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berry berry, on the vine
who's the suiciest of them all?

Why of course, you are. Suicy berry!

Hi Everybody,

I've got a little tidbit here, filled with yummy tastes that I wanted to share with you.

Considering the crowd I hang with, this is pretty much heresy. But considering how busy and changing my daily life is, how much do you think my Care Level is? Yeah, like negative 90 million. Tiny E enjoys mixing powders with eggs, butter and whatever else. Putting them in to cups and cooking them is all that's important. If I can shave 30 minutes off prep time for nap time? Count me in.

So, on a walk-by whim, I bought this:

I didn't look at the instructions or ingredients, just bought. It was something to share with the little dude. Damn, I made a great choice.

After reading the instructions, I needed to add an egg, some milk and melted butter. To find a boxed mix that requires more than the addition of water really impresses me. Usually it's water or an egg and that's it. Yeah, so here is where it takes a turn for the better. They wanted two tablespoons of melted butter. Okay, so there's the fat, the action, the delivery system for flavor. But what if I doubled that or more, and used bacon fat?

Holy crap! The package came alive! The crust of the muffins were crunchy, yet juicy, corny inners. And you know what? The sugar level was at the bottom, way down low. Sure there was some flour in there to make it cakey, but the sugar wasn't there. Only 5 grams for 6 muffins, I was impressed. Very impressed, I would serve this to anyone I know with confidence. I would serve this to Shuna at any one of my gatherings, without qualms. I will buy this packaged product again, it's Meathenge Approved.

Love you guys,

xo, Biggles

Tiny E and I made some cupcakes yesterday. He was feeling a little blue about not being 12 or 13 like his brother and neighbor boy (read here: being left out and taunted). So, Super Papa jumped in and grabbed a box wherein you add the eggs, water and oil=cupcakes. We had a great time and I had the wits to remember the food coloring.

Let's just say Tiny E found out what happens when you add all kinds of different colors together, Shrek Cupcakes.

Over the last 24 hours the discussion arose over the difference between cupcakes and muffins. The boys discussed this amongst themselves for quite some time. My immediate response was that cupcakes are usually of a very cakey substance with icing. Wherein a muffin is something more substantial and doesn't have icing. All good.

As of tonight, after dinner, we really needed to resolve this issue. So I went straight to the World Book, nada. Next up, The New Oxford American Dictionary. I was pretty spot on with my definition. But what caught me was the second definition of cupcake, 2nd dfinition was an attractive woman. The howling only now is slowing to a crawl.

Biggles

ps - Hey there cupcake, fries come with that shake?

See, once a week the boys get to spend the entire afternoon over at my Uncle's. Why is this so great? Uncle Ralph's is a place where there are no limits to canned soup, packaged noodles, candy, juice, soda, shopping, ice cream store visits and whatever else comes along. Uncle Ralph also happens to be living in our family stronghold, they moved in to this area in 1946. I grew up in that yard picking plums, oranges, pears, apples, cherries and whatever else we could find. Then we'd march off to the kitchen and Gramma would bake a few pies, preserve some fruit and make pickles rolled up in ham slices.

Time has come and gone, the garden has changed over the years and Gramm is doing such things in a loftier place these days. Even after all this time, with a lot of hard work from Ralph, the yard is producing some amazing goodies this year. One of which would be these fancy blackberries. I showed up to pick up the kidlets and he handed me 8 cups worth. Each one as sweet as the next. Time to make jam.

I've never made jam. And since Mama can't have sugar, this task was even tougher. I don't know the chemistry of such things, so I had to resort to reading a book, Joy of Cooking.
I washed the berries and put them in a non-reactive pot. Added 2 finely diced apples, cored and peeled. Apparently these berries don't have much pectin, the stuff that will hold the jam together. Get warm and mooshy. All we had left was about a 1/2 cup of Splenda and off I went. Sorry about the Splenda, sugar isn't an option. Diabetes ain't nothing to screw with, not even once.
Here's the killer, sugar will thicken the jam. Splenda will not. So, I had to just cook it until I thought it was 'together', whatever that meant. It probably took me most of an hour and I called it done.

I did not preserve the jam, it's fresh and we'll consume it quickly. Since the berries were perfectly sweet, the missed refined sugar really isn't. I don't know if the apples did anything, but who cares. The results are absolutely wonderful and I'm very happy with myself. Yipppeeee!

Biggles

What a strange trip this has been. It all started innocently enough. Meathead (brother inlaw) has his way of making corn bread. NO COOKIE INGREDIENTS, is the guideline. No flour, no sugar. He wanted the bite and crunch of the corn meal, nothing in the way. His grandmother made it this way and unfortunately she never wrote it down. So Meathead has been winging it for years, tweaking this and changing that. I was lucky enough to get a piece a few months ago, heaven. I asked for the 'recipe' and he was kind enough to put something down. This last Sunday was time and off I went on the hunt for the perfect cornbread.

Last month Meathenge participated in the famous, Is My Blog Burning. IMBB is a themed cooking roundabout wherein people who have blogs cook to the theme and post it up, simple enough. Last month's theme were Muffins or Cupcakes, muffins are so cool. Meathenge Labs put their heads together and wound up doing a Curry Chicken Muffin, came out very well I must say. But it wasn't the only good looking recipe my wife found, one of the others was a BLT Muffin. I wasn't able to pull off two muffins for the roundabout, so I did it this last Sunday. Read on, if you dare.

