TheSnackHound

“Heh, Heh, Heh…Candygram!”

Okay, you might have to have something like this…

Standing mixers come in a variety of colors these days. Recently, there was even one that was pink for Breast Cancer Awareness. Colors? Shmolors! I just saw what they are doing over at FlameKA.com and you won’t be so proud of yourself for having a purple or pink mixer when you see you can have one with flames or made up like a bomber plane. I even saw some cow spots! You use your regular ol’ KitchenAid and buy special decals that can get you over the tragedy that KitchenAid does not offer this in its regular line.

I have been using stubbornly using a regular old handmixer for years, and this kind of craziness just may put me over the edge.  Kind of like how I made due with other dolls, and didn’t ask for a Barbie until they came out with her horse, Dallas. I guess I am a bit of an accessory person…

Check out more crazy ways to trick out a mixer HERE

A few of my cousins have gone on Wine Tours in various parts of the country. They really enjoyed them, as unlike other tours, they weren’t rushed in and out like cattle. A lot of tours promise to take you to several wineries and teach you how to make wine. They never used the information they learned because they are just the types to not slow down, but they did say that they sampled a little too much! Even so, you don’t have to go overboard on the tours, and you are also shown some beautiful areas of the countryside that you normally wouldn’t get to see. Partly because we are always worried about getting from point A to point b and don’t notice, but because much of it is private acerage that you would normally not get a peek at.

I am just an occasional drinker, but think there is a lot of value in learning to make your own, even if its just once in a blue moon, and a bottle or two at a time. You won’t get the various sulfites like some commercial wines, and can cater to food sensitivities when looking for a base for a delicious recipe.

There are many websites devoted to the preservation, mutilation, and transformation of Peeps, but not much to say about Skittles.  Yes, Skittles; the candy that announcers so haughtily demand for you to “TASTE THE RAINBOW.”

This command was a little more humble when Skittles were first introduced during my childhood.  Someone was probably just HOPING we wanted to try them.    To be accurate, Skittles were originally a British candy that was introduced in the United States in the early 70s, which was slightly before my time, but they were not made in the US until 1981, or 1982.  Thus, the marketing that went in to targetting children who would want to eat them did not commence until then.  My brother and I were some of the children who were sucked in by those various ploys.  I do believe they hit the drugstores counters of rural Wisconsin long before the commercials did, however.  Click Here to enjoy an 80s Skittles commercial.  What a dull world we would have lived in without them.

I always knew that my brother would have some sort of culinary destiny.  What his creations lacked in artistic “plating,” they transcended many levels of daringness and creativity.   In 1984, I think it was, on a snow day, a sick day, or a vacation day – my memory is foggy now – he first set his mind on the idea that Skittles could be so much more.  It perhaps was not until 1986 that his idea became a reality.   When our family got a microwave oven, his true muse was found.

I think the microwave was a JCPenney brand, if I am not mistaken.   Perhaps the last in our extended family to jump on the trend bandwagon,  we had been spared from owning the most giant of microwave ovens of earlier years (which really defeated the purpose of being smaller than a regular oven).  At any rate, that dial was turned to thirty seconds and the rest was history.      Little did we know that there was shellac in the American version of Skittles, and if we knew we probably would not have cared.

There are many recipes floating around on the web and in books, involving making M&M cookies or cupcakes, and then  substituting Skittles.   To my brother, that would have just been amateur hour.

The tangy smell of melted skittles mixed with the heady aroma of chocolate is still in my mind to this day, for better or for worse.   It all occured on top of several paper plates.   Luckily, there was no incident of fire or destruction, other than destroying his inhibitions of combining tangy, tart, and chocolatey all in one creative expression.

I have to admit, in editorial honesty, that we never actually did eat the creation.   The Skittle “shells,” if you call them that had cracked and broken and the gelatanous innards had oozed together with the chocolate.   The effect was similar looking to ”melted crayons and chocolate.”    I think we were a little afraid it was all quite radioactive.

When we lived in the Boston area, we went to the cutest candy shop. It not only had the traditional brittles, fudges, and bars, but all sorts of novelty chocolate for just about any wish. After we moved, they levelled the historical building and made it another donut shop (bad move! that donut shop didn’t last!.) Since, we have not been able to find any place in our new town that was the same feast for the eyes as well as it was the scourge of the digestive tract or the wallet. The prices were good, we just bought a lot at once.

