Homemade cat toys!

My crafty friend Andrea made her cat some of these toys, and ordered me to do the same. We got some fabric scraps at our local fabric store. Stores should have a discounted scrap section where the ends of bolts or misshapen pieces are sold at a deep discount. Andrea recommends using fleece(hers cost about $1.50); I chose a nylon sparkly fabric (about $3) because I'm easily distracted like that. To make this simple toy, you also need a needle, thread, scissors, and some catnip. I got organic catnip from Target for less than $3.

The easiest, least time consuming way to make the toy is to cut a 2" wide by 8-10" long piece of fabric.

Make a slipknot at the end, leaving a pouch about 1-2" in size.

Sew one side of the pouch, put catnip in the other side, and sew up the remaining side.

Cut the hanging fabric into strips (toy should look a little like an octopus)

Give to your favorite cat and watch the show.

I also tried a couple of different designs. You could cut a heart-shaped piece that's about 3" down the middle. Sew it up inside-out, leaving a hole at the top for the 'nip. Turn right-side-out, fill with 'nip, sew it closed. You could sew on eyes and a tail, and voila! A catnip-filled mouse!



You could also do a little pouch. I probably don't need to explain how to do that.



Ultimately, the octopus is the easiest. The cat likes anything that even remotely involves 'nip, so she's not picky.

Pumpkin (pie) ice cream

Made some delicious pumpkin ice cream with pumpkin pulp left over from Thanksgiving. Since I had just the right amount of pumpkin, I made the whole ice cream recipe but needed to do it in two batches because of the size of my ice cream maker. For the second batch, I thought I'd get creative and throw in some crushed shortbread cookies to make pumpkin ice cream into super great pumpkin pie ice cream! It might have worked if the machine base had completely frozen solid again between batches. Even though I left the base in the freezer for over 6 hours, it wasn't frozen enough to make ice cream. So I got a weird mixture of the ingredients, but it wasn't ice cream. Even when I put the mixture into the freezer to see what would happen if I froze it, the results were just not right. It was not the right consistency--the mix had big ice crystals in it and it just didn't look or taste like ice cream. I ended up letting it thaw and throwing it out, which is very unlike me. I never met a dessert I didn't like. So, let this be a lesson: make sure the machine base is completely frozen solid before starting the next batch.

Straight up pumpkin ice cream recipe (makes 3 quarts):
15 oz. pumpkin
3 c. half and half
2 c. heavy cream
3/4 c. sugar
1 tsp. each ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg

Mix and refrigerate to 40 degrees; follow ice cream maker's instructions.

I still maintain that you could add crushed cookies in the last 5 minutes of mixing to get the essence of pie. As long as the machine's base is frozen, this trick should work.

My favorite appetizer

My new favorite appetizer, served at a holiday party this weekend:

Pickle Roll Ups

Ingredients:
Thin sliced deli ham
Cream cheese
Pickle spears

Instructions:
Spread cream cheese on ham slices. Layer. Roll a pickle spear up in the middle. Slice into sushi-roll-size bites. Eat until you burst.

Is this a Midwestern thing? The roll ups, not the eating until bursting. Let me know!

Coffee, vanilla, and peppermint body scrub--almost good enough to eat!

A friend and I made homemade body scrub to be given as holiday gifts, loosely based on this recipe. We tested out proportions and scents this morning, and then tried out the product on ourselves and her boyfriend, and the results are fantastic! Our hands were soft, smooth, and smelled sweet, almost like chocolate. If you happen to lick your own hands after rinsing, you won't be disappointed either.

Here are the proportions we like best:
3/4 c. turbinado sugar
1/8 c. (plus a little more to add if mixture is too dry) olive oil or vegetable glycerin
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
8 drops peppermint oil
1/4 c. coffee grounds

(You can find all of the above at a health food store.) Mix everything together, store in 1/2 pt. Ball jar. Rub scrub on hands, elbows, feet, or any other body part you wish to feel soft, smooth, and energized. Scrub may need to be mixed if ingredients have settled. Watch for coffee grounds in drain. Be careful if using in shower! Refrigerate scrub when not in use to prolong freshness.

