Category: Food

Apple Fritters

brookeshelf3 Comments

applesWhen Brian and I moved into Retro Acres, we discovered an apple tree in the backyard and an electric cast-iron skillet in the kitchen.

Although I wasn’t very thrilled by either prospect — our house in Pittsburgh had a crabapple tree that caused us no end of rotten-fruit annoyance, and the skillet seemed like just one more appliance to clutter the kitchen — my mother convinced me otherwise.

Come October, she said, the hard green bumps in the tree would morph into sweet deep-red lumps of awesome, and the skillet is an excellent device for deep frying foods — no splatters, constant temperature.

What better circumstances for cooking apple fritters?  They’re golden brown nuggets of sugary goodness, they are.  I’ve had a couple of friends request that I post good recipes on this blog, so here’s my first. 

My recipe is adapted from Martha W. Murphy’s excellent The Bed & Breakfast Cookbook, which I highly recommend picking up.

Apple Fritters

  • 2 cups flour
  • 2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 6 Tbs. sugar
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 cups peeled, cored apples, chopped fine (about two big apples)
  • cinnamon and sugar, for rolling

In a big bowl, mix together flour, powder, salt, and sugar.  Measure the milk in a big liquid measuring cup or small bowl, add the eggs, and whisk together.  Gradually pour liquid ingredients into dry, mixing well to prevent lumps.  Use a rubber spatula to stir in the apples.

In a skillet, heat up 1″ of oil to approximately 340 degrees F.  Drop a little bit of batter in the oil while it preheats — when it begins to bubble, puff up, and brown, then the oil is ready for cooking.

Have a paper-towel-lined plate and a shallow bowl of cinnamon sugar ready.  Drop heaping tablespoons of batter into the oil and cook for 2-3 minutes per side.  When cooked, they should be about 4-5″ across, and a deep golden-brown.  You may have to experiment to get them right; I find that making them on the small side prevents a doughy center.  If made correctly, the outside should be brown and crisp, and the inside soft, fluffy, and studded with apples.

Drain the fritters on the paper towels for a moment, then roll in the cinnamon sugar.  This makes roughly 1 1/2 dozen hot ‘n’ tasty fritters.  Mmmm.

Eleanor says that I am “the best mom ever ever ever” (pounding fist on the table for each “ever”) “who makes fritters.”  Brian calls apple fritters “the breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack of champions.”  William screamed when we thought he was finished and tried to take his plate away.  Jeffrey didn’t say anything, but has learned to snatch up fritters with cat-like reflexes.  I think my diet’s ruined, but that’s nothing new (I am down 12 pounds, if I do say so myself.

The Pictures Are Back!

brookeshelf5 Comments

Yes!  The house is FINALLY under controll enough that I can once again blog without guilt!

Which means that I can add purty pictures to the blog!  Check it out:

Alpine Loop, 5 October 2008. PURTY!
Alpine Loop, 5 October 2008. PURTY!

Yesterday Brian and I spent the second half of General Conference driving the family down to the grandparents’ house in Provo.  We decided to take the scenic route, going out to Park City, then down through Midway and ending with the spectacular Alpine Loop, a winding road that takes you through the aspen-and-evergreen forests of Mt. Timpanogos.  We saw many, many scenic vistas, and many, many people taking photos of them.  Playing Spot-the-Tripod became something of a sport.  Alas, most of MY photos didn’t turn out so well, and the one above doesn’t quite capture the Beethoven’s-Ninth-Symphony-Esque-Grandiosity of it all.  Let’s just say that a few days ago I was moping about, missing autumn on the East Coast, but now I don’t feel that way at all.  Hurrah for snowcapped mountain peaks!

Here’s another spectacular photo, although you may not appreciate it as much as I do:

This is Eleanor’s first-ever attempt at writing her name!  Well, her first two attempts, really.  She’s very interested in reading and writing, which is a big change of pace compared to Jeffrey.  Jeffrey, at age six, still needs to be prodded with a hot iron just to pick up a pencil, while Ella’s diving into the whole alphabet thing full on. 

