Hormel sent us some recipes and tips to use on National Men Make Dinner Day - a day made possible by men who never cook.  I told Deb I would print it, but first I had to make a disclaimer.  We don’t think this should be a day.  Why on earth would we limit our husbands or significant others to one day a year, now really?  It’s not the dark ages.

If they get home first from work, let them have at it.  Deb’s husband is a gourmet grill master and great cook.  My husband cooks dinner when he gets home first.  Just so you know, we are teaching our next generation men to be comfortable in the kitchen too.  Some nights my son prepares dinner and has it ready when we get home from work.  Deb’s son takes cooking lessons.  Empower your husband, give them full kitchen have at it rights and let them just throw things together.  They’ll learn that breakfast links don’t work the same as sweet italian sausage with spaghetti.  So, let’s abolish National Men Make Dinner Day altogether and make it National Husband Cleans Up Cat Puke Night or something else I could use more.

(Deb’s note: I like the idea of National Fix the Bathroom You Gutted Six Years Ago Day or Take the Fence Panels You Bought in April Out of the Garage and Do Something with Them Day.)

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Every year on the weekend before Halloween, my husband and son find a couple of pumpkins to carve and put out on our front porch for Halloween. This isn’t for any visiting Trick or Treaters, because we don’t get any of them here. We live off the beaten path. Heck we don’t even Trick or Treat here. But The Boy and The Husband love to carve them some pumpkins, and it keeps them amused for an hour or two. So who am I to discourage? I only wish it took longer.

We like to visit local farms for pumpkin picking. I believe in supporting local farmers as much as I can, plus the pumpkins are much nicer and bigger than most supermarket pumpkins. I think finding the perfect pumpkins is part of the fun.

My husband and son usually carve two different pumpkins. They either make their own patterns or find jack o’lantern patterns online. This year they did one of each. As you can see by the results, they both came out awesome!

Since no one actually sees our pumpkins, we light them  and keep them on the table while we’re eating or playing games. We do put them out on Halloween however, on the off chance someone driving by might slow down and take a look.

I love family traditions, don’t you?

Images (c) Deborah Ng

Ah yes, Southern Comfort. Who doesn’t remember parties out in the woods or the smoke-filled basement of a friends house, passing the bottle around and waking up feeling awful the next morning? I do. All too well. But that was last week and this is now.

Fortunately I’m not one of those girls who had regrets after one of those bottle passing incidents, if you know what I mean. Because even through my Southern Comfort induced haze, my mother’s voice lectured me about having sex with random guys or making a fool out of myself. Besides, I didn’t need booze to act foolish.

OK, so I’m a little older now and I drink responsibily (and you should too!) but the name Southern Comfort will always be synonymous with the partays of my late teens and early twenties.  Now, I’m not promoting teen drinking, actually I discourage it, but I’d be a liar to say it didn’t happen. Anyway, this isn’t about me sneaking around in the woods when I was 19 anyway. It’s about grownup drinking with Southern Comfort, in particular sharing these holiday recipes.

Holiday SoCo® Limetini
2 1/2 oz. Southern Comfort
Splash of sweetened lime juice
Red sugar
Combine ingredients with ice in a shaker. Shake well. Strain into a chilled martini glass rimmed with red sugar. Garnish with a lime twist. (more…)

 

I’m a simple girl. I don’t spend much money on myself and it doesn’t take much to make me happy. My favorite times are spent hiking on the weekends with my family or having a movie or reading night at home. So when I received a case of Dunkin Donuts packaged coffee in the mail it was a real treat. You see, Dunkin Donuts is my favorite coffee ever. It’s like Christmas came early.

So just after receiving my case of packaged coffee (Two giant thumbs up for the Cinnamon Spice, by the way) I saw a commercial about how more people prefer the taste of Dunkin Donuts coffee to that of Starbucks. It took me less than 30 seconds to agree. Now, don’t get me wrong because I do love me some white chocolate mocha, and I actually spend more time at Starbucks because it’s closer, but if I had to choose, it would be Dunkin Donuts all the way.

