February 11: Don't Cry Over Spilled Milk Day and Peppermint Patty Day

I don't really have anything to say about Don't Cry Over Spilled Milk Day except...  did you catch President Obama's joke during the State of the Union speech?  Oh, and has anyone actually cried over spilled milk?  Anyone the age over five that is?

Okay, on to Peppermint Patty Day!  Peppermint patties are peppermint flavored discs  covered in chocolate.  I've never been a fan of the combination of chocolate and mint together, so this is another food I don't know a whole lot about.  The only peppermint patties I know of are York peppermint patties.  Those seem to be pretty popular.  You can also make your own.  Plus, I think they'd be great for decorating chocolate cakes.

February 10: Cream Cheese Brownies Day

It's Cream Cheese Brownies Day!  I figured that cream cheese brownies just meant that cream cheese was mixed into the batter before baking.  Well, it can be, but there are quite a few variations on cream cheese brownies.  Some recipes call for the cream cheese to be a separate layer on top of a chocolate layer, while others use the cream cheese to create a marbled effect.  Here's a quick round-up of recipes I looked at:

• Smitten Kitchen's Cream Cheese Brownies is a marbled brownie recipe adapted from Cook's Illustrated.  It was also tweaked a couple of  years later.
• Stylish Cuisine has a layered recipe that she declares is the best brownie she's ever had.  Supposedly, these are best straight from the freezer.
• This cream cheese brownie recipe is a marbled type, but tatkes the short-cut of using a brownie mix.  So does this Betty Crocker recipe. 
• I really wanted to try this Joy of Cooking recipe, but I don't have any metal bowls.
• Like raspberries?  Then you might want to try this recipe from Brown Eyed Baker that uses raspberries.

Eventually, I picked this recipe from Kraft.  Since I have no large microwave-safe bowl, I melted the butter and chocolate using my Micro Pitcher set from Tupperware (that thing is awesome!) and then poured the melted butter and chocolate into a mixing bowl.  Otherwise, I just followed the recipe as it is written.  One little puzzle I ran into was that the cream cheese mixture was a lot of mixture!  I was expecting it to be a smaller amount but there was enough that I could have probably made it a layered brownie.  Also, swirling the two batters together was a bit problematic - the chocolate layer was really thick.  The recipe says to swirl gently which I figured was just cutting a knife through in various directions.  Nope!  This took some actual swirling to get the batters to mix in a nice swirl pattern.

Here's my attempt at getting the swirl, but not really getting it....

 I put it in the oven anyways, wondering if the two batters would mix more while baking.

I baked it for 40 minutes and, since I also had trouble spreading it evenly in the pan, it cooked a little unevenly.  The top of the cream cheese portion browned a little in spots. 

It was tasty and the smell was so good that the brownies were cut long before it was completely cooled.  It's a good recipe - very, very sweet - but definitely not a good recipe for those concerned with their weights.

February 9: Bagels and Lox Day & Pizza Pie Day

Bagels and Lox Day

I've had bagels but I've never had lox.  I thought lox was just another term for smoked salmon, but it's not.  Lox is salmon, but to make lox, the salmon is brined instead of smoked.  An older post from the Accidental Hedonist explores the making of a perfect Bagel and Lox.  The Gothamist asks what you're doing to celebrate the day.  Sounds like this is a food I need to try whenever I visit New York!


Pizza Pie Day

Speaking of foods I need to eat whenever I visit New York...  Today's also Pizza Pie Day!  I've already talked about pizza during National Pizza Week and I spent today trying to eat some of my leftovers (I still had some Fettuccine Alfredo left!), so I wasn't going to eat pizza today.  However, the casual mention of "Hey, it's Pizza Pie Day" worked its insidious magic and my roommate decided to make mini pita pizzas, which meant that I got some pictures of a sort-of pizza pie.


Making mini pita pizzas is really easy.  All you need is some mini pitas, some Pizza Squeeze, mozzarella, and mini pepperonis.  And this is totally flexible.  You can always substitute English Muffins or thick toast for the mini pitas.  There's one recipe we have floating around here somewhere that used grilled eggplant as the base.  (That's my favorite way to eat eggplant.)  No Pizza Squeeze?  Try using some spaghetti sauce.  And you can use whatever toppings you want- you don't have to use mini pepperonis.  (If you still want to have pepperoni, just take normal pepperoni and chop it up.)

