Costa Rica Parte Una: McPinto and a Haunted Sanatorio

People always get super envious when I mention that we are making a trip to Costa Rica to visit Husband’s parents and brother. I am always a bit more nonchalant as I regard it as a family trip to visit the in-laws. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy going and appreciate that I have the opportunity to go more than the average person. I get that it is a cool and exotic locale that I get to go to instead of say, um… Normal, Illinois. No offense to Normal. I am sure it is a lovely little city. It just happens to be the first place that popped in my head. Probably because it is called Normal. Who came up with that one? That city was destined to get a bum rap from the get go!

However, back to my point. Think about your own family trips. It is always fun and exciting because you get to see people you don’t see that often and you are leaving your home base for new surroundings for a while. However, really THINK about what you do. You just hang out most of the time and revel in being lazy. You eat, watch TV, putz on the computer, read guilty pleasures books and magazines, visit with family and friends, sleep lots, etc. You venture out occasionally to run errands or maybe go shopping, and your hosts probably plan one or two fun excursions while you are there. I am right, aren’t I!?! It is not like when you take a getaway vacation to some place new and exciting where you: Cram. In. Everything. You. Possibly. Can. (In way too short amount of time to really see any thing). I think that is how everyone envisions our trips to Costa Rica because they are seeing it as a vacation destination and not as just Husband’s childhood home. Of course, we do manage to add some fun to our family visit so it is a vacation, too! So that it what I am going to share: the fun vacationy stuff. Cuz, let me tell you, I have done plenty of the hum drum stuff above, and boy, it has been lovely to be lazy and relax! Unfortunately, I don’t think you would find it particularly interesting reading.

First, some general impressions of Costa Rica and San Jose. I have actually spent quite a bit of time in Central America, and there is a definite look and feel to this region of the world. Part of it is the terrain (lush, green, tropical, mountainous), another part the language and the people, and the other part is just the general look of the architecture. I think the design of buildings is large part of the familiarity I have encountered in my travels. I suspect for durability (earthquakes, humid and damp climates) and cost, most homes are made of cinder blocks and are quite boxy and flat. In the city, everything is fenced, walled, and gated. There are bars on the windows and doors, and often razor wire on top of the walls. It makes you realize how naively we often take our security for granted in our own neighborhoods. Now, in actuality, I have never felt particularly unsafe in any of my Latin American travels, although I often am quite aware of my gringaness (I think I just made that word up). Get ready for more Spanglish, by the way.

This is about my sixth trip to Costa Rica, and I definitely grow to appreciate it more and more with each visit. San Jose is really like any other large city other than the differences in architecture and the signs being in a different language. I am honestly not that familiar with the city. Despite the numerous extended stays, I still do not feel like I know how to get around the city and only have a vague sense of its layout. I guess we can chalk that up to my laziness in ambition to familiarize myself, as well as a lack of need, to date. I try to pay attention when we are out in the car, but I don’t think I could get to my in-laws’ house on my own even if my life depended on it. I also realized that we spend most of our time in the equivalent of a suburb of the city so that doesn't really help either. In fact, I have only been to downtown proper on a few occasions. On my last visit, R and I did a little exploring, and he took me to a cool museum (Museo Nacional) and an historic theatre (Teatro Nacional). However, that is about it for my city explorations. When we explore, we head out of the city.

Even after all my travels here and there, I am still taken off guard when I see something familiar like a Taco Bell or Papa John’s plopped down in somewhat alien surroundings. You have such a sense of differentness when travelling that it seems odd to see something that you associate with the United States right there in front of you. I do not really find it that comforting. I enjoy the experience of being some place different, and for me, it almost seems incorrect to have it invaded by something that I regard as such American icons (or perhaps blights???). I am sure the locals are happy to be able ogle the waitresses at Hooter’s (yes, there is one), to make their McDonald’s run, and enjoy the Colonel’s chicken, but give me comida tipica!

Speaking of which, I saw the funniest thing today. See, the national dish of Costa Rica is called Gallo Pinto. It is basically a mixture of day old rice, black bean, onions, peppers, and seasonings that is fried up and served for breakfast with tortillas and a fried egg on top. Yummo! So we are driving down the street, and I am reading all the signs and billboards like I always do in a weird effort to increase my familiarity with the Spanish language. What do I see? I see a McDonald’s bulletin board advertising McPinto Deluxe. I am not even kidding. They were advertising their own offering of Gallo Pinto that they are calling McPinto. I was pretty much speechless.

