We are in the middle of kitchen construction con Queso. 

I can’t wait to show you the final results – heck, I can’t wait to see them myself.

In the meantime, I’ll be shopping. And talking a lot about the process. … after all, the only way to get through a traumatic experience is to talk your way through it…so sayeth the billion dollar psychoanalysis industry. Plus, a kitchen remodel is like being pregnant or starting a business – when you are in the middle of it, it’s all you can talk about.

What? You don’t normally have scooters in your kitchen? Weird.

So saddle up friends– let’s overhaul a kitchen!

“When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven.

It might be a trick, but if it’s not, mmmmmmmm, boy.” –Jack Handy

Because I love you, and because you need to make a pecan pie next week, right here and right now I’ll share with you a pecan pie recipe that’s been in our family for a long time. (We always have a lot of pecans, you know.) We can trace this simple but incredibly yummy recipe as far back as it being from my mother’s mother’s mother’s kitchen (which is now my kitchen). And Thanksgiving just isn’t Thanksgiving without a few of these around.

What You’ll Do
Preheat oven to 375 F. Mix together eggs, syrup, sugar, vanilla, softened butter. Pour it in a pie shell and arrange pecan halves on top. Bake pie on the bottom shelf of the oven for 20 minutes. Move the pie up to the middle of the oven, reduce the heat to 325 F, and bake for 20-25 more minutes.

Done.

This is super simple. Old school Texans liked things simple with just a few ingredients. However, one of those ingredients is Karo syrup…and, let’s face it, it  ’aint what it used to be. So. If you’d rather have a traditional recipe that doesn’t include Karo syrup, here you go. From Southern Living (They have a bunch of pecan pie recipes over there.)

Southern Living’s Not My Great Grandmother’s Utterly Deadly Southern Pecan Pie

1/2 (14.1-oz.) package refrigerated piecrusts

1 tablespoon powdered sugar

4 large eggs

1 1/2 cups firmly packed light brown sugar

1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled to room temperature

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup chopped pecans

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons milk

1 1/2 teaspoons bourbon

1 1/2 cups pecan halves

(I’d add vanilla to this, this is my addition, not part of Southern Living’s recipe)

What You’ll Do

Preheat oven to 325°. Fit piecrust into a 10-inch cast-iron skillet; sprinkle piecrust with powdered sugar. Whisk eggs in a large bowl until foamy; whisk in brown sugar and next 6 ingredients. Pour mixture into piecrust, and top with pecan halves. Bake at 325° for 30 minutes; reduce oven temperature to 300°, and bake 30 more minutes. Turn oven off, and let pie stand in oven, with door closed, 3 hours.

Enjoy!

Here’s What You’ll Need:

Here’s my list of ways to wait out a hurricane while you’re waiting. And drinking.

In the meantime, batten down and hang in there.

You only need 4 ingredients really and it only takes 3 minutes in the microwave to “cook” and then decorating time, which doesn’t at all feel like cooking.

Here’s what you need:

4 apples

2 tablespoons of evaporated milk

50 unwrapped Werther’s chewy caramels. They’re the best.

Sticks of some kind. I used popsicle sticks. Martha uses twigs.

Here’s what you do:

Push sticks into the tops of the apples.

Melt the caramels and milk in a microwave-safe bowl in the microwave on high for 2 or 3 minutes, stirring frequently until smooth.  While you’re doing that…

Fill bowls with fun dipping items.

Sprinkles. Pecans. Smashed up cookies. Smashed up salt and vinegar potato chips (this was only good to me).

Then get ready to dip.

Then dip the apple into the caramel.

Don’t get the caramel on you because, seriously, it’s hot.

Place on waxed paper until caramel sets or refrigerate 15 minutes for
quicker results. Or just put them on festive plates like I did. It will take you* about an hour to get the caramel off the plates. So you can look forward to that.

*And by you, I mean someone. Thanks, James.

Then enjoy.

There are about a zillion creative ways to make caramel apples especially excellent.

Harry and I made 10 versions of creative caramel apples and I posted about those on Hitting Refresh. There might be a Cee Lo apple over there. I’m just saying.

