Cereal Killer

So this was the first time I ever made Rice Krispies Treats. Now I know why. It was about as much fun as … I don’t know … eating leather. I let loose a few choice words while I was working on them.

Nevertheless, I share my exploits with you, gentle reader, because they ended up quite sickeningly tasty and because they look quite nice once you clean all the goopy mess off your hands and everything else.

Here’s the recipe I used. It’s a simpler and less gross-sounding version of this one that I found on About.com the other day after a co-worker said “they should make candy corn cereal.”

Crispy Halloween Treats

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup butter
• butter for pan and hands
• 10 cups “crispy rice cereal” (uh, that’s Rice Krispies)
• 9 cups miniature marshmallows
• 2 cups candy corn

Butter a large jelly roll pan. In my case, I used one of the awesome big aluminum pans I always call a cookie sheet but really isn’t that my mom’s friend, a school lunch lady, let us put in with the order when the caf ordered new ones. In a pretty big saucepan melt butter and marshmallows on medium heat; stir them constantly until smooth. In an enormous bowl – I’m not kidding here, you’re going to need a tub or something – mix “crispy rice cereal” and candy corn. Add the disgusting marshmallow mixture to the cereal mixture; stir quickly to combine. Spread the mixture on prepared jelly roll pan and press with your buttered hands if you aren’t too grossed out. Let them sit on the kitchen table until you finish washing the dishes, about one hour, then cut into small squares.

I know! The last time I had that much fun in the kitchen, I was two years old and on my way to the hospital to get stitches in my head from hitting it on a drawer pull. Yeah. That’s more like it.

Food humor, with a side of sacrilege

I saw something on a car today that is even funnier than God Is My Quahog:

Ode to One Pie

There are a lot of things I love about New England: fresh seafood, colorful leaves, ornery folks. But something I especially love is the variety of old-fashioned regional foods. Chief among these is One Pie, and chiefest among the One Pie varieties is the squash. Squash is at once deliciously bizarre sounding and ordinary. At some times of the late summer the squash is so common, and then so abundant in Ziploc freezer bags, that the thought of buying commercially canned squash would be ridiculous. But yet for many New England cooks the One Pie squash is both secret weapon and, I think, uniquely odd thing that we embrace simply because we are known for embracing uniquely odd things.

It’s darn near impossible to find much about One Pie (of West Paris, Maine) on the Internet, but what I do find definitely falls into the “ornery New Englanders” category. Pretty much all I found was a bunch of complaints from Thanksgiving 2007 that the recipe for squash pie on the labels everyone bought was wrong. Seems the recipe is supposed to call for 20 minutes of baking at one temperature and then another spell of baking at a lower temperature. But somehow the labels most cooks ended up with last fall had just the 20-minute bake mentioned. Awful lot of angry cooks. What I don’t understand is, you say you’ve been using One Pie Squash to make yer Thanksgiving pie for yer whole life, and yer mother before ya too. So how come when you read the label and it says to bake it for just 20 minutes you thought that all of a sudden this year it would be different? This observation also flies in the face of the Hardy and Thrifty New Englander stereotype: I would have thought these people would be cooking their squash pie from an old label they tore off a can years ago and saved. I know I have a One Pie label kicking around somewhere around here.

Ah, the labels. Probably the best thing about One Pie is the old-fashioned typography and design of the label. The only other thing I found online about One Pie was a blog entry from some sort of city folk about the label. It even features nearly the same photo I took of my One Pie can: http://brooklynometry.blogspot.com/2007/12/one-pie.html

Only the photo of my can of One Pie is probably the best kind: a freshly emptied can.

Here are some of my favorite recipes featuring One Pie:

SQUASH

Ann’s Pumpkin Cookies

(OK, so these are supposed to be made with the pumpkin. But one time in college we wanted to make them but all we had was squash in the pantry. I actually liked them better with the squash and make them with squash whenever I can.)