Onto the first actual adventure in this blog series. The day after Christmas, R and I headed to a supposedly haunted, abandoned sanitarium as a fun get out of the house excursion with his brother and several of his friends. It is located in the outskirts of Cartago and has been used as a tuberculosis hospital called Prusia, as an insane asylum called Sanatorio Carlos Duran, and an orphanage for children. It was really out in the middle of nowhere farm land with the next closest landmark being a volcano that last erupted in the 1960’s, which apparently led to it being vacated for the last time, I think. I did not get the haunted vibe at all, but I wasn’t really looking for it, and perhaps there was too many visitors for shy ghosties. It was creepy, though, when you thought about what is was used for in the past, and the hallway with all the children’s handprints was a little unsettling. On R’s Facebook photo album, I called it a tropical Shutter Island. Along with the interesting architecture, there was tons of more current graffiti throughout the entire building. Here is a link with a few more details if you are interested, as well as someone else’s blog entry with a good picture and some creepy stories about the place. Side note: he references Louisville's Waverly Sanitarium in the same blog. How funny!

It was not quite as abandoned as we expected as they were actually charging admission, and this was not apparently an original idea given the holidays so there were quite a few visitors besides just ourselves. Despite the unexpected popularity and commercialism, it was still quite an interesting exploration. As I previously mentioned, there is definite architectural style that you encounter in most of Latin America. I will call it cement block utilitarianism. It has its own weird charm, but it is definitely unlike anything that most of us North Americans are used to encountering. This place did not fit this design mold at all. It had hard wood floors and painted plaster walls in most places and more of what I would consider a North American design style. Not really sure why it ended up being built this way, but it is obvious why you don’t see much of this style and use of materials around these parts. The wet, humid climate, along with neglect has taken its toll. Despite its unpleasant past uses, I could almost imagine that at one point it had a sort of dignified beauty about it. It was huge, and it felt like a maze with its multiple wings, floors and rooms connecting to rooms connecting to rooms.

On the way back, R’s brother took us to one of his favorite places for lunch, Posada De La Luna . It provided typical Costa Rican cuisine (comida tipica) that did not let us down, including freshly made corn tortillas, yummy plaintains (maduros), yucca frita, and this really awesome tortilla de queso. It is kind of hard to describe as it is not a quesadilla. It is more like they took masa and local salty cheese, mixed it all up into a thick tortilla and pan fried it. Soooo good! I also had my first refresco naturale, otherwise known as fresh fruit juice. I got mora (blackberry). R likes his with leche (yuk). However, I was jealous of his cool cookie on top! It was a yummy way to wrap up our adventure for the day.

Cultural End Note: Christmas is a big deal here in this majority Catholic country. Everyone gets into the spirit. Gas stations are over the top decorated with garlands and trees on top of gas pumps. Everywhere you look there are nativity scenes. Christmas Eve, in particular, is a huge celebratory night with evening masses and lots of fireworks and firecrackers. Long after we went to bed, or tried to at least, they continued on and on and on….

Husband will get all photo credits on this trip as chief camera operator. Here is a link to his facebook album. Enjoy!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=38202&id=100000653285100&l=09e73271ea

Cleaning Out the Fridge for Holiday Travel

As I started writing this, I realized that I am becoming one of the THOSE cooks who share a recipe they threw together with lots of vagueness about what to do. However, I am not a particularly adventuresome and creative cook when it comes to making stuff up. I tend to look at cookbooks and food blogs for inspiration, so I really do keep it simple if it is something I put together without a recipe. And since this is not really meant to be a cooking blog, I don’t feel too bad. So, this week’s cooking adventure was intended to clear as much out of our fridge as possible before starting holiday travels and not do too much grocery shopping before we left. We had lots of lovely CSA goodies to use up. It also helps that I am pretty much at loose ends. I am much more motivated to cook when I haven’t been on the go all day.

Day 1: Spinach Enchiladas

I modeled this off a chicken and spinach enchilada recipe I have used as a repeated standby through the years. We have cut back our meat intake back quite a bit, so I decided to see how it was with just spinach. It was a pretty good team effort by R and I. We always forget how much we really like working together in the kitchen when we both have the time and energy. We are slowly figuring out a rhythm and pattern that works in our teeny kitchen.

Note: I realized how used to pre-cleaned produce we get. Man, that spinach was DIRTY! Had to do the whole submerge in water thing.

The filling:

I used two bags of fresh spinach. Guess I could have weighed it, but I didn’t.

Chopped and cooked down an onion till soft and brown. Added about 4 cloves of chopped garlic and the spinach. Let it all cook down.

