Nebraska Crack!

Our friends, the Korbs, up and left us last year for what I affectionately refer to as Corn Land, U.S.A., a.k.a., Omaha, Nebraska. Michelle also refers to this as “the middle coast,” to make herself feel better about living in the Midwest. Were I her, I would do the same. I kid, I kid …
As much as I enjoy making fun of Nebraska, it actually holds a very special spot in my heart. My mom was born and raised in Corn Land and I “vacationed” there quite a bit as a child. We would pack up our 1984 Chevrolet Caprice Classic station wagon, “Big Blue,” and hit the road, stopping at every monument and national park along the way. And oh my, the education! I was well-versed in the history of each battlefield between the Pacific Ocean and Chimney Rock by the time I was six-years-old. Not everyone gets the opportunity to drink a handmade sarsaparilla while gazing over the field where the Battle of Little Big Horn was fought, or see the Crazy Horse Memorial when it was just a nose. Gotta say, Disney World was a little more up my alley in those days.

I do have really fond memories of Nebraska, though, once we finally arrived. Hosing down the trampoline with my cousin Lynn to lay out in the scorching sun, riding the four-wheeler up to the neighboring farm and having the farmer force me to attempt milking the cow, driving my aunt’s car through the cornfield with a newly-minted driver’s permit and being allowed to walk to the corner store all by myself as a nine-year-old because it was a classic, small town, American main street where nothing bad could ever happen. Ahhh, I miss that place.

We miss the Korbs terribly, too, but thankfully they left behind one of my all-time favorite appetizer recipes which originated in their new home, aptly named “Nebraska Crack.” It’s sweet, it’s salty, it’s tangy and it’s — you guessed it — as addictive as crack. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.


Nebraska Crack

“Salsa” ingredients
1 can yellow sweet corn, drained
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
8 oz. (one small package) crumbled feta
1 red pepper, chopped
1 bunch green onions, chopped

Dressing
¼ cup light olive oil
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
Garlic powder, salt & cayenne pepper to taste

Tortilla chips for serving (Tostitos Scoops work best)

Directions
Mix oil, vinegar and sugar in a bowl. Dissolve sugar well by stirring. Add black beans, corn, onions and red pepper. Crumbled feta into bowl. Mix all ingredients together. Serve with tortilla chips.

(Note: I made a few modifications. The original recipe calls for a half cup each of olive oil, sugar and vinegar, but I like mine a bit drier -- make it however you like! I also added the green onion and used cayenne instead of black pepper.)

Burpless cucumbers and new knees

Bonjour! I’m back from extended hiatus. The unforeseen long break can — for the most part — be blamed on my archaic laptop. Well, that and my serious lack of patience. The poor, old girl was taking upwards of five minutes (I kid you not) to open a photo. And that was only when she didn’t completely freeze in the process. I decided to simply walk away until I had time to perform a clean install of XP, hoping that everything would return to sunshine and rainbows. Luckily, it did the trick and I’m back in business. The last two months have been fairly docile, however, so you haven’t missed much. I survived my 30th birthday and have been enjoying the foray into my fourth decade, including a weekend trip to Los Angeles to celebrate with my college friend, Melanie — a little birthday gift to myself. We had a fabulous time and I even had two celebrity sightings; Nicole Richie, eating (!) at a Mexican restaurant (she struck me as surprising normal — I always knew Lionel couldn’t completely fail as a father) and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, just hanging out at a bar, having a beer, surrounded by fawning, skinny blondes. OK, I fawned a little, too, but from across the room … and since I’m a brunette it doesn’t count.

In news from the home front, Morgan had his ACL reconstructed at the beginning of May as the result of a several-month-old soccer injury, so we’ve been sticking around the house for the past few weeks. Physical therapy starts next week and I’m very much looking forward to having a good-as-new husband within the coming months. Seeing him endure surgery and the beginnings of what is foretold to be fairly long recovery (six full months for sports; a full year to 100 percent) has made me incredibly appreciative of my knees. I’ve been taking two or three spinning classes at my gym each week and long walks after work. Good knees are a blessing and should be used to their fullest! It has finally thawed a bit, too, since my report of snow on the tulips; we’ve actually hit the low-70s a couple times in the past few weeks. And with the fear of frost passing, we have decided to try our hands as vegetable gardeners / “As Seen on TV” testers for the Topsy Turvy Tomato Planter. The bags were on sale for $9.99 at Walgreens and because we already planted a failed trough of asparagus shortly before Easter, an attempt at growing things above ground seems like an excellent idea. We picked up starts of cherry tomatoes, yellow summer squash and burpless cucumbers at the most awesome nursery in the entire universe, Flower World. It’s 15 gorgeous acres of every plant, tree, shrub and any other type of foliage you can possibly imagine. If you live within 500 miles, I strongly suggest making the trip. I found the “burpless” cucumber name quite amusing and looked up its origin. Apparently they have less of the bitter compound found in traditional American cucumbers and are actually supposed to produce fewer burps. I’ve never found the standard variety cucumber to be particularly belch-inducing, but perhaps some people have this issue. Who knows. Anyway, I’ll keep you updated on the vegetable progress. Hopefully there won’t be terrible disappointment to follow … please send good veggie wishes my way!