If you want to make several jars at once, you can use 1 40 oz. bag sugar, 1 16 oz. jar oil, and 1 12 oz. bag ground coffee to yield about 7 jars' worth. Enjoy!

Cold weather comfort foods

Some remarkable meals from the last week:

Chili and Biscuits

Vegetarian Chili
1 pkg. Morningstar Farms veggie crumbles
1 can chopped tomatoes
1 can red beans, drained and rinsed
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 small can green chilies
1 small can sliced olives

heat it all up in a large pan and serve with:

Horseradish Cheddar Biscuits
1/4 lb. shredded horseradish cheddar
2 c. Bisquick mix
2/3 cup milk

mix it all up, put dollops on baking sheet, and bake at 400 degrees for 9-10 minutes. Makes about 6 extra large biscuits.


Then last night:

Stuffed Shells, Sauteed Kale, and Pumpkin Puddin'

Suffed Shells with Turkey and Artichoke
I used this recipe but substituted soft tofu for the ricotta, eliminated the onion, and used jarred sauce. Bike Guy insisted on using fresh artichokes instead of canned, which were delicious but time consuming. I say save yourself the 45 minutes and use the canned.

Sauteed Kale with Garlic
Remove the leaves from one large bunch of kale, wash, and dry
Saute chopped garlic in olive oil until fragrant, reduce heat to medium
Add the kale and cover until it starts to wilt
Sprinkle with a touch of salt and a tiny squeeze of lemon
Serve it up!

Note: the shells serve about 8 people, and the kale about 2. Plan accordingly.

And for dessert:

Pumpkin Puddin'
I used this recipe but used non-fat evaporated milk because I had it on hand. It makes a delicious, low-cal, low-fat easy dessert!

Bourbon apple pie ice cream

I tried to find an actual recipe for Bourbon Apple Pie Ice Cream, but I didn't, so I had to do some searching to find recipes I liked the sound of and could combine. Ultimately, I used this recipe as the base and made some minor adjustments, below.

5/8 c. sugar
1/8 c. flour
1/8 tsp. salt
2 c. milk
2 eggs, slightly beaten
2 c. heavy whipping cream
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 can apple pie filling, chopped (or fresh peeled, cored, seeded and chopped apples sauteed with butter, sugar, and cinnamon for 10 min. in a skillet) -- you can see why I used the canned stuff!
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 tbsp. bourbon
1/2 c. crushed cookies

In large saucepan, combine sugar, flour, and salt and gradually stir in milk. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes until thickened.

Whisk a small amount of the hot mixture into the eggs, then return all to the pan, whisking constantly. Cook and stir over low heat until mixture reaches 160 degrees and coats the back of a metal spoon.

Remove from heat. Cool by placing pan in a bowl of ice water and stir for 2 minutes.

Stir in whipping cream and vanilla; add pie filling, cinnamon, and bourbon. Press plastic wrap onto surface of custard and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.

Put in ice cream maker and follow manufacturer's instructions. In the last 5 minutes of mixing, add the crushed cookies. Freeze before serving.


In ice water bath


Chopped apple pie filling--you can see my choice of cookie to crush


Mixture before refrigeration


Mixing it up--overflow!

I had to remove about 1/2 cup of the mixture from the machine because it was too full. Even after taking some out, after the mixing was done, it was way too full and it was difficult to get the cookie crumbs mixed in.

I put the "raw" ice cream into mini containers for easy freezing, but it was difficult to close the containers with the soft mixture in it. Next time, I will freeze the whole "raw" batch and then apportion the ice cream into smaller containers for giving away. I'll update this with feedback from my unsuspecting friends.

Until then, Happy Thanksgiving!

Avocado ice cream

Well, I forgot to take pictures until I was past the pureeing point. But you will see some images below. Keep in mind that this is a foodie blog, not a photography blog.

I adapted the recipe from the book to make a smaller batch and use fresh ingredients:

2 fresh, ripe avocados
1 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup sugar

Dissolve sugar in milk over low heat. Cool in fridge.
In blender, puree avocado flesh with cream, add milk/sugar mixture.
Chill puree mixture in fridge.
When cold, add puree mixture to ice cream machine and operate as usual.