The Sauce:

It called for 8 oz of sour cream, but I only had about half that, so I added extra yogurt and didn’t notice a difference

Original recipe called for ¼ c. plain non-fat yogurt. Clearly used more than that (see above).

About 1 ½ cups of low fat milk.

1 tbsp cumin

4 oz can of chopped chilies (we used a package of our frozen CSA chilies)

2 tbsp of flour

Mix it all up. I added several big spoonfuls to the spinach mixture to make it a little creamy.

Making the Enchiladas:

We used flour tortillas, but it would be yummy with corn tortillas, too.

Put some filling in, and roll. Yep, that simple. Biggest challenge is eyeballing it to make it stretch evenly for amount of enchiladas you are making. I can’t really help you with that one. Just use your common sense!

I recommend greasing your pan. I used cooking spray. We filled a 9 x 13 baking dish.

Dump the rest of the sauce over the enchiladas and spread it out to cover. Sprinkle with cheese.

Bake at 375 degrees for about 30 – 40 minutes until browned and bubbly.

We served ours with rice as a side. Enjoy!

Day 2: Beans, Greens and Cornbread

My inspiration came from this recipe, although honestly, it didn’t taste particularly “mexicany” to me.

Have I mentioned how much we love our slow cooker? We used to do “Slow Cooker Sundays” all

the time before moving. We are slowly getting back into the groove. I have found it is absolutely amazing for cooking a big old pot of beans all day long. I do love the simplicity of a bowl of beans. This also worked out well because we had one of my classmate friends, L, and her fellow, D, over for dinner since we had been chatting about getting together before we went our separate ways for the break. They had been packing all day as they are moving to a new place, so it was nice to treat them to a hot meal. We all know how tiring packing can be!

Note: A lot of our spices comes from Penzey’s. I guess this is a bit of a free plug for them. LOVE them. In many cases, they will be the same price or cheaper than what you can get at your local grocery, especially if you buy the bigger bulk bags.

Crockpot Bean Soup

1 lb of dried pintos (no need to soak!) Just rinse and look for rocks and junk that shouldn’t be there.

1 chopped onion

3 cloves of garlic, chopped

Seasonings: 1 ½ tbsp of cumin, Adobo seasoning, Chicago Steak Seasoning, Smoked Spanish Paprika, 2 spoonfuls of brown sugar, Trinidad Seasoning. All of this was to taste throughout the cooking process.

Fill the cooker about 2/3 of the way with water and cook on low for at least 8 hours. I added some more water along the way to keep the beans barely covered so they would not get dry and crusty.

Greens

This was an attempt to use up random bags of mystery greens we had received from the CSA. I used half a bag of something of which I had no clue what it is, but knew it had tasted good last week! The other bag was little baby kale. This was pretty simple. I pulled all the stems off (hate stems), and gave it a good rinse. Threw it in a big skillet with a drizzle of olive oil and 2 Tbps of butter. For spices, I used an Herbed Season Salt, Trinidad seasoning, red pepper flakes, and some ground pepper. After they wilted down, I drizzled them with some red wine vinegar. That’s it, people! You wanna know what else? Greens are kinda starting to grow on me, especially when I season them the way I like it. I think that is the key: Use seasonings you like to accent the flavor of the greens.

Cornbread

As I mentioned, this was an effort to get rid of stuff in our refrigerator. Well, we were out of eggs, so I went in quest of an eggless cornbread recipe on the internet. This is the one I picked, and I followed it as is (Well, we were out of wheat pastry flour, so I used a mix of all purpose and wheat flour). It got pretty good reviews from all of us, and I would make it again. I typically rely on good old Jiffy mix, but as I threw together this one bowl wonder, I realized how EASY it is to make cornbread from scratch. Why on earth I have not figured that out before now… who knows?

Day 3: Couscous Salad with Butternut Squash and Sauteed Radishes and Peas

Again, we were trying to work our way through as many vegetables as possible before travelling, so that was the primary goal with this menu. The added bonus is that both recipes called for citrus and we have gotten a ton of oranges through the CSA. I had been eyeing this salad for a while after reading about it on two different blogs. I found it pretty yummy, but I think I would cut it in half next time. The leftovers were okay but not great, and actually, we left some behind that we just could not get through before travelling. I went light on the cinnamon because R is not a big fan of it in savory dishes and I subbed allspice for nutmeg as we didn’t have any. I also added more oil to the dressing as I thought the proportions were a little high on the acidic side. The radish dish was an experiment. I have always been curious about what cooked radishes would be like. I did make a few minor changes from the original recipe. I used frozen peas instead of sugar snaps. We are not fans of dill, so I subbed dried tarragon. Overall, it wasn’t bad and not nearly as weird as you might think it could be. It mellowed out the sharpness of the radishes but left the crunch. I don’t think I would make it regularly, but it is an unusual way to fix radishes if you are looking for something different. It also looks really pretty. I wasn’t crazy with how it reheated, so I would only make enough for one meal or make sure you are fixing it for more than two people.

