My Life Without Coffee (or Caffeine)...

VA introduced Team 308 to this lovely mug.  I later received this mug from VA for my birthday.  It's still one of my favorites.  Thanks VA!

Emily and I were chatting the other day about the lame things we do when we are so tired.  It's pretty amazing the careless and spacey things I do without my cup of Joe or when I am desperately in need of more java.  And I'm often tired so this list keeps growing.  So my question for you is...my life without coffee means...?  You fill in the blank.  Let's keep this list going as we keep enjoying the lovely and beneficial effects from our cups of coffee/caffeine.  And post a picture of your favorite coffee mug just for fun!

My Life Without Coffee...

Is walking into the shower with my house shoes on.  It's terrible.  I realize the tragedy a little to late to save the shoes.  It is the feeling of my fluffy house shoes feeling really heavy at first followed by wetness from the water.  Good times.

Is putting my shirt on backwards or inside out.  And then having it pointed out to me or discovering my error later in the day.

Is forgetting to put the water I filled and measured in my coffee pot in the actual machine.  I am so guilty of this.  I will fill my coffee pot with water  and turn on the coffee machine, but forget to pour the water in the machine.  Eventually I discover my machine in agony and/or I discover I have no coffee...a very sad moment.

"Texans Love Lentil Soup"

In the summer of 2005 I was in Spain studying at El Universidad de Salamanca.  If you have not been to Salamanca, I highly recommend you take some time out of your life to visit.  The school is beautiful, the Spaniards are polite, the culture is rich and history is still playing out.

Salamanca is located between Madrid and the Portugal border.  It is where I learned that I speak "Mexican Spanish," I don't care for Spanish cuisine and that "Texans love lentil soup."  Yes, one day my host family mom, Ellie, made lentil soup for me and my friend Ashley (also a Texan).  We devoured two bowls each.  We were so hungry.  The Spanish eat at much later hours than Americans do.  Ellie, my Spanish host mom, said every time she has Texans in her house, they all  love lentil soup! 

I had never tried to make lentil soup.  It's not something my mom ever made for us...she's not really a soup kind of person.  I take after my father in that department.  But I had the soup in Spain (obviously) and few places growing up in Texas (I think a friend's home and at restaurants).  All I know is that I liked it and one day would aim to attempt to make it myself. 

Well my friends, that time has come!  Get excited!  Yes, and again, I tried to follow a recipe and I failed and I Mexicanfied it.  Yes, I typed Mexican-fied (add it to your dictionary) cause it's going to be around.  So this is what happened on Sunday...

Sarith's Mexicanfied Lentil Soup

Ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups chopped onion
1 tablespoon cumin
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon chili powder
2 teaspoons ground black pepper
1/2 salt
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 1/3 cups water
2 1/3 cups dried lentils
1 box + 1 can of chicken broth
1 14 oz can of crushed tomatoes, undrained
1/2 small green bell pepper (whole for flavor)
1/2 Caldo de Pollo (chicken bullion cube)
1 cup chopped carrots
Goat Cheese
Tomatoes
Cilantro

Preparation
Heat olive oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat.  Add the onion; saute for 3 minutes or until tender.  Add the next six ingredients (cumin to garlic cloves); saute for 1 minute.  Add water and next
six ingredients (water - Caldo de Pollo) reserving the 1 can of chicken broth for later and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat; simmer 1 hour.  At 40 minutes, add carrots and continue to simmer.

Place 2 cups of lentil mixture in blender; process until smooth.  Pour pureed soup back into lentil soup.  Garnish with goat cheese, tomatoes and cilantro, if desired.  Enjoy!

Gan Gan's Cream Cheese Mints

Gan Gan was my Mom's mom. I loved her like crazy. She was spunky, and kind, and absolutely hilarious. As a little girl, I loved spending time with "Gan Gan." I didn't get the chance to know her as an adult (she passed away when I was in middle school). She didn't cook very much (that I remember), but it was always fun to help her in the kitchen! (As a side note, I found out recently that she was also adopted...and her adoption story is SO interesting!)

When I was trying to decide what recipe to post, I looked through a few that she had passed down - Chocolate Pie, Lemon Pie, Bourbon Balls (interesting). But I landed on Cream Cheese Mints.

These are kind of old-fashioned. Not something I really make very often - in fact I've only made them once or twice as an adult. Though I do remember having them at "teas" and "luncheons" and other various fancy parties when growing up.

