Hummus

I've been eating hummus lately.  My blood pressure leveled out and I know beans are supposed to be a natural healthy option (and losing weight), so I'm trying to up my fish and bean intake.  I bought a few store options and they're sort of boring, even those labeled as spicy.  I hear the "everything" option, akin to an everything bagel, makes some top 10 lists, so I still intend to try that.  As an experiment, I mixed some ghost curry power into a store bought dollop.  No good.  You can bury a LOT of ghost curry powder in store bought hummus to no effect.  And when you finally do get it to cut through, it tastes more like powder, less like hummus.

So I have made my own.  Anyone who knows me knows this is not exactly my thing.  But it seemed worth a try.  Most of the recipes out there are some variation of this (basic ingredient mix below).  I wanted to try this variation (video below), but finding dried peppers online is a little more difficult than I expected, at least Anaheim variety.  Ghost peppers, not so hard.  I suspect they aren't purchased as often.  And, with the USPS nonsense underway, I didn't want to wait for two weeks.

So I compromised.  Washed the garbanzo beans (what a pain, but in the end worth it).  Used a whole lemon (too much, although I wonder how other citrus bases would work, like a lime).  Used two cloves of garlic (too much, although if you're not going to eat hummus and make out with your vegan friend, maybe not an issue).  And then in addition to what's below added 1 t. of ground chipotle (fresh is probably better) and .5 t. (roughly, maybe a little more) of ghost curry powder from Savory Spice.

Outcome: better than the store bought.  Smoother, sharper flavors, and I can at least feel the heat although I erred on the side of caution and sampled it as I slowly added chipotle and ghost.  A few issues like the lemon and garlic amounts I used.  Just a little heat (in my opinion) without being overwhelming.  I may have to try real chipotle and ghost peppers (dried) and see if it's any different, although the curry aspect works pretty well and I may try some of the other Indian spice mixes I have from Penzey's as an alternative before I worry about that. It'd be good on naan, although as a general snack pita is a healthier option from a sheer calorie perspective.

1 (15-ounce) can chickpeas or 1 1/2 cups (250 grams) cooked chickpeas

1/4 cup (60 ml) fresh lemon juice (1 large lemon)

1/4 cup (60 ml) well-stirred tahini, see our homemade tahini recipe

1 small garlic clove, minced

2 tablespoons (30 ml) extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for serving

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

Salt to taste

2 to 3 tablespoons (30 to 45 ml) water

Dash ground paprika or sumac, for serving

Ramen

Ming and Kyle gave me Asian cookbooks for the holidays, including a lot of how to cook Ramen information. I have yet to read them because I have to finish up half a dozen other books first.  So I'm going to just have to pick a recipe and do some United Noodles shopping and hope that it doesn't suffer significantly just because I didn't read the commentary.

I thought both the Thai Curry Soup and Thai Peanut Chicken soup at this site sounded pretty tasty.  A shopping list is in order.  I should find an online one so I can roll up ingredients across a few recipes.
http://www.thewickednoodle.com/ramen-noodle-recipes/

For vegetarian day at our house, I thought the stewed carrots as pulled pork recipe, though not out of an Asian cookbook, seems pretty cool.  Might make a good alternative to potato/cauliflower days.
http://www.thekitchn.com/stewed-carrots-the-new-pulled-pork-old-ingredient-new-trick-215252

Indian Spiced Cauliflower

This was absolutely delicious.  Cauliflower.  Yukon Potatoes.  Onion.  Jalapeno.  Some spices.  Cook it all for a while in a baking pan, and then put it under the broiler to crisp the top up just a bit.  Best fresh, before the cauliflower gets soft with reheating, but a few minutes under the broiler for the leftovers and it's back in almost as good as original shape.  So I wouldn't take it to work and reheat it in the microwave, but a head of cauliflower and six potatoes made for a lot of meals.  Between that, the two crockpots of squash-corn soup/chowder, and Kyle's soup and ham, we're only now getting past the lefovers from the first of the year.

