Newlywed Meatloaf

Today would have been Dennis and Marilyn's 39th wedding anniversary.

If they look young here, it's because they were--Dennis was on the verge of 20 and Marilyn would turn 19 in a few months.

Chad would come along about three years later.

And Brent showed up not quite a year after that.

I don't have words for how Dennis must feel this weekend, or Chad and Brent, who will have their first Mother's Day without their mom tomorrow.

We asked Dennis over for dinner tonight--and I decided to make meatloaf.  

Yes, meatloaf.

I'm no expert on such things, but I'm guessing meatloaf is not a traditional anniversary food. But stay with me here. I have reasons.

First of all, we're not really in celebration mode tonight when it comes to cuisine--more like comfort mode, and meatloaf works for comfort food.

More importantly, look in the upper right-hand corner of the recipe above.

See the date?

May 16, 1973.

Four days after Dennis and Marilyn got married. 

I imagine this is how it went: They got married in Monmouth, and went away to Galena for a short honeymoon.

Upon returning home and feeling hunger approach, they looked at each other--two kids, really, just a few days into decades of marriage--and wondered what they were going to make for dinner.

So somebody called mom and got a recipe for meatloaf--and also thought to write down the date on the card.

Was this the first meal they made together as husband and wife? It might have been.

And so that's what we're having tonight.

This is a standard, old-school meatloaf. Nothing fancy, nothing flashy--just, literally, how mom used to make it. I used about 3/4 of a cup of oatmeal instead of the 1 1/2 cups of breadcrumbs, and took the liberty of adding some Worcestershire sauce to the line-up as well.

The seasoning in this meatloaf comes entirely from a packet of Lipton onion soup mix. An egg and the oatmeal bind it together.

I went free-form in an enamel baking dish instead of using a loaf pan because more of the surface area gets browned that way, and that's a good thing.

This went in to a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. Then I brushed a mixture of ketchup and Worcestershire sauce over the top and sides, and put it back in the oven for another 30 minutes.

What I had, then, was Newlywed Meatloaf.

In the interest of comfort food, we're eating this tonight sandwich-style--thick slices of meatloaf piled on toasted bread with lettuce, pickle, onion, ketchup, and spicy mustard.

Some sweet potato fries on the side, and a little wine--to toast a very special person who isn't here.  

We miss you, Marilyn. Today, tomorrow, and always. 

Belated Gooey Buttercake

Time slips away so fast, doesn't it?

I mean that in a big sense--that Chad turned 36 this week, that in a couple of weeks we'll celebrate our 8th wedding anniversary, that this fall it will be 17 years since we first met. (Holy crap.)

And also that it was a year ago this weekend, when Dennis and Marilyn came over to celebrate Chad's 35th with us, that Chad and I started to worry that Marilyn's health was not good. Even though she'd recently been declared cancer-free, 15 months after her mastectomy, something just seemed off that night. She'd been fighting a cold and it looked like she'd lost weight. She barely finished her wine, and she seemed uncomfortable, like she was in a pain and in a hurry to get home. In retrospect, her cancer was indeed back, and tumors probably already were invading her lungs and brain. We didn't know it then, of course, but she had fewer than 10 weeks to live.

Big things aside, I mean, too, that time slips away in smaller, day-to-day ways. The past few weeks have been like a dream I had repeatedly as a kid.  In the dream, I am not old enough to drive, but I'm behind the wheel of my parents' blue Ford Fairmont (affectionately named Betty Ford). I don't know how to stop the car from moving and I keep driving past reminders of all the things I need to get done. I see my piano teacher along the road and I want to wave, but I'm afraid I will lose control of the car. The only I can do is keep my hands on the wheel to keep the car on the road.

Childhood anxiety dreams are so cute, aren't they?

Lately it seems like I've been unable to stop as I've been driving past piles of laundry and freelance work, plants that need to be put in the ground and weeds that need to be taken out of the ground, dirt that needs to be removed from various surfaces, papers to write and a final to study for--all amid that thing called a full-time job.

