First World Problems: Did You Smell Something?

We've recently started going to food swaps.  Last time we had a visit from the Marshmallow Fairy and got delectable Salted Carmel Marshmallows!  They are beyond phenomenal in hot cocoa or plain.  As such, when we heard they were going to be at the food swap in Winnetka, we knew we had to schedule it in so we could get more mallows!  More!

We decided to can some of our apple filling which we have been altering for various apple recipes.  Only when you find a pot in the basement that might have been in your house for more than twenty years you may be in for a surprise.  As were we, as we heated up water in this canning pot which was going completely normal until the water started to get closer to a boil.  There was a funny smell and we realized that the formica next to the stove was melting!  There is a black spot the size of a silver dollar next to our stove!  We had no idea that it would melt at all.  We boil pots of that size all the time on that burner, but they're not nearly so old.  We had no trouble using another pot to can our apple mixture, but it was certainly a hair raising moment.

Followed by the dog being unsupervised which led to a foot licking frenzy.  She has a fetish and licks non-stop.  So, then we had a dog who was bleeding all over the kitchen.   Rosie certainly was not cooperative.  She wanted to be in the kitchen near all the smells but she was stubbornly wanting not to be cleaned.

We found out that we cannot make coconut butter in our new ninja blender.  The blender is too powerful and the coconut was too dry.  So, we had a messy blender with stubborn coconut that I wanted to put on my toast but could only stare at longingly.  Oh, fresh bread with coconut butter is marvelous for breakfast.  Alas, we are without coconut butter.   Hard times they are here.

As always the cat continues his nightly terrors.  He runs from room to room wanting to snuggle with a human.  For some reason, he does not like being kicked.  He will run out of the room and then return shortly afterwards.  He is most fickle.  Thus, causing all the heat to escape from the room with a humidifier running.  He has taken to creepily staring as well.  He goes from human to human when hungry and meows and hopes for signs of awareness.  Then, he will settle to stare at Susie as she sleeps.  He can sit still for hours staring waiting for her to wake up which can start earlier than dawn.

So that was our crazy week!  How was yours?

Cabot Crisps for the Chicago Food Swap

This past weekend we attended our second Chicago Food Swap and we made something delectable.  Cabot Cheese sponsored the food swap and picked two bloggers to make something with their products.  We lucked out and got picked!!  I've worked with Cabot Cheeses before and absolutely love their products.  A branch of my family actually lives in Barre, VT where Cabot is based.

I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to make, but knew I wanted it to be something with cheese.  There were two things I was debating either crackers or a farm loaf studded with cheddar.  I went with crackers.  I thought they'd be cute if I used the electric cookie press to make holiday shapes.  If I'd been able to find the electric cookie press, that is.  It's lost somewhere in the depths of the basement.  If you've ever seen my basement, you'd understand.  

So I tried to make cute holiday cheese-y crackers with the manual cookie press....lets just say it was a dismal failure.  They came out huge and way too thick.  That left me with hand rolling and cutting the cracker dough.  Let's just say there is a reason most people don't make crackers at home.  It's a lot of work!  Ours turned out great, I mean you really can't go wrong when you use Cabot Cheese, but I don't know that I'd make them again.  Or at least not enough to share!  They were easy until about the third batch when you want to just get them all baked, but you can only peel one cracker off the sheet at a time!  Next time, we will definitely try parchment paper instead.  The best part about this recipe is that you really get the cheesy goodness because the main ingredient is cheese!  No overly complicated recipe with loads of add-ins.  We like our cheese straight up with a slight crisp! We hope you enjoy our recipe for Cabot Crisps!  

Cabot Crisps

8 ounces Cabot Cheese of your choice, shredded

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2-3 tablespoons water

After much trial and error, I used the food processor for the entire dough making process.

First using the shredding blade, shred your cheese.  Change out to the chopping blade.  Add butter, salt and flour to the shredded cheese.  Pulse until it forms a crumbly mixture. Remove top, sprinkle in water (you'll need 2 tablespoons for full fat cheeses and 3 tablespoons for low-fat cheeses) and pulse until a dough forms.

Now comes the fun part!  Get two good sized sheets of waxed paper.  Take a third of the dough, roll it out to between 1/8th-1/16th of an inch thick and cut with a pizza cutter.  Move each cracker by hand to an ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes.  Crackers will puff and turn golden.

First World Problems: Help the Oven Is OVERFLOWING

It's true that our job as food bloggers means quite a lot of time spent in our kitchen.  We are cooking and then baking and mixing.  All for the sake of those few perfect shots and of course the excellent taste.