Which is good, because I wouldn't eat anything I had touched at the moment (if I wasn't me) - two days of the flu (with a lot more lead up) and I'm a walking bio-hazard.  But try the recipe.  Excellent vegetarian fare.

A bit more postpourri

I read a good book, which I think I'll talk about tomorrow.  And I went back to work, which was pretty productive given I was already done with all my email and the short week has most people fairly busy and I'm coming off two release cycles.  And we had our annual New Year's party which involved the least amount of cards/poker ever and was more a few board games and watching the children wrestle in the frontroom while Kyle told them it wasn't allowed.  Instead, I'll list a few things I've been reading.  Only a few, because I've been spamming the hell out of Kyle with things I find interesting on Zite, the Eagan Patch crime section, and a variety of other locations.

• Making waffles out of leftover Thanksgiving stuffing.  Something I would have never thought to do but which is an ingenious use of leftovers.  Gravy AND maple syrup - decadent.
• Indigenous Native American Food of the Southwest - Part I and Part II.  I wish I had known about some of the restaurants that did locally sourced food when I was last down there.
• Skinny orange chicken - I was also reading about velveting meat, but that just seems like extra calories.  This looks pretty straight forward for something I like to eat.
• 22 recipes under 500 calories.  I have to try pumpkin lasagna.  Then I have to modify it to try butternut squash lasagna.  I can find the other 21 or 22 recipes on that page.  Maybe it doesn't like my browser.  But the pumpkin lasagna alone is worth my time.
• The 124 United States that could have been - even in that world, RAGBRAI would have been just as long.
• 15 ways to exercise in under 5 minutes - basically the 7 minute exercise set, but with demonstration videos in case, like me, you sometimes don't know what the hell they're trying to describe.
• 12 maps that changed the world - the map of the 124 states is not among them.
• 10 ways to be happier - I agree with them.  Live close to work and plan your next bicycling vacation.  Helps keep me happy.
• The Forgotten Souls of London's Women of the Night - Amazing little bit of history Justinian  pointed me at.  Which led me to...
• Lost Frescoes of the Maginot Line - also wonderfully interesting.

Slow Cooker Recipes to Try

Kalyn's Kitchen had a list of 10 slow cook meals.

I particularly want to try the Thai Butternut Soup.  The Chickpea Stew.  And the Lemony Turkey Soup.

Tater Tot Breakfast Redux

I've been making tater tot, cheese, and ham in a crock pot for company potlucks for six years now.  It's definitely not a cheap meal to make - almost 5 pounds of tots, almost 2 pounds of cheese, about a dozen eggs...I follow that recipe loosely - but it seems to be appreciated.  It took approximately 30 minutes for it to disappear during the morning portion of today's potluck.  I got to haul my crockpot out of there almost immediately.  As a nice side effect, it kept the car very warm this morning on the ride into work.

I realized that I didn't post pictures with the recipe before.  So here they are.  All the cheese, tots, ham, pepper, and onion ready to go except for...


...eggs.  Lots of eggs.  I mixed a bit of milk in as well.  I didn't use the 12th egg - if you're counting - as it had a crack in it.  I don't think anyone noticed.


After a night of cooking on low.  You can't see it, but it's bubbling.  Maybe next time I should take a video.  The edges were particularly crispy and tasty.


And the full pot, so you have some idea of what disappeared so fast.  Total calories in that pot?

• Eggs: 11x78 = 858
• 4 pounds tater tots = 26 x 4/5 x 160 = 3328
• 24 ounces of ham = 75 x 24 = 1800
• 1.5 pounds of cheddar = 113 x 24 = 2712
• 1 green pepper = 24
• 1 onion  = 44
• 1 cup skim milk = 83 

Total: 8849 calories

It's Good!

Memories of Grandma Madeline.  In her things my mother found this Kid's Kooking Lesson #4 recipe for Fruit Basket Upset involving fruit cocktail (which I despise, by the way.  I'd make it with real fruit now), bananas (peeled and diced), and mini marshmallows.  The min marsh note took me a while to figure out, although in retrospect it makes sense.