Happy apple making.

I feel like I’m sort of an expert on Tacos (Klout agrees…my expertise: tacos, coffee and cowboy (?)) so I was feeling cocky and typically Texan about the prospect of making these Californiaish tacos. But guys, they’re really good. And real simple.

Check it.

Here you go.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

2 tbsp olive oil

1 qt chicken broth

2 chopped red potatoes

2 large onions, chopped

3 tbsp minced garlic

1 tbsp ground cumin

3 cups of corn

1 can of chopped chiles

2 cups of raw chicken

1 cup heavy cream

2 cups shredded cheese

chives and/or  jalapeños, chopped

WHAT YOU’LL DO

In a large dutch oven, heat the oil over high heat.Add the onions and stir over medium-low heat until soft. Stir in the garlic, 3 cups of water and the cumin and cook over low heat for 5 minutes or so. Add 1 qt chicken broth and 2 chopped red potatoes.. Simmer until tender, about 10 minutes. Add 3 cups of corn (I cut it straight off the cob, but I guess you can used canned corn if you want)1 can of chipped chiles and 2 cups chopped raw chicken. Simmer for about 10 minutes. Stir in 1 cup heavy cream and 2 cups of cheese. Top with chives and/or jalapeños.

Enjoy.

A: You plant a garden and have the kids grow the vegetables themselves.

This was the answer someone gave me. This completely did not work.

In March, we started this little backyard garden. Squash, early pumpkins, okra, cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers. I’ve tried all of these things before, with the exception of okra, and all of them have failed miserably, with the exception of tomatoes. So I had medium to low hope of this doing anything. Or, more honestly, I was glass-half-empty and full of I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing, so I planted about 25 squash plants.

This is the garden a few weeks later. I now have about 90 gabillion squash blossoms. (25 is waay too many squash plants, as any sane person will tell you…a good number: 4 or 6.) So, honestly and currently, we have approximately 150 squash blooming/growing, and I need to come up with some ways to eat squash. Because seriously.

Also, the whole idea that the kid would like vegetables because he raised them like pets? False. First of all, he’s pretty disinterested in the whole thing. He’d rather play soccer next to the garden rather than look at it. Secondly, I don’t know, it just didn’t work at all. Which brings me to the next advice I’ve received….

Q: How do you make kids like vegetables?

A: Trick them.

I’m not against tricking kids…hello Santa. Tooth Fairy. Fresh Beat Band. But I’ve tried Jessica Seinfeld’s ideas, and my kid is not easily tricked. Not much gets by him. He’s super into chili though, so this could work.

At this point we’ll need to make squash chili though.

Actually, I may try that. Also, fair warning, I may feature a lot of squash recipes here over the next month or so. Because I have 150 squash. At the same time.

Here’s Jenny’s.

The Bloggess’s Squash Recipe

I called Jenny yesterday because I know she likes squash. This is what she does:

“Cut up the squash, put a ton of butter on it, put some salt on it, microwave it for 4 minutes, put more butter and salt on it.”

It was actually quite good. Sort of like popcorn, but with vegetables.

However, this also did not work for the kid. I think I need to somehow make squash Frito Pie. The squash will be silent.

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This post is part of a partnership between myself and the Vicks brand as it launches Vick’s Nature Fusion, a new line of over-the-counter cold, cough and flu relief products. The alcohol- and gluten-free line bodyslams symptoms with a sweet and natural kick. As evidenced above, Vick’s has partnered with Australian celebrity chef Curtis Stone to produce a series of videos featuring bloggers asking questions about the challenges of serving up healthy foods. And let’s keep it real, Curtis is pretty easy on the eyes and ears, so it makes YouTube completely tolerable. 

It’s kind of a lot…and it’s this weird and wonderfully dynamic thing. There’s a ton of planning involved, but we never completely know what’s going to happen until we’re in the middle of it. And that’s sort of a metaphor for life, isn’t it?

It also means, I’m not cooking at all right now.