They are basically mint-flavored icing candies. Yum. Super simple. A few ingredients (some of which you can leave out - namely food color). These are really fun for small kids to help with - because it's kind of like working with play dough and there are no sharp or hot objects involved. Enjoy!

Gan Gan's Cream Cheese Mints

yield 6-7 dozen

Ingredients

• 3 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 tsp. liquid peppermint flavoring
• 2-2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• food color (optional)
• granulated sugar for decoration

Mix 1 package cream cheese (softened) with 1/2 tsp. peppermint flavoring. Gradually add 2-2 1/2 cups powdered sugar. Knead until no longer sticky. Divide into 4 portions and add food coloring of your choice to each (optional).

Shape into 3/4" balls and roll in sugar. Flatten with a fork to create a pattern. Let dry at room temperature.

Store loosely covered in the refrigerator.


PS - I didn't have time to take pictures this month (sorry!). And yes - It's August 7 and I'm just now posting for July. Can you say slacker?!? I will try to be better next month! I did post a couple of other non-grandmother recipes over on my photography blog...watermelon sorbet & my favorite popsicles.

Lazy Man Fruit Cobbler‏

This is a versatile recipe that comes from my Mother's Mother, GrandMomma Cunningham.

My GrandMomma was a strong, loyal, no nonsense kind of woman and Granddaddy Cunningham was a dreamer, risk taker and businessman. GrandMomma worked as a nurses aide at the local hospital. When she wasn't there she was helping Granddaddy run his General Store, or his chicken farm, or whatever new business venture he had come up with next (coordinating wrestling tournaments, the occasional midget wrestling tournament, buying and selling properties, farming vegetables, crop dusting, etc.).

So GrandMomma didn't have as much time to cook as she would have liked. But her and Granddaddy both had a sweet tooth. GrandMomma made Divinity candy and Fudge. Divinity was her favorite but making it is completely dependent on the weather and the humidity. And well, living in West Tennessee not too far from the Mighty Mississippi River does not lend itself to too many days with low humidity levels. But my favorite recipe from her didn't depend on the weather. This dessert she frequently made was weather proof, quick, easy and cheap to make: Lazy Man Fruit Cobbler. ‏

My Momma, my sister and I made it frequently growing up and know the recipe by heart. It is a fail-safe, go to dessert for us... well so long as I don't attempt to make it Gluten Free. (That was a disaster as Sarith can attest to for me.) And since we had large harvests of blueberries and blackberries from our backyard each year when we were growing up, we often had blueberry or blackberry cobbler. 

My sister even got into it with a male friend of hers over whose Momma's fruit cobbler was better. So when she was invited to his parent's house for dinner along with the rest of their friends, she proceeded to make the cobbler as her contribution and took it over to their house to prove that her family recipe was superior (where she gets this behavior from remains a complete mystery to me, for surely I have never, ever done such a thing.) His parents said that they actually preferred Katie's cobbler to their usual cobbler and asked her for the recipe. Katie felt as if she won some food network show. Personally, I don't know if they were just being polite or if they did prefer our family recipe. But I wasn't about to burst her bubble. 

We traditionally make this with water. So it is lactose free if you use margarine, instead of butter. It is also egg free. A rarity in baked desserts.  

You can use any fruit or combination of fruits you prefer. I tend to stick to traditional flavors such as Blackberry, Peach, Blueberry, Mixed Berry, or Cherry. However, a Blueberry and Peach cobbler is tasty. The classic Apple is yummy. A Blueberry Lemon with lemon zest tossed with the blueberries and a little lemon juice in the batter would be delicious as well. Or a Cranberry and Pear cobbler for Thanksgiving.

The cobbler is best using fresh fruit that is currently in season. But frozen fruit (defrosted) or canned fruit, such as peaches, work really well in the cobbler in the winter and early spring when fruits are not in season. Your options are limitless, I've even seen a pineapple cobbler. But I would recommend tossing the blackberries with sugar if they are tart or adding a little cinnamon, nutmeg or apple spice mixture to the apples before baking.

Now on to the baking! Preheat the oven to 350. 


Melt the butter/margarine in the baking dish you will be using. (My family typically used a round 2 quart baking dish with a lid. The lid was for when we stored the left over cobbler in the fridge, not while the cobbler was baking.)

Mix together the self-rising flour, sugar and the water (or milk) to make the batter.
 
