Unless, of course, you’re talking about making 7-Layer Bars (thanks, Meagen Ryan!) a prerequisite for a birthday party. That is definitely a lifestyle change everyone should embrace.

The party was definitely Midwestern, all the way from the contributed food & drink – Steve Mandzik’s strawberry, almond leafy greens with vinaigrette, Jenn Bonsall’s homemade marshmallow fruit salad, the aforementioned 7-layer bars, chocolate and lemon cakes, countless sausages and hot/chicken/tofu dogs, buns, and condiments in addition to beer and vodka lemonade courtesy of Matt McNabb – to the the Midwestern cookbook our neighbors brought Wayne as a present.

In addition to literally bringing home the bacon (to wrap the hotdogs in, of course), I committed myself to four dishes: green bean casserole, potato salad, something involving Jello and Kool Whip, and Mac-N-Cheese cupcakes. Here’s my postprandial redux with recipes:

1. Green Bean Casserole

During the research phase, I spoke with a fair amount of Midwesterners and they all agreed that this is pretty standard party food. The basic ingredients – milk, one can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, and green beans – definitely didn’t stir up as much debate as the topping. When one of my choir mates suggested potato chips for the topping, another looked at her as if she had just suggested topping a California roll with peanut butter. I was intrigued but I do love me some fried onions.

Ingredients

• 1 can Campbell’s Condensed Cream of Mushroom soup
• 4 cups of green beans
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 can of french-friend onions
• salt and pepper to taste

Preparation

1. Cook the green beans and set aside in a strainer. Whisk the soup and milk together until smooth in 1 1/2 qt baking dish. Add the beans and 2/3 cup of the french-fried onions. Bake for 25 mins at 350°F.
2. Sprinkle another 2/3 cup of the french-fried onions evenly over the top of the cooked mixture and bake for another 5 minutes, or until the onions are lightly browned. Best served warm.

2. Potato Salad

I’m kinda picky about my potato salad – I don’t like crunchy stuff in it (unless it’s bacon) and I’m not a huge fan of vinegar. I tend towards things involving dill and some mayo/lemon juice but I was committed to making something Midwestern. I started with this recipe because the author shares the same Germanic/Irish background that Wayne does and ended up modifying it as below.

Ingredients

• 2 lbs red potatoes
• 2 small onions
• 2 cups mayonnaise
• 3 tbs mustard (from a jar, not the spice)
• 1/3 cup cider vinegar
• salt and pepper, to taste

Preparation

1. Boil the potatoes until just done. Set aside to cool and drain. I leave the potato skins on (Cue the voice of my grandmother: “It’s where all the vitamins are!”) but you might feel otherwise. If you really can’t stand the idea of eating potato skins, it is much easier to slip them from their skins AFTER they’ve been cooked. Once cooled, place in a big bowl and break into chunks with a fork.
2. Chop the onions finely. Saute in some oil (or my favorite, bacon grease). Once cooked, turn off the heat and mix thoroughly in a bowl with the mayo, vinegar, and mustard. Coat the potatoes evenly and add salt and pepper to taste. Serve warm. Also tastes great from the fridge

This was hands down my favorite recipe of the day (that I made). Since I expected a couple of vegetarians at the party, I left out bacon but I have plans to make this again with sauteed bacon and onions. Very definite plans.

3. Jello Molds

A couple of years ago, I found an Easter egg mold for Jello and Wayne and I made some striped Jello eggs for his parents one year. It must have left quite an impression because what should I find under the Christmas tree this year but 3 Halloween-themed Jello molds – an anatomically correct heart, brain, and a tray for Jello eyeballs. Spiffy!

Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait until Halloween to use them. I will confess that I didn’t oil the heart mold before pouring in the Jello and ended up completely ripping the first heart in half trying to get it out of the mold. The second one turned out just fine. Definitely go for the jiggler version of Jello instead of the straight up Jello – your body part will hold its shape much better.

The super cheesy part of making a heart and brain Jello mold for Wayne’s birthday was that I got to tell him I love him with all my heart and mind. Awwwww….