I feel like the way that I’ve architected my current life, (accidentally or purposefully, I can’t tell) it’s very seasonal. I work when Harry’s in school…some seasons more than others…and then I don’t. When I’m working less, I’m cooking more. Amongst other things. And right now, I’m doing very little in the kitchen.

So easy stuff is working for me. If I’m anywhere near making things at home, it’s stuff like this (which is awesome):

I hope to write more about Mom 2.0 over the next week or so. Mainly because I’d like to remember what I’m thinking when I’m in the middle of it. Although, I’m promising nothing. It’s honestly just a major victory that we’re all brushing our teeth right now.

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This post is part of a partnership between myself and the Vicks brand as it launches Vick’s Nature Fusion, a new line of over-the-counter cold, cough and flu relief products. The alcohol- and gluten-free line bodyslams symptoms with a sweet and natural kick. As evidenced above, Vick’s has partnered with Australian celebrity chef Curtis Stone to produce a series of videos featuring bloggers asking questions about the challenges of serving up healthy foods. And let’s keep it real, Curtis is pretty easy on the eyes and ears, so it makes YouTube completely tolerable. 

I take after my dad’s side of the family. We have great super dark hair that doesn’t fall out or turn grey, but we also have substantial hips and crappy whatever it is in your body that processes sugar. As a result, I shouldn’t really eat it (or drink it) and that includes bread and rice and pasta and everything else that’s right with the world.

I even attempt to give up pizza. This is a real bummer for all kinds of reasons. But I think I could do this.

Really thin crust…maybe there’s even some kind of low sugar, whole wheat crust option that’s not terrible. I need to look into that.

In the meantime, I might add pizza back into my mix. Especially if I only add topics from my backyard. That’s an interesting challenge. I’ll let you know if I slip into some kind of weird sugar coma.

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This post is part of a partnership between myself and the Vicks brand as it launches Vick’s Nature Fusion, a new line of over-the-counter cold, cough and flu relief products. The alcohol- and gluten-free line bodyslams symptoms with a sweet and natural kick. As evidenced above, Vick’s has partnered with Australian celebrity chef Curtis Stone to produce a series of videos featuring bloggers asking questions about the challenges of serving up healthy foods. And let’s keep it real, Curtis is pretty easy on the eyes and ears, so it makes YouTube completely tolerable. 

So I’m going to be talking a lot about this over the next weeks. For starters, we’re growing some things. A few months ago, I ordered seeds, then we planted them, and now…

We have the tomatos. We also have tons of cilantro, onions, garlic, and jalapeños.

And now, limes. Yep. They’re coming soon to a back porch near me. I’ve never been able to grow limes before, ever, and it’s so interesting to watch them grow. I had no idea.

A few weeks ago my back porch smelled like orange blossoms and lime blossoms…which is basically like a clean, fresh version of heaven. Not like the perfume Heaven at all. Sort of the opposite of that actually.

And now, just a few weeks later, fetus limes! (The oranges didn’t do anything. Maybe next year.) But I’ll keep you posted on the limes. And I will attack any animal that tries to get them. Try me, animals.

And so I realized the other day that I now have almost all the ingredients for a party.

Or a healthy snack.

Whatever I might be in the mood for that day.

Because as you can see below, cute Curtis Stone makes a case for why salsa is healthy. And he makes his a bit differently than I do (I’ve never grilled the tomatos before. I’m going to try that.) Frankly, his way looks even easier than mine. And it has less beer in it. For the sake of our health and all that’s good in the world, I’m going to try it. I’ll let you know how it goes.

As soon as my limes grow up a bit.

This post is part of a partnership between myself and the Vicks brand as it launches Vick’s Nature Fusion, a new line of over-the-counter cold, cough and flu relief products. The alcohol- and gluten-free line bodyslams symptoms with a sweet and natural kick. As evidenced above, Vick’s has partnered with Australian celebrity chef Curtis Stone to produce a series of videos featuring bloggers asking questions about the challenges of serving up healthy foods. And let’s keep it real, Curtis is pretty easy on the eyes and ears, so it makes YouTube completely tolerable.