The Brownie Trials: Part I

The average evening in our house consists of Henry dinner/bath/bedtime routine kicking off at around 6:00 and ending anywhere from 7:00-7:30, depending on his needs for a nice long cuddle. After that, I make my way into the kitchen to start on dinner. If I'm lucky, I'm kicked back in our big leather arm chair with my feet elevated by 8:30. At this point in the night I realize how tired I really am and toy with the idea of heading up to bed.. but its not even 9pm! This is adulthood, Janell.. breathe it innn.

Anyway, this week's routine has been slightly strange. After dinner, I've voluntarily stood on my feet just a smidge longer than usual in the name of baking, of all things! As someone who typically only enjoys savory or salty snacks, I've taken delight in not having to fight off cravings of the sinfully chocolate and fattening nature. That is why the past couple evenings have taken me by surprise. I've had brownies on the brain big time. And being an advocate of all things homemade, I set out to find a brownie recipe that fit a very simple set of criteria. The brownies 1. had to be simple (I didn't want to be washing a bunch of extra bowls at that hour of the night) and 2. had to be fast (I wanted my chocolate and I wanted it now). So, I found this recipe through a Pinterest search. It required a bowl and a pan but I got away with only using 1 bowl. The ingredients were items I always have on hand in my baker's cabinet. It also took a measly 25 minutes to bake. It was game on.

25 minutes and some change later, I was slicing off a hunk of warm brownie. I like my brownies a little on the rich side -the kind of brownie that requires a TALL glass of milk- with a crisp top and edges. These brownies had that for sure.  They were a little gooier than I typically like, but they weren't even cooled yet so I decided to give them another go in the morning. Why not, right? In the light of day, the extra gooiness has morphed into the perfect fudgey consistency that I'd been looking for. And the frosting... I don't think I'd ever had a frosted brownie before, unless Little Debbie's count. I'm not a huge frosting person anyways, but this frosting.. Dudes, it was just enough to put these brownies over the top. I really liked the addition of honey in the frosting recipe. It added an extra dimension of flavor and texture to the typical powdered sugar recipe.

When I searched Pinterest for this recipe, I came across a LOT of brownie recipes. Ranging from flour-less gluten-free brownies to s'mores brownies and everything in between. This gave me the idea to test out a few brownie recipes. My waistline will thank me later for spreading this brownie experiment out over the next few weeks (or until my newly found sweet-tooth disappears!) instead of tackling it all at once.

Feel free to follow along in your kitchen, if you'd like. I'd love to hear how the recipes measure up to your discerning brownie standards. Very official stuff.. because brownies are serious business, right? 

allrecipes.com "best brownies" recipe

brownie ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla extract
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/4 t salt
1/4 t baking powder

frosting ingredients:
3 T butter, softened
3 T unsweetened cocoa powder
1 T honey
1 t vanilla extract
1 cup confectioner's sugar

directions:
Preheat oven to 350 deg F. Grease and flour an 8x8" pan
In a large saucepan, melt 1/2 cup butter. Remove from heat and stir in sugar, eggs, and 1 t vanilla.
Beat in 1/3 c cocoa, 1/2 c flour, salt, and baking powder. Spread batter into the pan. Bake for 25-30 minutes. Do no overcook.
For frosting, combine butter, cocoa, honey, vanilla extract and confectioners sugar. Stir until smooth. Frost brownies when they are still warm.  Enjoy!

summer eats: hobo sandwiches

 Grilling season is in full swing at our house as I'm sure it is else where in America, so I thought I'd share one of our favorite summer time meals today.  I do not claim to be a "food blogger", in any way, but cooking is something I love to do and if something is worth sharing with you, I will :)  I've eaten more steaks, hamburgers, brats, and hotdogs in the past few weeks than I typically do all year. This must mean that summer has officially arrived. Foil meals are some of my favorite things to make on the grill. They remind me of growing up in a tiny town, my grandparents, and camping.

I was first introduced to the "hobo sandwich" at my Grandma & Grandpa Bodmer's house. We used to walk a few blocks down to their house in summer time to have supper with them. They would make these hobo sandwiches for us like they did for my dad when he was growing up. Dad used to make them for us on all of our camping trips, carrying on the tradition after grandma and grandpa passed away. Thinking about this meal makes me homesick. Its amazing what emotions can be tied to a plate of food.