Here is the link to the Couscous Salad with Butternut Squash

Here is the link to the Sauteed Radishes with Peas

Aunty C Returns to Middle America (AKA, Indiana and Kentucky)

I became an aunt for the first time on June 12, 2010. I am definitely a big fan of being an aunt. I feel extra cool and stuff, and I don’t have to worry about all that scary parenting! Due to the craziness that has been my life since making the decision to move to Flagstaff, I have not been able to make a trip home to meet my lovely little niece. This is definitely where technology makes distance easier, though. I have watched her grow over the last 6 months, so I have not felt completely disconnected. Again, also due the craziness that has been our life, we have not been back to Louisville or my parent’s house up the river in Indiana since last winter. Although I have a whole month off from school and work, it was not possible to find a period of time during said month when all my family would be in Indiana, if you can believe it! Anyways. I was able to find a long weekend shortly before the end of the semester where I could slip away for a visit. Of course, I naively thought I would be all done with my school work, but more on that later.

A remote location definitely makes traveling longer. I arrived at the Flagstaff airport at dawn (at least there is an airport, right?), then headed to Phoenix, then to Charlotte (where the sun was now setting), before finally landing in Louisville. My pictures from the airport make it clear I had arrived in Louisville. It has been a while since I have actually flown to Louisville, and I don’t remember these goofy things, but they are so Kentucky I just could resist a couple of quick snapshots.

Although the flying part of my journey was quite done at that point, it was still an hour and twenty minute drive to my parent’s house in Madison. We went to dinner in Louisville at one of my favorite places to eat: Café Lou Lou. R and I are addicted to the Mezze Platter. Although it is on the menu as an appetizer, we make a very good meal out of it. What is it about dips? It is so fun to pile up a little bit of this and a little bit of that onto a pita. It is definitely one of my favorite Mediterranean dishes of all time. We have attempted a couple of times to make some of the more unusual items on the platter with varying degrees of success. Here is a picture, although it is a little dark.

As referenced earlier, I was not done with my mountains of end of semester writing even though I had anticipated being done with everything by the time I travelled. So, I spent Friday morning holed up writing away. I was thrilled that my darling Callie kitty was excited to see me. It has been hit or miss with her affection since they were moved to “grandma and grandpa’s” house after R and I got married. No pets allowed in campus housing, sigh. She snuggled up with me all night and as you can see, was a great foot warmer while I was writing my papers. However, Roxie, our

Brittany spaniel, was very jealous of all the attention she was getting so, she had to get up on the bed, too. Talk about two jealous old ladies! They are not each other’s biggest fans and I think they spend a lot of time competing for who gets the most love. Callie swats at Roxie when she gets too close, but Roxie knows she has the size advantage. After a morning of writing, my mom and I headed to my Nana’s house (godmother) as I had not had a chance to see her in a long time. She is a wonderful woman who has literally known me since the day I was born, and once kindly put a roof over my head for a few months while I was in transition after college.

That evening, I met up with a high school friend, A, at one of the local wineries. Here is a link to The Thomas Family Winery. It is still sometimes referred to as “the old Greyhound station.” I met Steve and Elizabeth shortly after they moved to Madison to start the winery, gosh… wow… close to 15 years ago. Where does the time go? They make wonderful wines, have live music on the weekends, are great hosts, and provide an all around great pub like atmosphere. So A and I spent several hours gabbing and catching up over red wine and cheese. We have travelled a lot together over the years, but it has been a while. So, we are planning a trip for the fall of 2012 when I should have my diploma in hand and hopefully a new job. She always has the best ideas. We are going to do a Irish horse drawn caravan trip. Okay, I know you are going, what??? I did the same thing until she sent me a link explaining it. So here is a link that does a much better job of showing you what it is all about. I think it is gonna be way cool and an interesting way to explore the Irish country side. http://www.irishhorsedrawncaravans.com/