This is the amusing part - according to Grandma it's my salad and, "Its good."

Starfruit

I've never eaten a starfruit before.  Which is strange, because they've been right there in the supermarket tempting me for the last several decades.  Yesterday I bought one and went on a search for what to do with it.  After all, it's more difficult to ignore an ingredient if it's in your hand.  At least that's my theory - override my laziness with my stinginess around wasting food.  I did some poking around online and the best option seemed to be to dry them, which I figured I'd like as I like dried banana chips.  In the end, it was less about drying them and more about candying them.  What all the recipes have in common is a cup of sugar.  After that, it's variations on the theme.  I went with number three below, although if there had been ginger around the house, I would have combined #2 and #3.  They were delicious and, as an added bonus, I have a quarter cup of honey/star fruit infusion to put in tea.

• http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Star-Fruit-Chips-23666  - basic recipe.
• http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-10-25/features/fl-food-carambola-r2-20121025_1_chips-star-fruit - add some ginger.
• http://www.cbc.ca/stevenandchris/2011/01/the-ingredient-exotic-fruit.html - use honey and cayenne
• http://www.inomthings.com/?p=95 - seriously fancy (rum, cardamon, lemon juice)

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was once again held at our house.  We cooked both corporate turkeys.  Mine, and Leon's.  I think we could have once again done with one, but two ensured plenty of leftovers.  Lee and his family showed up.  Lloyd (my other uncle in law - or Eryn's great uncle, depending on how you color it).  My father in law and mother in law.  And my sister in law and her family.  Cookie Queen and her kids showed up later for some play time.

Apparently snrky.com did a special cartoon to celebrate our turkeys noting, "It's the intangibles that count."

There were two rounds of poker.  I lost the first, despite putting the hurt to my father in law and Eryn (that's right, no mercy in poker, even for my own daughter.  And yes, she plays Hold 'em.  I need to remind her to save some money for New Year's Eve).  And won the second.  $12.  Enough to offset half a bottle of one of the two bourbons I bought for Thanksgiving, as that seems to be the drink of choice - both for the menfolk and womenfolk.  The beer was virtually untouched.

Buffalo Trace and Eagle Rare.  Kyle's Kentucky trip influence is clearly visible in my choices.  When I was buying my bottles at The Cellars, there was a kid in a suit shopping for Scotch. He was clearly excited and I had the impression he was either hosting Thanksgiving, or taking a bottle to Thanksgiving, or had gotten a promotion.  He had some good $40 bottles in hand.  Then asked the guy from the Cellars, "So these are nice, but what's your favorite?"  The clerk noted his favorite was just over $100 a bottle and the kid looked simultaneously taken aback and intrigued.  Definitely the appropriate approach.  Some skepticism in your $100+ purchases.  I should have taken down his name and number so we could do scotch sharing nights.  That's the best way to try $100 bottles.  Hear that Kyle?  Up for Scotch or Bourbon nights with a group of 4 or 5?

My wife and I discussed the possibility of making squash soup for Thanksgiving next year.  I am loving the squash soup with crustini/french bread.  Don't panic.  In addition to the turkey, not instead of the turkey.  While listening to MPR, I heard them discussing this recipe, harvest stuffed squash, which I'd also like to try.  Might have to experiment earlier to get an idea for whether it's good.  But the ingredients sound delicious.  Here are the details, courtesy of Beth Dooley at MPR.

