as hot inside your office as it is outside, and there is literally no escape is to sit down at your old desk because it is downstairs and therefore 3 degrees cooler than your desk upstairs (and also because it is cleaner) with a box of Crayolas and a stack of printer paper and have at it.  So here we go:

This is a shoe.  My shoe, to be exact.  Size 8 1/2, fairly average as far as women's shoes go.

This is a zucchini.  One of the zucchini from my garden before the little rat bastard squash bugs moved in and decimated by precious plants.

Don't let the picture fool you.  Looks like your typical zucchini, right?  Wrong!  Here is a side by side comparison of my shoe and several of my zucchini.  And a yellow squash.

See?  Freaks of nature.  Incidentally, and to prove I'm not making things up, I took a real picture of this set up and sent it to my parents.  So if you don't believe me, ask them.  The zucchini bread was made from two of the middle sized zucchini (the super monsters).  I still have two of the smaller (all relative) zukes and the yellow squash to eat, but to be frank, I'm zucchinied out!


This is a pig.

He speaks for himself.  He makes ham and bacon and pork chops and all kinds of delicious.  And when you use his drippin's in a pie crust, you get

BACON BERRY PIE!  Obviously, seen here before its untimely demise.  Mmmmm pie.


This is the reason I hate charcoal grills.

KABOOM.  Goodbye knuckles and some of my hair.  (This reminds me of what I want to write about in my next post.  It will be full of flowers and history and massive amounts of nerdage!)  Still, it was free, it's the only grill I have, and the steak I eventually grilled on it was spectacular.  Might even have the leftovers for dinner tonight.  In fact, I WILL have the leftovers for dinner tonight.  TRY AND STOP ME!

Ahem.

We'll close this pictorial romp with a visual for my nummy roast potato recipe.

Voila!  Future posts shall contain equally colourful and delightful illustrations.  Mostly because I just like using crayons.  Enjoy the visual stimulation, my friends.  Stay hungry!