All I Want for Pancha Ganapati...

...are my two front teeth!

Royal Treat

For about a year now, we've been receiving The Baking Sheet, the bimonthly baking publication from King Arthur. While each issue has been filled with temptations galore, the husband and I have tried only one recipe from its pages--and I absented myself from that task, aside from prepping the mise en place for the husband's nuts.

Until today. I had some time on my hands, and the cooler weather had me itching to bake something. We'd already targeted the peanut butter squares in the Holiday 2010 issue as something the husband and I both would love to try, and I had gathered most of the ingredients I didn't already have over the past few weeks. When I found I didn't even have to turn on the oven to make these squares, I was sold.

Peanut Butter Squares1 C (9.5 oz.) peanut butter, crunchy or smooth
3/4 C (1 1/5 sticks, 6 oz.) butter
1 t vanilla extract
2 C (7 oz.) graham cracker crumbs
3 C (12 oz.) confectioners' sugar
2 C (12 oz.) chocolate chips
2 T (0.75 oz.) vegetable shortening
Sugar decorations (optional)

1. Melt the peanut butter and butter together. If you have a large microwave-safe bowl, use it and save yourself some dishes.
   
2. Stir in the vanilla.
   
3. Add the crumbs and sugar, mixing until evenly combined.
   
4. Press the mixture into a 9" x 13" pan (lining it with parchment can make removal of the bars easier).
5. In a 2-cup microwave-safe liquid measuring cup, melt together the chocolate chips and shortening at medium power in the microwave, then stir until smooth.
   
6. Spread the chocolate over the peanut butter layer.
   
7. Place or sprinkle the decorations atop the chocolate before it sets.

Yield: 8 dozen 1-inch squares.

Nutritional Info
Calories: 75
Fat: 6 g
Sat fat: 1 g
Protein: 1 g
Carbs: 6 g
Na: 25 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
As I mentioned earlier, I already had on hand some of the ingredients for this recipe:

• While the recipe doesn't specifically call for milk chocolate chips, that's what I used--Ghiradelli ones, to be precise, which have less fat and cholesterol but a smidge more sugar than the Guitard I like.
  
• The graham crackers I had squirreled away in the deep freezer turned out to be low-fat cinnamon grahams. Did that deter me? Hell no!
  
• I have both hormone-free regular stick butter and light stick margarine on hand, and I opted to use the light stuff. I know its higher water content can make a mockery of many dessert recipes, but in this case, I was hoping the higher water content might help me out if I found the peanut butter-butter melted mixture not willing to absorb both 3 cups of powdered sugar and 2 cups of graham cracker crumbs.

The recipe could not have been easier to put together. I suspect a less-fastidious person who isn't obsessed with getting every last speck and every last crumb and every last droplet incorporated could do it in less time than I took, so I highly recommend this recipe should you need a quick treat for some event, Gentle Reader.

As for the tastiness of the final product, the boys and I both heartily endorse these squares. The cinnamon grahams gave the bars a nice surprise, the husband and I thought. The boy was a bit skeptical at first when he saw me cutting into the big chunk, but when I told him basically I'd made a big-ass Reese's peanut butter cup, he was game. He took one bite and was sold. The Faudie scores a hit!

I suspect my use of the light margarine not only gave the peanut butter layer a slightly oily texture (not a heavy, oil, greasy feeling, mind you) but also didn't give the base layer enough "glue" to stick together forever, for when I started cutting into the product, several hours after I'd made the squares and after it had had maybe 30 minutes to warm up a tad after spending most of the day in the 'fridge, they didn't cut cleanly so much. To be fair, even the topping split and fissured like the crust of California during the earthquake in Superman. Did that dampen our enjoyment of the squares? Hell no. I majorly blew my commitment to tightly constraining my daily calorie intake once I had my first bite of these squares. So if you are anything like me, Gentle Reader, and trying to maintain a certain health regimen, perhaps you might not want to make these squares.

Nastiness on a Bun

Sloppy Joes with corn. Not corn on the side, Gentle Reader, but corn mixed into the meat.

Yeah, insert your own scatalogical joke here.

Nuts

The husband took over the kitchen Sunday morning. Here's his report on the morning's activities.

--The Faudie
As you may have noticed, daylight saving time ended last weekend. Circadian rhythms were disrupted, clocks were adjusted, nightfall now begins depressingly early in the evening and people on the Internet got something new to complain about. (My favorite take on the whole thing comes courtesy NPR: "How Bush Ruined Daylight Savings." Surprise, surprise: He changed it in such a way that it helped no one except big business interests.)

