animal crackers are the stuff that childhood cheesecakes are made of

Yes, a very stupid title, but nonetheless, this cheesecake is not. This is how it all "went down":

Scene one- the grocery store

Keegan (the roommate): "So I vaguely remember you promising to make me a cheesecake soon"

Me: "Oh I did, huh, well I don't have any recipes on hand"

Keegan: "Well just get two things of cream cheese and make me one!"

Me: "But I don't even--"

Keegan: "Chocolate! Chocolate! A Chocolate one!"

She gets in these dessert moods, not necessarily foul ones, but those heart wrenchingly puppy eyed please ones. She will come prancing into my room in her polka dotted pjs and coo "roooooomieeeee" and then beg. She is quite good at this, seeing as she has a cheesecake cooling on the counter that I just pulled from the oven. Actually, this is my favourite mood of her's, because I can make anything and force her to try it. ***Remembering the face she made, reeling over the texture of cous cous*** Although she picked the make I chose the model, and oh what a cherry she is. A nostalgic piece of childhood poured into a buttery crust of adult sophistication. With a dollop of yesterdays hand-whipped chai spiced whipped cream, this little flashback will be complete. Fun Filled: Chocolate Chip Animal Cracker Cheesecake.





Ingredients:

1/4 cup sugar
4 tablespoons melted butter (unsalted, as always)
1/3 cup almonds
couple handfuls of animal crackers
2 8oz packages of cream cheese-room temperature (I used low fat)
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of salt
1/3 cup plain yogurt
splash of milk
plenty of chocolate chips

for the crust:
combine sugar and almonds in food processor, after slightly chopped add in animal crackers a bit at a time. Looking for the consistency of polenta or coarse corn meal. Add in melted butter, pulse a few more times. Add into a large tart tin, or spring form pan, if you'd like. Push flat with fingers and palm or bottom of a flat glass. Freeze for 15 minutes.

for the filling:
combine 1/2 cup of sugar and cream cheese to stand mixer on medium. Turn to low add egg, vanilla, and salt. If cream cheese is not quite room temperature this process might take a while longer to rid the filling of any big cream cheese pieces. Add in yogurt and splash of milk. Mix until smooth and creamy. With a spatula or spoon fold in chocolate chips. The chips will fall to bottom so you will end up scooping a bunch of them on top of the filling, its okay they will mix in quite nicely while in the oven.

Bake at 350, you remebered to preheat didn't you, for 30-35 minutes.

Cool on wire rack.

Chill for 1-2 hours, or overnight, or if you just can't wait, like my darling roomie, just eat it when its cooled.

Top with a bit of whip cream and an extra chocolate chip or two, or get fancy with some chocolate curls and shavings!

Hysmith family Christmas uniforms: flour dusted cranberry stained pajamas

We rolled out of bed in flannels yet the floor was sticky with humidity. Hot tea was ready to pour yet it undoubtedly wanted ice. Our stockings hung over the fireplace, yet no fire roared cheerily behind them. It was 80-something degrees Christmas day, how rude. We began the day with Da's "secret recipe" cinnamon rolls made with whole wheat flour...well wait they're secret.


After a jaunt of a bike ride through our deserted little college town, in which I did not manage to fall or seriously hurt myself or my bike, we returned to begin the mighty task that lay before us: "CHRISTMAS DINNER" (Says Da in a deep DJ weekly top 40 countdown voice).

The Menu:
zealously herbed breast of turkey wrapped in prosciutto
citrus barley with roasted grapes
brown sugar fruit salad
sauteed cherry cranberry chutney
shallot and ginger pan seared broccoli
sweet potato yeast rolls

The shear amount of herbs included in these dishes would like to strip our garden bare, yet each little potted plant seemed to replenish it self magically with each trip out the back door.


The brown sugar fruit salad is most simple and palates better a day after it is made. I liken it to a soup that needs a full nights rest to bring about its full flavours. Ingredients consist of several tablespoons of brown sugar and the juice of one lime. Let it the acid dissolve all the sugar before tossing the fruit. Chop up bite size portions of whichever fruits you like and those which are in season: apples (grannysmiths are my preference) black grapes, any berries, plums, peaches, cranberries, pears. Anything but bananas! Toss the fruit about till completely coated with limed sugar. Chiffonade a few mints leaves and toss those in too. Now that I think of it, in the summer time a full sweet basil would be even better!