I just found the bestest and cutest chocolate gifts at Gertrude Hawk Chocolates online that gave me the same sort of nostalgia!  How could you not want to buy a little firehouse with firefighter and firetruck shaped chocolate in it?  I think that the fire truck would taste better than the dollhouse themed chocolates as I was more of a tomboy who played Tonka trucks. In fact, I know that certain shapes taste better than others.

I couldn’t remember where I had heard the name before, and then I recalled a candybar fundraiser for my basketball team when I was in high school that we did using their bars! The profit amount was better than any of their competitors and the taste was much better too. I will say that if we sold the chocolate petshop or dollhouse chocolates, all the girls that were with me on the team would have bought them up and stockpiled them.  We would have worked it off on the court.

My Uncle passed away a year ago, and I really miss him.   He definitely was someone that God really broke the mold on, and I never quite knew anyone else like him.   We talked about saving money alot, and he thought I wasn’t cutting corners enough, and I wasn’t afraid to tease him about some of his frugal adventures.

One in particular I remember well.   He would never buy a candy bar, because it was much cheaper by weight or volume to buy a  bag of chocolate morsels.   I have fond memories as a child eagerly eating a handful of those.   It was a way for my parents to give me chocolate without me eating the whole big bar, and I was happy with that.  My uncle did me one better.  He drove around with them in a paper cup in the cup holder of the car and ate them as he drove.

That seemed pretty sweet, until he realized that chocolate morsels, because they are used in baking, don’t have any extra coating to prevent them from melting in your hand.   The car in the summer had the aroma of chocolate, which seemed custom made for a foodie, until you put your hand down and got melted chocolate all over it.

I guess, in the end, it cost him more, as most of the chocolate was rendered useless, unless we went to get an ice cream and then dumped the cup over it, and saved the 50 cents to a dollar twenty five disparity between a bowl of ice cream and a hot fudge sundae.  Deduct the cost of driving around looking for chocolate morsels, and all we gained was an adventure, not the savings he set out to gain!

I stumbled across a new travel mug on ecogeekliving.com.

At first, I was really perplexed at why anyone would need a heated travel mug that plugs into your dashboard.   Regular insulated travel mugs do a pretty good job of keeping the hot stuff hot and the cold stuff cold.   Afterall, you aren’t supposed to be nursing that chocolate milk all day long.

Then, it hit me.

You can set your ideal temperature, and the cup lets you know when the optimum temperature is reached.  In otherwords, you can not only keep your preexisting beverage maintain the right tepidity, but you can actually cook on the road!   You can make tea and the newer instant coffees that come in a tea bag like delivery.    I was just thinking that you could easily make hot chocolate, powdered soup mixes (they have instant miso soup), and you could even get more creative with travel cup recipes from scratch.

I think I would drive around with some boil in the bag rice, go to the store, get some veggies, and then when I got home, I could walk in and say “here you go.”   Rice takes so much longer to cook, so as soon as the veggies cooked on the skillet, I would dump the rice out of my travel mug and no one would have to wait for that pokey slow cook rice!

Not sure about you folks, but my life will never be the same.

The following information is provided as a public service announcement and not as an endorsement of any said practices, nor encouragement to try this at home.**

I was typing away, and I heard out of the corner of my ear the dismebodied voice of Ted Allen talking about exploding grapes. Of course, as this was a subject of interest to me, I emerged from my office to see what it was all about. It was a show where this very idea was put through its paces. Of course, as you know from my post about Skittles, a show like this would have been a mere dare to my brother and I as kids.

Apparently, after further research, as I missed most of the segment, grapes do indeed go through a freaky metamorphisis in the mircowave.  Somehow, the liquid-like center of a grape does not agree with the technology.

On Wikihow, the subject was deemed so rediculous that regulars threatened to have it pulled.

One user replied:

I’ve done this before. It does not damage the microwave in any sort of way, and exploding is definitely the wrong word for what happens. All it is is the water in between the two grape halves is excited to the plasma state, and creates what appears to be a large fireball rising up through the microwave. However, there isn’t enough energy to sustain the plasma-state and by the time it hits the top of the microwave chamber, it will turn back into ordinary water. It’s not dangerous, and it is actually an interesting bit of a time-waster with good science behind it as well.

So, would anyone recommend actually intentionally doing this to make some sort of grape spread for cucumber sandwiches?   I would be afraid that the grapes would be in such a microwave induced altered state that it would be a secret ingredient for a potion in a classic horror film.  (There was no mention of Frankenfood grapes reacting differently) At least that’s my opinion.

