Home for Halloween

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Trick or Treat

We celebrated Halloween at home this year, watching the kids in costume come and go, and RUNNING OUT OF CANDY IN 45 MINUTES. I’m not kidding, 45 minutes is how long our 151 bags of candy lasted.

Some of the family came over to enjoy some smoked sausages, sauerkraut, and potato salad (all made by my superstar husband), red candied apples (made by me!), and keg of beer (that’s right, a whoooole kegger!)

Naturally, I forgot to photograph the food and drinks, but here’s some of the candy:Halloween Candy

and a photo of our staff, dressed up and ready to scare the neighborhood kids:

Halloween Staff

We’re still recovering.

Lasang Pinoy 21: Cooking for Heroes

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Bryan Alvarez of Shoots. Eats. Leaves. has posted his round-up of October’s Lasang Pinoy. This was a particularly special event, being Lasang Pinoy’s Anniversary Edition and featuring the theme Cooking for Heroes. Not the immensely popular television show, no, but Filipino heroes- like Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, even the People of People Power!

Will it make you hungry? Yes. But what I love about this round is how interesting all of the write-ups were. Make yourself a cup of tea and go read them.

I hope it’s not too early to mention that I’ll be hosting January 2008′s Lasang Pinoy: Crockpot Cooking! To join in the fun, I suggest you sign up for the Lasang Pinoy mailing list.

Hot enough for car-baked cookies?

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I’ve heard of days that are hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk, but what about baking cookies in your car? Baking Bites first wrote about other people doing it, then decided to try it out for themselves- and it worked (after about 2 1/2 hours). The cookies didn’t brown, but were “slightly crisp at the edges and chewy in the center”. Read more at Baking Bites.

Cookbook Experiment

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Inspired by Julie and Julia- which I started reading a few days ago- and the ambitious French Laundry at Home, I’ve decided to embark on a “cookbook experiment” of my own.

For those unfamiliar with the two projects I mentioned above, these were ordinary women who chose challenge themselves by cooking every single recipe in their cookbook of choice: for Julie, it was the old classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, and for the latter it’s the new classic The French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller. These women are amazing, and I can only hope that I prove to be as determined as they are.

I haven’t decided yet which cookbook I’ll be using. Here are some I’m considering:

Which one gets your vote?

Tokidoki Cake

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tokidoki cake
I am LOVING this right now- not only is it Tokidoki, it’s Le Sportsac- AND it’s a cake!

outside: tons of fondant to make the tokidoki figure (and a lot of toothpicks), and to create the bag. the hearts and crossbones were hand-piped by her assistant, claire, onto wax paper, then dried and applied to the cake with more royal icing. inside: eight layers of vanilla macadamia nut cake with buttercream and a generous lashing of grand marnier.
(via the scent of green bananas)