HARVEST STUFFED SQUASH
Serves 8
Ingredients: 
4 small Cinderella pumpkins or acorn squash, halved and seeded
2 tablespoons sunflower oil or olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 fennel bulb, diced
1 red bell pepper, seeded, deveined, and chopped
1 large carrot, finely diced
1/4 cup chopped hazelnuts
2 cups cooked wild rice or barley
1/2 cup chopped parsley
2 tablespoons rubbed sage
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions: 
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Place the squash cut-side down on a baking sheet and bake until it is tender, about 40 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large skillet and saute the onion, garlic, fennel, red pepper, carrot, and hazelnuts until the onions are translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the wild rice and herbs, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove the squash from the oven, turn it over, and place it cut-side up on the baking sheet. Fill the squash with the stuffing. Return the squash to the oven and bake it an additional 30 minutes.

Finally - you can't declare Thanksgiving over until the naked Barbie balances on an exercise ball.  Haven't heard that saying before?  Get used to it.  And just so you don't have to imagine it...

Seafood Pot Pie

A highschool classmate of mine, Raquel, sent me a recipe for seafood pot pie.  I finally got around to trying it tonight.  Pretty good, although Pooteewheet claims it needs fewer scallops and more sriracha.

Scooter and Pooteewheet's seafood pot pies.  Can you guess which one is mine?  You'll note I didn't carefully cut the edges.  I thought about it and then decided extra crust was extra crust for the pot pie and that was a good thing.  Constructive mess.  As further evidence of my food should taste good but not always look good, you'll see my fingerprints in the quickly rolled pastry tops which I had to create because I only had two bottoms and twice as much pot pie eatums as fit in one.


Baked.  One sinkhole, but a nice color.  Don't ask me how long I baked it with the bake dial set to "off" before I finally figured out they weren't actually cooking.


A piece of seafood pot pie artfully plated in the John Deere bowl.


A little heavy on the liquid, but Pooteewheet was spooning it over her serving, so it doesn't go to waste.  I'm wondering how I'll reheat 1.67 seafood pot pies without a functional microwave, however.  Tricky.

• 1 bag (12 oz.) cooked frozen baby shrimp - thawed
• 1/2 lb. bay scallops
• 1/2 lb. of your favorite white fish or crab meat
• 1 cup sliced carrots
• 1 cup frozen green peas
• 1/2 cup sliced celery
• 1/3 cup butter
• 1/3 cup chopped onion
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon celery seed
• 1- 3/4 cups chicken or vegetable broth
• 2/3 cup milk
• 2 (9 inch) unbaked pie crusts

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

In a saucepan, combine carrots, peas, and celery. Add water to cover and boil for 15 minutes. Remove from heat, drain and set aside. (you can microwave instead)

In the saucepan over medium heat, cook onions in butter until soft and translucent. Stir in flour, salt, pepper, and celery seed. Slowly stir in broth and milk. Simmer over medium-low heat until thick. Remove from heat and set aside.

Place the vegetable mixture in bottom pie crust. Place seafood on top of the vegetables. Pour hot liquid mixture over all of it. Cover with top crust, seal edges, and cut away excess dough. Make several small slits in the top to allow steam to escape.

Bake in the preheated oven for 35 to 40 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown and filling is bubbly. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Delicious Grilled Garlic and Herb Shrimp

I made this Grilled Garlic and Herb Shrimp recipe tonight from AllRecipes.com (they have a decent iPad app, although this particular recipe doesn't list ingredients in the app, which is strange). Rather than following the recipe exactly, I used one pound of cooked shrimp (good shrimp, from Kowalski's, although on sale) and the same mixture of ingredients, and let it sit in a plastic bag to marinate overnight. Then I put it in a pan, including the extra sauce, and let it simmer with a cover until ready and dropped it on top of some thin noodles and served it with a side of curried, baked cauliflower, and lettuce (salad).  Absolutely delicious.  Probably the best thing I've made so far since I've started focusing on fish and shellfish.  I strongly recommend it if you like shrimp.  Eryn ate half of my wife's serving, and she's notoriously picky.