Saturday was our big family gathering. My sister, her husband, and my darling niece came down from Indianapolis along with my other sister who is in college there. J’s birthday happened to be on Monday, so we celebrated her birthday. I won’t overwhelm you with a bazillion pictures, but here are a few highlights of me and my crazy family. If you want to see more, you can check out my album on Facebook. As you can see most of the day was about my niece and her being the center of attention. As the first grandchild and niece of our generation, I think she had more pictures taken than the average super model on a photo shoot! She is 6 months old, so she is at that super cute age where she is aware of you, getting wiggly, rolls around a lot, and almost crawling. She has also found her voice and is starting to babble. Anyways, it was great fun, and yes, I did let other people hold her. The pictures are proof of that! After a busy day of family and food, I was headed to “the Ville,” (Louisville) or Luhvul as we like to say. If you say “Lewisville” or “Looeyville” people will know you are NOT from the area.

I get to feed my niece

Gnawing on the best toy ever, Sophie the Giraffe, that Auntie C gave her

Grandma and Grandpa!

Siblings and Darling Niece Shot with Jule's Birthday Cake

This is what happens when we try to take a picture together (it took about three)

Much better with Darling Niece

I can't remember the last time we had a picture with the whole family. And everyone actually looks good in it!

The next 24 hours was a whirlwind of meeting up with good friends from my Louisville days. Starting with a sushi dinner on Saturday with my good friend C (where I, as usual ordered too many rolls), Sunday brunch at Lynn’s Paradise Cafe for the best biscuits and gravy (why oh why is there no good biscuits and gravy out west???), on to tea and Cake Flour cupcakes (featured on Food Network's Best Thing I Ever Ate) at the Hillbilly Tea (which is a new and super cute downtown destination, and I would totally have eaten there if not stuffed from biscuits and gravy). Then I did mad more paper writing to meet my Sunday night deadline then wrapped up with a good gab fest with my host P (and bestie) and our good friend Double D. I should mention that P fosters another one of our cats, Kobi. He was a bit standoffish, but as you can see, he

couldn’t resist curling up with my netbook. After they left, I finished proofing my paper so I could email it from a local coffee shop, before heading back to Madison. It was getting pretty late in the day and the snow was sticking so I was in a hurry. This is where it gets interesting, frustrating, and embarrassing.

I load my backpack and purse into my mom’s Pathfinder, and pull out the snow scraper to brush off the snow. I had the brilliant idea to start the car so it could warm up while I was getting the snow off. A little voice in my head told me to leave the door open as I had vague recollections of it being easy to lock the keys in this car. So, this went fine, until I rounded the final corner, skidded a bit, knocked the door and it swung shut. I had that NOOOOOOO moment. Then I thought to myself that maybe I had made up that whole locking the keys in the car business, so I tried the handle. Nope, definitely locked. Tried the other three and the back, just in case. Yep. Definitely locked. Did I mention it was snowing? Did I mention the car was running? Did I mention everything, including my cell phone and AAA card were in the locked car? Did I mention that my host had already left for some evening plans? Pretty sure I used some strong expletive for a few minutes while I considered my options. Knowing that P has decent relationships with her neighbors, I went there and knocked. I introduced myself and explained my sorry situation. They very kindly let me in to use their phone and internet to look up a number for AAA. Which, by the way, is very difficult to find on their website. Humph! Called for lock service, and then called my mom to break the news about why I was going to be a bit later than I had planned. Well, then I learned that there was a key hidden for that very reason… So, called AAA back to cancel service, and was on my way about five minutes later. Stopped at Highland Coffee for a latte and to email my final paper. I really wanted a mocha with blackberry whip cream (and I always order my drinks without whip, so it is THAT good), but was in a bit of a sugar overload by the end of my day, so went for the straight latte. A very slow 45 mph drive then ensued, and I made it home almost two hours later. Sheesh! What an end to the day.

Other than a lunch date with another high school friend, the rest of my trip was pretty chill and was spent hanging out with my parents and brother, which I needed and enjoyed. Before I knew

it, it was time to head to the airport. Callie tried really hard to get me to pack her up for the return trip back. Mom treated me to a hearty breakfast at Wild Eggs, where I got the Truffled Scramble, yum. I want to learn how to make their Everything Muffin, it is sweet and savory at the same time. Then it was time to come back to Flag. I love it here, but boy, do I get homesick for Louisville and my old haunts when I am there. You just cannot beat the architecture in that area. Both Louisville and Madison just have the most beautiful architecture and green space. I was looking forward to escaping the cold, snow, and rain. However, the blue skies and fifty degree weather disappeared with my return to Flag. Has been gray, snowy, and rainy ever since. Sigh!

