My Brownie Conundrum

By Somer

I really love brownies.  Well, let me rephrase that:  I really love good brownies.  I understand that good can be a very subjective word so I’ll give my definition of what makes a brownie good in my head.

I love thick, dense, fudgy, and soft brownies.  I don’t like light and fluffy or cakey brownies.  I don’t really love nuts in my brownies and I’m not crazy about coffee flavoring.  I want a straight forward brick of chocolate goodness when I am going to eat a brownie.

Here’s my problem:  I have yet to find a homemade brownie recipe that measures up to the boxed brand that really gets my engine roaring.  I keep getting dry, cakey, light brownies.  Some call for “just a teaspoon of coffee because it brings out the chocolate flavoring” which is bull because, as someone who rarely drinks coffee, it makes the brownies taste like COFFEE!  I get recipes the rely heavily on the addition of nuts to help with flavoring and texture, and I get recipes that just taste bad.

I don’t want my brownies to taste like cake or cookies…I prefer something that is akin to what would happen if chocolate cake and fudge had a baby…that baby would be the perfect brownie.  Actually, the closest homemade thing that I have found to my perfect brownie is a molten chocolate cake.  That was close.

I’m writing this to let you all know that I’m frustrated.  I’m going to keep looking, but I don’t want to have to keep buying my perfect brownie from a box.  I want to make it from scratch.  If you have any recipes that you think are what I might be looking for, please submit them to me (my email is located to the left under the contact tag).

If you have a recipe conundrum like me, don’t get discouraged.  With the internet at our fingertips, it is both a curse and a blessing in our search for food perfection.  Don’t be afraid to use it, or the book store, or your local library.

VANILLA EXTRACT:  WEEK 3

It’s getting great color.  It still smells like rum, but it’s looking great!  We’re about half way there.

Junk Food Confessions: Part 1

By Somer

Since we had a simple fish dish for dinner tonight and the homemade baked bean recipe that I tested over the weekend still needs to tweaking, I’ve decided to put my pride in the backseat for a bit and make a confession or two regarding my undying love for junk food.  That’s right, I love junk food.  In my vocabulary, the term “junk food” encompasses things like fast food, sweets, processed foods, and basically things that are very bad for you and carry almost no nutritional value.  But, as you can see, I have little or no shame regarding my affair with the dark side of the world of food.

I could sit here and try to make excuses as to why I love junk food.  I grew up poor and these kinds of foods were the only indulgences my family could afford;  Some of the only family bonding my brother and I did with our mom was with us staying up late on Saturday nights watching scary movies and pigging out on potato chips;  I use food for comfort and the sweets tend to provide the most comfort for me.  Those are all excuses and I don’t firmly stand behind a single one of them.  The one golden fact that I can offer is that I just love them.  Just because.

-White Cheddar Popcorn:  This is something that I don’t get very often…..because I will actually sit and eat the entire bag.  I pop my own popcorn every now and then and sprinkle a white cheddar flavoring over the top, but it’s not as sinful as the stuff in a bag.  It’s just soo good.

-Puffed Corn Cheese Snacks:  I love Cheese Balls.  I love Cheese Curls.  I love Cheese Puffs.  I can restrain myself and eat a handful or so at a time, but I still love them.  I have such warm and fuzzy memories from my childhood of eating bologna sandwiches with a side of cheese puffs.

-Lay’s Sour Cream and Onion Potato Chips:  This is probably my all time favorite snack.  I really like potato chips of all different flavors, but this particular brand has been my unchallenged favorite since I was a child.  I still like to buy a bag every now and then and see if I can make it last the whole month.  These go great crunched into a turkey sandwich.  That’s not weird!

-Animal Crackers:  As you know, these are more like a cookie.  When I was little, every now and then one of my attending grown ups (parent, grandparent, etc.) would buy me one of those tiny boxes of Barnum’s Animal Crackers.  It was a treat I had maybe a handful of times in my entire childhood.  Well, when I was pregnant with my son, I was at a Costco and saw a huge tub of Organic Disney animal crackers.  I ate the entire tub in about 2 months.  Now I always have one of those huge tubs in my pantry so that I can snag a couple when I need a little pick me up.  I love them!

-Donuts (or Doughnuts, if you prefer):  I love donuts!  My favorite are the original Krispy Kremes.  I also love chocolate glazed, powder sugared, cream (not custard) filled, jelly filled, fruit filled, cheese filled…..oh I could go on and on.  Again, this isn’t something that I allow myself to indulge too often, but when I do I really enjoy it.

-Soda:  Yes.  I love soda.  I drink diet soda so as not to completely destroy what little bit of a figure I have, but I cannot go through my life without soda.  I’ve tried quitting.  I’ve gone a year before without soda, but then I went to a party where there was only soda to drink and immediately after I was at the grocery store buying soda for my home.

-Vanilla Wafers:  When a get strong hunger pangs late at night, I come downstairs and eat 4 of these babies and drink a small glass of milk and it’s always enough to kill the hunger.  My great grandmother was very very poor, but she always had ‘Nilla Wafers to offer me when I would visit her home and I always think of her when I eat them.

-Cookies:  Any kind.  I love them all.  Oreo are great, but I love baking homemade.

-Candy Bars:  I almost never eat these, but I love them.  I love Snickers, Baby Ruth, Hershey with Almonds, Twix, Kit Kat, and Mr. Goodbar.  YUM.

-Little Debbie Snacks:  Name one and I’ll tell you that I love it.

This is only the snack part.  Tomorrow I will share with you my shameful and passionate love for the McDonald’s Big Mac.  I hope you don’t think less of me for indulging in junk every now and then.  If you do, then I blow a raspberry in your general direction!

Yummy Popcorn on the Cheap is Smart

By Somer

Those bags of popcorn with that greasy, disgusting “butter flavoring” that you put in the microwave are not only yucky, but it is also insanely expensive…considering what it is.  Don’t buy that stuff, people.  Please.  I’ll beg if I have to.

Buy the bags of popcorn that look like this.  This is a 1-pound bag and I paid less than $2 for it.  Ha!  That got your attention, didn’t it?  This bag will last months in my house (my husband and I are piggies and love popcorn).  For a serving of popcorn that will satisfy two piggies such as us, you only need about 1/3 cup of the popcorn.  The bags come with cooking directions but you basically need a pot, vegetable oil, and the popcorn.

I know the microwavable atrocities only take like 4 minutes to make but to make it this way is seriously not much longer.  It’s not even 10 minutes.  And this way you can control salt content and flavorings.

Personally, I’m a nut for white cheddar anything and this flavoring can be purchased right in my regular supermarket.  If I want just a tiny sprinkling of salt, I can do that.  There are lots of different flavorings for popcorn in the supermarket.  It’s a better selection than what the microwavable atrocities offer.

Also, this popcorn just tastes better.  There’s a sweetness to it that you won’t find with the microwavable atrocities.  And best of all?  You need this kind of popcorn to make Popcorn Balls.  If you’ve never had Popcorn Balls, you have my deepest sympathies because you have missed out on a lovely part of life.  I’ll post a recipe in due time.  For right now, just enjoy a regular bowl cuddled on the couch or in bed.