Cooking With The Mouse

I just got back from a crazy 3-day trip to Disney World.

I've written about my love of Disney before here, and not much has changed since then.

Loads of walking, lots of food.

I am avoiding the scale like the plague, but plan on starting Cycle 1 over again now that I am home and have been to the grocery store.

Before we left, I got into the mood with yet another one of my cookbooks. This time it is #23 of 99.

Calling it "gourmet" is a bit of a stretch.

It's also pretty old, so some of the restaurants that are in the book don't exist anymore.

I must have bought this one in a Disney haze. It happens sometimes.

Looking for the fastest and easiest recipe in the book, I came across one for banana bread. Sold.

Supposedly this recipe comes from the Disneyland Hotel. We have actually been there, but not to eat banana bread. We visited Trader Sam's, a very cool tiki bar that has some amazing decor and special effects. They're actually building one now at Disney World, and I can't wait to go there again!

Anyway...banana bread.

Disneyland Hotel Banana Bread Recipe
Ingredients
* 1 cup butter
* 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 2 cups sugar
* 3 cups flour
* 2 eggs
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 2 teaspoons water
* 2 teaspoons baking soda
* 2 cups ripe bananas (Mashed)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Sift together Flour, Salt and Baking Soda — Set Aside.
Mix melted Butter and Sugar until well blended.
Add Eggs one at a time, mixing well after each one.
Add Water.
Add Bananas and Vanilla — Mix well.
Fold in Flour mixture until well incorporated.
Grease 2 loaf pans and divide batter equally between the 2 pans.
Bake for 1 hour or until center of loaf is firm and a toothpick inserted to the center comes out clean.

Pretty darn good!

Everyone has their own banana bread recipe, but I think this one is worth a try. I threw in some chocolate chips, because why not?

As for cookbook #24, I figured I would get Disney out of the way by having my kiddo make something from this book:

I had picked this up at a Scholastic Warehouse sale. I had big dreams of cooking with my child. When he was very young he would watch Ina Garten with me and say "MIXER! MIXER!" Unfortunately that didn't actually mean he wanted to make anything past cracking eggs.

As he got older, he showed a bit more interest and even attended a cooking class one summer and took great pride in making french toast for us. Not too bad! As for why they also taught them how to make bacon-wrapped cream cheese toast I'll never know...

So, I pulled this book out and handed it to him, telling him to choose whatever he wanted and I would pick up the ingredients at the store.

Mercifully, he chose something cheap and easy...

Essentially it was just chocolate pudding with a touch of peppermint extract, topped with Cool Whip that also had a hint of mint. He added the mini chips as a garnish because I refused to let him color the whipped cream with green dye. I had to draw the line somewhere. It was bad enough we were loading up on chocolate before bed...no one needed artificial colors as well!

I won't bother copying the recipe because if you can't figure this one out you must be my grandmother...who couldn't even make me a packet of Ramen soup when I was little. She told me to wait for my grandfather to come back from the store because she "didn't know how" to make it. Despite the fact that I told her she just had to boil 2 cups of water and then add the noodles for 3 minutes...she insisted on waiting for Poppy to return. She then gave me some Triscuits and cheese. That was as domestic as she got.

Fortunately, I did not inherit her aversion to the kitchen and have now gone through 24 of 99 cookbooks! I am not sure about keeping either one of them, honestly. I am sure one of my friends that has little kids would like the Magic Kitchen. Sadly, we've outgrown it. As for Mickey's "Gourmet" Kitchen? It gets one more chance with me, then it's a trip to Ebay if I'm not impressed!

Parton Me, But Have You Seen Dolly?

Back in 2009, we took an epic road trip.

Starting here in Connecticut, we stopped in State College, PA, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey and then back home.

We saw everything from Penn State, to Churchill Downs, a ball game, a bat factory, Lincoln's birthplace, Graceland, the motel where MLK was assassinated, the Smoky Mountains, Dollywood, Luray Caverns, Mammoth Cave, and everything in between.

We ate at places we had seen on Man v. Food and Food Network, like Gus' Fried Chicken, Lynn's Paradise Cafe, and the Loveless Cafe. We sat in Elvis' booth at the Arcade and ate fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. It was awesome.

Pigeon Forge, Tennessee was one of our many stops. I thought it looked like the Hillbilly Las Vegas. A strip of pancake houses, wax museums, go-karts, hotels, panning for gold and other oddities. It is also the home of Dollywood and Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede. Oh, and Dolly Parton herself.