Our loverly neighbors joined us at the climax of our cooking escapade which allowed me to sneak off for a game of "take two", a sort of back alley scrabble, with Nan and the kid sister. Nan, being the wonderful lady-neighbor that she is, satiated my leafy cravings and brought her simple yet refreshing green salad of cashews, dried cranberries, mozzarella, and julienned green apples.


In conclusion, our family does not prepare a most orthodox Christmas meal, nor do we follow a strict starch/veggie/meat/pie code of more traditional holiday dinners. To be honest I wouldn't put a tofurkey past my father without the possibility of his delicately primping it to the bubbling concoction that was our Christmas vitals.

Next on the menu due for Hysmith family alterations: New Year's Day Luck and Health feast (complete with cabbage hats).

jalapeno studded sour cream; or, how a non-Jewish foodie spiced up Hanukkah

Though the days marked by food intake and hours logged on couch and/or bed have long since passed I have yet to begin my holiday postings! Growing up my father introduced me and my brother to various cultural holidays in hopes that we would better understand the world and own culture. Little did we know that this was his excuse to experiment food-wise and add yet more days onto the annual week or two of gorging. His culinary devices won out, thankfully and this year I decided to prepare a Hanukkah dinner for my Mum and her new boyfriend, Mark (who has a Jewish last name, though is not the slightest bit Jewish). Though I thoroughly enjoy a grease soaked potato as much as the next person, I find that it lacks bite and is wanting in ???. So as a proposed remedy I fashioned the traditional sour cream slathering with a heated pop of diced Jalapeno peppers. My palate is one only subdued with the most sweltering of heats, the kind that literally burns away your taste buds yet later leaves you with a satisfying warmth in your tummy. Sadly, these latkes didn't do the trick. Next year, I'm thinking potato-horseradish latkes with roasted Ancho chile sour cream. Maybe?

Compositions for LIN312: Eat your Words

These are the few essays I wrote for one of my linguistics electives last Spring. The course discussed, well, the linguistic application of food. The course was wonderfully impressive, yet needed improvement. I will hopefully do that...one day.

All Buttered about Butter

Cinnamomum verum and the Bridge to Authenticity

Le Cuisine Lyonnaise: Fromage, Fruits Beaujolais and Frog legs

Chapter 1 English Edibles: Fears and Beers

 When I left Oxford, England I wanted only one souvenir for myself: the head chefs recipe for sticky toffee pudding.  I like to think that this recipe is as old as the relatively young Brasenose college nestled in the heart of Oxford.  When I say relative, I do mean that; a mere 500 years compared to those other more renowned colleges that boast 900 years or more! Though this quaint little college has nothing to be ashamed of in any way, despite lacking in historic academic semesters; a beautiful vintage library, stairwells that twist around and creep up behind you like ghosts that undoubtedly haunt them. Even Jane Austen had the privilege to study under the headmaster's wife's instruction for a summer.  She is the very reason I even ventured to Brasenose college.  I left on a five week study abroad program specifically for the discovery of all things Austen, but I seemed to have returned with much more than just a tome full of Regency trivia and a habit for saying "cheers".  

I approached my trip to England with severe caution, after all I am a pseudo vegetarian ( no reds, nothing bloody).  All I had heard was ghastly tales of sausages bobbing in pools of muck and baked beans with bits of mystery meat and ,worst of all, the utter indignation for anything with the slightest bit of spice.  I contemplated packing a stealthy package of salt and pepper in my luggage but found myself nervously laughing away the idea.  

I arrived in the afternoon, starved, parched and exhausted, terrified by the idea of never finding a diet coke.  I remembered that I only packed one box of Kashi pumpkin spice flax bars and wept quietly in my 17th century dorm room.  When dinner arrived, though I was not excited about the menu, I was at least thrilled about eating "harry potter style".  The dinning hall was exactly thus: gilded portraits leaning forward from their tacks so as to get a better look at their guests below, massive solid wood tables with notches and scratches as deep as the college is old, and a high arched ceiling with windows reaching up to its corners.  This was to replace my pathetic little bought-in-a-box dining room table, that possessed painted wood laminate and no trace of the real stuff.  The tables were set with pitchers of water and the most amazing squash (english for juice) that tasted like boysenberry candies my old french teacher used to pass out. There was real pats of butter, though they were packaged in little gold foils it was unlike any butter I've ever tasted.  Fresh rolls of every sort from the bakery down the street.  Every dinner was served by students of the college who were working over the summer to earn some extra money.  The students would one by one, dressed in white button down shirts and black trousers, bring us our courses. Sadly I do not remember my first meal, perhaps it was the jet lag. Though I do recall that it desperately needed seasoning.  Disclaimer: I am not a compulsive salter.  The salt was ordinary table salt, like one finds in many American pantries but the pepper, oh the pepper, was a fine dust that resembled and smelt of decaying mummy and made one cough like breathing the the first smoke from a bonfire.  Being an immense fan of peppercorns, I held a private funeral for my taste buds that must endure the following weeks. 