Eleanor and I were so excited about her name-writing that we had to celebrate with some Pumpkin Brains:

“Pumpkin Brains” is just the name we give on of my family’s favorite Halloween treats.  You mix dry-roasted peanuts and candy corn together, and eat them together in the same bite.  The resulting combination tastes a LOT like a Baby Ruth bar and is mega-addictive.  Before I discovered Pumpkin Brains, I simply could not understand the appeal of candy corn (on its own, it is rather oo-ugh) but nowadays I usually insist on hunting down the Brach’s brand candy corn.  (Oh, so far superior to every other brand.  I can only find it at Target.)  Getting the correct 2:1 peanut-to-candy ratio is, needless to say, essential.

Loving & Leaving Pittsburgh: Bruster’s Ice Cream

brookeshelf2 Comments

On summer evenings (or, as is often the case, spring evenings) we like to walk the couple of blocks it takes to get to our neighborhood ice cream parlor, Bruster’s. Bruster’s is a local chain, and we like it better than the other (many, many) ice cream places in town, for these reasons:

1. Kids under four feet get free baby cones. If you ask, they will even make a “Purple Dinosaur” cone for the little ones. Note the googly candy eyes.

2. Banana Thursdays — on these days, if you bring a banana from home, you can get a banana split for half price. Brian and I like to share these. The splits are different from other places — they use strawberry, pineapple, and fudge toppings. The strawberry topping tastes sparkly, almost as if it’s carbonated. Maybe from having three hundred grams of sugar per ounce, perhaps?

Oh, and the kids can entertain themselves with the banana on the walk there. Here is the classic “banana phone.”

3. The “dirt sundaes” for kids cost less than a one-scoop cone. Jeffrey was good enough to share his dirt with William. Happy baby!

4. The kids’ favorite thing is this little Bruster’s truck. We have yet to actually put money in it to make it go. The kids don’t need money to go for a ride — the imagination makes for the most delicious trip of all.

Loving & Leaving Pittsburgh: the Udipi Café

brookeshelfLeave a comment

One of our favorite places to eat in the area is the Udipi Café.  This is a restaurant out in Monroeville that serves South Indian food.  This is very different from the usual fare found in Indian restaurants.  It’s all vegetarian, but what the cuisine is famous for is its unusual architectural features.  The dosai are these thin rice crepes that are rolled into all sorts of crazy shapes, like a spiraling cone:

Jeffrey calls this “pyramid bread,” and loves dipping it in the coconut sauce.  I prefer the cylindrical dosai that come stuffed with sauteéd potatoes, peas, onions, and lentils.  Sooooo buttery good.  The other dish we like to order are the uthapamm, which are these thick lentil pancakes cooked with tomatoes and peas.  Mmmm.

We enjoy getting the appetizer platter too, which always includes these fluffy little steamed cakes made from rice flour.  The name of them currently escapes me, but babies LOVE THEM.  William just about hopped out of his high chair, waving his little fists for more.

For dessert, we always order a batura, which is this giant puffy fried bread.  It’s essentially a ginormous scone.  Here it is next to Wim-Wim’s head, to give a sense of scale:

Sometimes I sneak a small jar of honey in my purse to eat with the bread.  It’s soooo good.

The best part of this place is how kid-friendly it is.  The wait staff is incredibly patient and kind with my little ones, and like to play peek-a-boo with the babies.  Almost all of the food is eaten with your hands, so I never have to nag my kids about using their silverware properly.  There’s a tall fluffy stack of paper napkins on each table.  And the restarurant is happy to split a mango smoothie between two lidded cups (a service that isn’t as easily found as you’d expect).

I’m going to miss South Indian food in Utah, but I’m sure we’ll find other cuisines that will work their ways into our hearts just as well.  Already, I’m looking forward to a certain Salvadorean place on the west side of town, whose pupusas may juuuust make up for the loss of the batura.  Just.