One last thing: everytime I hear "pizza pie" instead of "pizza," I get an image in my mind of a pie (you know, the kind that you need a pie dish for) made with pizza fixings.  Maybe one day I should make this. 

February 8: Molasses Bar Day

It's National Molasses Bar Day!  PunchBowl.com has a nice little blurb about the day and the food.  Judi Leaming over at Herkimer Telegram does a good job of researching the day, too.  And so does CNN's Eatocracy.  Le sigh.  I really don't have more info to add to those sites - molasses bars are another food I haven't eaten.  I can't seem to find many recipes for molasses bars that are well-rated, but The Kitchen Magpie has a recipe that looks really tasty.  Just make note that that's a large recipe.

Molasses was never a big ingredient in anything in my household. If you grow up in a household eating mostly Asian food, you don't really get a whole lot of exposure to molasses.  I always thought molasses was like syrup and that it came from trees.  Boy, was I wrong!  Molasses comes from cane or beet sugar.  (Thanks, Wise Geek!) But in my quest to look up information about molasses bars and molasses, I learned something very interesting indeed: molasses can be dangerous and can destroy whole cities like Godzilla!  Okay, maybe not in this day and age, but in 1919, molasses destroyed part of Boston.  This event was called the Molasses Disaster.

While that sounds like something I might make in my kitchen, "Molasses Disaster" would make a great band name.

Ok, maybe just a song title.

February 7: Fettuccine Alfredo Day

Today is Fettuccine Alfredo day!  Let's take this in parts, shall we?  Fettuccine is a type of noodle and alfredo refers to the sauce, that I already knew.  I tend to stay away from pastas that use alfredo sauce, since the white color of the sauce generally lets me know it has dairy in it.  So all I really knew was that alfredo sauce was white and probably had cheese in it. 

A little digging turned up some interesting tidbits about Fettuccine Alfredo.

Apparently, this is another food named after a real person.  The story goes that some Italian guy made Fettuccine Burro (fettuccine noodles with butter) for his pregnant wife who stuggled with morning sickness.  Except he increased the amount of butter a lot.  She loved it and after her pregnancy was over, they added it to the menu of their restaurant.  They called their Fettuccine Burro with extra butter Fettuccine Alfredo and it became a popular dish.

I don't know how Fettuccine Alfredo is served in Italy these days, but here in the US, Fettuccine Alfredo is made with lots of butter, cream, white cheese, and can have things likes peas, herbs, and even shrimp tossed in.  Over at Food Network, Emeril has a popular Fettuccine Alfredo recipe.  Kraft, the makers of that easily identifiable blue box mac-n-cheese, also has a popular Fettuccine Alfredo recipe.  And Betty Crocker even gives suggestions to reduce the fat in Fettuccine Alfredo.

Let's face it - all that butter, cream and cheese is not good for the waistline.  Still, after looking at various recipes online, I thought, "Hey, I'll make my own!"  So here's what I did:

• Cook the fettuccine noodles.  Really, just follow the directions on the packaging for this step.
• In the pot you cooked the noodles, over medium heat, melt 1/4 cup of butter.
• Add 1 cup heavy cream.  Stir constantly, reducing to low heat.
• Add 1 cup of shredded mixed parmesan and mozzarella cheese.
• Add about 1/3 cup of Tuscan Sunset blend from Penzey's Spices.
• When all the cheese has melted, turn off the stove and serve the pasta.

Notice I didn't say how much noodles to cook?  That's hard for me to judge - I just kind of went, "Meh, this is enough noodles."   I probably cooked about three servings of noodles, which wasn't enough for the amount of sauce I made.  You can see in the photo that there's a lot of sauce and not enough noodles.   Just check the pasta box for serving size and figure you'll make about six to eight servings.  In my mind, anything that has that much saturated fat should never be the main dish, so after I took photos, I only ate about a quarter of what you see pictured, stored the rest in the fridge, and scraped the dish with homemade bread to get all that cheesey, creamy sauce.