The actual article writer states some words of wisdom:

This might not work on the very first grape you try. Try it plenty of times before giving up.

If it still doesn’t work, you may need to move it to a different spot in the microwave. Some microwaves have “hotspots” that are exposed to more energy than other spots, so you’ll be trying to find one of those.

The writer also instructs that it works best if you slice the grape slightly.

So, the actual intent was to “successfully explode a grape” and not really a word to the wise to help you AVOID IT.

Oh well, we have stopped using our microwave, but I imagine I am going to have to make sure my brother doesn’t read this because he’s going to see an unused microwave as something that just “calls” to him.

(**= I double dog dare you).

My brother is coming to town!  I haven’t seen him in about two years.  We live far apart, but when we get together, we are like two little kids.  We just laugh and laugh.  Often, we ill pull out a trivia game.  More often than that, we will commandeer some very regressive game like Chutes and Ladders, even though we are 25-30 years older than the 3-5 year old “target age.”   Out now is a ScreenLife Disney Bingo Game.  We haven’t played a game as interactive as that in a long time, which means there will be plenty of harrassment from eachother if there is any technical illiteracy.

But, I am ready for him.    I was just thinking of the Disney videos we sat through when we watched our little sister, and I was thinking of all the different cooking scenes in the movies that I really didn’t pay attention to then, but somehow are stored in my brain.  So without further ado…

Top 15 Big Food Moments in Disney Films

(In My View Anyway)
(In Backwards Order)

15)  Dog Bones get eaten in ‘Oliver and Company.” Not too earth shattering, but I felt it didn’t feel right unless the list was 15 and not 14 items

14)  Ratatouille.  Okay…now that one’s out of the way. Next.

13) Bambi eats grass.  It may sound gross. He talks, but he is still a deer, remember!

12) Pinocchio and Gepetto are Whale Food.

11)  Marlin and Dorrie are Whale Food.

10) Obscure, background-filling “Salt and Pepper Shaker” characters in “Beauty and the Beast” are turned into bigger character roles with solo dances in the Broadway version of “Beauty and the Beast.”  Collectors wonder when the commemoratve Beauty and the Beast Salt Shaker salt shakers come out.   They are sorely disappointed because they only come out with figural “Beast and Belle” salt and pepper shaker sets and not replicas of the actual Salt and Pepper Shaker.

9) Spaghetti Dinner for Two in “Lady & The Tramp.”  Woulda put it closer to the top of the list but its predictable.

8 ) Ariel drinks the Kool-Aid.  Gets Legs.

7) Fish are Friends, Not Food in Finding Nemo

6) Sebastian almost becomes crab cakes in “The Little Mermaid.” Chase ensues

5) The most famous bitten Apple since Adam eve.  Snow White Bites Down.

4) Dumbo gets liquored up.  Is this in the new PC edits of Dumbo or do they label the XXX bottle “Mountain Dew”

3) The Fairy Godmother’s Bake a Cake for Aurora (Sleeping Beauty).  They don’t really bake it.  It’s raw. And they use any cups and mugs they have to measure it out.  Sounds like me.

2) Mrs. Potts pours Belle a cup of Tea OUT OF HER OWN HEAD.  Gross!

1) Ariel combs her hair with a fork.

Yeah, the Dinglehopper! I think is the oddest and best Disney food related moment.  My mind is strange, I know.   So if you think I am an oddball…what are your top 5 favorite Disney Songs, Movies, or Moments?

Well, brush up on all the names of these movies for when you grab your own Disney Bingo. You can snag yourself one at Drugstore.com. Amazon surely has it too. We’ll have a tournament against eachother.

Our friend Nancy baked us a cake!   I was so excited about that!   I know she was feeling badly after the rough patch we had but the truth remains: I haven’t changed much since I was five years old:  I can be bribed with chocolate cake, especially if it has whipped cream anywhere near it.

There are two tips that can make any boxed mix cake taste homemade:

1) Right when the cake comes out of the oven, place waxed paper over it while still in the pan.  This locks the moisture in and takes away that “dry brownie effect.”

If you don’t know what a horror a dry cake can be, just read “My Name is Mud Cake” 

2) Make an easy frosting.  Mix half and half of a commercial chocolate frosting, and either real whipped cream or whipped dessert toping.   This will make a very moist chocolatey topping for your sheet or pan cake.

I was amazed that she actually told me these secrets.  (I am still alive!)