Hit by a Pitch

Although I’m a child of the 70s, I’d somehow gotten this far in life without ever having pineapple upside-down cake. Weird, right?

When I realized it was the perfect dessert for a New Year’s Eve celebration that included 70s-friendly fondue, I figured I’d make a pineapple upside-down cake. It was very easy and very good! I used this recipe, with the following changes: (1) decrease cardamom to 1/2 teaspoon; (2) use canned pineapple rings because we couldn’t find a pineapple that was ripe at the last minute — canned pineapple also provides the juice, so that’s cool; (3) adjust for high altitude — decrease baking powder to 1 1/2 teaspoons and decrease sugar (in cake, not topping) to 3/4 cup; (4) use spiced rum because that’s what we had; and (5) sprinkle cake with rum after the kids get their slices.

Everybody had seconds, so I think that means the cake was a hit. I’ll definitely be making it again.

Also, if you were wondering, yes, toddlers like fondue as much as they like messing with the fondue skewer things. (Recipe here — we omitted the cherry brandy, because who has cherry brandy sitting around and who wants to buy cherry brandy just to have a tablespoon to put in the cheese fondue you make once every 10 or so years.)

Also, happy new year!!

Usually when I want peanut butter cookies, I bust out Ye Olde Mom’s Peanut Butter Cookie Recipe, which as all recipes of the Ye Olde Mom’s Series, was written on an index card in the days when I dotted my is (Okay, that’s just hard. I know it’s not correct to apostrophe i’s, but if you don’t, it looks like I’m saying “is.”) with circles. Also I insisted that “@” meant “about” and didn’t really capitalize. (I think that’s why, to this day, I have no patience for people who don’t capitalize. Come on, man, that’s for high school, early college at the latest if you fancy yourself the second coming of e.e. cummings or some shit.)

This is probably the same peanut butter cookie recipe everybody in the world has had since the dawn of time, except those people who make the peanut butter cookies with Hershey’s kisses on them, which are very good but if you ask me don’t really need the kisses.

This time, I wanted a peanut butter cookie that reflects my new obsession with putting peanut butter in my oatmeal, so I guess that would be peanut butter oatmeal cookies. I turned to Chef Google and found something that sounded awesome: “Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies.” The description did not disappoint: “These cookies contain peanut butter and oatmeal.” My midwestern sensibilities appreciate the adequate summary.

The recipe is here. I followed it but:

• I used 1 cup softened butter and 1/2 cup shortening. (My “I don’t bake with shortening!” stance has been softened by the delicious pie crust shortening makes.)
• I made the following high-altitude alterations: reduced sugar to 1 1/2 cup and reduced baking soda to 1 1/2 teaspoon; this worked well for this recipe.
• I used my cookie scooper, which is larger than a teaspoon.
• I was very half-assed about flattening the dough with a fork.
• I preferred a baking time of 11 minutes instead of 12. Oops, never mind. The next day, the cookies baked for 12 minutes tasted better.
• I put the dough in the refrigerator between batches to firm it up.

These are good! They’re not too sweet and they’re not as heavy as regular peanut butter cookies. The shortening gives them a hint of flakiness, which is kind of awesome. They taste a little healthier than regular peanut butter cookies (not saying they are, but they taste like it, but not in a bad way). I’ll be adding them to my dessert arsenal for sure!

Back in the day, I did really exciting things on Saturday nights. Since high school, I always had to be out and about at the current place to be. It wasn’t just going out, either — it was also getting ready to go out. It took hours to do makeup and hair and to figure out exactly the right outfit to wear. (I suspect I used up my lifetime allotment of hours spent giving a shit about this stuff, which is why I don’t bother with it much now.)