In theory, this recipe should make 1 quart, but I think it yields a little less. Which is fine with me, because I don't want to be responsible for eating a whole quart of ice cream.

(By the way, 1/2 cup of ice cream equals about 250 calories. A moderate, hour-long bike ride burns about 250 calories. So one cannot dive guilt-free into a microbrewed batch of homemade ice cream. I'm just sayin'. How many calories is it when you taste the puree, taste the mixed product, taste the frozen results, taste after transferring to storage container, lick the bowl and aerator clean, taste after freezing for 5 minutes, and so on?)

The avocado ice cream is delicious! It's creamy and sweet, but has a fruity taste. It tastes like sweet potatoes after you add butter and sugar and you blend until smooth--it's got that creamy sweet desserty taste that's reminiscent of the original item, but better.



After pureeing



In the mixer



After transferring frozen product to storage container

By the way, I just couldn't stand the taste of the fig ice cream after day two. Both Bike Guy and my friend Tim agreed that the fig ice cream paired well with homemade pumpkin pie, but it really wasn't good on its own. I let the remaining two quarts of ice cream soften overnight and got rid of it. I'll reiterate: full-fat milk and cream and fresh ingredients are the only way to get a premium product.

Next up, by special request: Bourbon Apple Pie Ice Cream

First batch

I got an ice cream maker, scoop, and recipe book* for my birthday from my mom. I had tried out this maker with my roommate this summer with excellent results, so I was confident that this one would work for me. The only problem is that my recipe book makes 2 quart recipes and my maker isn't big enough. I can't do the kind of math to reduce the recipes by 25%, so in the future, I may have to halve all the recipes.

So, I chose to make fig ice cream (recipe follows). Recently, I had the most amazing fig gelato at this place in Seattle. It was light pink in color, creamy, and tasted like fresh figs. This recipe called for dried figs (which was convenient, because fresh figs are not in season around here) which needed to be softened by cooking in water for a while. After cooking, the recipe said to blend until smooth. I followed all the steps but the blended figs were quite unappetizing. Unlike fresh figs, which are purply-peachy and pretty on the inside, dried figs are brown. Which meant, I realized after blending in the milk, cream, and sugar, the fig mix smelled and tasted more like prunes.

I have extra mix because I didn't realize ahead of time that my mixer is smaller than the recipe yield. I think I'm going to buy a bunch of mini disposable tupperware containers and try to give away the fig/prune ice cream to friends. Nothing wrong with dessert that makes you regular!

After about 20 minutes of mixing, the mix started to look more like ice cream, but was still brown. And tasted like prunes. After the recommended 25 minutes of mixing, I put the frozen mixture in the freezer. Hopefully it will magically turn into the fantastic gelato of my memory.**

I will post pictures in the future--it occurred to me well into the process that I should be documenting this visually. From now on!

Note: I used 2% instead of whole milk in an attempt to make a reduced-calorie dessert. In the future, I won't try this again. The calories saved don't make up for the runnier product. I'd rather have less ice cream and have a richer experience.

*I chose this book because of the number of recipes compared to other ice cream recipe books. Plus, the clincher was the recipe for peanut butter sauce. Yum. After trying this one recipe, though, I might recommend a book with pictures (to avoid any chocolate/prune color disappointment) and one with more careful testing and copyediting. (This recipe had a typo, corrected for you here, and lack of direction--cook until soft? How long? What temperature?)

**It did not.

Fig Ice Cream (from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Homemade Ice Cream)
12 oz. dried figs
2 cups water
3/4 cup table sugar
3 cups milk
1 1/2 cups whipping cream

1. Place figs and water in heavy sauce pan and cook until very soft. Drain figs and save one cup of the cooking water.

2. Place soft figs in a blender. Add sugar and saved cooking water. Blend until smooth. You may have to add a little milk.

3. In a mixing bowl add fig mixture, remaining milk, whipping cream, and mix until smooth.

4. Cool mixture to 40degrees F in your refrigerator.

5. Transfer cold mixture to the ice cream freezer and follow manufacturer's guidelines.