Lemon Coconut Icebox Cupcakes... for America

So, mostly for me, Summertime is a cooking and baking hiatus. Not because I'm so busy taking in the music festivals or paddleboarding or whatever people in the Chicago commercials are always doing while they raaaaave about summer in this city. My summer is pretty much one long grit of my teeth trying to limit my time with people I care about while I inevitably get the mooooost heat crabby. Avoiding any heat of any kind means never ever turning on my stove or oven or even walking by the pair of 'em while the pilot light is lit if I can manage it. 

But you know I also do not like to show up places emptyhanded, and even as I actively try not to let people see me at my worst (aka, hottest) over the summer, sometimes there's a holiday or a celebration and appearances must be made.

Real talk, it is not even hot this week in Chicago. It's like 72 and absolutely perfect, so that whole preamble was just because when I was PLANNING to make this recipe, I was peptalking myself like "Okay, I could make this even if it is like 90 degrees and 150% humidity as the Midwest is wont to be in July and you're hating life but still needing to be a decent guest" and thus a dream was borne. An American icebox cupcake dream.

In addition to the non-negotiable of not requiring an oven or stove (which is enough to win my heart forever), let me tell you why else these icebox cupcakes are the best:

1. Shutterbean made them and so they obvi look amazing and beautiful and perfectly lit in her version.

2. Every single ingredient can be best obtained at Trader Joe's.

3. They are moooostly about assembly and require practically no skill, which is my most favorite ratio of those two things.

4. You can adapt them in about a million ways by changing up different parts of the recipe which is honestly the only thing I even like about baking and usually doing so throws absolutely everything off because you really can't be so cavalier about such things when you're baking but since you're NOT baking this time, you totally can. For example, I swapped lemon cookies out for coconut cookies and left the raspberries out altogether because I planned to do toasted coconut on top for fancies, but more on that LATER because, drama.

5. Icebox is an adorable throwback name for a refrigerator which means that our ancestors have been making these for at least decades if not centuries, so like, helllooooooooooo heritage, I smell a 4th of July miracle a-comin'!

6. They're so easy, I had to stall for time whining about the non-existent heat otherwise this wouldn't even be a post. It may remain unclear throughout why it even is.

Cool, we have a super robust list of why these are awesome and about a hundred pictures I took along the way, so let's see if I can't speed this along a little so you can get to your patriotic Jell-o shots or whatever YOU plan on doing to celebrate our nation's birth.

Here's what you need:

• 1 pint heavy whipping cream
• 1/3 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract (pure if I need to say so, because we're not barbarians)
• 1 tbsp lemon zest (or if you are lazy and don't plan ahead, as much zest as you can get from the lemons you already own, which for me was one large and one small and did NOT make one full tablespoon)
• 1/2 cup lemon curd 
• Multiples of 3 or 4 wafer cookies, times how many cupcakes you want to make. I clearly did not do math first and my box had 72 cookies and so I did layers of 3 times 21, which is 63, because maybe I needed to try a couple first
• Fruits, or whatever else you use to make up for (spoiler alert!) burning your coconut
• Cupcake sleeves or whatever frou-frou thing they're actually called. Enough for all your cupcakes, genius.

So first, I got my little cups laid out in my multiple little tupperwares because I am not old or grown-up enough to have a cupcake carrier yet, but also sort of don't want one because holy storage crisis.
Then I put a coconut cookie in each just to sort of set the scene, you know. Get the party started.

Because, actually it was way premature to start wafer assembly, since I needed to first spend infinity minutes whipping cream. I get that our ancestral icebox maidens probably did this by hand, so the ensuing whine about how long this took is totally a Millennial Patience Fail, but also, oh my god, is this mixer not ELECTRIC?!? 

Whipping cream in a bowl. That's when you start standing there, literally not doing anything so it's really strange how cranky it's going to make you when it takes like ten minutes to get to what is described by Shutterbean as "soft peaks".

Once soft peaks are achieved and you've collected your trophy for participating, you're going to add in your powdered sugar and PURE vanilla extract and continue that beating until you've achieved "firm peaks". These are like soft peaks, but firmer.

Then you're going to bust out the magical miracle ingredient: lemon curd! Four HEAPING teaspoons later and your whip cream just went from moderately unhealthy on account of how it is fuuuuuulll fat cream to legit death by cream and butter because pssst, that's why lemon curd is so good: Butter.

Anyway, dump that in with abandon because, hey, we're celebrating Amerrrrrrrrica and ain't nothing more American than full fat cream and butter mixed with nominal amounts of fruit.