Personally, I think we should ditch DST altogether and let nature be nature, but no one really cares what I think of DST. I must admit, however, that this year's "fall back" and the resultant extra hour weren't entirely unappreciated. We'd received the Autumn 2010 issue of The Baking Sheet quite a few weeks ago. I'd been wanting to make the recipe pictured on the cover but never really had the time--at least, I never had the time until DST ended. A 25-hour Sunday may defy all laws of nature and time and space, but it's convenient if you want to bake something.

The recipe was appropriately seasonal and perfect for marking the end of DST:

Butterscotch Acorns

Dough
1 C unsalted butter, melted
3/4 C brown sugar
1 t vanilla extract
1/2 C pecan meal or finely chopped pecans
2 3/4 C King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt

Topping
2 C butterscotch chips
1 1/4 C finely chopped pistachio nuts
1/2 C extra butterscotch chips, unmelted

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Combine melted butter, sugar, vanilla and pecans.
3. Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt; add to the butter mixture, mixing until combined.
4. Scoop batter by the teaspoon and place flat-side-down on greased baking sheets. Pinch tops to a point to resemble an acorn.
5. Bake for 15 minutes.
6. Melt two cups of butterscotch chips.
7. Use a dab of the melted chips to "glue" a whole chip on the flat end of the cooled cookies.
8. When chip has set, dip the flat end (tops) of the cookies into the melted chips, let the excess run off, then coat with the chopped nuts.

Yield: 60 cookies (serving size: 1 cookie)

Nutritional Info
Calories: 104
Fat: 6 g
Carbs: 11 g
Cholesterol: 8 mg
Sodium: 40 mg
Protein: 1 g

The Husband's Futzings
I don't have any significant changes to the ingredients to report, but the method of preparation...well, I found The Baking Sheet's instructions to be a little nuts, if you'll pardon the expression.

The cookie part of the acorns (steps 1 - 5) came together without major incident. I do think the guidance to use only a teaspoon's worth of dough for each cookie is an underestimate; the boy and I found that by using more than this amount, we were better able to shape appropriately acorn-ish acorns. And even with the larger acorns, we were able to make some 72 cookies by the kiddo's somewhat shaky count. The real fun, though, came when it was time to make the acorn "caps."

In my world, butterscotch is a flavoring, not an adhesive. I don't think melted chips can do what the recipe says they can do. I had zero luck using the melted chips to "glue" a whole chip to the flat end of the cookie. (Which just begged the question: exacly what purpose was that glued-on chip supposed to serve? Neither The Faudie nor I could figure that one out. I suppose it was supposed to help form the cap of the acorn, but I would have appreciated it if the recipe had been more clear on this point.) Also, I had zero luck dipping the cookies in the melted chips and then getting the chopped pistachio nuts to stick. So instead, I futzed.

Recalling our near-fiasco with the midnight mice, in which we were forced to hand-coat each cookie to obtain the desired effect, I combined the melted butterscotch chips with the pistachio pieces, resulting in a compound I could use like modeling clay. Each acorn cookie received a carefully sculpted cap...or maybe a not-so-carefully sculpted cap as my patience started to wear thin after the first 50 or so cookies. Suffice to say, some of the cookies came out looking a lot more like acorns than the others.

We made 72 cookies, and these were the only ones that actually looked like acorns.

To be fair, the cookies on the cover of The Baking Sheet didn't bear that strong of a resemblance to real acorns either, so I don't feel too bad about the way mine turned out. Appearance, after all, is second to taste, and these acorns taste pretty good. They're similar to pecan sandies (or, as The Faudie pointed out, besan ladoos), albeit with a funky butterscotch-pistachio topping.

Switching back and forth from DST still sucks, but at least I was able to do something productive with the extra time!

Autumn Surprise

Yesterday I returned from my noontime swim to find all waiting on the kitchen for me to feed them Momma, Bootsy, Felix, Keeko Jr.--and a fuzzy widdle gray striped kitten! The kitten was trying to nurse off Momma, but Momma wasn't having any of it. The catlets, who Momma presented to us this spring, didn't quite know what to make of Junior and were keeping their distance. I managed to snap a few quick pictures before Junior hid between the storage chest and the exterior wall of the house.

Excited and intrigued by the appearance of this new kitten, I dialed up the husband and shared the news. Later during the late afternoon, the husband spied Junior out once again with Momma and the catlets, and he took some more photos to document that Momma was now more hospitable to the new arrival, thus making the relationship between the two more clear. Yup, Momma managed to get herself knocked up again after her spring brood was born. Good going, Momma. We'll start calling you Britney Spears.

The appearance of just one kitten is a bit of a puzzler, but I didn't want to linger on what might have happened to any other kittens. Of course, I need not have wondered to long, for before the husband and I went to bed, we looked out on the kitchen patio--and Momma's new brood had doubled in size. This second new arrival is a dark little thing--a blend of Felix's classic black cat and Calli, who was born in the spring of 2009--and was thus difficult to photograph at 8:45 p.m. at night.