Now, I couldn’t really give a shit about Saturday night. Don’t worry — it’s not just because I have a kid. I gave up on caring about Saturday night years ago, when I realized I was just as happy sitting on the couch watching Forensic Files (don’t worry — I’m not quite that lame any more) as I was going to a club (ugh) or bar. Honestly, I think that’s part of why I decided I wanted to have a kid. I was tired of going to bars. I know that sounds kind of, I don’t know, flippant? But that’s kind of how it was. Maybe for people who aren’t born wanting to have kids, eventually, they run out of other things to do and they get tired of going to bars and then say what the hell let’s have a kid. I know a few other people who have admitted that it happens this way. I suspect these people, more often than not, turn out to be relatively content parents because they’re going into it with few expectations, but that’s a story for another day.

Our Saturdays now are unexciting and domestic. I usually pretend to be asleep while Ben gets up and makes coffee, feeds the animals, and gets Soren changed and eating breakfast. Don’t worry — it gets much more exciting (I lie). Eventually, we roll out to do the grocery shopping (Super Target, King Soopers, beer store). We get home and have lunch and/or naps and then clean the house (I dust, Ben vacuums, and we take turns cleaning the bathroom). Saturdays are usually dedicated to doing all the shit we have to do. (The odd result is that Sunday, a day I’ve spent most of my life dreading, is now kind of my favorite because we don’t have work to do and usually spend most of the day doing fun stuff.)

The fun part of Saturday is that it’s almost always officially Pizza Nite (sorry for the unnecessary capital letters and cutesy spelling of “night” — I kind of have to) (“officially” means that more often than not, we also have pizza on other days). On almost every Saturday evening, we order pizza or, less often, Ben makes pizza. (On rare occasions, I can convince Ben to order Thai food, which I could eat every day but Ben finds the lack of cheese troubling.) Ben makes really good pizza. I keep bugging him to write down his recipe or at least dictate it to me like I’m some kind of 50s secretary so I can share it with you guys.

Our current favorite pizza in the world is pizza with fresh jalapenos, green chiles, and green peppers. We discovered this combination almost by accident one day at Woody’s Wood-Fired Pizza in Golden. I wanted to get the pizza with herbed olive oil, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, fresh spinach, roasted garlic, and feta and mozzarella cheeses. Ben, however, is a pizza republican and won’t consent to anything that doesn’t have red sauce. So we settled on all the pepper-type ingredients, and it turned out to be the best combination of pizza ingredients we’ve ever had, seriously. Even in Colorado, most pizza places don’t have green chiles as an ingredient option, which is tragic. And fresh jalapenos aren’t always an option, either.

And so it came to be that Ben made pizza tonight and it was really good. That’s probably the most exciting thing we did all day. And that’s cool.

The world probably doesn’t need another seven-layer salad recipe, but some of the ones I’ve seen out there are a little weird. White sugar? Parmesan? What? Here’s my vegetarian twist on my mom’s version, which, obviously, is the proper Midwestern mom version. She used to make this for Christmas Eve every year — it was an interesting accompaniment to an otherwise traditional Lithuanian meal. It’s a good thing to bring to potlucks because it’s huge, relatively easy, people generally eat at least a bit of it, and you can make it the night before. If you do the math, I think this should actually count as a 10-layer salad, but that just doesn’t sound right.

Seven-Layer Salad

Ingredients

• one head iceberg lettuce, shredded
• 1 green pepper, diced
• 2 stalks celery, finely diced (original calls for 1 cup, which I find overwhelming but I’m not a celery fan)
• 1 medium-to-large yellow onion, chopped
• 1 12-ounce package frozen peas (no need to thaw)
• 1 generous cup shredded carrots
• 2 cups mayonnaise (I use Best Foods light mayo, which is Hellmann’s east of the Rockies) not that light helps much in this situation because holy crap mayo)
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 cup (or more — come on man, it’s cheese) shredded cheddar (preferably sharp)
• 4-6 hard-boiled (free range) eggs¹ (I just used 4 but think 6 would’ve been better), chopped
• 8-10 slices Morningstar Farms veggie bacon slices,² microwaved, cooled, and broken into bite-sized (or smaller, if you prefer) pieces (don’t cook this until right before serving the salad)

Directions

Layer all ingredients except veggie bacon into a gigantic (preferably glass or clear plastic) bowl in the order listed above, evenly distributing each item over the lettuce as much as possible. The mayo application is the trickiest part — I use a spoon to blop the mayo around the top of the salad and then a rubber scraper to spread it as if I were frosting a very delicate, weird cake.