Speaking of nominal amounts of fruit, you're going to also be getting into a lemon zest scene with this. Since you're sort of fancy, but maybe also not so fancy that you have an actual fruit zester, you just sort of jankily grate it with a cheese grater, because you're basically kitchen MacGuyver.

Once you've got a teaspoon of zest, or no more lemon to zest as was the case in my particular scenario, dump that in too. Once it's in, you're going to fold that and the curd into the whipped cream.

Folding is fancy stirring. 

Whipped cream's all done. You know what time it is? 

Assembly o'clock!

 Get your cookies, get your cream, and get to stacking. 

Because Shutterbean knew how to count and plan, she did four cookie layers. On account of me being so reckless and wild with math in the kitchen, I did three. I also didn't do the additional plop of lemon curd on top, because I thought things were maybe getting a little OOC with the lemon curd.

 I think everyone's going to be just fine, so chill.

If I sound slightly defensive about my whimsically innovative approach to baking, it is on account of the following, which was my attempt at a kitchen hack of toasting coconut flakes in my toaster oven and wound up being... well, this:

Riiiiiiiiiight. 

So coconut was no longer a pretty or fun addition to these cupcakes. Hit the fridge and lo and behold, I had patriotic fruit at the ready! Personally, I am not so into the stars and stripes cake, etc. approach to the 4th of July and wasn't thrilled with the ruining of my epic lemon-coconut flavor pairing, but in a pinch, using strawberries and blueberries for a 4th dessert probably looks intentional and whatever, it's not the end of the world. 

And, I'll admit it: turned out pretty adorable.

Now they're so cute!
They kind of remind me of that Kandinsky painting. You know the one. I had it on my wall for all of college after the First Year Poster Sale and I bet you did too.

The one sort of sad thing about making fun treats for a party is you really shouldn't have a sample because you're messing with an already limited number of viable treats. That is normally very difficult for me to achieve but oh hi, number SEVEN reason why this recipe is amazing: You've got to put them in the "icebox" for four or more hours to properly soften up and become like little mushy love pillows so you won't even be tempted until the middle of the night and you'll be asleep. 

MIRACLE RECIPE.

(I am so evangelically into how amazing this recipe is to make, I genuinely do not care how it winds up tasting.)

Eastover/Passter, but let's be clear: neither Easter nor Passover

Some fairly religiously underaffiliated friends suggested having a "Passeaster" celebration this weekend, complete with all of the great food things one comes to expect from Passover and Easter with none of that complicated religious stuff to get in the way.  Obviously, I was in.  Our hosts sent out a lovely list of food items that might be included in the feast and altruistically volunteered to handle all the really difficult-to-make spectacular-to-behold showpiece food items. In order to not show up empty handed and lame before eating more than one's fair share of brisket, this left "potato side," "Easter candy?," and kugel as remaining options available to make .  I have unreasonable difficulties making potatoes not crunchy (which is only a desirable state when making potato chips and that is only sometimes what I am making) and I already ate an adorable dozen mini Cadbury eggs (they came in the cutest miniature egg carton!) this week so can clearly not be trusted around holiday candy of any kind. Kugel it was. So now's as good a time as any to admit, I actually do know that kugel is not "kosher for Passover". I knew it even before I had to hear it from my boss when she agreed to give me her family kugel recipe and then again through osmosis when she called her mother (in Florida) for the recipe and her mother clearly judged my boss for hiring an idiot who didn't know that kugel wasn't a traditional Passover food. I KNOW. HOWEVER. We're not having Passover. It's Passter... or Eastover... or whatever. But not Passover. (Sidenote to say these hybrid holidays like Chrismukkah and Eastover are unique to our generation and while I recognize that for devoutly religious folks among us, these mashups are literally sacrilegious, I actually feel like they represent a really neat worldview of young-ish people of this time. Second sidenote to say, since my last post, I've turned 30, so maybe you quibble with me including myself in "young-ish". Point taken.) Right, so kugel. Despite being non-affiliated with the kugel culture firsthand, I've had my share of delightful kugels. I like from the outset that it seems like my very favorite type of food, which is something that there are a million variations of that you can add whatever the eff you want to without totally wrecking its pretty basic awesomeness. In fact, I almost made a caramel apple kugel that seemed like it would be pretty spectacular, but I let reason prevail. The other important thing to know going into making kugel is, this recipe will make you pretty certain a heart attack is in your imminent future. There is zero nutritional value from what I can tell, and it features immoderate amounts of pretty much every ingredient you're supposed to have in moderation except for maybe steak. Also, everything is white, which is like Nutrition 101 for "not great for you, actually pretty bad for you". Whatever! It's a holiday!  (Sort of?) First, I had to go to the store to assemble these ingredients, which was embarrassing, because they were the only thing in my cart and it made it look like I don't know I'm supposed to eat vegetables. This is the ingredient list I got from my boss's mom, after she stopped judging: 12 ounces egg noodles (I got "extra wide" - you do you) 3/4 cup sour cream 3 ounces cream cheese 1 1/2 sticks (that's 3/4 cup, mathies) of butter 3-4 large eggs DID YOU HAVE A HEART ATTACK YET? You will. Salt to taste 3 tablespoons butter 1/2 cup milk 16 ounces cottage cheese White raisins (optional) (but WHY would you leave these out when they are pretty much the only fruit-and-vegetable-adjacent thing listed?!?) Topping 1/2 cup corn flakes, crumbed up 1 tablespoon melted butter 1 tablespoon brown sugar Dash of cinnamon (I committed to a full teaspoon, because I live on the edge) Ingredient family portrait: One of these things is not like the other (Hint: it's the one that's a fruit)