Ingredients:

• 1 can of canned squash or pumpkin
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup oil (or applesauce for low-fat version)
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp baking soda, dissolved in 1 tsp. of water
• Optional: nuts, chocolate chips, etc.

Directions: Mix all the ingredients together. Put cookie-sized blobs of mix on a greased cookie sheet and bake in a 375 degree oven for 12-15 minutes. The cookies come out the way they look when they go in. You can also make these cookies with fresh pumpkin or squash but it makes the mix runnier, so adjust accordingly.

PUMPKIN

Ina Garten’s recipe for Soupe au Potiron. It’s a French recipe that she says is usually made with potirons, a kind of French pumpkin. But she recommends using canned pumpkin.

BONUS!

And here is a recipe for something I just tried. It was super easy and turned out fine, although I think it needs a little more flavor: Penne With Pumpkin Cream Sauce from the magazine Everyday With Rachael Ray.

As always, I made it with Romano cheese instead because I didn’t have any fresh Parmesan, with a tiny bit of garlic because I didn’t have any onions, and with a mix of half-and-half and 1 percent milk because I didn’t have any heavy cream. Still, not bad. Probably just needed a little more cheese.

Raw Goods

Friday night dinner in Maine: a dozen oysters and a beer, at J’s Oyster Bar in Portland. This place is a REAL bar. The tables feature some of that do-it-yourself decoupage you can only find in joints of this sort, with pieces of decorative paper stuck beneath a layer of epoxy—but not epoxied enough that it’s hasn’t been picked at and peeled by drunks or people bored or uncomfortable with their dinner companions. The bathroom wall features a poster offering the services of a company which will drive both you and your car home if you are too drunk to do it effectively yourself. It even smells like a bar, even though you can’t smoke in bars anymore.

Mac and Cheese and Garlic

Ever have one of those days when no matter what fascinating thing is on NPR, you spend the whole drive home thinking about dinner? That was me, tonight.

The culprit? Another entry from the "Recipes for Health" department at the New York Times, this time something that sooo doesn't sound healthy: Creamy Pasta. This is from "Recipes for Health: Kids Edition" and is described as "an alternative to prepackaged macaroni and cheese." It was a winner, and so easy ... but the best part is probably that it's infinitely customizable. For instance, you can always toss in some veggies, but I didn't have any broccoli or peas (my faves). Another option is to add garlic. I chose this route; the suggestion was for a whole clove, but my clove must have been larger than average because my breath is definitely pungent right now. It is kickin'.

Did I mention one of the ingredients is cottage cheese?! Yes, cottage cheese that's been pulverized in the food processor is one of the main ingredients. This is probably the component of the recipe which fascinated me the most on my drive home. ("It must just get all creamy, like any other dairy product," I thought. "But it's cottage cheese! That's so CRAZY!") I have been eating a half-cup of fat-free cottage cheese as part of my breakfast for just about a year now -- I got these cute little Rubbermaid cups that hold exactly the right amount. So I get my calcium, and a little protein to keep me full, hence preventing me from biting the heads off my coworkers at 10:45 a.m. (I get cranky when I'm hungry.)

Although I resisted the urge to add some leftover chicken to the mix -- I wanted to follow the recipe to the letter for my first go-round -- I think a little cut-up breast meat would be a nice addition. Unfortunately, in my excitement that all was going well, I actually forgot two -- two! -- of the recipe's ingredients: the milk and the olive oil. So mine turned out a little chunkier than it should have been (it actually ended up resembling the texture of cottage cheese again, even though the curds had been all mashed up). And, as always, I substituted the Parmesan cheese -- which, again, I didn't have -- for some Gruyere. And I probably added more freshly ground pepper, and more coarsely ground at that, than the average kid could stand. Still tasty!

And oh yes -- the Times' photo is much better than mine, but I did want to include this photo to show off my spatula with the cute little lobsters and crabs. It's from Sur La Table. I think it's so fun.