Winter fare theatre

Since we've now waded ankle-deep into April and are still wearing long johns to fend off the damp chill, I present to you yet another installment of winter fare theatre. Please don’t give up hope. I’m sure we’ll get to the pineapple and popsicles soon … but for now, it's OK to keep using the oven. I’ve been doing a lot of vegetable roasting lately, namely broccoli and brussels sprouts. Roasting is my favorite way to prepare broccoli and my second favorite way to prepare brussels sprouts (60-second sprouts are still my favorite). The dry, high heat brings out the natural sweetness in the vegetables and produces a really intense, concentrated flavor. The trick in this “recipe” (if you can call it that — sorry for the lack of measurement) is to add the balsamic vinegar before you roast. It creates a sweet, syrup-like glaze on the vegetables. Enjoy!

Roasted balsamic broccoli & brussels sprouts
Serves four as a side dish.

Ingredients
1 pound each broccoli florets and brussels sprouts (cleaned and halved)
Enough olive oil for a light coating (probably a little less than 1/2 cup)
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar (approximate)
A few big dashes of garlic powder
Kosher salt and pepper to taste

Instructions
Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

Line baking sheet with heavy aluminum foil.

Toss all ingredients together and roast for 18 to 20 minutes, turning/mixing once during cooking.

New study: Cold weather slows human aging

And by new, I mean “I just made it up.”

It’s still cold here. This week we’re running about 10 degrees below average. The flowers aren’t as far along as they should be. Thankfully, I am fairly certain that cold weather slows human aging, too. This is very good news, considering the plan is for me to turn 30 in nine days. But since it snowed this morning, that can be put off a little longer.

I’m not quite ready to give up this decade (or trade in my Clearasil for anti-aging potions). I thought I had prepared myself. My plan was to gracefully embrace 30. To wear it proudly and begin commanding the respect I deserve for entering into full-fledged adultdom.

“30 is the new awesome, 30 is the new awesome …” I repeated it until I [thought] I truly believed it. But then, last week, something awful happened. I remembered my 15th birthday. The 15th birthday that seems so recent in my mind. I had an outrageous realization — I will be twice as old as I was on that birthday. And since time is moving much faster now than it did in ninth grade, I’ll be close to 45 years old before this year's candles are even extinguished.

So for once, I’m thankful for snow in April. Because it’s going to keep both the flowers and me young for a little longer.

The second love of my life: Alvin the Roomba

The original intent of this blog was to feature all things domestic — gardening, home improvement, sock darning, etc. … I obviously like to cook more than participate in any of those other activities, though. So since nearly all of my posts have been centered in the kitchen, today I’m going to share with you the second love of my life, “Alvin” the Roomba, our iRobot 560 vacuuming robot. Alvin came to us as a Christmas gift from my parents. He makes us so happy. I can barely remember what life was like before he arrived. I seem to recall it being pretty similar, but with a greater volume of dust bunnies. I named our Roomba because to me, he’s not just a vacuum. We can’t have pets due to allergies, so he’s as close to a furry friend as our house will ever see.

Alvin vacuums our downstairs Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 10 a.m. His close attention to detail and gentle temperament with our furniture have earned him a special place in our hearts. Dust allergies have already improved and we’re no longer embarrassed to show the bottoms of our socks.

A few weeks ago, while I was lying in bed with a cold that I believed had the potential to take my life, I heard Alvin play his start-up song — similar to the theme from the original Mario Brothers — and back out of his dock. He began whirring away, sweeping up the previous day’s grime, almost as if to say, “No, no. You rest. Let me take care of the house.” If only he could have delivered orange juice and Sudafed to my beside.

Since we have all hard floors downstairs (the only place we use Alvin), this machine works especially well in our house. Our friends who have Roombas circulating on carpeted areas, however, report mixed reviews. If you look into getting an Alvin of your own, check out the different models and make sure your floors are properly suited.