Pour the batter into the baking dish on top of the melted butter.
 
Dump the fruit on top of the batter.
 
Bake for 1 hour.
 
Serve warm with ice cream of choice.

Our default ice cream for the cobbler was vanilla because it goes with everything. But a small scoop of chocolate ice cream over a cherry cobbler is delightful and reminds me of the Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia ice cream. I would also suggest the chocolate ice cream with a blackberry cobbler. (Godiva used to sell these chocolate cups filled with fresh blackberries. They were little bites of heaven.) Peach ice cream pairs well with a blueberry cobbler, or if you really love peaches, with a peach cobbler. I would think that a apple cobbler would pair well with a butter pecan, Breyer's Caramel Praline Crunch or Ben & Jerry's Cinnamon Bun ice cream (caramel ice cream with cinnamon bun dough & a cinnamon streusel swirl). Or maybe even serving a pineapple cobbler with Ben & Jerry's Pina Colada ice cream while the song Escape by Rupert Holmes plays in the background. Ok, I may have gone a little too far with the last suggestion. So I will stop while I am ahead.  


Lazy Man Fruit Cobbler

Ingredients‏ 

• 1 stick of Butter or Margerine, melted
• 1 cup Self-Rising Flour
• 1 cup Sugar
• 1 cup Water or Milk (Your preference. We aways used water but I have often seen the recipe used with milk instead.)
• 2 cups Fruit
• Ice Cream is optional but highly recommended (Vanilla is the traditional but use whatever tickles your fancy or taste buds)

Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 350.
2. Melt the butter/margerine in the baking dish you will be using. 
3. Mix together the self-rising flour, sugar and the water (or milk) to make the batter.
4. Pour the batter into the baking dish on top of the melted butter.
5. Dump the fruit on top of the batter.
6. Bake for 1 hour.
7. Serve with immediately with your choice of ice cream on top. 

Grandma Batman's Lemon Meringue Pie

When life hands you lemons, lemonade is a viable option - - but I've always been partial to lemon meringue pie.

###

Here’s what I remember from the summer afternoons of my childhood:

Grandma Batman’s arms were impossibly soft and strong at the same time, and that was never more apparent than when she was kneading bread or rolling out pie dough. As a kid, borrowing an apron from her collection was like picking out a super hero cape. Except that these capes had ruffles, and you wore them around front like a shield instead of letting them trail off your back like a flimsy decoration. From the chair I’d pulled up to her counter, like a sidekick in a sidecar along for the adventure, I would watch with awe as Grandma would spin up magical clouds of flour until, out of the sugary storm, a clump of dough would begin to take shape. By step four of any recipe, her countertops always looked like a war zone. But even though everything around her was a mess, she concentrated on the task at hand with absolute precision. The delicate creations she could pull from the powdery debris were naught but magical.

###

Grandma has Alzheimer's now and is unable to cook. It makes me sad that my younger cousins will never be able to know the strong, competent version of her that I knew. She was my hero.

Then again, I will never know Grandma the way that my father knew her as his mother. And neither my father nor I can know the woman that my grandpa fell in love with 65 years ago - - the woman he adores and devotedly serves to this day.

But I did get to meet her once.

###

One afternoon, shortly after moving back to the Midwest after nearly 7 years inside the Beltway, I drove up to visit my grandparents. I’d just gone through some serious soul-searching (and some significant heartbreak), so I felt like Julia Roberts in “Eat, Pray, Love,” except that I skipped Italy, India, and Indonesia in favor of Indiana, hoping my grandparents could offer more relevant wisdom (and culinary insight) than some far-off shaman.

Grandpa had to slip away to a funeral for a few hours, so I sat on the couch while Grandma rested quietly in her recliner, wrapped in a blue blanket. Without her memories, we were strangers.

I smiled. She blinked.

“Do you remember baking with me?” I asked. “You taught me how to make a lemon meringue pie.”

“Oh, well that’s nice,” she murmured.

“You’re the best baker I know,” I said, truthfully. “Do you have any tips for me?”

“I’ll tell you my secret,” she said as her eyes lit up. I leaned forward expectantly, not wanting to miss a word. “Find a good recipe, and do exactly what it says. Exactly. Don’t mess with it. It will turn out the same every time.”

(So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen: the only secret of the best chef in the Midwest.)