4. Mac-n-Cheese Cupcakes

When I went through a big cupcake phase last year, I spotted this this recipe for Mac-N-Cheese cupcakes on Bake and Destroy and filed it away for a rainy birthday. Or a sunny birthday, as it turned out to be. I cheesed out* and went the Jiffy corn muffin mix route due to my demanding pre-birthday preparation schedule but given the feedback, I’d definitely be up for trying them again with a nicer corn muffin base.

Disclaimer: Being allergic to milk, I didn’t have one of these myself. I will say, however, that they didn’t last very long.

*Yes, that was a deliberately bad pun.

It’s a pretty versatile recipe – two years ago, Wayne used it to build a scale model of his parents’ farmhouse in Michigan. Last year, we got ambitious and designed modern art interlocking sculpture cookies. In the middle of July this year, I was struck with a vision of Tetris-shaped gingerbread cookies.

Side Note: I was lucky to have this idea in the middle of July because it gave me exactly 5 months to procrastinate, pretending to look for Tetris cookie cutters online and then 1 week to infect my crack cookiecutter engineering and production team with a nasty stomach bug. Fortunately, it was easy enough to lure unsuspecting cookie production staff to the house with promises of homemade chicken stew, apple cider, sugar cookies, SomaFM’s Xmas in Frisko, and Apples to Apples.

Ingredients

• Dough
• 2 1/4 cups unbleached all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
• 1/4 cup mild-flavored (light) molasses
• Glaze
• 3/4 cup half and half
• 1/3 cup (1 ounce) juniper berries, lightly crushed
• 1 pound powdered sugar
• Assorted decorations (colored sugars, nonpareils, and dragées)

Preparation

1. Whisk first 6 ingredients in medium bowl. Beat butter and sugar in large bowl until fluffy. Beat in molasses. Beat in dry ingredients. Gather dough; divide into 4 pieces. Shape into disks. Wrap; chill at least 2 hours and up to 2 days.
2. Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment. Roll out 1 dough disk to 1/8-inch thickness. Using 3 1/2-inch cutter, cut out cookies. Transfer to sheet. Gather scraps; chill.
3. Bake cookies until almost firm in center, 12 minutes. Cool on sheets 2 minutes, then cool on racks. Repeat, using all dough. Store airtight at room temperature up to 3 days or freeze up to 2 weeks.
4. Bring first 2 ingredients to simmer. Cover; chill 5 hours. Strain. Place powdered sugar in bowl. Whisk in half and half by spoonfuls until glaze is spreadable. Frost cookies; decorate. Let stand until glaze sets. Store between sheets of waxed paper in airtight container at room temperature up to 3 days.

Note to self: If you’re going to invite people to a potluck involving chili, be sure to delegate the bringing of chips to one person and one person alone. Otherwise, be prepared to horribly torn between the fatty salty goodness of Fritos and the light crispy goodness of Xochitl.

This meeting was extra fun for 2 reasons: 1. It was at my house. 2. We made playdough.

Or, to be accurate, our fearless leader Kelli Shewmaker made playdough. She had the sneaky idea that playing with playdough would free our subconscious creativity during our planning discussion. And boy was she right! While we made bees, flowers, tiny vegetables, sheep, and things disturbingly shaped like human organs, we had really productive conversations about event scheduling, venue, attendees, website, eventbrite, ticketing, meals, etc. I think we even impressed our newest member who was attending her very first meeting and decided to come again (although it could have just been the excellent food).

Ingredients

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup salt
• 1 cup water
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 2 tablespoons cream of tartar
• food coloring

Preparation

Mix flour, salt and oil in a saucepan on the stove, and slowly add the water. Cook over low heat, stirring until dough becomes stiff. Remove to a plate or wax paper and let cool to a temperature where you can handle it easily. Knead the playdough to desired consistency. Use as is, or divide into balls and add food coloring. Playdough remains pliable for about a day in open air. After a day, it begins to harden and will be completely hardened in 2-3 days.

Preparation Note: Do NOT make playdough shortly before a job interview, fancy dinner party, or anywhere else you might be embarrassed by technicolor rainbow hands. The more deeply you work the dye into the dough, the more deeply it gets worked into your skin.

So I decided to make chili. Now, before I get started on a rant about chili and especially the horrendous state of chili in DC, let me just state that 8 years of living in Texas have quite heavily influenced what I expect chili to taste like: rich, dense, layered and spicy. In fact, the spicier, the better.