It was tasty and you can chalk one up on the success side of the kitchen scoreboard, but if I make it again, I think I'll add peas so it has a pop of color.

February 6: Frozen Yogurt Day and Nutella Day

Frozen Yogurt Day

Frozen Yogurt seems to be all the rage these days.  There are so many frozen yogurt places - it seems like there's a new one popping up every other day.  I remember how excited my friend was when Red Mango opened up near him and how he was thrilled when Pinkberry moved into town, too.  Doing a little reading on frozen yogurt, it amused me to read that in 2007 not everyone was happy about frozen yogurt moving in.  And in 2009, the competitors were doing their best to one-up one another.   But whether you call it FroYo or  you prefer your frozen yogurt in pop form, why early February?  Isn't this another day that would be better suited for summer?


Nutella Day

Ah, Nutella.  A chocolatey, hazelnut spread that some believe is essential for a healthy breakfast.  I don't consider it healthy, per se, but it does make for a tasty dessert.  (Sorry- anything that has sugar as the first ingredient I'm not going to consider healthy.)   If you're craving sugar while camping, you can even get a small packet of Nutella (pictured here with a penny for size comparison.)  In fact, one of my favorite memories of camping is associated with Nutella.  Carlsbad Caverns, NM, a bunch of us sitting around a small fire that had taken us forever to even get lit, with the weather so cold our juice froze overnight.  Someone brought out tortillas, Nutella, and marshmallows.  We spread the Nutella on the tortilla, sprinkled in the mini-marhsmallows, folded the tortilla in half, and cooked it over the fire until the marshmallows and Nutella became a gooey mess.  Improvised s'mores, really.

  Maybe it was the cold, maybe it was the camaraderie, but that combination of tortilla, Nutella, and marshmallows earned an instant spot in my file of Must Make Again and Again Camp Desserts.

By the way, if you love Nutella, you can enter to win a case of it.  A case.  That's a lot of Nutella.

February 5: Chocolate Fondue Day

Right now, a majority of Americans are watching the Superbowl, the game of all games for the sport known as (American) football.  I'm one of them.  I have no particular investment in the game - no money on the game, none of my teams made it - so I'm just rooting for a good game.  Well, I suppose I'm semi-cheering for the Giants, since so many of my friends are Giants fans.

In addition to being the day of the Superbowl, it's Chocolate Fondue Day.  So while the game is on, we're dipping various foodstuffs in melted semi-sweet chocolate mixed with cream.  We started out with fruits and some peanut butter sandwhich cookies as you see pictured here, but as the game has gone on, we started dipping anything and everything in the chocolate.  Leftover waffles?  Dip it!  Pumpkin bread?  Dip it!  Hey, we have some carrots! Uh....

Okay, so we're not dipping everything.

First step for the fondue, after buying everything, was chopping up the chocolate.  That was tiring so we took turns.  Next time, I buy the chocolate that comes in smaller pieces.

Initially, for our chocolate fondue, we mixed about half a pound of semi-sweet chocolate with 1/3 cup heavy whipping cream. As the chocolate melted, we added about 1/3 cup more cream since the chocolate was looking thick.  We began by dipping fresh pineapple chunks, fresh mango slices, fresh seedless green graps, dried figs, fresh satsuma mandarin segments, fresh ruby red grapefruit, dried papaya  spears, and peanut butter sandwich cookies.  As the chocolate dipping continued, we added some fresh banana, pumpkin bread, and even some leftoever waffles.

By the time halftime came around, we were chocolated out (but not out of chocolate.)  Sometime in the third quarter, we unplugged the mini crockpot we were using for the chocolate.  (While being bi-coastal is great for exploring, it sucks when your electric fondue pot is on the other coast and you're looking for it.)

I feel like I need to eat nothing but cruciferous greens for the next 24 hours to atone for the chocolate consumed.

Happy Chocolate Fondue Day, folks!  And here's hoping the end of the game is exciting and the commercials improve!