Next on my wishlist: The Scooba.

Trifle of love

According to Webster, a trifle is something of little value, substance, or importance. It can also be a dessert. It cannot, however, be both. So for the Valentine’s Day wine tournament we attended the weekend before last, I made a very valuable, substantial and important dessert. I call it my, “Trifle of Love.” This is a recipe I’m especially proud of because I created most of it myself, with just one idea from Paula Deen. Shhh. Don’t tell Morgan — he’s not a fan. We get into it whenever I watch her show on Food Network:

M: Uggggggghh! Paula Deen. Turn it off!
Me: You’re just jealous because I don’t feed you real butter.
M (in his best Paula voice): What-ev-uh, honey.
This trifle has three main components: cake, fruit and cream. For the cake layers, I used a chocolate fudge cake mix (my mother taught me to only use Betty Crocker cake mix and I swear by it), substituting half the water with sweet Marsala wine (Paula’s tip). For the fruit layer, I used three sixteen ounce bags of frozen strawberries and one ridiculously expensive ($9) pint of fresh strawberries. And for the cream layer, I combined heavy whipping cream, mascarpone cheese, cocoa powder, sugar, vanilla, and a liberal amount of sweet Marsala wine — this resulted in a nice, fluffy tiramisu-like flavor and texture. I left the frozen strawberries whole, and they turned out a bit slimy when thawed, so I think next time I’ll chop them up a bit. They still tasted good, though. Here’s the full recipe, as best I can remember:

Ingredients
1 chocolate cake mix (I like chocolate fudge)
2 Tbsp. granulated sugar
1 ¼ C. sweet Marsala wine, plus extra for sprinkling over cake layers
2 8 oz. tubs mascarpone cheese
¾ C. powdered sugar
2 Tbsp. cocoa powder
1 pint heavy whipping cream
1 Tbsp. real vanilla extract
3 16 oz. bags frozen whole strawberries, thawed
1 pint fresh strawberries, washed, hulled and halved

Place thawed strawberries in bowl with sugar, mix thoroughly and set aside. Prepare cake mix according to instructions on box, substituting half the water with sweet Marsala wine. Set aside to cool completely.

Add together in a large mixing bowl: mascarpone cheese, whipping cream, vanilla, cocoa powder, sugar and ½ C. wine. Stir lightly until all ingredients are moistened. Whip with a electric hand mixer until consistency is that of extra thick whipped cream, about three to four minutes. Set aside.

Cut cake into 1-inch cubes. Place half of the cake cubes in the bottom of a 3- to 3 1/2-quart trifle bowl or other straight-sided glass bowl. Place thumb (or if your thumb isn’t big enough, as in my case, your index and middle fingers) over the opening of the Marsala wine bottle and “sprinkle” wine liberally over the cake.

Drain strawberries from sugar/syrup that has developed. Using one half of strawberries for first layer, roughly chop and place on top of cake, making sure some fruit can be seen through sides of glass.

Spread half of cream mixture over strawberries.

Repeat with another layer each of cake sprinkled with wine, strawberries and cream, finishing with fresh strawberries on top of trifle.

Tapas, Franco-American style

Our friends Paul and Jen hosted a really fun “Around the World” tapas party last weekend. Each couple was supposed to pick a country to represent and make a corresponding tapa.
Our original plan was Swedish meatballs with lingonberries, but I’ve never made them before and Morgan wasn’t up to cooking. I fortuitously found some more crab in our freezer from last summer's catch — I mistakenly thought it had all been used on the whiskey crab soup a couple months ago — and decided to try my hand at mini crab quiche using my regular crab quiche filling. I did top each quiche with a pinch of pungent shredded parmesan, too, (not in the original recipe) which added a nice nutty flavor and pretty deep-brown finish. Since France was already taken with Jen’s mouth-watering boeuf bourguignon — seriously, I’m drooling a little just thinking about it — we said the quiche were Franco-American and went with the good ol’ U.S. of A.

I know any baking aficionados may have an attack over this, but I really can’t tell a big difference between store bought pie crust and homemade, so I bought some refrigerated dough, cut circles with a large wine glass and pressed the crust into a 24-count mini muffin tin. The glass was the perfect size to make a nice edge around each top to hold in the filling. Plus, who doesn’t enjoy a little extra crust? I used about two and a half crusts for the entire pan. Since most boxes come with two crusts, make sure to buy two boxes if you try this.