Nothing like a Nice Meatball Sandwich.

It's clean out the freezer week, an annual purging of the mysterious freezer burned meats and leftovers that have been collecting, hopefully over only the past twelve months. Half a bag of Cost-co meatballs emerged from the freezer depths, a relic of holiday parties gone-by... Well, the time for festive buffets is past, but it's never too late for a meatball sandwich!

Break out the crockpot and coat the pot with olive oil before adding the frozen meatballs. Cost-co's are fully cooked and just need to heat through (thus their popularity on the buffet table.) Slice a green pepper and a small onion, and saute in 2T olive oil, with 2-3 chopped garlic cloves. I slice the onion in wedges, top to bottom, so they stay a little firmer in the crockpot. Add to the meatballs in the pot, along with a cup of your favorite barbeque sauce, 1t worchester sauce, and 1T balsamic vinegar (adjust this to taste... a little dry mustard? a little chili powder? a little chalula?) Let the crockpot work it's magic for two hours or so, stirring occasionally.

The keys to a great meatball sandwich, in my humble opinion: 1) Choose a french baguette with a shiny crust and fresh, chewy interior. Use about six inch lengths, and when you add the meatballs, don't over-do it. Keep the sauce to a minimum too - unless you're a fan of soggy bread. 2) Top the sandwich with a good white cheese like havardi or munster - now it's time to be generous and skimp not on the fromage! Set the sandwich under a broiler just long enough to melt the cheese. Maybe have some hot extra sauce available on the side for the saucy dippers in the family.

I think these are an excellent reward for cleaning out the freezer.

Snack Review: Brother's Fruit Crisps

In my never ending quest for easy yet healthy kid snacks, I stumbled upon a new-to-me product at Costco last month. Literally stumbled - those aisles were crowded! After almost knocking over the stack of Brother's-All-Natural Crisps, I added a box to my heaping cart and had the boys give them a try.

The box contained 20 pouches of freeze dried fruit - ten fuji apple and ten strawberry-banana. Overall, it got a mixed review, but I think they'll be finding in the pantry on a regular basis. Here are our thumbs up/thumbs down remarks:

Texture: The freeze drying technique gives a strange styrofoam feel to the fruit; where dehydrated fruit is often tough and chewy, these almost dissolve in your mouth. Strange at first for those used to dehydrated fruit, but at least it doesn't stick to your teeth.

Taste: Thumbs up on the apple, and two thumbs up on the strawberry, but the bananas were left sad and alone after one sample. Really, that's a fruit that belongs in a peel or in muffins, fully hydrated either way. Other flavors available include pear and peach, and they have a new potato crisp product as well.

Ingrediants: This point is purely my own perspective, as my kids would surely like to see the fruit marinated in a little high fructose corn syrup. Most "fruit" snacks contain sweeteners, at least in the form of concentrated apple or grape juice. This is a WYSIWYG snack - what you see is what you get - thumbs up for that!

Packaging: The pouches are a good size - 1/2 cup serving - and are easy to stick in a lunchbox - but they don't seem to be recyclable. Are pouches like this ever recyclable?

Quality: The crisps are made and packaged in China, which raises some red flags for anyone who's paid a bit of attention over this past year. The Brother's website insists they enforce strict quality controls and test for pesticides and heavy metals, and I've only found glowing reports in the media about their products.

Next trip to the mega-bulk mecca I will be on the look-out for the potato and other fruit crisps - I'll let you know what I find!

Holly Crispies

Yikes - can there really only be ten days before Christmas? Somehow I was counting on an extra week in there somewhere. Only when W. started rattling on about winter break starting this Friday (we like long winter school breaks here in Bend. Long division and phonetics can wait - we've got some skiing to do!) did I clue into the fact that this month is flying by faster than Santa's sleigh on Christmas Eve.

So here is a quick and easy holiday cookie - a Christmas spin on an old standby. In a nutshell, it's a rice crispie treat made with cornflakes instead of puffed rice (looks more like holly) with green food coloring in the marshmallow mix, and some cinnamon hots tossed in for holly berries.

Melt 1/3 cup butter in a large stockpot over low heat, and stir in one bag marshmallows. Marshmallows are one of the few grocery items that I won't buy the generic brand - trust me, they taste like flour. Go for a name brand. When the mixture is smooth and shiny, stir in about 1/2 t food coloring, and a full box (18oz) cornflakes. Generic is perfect. Stir to coat the flakes.

My mom made these when I was a kid, and somehow she worked the coated flakes into cute little wreaths, adding three cinnamon hots to each. In my world, the mixture starts to set up quickly, and turns into a big sticky mess if I get too creative - so I turn the whole panful out onto a baking sheet, flatten it down a bit, and sprinkle the hots over the top, pressing them in a little until they stick. After it firms up, cut into bite size chunks and store in an airtight container.

My boys had them for breakfast - they are mostly cornflakes, after all!