First, you need to prepare your egg noodles according to package instructions, which means 10 minutes after the salted water boils. I'd encourage you to start with a big enough pot to fit all the water and noodles first, so that you don't have a dangerous hot water/noodle situation on your hands when your noodles outgrow the too-small pot you started with. That happened to a friend of mine once...

While your noodles are draining, melt that ration of butter.

Once the noodles have been drained, you can return them to one of the two hot pans you've now made dirty messing up your pot size and add in your melted butter and mix it up. Do you dig the color it is? You're going to be soooo into the rest of this recipe.

Now add in the cream cheese, "chunked up". This is the first time you will physically feel as disgusting as this recipe seems like it is making your body. If it looks like this, you've done chunked it up real good.

Get used to this color

Now you're going to mix up the milk and sour cream. Here's where I started to take my first liberties, because you obviously knew those were coming. I don't drink milk-milk and soy milk felt like a weird substitution this time. I am loathe to buy milk-milk for recipes because no matter how small a size I get, a lot goes to waste and maybe I'm just spoiled from soy milk (soy-led? Wait, no.), but milk-milk goes bad super fast. Anyway, I opted no. Also, I already had to suck it up and buy buttermilk for my new donut-making habit this weekend, so I just figured, it's half a cup, who cares. More sour things seemed like par for the course with this recipe.

This is mostly to show how tan my forearm is. Thanks, Mexico.

I also made a bold move on the sour cream, opting for this "Greek-style" sour cream, because it claims half the fat and honestly, this recipe is making me feel really guilty and my mom hasn't even read it yet.

Just like, small allowances for "health"

So stir those two rebels together and then pour them on top of your super multi-cultural noodle mix.

Shades of meh.

Add in your sugar and a dash or two (or more if you used unsalted butter and have already recklessly disregarded living into your 80's,which I did and I have) of salt (potentially the only kosher part of my recipe but I seriously have no idea).

I am fascinated by the various food suppliers of different regions and one of the most adorable I have seen is Daisy dairy products here in Chicago. Just real cute.

Everything is more charming in the Midwest

You've got the hang of stirring things in, so why don't you go ahead and dump that whole tub of cottage cheese into the mix and see how vibrant it makes your kugel-in-progress.

So, um, still that color, huh?

At this point, I had to add something to mix it up a little, so while the recipe called for optional raisins and specified they be white, I just couldn't.

Let there be craisins!

For all I know, the craisins may be the most blasphemous part of this whole operation, but I stand by my choice.

Speaking of danger, I don't like corn flakes (does anyone?) and wasn't going to buy them for this recipe and knew I already had the dregs of a box of Wheaties (which I actually do super love, so color me unpredictable!) at home, so I just used those for the topping. I would support you using pretty much any cereal here short of like, Fruity Pebbles (though lord knows, we could use some color), so I'd say, whatever's around, but if you're a rule follower, it should be corn flakes. Probably name brand, honestly.

Crush those into smithereens and add in one or two tablespoons of butter and a little bit of brown sugar and cinnamon and mash that all together.

When brown feels like it is dramatically diversifying your color palette.

My recipe-giver specified that adding in the eggs should be the very last thing and while I take liberties with many things in the kitchen, messing up the timing of eggs in recipes is something I never fool around with. The recipe calls for 3-4 large eggs, so I used 4, but only the yolks of 3 because, health.

Beat those eggs up and then toss them into the pot.

Poor, sad, craisins, so outnumbered by things that are beige.

Your kugs is totally ready to be baked now. Butter or spray up a baking dish (8x12", 9x7", honestly, I do not think it matters. I have a 9x7" and then I also have a little mini baking dish that I used because after allotting my month's ration of dairy to this recipe, I wasn't going to give all the goodness away. Jesus probably would've.)

