Fruity Feet

Good afternoon! While Liz "enjoys" snowy Northern New York, I enjoyed a meat-filled cocktail time in sunny Southern California! First up was the kiddie cocktail (mocktail): the Desert Cooler. This russipe doesn't even include a suggestion to transform it into a cocktail (Gasp!) for the adults in the room. What was Aunt Sandy thinking?! By itself, it is simply lacking something... probably a kick of booze. You combine equal parts orange jews, pineapple jews and sparkling apple cider- pour it over ice and garnish with pineapple. Yawn. It wasn't horrible, but it also didn't taste like much. My Aunt said it tasted mainly like pineapple, but I thought it mainly tasted like apple (the sparkle gets dulled down by the other jews). I don't know why someone would want to waste good sparkling apple cider (which by itself is delicious and always a kid's favorite holiday treat... at least it was mine) without putting some booze in it! Everyone said it needed spice rum.... and almost everyone threw their glass out.

Next was the return of condensed Campbell's cheese soup (yeay!) with the ridiculously salty Cheddar Cheese Baked Potato Soup. First you take a russet potato and put it in the microwave for 7-8 minutes. Never having cooked a potato this way, I was happy my aunt told me to poke holes in it, lest I want the thing to explode, because the russipie gives no such instruction. After 7.5 minutes, the potato was shriveled and sad looking, so I supposed it was "done." While the nuked potato cools (Sandy warns "it will be HOT!"), you heat up 2 cans cheddar cheese soup, 2.5 cups low-sodium chicken stock and 1/4 c. real bacon pieces into a medium pan. You let it simmer for a bit, add the potato (which you cut into 1/2 inch cubes once it cools) and let the whole thing simmer for 5 more minutes. To serve you garnish the soup with a dollop of sour cream. Okay first, can I just tell you that the low-sodium broth, I imagine, does nothing to compensate for the insane amount of salt in the canned cheddar soup, not to mention the bacon?! My dad took one spoonful and said, "well, that's my daily intake of sodium for the day." He wouldn't eat any more...and my dad loves salt. My sister, cousin and I actually ate some. It tasted good once our tongues were numb from the sodium overload. The potato chunks left something to be desired. Their texture felt like a really poorly made, dense gnocchi: they were gooey, chewy and gummy.

Since the soup was a bust, we moved on to a real cocktail, the Palm Springs Punch. Once 11 oz. can of pineapple jews mixes with 1 L. ginger ale and 1 c. bourbon. You pour this over ice and then add 2 (15 oz.) cans of fruit cocktail. Yes, you heard me right, fruit cocktail in a fruity cocktail...how clever, Aunt Sandy. Now as you will notice in the picture below, the can of fruit cocktail (which looked completely normal on the outside) was completely ruined and void of jews on the inside, so we had to throw away the kind with cherries (my favorite) in exchange for some fruit cocktail cups my mom had stored in the pantry for god-only-knows how long.

I didn't make as much as the russsipe called for, because no one was really interested in drinking in the middle of the afternoon (my family was not interested in following the sacred rules of cocktail time), but they were sports and took a sip. My sister's boyfriend said it tasted rancid, but that was really the worst review it got. My sister and I thought it was quite tasty (I drank mine and then picked out the booze soaked fruit afterwards), but then again we loved fruit cocktail as children, so anything that reminds us of that is delicious. In all honesty, I think it would make an excellent springtime cocktail. It also wasn't nearly as boozy as Aunt Sandy's normal monstrosities.

Pleasantly pleased, we moved onto the final dish: Sweet and Sour Chicken Skewers. In a pan, you bring to a boil: 1/2 c. apple cider vinegar, 1/4 c. brown sugar, pineapple jews, 1 T. cornstarch and 1 T. water. You let the sauce thicken for about 8 minutes, then you reserve half for the dipping sauce. As this was cooking my sister said it smelled like feet. When my Aunt and cousin came over, they said the same thing. It got so bad, my mom had to open a window. As the sauce cooled and the kitchen aired out, my cousin and I made the skewers. We alternated chunks of chicken, pineapple and red pepper, salt and peppered them, and then popped them onto a medium hot greased grill. After cooking for 4 minutes on each side, we basted them in the sweet and sour sauce. These are to be served with the dipping sauce, but my mom threw it out as soon as everyone tasted it (but me). It tasted like feet apparently. The skewers themselves weren't bad. They weren't very sweet or sour, but they had a nice mild flavor to them...and really, can you go wrong with grilled kabobs? That nice charred taste will subdue any nasty foot flavor a sauce may have.

So that just about does it for my California Cocktail Time. Liz and I will have time for a couple more entries before our winter break is over, so keep a lookout! Until then, remember to keep it a cocktail, keep it botulism free, keep it footloose, and always keep it Semi-Edible!