I remember when I lived in my first apartment in Middle Village, Queens, NYC (this was in the mid to late 80’s). There was a Dunkin Donuts a little more than half mile away on Woodhaven Boulevard. Every Sunday I would pick up a newspaper a couple of large Dunkin Donuts coffee, and a warm, freshly baked bagel or roll from the bakery across the street from my apartment. Now that’s comfort food. (more…)

We at Cookerati would like to extend our condolences to the Newman family.  He was an American Icon, hero and role model, but we’re sure that no one knew him better and feels the loss more than his family at this time.  Newman’s own is one of the product lines we have and do endorse and we hope the family will continue with it’s quality products and it’s philanthropy.

Last fall, my husband and I planted in the fall for the first time.  We planted garlic, spinach, lettuces, and carrots.  We decided to start small and see how it goes.  If it was successful we would do it again, and if not then we were still okay.  We have raised beds that we built and filled with dirt and leaves composted over the winter.  The raised beds help because the soil doesn’t stay soggy very long.  However, in the summer you will need to water more so there are trade offs.  We recently seeded one of the beds with greens, spinach, kale and lettuce and other things.  They’re sprouting and starting to grow which is always exciting. 

I forgot about the garlic until I received an ad for Burpee in my email as a reminder.  Last year I went to a small local garden store and bought it there.  Because the garlic was left over from spring planting time some of the bulbs were dry, so the owner gave me two heads for the price of one.  I planted them, and a little more than half came up.  I threw some away because they were too dry, but I think it was a win win situation.  Now is the time to go to the garden supply store and see what you can bargain for with those summer seed packs and other seeds.  The garden place we go to started out as a small shed with some big growing tunnels and has slowly grown in size over the years.  It’s a family owned and operated place, therfore they have more say over what they sell and for how much. 

My spinach languished over the winter, but really early spring it came up in huge amounts.  I cooked from the end of February on with that spinach until about July.  We’ve planted a second planting of peas and they have started coming up already so we’ll have more peas to freeze for the winter.  We can never have enough of them.  People who live in the south can probably only plant some of their vegetables like peas and carrots in the fall because it is too hot to grow them in the summer.  The Cole crops like it to be cool also.  One little tidbit to remember is that things take longer to grow in the fall because daylight hours are shrinking.  Less sun means slower growing time.  Give your veggies some extra time to grow. 

Here’s an article on Fall Gardening from Seeds of Change, one of my favorite gardening resources.

Kashi is giving away a free oatmeal and chocolate chip cookie on their website.  My daughter is already complaining of the dorm food.  I told her the problem is more lack of control over what you get to eat and how it is prepared rather than the actual food.  There are plenty of options, but none of them were from her cabinet or her kitchen. 

So anyway, Kashi is giving away a free cookie.  As a surprise, I had my sample sent to her dorm address, hoping to undo the dorm food blues.  She got the cookie and called me right after she picked it up.  She was going to wait to have it - at least that’s what she told me, but she didn’t wait too long because less than 3 hours later and she had already eaten it.  She said she loved it, it was really good. I forgot about the cookie until she called and asked her what kind it was.  It is a chocolate chip and oatmeal cookie, two of her favorite cookies rolled up into one. 

I love Kashi foods.  I eat the single portion meals for lunch because they’re so nutritious.  I received a box of Blackberry Graham cereal bars that were wonderful… they’re gone already too.  A wonderul Blackberry jam rolled up (kind of?) in a graham and honey flavored cereal bar.  Delicious.  I had to fight my husband off of them, he loved them too.  Kashi comes up with such great 7 grained foods.

So send some Kashi to your kid and see if you get a phone call.  I got mine and that’s worth a cookie don’t you think?