Sharing is caring, but pre-planned leftovers is just good sense.

Pour your kugel into the dishes and then top with your topping, that's why it's called topping. I didn't have enough for Mini Me, so I guess maybe I AM capable of making sacrifices. Pop it into your - OH NO, I FORGOT TO TELL YOU TO PREHEAT THE OVEN - preheated 350 degree oven and let it cook for about an hour. When you're done, it's going to look like this.

And taste like beige.
Just kidding. It's going to taste amazing.
Because that's what butter and dairy and eggs do to a recipe.
(And um, also, craisins.)

HAPPY EASTOVER!

Oh, Kale No!

Okay, first things first. If kale is just not your thing, this is not your post. I totally get it. Kale is weird and bottom-of-the-ocean looking and excessively crunchy if you're not super into crunch. However, if kale is not your thing ONLY because kale has been overdone to death for the past couple of years and screams of hipster lameness, may I just gently implore you: don't be That Girl (or That Guy, but again, I highly doubt you're reading this AND a guy.) 

As with all (admittedly) faddish food trends, there is a reason we all got hype about kale in the first place, and that is because it is baaaaaasically lettuce, except where lettuce has zero nutrients or anything positive going for it except crunch, kale has mega nutrients AND is crunchy. Now, don't ask me WHAT nutrients, because I don't know and don't care, and don't pretend you know or care either. But nutrients. So that we feel great about ourselves, because really, why else? (Health... okay, fine.)

So, cool, anyone who is reading is still on board with kale and ready to straight up substitute it into a classic Caesar salad, which we all know is a salad in name only because it is far too tasty and fatty to really be a salad UNLESS, you swap out the lettuce with kale and then blammo! Nutritious AND delicious.

I saw this Smoky Kale Caesar salad on Shutterbean a few weeks ago and if Shutterbean is not on your daily or weekly read list, then why don't you pause for a sec and go bookmark it real quick and then add into your calendar to send me a thank-you note in about a week when you realize it is the best bookmarking decision you made since this. 

I'll admit, with this particular recipe, I came for the pretty kale pics and stayed for the homemade croutons. If you haven't made your own croutons, this recipe breaks it down awesome-style and makes you into every friend's new BEST friend on account of how awesome you will be bringing it to the next year of parties. (Salad parties, I guess? OR SOUP. Croutons, so versatile.) Speaking of best friends, I first made my own croutons with my BFF and she does hers even more deliciously by frying them up in a pan, but this is not that this time, but for sure you could do that instead of the oven prep I SWEAR I AM GETTING TO.

Okay, we'll get to the salad part of this salad later (spoiler alert: it is literally just cutting up kale), but first let's crouton. The verb.

Anyone who has eaten shitty store-bought tiny baby rock croutons and still been like "Oh, ew! No, waaaaaaait, even this is very delicious" knows you can use any bread (I see you with your Wonderbread, Pepperidge Farm) for croutons. That said, hearty breads are the best. Tracy (we're on a first name basis, I guess? But also, I don't know her last name because, The Internet) over at Shutterbean says "country bread", and since I was already feeling smug about my good kale intentions, I went for the gold (also, hey, Olympics! but okay, they've been a little bit terrible, no? We'll talk later) and did "multigrain country bread". Feeling better about yourself because you use multigrain bread may not be the most sustainable form of self-esteem but it is A form of self-esteem, so there.

If you're wondering, have we even started preparing any food yet? The answer is no. We have not. Let's do that now.

Tear up that country bread. Or, I know I was mean about Wonderbread earlier but, really whatever bread you have is fine (but do you seriously buy Wonderbread? We're adults), because these are going to turn out great no matter what. As with all things I do, I was not very uniform about my tearing. I hope you let that give you license to also not be too perfect about it. But if not, maybe you need to cut instead of tear these and bust out a ruler and find that they're mostly 1"x1", aka bite-sized. I'm making fun of you. Don't do that.

All those little multigrains make this exceptionally photogenic.

(My girl) Tracy says to lay this out on the baking sheet now, but I made an executive decision to put the bread in the bowl and oil and season there so I could shake it all up. I have a notoriously shaky irregular hand with oil pouring, so for me the bowl-and-shake method (tm) works best. Also, it's fun to shake. Shake what, you ask? That's right, I didn't say. Olive oil (however much, but like, not too much, be reasonable about it. Soggy croutons are, in fact, not croutons) and then a mix of thyme, oregano, basil, salt, and pepper. Or whatever you have. They're croutons. We've already overthought them. 