Peaches y Crema

Hola! As stated in the last entry, our friend Joey wanted to host a Mexican Fiesta party, semi homemade style. As soon as he mentioned it, Liz and I jumped all over this opportunity. What better venue to get a huge amount of victims…er subjects….er friends to taste lots of Aunt Sandy’s good ol’ Mexican delicacies? After all, Mexican food is Sandy's favorite food so there were plenty of super simple russipies waiting for us to test. I brought a hot, semi-delicious pot of Creamy Green Chile Soup while Liz tackled what I feel was one of the grossest russipies to date: Halibut Tacos with Peach Salsa. For cocktail time Joey served up Cosmoritas.

Because cocktail time is the best time of the day, I'll start with the Cosmorita. You shake an ice filled martini shaker with 1 shot of tequila, a splash of lime juice and 2 shots cranberry. You strain the concoction into a glass and garnish with a lime wheel. This doesn’t sound that bad- and it wasn’t. If you haven’t guessed it by now, Aunt Sandy took most of the ingredients in a cosmopolitan and added tequila instead of vodka. How. Original. And if I liked tequila more, I probably would make this again. But I don't, so I wont. This is a strong tasting drink- we all passed around and sampled one glass as opposed to each of us drinking one and then being floored. Needless to say for the rest of the night, the rest of us stuck to margaritas, sangria and tecate.

My favorite item of the night (that was from a Semi-Russipe) was my Creamy Green Chile Soup. In a pot you boil 1 c. frozen chopped onions (this was our first russipe using frozen onions! I was so excited and can I just tell you they were super easy to find in the store), 1t. garlic, 1c. frozen corn, 2 cans diced green chile, 4c. chicken stock and 1tsp. Mexican seasoning. I could not find Mexican Seasoning (does it exist?)…just Mexican Taco mix, so I used that. While this boils, in another skillet you add 2Tbs butter, 1c. corn and 1 can green chiles. Then you add 1 package of fresh (gasp!) sliced mushrooms and sauté for 10 minutes. This is quite the complex russipe. The directions from there get kind of confusing. I deciphered them (and Liz corroborated my idea) to mean that you then puree the soup mix, and as the final steps add the sautéed vegetables, stir in ¾ cup crema and pepper the shit out of the soup to get a decent flavor (no salt necessary). There are warnings in the directions to keep the blender from blasting scalding soup into your eyes and all over the counter… heed these warning. Because even if you heed the warnings, the soup explodes. In all fairness I was running late, so I didn’t really let the soup cool before blending, but hey, I like to live on the wild side sometimes. This soup was fairly well received at the party once it was garnished with cilantro and cheese. Everyone said they would eat it again or would want to eat a bowlful of it. Liz didn’t like it, and though I thought the mushrooms were slimy- I enjoyed it. I took the leftovers home, added some chicken and had a couple delicious meals out of it. All in all, I would say this was not so super simple (considering the ease of her other russipies) but worth making.

Next was Liz’s heroic creation of Sandy’s Halibut Tacos with Peach Salsa. Now really, just looking at the title of this is deceiving. Sure there’s a slight hesitation at the thought of peaches on fish tacos, but mangos and pineapples have been successful, if not delicious, on tacos. And everyone loves fish tacos, verdad? Si. But then you learn that there’s allspice involved. And not just a pinch of allspice, but a whole heaping teaspoon! Ick times 5. But I am getting ahead of myself here. First, Liz took a pound of tilapia and marinated it in a packet of hot taco seasoning mix for 30 minutes. She chose to diverge from the russipe and use tilapia instead of halibut for two reasons. First, we are poor law students. And second, we aren’t about to waste good halibut on something as gross as this. The sodium infused fish is then grilled and put on corn tortillas. It is topped with coleslaw mix and the peach salsa. Despite the taco seasoning mix, this still sounds harmless, if not tasty. But no, the peach salsa is absolutely, without a doubt in my top 3 worst Semi-Edible dishes. You take 2c. mild chunky salsa, add 1c. chopped frozen peach slices and 1t. allspice. Aye dios mio!

First off, 99% of pre-made salsas are inedible to begin with... adding allspice and frozen peaches would make even homemade salsas inedible. Liz and I decided it smelled and tasted like old people and potpourri salsa. After we finished gagging and gulping down our margaritas to kill the aftertaste, we made sure everyone tried one bite before we ditched the salsa and ate the fish tacos plain or with guacamole. It was absolutely inedible and I am sorry I ever put that in my mouth.

There are three other sodalicious items made for the fiesta that we will post next week. In all honesty, they weren't bad. Although, in my opinion, nothing short of the Hot Crab Rangoon Dip can ever be as bad as that peach salsa. It gives me chills just thinking about it.

So until next time remember to keep it Mexican, keep it slimy, keep it allspice free, and always keep it Semi-Edible.