As such we have found ourselves on a winding path of food.  We recently started attending the Chicago Food Swap.  We'd been considering going for months but never had the time.  Since we finally went last month, we decided from our good haul that we would go again.  Only we didn't learn from experience quite yet.  Never ever plan an event the day before a food swap.  Even if we have our recipes selected, generally they are new and untested.

Not that they are going to go horribly wrong, just that sometimes we don't realize just how ambitious making seven different flavors of cheddar crackers by hand is.  It is a lot of work.  A lot of hours in the kitchen with lots of slicing and rolling and peeling and placing.  Detailed work, which while the recipe is extremely simple in terms of ingredients: flour, butter, water and cheese; the process is time consuming.  Especially when your plan falls through and you don't find your electric cookie press and the handheld one turns out to be unreliable crafting giant cookie crackers.  We opted to do them by hand.

This was better in terms of sizing our crackers.  For the most part they are squares or you can tell that they were the sad corners which just got the short end of the dough.  The next fiasco was in cooking all of these.  We had our oven on for hours non-stop.  We'd mix a batch, roll and cut and just manage to get all of the little squares peeled off the wax paper and onto the waiting pan.  Which meant that we were going on pan at a time in our oven.  The crackers would cool perfectly on the rack in the time it took to make a new batch, by then we were finally fast enough to keep with our pan rotations.

Only by this time, we were hysterical.  Two of us in the kitchen, dashing from oven to counter to slicer.  It was madness as we tried to peel without breaking the pieces even smaller.  We were just saying words in front of cheese or crackers and laughing out of control.  Our sanity was pushed to the limits as the crackers took control of all we thought we knew about the world.  We had an oven which overflowed with cracker bounty.  Granted, they are delicious and cheesy.  Truly, they have more cheese than your average cheese cracker, but there were too many.   It was as if they multiplied in the oven as we moved them to the rack to cool.  For the longest time it seemed as if the amount of cheese we had yet to use was not changing.  We had a stack of cheese to use and the hours just ticked away and we despaired.  We were going to be cracker bakers.  Our family business had taken hold and I could see my children apprenticing in the cracker arts.  How to peel perfectly with your fingers.  How the spacing was necessary and precise.  How the timing was immaculate.  Everything flashed before our eyes as the crackers kept baking.

Then, this morning to our horror, we realized that our crackers had lost their crisp.  We had to start again the cracker baking.  We had to recrisp our crackers, this was much easier than an initial baking process, but it was still time consuming.  As our thousands of tiny crackers went back into the oven.  Finally, we were done and could manage to parcel them out into bags.  Hoping with all of our might that someone would want our cracker wares in seven different flavors in exchange for anything else because we are all cracked up.  No more crackers for us.  Too much of a good thing is enough to last us through the holidays.

November Chicago Food Swap

After a ton of misses, we finally made it to the Chicago Food Swap at the Chopping Block inside the Merchandise Mart this past Sunday.  We'd been signed up a few times now, but something always came up to prevent us from going.

Y'all know by now that I'm a baker more than anything else.  I do occasionally make curds but really nothing else thats meant to sit for any amount of time.  Being our first time I made some of our favorites, buttermilk chocolate pound cake and roasted garlic focaccia.  I wanted to bring something that we ourselves loved, just in case we weren't able to trade it all away.  Luckily that didn't happen.  :)

I also brought something new to us.  I'd just read about coconut buttermilk and really wanted to give it a go.  I made up a batch and brought three jars of it with me.  If you were one of the lucky three to get a batch, I definitely recommend making pancakes with it.  That's what I used mine for and man, oh man were they good!  I was worried there wouldn't be enough "juice" (fermenting power) to give the pancakes lift but they turned out great.

This a photo of our haul.  Some of the things we've already tried and loved was the kimchi, kimbap and the dumplings.  We haven't tried making kimchi yet, but as its Susie's favorite I was glad someone there had it.  She said it was milder than she'd had before but still had great flavor due to it being super fresh.

We took home Farmer Jim's huge Blue Hubbard Squash!  I still can't believe that no one had bid on it by the time I walked back in to trade some pound cake for a smaller squash.  I'm going to have to ask the neighbor to cut it for me, but my family is already looking forward to the treats I'll make with it.

We're signed up for next month's swap already and I know Susie's hoping there will be more Korean treats to be found!  If you love to cook and live in the Chicago area, I definitely recommend trying this out.  Even though our first time was a little disconcerting, huge mobs of people aren't always our thing, it's definitely worth trying,