After dinner, I sauntered outside the hall with my fellow UT students when we were motioned towards a little basement staircase.  The Buttery.  Brasenose's own private pub.  Being from Texas I am accustomed to alcohol and drinking, but in the school's basement! I am also not one to drink and beer or concocted beverage that some upperclassmen might hand me.  I like to think of myself as a budding enthusiast when it comes to such special libations.   Though, not wanting to be left out, I followed the other girls downstairs.  I expected the moldy stale stench one usually encounters in the numerous bars in Austin and throughout Texas.  I did not expect, tidy little dark wood tables, dust free stone floors, or the same Oxford boys who were our waiters to be drinking enormous pints while playing a game of raunchy Jenga.  Then the smell hit me, a beautiful sweet and dulcet collaboration of wheats and billows of what I can only describe as yeast puffed clouds.  The mere odor of local beers and ales had permeated this tiny stone basement pub making it my new favourite haunt, sadly I only had the red wine.  

Chicken Pot Pie: Universal Health Care at its Best

So tonight, at the request of my oh so eager roommate, I made my scrumptious Chicken Pot Pie. I say it is scrumptious with such assurance because I was proud of myself for my ingenuity as a new pot pie maker. My first endeavor with pot pie began late in the summer before my freshman year at University. The freshest vegetables were just at market and the Texas sun was still withholding its hottest rays to let us autumn junkies have our one last fix. I sped to the market one afternoon with a mind to purchase all things in miniature: micro greens, small organic carrots, fingerling potatoes (of various earthy colours), pearl onions, snap peas, broccolitini, and sweet corn. All these I planned to tuck neatly into a quaint ramekin lined with a feather or two of philo dough, a perfectly rounded slice of emmentaler, a bit of stock reduced in a garlic roux, and of course the chicken!

As I child I loathed any sort of dish slightly reminiscent of a casserole one might find on a church potluck line up and unfortunately pot pie was in this category. I still do not understand why I associated pot pies with such nasties as casseroles, they are very distant cousins at best. The basic components of a true casserole includes some sort of noodle, a creamy liquid (usually a canned mushroom soup of sorts), an undefinable meat substance (i.e. ground beyond belief beef, boiled chicken shreds, or the dreaded canned cat food, I mean tuna) and either an over powering salinity similar to the Gulf of Mexico or a complete void of salt. Pot pie, usually, lacks all of these dreaded characteristics, yet I couldn't bring myself to even a forkful. I shut myself off from the mysterious world of labeled Tupperwares and crusty overcooked pan corners only to exempt my misinformed palate from such wonderous things that could happen as a result of a steaming doughy pot pie.

Bon temps roulant: Autumn in a fist fight with Summer...

So I have yet to add another recipe/baking awakening but as the inklings of Fall creep in my baking senses begin to tingle and I have to find my way to an oven or I just feel too lazy. At this moment I am baking cardamom snaps, not my own recipe www.bhg.com, but they aren't too pretty and won't go up on this site till they are!

It is almost Samhain, or the nature-freaks autumn version of a New Years. So it is a time for eating, baking, pumpkin spice lattes, and harvest-themed resolutions! I have several but the one that really applies here is at least one weekly baking excursion with my new friend Julia. Who is Julia you might ponder...well she is my new shiny red KitchenAid Stand Mixer! Leave me alone, Alton Brown named his...and she is named for the great Julia Child...I don't think she would mind being reincarnated as a kitchen utensil.

So yes, so hopefully every week Julia and I will explore the many reaches of the culinary world together and share them with everyone!

To Do:
1. need more butter
2. find family pumpkin pie recipe
3. figure out the secret ingredient in my Da's cornbread...he is holding out
4. I smell cardamom...need to go check those snaps!