And then, because she didn't know a thing about me, she politely asked the first question that any woman would ask a new acquaintance. “Are you married?”

“No,” I replied.

“Are you about to be married?”

“I don’t think so,” I admitted.

“Well, do you have a boyfriend?” she pressed good-naturedly.

“No,” I said. And then, because I couldn't stop myself, I added, “There was somebody, but he doesn't love me anymore. I guess he never really did.”

I barely got the words out before my throat started to swell. All of a sudden, I realized that my plan had failed. The hundreds of miles I had put between myself and this heartache were not enough. If her disease had not robbed her of her vision, she would have seen the tears brim, my eyes redden, and the way I couldn't meet her gaze. And if she had recognized me as her granddaughter, I’m sure she would have said something comforting about how I was beautiful and loved and how someone even more wonderful was probably searching for me at this very moment and how he would just adore my lemon meringue pie. But because Alzheimer’s isn't that polite, she just blinked.

And then she asked, “Are you married?”

I sniffed, confused. “No.”

“Are you about to be married? Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Well that’s okay, you've still got time.” Then, second guessing herself, she asked, “How old are you, anyway?”

“I’m twenty-(mumble).”

“Oh. Hmm,” she murmured, followed by a long pause and some more blinking. And then, “Are you married?”

She asked me this 27 times in a row. I counted.

It became apparent that the questioning was not going to stop until I gave her a more satisfactory answer, but I couldn't bring myself to lie. Lying to your grandma (even if she doesn't know she’s your grandma) seems like a bad idea in principle, but it seems especially egregious when your grandma is as near to sainthood as mine is. So I deflected.

“I’m not married, but I know that you are, Mrs. Batman. I've met your husband. He loves you very much.”

She blushed with the shy smile of a young bride, not as a knowing old wife with 65 years of marital secrets and loyalty to defend. “Oh yes,” she gushed, “I am married to the most wonderful man.”

“What makes him so wonderful?” I pressed.

“Well, he is very kind, and he’s very neat. He always folds his trousers back up and doesn't just toss them on the floor. And he treats his mother well. You can tell a lot about a man by how he treats his mother, and he treats his very well. My mother lived on a farm . . ."

Successfully distracted by her deepest memories, we talked about her childhood in the rural hills of southern Indiana, and she repeated a handful of stories about milking cows and collecting eggs until my grandpa returned. After a couple go-rounds with the same tale about some ornery roosters, we were laughing like old friends who already knew each other’s best jokes. 

It was lovely.

###

Later, at dinner, Grandpa leaned over to help his bride struggle through her meal. “Eat your pizza, Grandma.”

“Who you callin' 'Grandma'?” she sassed with a hearty guffaw.

"Why, you, of course,” he answered, surprised.

“I'm not a Grandma! I ain’t old enough for that!”

“How old do you think you are?”

She blinked. Several decades worth of memories from a quietly valiant life escaped like an unimportant dream from the night before. And then she laughed again, “Well, I can't remember. But I ain’t old enough to be a grandma!”

When I got ready to leave, she asked me with genuine concern “if my daddy knew I was driving so far by myself at night.” Never mind that I had just driven solo halfway across the country to start a whole new life on my own. We were friends now, so she wanted to make sure that I got home safely.

###

For one afternoon, I got to talk to my grandma as if we were the same age, strangers in our young twenties meeting for the first time at a reception in a church fellowship hall somewhere. The good news is, we would have been friends. Which means that no matter how lost I might feel at times, I must be on the right track.

If given the option, would I prefer to have my wise, old grandma, whose sharp wit and rough edges have been worn soft and smooth under the river of time? Would I rather that she know me as her granddaughter, passing wisdom to me like a family heirloom? Praying for me the knowing prayers of someone who has walked these roads before me? Of course.

But I digress. This post is about pie.

###
Take your lemons and mix the bitter with the sweet. Watch the filling carefully when it’s over the flame. If you don’t, it won’t firm up and will run all over the place.

Don't take your crust for granted. It's more important than you think. If you’re gentle, the dough will stretch more than you realize - - but be careful not to tear it. It takes time (and practice), but a truly great pie crust is more than just an edible base. It’s a delight.

Finally, spread the meringue over the lemon filling while it's still hot, lest it weep. But if it does weep, don’t worry. 

Grandma says that, no matter how experienced you are in the kitchen, everybody weeps from time to time.

###

And the recipe, straight from my ten-year-old self to you: