Pretty Sassy

I was chatting with this cool guy at work.

Me: Hey when you gonna put that candy bowl back out, I miss it.
Him: I can’t, I’m on a diet.
Me: That’s great that your being so healthy, but maybe you can fill it with stuff you don’t like.
Him: I’ll still eat it.
Me: I bet you wouldn’t eat circus peanuts!
Him: What are those?
Me: Those horrid orange marshmallow-ish candys that are shaped like peanuts.
Him: Those are terrible.

That is why I would like to declare Circus Peanuts the worst candy in the universe.  In Junior High my friend Michelle convinced her now husband(yup, still happens) to kiss her by placing a circus peanut between her teeth and taunting him to bite it.  So beside Junior high romance, it has no purpose.  If you have a potential candidate as worst american candy, please let me know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circus_peanut

This weekend the mister and I had gone to the Culver City Surfas(a really cool chef supply store that also caters to the normal cook).   I had been further working on my great pursuit to make the worlds greatest, not remotely authentic paper wrapped chicken and needed some Chinese 5 Spice.

 The mister had not ever been to Surfas and was sort of blown away when we walked in, it’s high-end gourmet and serious resturant kitchen at the same time.

As soon as we got in the dude immediately needed to make use of the facilities which are near the test kitchen.  While in the test kitchen I talked to a chef who is using their kitchen to make some very delicious(I know I tried them) crustless kitchens to serve to a very prominent food buyer. 

While at the counter I spied packages of Little Flower Candy Company handmade vanilla marshmallows.  I had never had handmade marshmallows before.  My everyday favorite are the sugar-free La Nouba Marshmallows which are in taste and texture better than a jet-puffed.  After I plopped them on the counter the lady whispered “You are in for a real treat”, she told me there were excellent out of hand but out of this world in a beverage.  

This afternoon I plopped one in a cup of coffee and pulled it out to take a bite.  These marshmallows must have much lower melting points, because the marshmallow was that campfire liquid gooey without the burning napalm effect.   Oh man was it good.  I mean like really good.  It was creamy and dense and delicious.  The vanilla flavor was exquisite and without high fructose corn syrup it just had the cleanest taste profile ever.  It was like a little vanilla fairy was dancing on my tongue.

This are amazing.    I’m not a big jellybean fan.  But after my dance instructor handed me a handfull fo these to me I changed my tune.  It’s a super flavorfull sweet tart middle with a sort of lemon-head crust on the outside that reminds me of the chewy sweet tarts from a few years ago.  I bought the bag a few days ago and the dude and I have been fighting over them since.

 Really, they are worth it.  I want some now.

 Here is CandyBlogs review(which is so much more detailed than mine).

http://www.typetive.com/candyblog/item/sweetart_jelly_beans/

A little while ago I put in request for NPR Splendid Table contributer and author of the cookbooks A New Way To Cook(2001) and The Improvisational Cook(2006) Sally Schneider(aka the Improvisational Cook) for an email interview.   I was so excited that she agreed and even more excited to share her rich answers on life, cooking and make-up.

To me, my Rockstars have always been cooks and scientists.  Sally Schneider fits this mold as she is both cook and wonderful mad scientist.  She writes with her unique, more formula than cookbook, to teach the big picture behind the recipe.   So here is the interview!  Thank you Sally!

 Here are the questions
1. 5 favorite beauty products you can’t live without.
Kevin Aucoin Eyebrow Pencil. Laura Mercier Tinted Moisturizer, I’m still looking for the perfect lipstick but Mac’s Spice Pencil is a great all-purpose one. Can’t live w/o mascara but don’t have a favorite.

2. Do you use Wondra in your cooking for anything else but fake-frying?
I also use it to make a butterless base for souffle’s, which I make all the time i.e. Wondra and milk, whisked together, egg yolks added, with salt, pepper, nutmeg, then grated cheese and egg whites folded in….The recipe is at http://splendidtable.publicradio.org/recipes/light_cheesesouffle.shtml

3. Voges Mo’s Bacon Bar. Try it? Like it?
I’m dying to try it but haven’t found it yet. It’s an inspired idea: adding smoke and more fat to chocolate, if they get the right balance.

4. Junk food worth commiting crime for?
I’d kill for a good gougere, (a French style cheese puff made from choux pastry – eclair dough – baked with cheese in the batter) which is really hard to find and isn’t really junk food except that you need to eat them with cocktails. I also have a fondness for Eskimo Pies and malted milkshakes, and spoons of caramel (the jarred stuff used for ice cream sundaes, made without any scary additives) sprinkled with a tiny bit of sea salt OR mixed with peanut butter.

5. You’ve just graduated from highschool, what was the plan? Never had a plan. Just followed things along in a kind of zig-zag path (up the Amazon River and thinking I might be a photographer….) until I woke up from a dream knowing that I should cook (really!) and then followed that in all sorts of ways, from chef to caterer, to food stylist to journalist to cookbook author to here, doing my thing on American Public Media, writing in new territory, and about to launch a blog….

Note from Kelly: I must make a souffle now.  I must.

 Who the heck would spend $7.50 for a chocolate bar?

Me!  It’s chocolate and bacon.  But I should clarify.  Smokey applewood  bacon in 41% milk chocolate.  This bar ain’t for kiddies. 

I first heard about this delightful little bar on the MunchCast podcast from Powell’s Sweet Shop in Northern California.   During the episode Leo Laporte “accidentally” walks off from the premises of the candy store with a Mo’s Bacon Bar in his pocket and falls horribly in love.

I listened to it and thought “bacon and chocolate, that makes sense”.  Evidently most people who I talked about this with didn’t get the mystique.  They thought bacon and chocolate sounded strange.

So when I spotted the Vosges Mo’s Bacon bars at my local Whole Foods I grabbed one and forgot about it for a few days.

So the taste?  Well you know how sweet and salty are actually really good?  This is like that.  It’s a little like a chocolate bar with salty almonds, but more bacon-ey and smokey.  The chocolate is really good, it’s 41% cacao milk chocolate.  It’s really a wonderfull  treat, with or without bacon.    The bar itself has a pretty short shelf life(it’s bacon after all). 

If it sounds interesting, you should try it.  I give it an enthusiastic “YES”.

Kelly

 P.S.  If you are ever looking for the perfect gift for somebody that likes strange things.  It might be this

     Versus      

Here at prettysassy.com we get a lot of email.  A lot of email about which red pepper Jam or Jelly is the best.  It’s one of those things that people are nervous to talk about it.   I want to shed some light on this subject and may make you feel less trashy about your love of the spicy jewel.

While Grocery shopping I  spotted Reese’s Hot Pepper Jelly and Delicae Gourmet’s Roasted Red Pepper Jam and wondered..  Mmmmmn, which one is best?

I’m pretty sure I’m one of like 4 people who have a fondness for pepper jelly, so I figured finding someone elses review would be a lost cause.

So I conducted a formal testing by carefully layout out 6 townhouse crackers, topping them with a modest layer of Philadelphia Cream Cheese and slathering on either the Jelly or the Roasted Pepper Jam. 

I kept a freshly opened can of Diet Sunkist to ensure that my palate was properly cleansed between tests.

Reeses: Smoother consistency with tiny bits of seeds and of  red jalapeno scattered through.  From looks it reminds me of canned Cranberries.    The smell from the jar is almost all vinegar with a little smack from the peppers.  Spread on my cracker it looks pretty much like any other jam spread on a townhouse cracker.  The first thing I taste is sweet.  A tangy, over-the-top sugar high sweet that makes me feel like I’m eating cherry jell-o.  Then it runs hot.  Sort of kicks your tonsils on the way down.  It’s so candy-like, I want to take a spoon and dig in.  The sweet hot combination is very well balanced and it seems to turn on all the bells and whistles in your mouth as it goes down.

Delicae Roasted Red Pepper Jam: I open the jar and it looks like jarred bruschetta.  I see chunks of peppers and onions and slight bits of char(from the roasting I guess).  The texture is almost like a chutney, It’s pretty and more sophisticated than Reese’s.  On the cracker it looks like something that you might even serve.   It sort of piles on the cracker in an indulgent mound.  It smells just like pickled onions.  In fact this jam really reminds me more of a relish.   When I eat it, the sour and sweet really fight it out, making for an excellent balance.  It would make an interesting relish on a hamburger.

I really wanted a clear winner, but there isn’t.  They we’re both good.   Roasted Red Pepper Jam was far more sophisticated than the Sweet-Hot Reese’s but it all depends on the mood your in.
Kelly

The mister loves his beans.  Chili with beans, baked beans, refried beans, black beans, kidney beans and Mr. Bean. 

As the budding domestic goddess(don’t worry I’m not serious) I have been working to make the Mister some baked beans that he would proclaim “Better than the Can”

When I went seeking a recipe I found most relied on pre-made can beans that you doctored up with ketchup and BBQ sauce.

Always one for a challenge I tried the following two recipes.

This one is Tyler Florence.  I tried this first because..  It’s Tyler.     I have a feeling the recipe was written wrong because the beans ended up really dry(not enough liquid), burnt on the bottom and the massive amount of bacon made it greasy.

This one is from hillbillyhousewife.com and was pretty good, but took 5-7 hours.   I’m domestic, but I’m just not that domestic. 

After that I swallowed my pride and tried this recipe from Dave Liberman  of the food network.  Because it uses regular canned beans as a base it takes around and hour.  No domestic bean soaking and fiddling with the stove all day, but it is delicious.  I mean really good.  I mean lick the bowl, not-nuclear-sweet, meaty goodness(I think regular canned baked beans are super sweet).  The only change I made was adding a few(3-4) cups of water to make the beans softer.  I knew I hit it on the nose when the mister gazed at me lovingly and said “you have a little sauce on your nose, may I please have another bowl?”.

Catch geek boys with beany goodness. 

I HEART Shockwave games.  Shockwave.com is an online publisher of casual for games.  For around $60.00 a year I get unlimited access to download any of there hundreds of casual games.

See for me and others like me, casual games are sort of like crack.  They are all very easy to pickup and understand, horribly repetitive, provide a lot of positive feedback.   Mastering something simple, that seems slightly complex is always soul-drenching satisfying after a long day.  So basically you get hooked when you play and when you lose.  It’s like really cheap slot machines.

I love Burger Rush because it is like the childhood game Build a Better Burger that my parents never purchased me.  I am still sad by that.  The game was designed to train young, fertile minds how to handle the rigors of a burger assembly line.  I imagine the game was designed by the burger industry as early training.  

But I wanted this game, badly.   I fantasized how fun it would be to follow the process of making a better burger(and fries, soda and shakes!!).  I also badly wanted to show the neighbor girls my mad cooking skillz.  Look at the box(above), do you see how much fun those kids are having?  And is it just me or does the boy on the left look like the kid from the 80’s TV Show “Small Wonder”?   Remember “Small Wonder”?  It was a show about a robotics engineer who builds a girl named V.I.K.I who talks like a robot(”do you want me to dismantle the dog?) and learns the softer side of life while teaching the world that robots are people too?  If you don’t remember that maybe you remember the red-haired neighbor who said “No, no, no, no, no, no”.  There was a dark haired boy in my sixth grade class that loved to say that all the time.  That kid was cool.

Where was I?  Oh yeah Burger Rush

See the game is part tetris-ish where you shuffle burger ingredients together(every trio you gather earns points and fills orders) in order to serve mad customers(French Mimes, Geeks, Grandmas, Space Cadets and Movie Stars).  You can add fries and sodas for bonus points. 

Shockwave offers a free trial of the game, but I will tell you this..  Because of it’s Tetris nature the game is like CRACK.  During gameplay the Mister would try to rip the laptop out of my hands for a quick fix.   I would tell him “No, no, no, no, no, no”.

I love casual games and this one mixes several categories(puzzles and simulation).