So yeah. I haven't updated this thing in a while. I've had a couple of ideas rolling around, but attempts to actually procure ingredients, combine them in a productive manner, and document the process via the magic of the Internet have been abandoned along the roadside, so to speak.

As Chad's birthday came and went this week, I remained committed to the idea of making him a cake, just as soon as I could slow things down enough to get it done. I picked something simple because, well, I wanted to make something simple.

This comes from Marilyn's recipe box. My sources, the Simpson boys, tell me she made it quite a bit.

Gooey Buttercake is a St. Louis tradition, apparently. More authentic versions ditch the cake mix and do it the old-fashioned way with flour and whatnot, but we didn't have time to fuss with that this time. It's also not a very traditional birthday cake or formal dessert cake--it's more often served as a coffee cake--but whatever. Chad isn't picky.

This is a cake of two layers: the cake layer and the gooey layer.

First the cake. Much like Marilyn's recipe for Caramel Bars, we're using a cake mix but disregarding the instructions on the box. Indeed, we are raging against the cake mix machine.

The cake mix, two eggs, and a stick of melted butter are combined and spread into the bottom of a pan. This stuff is thick and sticky and a bit hard to spread, but I know you can do it.

Next, the gooey layer. Cream cheese, powdered sugar, and eggs are blended together and poured over the cake. Much easier to spread.

Then, into the oven at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes. When it comes out, it will look very pretty, thanks to the gooey layer, which becomes golden brown and crispy on the top.

That gooey layer is by far the superior part of this cake. The cake part is a little dry and boring, IMHO, but the topping is, well, gooey. Like the top of a lemon bar, but without the lemon.

And more gooey.

This ended up being a pretty versatile cake. It worked fine as a belated birthday cake, a late-night snack a couple nights in a row, and breakfast for a belated Sunday morning blogging session.

Like the days and years, though, it goes fast. Enjoy it while you can.

Burnt Sugar Cake

For my mom's birthday last week, it seemed appropriate to turn to the stack of recipes that belonged to my great-grandmother, Signe.

Remember Signe? From the butterscotch pie?

My mom gave me this collection of recipes over the holidays. It's an old notebook that's pretty much falling apart. It includes a number of Swedish recipes that I intend to try at some point, and lots of other cakes and cookies and pies, some simple and some--those clipped from magazines and pasted in the notebook, that is--are rather fanciful.

This one isn't particularly fanciful, but I think it's unique.

The ingredients here are no different than a regular old white cake. But burning the sugar first takes those regular old ingredients and creates a cake with a different taste.

Plus, I couldn't pass up the chance to burn something on purpose. I'm pretty good at burning cookies, bread, frozen pizza, etc., so I figured this would be right up my alley.

First, I put a cup of sugar in a pan. Easy enough.

I turned on the burner--about medium high--and got ready to burn.

This, while pretty and rather nice smelling, is no where near burned enough. Signe said to stir until it was "burnt black," so I kept going.

When smoke started rolling off the pan and I started coughing from the fumes, I knew my work was done.

The recipe calls for you to add some water at this point. Beware: burnt hot sugar and water do not like each other very much. Be careful, lest you inadvertently make some burnt flesh to go with your burnt sugar cake.

But, once the burnt sugar mixture has cooled, you'll have a dark syrup, almost the consistency of molasses, but just a little runnier. And by that time, the smoke in the kitchen will have cleared, so you can proceed with your cake.

Much like a lot of the older, handwritten recipes I've come across, there's no hand-holding in this recipe. There's no step-by-step, overly detailed instructions with helpful tips on what to mix with what and when and how. But after studying this one--and looking at the order the ingredients were listed--I decided to cream the butter and sugar, then add and combine the water before moving on to the dry ingredients.

Then I beat in the eggs, so that I had a regular old white cake on one side... and a bowl of scorched sugar syrup on the other.

Mixing in 5 tablespoons of the burnt sugar turned the batter a lovely hue--the color of a spice cake, or a snickerdoodle.