Obligatory Chili Rant: Apologies to the President but what they serve at Ben’s Chili Bowl is not chili. It’s so far from what chili should be that, if chili got together and had a family reunion, BCB chili would not be allowed in the family picture.

The inspiration for this chili came from this recipe I found on Epicurious – I modified it quite a bit, upping the amount of seasoning, reducing the amount of meat, changing the type of beans and adding mushrooms and soy sauce. (For slightly more hoity-toity variation, you could also use red wine in place of soy sauce or, if you’re feeling particularly boozy, you can omit both the soy sauce and the broth and just use beer.) And, of course, substituting fresh yellow tomatoes for boring ol’ canned red ones.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon cooking oil
• 3 large onions chopped
• 2-3 jalapeños, seeded and chopped
• 1 head of garlic (about 8 small cloves), chopped fine
• 2 pounds ground beef
• 1/2 cup chili powder
• 4 tablespoons ground cumin
• 2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 10-12 baseball-sized yellow tomatoes
• 1/2 pound of brown mushrooms
• 1/2 cup dried pinto beans (or 1 can prepared beans)
• 1/2 cup dried black beans (or 1 can prepared beans)
• 3 cups of beef or chicken broth
• 1 tbsp of soy sauce
• salt and pepper
• favorite toppings: sour cream, grated cheddar cheese, saltines, bread, tortilla chips, chopped cilantro, etc.

Preparation

1. If using dried beans, place beans in a pot and cover with double the amount of water. Bring to a boil and let boil for 5 minutes. Cover, turn down heat to low and simmer until beans are cooked for two hours, checking periodically to check water levels. Add water as needed. Set aside.
2. Chop onions, tomatoes, and mushrooms coarsely. Remove seeds and ribs from jalapeños and chop finely. Peel garlic and chop finely. Heat oil in a sautepan and saute onions until semi-translucent. Add garlic and jalapeños and saute for 2 minutes. Add beef and brown well, breaking up any stubborn clumps with a fork.
3. Throw in tomatoes, mushrooms, beans, spices and broth. Mix thoroughly and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for around an hour, until chili starts to thicken. Ideally, let the chili set for a day before serving to let the flavors chill out and mingle.
4. Serve topped with your favorite stuff.

Postprandial Notes: I actually made both a vegetarian and a meat version of the chili for a Social Justice Camp planning meeting. This round, I merely omitted the meat but in the future, I will increase the amount of mushrooms and probably include kidney beans for greater bean variety.

They’ve surprised us with sacks of free plums, occasional peaches, asparagus and rhubarb; taken in packages, helped with freecycling, and (this is the best part) invited us over for dinner.

Tonight’s menu was spinach salad with feta, red onion and cherry tomatoes with homemade vinaigrette, spanish tortilla (in the pic above – recipe forthcoming), and peach, blueberry & rhubarb pie (inspired by my own peach-blueberry recipe – whee!).

Canon EOS 5D with hotshod 580EX II, ETTL mode and bounced. 1/180 sec @ f5.6, ISO 800.

Day One: Wake up at 7:30, stagger bleary-eyed to the truck and crawl in, drive slowly up to the Adams Morgan Farmers’ Market. Score lots of reasonably priced vegetables from Farmer Mike, aka Michael Tabor, of Licking Creek Farms. Cruise by Mount Pleasant Farmers’ Market to look for herbs. Pick up the 3rd Tomateer, Kristin, and fetch canning jars from 17th Street Hardware. Return home. Chop vegetables. Boil jars. Chop vegetables. Make some pesto with leftover basil. Cut herbs. Chop vegetables. Bring sauce to a boil.

Canon EOS 5D with hotshod 580EX II, ETTL mode and bounced. 1/180 sec @ f5.6, ISO 800.

Chop vegetables. Simmer sauce. Pour into jars. Boil jars. Cool jars. Try not to sweat all over everything but fail miserably.

(My kitchen is tiny. And L-shaped. Since it’s conveniently placed in the middle of our dog-run style apartment, it effectively acts as a windbreak for any breeze that enters either our enormous front window or two back windows. We appreciate the warmth in the winter but the summer… ehhh, not so much.)

Day Two: Eat breakfast.