This dish in  my opinion, one of the most flavorful and delicious grill meals I've had and its so simple to throw together. How much of each ingredient you need will depend on how many you are making. I will break down the ingredients you need to make 1 of them.

enough ingredients to make 2 hobo sandwiches above

Hobo Sandwich

• 1 medium sized, hand formed, hamburger patty (not sure how it will work with frozen patties)
• 1 thick slice of a vidalia onion
• 1 medium or large potato, sliced 1/4" thick
• 1 medium/large carrot, sliced 1/4" thick
• 1/2 cup frozen peas
• butter
• tin foil

definitely forgot frozen peas at the store and tried using canned peas..
lets just say i highly recommend getting the frozen ones..

Directions:

Tear off a piece of tin foil about 2 feet wide and lay it flat on the counter. In the center, make a circle of sliced potatoes, layering them about 8" wide. Form the hamburger patty and place on top of the potatoes. You should be able to see the potatoes sticking out a couple inches from beneath the burger. Now you can place your carrot slices evenly around the burger, on top of the potatoes.

Fold up the top and bottom edges of the foil a little so the peas don't roll away. Now sprinkled the frozen peas around the burger, on top of the potatoes and carrots. Generously season with salt & pepper. Now place the onion slice on top of the burger. Cut 1/2" wide piece of butter and put it on top of the onion.

Next, you pull the top and bottom edges towards the middle, creasing the foil once it meets the edge of the potatoes. Once this is done, you grab the left edge and the right edge of the foil and pull them towards the center where their edges will meet. Start folding them down towards the ingredients until they are snug and you can no longer see any of the ingredients. Place on the grill at medium heat for 20 minutes, or until the meat is no longer pink at the center. Carefully unfold, and enjoy :)

the week in instagrams

 There's something a tad bit depressing about passing an exit you turned on to everyday
for 3 years. Its not that I long to go back to my college days at Illinois State..
I love where I am in life and wouldn't trade it for anything, but reminiscing
about days gone by, mourning time lost, is not a fun process.
Maybe its just me getting older. No matter, every time we head south
on I-39 I feel the same way.

 My brother-in-law and I made a trip down to Bloomington for the first monthly 

antiques/flea market of the year. I ended up coming home with some vintage 

prints for the kitchen that I intend on framing and a gorgeous polka dotted scarf. I love

 vintage baby shoes, especially if they are saddle shoes and these babies were so cute!

As I've mentioned before, we've been having a bit of a dry spell in our area. 

We need rain so badly and there hasn't been much in the forecast as of late. 

The other day, we had 40+ mile per hour winds whip through our neck of the

 woods and the "dust storms" that resulted were pretty crappy. This photo is what it

looked like pulling out of my driveway that afternoon. My bro-in-law & I hopped in 

the truck and went exploring because hoeing corn that Chris mis-planted in all that dust

and heat was getting pretty old. If thatday wasn't the poster child for why 

more farmers should be implementing conservation methods of tillage, I don't

 know what is. I could see dust flying off of certain fields all 

day long, while the fields next to these ones weren't losing much at all. It pays to 

leave crop residue on top of the soil surface on dry years like this. Top soil is

 just too precious. Plus the left over residue keeps moisture in the ground longer.

More of that dust.

We went to the wedding of my sister-in-law's life long best friend on Saturday. Everything
 was so perfect and beautiful :) The entire Happ clan was there and you'd better
 believe that we took full advantage of the amazingly fun photo booth that
 was provided. The left photo strip is Chris & myself, along with my 

mother-in-law, Karen. The center is of us and our great friends, Katie & Devin. 

The strip on the right is my sis-in-law, my bro-in-law and myself, hamming it up, 

of course. Photo booths never get old.. I get so excited when we walk into

 a reception that has one :)

Queso fundito on Memorial Day. We had lunch at our favorite Mexican restaurant that we

have been missing out on a lot lately. It was as fantastic as I remembered.

 We finished up our Memorial Day festivities by grilling out steaks & chops with Chris's 

sister, Emily, and her boyfriend from Fort Worth, TX, Billy. She brought over a bottle

of rhubarb wine for me, as she knows my obsession with anything rhubarb. Isn't that 

label easy on the eyes? I love it. 