Shake, shake, shake, then pour onto a (parchment papered if you're smart/lazy) baking tray and pop in your (already pre-heated to 350 because I meant to tell you that) oven for about ten minutes. After ten minutes, shake them around a bit, or manually turn each one over by hand (I actually did that because my Type A-ness takes hold in the kitchen in very inconsistent ways) and return to the oven for about five minutes. Take them out and let them rest on the warm oven for extra crunchiness. Tracy says to use day-old bread, I didn't have the patience for that and am here to report, I think they are still better than okay, but if you want to follow the actual chef, I definitely would not blame you.

This is pre-turn, but I'll tell you what. It looked very much the same post-turn.
Only a mom would know the difference. A crouton mom.

Now that we've spent approximately fifty thousand words on croutons, let's talk dressing. We're making a Caesar dressing on account of this is a Caesar salad and without a Caesar dressing, it would just be kale with stale bread on top. Which... yeah, I'd probably still eat that? But this will be better if we make dressing.

Warning: there is something really gross that goes into Caesar dressing that you cannot un-know once you know, so proceed with caution.

Ingredient Family Portrait, minus one because there's a gross surprise in store.

Gather your MANY ingredients.

- 1 tsp red wine vinegar

- 1 tsp lemon juice (mine is not fresh, oh my god, don't judge me)

- 2 cloves of garlic (or ~1tsp of garlic powder which I did because I just don't have the angelic good nature necessary to make up for my hands and hair being smelly all week in public)

- 1.5 tsp chili powder (I used cayenne pepper because I accidentally didn't know the difference)

- 1.5 tsp smoked paprika (I used regular paprika because it seemed like a spice I would use again, and so now I guess this is technically where my salad is not going to be "smoky" like Shutterbean's)

- 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

- 1 egg yolk (which is gross but is TOTALLY NOT EVEN THE GROSSEST THING)

AND...

Let's be honest, probably a lesser king.

Yes, real Caesar dressing, even that which will be used on kale, requires anchovies. If you're a vegetarian or squeamish, you could leave them out, but don't delude yourself that you're making real Caesar dressing anymore. You're not. 

I don't know why I'm getting all indignant about Caesar purity, except probably just because I did dig out four anchovies from this can with MY OWN FINGERS, so I likely just need to justify that the complete disgustingness of that was worth it for authenticity. It totally is, right? Because it was really nasty. But I did at least take a moment to consider how insignificantly microscopic my own anchovy disgust was if compared with someone working at the King Oscar factory filleting and packing these little suckers working hard for the money. Respect.

All these ingredients get blended up either with an immersion blender or if you happen to have received one as a gift approximately eight years ago and carted it between six different apartments and used maybe seven times post-Pesto Phase 2k7, a Magic Bullet. Tracy details the proper order in which to do this, but I obviously ignored that and will probably die of salmonella because did I mention the raw egg yolk? Yeah, we're doing this real-Rocky style. But I think even if I had blended the ingredients in the right order, I might still die, so I'd rather live on the edge while the livin's still good. 

Once it's blended, if you happen to have a very precious little jar hanging around, go ahead and put it in that for storage. Otherwise, tupperware will do ya. (But, I need to be real with you, probably will not make your coworkers quite as in awe of your domesticity.)

This dressing matches my shirt, which also matches my skin, so yeah, I look like human flu today.

So, crouton's are done. Dressing is done. I know, I'd be totally fine if we stopped right there and just dunked croutons in dressing all week, but WE HAVE TO HAVE KALE. It's why we're allowed to have raw eggs and so much Parmesan cheese. NUTRIENTS. 

I think I got the wrong kind of kale to make it look like Tracy's, but real talk, my grocery store only had one kind of kale, and like I was going to know the difference anyway? But I do think my (unspecified type of) kale required a little more creative cutting than Tracy's. Instead of just trimming off the lower stem and cutting across the remaining stems, I sliced the leaves off of each side of the whole stem before cutting to size, because I'm eating kale, but I don't need to be a martyr about it.

It's still kale. What were you expecting?

Pack that stuff up, bag up those gorgeous croutons, grate some sharp cheddar cheese, get ready to out-cute everyone with your little dressing jar, and you're good to go on happy kaletimes for lunch all week. I tried each part and they were yum, but since this is an assembly-required lunch, I don't know how this tastes all together yet, so maybe terrible, but probably great. Let's assume great.

Souper Bowl Sunday

First things first. Before you get all indignant. I did not make soup for the Super Bowl. I'm an American.

I am, however, multi-tasking my pre-Super Bowl time with soup-making. For Super Bowl realsies, I'm attending a dip competition and bringing this desserty banoffee dip to really shake things up. Also, cheesy bread, because while it is not technically dip, who gon' stop me? Also, I made some weird overnight chai steel cut oats, which I wouldn't dare bring to a party because I assume they're going to be terrible, but the "overnight" part means we won't find out that unsecret surprise until tomorrow morning when it's too freaking late and it's already my all-week breakfast.