My friend Larry is now going into his second week without electricity.  Another friend Jodi just got hers back on after a week off.  Jodi had a generator and plugged in her fridge, but couldn’t keep it running 24 hours a day and still lost most of the contents.  Larry on the other hand doesn’t even have that.  He does plug into the neighbors outlet (with permission) and uses it for one small lamp and a small TV in the evening.  He said that it saves his sanity to have that one little bit.  However, his refrigerator is off, he doesn’t have a stove or oven he can use.  He has running water - Jodi did not. I have a propane stove and a gas grill I could use, but Larry doesn’t have those things.  Even if he did, he said without a fridge it would be a waste of money to go out and buy ingredients for one meal at a time.  So he eats out most of his meals or buys and brings it home. 

What do you do in a case like this?  How do you handle it and is it difficult, does it get to you?  I know there are people who go without due to all different circumstances.  I know we would probably hit up my husband’s stash of end of the world tuna and we’ve got some camp food that you just have to add hot water to.   I guess canned foods and prepackaged would keep the best.  So my question to you is what are your best survivalist cooking methods?  I guess I would treat it like a big camping trip and handle it with coolers and small amounts of food.  You can buy one salad at a time in Kroger’s to get those veggies in.  I actually do have vegetables and greens in the garden right now, so I could do that too.  What would you do?

My sister in law is a lovely down to earth person.  She thinks there are other ways to cure a problem than just chemicals.  If I we were talking and I complained about a headache, she’d mention that supposedly taping a banana to my forehead and the back of my neck should help. If I said my son has an upset stomach, she’d say that I could burn a stick wait for it to cool and then have him chew on the burned end.  I asked her if she did these things, and she say, no, not yet.  However, there were other things she did try like poultices that worked.  A lot of remedies with funky sounding processes like the banana taping have their roots embedded in a practical solution. It could be you have a potassium deficiency that was solved by the banana.  The chewing on a burnt stick is like using charcoal to absorb poisons in the stomach. 

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Every New Years, we make resolutions to change something.  Every school year, I make the resolution to start bringing my lunch to work.  I guess my kids go back to school and I would like them to pack a lunch and so I resolve to do it to.  When the kids were younger I always packed their lunches.  I knew they wouldn’t eat the school food except for pizza and so I packed.  My son’s teacher came to the home when he was in pre-school (mandatory if the kids are in a head start program to have a home visit) and she told me how good and wholesome his lunch was.  A gold star lunch!  When they went to middle school they wanted to buy and I let them.  The lunches aren’t expensive so I let them buy.  As a result I bought also.  When they got to high school, there was more variety and substitutions and I had to institute money limits for the daily lunch.  I let them know that they could pack lunch at any time, but they weren’t into it.  They weren’t thrilled with the limits though, but they stuck to it.  Unfortunately,leadership by example wasn’t what I was doing.  I wasn’t walking the walk.  I didn’t pack my lunch and my money has slipped through my fingers for food time at work.  So I resolve to cut back on food buying at work and pack more lunches.

I am doing better.  Now that my daughter’s at college, I find we have a little bit of leftovers.  So I am bringing leftovers to eat.  I’m trying not to turn my fridge into a composter.  I’ll bring the fruit to work to eat so it doesn’t go to waste.  I am bringing the drink mixes in the pouches to work.  While they are fifty cents a piece if you buy them in the cafeteria or the sundry, they are much cheaper if you buy the box.  I keep a box in my desk drawer plus I’ve got a cup I reuse and fill with ice and water from the water fountain.  I pour in my mix and I have a drink to go with my lunch.  Bottles of soda just went up to 1.35, so this is a big cut in spending. 

My son came to me the other day and said that he’s going to start looking at the menu for the school and deciding to only eat on the days that he likes the food.  He said he’s getting the food because it’s paid for, and he eats it, but he’s not always thrilled or satisfied.  We discussed that he needs to come up with what he thinks he wants in his lunch and how he’ll have to make time to put together his lunch.  I know some of you are probably thinking I as the mom should do it all for my son, but I am a big believer in teaching my kids self reliance.  My son and I have made our resolutions, now we have to get a routine established to follow through.  Maybe if we work on it, my husband will join in too.

Now, I’ll like some help with my new routine.  What’s your lunch making routine?