I hope that everyone enjoyed their long weekend. Besides the high temps & winds, 

ours was pretty great, if I do say so myself. 

donut try this at home, kids

        Today started out pretty dreary. Then it morphed into the most depressing form of weather, freezing rain. One second I'm glancing out the window at big fat rain drops coming down in slanted sheets and the next I'm staring, in disbelief, at golf-ball-sized snow flakes coming down with consistency. Geesh! Pick a season already, Mother Nature!
        So, needless to say, it felt like a perfect day for baking at our house. The other day I was in Target picking up cleaning supplies from my painstakingly-made list when, out of nowhere, an Easter-inspired end cap caught my attention with all of its glaring pastels and I spotted a Wilton donut pan. I have been seeing donut recipes everywhere, but especially on Pinterest. I've heard that "the donut is the new cupcake", whatever that means. All I know is that this girl loves her some donuts. So I didn't hesitate buying the pan, even though I know my donut making will just be a short-lived phase.
        I whipped up the recipe, according to the directions on the back of the pan packaging. I new I was in for trouble when it called for nutmeg. I'm not a big fan. I don't even include it in my apple pie. But I added it in anyway. Then it called for 3/4 cup of granulated sugar. This girl only had about a 1/4 cup in her pantry (I still have no idea how I've run so low on sugar). So I added a little brown sugar. The first 6 donuts came out looking great and I quickly threw a couple of them in a bag of powdered sugar (for myself) and made a chocolate glaze for the rest of them (for Chris). Of course, the nutmeg ruined it for me. Dang nutmeg! But Chris poked his head in the kitchen while he was putting on his muck boots, ready to go out and do afternoon cattle chores. He snatched up a chocolate glazed one and gave me a look of approval. At least they won't go to waste.
         This weekend, we are slated for a lot of bumming. Tomorrow night we are taking my brother out for chicken george (one of the most de-lish uses of chicken I've encountered; battered morsels of chicken with this fabulous sweet/tangy/sour white sauce). He's been working most every weekend night bagging groceries at our local grocery store and finally has a Saturday off. So we are taking him out for his favorite meal. I'm pretty excited for some quality time with him. Next year he will be a senior in high school and after that, who knows where he will be so we are going to make the most of our time with him while he's still a local.  Let's hope for some spring-like weather for next week. Enjoy your weekend!

   

Mile High

left: sunrise over Colorado; center: our tiny Nissan Versa rental; right: the best meal I've EVER had, filet & lobster at Black Hat Cattle Co.

       As you can see, I recently discovered Instagram. I didn't feel like lugging along my DSLR camera, so I opted for documenting with my iPhone. We woke up at 2am on Thursday morning and made our way to Chicago to board the plane to Denver. The entire day dragged for me.. I was pretty much a zombie. While sitting on an aluminum bench in the grandstands watching the bull show, I found myself repeating behavior that I had done before during long boring lectures in college: the doze and snap, as I call it. Ya know..when you find yourself dozing off with your head slowly making its way forward when you realize what's going on and snap yourself back up and attempt to keep yourself awake. Lets just say this went on for the entire afternoon. I DO NOT do well with less that 8 hours of sleep. God help me, when we have a baby someday and sleep becomes a luxury. That night, we both were not feeling that well but we decided to try out a new restaurant before we headed back to the hotel. I mentioned a couple posts ago the Denver Chophouse (our usual). Thanks to Chris thinking outside of the box and urging me to let us try something new, we found my new favorite steak joint EVER. We took our little, four-cylander cracker box Nissan 30 miles outside of Denver up winding roads and steep inclines until we made it to the little town of Kittredge. Our entire experience at the restaurant, Black Hat Cattle Co., was perfect. The lighting was low and romantic. The food was even better. The decor was strictly western/cowboy/AMAZING. The owner of the restaurant was there all evening, greeting customers, shaking hands, making sure that everyone was happy with their service and meal. It was just great.

left: Chris at the Black Hat;  center: the romantic lighting at decor at the Black Hat;  right: the staircase/chandelier just inside of the historic Denver Stockyards Building

      

 The next day (Friday), we walked around the historic Denver stockyards, where current livestock breeders had set up their animals inside of the old pens. We meandered in and out of the pens admiring beautifully bred and raised animals and talking with other breeders from around the country. We ended up eating dinner in the Stockyards Saloon, a building that has housed a saloon/restaurant since the late 1800s. I tried to imagine how it would have been back then, when cowboys, weary from their long journey leading their cattle on horseback to the stockyards, kicked back and relaxed or got completely blitzed on whiskey there.

left: the fab lemon shake ups that drank the heck out of; center: our friends' stalls; right: my cowboy boots resting on

the sawdust that covered the barn floor

 Saturday was our final day in Denver. It was show day so we got there around 6am to help our friends get ready for the show/assist in carrying any supplies they needed to the show ring. The heifer we own got 3rd in her class. It was nice to see her all cleaned up gliding around the ring. There were vendors set up outside of the show ring and I found 2 booths that offered farm fresh honey. Being the honey fiend that I am, I couldn't just buy one jar so I ended up coming home with 2: a nice, tall jar of raw strawberry/raspberry honey (its not flavored, those are just the plants that the bees got their pollen from), and a short, stubby jar of whipped cinnamon honey which is great for spreading on toast, etc. 

