It's Tinsel Time At My House

I have a real, aching love for tacky Christmas lights. Not being a supporter of most things Christmas, I can pass on all the professionally produced lights, but the allure of a house covered in C9 lights in weird or random patterns is too much for me to bah-humbug about. My family suffers my "OH! Look over there" followed by a sharp turn of the wheel and our slow crawl past the house. There is a giant bin in my garage with lights and such, begging me for the last 2 years to do something interesting, but I have failed 2 years in a row.

This year I decided that I would put up some kind of tree to put the kiddo's presents around. He is the only person I still buy presents specifically for this holiday and since it's all about finding my joy in his experience, I wanted to give him festive without covering the house in Santa Claus. The end result:

The tree does actually twinkle thanks to the strand of twinkle lights I wrapped around the pole that holds up the tinsel tree. I got the tree at my local bullseye-themed big box retail store for less than $20. Tree, plus $3 in twinkle lights and $0.97 worth of tinsel garland and TADA Shiny Celebration Tree!!

Part of what I love most about the house we moved into last year is this giant mantle. The snowmen you see are a small bit of my college obsession. Prior to my low clutter days, I loved to have boxes and boxes of holiday decor. I have no interest in lugging that around every time I move, so I have paired it down to some fun pieces that really hold my interest.

That's about $5 in tinsel garland, $7 worth of pre-cut glittered snowflakes and a $2 bag of bows.

What is left of what used to be a slightly obsessive snowman collection. 

Menu: Tinsel Holiday Family Dinner

The "holiday season" is my least favorite time of any year. However - I do love food and I do love my family and this year I had a chance to feed the people I love the most so I grabbed it.

The weekend before the main holiday event my dad came down from Ohio, Robert's dad came over and we all sat around the dining table while D opened his presents and then we feasted.

I was a kitchen god.

The Menu

Starters: 
* Cheese-ball, summer sausage and crackers
(I didn't make these, dad brought them)
* Olive and Pickled Tray
* Deviled Eggs

Main: 
I splurged and bought a Honeybaked Ham, which has turned into several meals (more on that later)

Sides: 
* Sweet Potato and Butternut Squash Casserole with Almond and Pecan Crunch
* Slow Cooked Green Beans with Country Ham and Black Pepper
* Braised Brussel Sprouts with Leeks

From My Kitchen: Toffee Almond Caramel Coconut Dark Chocolate Bars

We are not a Christmas holiday celebrating household, but I do like a nice family dinner and all the baked goods that come along with a holiday built for gorging yourself. This recipe started as a reason to use toffee and came out as a new holiday favorite.

Tools to use:
Oven, pre-heated to 350F. Do this first and make sure that the oven is hot.
Mixer, I'm a shameless Kitchen Aid stand whore, but stand if you can, shortbread is a bitch to hand mix.
Baking Pan, 13x9x2 either well greased with butter, bakers spray or lined with parchment. Without it, this cookie is like a construction project to get out of the pan. (Helpful hints on stuck cookies below)
High sided, flat bottom medium sauce pan. You want ample room.
2 Spatulas, both silicone if you have them, things are about to get sticky.


Your Shopping List. 

Unsalted butter
White sugar
All-Purpose flour
Salt, kosher or sea
Toffee bits without any chocolate coating
Light corn syrup
Sliced Almonds
Shredded, unsweetened coconut
Dark chocolate chips

The Shortbread.

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup white granulated sugar
2 cups AP flour
pinch salt, sea or kosher
** mix butter and sugar in mixer until pale and airy
** stir flour and salt together with a fork
** add the flour mix to the butter mix, gradually until combined.

Your batter will be on the dry side, it's shortbread, not a chewy cookie. You want dense, but mold-able. The dough will melt in your hands, which is what makes it sticky and results in a greasy shortbread. Handle it a little as possible; dump it in the middle of the greased or lined jelly roll pan and use a rolling pin (this is my favorite kind), side of a can or the back of a large metal spoon to push the dough as evenly as possible into the baking pan.

Pop that into your waiting 350F oven for 10 to 15 min or until the edges are lightly golden brown the and middle looks more opaque.

While you stand around inhaling the ever growing buttery goodness coming from the oven, make your toffee topping.

The Topping.

Disclaimer: This is not a dessert for those with weak, fake or broken teeth. It's the gift that pulls out fillings if you are not careful.

1 1/2 cups plain toffee, pounded into bits - they sell bits in the baking aisle, or, you can buy toffee bars and beat them with your heavy plastic rolling pin like I do. Just toffee, not toffee covered in chocolate or that contains bits of nuts.
3/4 cup of light corn syrup
pinch of salt, kosher or sea
1 Tblsp unsalted butter
1 cup of sliced almonds, divided in half
1/2 cup of unsweetened shredded coconut
8 oz of dark chocolate chips

** in the medium saucepan, add the toffee bits and corn syrup and cook over medium heat stirring constantly until the toffee chips are melted into the syrup.
** take it off the heat and add the butter, stir in
** turn the heat to low, stir in 1/2 cup sliced almonds, 1/2 cup of coconut and a pinch of salt.
** turn off the heat and set the caramel mix aside

Assembly. 