Puppy Chow - Not Just for Puppies

I only make this in winter - maybe because it looks more like little muddy snowballs than puppy chow. But my boys are sometimes more like puppies than people so the name fits this snack. Puppy cow is a popular snack in this house because it is easy and cheap to make large quantities! We make it in big gallon ziplock bags, and mostly the boys eat it out of the bag, but if you needed a little gift you could pretty it up in a jar with a ribbon. Then hide so no one eats it before you have a chance to give it away.

Here's the how-to:

On the stovetop or in a microwavable (not plastic, though) bowl mix together 1/2 cup butter, one cup peanut butter, and a 12 oz bag of chocolate chips. Heat and stir until it's thoroughly melted and blended together. Meanwhile, empty a box of rice chex style cereal - the brand is not important, just the pillowy shape - into the biggest bowl you have. Pour the chocolate mixture over the cereal and stir until the cereal is evenly coated.

The next and final step is dusting the chocolatey cereal in powdered sugar: add about a cup and toss til evenly coated. This can be down in the bowl, or in a large ziploc baggie - then just store it in the baggie, ready to take it along on the next sledding expedition or snowshoe adventure.

Cookie-palooza 2008: Best Butter Cookies Ever

One of my oldest and favorite cookbooks is Susan Branch's Christmas from the Heart of the Home. It's all handwritten and handdrawn - and almost unbearably adorable. I think if Susan were my neighbor I'd be torn between spending every minute at her house and completely avoiding her - who can keep up with that level of delectable charm? Not me. But every December I pull out this book especially for the Butter Cookie recipe. The basic recipe is easy and the book supplies a number of variations, but I only make one of them: the candy canes.

The basic recipe is as follows: Preheat oven to 350. Cream 2 cups softened butter with 1 1/2 cups suger, then add in 4 egg yolks and and 2 t vanilla, mix well. Sift 4 1/2 cups flour with 1/2 t salt, and beat that into the butter mixture.

To make the candy can cookies, divide dough in half. Add red food coloring to half the dough, until desired level of pink is achieved (I use about 1/2 t) Roll a small lump of each colored dough into a rope about three inches long and the diameter of a pencil. Twist the two dough ropes together and curve into a candy cane shape. Bake 10 minutes on an ungreased cookie sheet.

OOPS - Just realized that I must have been really distracted last night when baking - I added the egg whites and tossed out the yolks! Hooray - low fat cookies! They actually turned out delicious - no one even noticed a difference from last year's batch... hmm, might make that a permanent change.

Adventures in Cascadia

Consider yourself invited to check out Adventures in Cascadia, my new blog that incorporates family travel and outdoor adventure in the Pacific Northwest, along with my favorite topic, which is of course, food. While Gather at the Table has mostly stayed confined to my own kitchen there is a world of fun and good eats just outside my doorstep to explore! Some of the posts may seem familiar, as I've selected a few from this blog to get it up and running, but you should see new stuff appear a couple times a week.

And the heat goes on...

Three days ago I began my first attempt at baked beans, boston-style, from scratch. They are still cooking.

While I am not especially known for following recipes to the letter, or instructions of any sort for that matter, I really did follow all the steps lined out for me in the bean chapter of Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker. I soaked two cups overnight in 4 inches of water, I rinsed and picked out the bad beans (they float!) and precooked them for two hours in the slow cooker on high. I then innocently went on the the next step: cooking them in the sauce.

After mixing and adding all the fabulous saucy ingredients (see below*) I set the cooker a-bubblin' and went on my merry way, thinking there'd be beans with the roasted chicken that night. And there were beans...crunchy hard ones! So I dumped the whole pot into my pressure cooker and cranked it up for twenty minutes, then another twenty minutes, and another twenty minutes. Honestly, you could armor a tank with these beans. We had chicken, carrots, and french bread for dinner.

Day two: beans are back in the crockpot, more water is added, beans simmer all day. The sauce is savory sweet with just the right kick, beans are the like malted milk balls: soft on the outside, a little raspy on the inside. Family is seriously let down at tonight's dinner. Maybe altitude is playing a part.

So here I am, day three, feeling like Bill Murray in Groundhog's Day, wondering if I'll ever get it right and be allowed to move on from the never-ending bean drama. They are still cooking. If it's no good tonight, we are going out, and tomorrow I'll post a lovely restaurant review!

*For the bean sauce, I used the Maple Pork and Beans recipe on page 196, but adapted it slightly. I first cooked 1/2 pound peppered maple bacon, and chopped it, then poured off the grease and sauteed one large chopped onion in the same pan. Then whisked together 3/4 cup ketsup, 1/2 cup maple syrup, 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1 T stoneground mustard, 1/2t cayenne pepper plus 1/2t chili pepper, and 6 whole cloves. Stir in the bacon and onions, along with 2 c boiling water, pour over and mix into the beans, and continue cooking. Add more boiling water as it thickens, as needed.

Next time I'll pressure cook the beans first, until they are close to done, before adding the sauce and slowcooking, because it seems you just can't overcook beans.