(Yes, Gentle Reader, we're typically in bed by 9. Hey, I get up at 4 a.m. Do you seriously expect me to stay up all night?)

This morning, the newbies were out once again, following Momma happily and starting to get a feel for our yard and their siblings. The catlets are still trying to figure out what to do with the kittens, since they still have a lot of their pouncy kittenish playfulness. At one point this morning, the newbies were stalking each other around the tree, and Keeko Jr. was watching nearby. After a brief discussion of the new kittens' physical attributes, the husband and I have temporarily named the gray tabby Tank since it reminds me so much of Tank the Armadillo of Beanie Baby fame. The Felix-Calli cross we're thinking of dubbing either Smudge or Splotch since its calico markings are sort of smudged on its black coat or look like splotches on its black coat.

While having new kittens to watch grow up is mildly entertaining, I do honestly not look forward to having to tear the boy away from kitten gazing so that he can do his homework or help set the table or get to bed on time. Of course, two new kittens means two more mouths to feed for several months, and our band of moochers is really getting out of hand. I wonder if there's a way to slip all of them some sort of tranquilizer in the food so we can take them en masse to the vet to be relieved of their reproductive organs. Think we could qualify for some sort of group discount?

Happy Run-iversary to Me!

If I remember things correctly (which is highly doubtful), three years ago today I started running. I started running because I was home to help my dad recover from his knee replacement surgery, was out for a walk while waiting for him and Mum to arrive home from the hospital in OKC and found I needed to go faster when "Given to Fly" was playing on my trusty iPod.

Do I blame Pearl Jam? Do I blame my dad's bum knee? Do I blame my impatience?How about all three of 'em?

I had no idea then that I'd become addicted. I've had setbacks and injuries, and I've had my share of moments when the last thing I wanted to do was get on the damn treadmill and run. I've even allowed myself a few times of cutting my run short because I just didn't feel right or I just had too much going on in my head to "let loose" while running. Unlike a lot of events in my life, I don't let myself linger on those moments. I focus instead on doing what I need to do now so that I can keep running and celebrate more run-iversaries.

That said, I do wish my body and my mental disposition were in such shape that would allow me to celebrate my run-iversaries with some kind of running challenge. But once you've done a half-marathon, a full marathon really seems to be the next big challenge, and not too many marathons happen in Austin in November (the one in San Antonio is just too expensive). And since the 'ol body isn't quite what it used to be in terms of allowing me to run a long distance, I've had to switch to challenging myself with longer and longer bike rides, and that's fine with me.

So this weekend, the bike and I celebrated our respective milestones (the bike's 1-year anniversary and my 3-year run-iversary) by taking part in The Wurst Ride in Texas. We traveled together 64-point-some-odd miles from south Austin to New Braunfels, totaling a metric century. I started off a few minutes after 8 a.m. and proudly crossed the finish line at 12:05 p.u. Not too shabby considering I stopped at two of the five rest stops for roughly 5 minutes each stop.

The ride was a great one, all things considered. Sure, the start temperature of 41 degrees wasn't pleasant, but I had enough thermal gear on to largely protect me. Sure, the constantly running nose got to be a drag, but that's why a person wears sleeves, right? Yes, I ran into (almost literally) my fair share of cyclists whose concept of "Share the road" means riding on the left side of the lane and cyclists whose concept of "Ride single file" means to ride two or three abreast while gossiping. I could have done without the bicycle-built-for-two folks, the mountain bikers and the folks who obviously spent a few thousand dollars on their bikes and accessories but obviously didn't ride those bikes terribly often. And even though the wind had shifted from the north-northwest breeze that had been blowing for the previous 2 or 3 days to a Gulf breeze out of the south-southeast, it was not really a factor at all. All in all, November 6, 2010, was a frickin' perfect day to ride a bike.

After a shower, an attempt at a nap that lasted about 2 hours and a failed attempt to put my contacts back in my eyeballs, which were all bloodshot and irritated from the cold air, I suppose, the boys and I headed to Gyros+ to celebrate with a lamb gyro (stuffed to the gills with yummy lamb), a grilled chicken gyro (tasty), falafel (falafel rocks) and a plate of hummus and warm, lightly toasted pitas. These gyros were my first, as was the falafel, and I have to admit that I'm now addicted to falafel. Are chickpeas just the best thing in the world to eat or what, Gentle Reader?

Happy run-iversary to me!

Need to Kill Your Thanksgiving Guests?

I think this masterpiece ought to do it.


I think the sprinkles atop the buttercream frosting are the perfecting touch to this monstrosity. Can you say, "Blorf!" Gentle Reader?