(Sorry, couldn’t resist sneaking this one in. The light was just gorgeous this morning, softly washing over my salad of homegrown yellow tomatoes, sundried peppers, chickpeas, and leafy greens. Did I mention I grew the tomatoes? ;)

Canon EOS 5D. 1/45 sec @ f3/5, ISO 800.

Then, do it all again, minus the running around with the car and plus guacamole appetizer. Total net: A whole lotta tomato pasta sauce, a whole lotta pesto, and enough leftover Roma tomatoes for a good-sized jar of dried tomatoes, some salsa, some gazpacho, and some more guacamole.

Truth be told, other than the time outlay (probably about 9 hours of work plus 1-2 hours of gathering supplies), canning was much, much easier than I thought. The canning tools we used this weekend were Andrea’s but once I get my own, Fancy Pantry is going to be my new BFF.

The recipe below is courtesy of Andrea’s uncle, conveniently halved for your easy one-day canning enjoyment.

Andrea Sauce

Ingredients

• 1 case of tomatoes, preferably Roma
• 2 massive carrots
• 6-8 bell peppers
• 4 onions
• 2 bunches of Swiss chard
• 1 pt of garlic bulbs
• 1 bunch of Italian parsley
• A whole lotta basil (think a quart Ziploc bag full of basil sprigs)
• Optional: 8-10 sprigs of oregano and thyme

Preparation

1. Chop tomatoes in 1-inch chunks. Remove any bad spots. Put into a big ol soup pot (mine is 16 qts but 20 would probably be even better).
2. Chop basil, carrots (peel if they are not organic), chard, parsley, and bell peppers and add to tomatoes. Peel garlic and onions, chop and add to tomatoes. Depending on your preference, chop the garlic finely or coarsely or grate it for maximum garlic taste.
3. Remove oregano leaves from stem and chop. Chop fresh thyme and stems finely. Add both to tomatoes. Mix thoroughly and bring to a boil. Simmer for 10 minutes and then remove from heat.
4. Ladle sauce into prepared canning jars. Process the jars for 45 minutes in a canning bath and then set aside to cool.
5. Serve over pasta, preferably when the supermarkets are full of nasty, mealy winter tomatoes. Enjoy!

This recipe is based on Bake and Destroy‘s Billy’s Vanilla Vanilla Cupcakes and Chocolate Buttercream. My methodology is a little different (“Wet to dry! Always add wet ingredients to dry!” I hear my grandmother cry…) and I change up the ingredients a bit: I omit the cake flour, add more vanilla and reduce the sugar by 1/4 for Nevitt, and a 1/2 for Wayne. Trust me when I tell you the super, buttery, creamy, sweet frosting more than makes up for it!

Cupcakes

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 325°. You can use cake cups or grease a cupcake pan with Crisco (or shortening of choice).
2. Mix dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl until well combined. Cut the butter in small chunks and mix in until chunks are coated with flour.
3. Mix wet ingredients together in a mixing bowl. Add to dry ingredients (I always hear my grandmother’s voice at this step: “Wet to dry!”) and mix well but not overly thoroughly.
4. Spoon batter into cups. Fill the cups halfway full and you should get 18 smaller cupcakes with a pretty rounded top or fill them 3/4 full and you get 12 larger cupcakes with a subtle muffintop shape.
5. Bake til a cake taster (knife, piece of straw, wire, etc. will do fine) comes out clean, about 20 minutes in my oven.
6. Cool completely before frosting. If you bake directly in the pan, cupcakes will be much easier to remove once cooled.

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients

• 1 stick o’ butter (8 tbps), at room temperature
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 3 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 3 tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preparation

1. Mix sugar and cocoa powder together in a large mixing bowl with a whisk or sifter or fork, if you’re really lazy (like me!).
2. Add the milk, butter and vanilla. Mix on low speed til evenly combined, then open up the throttle and mix on medium til light and fluffy (about a minute or so). If you think the frosting is too thick, add milk (a tsp at a time) to soften it a bit.
3. Pipe frosting onto cupcakes with a pastry bag (I use this one) or slather ‘em with a healthy dollop. If the cupcakes don’t get eaten immediately, I store them out of the fridge (they seem fine for 3 days) and the frosting in the fridge. Give the frosting up to an hour at room temperature to soften up before frosting. It also keeps fine in the freezer for extended periods.