Speaking of unsecret surprises, it's still super cold in Chicago. I'm not like a crazy fan of soup (though this blog might have you presuming otherwise), but when it's this cold out for this long, soup seems like really the only thing. Also, red wine. But I've found that makes for an inappropriate workplace lunch. So, soup it is.

I got some new knives and one of those amazing knife-hangy magnet strip thingies this week because I've been hating on my terrible cheap knife block since I bought it in 2006 and if the knives weren't that sharp when I got them (they were not), you can only imagine how lame they are seven years later. So, fun colorful knifes joined the kitchen party. Had to keep some of the random old stuff from the block just like... because I'm a hoarder, but it was very satisfying to toss 75% of that dumb block in the trash.

They're so fun and friendly-looking! Still sharp, though. Learned that the hard way.

So, I had my new knives and I was itching to chop. I don't have as much time as usual (aka, all day) since I do need to bring my subversive cheese bread and game-changing dessert dip into the city later this afternoon, so slow cooker was out. I know, terrifying, right? I was terrified. But, turns out, you can just make soup in a pot. Who knew? Oh, everyone? Cool. Congrats.

This soup is starring potatoes, onions, and garlic. All really great cuttin' food. It also features pasta, spinach, and parmesan cheese, and those are all things I enjoy, so I felt really great about where things were going. It also features an incredibly fast recipe-read, so if you are short on time and just trying to get shit done, a. I am not sure why you'd read this in the first place and b. I already linked it already, so just go follow that, party pooper.

Picked out some good cuttin' food.

So we'll start with potatoes. Recipe called for two, I panicked at the grocery store and got three. I think you probably can't have too many potatoes. Unless you are on some sort of pre-bridesmaiding Cancun diet, in which case, maybe three potatoes was pretty dumb. You can probably imagine how well that (totally made up, never going to happen) diet is going. Okay, peel and chop those up. Bite-size is key, maybe you try for like 1"x1", but also maybe don't sweat it, because, chill.

So many potatoes!

Heat up some olive oil, three swirls or so in a very large pot, or you could use a Dutch Boy if you're fancy and know that's a type of pot and not a type of person. Toss your potatoes, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and - in my case - garlic powder and cook on medium-high heat for about 5-6 minutes. Or as long as it takes for you to chop up your onions and garlic, let's not get too precious about this timing thing.

Heating up the potatoes. Super photogenic.

Chop up your one white (or yellow... I don't think it matters?) onion. If you want to feel better about your chopping, see this photo below of how good mine is. You're welcome.

A new knife isn't going to just miraculously make me better at chopping onions.

Smash and chop three or four cloves of garlic. And then spend the rest of the day trying to get the smell off your hands, hair, and body. That is the price we pay for garlic in recipes. It just is. By the time you've dealt with all that, your potatoes should be happily crisped up a little and partially cooked. Dump in your onions and garlic and partially cover the pot for five minutes or so, while the onions turn sort of clearer. 

Potato + onion marriage.

Meanwhile, let's discuss garbanzo beans. Oh, did I mention this recipe has garbanzo beans? I didn't, huh? Well, it does. Now, garbanzos aren't like my favorite thing and as such, I do not lose my shit over hummus like I know I'm supposed to as a red-blooded female human under the age of 35, but they're hearty and hold flavor and what not, so we can be friendly for this recipe. Dump two 14-ounce cans, or one 28-ounce can (math!), with the juice drained into a bowl. The recipe didn't specify draining the juice, but have you seen garbanzo can juice? It's gross. Get rid of that ick. I added salt, pepper, and garlic powder again, basically because I'd like to eradicate these garbanzo's garbanzo-ness as much as possible. 

Garbanzo party!

Once the onion, garlic, potato party has been going on for about six minutes or so, you're going to dump a quart (one of those little Trader Joe's containers worth) of chicken stock and three cups of water into your pot. Aren't you glad you chose a big one? Things are getting awfully full in there! You're going to bring this water/broth/veggie/legume/rootveg rave to a low boil (takes about seven minutes on medium heat, because you can be patient and not crank it up to high and risk ruining the whole thing, RIGHT?) 

Now that you've got some bubbles happening, you're going to dump a cup or two of short holey noodled (mini penne or macaroni or whatever one you choose, you do you!) pasta into the pot. Have you guys used this veggie pasta? It's my fave. 

One serving of veggies is like, not even that much, but don't pretend this doesn't make you feel better about your pasta choice.