Sweet Semester Endings and High Altitude Baking

For the end of the semester, I agreed to make some fun desserts for my staff’s last meeting as a thank you for their hard work. I asked for suggestions and got a request for brownies and for dessert pizza. One of my staff, who was transferring to another school, is vegan, so I also decided to experiment and try to make several vegan desserts. As usual, I forgot to take pictures. One of these days I will actually get in the habit of remembering to do so.

With regards to high altitude baking, we really didn’t have any problems with this other than that the sugar cookie crust spread a little more than I anticipated. I actually picked the brownie recipe because someone who commented on it was a high altitude baker and said it worked well. We did treat ourselves to this great cookbook, Pie in the Sky, since we both like baking and wanted some extra guidance. This one is nice because it has tables for different altitudes and has some nice stories about her journey to create all these recipes. We have used it for reference several times already with pretty good success.

Ultimate Vegan Brownies

These brownies were pretty tasty. They were very rich and fudgy, and yes, I really couldn’t tell they were vegan. I had never cooked with coconut oil before, but we had been wanting to try it as we had heard it was a good alternative for butter for some baking. I will warn it is pretty pricey, but we found it on sale so we decided to splurge and try it. I found it made the brownies a little oily or greasy, so I might try a little less. I also discovered that my instant espresso powder was REALLY old and concluded it might be best to not use it.We ended up just grinding up some coffee super fine and letting it sit in hot water. I found the coffee taste to be a bit bitter and strong. In the future I would probably brew the coffee or make sure I had fresh instant espresso. Other than that, we followed the recipe as given. The flax as a substitute for egg worked well, as creepily had the consistency of eggs after it sat as instructed. So they were good, but I would like to give them another go and see what I think with a little less oil and brewed coffee. The recipe follows, but if you click on the title above it will link you to the original recipe.

1 cup coconut oil
4 oz. (or 112 grams) bittersweet chocolate or to be even more strict just use unsweetened chocolate with 70% (or more) cocoa solids.
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp instant coffee or espresso powder
1/2 cup hot water
2 cups sugar
1 cup cake or pastry flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup dutch process cocoa
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp flax seeds (ground)
6 Tbsp hot water

Preheat oven to 350°F and grease an 8 x 8 pan.

• In a double boiler or a bowl set atop a pot of gently simmering water, melt the coconut oil, chocolate squares and vanilla together.
• Mix the coffee (or espresso) powder with the 1/2 cup of hot water and stir into the coconut/chocolate mixture. Add sugar and remove from heat. The sugars will dissolve a bit but you don’t need to completely dissolve it.
• In another bowl, sift together the flours, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk to combine.
• In yet another bowl (small one), mix the flax seeds and 6 Tbsp of hot water, allow to sit for 2-3 minutes.
• Combine the chocolate/coconut oil mixture with the flour mixture and stir to incorporate. Add the thickened flax and stir that in as well.
• Pour the batter into the greased baking pan and bake for 30-40 minutes. Start checking the brownies after the first 30 minutes to ensure it is baking evenly.
• When finished, remove the brownies from the oven, set atop a cooling rack and get busy somewhere else. These babies need to be utterly cooled before consuming. If you attempt to eat them before they are properly cooled, they will crumble. When they are properly cooled, you can’t even tell they are eggless, I promise!

Banana Bread French Toast Cupcakes

These you MUST try. Robert tried these on a whim for us to take to a friend’s house for dinner one night, and they disappeared in minutes. Since then, they have made multiple appearances. They go together ridiculously easy and are addictive. The first time, we made them with cow milk, but then decided to experiment making them vegan. We both dislike soy milk, so we decided to try almond milk. We leave out the almond extract because we do not like it, however that is why we decided to try using almond milk. I don’t like nuts in baked goods, so we also left those out. We found the almond milk worked well. They seemed a little stickier than the first time with cow milk, but we really didn’t notice the difference, otherwise. We like to use our mini-muffin pan along with couple of muffin tops. Again, click on the recipe title to follow a link to the original recipe. What follows is our adaptations.

1/2 cup mashed over ripe banana

1 & 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup canola oil

2/3 cup milk (dairy or non-dairy)

1 tsp vanilla extract

Then you:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line pan with paper liners (or spray with baking spray).
• Throw your mashed banana in a blender or or just smash it with a fork.
• Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and sugar into a large bowl, mix well. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the oil, soy or rice milk, vanilla, almond and mashed banana. Stir or fold the wet ingredients into the dry. Small lumps are fine.
• Fill liners 2/3 full (we didn't use liners, and just sprayed the muffin tins with cooking spray). Bake 20-22 minutes or until tops spring back when lightly touched. Cool in pan on wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and cool completely.

