Crockin' and almost rollin' with Gertrude

This year for christmas I got another kitchen appliance to add to my and my housemates' growing collection- you would think that with a food processor, waffle iron, sandwich maker, panini press, 2 blenders, fondue pot, george foreman grill and a ricecooker that I would not need anything else.... however, the aspiring adventurous chef inside of me said otherwise, so I asked for a CrockPot.  The idea of a CrockPot is very romantic- you can just whip up something in the morning before running out of the house and then come home to a warm,savory meal .  There are a few caveats however- first off, many of the recipes involve lots of processed food items that you simply throw together. Entire bottles of ranch dressing, cans of "cream of XXXX soup" or packets of taco seasoning are not exactly what I want to be putting into my body.  Therefore, I am on a mission to find healthy and delicious crock pot recipes with which I can fulfill this fantasy of coming home to a nice meal.  And when I mean delicious, I really mean it- my CrockPot is giant so anything I make I will be having for days!  Second, many of the recipes involve more work than you would expect- namely chopping lots of vegetables. So, I would like to find some recipes that minimize the amount of work (without sacrificing taste or nutritional value that is).

Last week on Saturday there was a 30% chance of rain.  That may seem like a normal winter day to anyone in any other year or in any other place (well actually it probably would be raining, not just a 30% chance) but this was a very significant day here in California since there was actually a CHANCE of rain- we have not had one drop of rain this entire year. Because of this it was actually somewhat wintery looking outside and I decided I needed to make a nice warm meal in the crock pot- I settled on a hearty beef stew.  I have never made stew before, so decided to strictly follow a recipe to ensure that this stew that I was going to be able to make at least 5 meals out of would be good. I followed the http://allrecipes.com/recipe/slow-cooker-beef-stew-i/ minus the celery since I simply do not like celery.  I also realized as I was putting in everything that I did not have Worcestershire sauce..... so I just added a splash of soysauce and ketchup (thank you yahoo! answers).  All in all, the stew was a tad bland. However, a sprinkle of salt fixed that!

Also for christmas I got some more pans! I got a brownie pan with individual brownie squares (which I am a little bit skeptical about since brownie edges are the worst) and a mini-loaf pan.  I decided to make use of the mini-loaf pans a make some whole-wheat cornbread with the following recipe http://www.food.com/recipe/whole-wheat-cornbread-80963.  My only faux pas came when I accidentally used the spoon I had been stirring the stew with (which had a strong flavor of onions) to scoop the batter into the loaf pans. Most of the time my worst nightmare is to have my baked good "contaminated" with onion-ness (I am not the biggest onion fan in general, let alone on things it just not be on!), but the cornbread with a tint of onion was actually pretty good.  Would I chop up onions and put them into cornbread.....??? probably not.  But this cornbread went wonderfully with my stew and was in the form of nice little freezable loafs. Now I'm off to go eat some of this stew....a week later. (don't worry I froze it too!)

Zebra Brownies

I will start by apologizing that I am writing this post almost two weeks after the creation of this product.  Lets just call this my belated holiday post.

If you go back to my december 2012 posts (wow 2012!- that was a long time ago.  Still can't believe it is 2014), you will see my entry called "gifty granola" which explains my yearly holiday tradition of giving a jar with some sort of delicious food item to my relatives.  I have done cookies many times, did granola last year and decided that this year I needed to continue to expand my horizons and do some other IAJ recipe.... IAJ obviously is an abbreviation for IAJ (a bet somewhere, in the world, that is a valid abbreviation).  The two requirements for IAJ recipes that I arbitrarily decided :  1) the receiver should not be required to put in more than 3 of their own ingredients into the mix to prevent them getting ripped off... some gift it is if they have to add 10 ingredients! 2) the mix has to look pretty.  That is really all there is to a successful something IAJ .

After browsing a bit online for some inspiration, I came across a recipe called "tuxedo brownies"  which fit all of my VERY strict requirements an IAJ recipe.  So, I decided to go for it. Basically, it entails layering walnuts, white chocolate chips, chocolate chips, brown sugar, flour, cocoa, salt and sugar.  I especially liked this recipe because it has no baking soda or baking powder to add to each one- that is annoying.

 If you haven't picked up on it, they are called "tuxedo brownies" because they have white chocolate chips and chocolate chips (black/white).  I was going to go with this exact same concept, but then I started to get the feeling that these are the types you give out at a wedding...... not christmas.  Maybe one day I will give my wedding guests tuxedo brownies IAJ but christmas was not that day! So, I racked my brain for other black on white things besides a tuxedo.  I came up with cow brownies (Davis resident obviously), Dalmatian brownies, piano brownies, skunk brownies (ew) and zebra brownies.  None of these are particular merry or festive as a christmas gift should be, so I just went with the most exotic- Zebra brownies.  I also found cool scrapbook paper that I could decorate with.  I ended up following the recipe exactly and then dolled up the jars to fit my zebra theme. I also obviously had to make a sample of these chewy, chocolatey and delicious brownies to bring to the party.  I suppose you could always make the brownies without even including the whole jar part if you are just making them on your own, but if you want a wonderful gift to give someone to give them the impression they are a masterful baker, you know what to do :) Happy 2014!!