There were no time or temp instructions on the recipe, but a little research indicated maybe 30 minutes at 350 degrees would do the trick.

It did.

I was going to need some frosting for in between the layers and to cover the top. I just happened to have a bunch of leftover burnt sugar, and because I really couldn't foresee using up that much burnt sugar in other recipes, I added some to the frosting (along with some butter and powdered sugar).

While the burnt sugar turned the cakes a dark, spicy color, it tinted the frosting a lovely golden shade. I spread some between the layers.

And then coated the top and sides.

When I whipped away my parchment paper, I had a lovely, vintage-looking cake.

How did it taste?

Well, I think my 8-year-old nephew, Sam, described it best when he said, "It tastes like nothing I've ever had before."

His mother (my sister), had other words.

"It tastes like burnt sugar," she said.

On Porch Swings, Procrastination, and Packinghouse Rolls

It was so nice waking up to rain this morning.

Mostly because it made this Saturday the kind of Saturday that makes it real easy to make excuses.

Nope, too wet to continue the unending quest to remove the 8 million @#*&ing maple seedlings that have invaded all the flower beds.

Too humid to finish that living room painting project I started two weeks ago. 

Not even sure I should take a shower. Probably would just take too long for my hair to dry in this weather.

Finish our @#$^ing taxes? Ha! Not today! It's RAINING! You can't do taxes when it's RAINING!

What I'm saying is, it's the kind of morning you just want to sit on the porch swing and listen to Lucinda Williams.

After a while, and after a couple cups of coffee, you think: Man, this is also the kind of morning you want to make something with no nutritional value whatsoever for breakfast.

This comes from Marilyn's recipe box, but it's in Chad's Grandma Carolyn's handwriting. Chad doesn't remember anyone actually making these at home when he was younger, but he does remember his family members talking with excitement about finally having the recipe for the Packinghouse rolls.

For the uninitiated, The Packinghouse is a local restaurant housed in an old meat packing plant. They are notorious for the cinnamon rolls they have on their salad bar. (Restaurant in a packing plant? Cinnamon rolls on the salad bar? Yep. This is the Midwest, in case you forgot.)

I like to think the Packinghouse rolls recipe spread locally much like that whole Famous Amos original cookie recipe hit the chain mail circuit years ago.

These cinnamon rolls aren't your big fluffy treats covered in a sticky glaze. These are layered, crispy little things covered with enough sugar to make your teeth ache and enough cinnamon to make your tongue tingle (in a good way).

Now, normally I would turn up my nose at using Bisquick, but since it's raining... what the hell. Bisquick it is.

You proof the yeast in warm water, then stir in your Bisquick (which is essentially flour with leavening agents and fat already included to speed things up), then add some more water and whisk it all together.

Then, as illustrated below, you roll the dough in a ball, cut it into quarters, roll them out long, brush them with butter, sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar, roll them like a jelly roll, forget to take pictures of several of those steps, put more cinnamon and sugar on top, and then cut 'em. With a knife. But don't sever them. Just slash 'em about three-quarters of the way through.

Put them in the oven at 350 for about 30 minutes, and then you'll have something like this.

 

Aerial view.

Now, the big question... do they taste like the Packinghouse rolls? Do they? DO THEY?

The answer?

Kinda. Not really.

Well, let's put it this way. If the real Packinghouse rolls and the rolls I made today were twins, they would be fraternal.

If the real Packinghouse rolls were the pair of Keds tennis shoes you wanted so bad when you were a kid, the rolls I made today would be the generic pair you bought and tried to glue pieces of blue rubber on the heels to make them look like the real thing.

Now, my teeth did ache and my tongue did tingle (in a good way) after eating these, just like with the real Packinghouse rolls, but the rolls themselves were a little... Bisquicky. Heavier than the real deal.

That's not to say they were not a pleasant thing to eat on the porch swing, in the rain, while listening to Lucinda Williams.

Also, can you file an extension on your taxes because it's raining?