Before I knew it, we had to be on the road. Returning our rental car was a satisfying experience. Chris, being stubborn, refused to upgrade our rental even when the woman at the counter asked him 3 times, stating that the car had no automatic locks, windows, anything.. I'm pretty sure he just wanted to get to the show as fast as possible on Thursday morning. So we ended up petrified of our deathtrap of a car. Getting passed by semi trucks and big dually pick up truck had never been so scary. At 7:20, we said goodbye to Denver for the year and flew off to the Windy City. Being back home has been great. Its hard to believe that 3 days away made us miss it so much. 

    

Herefords show

  Our Sunday morning has been rough. Chris is feeling like death after breathing in the fine dust at the stock show and inhaling the dry Denver air. The regulars who attend the stock show annually call this sickness the "Denver crud".  I can definitely feel a sore throat coming on but I can't complain because I am way better off than Chris. So I'm spending today nursing my baby back to health and doting on him like a happy little servant. Hope you are all enjoying your Sunday, and if you happen to have off work tomorrow, do something fun!

a little bit of this, a little bit of that

It sort of been a pretty mundane Monday here.. I had high hopes for it being a pretty productive day but my sore muscles (thanks, Nike Training Club iPhone app) have put any hopes of productivity on hold. I caught up on Kourtney & Kim Take New York (which only makes me despise Kim  and love Kourtney all the more). I pondered driving to Target to pick up a copy of The Girl Who Played With Fire but talked myself out of it because that meant hopping into a cold-leather-seated truck to get there. Finally I ended up on our iMac pretend online shopping. I made a promise to Chris (that excluded Christmas gifts) that I would put my online shopping on hold and to be honest it wasn't even that hard. Its way less fun to shop for clothes when you no longer wear the size you thought you were and have to send all the goodies back to the store. Such is life, right?

So today I'm just going to share some of the things that have popped up on my LOVE radar. Enjoy

1. I sort of stumbled upon this UK clothing website while reading Cup of Jo . She had posted a link to a pretty perfect polka-dot dress and I kept exploring. I'm obsessed with EVERYthing on their sight.. even their maternity clothing makes me wish I was preggers! This dress was pretty amazing: classic, sexy, chic  This adorably fun maternity dress made me swoon!

2. This lamp made from a vintage telephone. Seriously, how genius is that?

3. This restaurant.. Every year, Chris & I make our annual trip in January to Denver for the National Western Stock Show. The first year we went out, we searched and found the most perfectly dreamy steakhouse. Its located inside of a historic Union Pacific railroad building close to Coors Field in downtown Denver. Last year we tried to go, but they were closed for remodeling.. bummer.. BUT we ARE going this year. Like, we are going Thursday night. That's final

4. This popped up in Yahoo! news today. I've always had an interest in historic architecture, especially in cities that I love. This list of historic mansions for sale, happens to include a gem in Chicago and an absolutely swoon-worthy place in New Orleans... Ugh, a girl can dream, can't she?

5. This movie. I finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on Friday afternoon and it was every bit as thrilling as the reviews said. We had big plans to go to see the movie on Friday night at 7:30.. Then a baby calf decided that she would start to come into the world at about 6:00 that night. Calf trumped movie. Had plans to see it Saturday. Ended up staying in and renting Contagion (have any of you seen it!? Lets just say it totally freaked me out about germs on everything we touch). So.. my goal is to see the movie sometime before Thursday morning when we leave for Denver. Its just happening. That's all there is to it :)

That's about it. Enjoy your Monday!

Cakes, pies, & more cakes

One of the setbacks of living in an old Illinois farmhouse in the wintertime is the draftiness.

Although Chicago's "windy city" nickname referred to the political machines of bygone eras and NOT Mother Nature, the rest of the state can attest that the wind whips through our state throughout all seasons. Its an incessant wind that howls throughout winter and accounts for a lot of time in the spring being devoted to clearing sticks and fallen tree limbs from yards. More often than not, in the winter time, little, red weather alerts pop up on my iPhone proclaiming yet another Winter Wind Advisory. Its just something I've gotten used to. But this winter is completely different for me as its the 1st winter we have been living in our farmhouse. I'm quickly adapting to the drafts that cause me to wear my thick, wool snowmobiling sock inside the house during the day. The other day temps dropped and the wind chill sat right around -1 degree F. Fun, fun... I know!

So, to combat the freezing temps slowly but surely creeping into our home, I bake.

So far this week I've made 2 cakes and 1 pie (this is since Sunday). Chris bought me Paula Deen's Southern Cooking Bible for Christmas and it has really come in handy.