Once you've got your pasta in the mix, you're going to cook it to al dente level based on the cooking recommendations of your particular pasta. It could be as short as six minutes depending on your pasta of choice. Definitely err on the less is more school on this one, since if you overcook this pasta, I think the whole soup is going to be gross. No pressure. 

Pasta party!

Once you've got your pasta cooked, turn off the heat and add in some frozen spinach. "One box" or really let loose and do whatever you feel like. My frozen spinach was in a bag, and I am into spinach, so I did "one bag". You don't even need to have spinach if you don't want, so let's not obsess over the amount, okay?

Oh shit, who invited spinach?

I obviously scooped most of this soup into my dorky individual lunch tupperwares, but I was also hungry and needing to pre-game for Dipsville, U.S.A. later today, so I dished up a little bowl and gave it a parmesan sprinkle and phew, we're done. I never can be sure, but it actually turned out pretty yum. We did it! We won the Souper Bowl!

As if parmesan cheese doesn't make absolutely everything completely amazing.

Slow Cooker Stew-day

While I am frankly sick to death of talking about it, you may have heard: it's effing cold in Chicago right now. Like, maybe permanently? It's been cold for so long, it seems really reasonable that this is how it will be forever. I historically have been The Cold's #1 fan, but my radiator wasn't working last night and the overnight temps dropped to -2 and it was just like, seriously, enough. In short, it's finally cold enough for stew.

Stew is basically hibernation in food form. It's a little too hale and hearty for me most of the time, but with the next ten-day forecast looking like the last ten-day forecast (which is to say, shitty) and a really long way to go until March, I'm ready to admit, it might be Stew Time. 

I'm not anti-stew, or whatever, but it's just like, well, honestly, it's a lot of ingredients. You know how I feel about this many ingredients. Agitated is what. 

But like, full disclosure, I also sort of added ingredients. Because what I DO like about stew is that it's pretty accommodating. Once you have the basics (beef, I guess?) taken care of, you can just sort of improvise the rest. I started with this Real Simple slow-cooker recipe and then when I got inspired to add parsnips, I wanted to see if that was even a legit Thing and lo and behold, no less than Martha freaking Stewart validated my ingredient punt. So, the ingredients are all assembled, let's stew this!

Ingredient Family Portrait. I count eleven and that doesn't even include most of the spices. Oy.

First things first: we're going to cut up some meat. You may notice that I opted for the very simply named "beef stew meat" from Trader Joe's and it is also, helpfully, already cut. I could have just stopped there, but you know when you're eating stew, and it's like, there's way too much meat in your mouth, and you sort of feel like a caveperson? (please note my gender neutralism here today. Mad props to my MANY male readers.) So, yeah, I'm in control of this stew, and I went ahead and cut these pieces even smaller than the 2"x2" recommended in both recipes!! I obvi did not bust out a ruler for my cutting, but I'd approximate these guys are in the 1"x1" range. I know, so rebellious! "Bite-sized" by a fully evolved human. I did a pound of kosher fancy beef, you could do the two the recipe calls for if you're like Scrooge McDuck rich.

Counter space, actual size.

This naked beef needs to take a flour bath in advance of getting browned. The recipe just calls for a half cup of flour but you know I like to add stuff and plain flour just seems like too good of a blank canvas to leave alone. I added unmeasured amounts of salt, pepper, garlic powder, and red pepper flakes. I took a picture, and then I forked it up.

Messin' around with the flour, doin' my own thing.

Then I dunked my beef in the flour bath, and spoiler alert: that is the most fun part of this recipe prep. I'm not going to say it is terrible from here out, but enjoy this flour dunk while it lasts.

Naked no more!

Wait, spoke too soon. This olive oil swirl was the most fun part! Gosh, we are having sooooo much fun!

Clearly just proud of the swirling action.

So, you may remember from my last beef-themed post, it was a little less preparation than I was really into. Like, too easy. One of the things I'm way into about this particular recipe is that while it is slow-cooker (duh), there's also some legitimate prep involved. Cutting and meat-browning and the like. You know, so you feel like you've earned it.

So many meat shots.

So, brown that meat up. It's going to get cooked later, so let's not get too precious about this browning process. Beef is less sensitive than chicken, so you can kind of just do whatever. I mean, I'm not totally sure how true that is, but like,... I'm giving you permission.

Too many meat shots?

