White Saturday

Central Alabama is getting its first significant snowfall since 2000, and hubby and I are enjoying a quiet and relaxed day of the white stuff. Behold. To the left are our cars, Betsy and Gladys. Interestingly, the snow on the Bug's hood has slipped to the ground, but Gladys' hood rendered a bounty of clean snow for making snow cream. I used Michelle Malkin's recipe but substituted evaporated milk for the regular milk. Even better!

I am now threatening to break out the cocoa, evap milk, cinnamon and cayenne for some righteous Mexican-style hot chocolate, and hubby is very happy about this.

UPDATE: The hot chocolate is a hit! Here's the recipe:

In a coffee mug, combine
- 1 T plus 1/4 tsp. sugar
- 3 tsp. cocoa powder
- pinch of salt

Meanwhile, microwave 1 cup of evaporated milk on high for 1 minute or until hot but not scalding. Pour the heated milk into the mug, stirring briskly to combine the dry ingredients with the milk.

Add freshly ground cinnamon, fresly ground nutmeg and cayenne pepper powder to taste. Finish with a dash of vanilla extract.

Que delicioso!

ISO: Halloween recipes that don't induce vomiting

I love Halloween. I hate Googling for Halloween recipes.

To everyone out there who posts Halloween recipes: Please put your vomit-inducing recipes on a separate page AWAY from the recipes for roasted pumpkin seed and caramel apples. I am getting so tired of searching for innocent recipes and instead stumbling upon these appetizing selections:

*** Please do not read if you've recently had a meal or plan to within the next hour. ***

"Bloody Popcorn"
"Kitty Litter Cake"
"Brains and Eyeballs"
And perhaps the all-time worst: "Hair Salad with Saliva Dressing"

I am not 11. I do not think that gross is cool. I do not want to consume food that may taste fabulous but looks like roadkill, bodily waste or a serious industrial accident. I do not want scary bits floating in my beverage. I do not want to consume things that remind me of sinusitis.

I was at a Halloween party years ago at the home of this artsy-tartsy couple of university professors. The house was way out in the hinterland, which just gave you this heightened sense of foreboding. (Oh, so this is where they hide the bodies?) The decorations were fabulous in a house that already had this quirky Dali-esque spookiness about it. (The kitchen was decorated RED and BLACK.) The appetizers were delicious and the beverages were flowing.

I was having a grand old time swanning about in my Bollywood princess outfit when some knucklehead guest brings out the kitty litter cake. In a real kitty litter box with a scoop.

Although my rational forebrain knew I was looking at rolled oats dotted with some kind of fig paste, my reptilian brain was screaming, "DO NOT EAT POOP! DANGER! DANGER! DO NOT EAT POOP! POOP BAD! POOP BAD!"

I could feel the bile rising in the back of my throat. I wanted to punch the guy.

So, all you recipe posters: No gross stuff where I can easily find it. Thank you.

Alton Brown on the real reason we cook

Our Patron Saint of Perpetual Good Eats


The GGB recently gave up her 40-hour-a-week Corporate America job for a kinder gig as Household COO (and occasional dance teacher and freelancer). When my former coworkers asked me if I was looking forward to a change of pace, I often told them I was excited about cooking dinner and having it ready when my husband gets home.

A few people looked at me as if I'd said I was going to be manacled to a stove and given daily beatings for my trouble.

It is not fashionable these days to be enthusiastic about the home arts. And if you do cook, you're supposed to do it as quickly as possible a la Rachael Ray. (That's another post entirely. The woman is a blight on humanity.)

However, I picked up on a bit of cosmic brilliance by the anti-Rachael, the sensei of culinary kung fu, the high priest of all that is sacred and holy about the range top and the saute pan. I give you words of wisdom from Alton Brown:

... feeding someone is an act of caring. We will always be fed best by those that care, be it ourselves or the aforementioned friends and family.We are fat and sick and dying because we have handed a basic, fundamental and intimate function of life over to corporations. We choose to value our nourishment so little that we entrust it to strangers. We hand our lives over to big companies and then drag them to court when the deal goes bad. This is insanity.

Amen, brother.