Really Yummy Oat Bars

The inspiration for these is this amazing strawberry cookie bar that I had at Macy’s Coffeehouse. My friend came across this recipe in a macrobiotic cookbook she has, so she passed it on to me since the ingredients sounded very similar to what we had assessed as we ate one of the bars. It is not quite the same, but they are still really yummy as the recipe title promises! With the pan that I used, I decided to put all the oat mixture down and make a second half batch of the oat mixture to put on top of the preserves. I didn’t measure it, but I know I also used more strawberry preserves than it called for. I just spread it out until it made a full layer across the full pan.

• ½ c. whole wheat flour
• 1 ½ c. rolled oats
• 1 t. cinnamon
• ½ t. nutmeg
• ½ t. baking soda
• ¼ t. sea salt
• 1/3 c. maple syrup
• 1/3 c. oil
• ½ t. vanilla
• 1/3 c. fruit spread

Preheat oven to 350 F. In a bowl, mix the dry ingredients. Add maple syrup, corn oil, and vanilla mixing thoroughly. In a small baking pan or Pyrex dish, press half the mixture like a thick pie crust. Spread the fruit jam onto it and cover with the rest of the oat mixture. Bake for 25 minutes. Let cool before cutting into squares.

Dessert Pizza

For as common a dessert recipe as this one is, I had actually never made one. After researching lots of recipes I went with this one. I let the cookie bake for about 25 minutes. I found I really had to whip the cream cheese and whipped topping for a long time, and it still had a somewhat lumpy texture. Next time, I think I would whip the cream cheese with the milk first before adding whipped topping in hopes of getting an overall smoother texture. For fruit, I used a can of mandarin oranges, kiwis, red raspberries, and blueberries. I think this was my staff’s favorite. There were no leftovers!

Thanksgiving, Flagstaff Style

We just finished our first major holiday in our new home of Flagstaff, and it is filled with lots of happy new memories. The fabulous Aunt M made the trek from the Big D to join us for the holiday weekend. Having some family here definitely was the icing on the cake! The only black mark on the weekend was me being sick. After almost a week of constant coughing and persistent throat tickle, I called uncle and went to the doctor on Wednesday morning. As I suspected, he said it was most likely a sinus infection and prescribed me antibiotics, which I was trying to avoid. ANYWAYS, a minor inconvenience at most. It slowed me down a bit, energy wise, but did not stop me from enjoying my long weekend!

Our Thanksgiving plans were to join some of my fellow SUSer graduate students for a potluck feast. We had purchased a pasture raised turkey through our CSA. It was not inexpensive, but we concluded that it was worth the cost to know that Buddy (what we named him) had a humane life. So this meant we were cooking the turkey. Luckily, we agreed to do an early evening meal so that we did not have to get up crazy early to start roasting. Roasting our turkey turned into a b it of an adventure with some ups and downs. Upon reflection, I am pretty sure it was our first attempt at roasting at turkey, so we should have expected a learning curve.

Unfortunately, even though we had been letting it thaw in the refrigerator since we picked it up Saturday it was still pretty frozen on Thursday. So, we tried the dripping water technique and finally seemed to get it thawed for cooking. And, we were still on track for getting it in the oven by about 11 am. See, everything said that our size turkey should take about 3.5 to 4 hours to roast. So, this would get it done

around 3:30 and allow enough time for it to rest before we carved and took it our host for the evening. Thanks LE for being a fabulous host, by the way. Soooo, our lovely instant read thermometer (which I highly recommend, by the way) went off right about the time we expected it to do so. We were a little surprised by the lack of drippings in the bottom of the pan, and we were certainly not prepared for the gush of liquid that came out of Buddy when R pulled him out of the pan. Liquid that was a definite pinkish color… that was our first signal that all may not be as we hoped… but at least we knew where all our drippings were!

However, we decided to let him rest, and after a while, R started carving. As he got close to the center, we realized it was definitely not cooked all the way yet. Okay, so perhaps the core was not as well thawed as we had hoped. The turkey went back into the oven for some more sun tan time… And kept roasting as each temperature check did not tell us the inner core was where it should be. Finally, about an hour and half after we had anticipated it being done it finally seemed to be ready for carving. It did turn a lovely golden crispy brown, but of course, we completely forgot to take a picture before we carved it up!