Mr. Plow

brookeshelfLeave a comment

Today I took William and Eleanor out for lunch with friends at Boston Market. William is finally able to feed himself finger food, so I was happy to supply him with a nice pile of corn, bits of bread, and macaroni and cheese. I was having a nice time, chatting with friends and consuming my own food, so I wasn’t watching each and every move William made. His food would disappear, and he kept making a grab for mine, so I’d keep giving him more.

It wasn’t until I took him out of the highchair that I learned the ugly truth: a circle of food particles radiating around him, both on the high chair and continuing on the floor for three feet in every direction. Did any of the food ever get in his mouth?

It’s like he was a snowplow — how they appear to suck up the snow, when they are really blowing it behind them. William was a little foodplow: I gave him food, and instead of being consumed, it was merely tossed into the air as soon as it touched his hand.

Well, that’s misleading. He didn’t throw the food. I would have noticed that. It was just like he had become a little cloud at the center of a foodstorm, raining debris all over the clean floors of the Boston Market.

Sigh.

On the topic of babies throwing stuff:

*

Overboard! by Sarah Weeks — a bouncy, rhythmic paean to the baby’s favorite pastime: chuckin’ stuff. This book’s text is mega-addictive (“Slippy, sloppy, can of peaches / Yummy peaches, nice and fat / Peaches going OVERBOARD! / Good-bye, peaches! Splat! Splat! Splat!”). Sam William’s watercolors are Popsicle-bright and adorable. A read that comes very close to the chaotic deliciousness of any baby.

*OKAY.  For some reason, WordPress is being particularly stupid right now, and won’t upload my picture into this space.  So just go follow the link, okay?  I’ll try to add the image later  . . . (grr).

President’s Day, Part II: The Hershey Factory

brookeshelf2 Comments

hershey-kiss.jpgOn the way home from Valley Forge, we decided to stop in Hershey and do the free tour of the chocolate factory.

Well . . . you don’t tour the actual factory. You go on a ride that shows you simulated factory scenes. And singing animatronic cows.

To tell the truth, I went on this same tour back in the mid-90s, and it was vastly different then. More like a chocolate-based “It’s a Small World” ride. I prefer the cows.

But the fun thing this time was watching Jeff & Ella’s reaction to the ride. They didn’t quite understand what was going on, until our little cable car turned a corner and revealed rows of conveyor belts towing wrapped candy bars along. Then. . .

. . . well, it was like they had had some immense epiphany. They smiled and cheered rapturously, and burst into spontaneous applause. “So that’s what this is all about! To make CANDY!”

At the end of the ride, we told Jeffrey he could pick out one piece of candy from the gift shop for the ride home. He said he’d rather just go on the ride again. So we went again . . . and then again. After which, I was ready to kill the cows. But there was applause every time.

Gung Hoy Fat Choy! Or Something Like That!

brookeshelfLeave a comment

chopsticks.jpgThey’ve been learning about Chinese New Year in preschool this week.  How did I know?  Did the kids wear red?  Did they make a paper-mache dragon?  Did they get little envelopes of goodies?

No.

I wouldn’t even have known that they were doing a C.N.Y. unit at school if it weren’t for Jeffrey’s ongoing efforts to push the boundaries of our dinnertime rules as far as they can go.

It’s difficult to teach table manners to any kid, but Jeffrey can be more of a trial than most.  He gets up between bites, always wants to dump food in his glass, and frequently gets absent-minded and begins eating with his fingers — until the Great Scolding begins.  (I long wistfully for the day when dinnertime looks like dinner, not a training montage from No Time for Sergeants.)

Anyway, this past Friday was a little more hectic than usual.  Jeffrey kept forgetting to eat dinner with his fork, and I finally threatened to take his food away if he forgot again, when he suddenly stood up and held his arms up in the air.

“I know!”  he shouted.  “I can eat the way they do in Chinese!”  He then scampered off to the kitchen and began rummaging around in the silverware drawer.

The “Chinese way”?  After a few moments, we got it.