Banana Bread

Lee was looking for the banana bread recipe I use. Here you go:

• 1 c. sugar
• 1/3 c. butter, softened (try not to melt it)
• 2 eggs
• 1.5 c mashed ripe TR bananas (avoid frozen - and make sure they're going a little black. Wait! You can't get free fruit anymore - just use store bananas, approximately 3-4 of medium size).
• 1/3 c. water
• 1 2/3 c. all-purpose flour
• 1 t. baking soda
• .5 t. salt
• .25 t. baking powder

Oven to 350 degrees. Grease bottom of bread/loaf pan. Spray works fine, but I think I like to use a bit of butter best. Mix butter and sugar in mixing bowl. Blend in eggs. Add the water and the bananas. Beat lightly. Stir in remaining ingredients. Don't overstir. You'll get something more like a muffin or cake if you overstir. That's no good. It's not very banana bread like. I did this with the last two loaves I made because I was using frozen bananas from the fridge and wanted to avoid the big chunks of banana Eryn doesn't like. Eryn and Pooteewheet liked it fine, but I didn't like it at all, between the cakelike taste and odor the freezer bananas picked up - and kept Ming's loaf so he couldn't taste my shame. If you like nuts, stir in 1/2 c. (I never do...ick. I'm slightly allergic to walnuts). Bake until a toothpick or knife in the center comes out clean. Should be 55-60 minutes. Put it on a cooling rack and run a knife around the edges quickly. Supposedly it'll pull free as it cools, but I've had a few instances where it stuck as I tipped it out and ended up with chunks out of the side. Cool for 5-10 minutes and then remove from pan (just tip it over). Eat it. The center will still be crumbly, but if you like the ends, those will stay together and will be nice and hot. I tend to hand over a loaf to my family that's only the center. Sort of like eating the ears off a rabbit.

Alton Brown has Ginger Nuts

Well, he does. Ginger Almonds from his Live and Let Diet episode. I haven't tried them yet. I need to get an arbol chile. But I do have a test tin of almonds to try it on once I procure the chile, and I'll be going to the store today. I should add that commercial (Blue Diamond) wasabi/soy almonds are edible, but not particularly wasabi-ish or soyish. But they're still more interesting than vanilla or cinnamon. I may try to make my own to give them a bit of zing.

If you beat me to spreading and basting your nuts, let me know the results!

Ingredients
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 teaspoon dark sesame oil
1 dried arbol chile, stemmed and broken into small pieces
1 pound whole natural almonds
1 tablespoon less-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Directions
Heat the oven to 250 degrees F.

Combine the ginger and salt in a large mixing bowl and set aside.

Heat the olive oil and sesame oil in a 12-inch saute pan over medium-low heat. Add the arbol chile and cook, stirring frequently, until the chile begins to give off an aroma, 30 to 45 seconds. Add the almonds and cook, stirring frequently until lightly toasted, approximately 5 minutes. Add the soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce and cook until reduced slightly and the pan looks dry, approximately 1 minute. Immediately remove the nuts to the large bowl and toss with the ginger mixture.

Spread the coated nuts into a single layer on a half sheet pan lined with parchment paper and bake in the oven for 20 minutes. Remove the pan to a cooling rack for at least 30 minutes or until completely cool. Store in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

Brandy Slush

I was sick yesterday. For the second time in just over two weeks. I'm pretty sure I'm sick of being sick. I feel a thousand times better today, even though I had sweating episodes throughout the day. At least I didn't feel like I was going to fall asleep every time I opened my eyes, or that someone had ripped all the muscles out of my back, neck and head, twisted them, scrubbed them on a washboard, then put them back. That was yesterday. Today I was cheerfully taking Eryn out to look for a skull geocache in the woods. By the time we got home, Pooteewheet was sick with whatever I had. I wish her a pleasant night of sweating, groaning, and drooling on the covers - and not in the usual way.

And I'm making Brandy Slush mix. I've messed around with the recipe quite a bit, although mostly on the tea side, not the alcohol side. But I've noticed that 2 cups of brandy tends to make what comes out of the ice cream bucket more solid than slushy, so that's no good. This time I went with 2.5 cups. I figure I can just keep increasing it until I get the appropriate slushy consistency. And you can use a pretty cheap brandy, that just adds to the taste.