Along with the turkey and gravy, we took mashed potatoes and a big salad of mixed greens with pistachios (all from the CSA), pear, dried cranberries, Rogue Creamery bleu cheese, and raspberry vinaigrette. The fabulous Aunt M made her famous buttermilk pie (recipe to follow) and pumpkin pie. Our potluck extravaganza included the following contributions: two types of dressing, two types of cranberry sauce, mashed sweet potatoes, roasted butternut squash, sweet potato rolls, cheesy potato casserole, veggie tray, roasted root vegetable fries, dairy free pumpkin pie and an amazing chocolate turtle tarte. It was a lovely evening filled with tasty food and great new friends.

Robert had to work on Friday, so I spent the morning doing some studying. After lunch Aunt M and I headed into downtown Flagstaff to check out some of the local shops. Neither of really planned to spend money, but we ended up finding a few goodies. Aunt M found fun Christmas presents for her daughters, and we each bought each other a fun little gift for less than $5! I had been meaning to spend some time checking out some of the shops, and this was my first opportunity to really just wander and do this. We concluded that we had done our duty as citizens and contributed to the local economy by spending some money on the day after Thanksgiving, and we headed to Macy’s Coffeehouse to indulge in Macy’s Specials. I had a gift certificate for Oregano’s, so we decided to take a break from turkey and got pizza for dinner. We got the Frisco Thin Crust Pizza with a tomato cream sauce and bacon. Yum! We rounded out our evening with several competitive rounds of Quiddler.

Saturday, the weather looked promising in Sedona, so we headed south for an afternoon of hiking. We couldn’t have asked for more beautiful weather. After several days of highs in the 30’s, we welcomed the clear sunny day and temperatures of almost 60 degrees. It was amazing what a change in elevation could do. As we drove into downtown, we encountered some lingering fall foliage that we could not resist photographing. We picked out a new trail to explore called the Jim Thompson trail that was on the edge of downtown Sedona. It was perfect for what we wanted. It was a pretty easy, fairly flat trail with spectacular views of the surrounding red peaks. We took our time and even though it was a holiday weekend, the trail was not super crowded. It was also nice because it was JUST off the beaten path in Sedona, but you still felt like you were in the middle of nowhere most of the time.

Here are my pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2222387&id=18808643&l=c0dcb9d79e

After returning, we put together a white chili using some leftover turkey and roasted chilies and dried beans from the CSA that we slow cooked in our Crockpot. We have been getting a bag of roasted chilies almost every week. Although that is great, our freezer is quickly filling up with them. I recently went on a quest for recipes that called for chilies, and this one seemed like a good one to try. Obviously we substituted roasted turkey bits for the ground turkey, and chopped up our own chilies and used our own beans.

Today, I rounded out the rest of our holiday weekend with a Thanksgiving Leftovers Casserole. I already had a vision of what I intended to throw together, but then encountered this recipe from one of the blogs I like to read. I did a layer of stuffing, then tossed chopped turkey with gravy and thawed frozen peas. I then topped it off with a layer of mashed potatoes and some shredded cheese. Yum, yum! All in all, it has been a good holiday weekend.

The Fabulous Aunt M’s Buttermilk Pie Recipe

3 eggs

2 Tbs flour

½ c. butter, melted

1 c. buttermilk

1 tsp. vanilla

An unbaked pie shell

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Mix all the ingredients together and place in pie shell. Will bake for about 1 hour and 30 minutes. Enjoy!

Hearty Winter Salad

Okay, I am taking a super quick study break to make a quick blog post because this salad was THAT good. Stay tuned for a Tale of Flagstaff Thanksgiving later this week or next week.

Hearty Winter Salad

(Using CSA goodies and pantry odds and ends)

Note: Since this was an on the fly collaboration with Robert cooking and me telling him what to do, the directions are pretty free form. However, if you have any level of comfort in the kitchen, it should be pretty easy to follow.

1 small butternut squash (ours was from the CSA), peeled, seeded, and cubed

· Roast in oven for about an hour at 350 degrees. Turn up 450 degrees and cook for another 10 minutes or so until it starts to get brown and crispy

Take random greens (we used what we got from the CSA). Wash and tear.

· Throw in a skillet on medium high heat along with some garlic and olive oil until wilted. Sprinkle with balsamic vinegar

To build your salad, you will also need nuts (we used toasted pecans), dried fruit (we used cranberries), and cheese (we used goat). Customize to your taste and what you have on hand.

· Put down a layer of the wilted greens

· Add a pile of butternut squash

· Sprinkle with cranberries, nuts, and cheese.

Eat! Delish!

P.S. I could see some caramelized onions being a super yummy addition.