“Jeffrey,” I called out wearily.  “We don’t have any chopsticks.”  He didn’t hear me, but reemerged with a new fork and knife in each hand.  Climbing back into his seat, he then proceeded to use his fork and knife as if they were chopsticks — not that he held them both in one hand to pinch up food, but the way your average American five-year-old might eat with chopsticks: one in each fist, holding them at the tops of the handles, picking up food like the metal crane in a carnival prize-machine.

Ah, multicultural education: is there anything it can’t influence?

Anyhow, this is my new favorite “Chinese New Year” book (although it doesn’t have much to do with the holiday):

dragon-dancing.jpg

Dragon Dancing by Carole Lex Schaefer, illus. by Pierr Morgan.   A class of preschool kids learn about dragons in class, and then decide to make a dragon in art class for classmate Mei Lin’s birthday.  Morgan’s Asian-inspired illustrations sparkle with clean lines, gorgeous colors, and pretty details, but what really shines here is Schaefer’s alliterative text, which includes very true-to-life kidspeak: Dragons have “boink-boink eyes” and a “ricky-rack back.”  My favorite new picture book, perfect both for laptime and group storytime.  A Charlotte Zolotow Honor Book (the prize for picture book writing).

Good Eats

brookeshelfLeave a comment

baby-bowl.jpgWilliam crossed the Food Frontier this week. And by that, I mean that we spooned some rice cereal thinned with water into his mouth.

Poor kid. For weeks he’s been watching us with intense interest whenever we eat, always trying to swipe the cookies, apples, water, or what have you out of our hands. (The funny thing is that he would always move his hand slooooowly up to the treat, cartoon-character-style, as if that would prevent us from noticing.)

Finally, we set him in the high chair, rope a bib around his little chicken neck, and bring out the bowl. He kicks his little chubby legs, and makes a grab for the spoon, grunting like a pale pink monkey the entire time. I have to hold his hands down just so I can give him some delicious — wallpaper paste!

Seriously, have you ever tasted the rice cereal? Completely flavorless. Who can blame William for the look of disenchantment? Who can blame him for letting the stuff just spill out of his mouth?

I wonder if rice cereal’s similarity to glue is the reason why so many second graders end up eating paste in art class. (“Mmmm! This Elmer’s is just like the kind Mama used to make!”)

.
For his entire life, William has feasted on Triple-Cream Mama Milkshakes, served up hot and fresh on demand, but his introduction to the real culinary world seems like something an orphan would eat in a Dickens novel. Is this symbolic of Something?

“Welcome to the real world, kid! Here, have some gruel!”

Nah.

Warning: Reading This Post Could Raise Your Cholesterol

brookeshelfLeave a comment

pancakes.jpgLast night, I asked Jeffrey what his favorite food is.

“Anything I make,” he replied. This was an unexpected answer — usually Jeffrey’s homemade concoctions consist of a vague mash of raisins and Goldfish crackers created in the biggest bowl he manages to haul out of the kitchen. But then I remember that Jeffrey gets to do a lot of cooking at preschool.

“What food do you like to make?” I ask.

“Pancake spaghetti,” he promptly responds. Huh?

“You make a pancake, then tear it up into spaghetti,” he explains. “Then you put sausage meatballs on it.” Hmm. That sounds like it could actually work.

“Do you put spaghetti sauce on it?” I tease him. He makes a face.

“No, that would be yucky,” he says, giggling.

“So what else could we put on the pancake spaghetti that would taste good?”

“Um . . . how about . . . cream cheese?” he says.

Whoa. I was expecting “maple syrup,” but cream cheese sounds AWESOME. But wait — there’s more:

“And then we could FRY it!” he squeals. “And put maple syrup on TOP!”

Good. Gravy. My son is a culinary genius. Yeah, it sounds pretty much like a funnel cake with a cheesecake filling, but would that be such a bad thing? And who would expect it from a five-year-old? If I weren’t trying to lose the baby weight, I’d seriously think about giving the Pancake Spaghetti a whirl.

However, I really think that all this was caused by the influence of my sister-in-law, Kristen, who has stated on numerous occasions that her favorite color is “fried.”

Ah, role models. What would my kids be cooking without them?