Category: Cookery

Happy Valentine’s Day!

We did grocery shopping for ours. The roads have been treacherous, you see, and it was a good idea for both of us to go so as to minimize the annoyance of it all. We also had a nice dinner of — I’m not sure what it was, officially. My wife took French fries and the last of the thanksgiving ham from the freezer, defrosted them, cooked them up in a skillet, heated the oven, then baked/broiled them still in the skillet with a heap of cheddar cheese on top.

Yeah, it came out real nice. No complaints from me, let me tell you. And perfect, for the kind of weather we’re having.

Let’s workshop this rum and cider drink!

I’m kind of avoiding writing tonight, for some reason; but I didn’t really need an excuse to use this…

…as an opportunity to throw together a hot rum and apple cider drink. Nothing fancy: shot of rum, apple cider, a touch of caramel syrup, a splash of lemon, and a little ground cinnamon and cloves. The whole thing worked fine as a rough-and-ready hot drink, with the emphasis on ‘rough.’ It had a bit of a bite to it, and I don’t think the caramel worked the way I wanted to. There should probably also been more cider, but I didn’t want to cool the drink.

Thoughts? The immediate one I had was adding one or more of orange and/or orange peel, nutmeg, and brown sugar. But I’m willing to entertain suggestions.

PIES!

Or a pie. Pumpkin, and I have no idea how it came out. I got the recipe off of a can, because we’re doing Thanksgiving dinner on our own for maybe the first time since my youngest son was born and that means we have to make everything ourselves.

So… pies! (My wife made an apple upside down thing and we’re keen to see how that’ll go, too.)

The FROZEN DREAMS Goodreads Giveaway / Cornbread Challenge!

I don’t know why these work, but they do.

Anyway, here’s the challenge: I have a Goodreads Giveaway drive going: if I get nine more orders on the Backerkit store for a signed copy of FROZEN DREAMS, I will do a Goodreads Giveaway for five more signed copies. AND! If I get those orders in before the end of the month, I will make this recipe!

(Backerkit store link)

Blasphemous as it might be for having sugar in it.

Tweet of the Day, Let Me Commit Rank Cooking Heresy, Apparently edition.

My buddy Joe Cunningham’s cornbread recipe. Yes, yes, I am aware that there are Forbidden Things in it. Still doesn’t sound half bad, honestly. And we got everything except the Cajun seasoning, which I can pick up tomorrow. Maybe I’ll make it part of the Goodreads Giveaway Drive?

Seed-Cakes!

Uses this recipe, only with orange zest and poppy seeds. This is kind of an escalation, in its way: yesterday I noticed that my neighbors were cooking on the BBQ, and I was roasting up some vegetables myself. So I laid on them some baked potatoes and roasted corn and tossed in some fresh onions because I can’t cook them anyway. I mean, hey, all that goes with BBQ, right? No sense wasting good vegetables.

Only they sent over a couple of groaning plates of BBQ – far too much in response to the corn and potatoes – so there’s nothing to do except go bake some seed-cakes and send one of them over. This is my standard go-to when it comes to getting free BBQ from neighbors, and it’s worked out well for everybody so far.