This is an odd photograph, to me. If we'd had more time, I would have spent some time with it and redone the sucker. But it's been an odd week and reflects my mood completely.

This week marked the ending of Is My Blog Burning #13, cupcakes & muffins. Surely you sawr the entry for Curried Chicken muffins on Wednesday? They were terribly good, but left a lot of room for improvement. Even I was able to come up with some decent changes. Before I could make my move, Mama jumped in and whipped up a batch while I was at work yesterday (Thursday). Since I had the image I asked her to write up what she did and why. She did, and how. It's a longin' and a goodin'.
I enjoyed the changes, the muffin was more homogenous than my attempt. Plus it had a far nicer curry flavor to it. I have to say though, I did miss the chunks of onion. The first batch had far too many, but still it would be nice to have some caramelized yummies. Oh, and she was able to dry it up a bit. Less oil and less onion, you bet.
Go see what Mama was up to on Thursday, ith gooood.

Alright, I did it. After all this time I finally get to participate in a group blog cooking funtime. I did one, once, a long long time ago. It seems as though I'm always just missing them. Or just too darned busy, usually the latter.
This month, Is My Blog Burning #13 - My Little Cupcake (or muffin) hosted by I was just really very hungry.
I wanted to do something savory and asked my wife to search around for something neat lookin'. She found a handful of goodies and I had planned on doing two different kinds. Yeah well, I got to one of them. And this one would be Curried Chicken Muffins, from Alma in Australia. And they were goooood.

IDIDITIDIDITIDIDIT.

Yup, Biggles baked. It was one of the most amazing afternoons, ever. I know, nearly all of you have done fine with your bad selves. That's really great for you. But I've been an absent baker for years (I let everyone else do it). Luckily I married a woman who is a tremendous baker, this means I haven't been suffering for my unaptitude. I had a half day to myself, sort of. And decided to give it a try.

Just when you thought it was safe to come out, just when you thought the Arista Panzanese was done and out the door. You couldn't be more wrong. Last night there was a happy chunk of the special pork roast left over. Eric won't eat leftovers, but here at MeatHenge Labs we have no problems with such things.
Mama said it was time for MEAT PIE !!! I was okay with that, especially since she is the Pie Crust Queen.

I believe this marks about 15 Cook's Illustrated magazines I've received so far. And this recipe is the first of anything I've found of any use out of that rag. I know I know, many people just 'love' to rave about it for one reason or another. Each issue I find a handful of things that make me see red. I'm willing to put down the boxing gloves for a moment because my wife and I are suckers for biscuits and this issue had a recipe worth taking a look at. Yum.

Back on April 30th I posted something about working with E's new Easy Bake Oven. He and I worked through a few things such as cookies and a heart shaped cake. I ran in to a few snags, but I have to say it was an awful lot of fun. Well, last week we ran out of 'mixes' and figured we would order some replacements online.
Nah, we found them at Toys R us a few days ago and last night Mama and E made a cake. E wanted me to do it, but it was Mama's turn this time. Besides, she's the baker.
During this adventure, she found out that one door is smaller than the other (scraped the top off the cake) and you need to make sure you push the cake all the way in. This means I'll be taking it apart, again, and scraping the interior clean.
Drop what you're doing and go git one of these things, they fun !!!

Tiny E received an Easy Bake oven for his birthday this last weekend. Pretty cool stuff. First off we noted that one needs a 100 watt light bulb and not a Soft White one either, mark that one down for the grocery store. It comes with little cake tins, one shaped like a heart and the others were round. Some interesting purple colored pushy push push stick and some stickers to make it look like a real oven. You know, buttons and timer and handle. It believe it was Tuesday that we finally had the correct light bulb and E knew. It was time to start cooking with light.

Fresh bagel time !!!

I'm not sure what prevoked her, but my wife made fresh bagels on Saturday. We'd never made them before, maybe it was the conquest of food untried that set this baking frenzy into motion.
As near as I could see she opened up The Joy of Cooking for the recipe. It seemed straight forward enough. Make a dough using ... ingredients, let it rise. Then make some little logs, and then make rings from those logs. Let those rise too. Heat up a pot of water and boilem' for a bit. Then pop them into the oven after wiping a little eggy wash on them.

I liked them a lot.

Nothing says the weather is getting cooler liked a big ol' batch of baked applies. Do what you see and cook for 45 minutes at 350. EASY. Don't use margarine FOO. These apples are Red Delicious and came from my Uncle's trees.

Alright, so we didn't make bacon last night. But M made two loaves of fresh wheat type bread. We needed bread for the kid's lunches today and were OUT. So instead of heading off to the local hag store for nasty crud bread she made it. No dumb bread machine either. Dumb machines. YOU GOT HANDS !!! Use'm foo.

Happy Birthday to me! Uh, okay so it was on the 8th. I been busy. Isn't it a pretty ... green? OR blue?

I'm sure you all must be getting tired of seeing week after week of fresh bread. Keep in mind we not tired of EATING IT !!!!! Again, no dumb bread machine here people. HA !!! I HAVE FRESH BREAD TO EAT !!!!

Hey don't that look FINE? There's fresh home made bread, and not with a bread machine either. Oh man it was good. Okay well it still is.

All good pizzas start here, the dough. It's easy and the taste it provides as compared to premade frozen dough is miles above.

Yeah, okay so the onions are way too thick. But they the sweet ones you can eat tons of. Yum!