** take the shortbread out of the oven and sprinkle the chocolate chips over the hot shortbread and spread around with a spatula
** pour the caramel topping over the shortbread and chocolate
** sprinkle the remaining almonds over the top
** pop the whole thing back in the oven for about 10 minutes or until the top bubbles

Let the whole pan cool down and then use a sharp knife to score the topping down to the short bread.

Try not to eat all of them, it's hard.

App Review: Pepperplate

What its for : Recipe organization, meal planning, shopping list organizing, weekly food packing.

Personal Technology: Samsung Galaxy Tab 2.0 (app & Chrome) & HTC OneX (ICS app) & Windows 7 (Chrome)

I'm taking a little break from the Portland posts to laud the wonderfulness that is Pepperplate.

I've been looking for a menu planning app that may all my wants in a single app and this one comes the closest.

Pepperplate gives me a place to collate my own recipes, many of which only existed in my head or on random scraps of paper stuck in cookbooks, along with ones I pull from my favorite websites. Those recipes can then be organized into menus, those menus into plans and those plans into shopping lists. It makes my little organizational heart go pitter-pat.

When you are ready to start cooking, you can set several timers to help get it all on the table at the same time. I've found this a little clunky, but it's still helpful to know in the beginning of cooking a dish when you should start your sides, but if you aren't good at getting a meal on the table (like me) this isn't going to help you much.

East of access is king in this app - from my laptop (at work when I come across some awesome idea for a meal), my phone (at the grocery store while I'm shopping), and my tablet (while I'm cooking in the kitchen) has meant better meals and less frustrating shopping experiences. 

The sync feature is my largest gripe and that's pretty minimal. Occasionally, the sync doesn't complete until you restart the app, or, reverts to a prior shopping list while in the middle of a shopping trip. Annoying, but it's not enough to make me not want to use it.

Being able to make notes on recipes that came from somewhere else is helpful, since I have to make adjustments for the tastes in my household.

The applet Chrome uses on the tablet doesn't function the way the developers obviously wanted it to. You can't easily import or copy and paste. Again, annoying but until I run out of interesting things from Bon Appetit and allrecipes.com it's not keeping me from using it.

You can get the app from Google Play (or iTunes)  and from here on the Web.

Portland, Day One : Fat Girl Eats Portland

The Nerd Llama menacing the harbor in Portland. 

With a photo like this, what else was I supposed to title this post?

Several months ago, my BFF said "We're going on vacation. Where do you want to go?" The agreement was that we had to go somewhere neither of us had ever been before. Given that she is a travelling sales rep and I have traveled pretty extensively, our options for virgin meets interesting destinations were few.

Portland, OR. Tada! So, last week we were off to help keep Portland weird.

Chasing the sunset on a 747.

The upside to late evening flights heading west is that you are forever chasing the sunset across the country. We arrived at PDX at about 9pm local time, the sun had just set, but my body thought it was midnight. The only way to cure jetlag - pizza and beer.

Local brew total - 2.

Rather than staying in a hotel we used AirBnB.com to find a condo. I can tell you that unless I have to, I might not ever stay in another hotel on vacation. It was nice to stay in a place that made you feel more like part of the city, rather than a tourist.

The condo we stayed in was in a building mostly populated by college students (Portland State University was just blocks away) and older professionals. You can see the actual condo we stayed in here. It was a cute little 'bachelor pad' of an apartment but it did us just fine.

Views from the porch:

The view from above to the courtyard below.

To the west, downtown and PSU

To the east, the Williamette River, with Mt. Hood beyond. 

Day Two: Goonies, Oysters and Beer.... coming shortly.

Planting All The Sits

My cat, Obi "The Wan" Kenobi (aka the Giant Grey One), hates plants, but she LOVES to plant sits.

Via Reddit, this is not my cat, but it's close.

So far, she has removed via her not insubstantial weight: my bibb lettuce, romaine, all the wild flowers I planted on the porch in containers,  a rosemary plant and attempted to replant sits in place of some of the day lilies that grow on the side of my driveway. She's a more effective sit gardener than I seem to be at making anything edible grow.

Luckily, she hates the citronella plant near the porch (which I can understand, it really smells terrible) and doesn't seem to like the tomato plants, so those are doing nicely.

Here are some photos of the front yard in full bloom. These were taken two weeks ago or so, just before the four straight days of rain we got here in the ATL. Now, the gardenias are blooming and smell lovely. I'll take more photos this weekend.

Little rambling spots

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Tumblr at the Nerd Llama is mostly random photos and brief snippets of the random shit that goes through my head.

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