Ginger tea is good, as opposed to just green tea. And I've been mixing a bit of ginger tea, lemon tea and green tea, and I suspect that will work best. And six bags instead of four to bring out the flavor. I have an urge to try lemongrass and ginger using fresh ingredients. I think that's my next experiment.

• 7 cups water - boil with 2 cups white sugar
• 2 cups of boiled water with 4-6 teabags (green tea, lemon tea, ginger tea - as you wish, Buttercup)
• 2-3 cups unflavored brandy OR 2-3 cups whiskey OR 2-3 cups apricot brandy Or 2-3 cups rum (flavored or otherwise) OR 1-1.5 cups brandy and 1-1.5 cups vodka.
• 1 - 12oz. can frozen orange juice concentrate (don't add extra water)
• 1 - 12oz. can frozen lemonade concentrate (don't add extra water). Some recipes call for 1/2 this much, but that seems wasteful unless you're drinking a lot of slush (2 gallons) or making some lemonade at the same time.
• Sprite or Mountain Dew or anything 7-upyish.

Add 2 cups of white sugar to the 7 cups of water and bring to a boil. Set aside and let cool (room temperature, or at least sort of luke warm). Put the teabags in the other 2 cups of boiling water. Let them cool as well. In an ice cream bucket - one of those gallon ones you can get full of mint chip or neopolitan at the store (I favor the former) - mix the 7 cups of cooled sugar water, the 2 cups of cooled tea (sans tea bags), the 2-3 cups of alcohol of choice, the 12 oz. of orange juice concentrate, and the 12 oz. of lemonade concentrate. Mix thoroughly (no chunks of lemonade or orange juice clumping up) and put in a freezer in a place where you won't tip it over. Don't tip it over. Just don't. A gallon of sugar water poured into your freezer is going to mess up your day. Give it 24 hours or so until thoroughly frozen, or appropriately slushy (depending on the alcohol content). Scoop some of it out into a cup. Add 7up/Sprite/Diet Sprite/Mountain Dew/Bargain Basement lemon lime soda. Your precise ratio may depend on your peference for slush or lemon lime soda. Give it a stir so everything mixes nicely.

I've found that if your mixture freezes a bit too solidly, warm soda can work best.

Evil Mother

Eryn's class made a cookbook for all the mothers for Mother's Day, each child listing their favorite recipe. Based on the contents, I have a vote for the most evil mother since my own told me that squash with butter and brown sugar was "dessert".

"Chocolate Chip Cookies with Chocolate on Top (they are brownie cookies)"

Mix them up. Put them on a the pan. Put them in the oven for about 5 minutes, and then you get to eat.

Ingredients:
Brown food coloring
Butter
Black food coloring
Cauliflower

Breakfast Potluck in a Crock Pot

I needed a post so that I can refer the potluck dish I made for work to the people who have been asking for it. I was sort of loose and fast with the process, but here we go:

For a FULL crock pot (sizeable - 4-5 quarts):

• 2-3 pounds of tater tots
• A pound of chopped ham - I think sausage or bacon would also work, although tater tots provide a lot of grease, so you might have to be careful in your experimenting (or thorough at drying the grease off the meat)
• A green pepper - you can chop it or mince it - I preferred mine minced
• A big onion - you can chop it or mince it - I preferred mine minced
• 1.5-2+ cups of shredded cheddar
• 8-10 eggs mixed with a cup of milk

In the big crock pot put down enough tater tots to cover the floor of the pot, and then layer in ham, pepper+onion and cheese. Layer it several times (i.e. about three), and then pour in the eggs+milk. Takes between 4-6 hours to cook on low. I started it at 11:00 p.m. and it was perfect at 6:00 a.m., so overnight works fine.

I did experiment with a 2/3 crock pot first. You can just do fewer layers. Use less tater tots and cheese, but the same amount of ham and onion and pepper as in the big pot. Top with six eggs mixed into a half cup of milk. Took about four hours on low.