Of course, as you can imagine, most of her recipes call for an ungodly amount of butter and sometimes I cringe a little when people go for that second helping of whatever dessert I've made (as I know the deep, dark buttery secrets that that piece of cake holds!). For the most part, however, I can't blame anyone for wanting more than one helping. Each recipe I've tried so far has been really very good.

I've been making the dessert section of her cookbook my bitch, so to speak. Ha!

Since Sunday I've made Peaches 'n' Cream pie (fabulous and custardy), Peach Upside Down Cake (highly, HIGHLY recommended), and this morning, to chase the draft out of the kitchen, Old Fashioned Sponge Cake came to be.

It may not be the most waistline friendly method, but Chris has come in from the cold to a warm, bakery-scented house every night this week and he loves it.

Windy (city) Weekend

the blurry ass picture of an awesome poster of the various neighborhoods in Chicago in
Laurel's apartment (her apt was in Ravenswood)

Friday I hopped in my friend Meg's jeep, Gardetto's & white chocolate truffles in hand (they are her favorites!) and settled myself in for our mid-rush hour trek into Chicago. This trip would Meg's second trip into the city, with her first being a 3rd grade class field trip to the Shed Aquarium. Having driven into Chicago many, many times myself I readied myself for the inevitable crappy, clogged up traffic and a-hole drivers. Meg did great, considering the a-hole drivers... Grrrrr... So, as we were about to pay for our 3rd toll (I had said that I would pay for them all because she was using up her gas), Meg asked me if I was sure that I wanted to pay, ya know since I had bought the tickets to the concert we were on our way to...... Wait......... tickets? TICKETS!?!?!?! I, in common Janell fashion, had left the tickets at home on the printer, a good hour and a half in the other direction in even worse traffic... I sat there for a minute before I told her, my stomach feeling like it had a dumbbell sitting in it. Meg, being as sweet as she is all the time, came up with about 5 resolutions to our problem. It turned out that I was able to re-download them offline so it was all good. 

We made it to the Ravenswood neighborhood, where her friend Laurel lived and parked outside of her apartment building. Got ready. Got on the train. Walked to this mind-blowingly good burger place called Burger Bar (I ordered the Fa-Getta-Bod-It burger which consisted of a burger, prosciutto, a fried egg, mozzarella, tomato, & basil mayo.... magnifique!). Made our way, slowly but surely with very, very full bellies to Joe's on Weed Street for the big event : Reckless Kelly in concert. We made our way through the crowd, closer to the stage. I stood there in awe that we were actually seeing the band that was the soundtrack to our college career together at ISU. Meg and I looked over at each other at some point with giddy 5-year-old smiles plastered on our faces and jumped up and down in place like school girls. It was a great concert....... despite the portly skin-headed redneck from southern Illinois that somehow thought we were his life long friends and proceeded to bother us the entire time. But he was entertaining to watch so it wasn't all bad. Concert came to a close, but not before they played my favorite song of theirs, "Crazy Eddie's Last Hurrah". It sounded a lot like this.....

perfection :)

left-burger bar, top center-periwinkle pancakes, center bottom- Angel Food Bakery, right- Reckless Kelly concert

Top: Me & my amaretto stone sour fueled goofy face (i ruin pictures by  being a goof all the time)
and  Meg waiting for the L, Bottom: Laurel & Sarah @ the breakfast joint

The next morning, Meg's friends Laurel & Sarah took us to a little corner bakery/breakfast joint called "Angel Food". The interior was painted the most lovely shades of light blue and delicate pastel green and the shelf along the top of the wall all around the place was lined with vintage Easy Bake ovens and children's cooking toys from every era. Pretty awesome, if you ask me. I had the periwinkle pancakes because I couldn't resist such a cute name. They were just grand. So if you are catching on, I usually judge a trip by the food. And of course I brought my camera along, and again in common Janell fashion, I left it at Laurel's apartment. So do enjoy the grainy, low res. shots my iPhone made happen.
That afternoon I was due back home for a family portrait session with some old friends. A little over a year ago Lynette asked me if I would want to take some engagement pictures for them, since she knew I had a nice camera. They were getting married about a month later and she wanted to get some done while they were still "engaged". That day helped me realize that I loved photography, like maybe enough to try and make a career out of it.

So snapping pictures of Lynette, her husband Nick, & their little man Hunter was kind of sentimental to me. It was windy and a tad bit chilly, but the little guy was a trooper. After we were done, Hunter took a nap on my shoulder for about an hour and it melted my heart. Oh, babies.....