Vic's Overnight Clover Leaf Rolls

I asked Chad's dad what I should bring for Easter dinner and he told me to surprise him.

Further research indicated that the ham, potatoes, corn, asparagus, deviled eggs, and dessert were already covered, so I decided to make my mom's homemade rolls.

There's really nothing that reminds me of holiday dinners more than my mom's rolls--the sight of them, the smell of them, the fact that I end up eating two of three of them before we actually eat.

I never knew they were "overnight" rolls until I asked for the recipe the Christmas before last, when I was hosting Chad's family for the holidays for the first time. Before that, if you'd asked me, I would have said they miraculously sprang from my mom's oven fully formed and beautiful golden every holiday morn.

Making my mom's and Marilyn's recipes (and those of their mothers and grandmothers, too) really has opened my eyes to how food becomes so ingrained in our memories about family. You don't just make something once. It takes someone making the same things, over and over, until those sights and tastes and smells (and food comas) become tradition.

My mom got the recipe for these rolls from an old Swedish cookbook. It originally called for lard, but she liked them with butter better, so that's how it's done now.  Thanks to the magic of the Internet, we can skip ahead to the "morning" part of the recipe. Last night, when it was too dark to take decent photographs, I mixed the dough as instructed and put it in the refrigerator. This morning, after a sunrise trip to the grocery store for more butter to melt and brush on the top, we were on our way.

To make these into clover leaf rolls, you roll the dough into walnut-sized balls and stuff them, three to a hole, into a muffin pan. I brushed my muffin pan with melted butter first, too, because butter and holidays are BFFs.

Then, more melted butter on the top, and sesame and/or poppy seeds to your liking. I did some sesame, some poppy, and some plain.

These have to rise for another three hours before you bake them, so if you are light on the muffin pan inventory like I am, you might run into a slight issue. It's not as though you can reuse the pans, unless you have double the time to wait for these suckers to rise. (I'm resisting all "the rolls have risen" Easter-related jokes, by the way. I think this shows incredible restraint.)

But, never fear. You can also make this dough into crescent rolls, which Chad likes better, anyway.

Just roll the dough into a circle--a quarter-inch thick--and slice it like a pizza.

Then roll each slice, starting at the wide end, into crescents. Brush with melted butter, of course, and then wait for them to rise. (Ahem.)

When the rolls have risen (!), pop them into the oven at 375 for 12-15 minutes, or until golden brown. You'll know they are about done when it starts to smell like a holiday dinner at my parents' house, which is exactly what Chad said when he came into the kitchen as I pulled them out of the oven.

Then I brushed some more melted butter on the top, because my mom taught me well.

This is my second time making these, and neither batch turned out just like my mom's, meaning they were not nearly as good. But I'll keep practicing, because a basket of these rolls is a thing of beauty.

A thing that traditions are made of.

Buttery and slightly crispy on the top, light and a little bit sweet in the center. Perfect for sopping up gravy, or for using some of Chad's Grandma Carolyn's apple butter, which is how we ate them today.

 

Vote for Market Alley Wines!

I guess I got spoiled by Chad's guest post on my birthday. I keep looking around, wondering who is going to make some food, take pictures of it, and write about it here.

I will be back soon with another post, but for now, I need your help. Or, more accurately, Market Alley Wines needs your help.

Life in our humble burg here in Forgottonia is not all that exciting, and we kind of like it that way. But that's not to say we don't like the fact that there are awesome local businesses springing up and thriving in our town.

One of those local businesses, Market Alley Wines, is a finalist in a national retail competition.

Believe me when I say Market Alley Wines is not what you would expect to stumble upon in a town of 10,000 people in western Illinois. Too often the businesses that open up in rural and economically depressed areas seem to have cut a few corners, and necessarily so. We find ourselves saying, "Well, it's not bad... for here."