Absolutely best served fresh unless you like overcooked cheese.

Postpourri

I've been sitting on a few links and bits I've enjoyed lately:

Almost a month old, but MNSpeak asked readers about where they like to shop for bikes. The comments have their responses. Freewheel is on there a few times. My service there has been excellent.

I was talking to coworkers about the conference bike just a few days ago because there was a discussion about whether my group should go on a local Segway ride (Velocipete). I was also talking about the space elevator ad I saw where they say the trip takes three months, so it's the elevator music that kills you (not the meteors). That came up because were getting elevator music over our conference/polycom phone. There were two architects debating how a space elevator works and how much energy is required, and what you need to keep the other end up. A much more fruitful discussion than the non-PC debate about what kind of icons to put next to country-specific rating systems.

Luke Francl has a link to a great visual description of how to understand joins. It's not great because it's completely correct for all versions of SQL, it's great because the author tried to explain it in an easy to digest way and the resulting commentary is all over the place. Which explains why you can work with databases forever and still be lost. Good SQL writing skills are extremely difficult to find.

Surly Brewing and Pumphouse Creamery are pimping Surly ice cream. I may have to make a special trip. "Just in time for the hot weather, Surly beer now available in ice cream form. Pumphouse Creamery, located at 4754 Chicago Ave S, is making ice cream with Furious beer. Barb, owner of Pumphouse, says she made ice cream with both bender and furious and customers really loved the furious ice cream. She says that the hops really come out in the ice cream. Yum!"

And finally, Dunn Brothers sent me a kebab recipe using their Costa Rica coffee. I'm going to guess they have no problem with me spreading the recipe, as it encourages everyone to buy lots of their coffee. These sound way better than the Heath Bar Cooler I had from Caribou today which almost made me ill. That's just too much damn sugar.

Marinade:
2 cups brewed Full City Roast Costa Rica
Tres Rios "La Dama" Dunn Bros Coffee
1 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons honey mustard
2 tablespoons mustard
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1/4 cup water

Kebabs:
2 pounds beef loin strips, cut in 1-inch cubes
2 red bell peppers, cut into 1-inch squares
1 red onion, cut into 1-inch squares
20 cherry tomatoes

For the Marinade:
Combine all of the ingredients, except cornstarch and water, in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Whisk together cornstarch and water in a small bowl to make a slurry. Add the slurry to the mixture and stir well. Bring back to boil and cook for 5 minutes. Let cool. Combine the beef and the marinade and refrigerate for 24 hours.

Preheat a grill.

Skewer beef cubes, red bell peppers, red onion and cherry tomatoes. Skewer each item separately as cooking times vary. Barbecue over low heat, turning and basting with marinade for 20 to 30 minutes or until done.

Cooking With Scooter

Creme de Menthe/Chocolate Chip Cookies

By virtue of an accident (self-rising flour) and a lack of a bag of chocolate chips (only half a bag of creme de menthe and half a bag of chocolate chips), I bring you a cookie that turned out pretty damn well.

1/2 c. butter (salted) - just one stick, so better for you than chocolate chip cookies which generally require two sticks for the same size batch
3/4 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. white granulated sugar
1 t. baking soda
1 t. baking powder
2 t. vanilla extract
2 eggs

Mix.

2 2/3 c. self-rising flour (I used Gold Medal self-rising specialty flour)

It'll get too thick and clumpy to be good cookie dough, so add some cold water a teaspoon or two at a time until it just quits being little clumps and becomes dry, but mixed cookie dough.

Add 1/2 bag of creme de menthe bits (I used Andes)
Add 1/2 bag of chocolate chips (I used Nestle semi-sweet morsels)

Mix in the chips.

Bake at 350 degrees on a non-stick pan (I use a stoneware pan) for about 12 minutes. Cook for a few more if not browning (move to a higher rack if necessary) until a respectable brown on top. Cool and eat. Probably really good with ice cream.