Week 18: Cranberry Vodka

Okay, you might think I am a big drinker, but no, not really. I just like making things from scratch and experimenting with food. My boyfriend got crazy over the holidays and bought a million bags of fresh cranberries before they were out of the grocery store. Fresh cranberries can only be found in the fall and around Christmas time since they are harvested only once a year. If you have always wondered how cranberries are grown, just Wikipedia cranberries! I have seen the commercials with the two guys in the cranberry bog, but how do they grow, in the water? We had no clue, so we looked it up and in short, they do grow on bushes and as an easy way to harvest them, they flood the area and the cranberries then float and are easy to collect. Check it out, amazing!

Anyway, we have been getting creative with our cranberries and decided to make a liqueur. Wow, did this really turn out wonderful. A nice tart liqueur and can be made into all sorts of drinks. Martini’s are a great use for this fresh and really dark red drink.

So, if you have a bag of cranberries in the freezer and don’t know what to do with it, try this easy recipe and enjoy!!

Cranberry Vodka

• 1 bag of fresh cranberries


• 3 cups vodka


• 1 cup water


• 2 cups sugar

Step 1: Combine sugar and water in a medium saucepan; cook over medium heat 5 minutes or until sugar dissolves, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, and cool completely.

Step 2: Place cranberries in a food processor; process 2 minutes or until finely chopped.

Step 3: Combine sugar mixture and cranberries in a large bowl; stir in vodka.

Step 4: Pour the vodka mixture into clean jars; secure with lids. Let stand 3 weeks in a cool, dark place, shaking every other day. We put our mixture in a big glass bowl that we stirred every other day. Depends on what you have available.

Step 5: Strain the cranberry mixture through a cheesecloth-lined sieve into a bowl, and discard solids. Carefully pour liqueur into clean bottles or jars. Note: Liqueur can be stored refrigerated or at room temperature for up to a year.

193 calories for 1/4 cup.

Recipe credit to: Cooking Light, December 2003
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=554718

Week 17: Homemade Granola Bars

Sorry for the long delay in posts. Was on vacation for a little bit! Little too cold in Florida for January for me and back to California for 80 degree weather!

I was watching the Food Network again! I really love Alton Brown, he is quirky and always has good ideas and interesting things to cook. I saw his program on making homemade granola bars and thought, perfect. Protein bars and granola bars are always expensive and I tend to eat snacks during the day and really liked having some granola bars around for my mid-day treat. The great thing about making your own granola bars or protein bars, is that you know what is in them and no preservatives! These are pretty simple and you should have most of the ingredients in your pantry.

I took a few of these granola bars in a zip-lock bag on a trip and ended up putting in a brownie I had made as well for my afternoon snack. Well, you can imagine the brownie mashed into the granola bars and, WOW, what a combo! Brownie Granola Bars! Yum. The combo was really great! Since you are baking the granola, you really can’t put in chocolate chips or anything that would melt, but this is a nice way to add some chocolate.

Homemade Granola Bars

• 2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats


• ½ cup raw sunflower seeds


• 1 cup sliced almonds


• ½ cup wheat germ


• ½ cup honey


• 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed


• 1-ounce unsalted butter, plus extra for pan


• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract or almond extract


• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt


• 6 1/2 ounces chopped dried fruit, any combination of apricots, cherries or blueberries
  

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 12 muffin tins.

Step 2: Spread the oats, sunflower seeds, almonds, and wheat germ onto a half-sheet pan. (I lined the sheet with tin foil, just for easier clean up.) Place in the oven and toast for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Step 3: Combine the honey, brown sugar, butter, extract, and salt in a medium saucepan and place over medium heat. Cook until the brown sugar has completely dissolved.

Step 4: Once the oat mixture is done, remove it from the oven and reduce the heat to 300 degrees F. Immediately add the oat mixture to the liquid mixture, add the dried fruit, and stir to combine.

Step 5: Put mix in muffin tins and press down. Place in the oven to bake for 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely. Store in an airtight container for up to a week.

The granola will look like it will fall apart when you take it out, but when it cools, it will harden due to the honey and sugar. Not to worry! Well, there you go, homemade granola. Has some fun with it, mix up your dried fruit, nuts, etc. I think this a pretty flexible recipe, so be a little hillbilly.

Recipe credit to: Alton Brown, Good Eats on the Food Network
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/granola-bars-recipe2/index.html
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/protein-bars-recipe/index.html

Week 16: Pie Birds

Who doesn’t like pies?! I had always thought of pies as sweet desserts, but when my boyfriend, Scott, got a Pie cookbook for Christmas a few years ago, we realized the diversity in sweet and savory pies! Marie Calendars has made millions on Chicken Pot Pies! (Have you seen the calories in the frozen varieties?) Scott is currently on a pie kick, pie for breakfast, lunch, and even dinner! So we have been making a few pies lately, with store bought crust for now, but soon we will move up and experiment with making our own pie dough. Fruit pies are some of my favorites and usually you just make slits in the pie for venting. But, we starting looking into pie vents, AKA, pie birds, and there is just something cool about a little bird in a pie. Anyone can cut a regular little slit in a pie, but a pie bird is so cute and an amazing little invention.
So for Christmas this year I decided to get Scott your traditional black pie bird and... I couldn’t find them anywhere! I checked Sur la Table, Williams Sonoma, other local cooking stores, hardware stores, and nothing! The only place I could find a pie bird was online. You practically pay more for shipping than the pie bird, but he was cute. Scott loved him and we decided to name him, Charlie. So this weekend, we used Charlie the pie bird in a mincemeat pie. Charlie did his job, our pie tin was a little too big, but all in all, it worked well and Charlie was happy to be doing his job and venting steam.

I’d recommend when making your next fruit pie, forget cutting those little vents and get yourself a little pie bird and have some fun. It is a bit hillbilly so enjoy! Here is an amazing pie cookbook if you love pies as much as we do and they use pie birds too!

Pie, by Angela Boggiano

Week 15: Presser Cooker Cooking

Pressure cookers have always been a mystery to me. As a kid, I remember this scary, whistling, dangerous pot on the stove. My mother was burnt a few times and boy those are nasty burns! Well a few decades later, it seems pressure cookers have gone hi-tech! A few years ago, I got a pressure cooker for Christmas, but this was no ordinary whistling scary pressure cooker, but a German designed, hi-tech, hard to get burned pressure cooker! I got a WMF Perfect Plus pressure cooker and a wonderful cookbook called, The Pressure Cooker Gourmet, by Victoria Wise. If you have a pressure cooker, get this book!

I love the concept of short cooking times with the taste of cooking in the oven. I still have some work to do with cooking in the pressure cooker and need to try some more recipes. My favorite way of cooking cabbage is in the pressure cooker, it takes 5 minutes of cooking and 5 minutes of cool down. Easy and awesome. So that has been about all I have cooked in my pressure cooker until this past weekend, when we decided to make game hens! Big step I know, but the recipe sounded so good, Game Hens with Fig, Orange Zest, and Herb Couscous Stuffing in Honey Almond Glaze. Yum! Total cook time was 22 minutes with 5 minutes of rest. We could have cooked the birds a little longer since we had monster game hens, so we microwaved them for a few minutes, but the pressure cooking method was easy. We definitely need to work at this, but I think this is a great way to cook a little hillbilly. Have fun and don’t be afraid to cook with a modern pressure cooker.

Recipe credit to: Pressure Cooker Gourmet, by Victoria Wise