We grabbed lunch at a place called the Applewood Farmhouse. It was down home cooking that featured things like apple fritters and apple juleps. For some reason I ended up buying their cookbook, because who doesn't like apples?

This ended up being another dust collector. I suppose its more of a souvenir than a practical cookbook at this point.

Guess I got all caught up in the apple-craziness that afternoon?

I chose to make Topsy-Turvy Apple Coffee Cake. Mostly because I had all of the ingredients already and because it looked fairly easy.

3/4 c butter or margarine, divided
1/3 c brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 c pecans, chopped
1 cups of sliced apples
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup sour cream
2 eggs
1 1/2 c all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 350.

Melt 1/4 cup butter in 8-inch square baking dish; blend in brown sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle pecans over brown sugar, place apple slices in single layer over nuts. Stir baking soda into sour cream and allow to stand for 10 minutes. Cream remaining 1/2 cup butter; add eggs and beat thoroughly. Stir flour, sugar and baking powder together. Add dry ingredients and sour cream alternately to creamed mixture; starting and ending with dry ingredients. Pour over apples, bake for 45-50 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in dish 10 minutes, invert onto serving dish.

Ok.

First of all, I had no idea what happens when you add baking soda to sour cream.

Science!

It glopped all over the place, and that was really annoying. This was not turning out to be as quick and easy as I thought...

The end result was just okay. The boys ate it and liked it, but I tasted it and would not make it again. There was nothing remarkable about it...and I have made so many other apple cakes that were much better than this one.

Still, I feel like I can't get rid of the cookbook. Mostly because it's just a fun souvenir from a great trip. I may drag it out one day and try something else. And then probably get rid of it!

Indulging My Inner Ingalls

Ever since I can remember, I have loved Laura Ingalls and all of her adventures.

I read the books over and over again. I can still vividly recall so many of the stories that Laura told. Even as a child, my favorite passages revolved around parties, holidays and food!

In very first book, Little House in the Big Woods, Pa slaughters a pig and blows up the bladder for Mary and Laura to use as a balloon. He also puts the pig's tail on a stick and they take turn roasting it in the fire to eat.

In another, Mary and Laura go to a birthday party at nasty Nellie Oleson's where they have fancy store-bought cake for the first time in their lives.

At Christmas, Mr. Edwards crosses a deep river to bring them gifts from Santa. They include a tin cup, a shiny penny, a peppermint stick and a small heart-shaped cake.

I could go on and on, and as I type this I am seriously contemplating going downstairs to get my set of Little House books out so I can read them again!

The television show was also a favorite, but nothing will ever replace my beloved books and their simple black and white illustrations.

Back when I was living in the Boston area, we had a junk store called Building 19. 

It was just a bunch of crap that looked like it had fallen off a truck. Books, tablecloths, food, kitchenware, clothing. It was a dump.

But going there was almost like going to a casino. It was a gamble. Most of the time you lose, but once in a blue moon you hit it big.

Like the day I found the Little House on the Prairie Cookbook for three dollars!

I was over the moon upon finding this, despite the fact that the majority of the recipes are not edible in my house. Ma used "Cracklins" for everything...even her baking. Pigeon Pie wasn't happening anytime soon either. 

Still...totally worth the three bucks.

One of my favorite memories from the books was when Mary and Laura got to make Molasses Candy on Snow...and that was in the cookbook!

I held onto that book thinking that one day, I too would make Molasses Candy on Snow with my daughter.

Well, I didn't have a daughter. 

That's cool. I can still do it with a boy. No problem.

It only took me 11 years to remember to get on it!

While we didn't get the forecasted 24-36 inches that I had prepped for, we still got enough to make our candy.

I gathered the ingredients...all two of them

I got my pan of snow ready to go

I boiled the molasses and brown sugar

And then we made some awful looking squiggles on the snow. Nowhere near as dainty as Mary and Laura's...

It hardened immediately, so we got to sample the candy right away

So? Was the reality of making my Little House Molasses Candy as good as my fantasy?

Umm.....no.

That stuff is NASTY!

Poor Mary and Laura. They didn't have chocolate readily available back then. This was as good as it got. Ma couldn't whip out a bag of Nestle chips and make some cookies. They had to eat molasses and brown sugar as a snow day treat. No cocoa with marshmallows for them!

This concludes cookbook #15 of 99. I'll keep my memories, but pass the cookbook onto some younger Little House fans that I know.