Market Alley Wines bucks that trend. It's a beautiful place, in concept and decor. Truly a destination. It's comfortable, classy, stocked with unique wines and gifts, and--even better--just a few blocks from our house. It's part of the downtown music and arts scene that is blossoming in our town. I spend time and money there because it's proof that small-town living can be as rich and fulfilling as city life, but a lot less hectic.

Here's the video our friend (and the owner of Market Alley Wines) Susan made for the contest (with a special guest appearance by Chad, no less).



Impressive, isn't it?

So, here's the deal. Will you vote (10 times daily) for Market Alley Wines by clicking here? Will you tell all your friends to vote, too?

Will you help put our humble but hopeful little town on the map?

Chocolate Zucchini Cake for Janey

There's a guest blogger here today at Sweetened and Condensed. I mean to say: This is Chad, not Jane. Jane turned 35 last night at midnight, and has since then been deservedly spoiled.

Jane and I aren't big on ceremonies or traditions. We were married at the Graceland Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, for instance. This past Christmas, we decided to buy presents for kids whose moms were staying at a local shelter in lieu of buying one another gifts.

We typically do something to celebrate our birthdays, but that something doesn't always involve making a cake. Sometimes there are margaritas involved. Once, to celebrate turning 30, I played in my first real poker tournament.

To be honest, while we enjoyed being charitable at Christmastime, we kind of wished we'd gotten each other presents. And maybe that's why Jane told me a month ago that she'd like it if I made her a cake this year for her birthday and blog about it. The only stipulation: The recipe had to be one of Mom's.

I had Jane pick a recipe, and she went with chocolate zucchini cake.

I didn't ask why she chose this particular cake until about twenty minutes ago. Here's how it went down:

Interviewer: Why did you choose a chocolate zucchini cake for your 35th birthday?
Jane: Because it wasn't made from a mix. And because I thought it would be interesting.
Interviewer: Thank you for your time, birthday girl.

Jane left the house a little after ten o'clock this morning for a mani/pedi, and I got down to work. Before she left, though, she let me know that Naprosyn was not part of the recipe.

Here's what I was working with:

[Not pictured: Butter, eggs, sugar, baking soda, salt. All of these things were necessary. Don't try to make this cake without them. It's hard making a cake and taking photos at the same time if you're not Jane.]

I melted the Baker's chocolate in a bowl in the microwave while I combined the eggs, sugar, and oil. Then I folded in the chocolate and began grating the zucchini. So you know: It's way easier to grate zucchini than cheese. It was even a little fun.

Then I combined the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda. There should have been a picture of the two bowls, one filled with chocolate-y zucchini and the other filled with dry ingredients, right before I combined them, but it, um, didn't quite turn out.

The photo I took after I poured the mixture into the bundt pan, however, did turn out.

Yes, I pulled Baby down off the refrigerator to help me out this morning. Jane likes to cook with the iPod on shuffle. I write to music, but cooking for me requires a different kind of concentration. After a while, though, the kitchen seemed too quiet. A little lonely. So I got down Baby and a bottle of wine.

I'd preheated the oven to 350 degrees, and tossed this thing in there.

When I pulled it out about seventy minutes later, it looked like this:

I set the cake aside to cool and got to work on the satiny chocolate glaze Jane had picked out for me to make.

The glaze didn't take much to make:

Note: Baby was not used in the making of the satiny chocolate glaze. He just refused to get out of the photo.

We don't have a double boiler in this house, so I filled a pan with a few inches of water and turned on a flame, then pulled a metal bowl from the cabinet and placed it on top of the pan. The butter went in, and so did the chips and the corn syrup. I stirred it all fairly vigorously.

Then I added the vanilla, and stirred it all a little more, and it was ready to go.

Before I give you that photo, though, here's me holding the cake I made from scratch:

Here's the cake on its stand. That parchment paper under the cake: You tear it into large-ish strips so that you can slide each of them out when you're done glazing it without disrupting your creation. Jane taught me this. She's the best.

And here I am pouring that satiny chocolate glaze:

And here's the birthday girl. Happy birthday, Janey! My fingers are crossed that this thing tastes OK.