Once the meat is sufficiently browned (I browned it a little more than this picture above, but not thaaaat much more), move the meat to your crockpot pot. Then in the SAME PAN (love), get into an onion cooking scene. This was another place that I improvised a little based on Trader Joe's inspiration. I do love chopping, but onion chopping is just so much. I can't. Also, I'm terrible at it. Nobody cares what onions look like inside things but you've seen. It's bad. Enter Trader Joe's being The Best and having pre-cut onions. Amazing. Also pre-cut garlic and shallots mix. SOOOO great. This recipe calls for garlic and not shallots, but whose gonna be sad about shallots coming to the party? Not me. Come on over, shallots. Each of these environmentally unfriendly (sorry, Mom!) containers has about a cup, and this recipe only called for a cup of onions and a bit of garlic, so I suspect we're going to have a pretty funky party. 

Yeah, my tongs are microphones. For impromptu kitchen sing-alongs. Sometimes you get onions in your eyes, but you still can't fight the funk.

This onion remix is going to cook for about ten minutes which I totally realized in advance, so now we have time to read the rest of the recipe prepare our vegetables. I got regular carrots instead of baby carrots because I have baby carrots at work and felt bad about buying more instead of using the ones that I already own even though they are at work and not where I need them to be today and welcome to the complex vortex of guilt that is my mind. These are also organic, because I was probably still feeling a little guilty about those plastic containers, so why not? Peel those and then chop 'em. Again, in the 1"x1" bite-size zone on the cutting. We want to cook with the end in mind and the end of this stew is eating this stew and I don't want too big of burny veggies in my mouth.

Haaaaaave you met my friend, Parsnip?

Let's talk about parsnips. They're great. They're sort of spicy? I don't know why I got so compelled to include them here, but I feel really good about it. Sort of like a genius a little. So, peel those bad boys up and invite them to the root veggie party that is this stew. You're wondering how many, right? Oh you, always so preoccupied by details, you're adorable. I did five carrots and those four parsnips you see above. Probably a pound between the two. 

Then it's potato time. I don't peel my potatoes. Partly because I like the skins, partly because I'm lazy. I swear it's an equal balance of the two. I think we'll all live if we have potato skins in this stew. If you can't, spend your day peeling perfectly good skins off your potatoes. Your call.

The purple potatoes are clearly the Prince of this bowl.

Okay, our root veggie party just got wild with the addition of those funtime potatoes. Everybody's cut sort of similar sized, but we can all acknowledge, pretty unpicturesquely. It's stew, get over it. Or cut yours prettier, but don't come back to me and say how long it took to make this stew, because that's on you now.

Back to our onions. We're about ten minutes into them cooking, so let's add six (adorable) ounces of tomato paste and mix it up. Because that's what the recipe says and whatever, sometimes we follow those.

I find this can precious. I have a huge thumb, so you can see how really fantastically tiny this can is.

Cool, cool. This whole shebang is going to go into the pot now. I have my pot on my stove for this portion, because it's not quite ready to be crocked yet. You do you.

IN THE SAME pan, pour a cup of "dry red wine", or whatever super cheap questionably wet or dry red wine you have in the house. Who knows such things? I mean, people do. I don't. Nor do I care. My Two Buck Chuck (nouveau, natch) works fine (I assume?) and is... present. This wine dump is intended to help you get the scrapings out of the pan. I don't know if I had that many scrapings, but you know what a slave I am to following recipes, so like, I swished it around a little and then poured it in the pot. Ask your root veggies to bring their party to the pot and dump those suckers in too. Mix it up now, before things get too crowded and no one has enough room to dance.

Good focus, both me and the camera.

Once everything is sort of tossed together, we're going to add our beef stock. The recipe calls for two cups. I'm not great at measuring (even though I have adorable measuring cups!), so mine probably had about two and half. Whatevs.

If you ever see whimsical kitchenware and wonder, "who on earth would use that?", the answer is me.

Before you pop the pot into the crock, add in whatever sort of herb situation you're into. Not like, drugs. This isn't THAT kind of pot (har, har.) Actual herbs. The recipe called for thyme and a bay leaf, but I didn't want to buy bay leaves for ONE MEASLY bay leaf singular, so I didn't. I assume it doesn't lead to the complete downfall of this whole stew, but you know, that's a risk I'll take. I DID buy a whole thing of fresh thyme, mostly because Trader Joe's brand of herbs is called Infinite, which means that the thyme is called "Infinite Thyme". So, yeah, love.

Sprinkle some more salt and pepper at will. Maybe a little more garlic powder. Whatever's still out was the ultra discriminating method I used for this portion. Less of a method than a random crapshoot, really. But such is stew, I think. Into it. 

Four hours on high if you're hungry and/or have shit to do, or a freewheelin' seven hours of thyme-smelling deliciousness on low later, and you've got yourself stew. You're stewin' it! Just stew it!

It's prettier when you close your eyes and just eat it. Look with your mouth.