Cover and put in the refrigerator. Chill for, ideally, at least 12 but no more than 24 hours. By the time you’re ready to serve, the peas will be thawed and the mayo and brown sugar will have been magically transformed into a delicious dressing with a complexity that belies its humble components (I exaggerate, but it is kind of cool).

At the last possible minute before you’re going to serve the salad, prepare and add the veggie bacon. This will help it stay crispy.

Enjoy your Midwestern mom food!

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Notes
1. To make perfect hard-boiled eggs (not soft!) at Denver altitude (5280 feet), do this: Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil. Add eggs right from the fridge (no need to bring to room temperature but be careful not to break them when you plop them in the water, like some people I know did the other day). Set a timer for 21 minutes. When the timer goes off, pour out the boiling water, put the pan in the sink, and let cold water run over the eggs until they’re cool. Peel. (Duh, but I try to be thorough.)
2. To prepare the veggie bacon, do this: Remove the package from the freezer and let it sit in a warm place for several minutes (this makes it easier to separate the strips, which stick together when they’re totally frozen). Place the desired amount of strips on a microwave-safe plate and microwave on high for 3 minutes. Move the strips on the inside of the plate to the outside and outside to inside and flip the strips over to help ensure even cooking. Microwave for 30-second intervals until the strips are as crispy as you like them (Ben is the veggie-bacon expert and says he does around 5 minutes total for that many strips because he likes them crispy and crispy is good for this salad — this is a longer cooking time than recommended on the package).

I don’t often tell you about stuff I ate when I’m not posting a recipe, but maybe I should when it’s really good.

Tonight’s dinner is something easy that was inspired in part by an appetizer we used to get at the now-defunct Privata Cafe in Chicago. It goes something like this:

• Make some cucumber salad. Cucumber salad is a mom thing (perhaps a midwestern mom thing but that’s hit or miss — Ben’s mom makes cucumber salad like this but my mom doesn’t). Peel and chop a cucumber (or you can thinly slice) and mix with 2 parts sour cream to one part mayo, plus salt and pepper to taste (and a little dill if you want). This is supposed to be made with yogurt, which could make it more healthy, but Ben insists that he hates yogurt (although that’s just silly, because he hates mayo, too, but I’m not complaining because he’s the cook).
• Cut up and fry some vegetables in a little oil until tender. Tonight we had zucchini and yellow squash from the garden plus carrots and onions.
• Warm a tortilla (I have half of a flour tortilla here because I generally roll open-faced style) over a gas burner. Alternatively, use pita, as seen on Ben’s plate above. Top your tortilla or fill your pita with a layer of hummus (we had green chile hummus that Ben made the other day) and the vegetables. Garnish with Sriracha and feta cheese (and tahini dressing if you have any — we didn’t tonight and it was fine). Take a giant serving of cucumber salad.
• Enjoy, possibly with a beer. (Mine was 400 Pound Monkey IPA from New Belgium. My dessert beer tonight is Nelson Imperial IPA from Widmer Brothers Brewing and holy crap it is good.)

I never thought of combining hummus with cooked veggies until we had it at Privata but wow, it’s really good.

Unfortunately, Soren misconstrued hummus as some sort of spa treatment that he smeared all over himself, but he seemed to enjoy the cucumber salad and, of course, the tortilla. That’s one of his favorite words: Tortilla! Tortilla! Tilla! Tillllllla! Speaking of Soren, Ben decided to give him a pillow tonight for the first time. When I checked on him, he was sleeping on the pillow like, well, like a little person. He was still tucked in under the blanket, too. My baby is growing up so fast you guys.