How Do You Cook Corn?

I grew up surrounded by corn.  Literally.  There was a dairy farm down the street, and one of their corn fields ran parallel to my yard.  We used to run around the fields and play hide and seek.  Even so, however, I have no idea how to cook corn on the cob.  We ate it regularly and, while I was in charge of husking the corn on the front porch, my mom was the corn cooking master.  Whatever she says, goes, and, while this is true in pretty much every aspect of our lives, she's particularly particular about her corn.  (And hamburgers, but that's a story for another time.)

So the moral of the story is: I don't know how to cook corn.  The only wisdom my mom imparted to me is a story she tells every time we eat corn about how we once visited one of her college friends and she put the corn on to cook right before we all left to go to a playground down the road.  We were at the park for an hour, probably, and the corn was still cooking when we got back.  Mom thinks that's way too long to cook corn, and she'll be willing to tell you so any chance she has.

Shelle and I have been enjoying some corn this season (not yet fresh from farm stands, but we're getting there), and when it came time to cook it, neither of us were sure quite what to do.  A quick internet search yielded a variety of results - put the corn in and then bring it to a boil, bring the water to a boil and then put the corn in, cook it for one minute, cook it for ten minutes, you get the idea.  We basically ignored it all and went with our gut feeling - and it was wrong.  Our corn is weird.  It's either overdone or underdone, but we can't tell which.  It's weirdly chewy, not crisp like corn should be.  So this begs a question to all of you: How do you cook corn?

Maybe I'd better just call my mother.

Frugal Friday: My Favorite Ice Cream Sundae

Hi folks!

Weird, I never use the word folks. I was looking back and every time I greet you people I say "Hi everyone" and that was getting old...so today, you are folks.

As you know, we eat a lot of ice cream. There is an amazing ice cream stand down the street from us, but it is sort of expensive and we are sort of poor. So we only let ourselves go to the ice cream stand when someone is visiting and we want to show it off. Sad, I know, but when you're broke it is the little things that make a huge difference and spending five bucks on ice cream is five dollars we could have put towards our student loan debt.

Anyway, we eat a lot of ice cream at home, and it can get boring really quickly when it is just carton after carton with no toppings or anything fun. So we started experimenting with different things in the house to top our ice cream. The Fresh Strawberry Sauce was a good one, but now that strawberry season is coming to a close, we are back to our old friend...peanut butter!

We love peanut butter, and melted on ice cream is the best way to eat it! It hardens a little bit when it touches the ice cream and every bite is just delicious! I like to add some chocolate syrup and peanut M&Ms too. Amanda is a big Cool Whip fan, but I prefer the whipped cream. It is clearly better!

Sound off in the comments section below...oil or cream?

Sweet and Spicy Barbecue Chicken

Amanda is a vegetarian, and I am not. I eat a lot of vegetarian meals, but sometimes a girl just needs some meat. Chicken is by far my favourite and it is so easy to make on the side of a vegetarian dinner! When I buy chicken, I usually get a big bulk pack because the unit price is significantly cheaper than buying the smaller packs. I spend the time upfront and clean all of the chicken breasts and package them individually into sandwich bags, then when I want some chicken it is ready to go!

I like to experiment with flavors, but I always come back to barbecue. We live in a small apartment with no yard, so cooking chicken on a grill is out of the question. I use a large skillet and cube the chicken and add a little bit of olive oil. I like my chicken over cooked and crispy brown, so I cook it for about 15 minutes on medium-high heat. Right before the chicken is done, I add about 1 tablespoon of butter, 1 tablespoon of honey, 1 to 2 tablespoons of barbecue sauce, a sprinkle of garlic powder and some red pepper flakes, I like it spicy. Let the sauce bubble and reduce for a minute or so before turning off the heat.

If you like more or less sauce on your chicken, you can change the ratio of sauce, sometimes I like to add in more of the sauce and have the chicken over rice.

This chicken does not disappoint! I had it last night with some corn on the cobb and salt potatoes, yum!

Frugal Friday: Swiffer Solution

It's a Frugal Friday!

Today's Frugal Friday tip is a recipe for the swiffer solution. We have all hard wood floors in our apartment and they can be a bitch to keep clean. It seems like every other day they need to be swept and swiffered. We were going through a lot of the solution and did not want to spend what little cash we had on swiffer cleaner.

After a little research on how to make cleaning products, we came up with this:

1 cup of water
1/4 cup of vinegar
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
1 tablespoon of scented oil

Every year when people don't know what to buy us for Christmas, we end up with an abundance of candles and scented oils. Don't get me wrong, I love candles and think they are wonderful gifts, but this house would smell like a weird garden with baked goods and cinnamon and fresh cotton if we used them all. So we decided to get creative and use the scented oil in the swiffer solution - it certainly helps to cover up the vinegar smell!.

We just keep refilling the bottle that originally came with our swiffer, so we just make a little at a time.  Good thing it's so easy!  If you are having a hard time getting the top off the swiffer solution bottle, try soaking it in really hot water, this should loosen it enough to unscrew.

Have a great weekend!!

Hash Brown Casserole

Remember when we made potato salad a little while ago?  We bought a pretty good sized bag of potatoes at the time, and we still had a few left we wanted to use up before they go bad.  And what's a great way to use up potatoes?  Throw them in a casserole!

This casserole is an old standby in my family, and we like to eat is as a main dish for weeknight dinners or as a side dish for holiday meals.  It's creamy and delicious, and it warms up really well in the microwave to make leftover lunches.  We eat it in winter and summer, pretty much any chance we get.  I'm telling you, you can't go wrong!

Here's what you'll need:

about 4 large potatoes, shredded
1 cup of sour cream
1 can of condensed potato soup
1 1/2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese
1/4 cup parmesan cheese

Throw all of the ingredients minus 1/2 cup of the shredded cheddar into a bowl and stir.  Once the ingredients are well mixed, pour them into a greased 8x8 pan.  Top with the remaining shredded cheddar and bake at 350 for about 45 minutes or until the cheese on top begins to brown.

If you're short on time, you can prepare the casserole ahead and let it sit in the fridge.  Just pop it out and into the oven an hour before you want to eat and you'll be good to go.  And if you have left overs, you can reheat the whole dish in the oven or spoon a bit into a bowl and warm it in the microwave.  That's what I'm doing for lunch tomorrow!

Chocolate Cake (From Scratch!)

I was raised on box mixes.  Cakes, brownies, macaroni and cheese - you name it, and if it came in a box, that's the version we ate in my house.  I imagine it was for convenience, it sounds like it would be time-consuming and difficult to make something from scratch (at least to me, who probably didn't even learn the meaning of the word until middle school).  But it's a bit more expensive too, and being broke just doesn't afford me the luxuries of counting on Betty Crocker to do my dirty work.

I decided to master one thing at a time, and began my adventures into baking from scratch with a chocolate cake.  I figured I'd use the Hershey's recipe since, well, Hershey's is basically synonymous with chocolate.  I found it here, and was certainly not disappointed.  At first it seemed a little funny to me, a born and raised box mix girl, but I needn't have worried.  I totally second-guessed Hershey's (I know, who do I think I am?  They're the ultimate chocolate authority!) about adding the boiling water in at the end, and it made my batter super runny (basically a brown liquid), but the recipe has never failed me.  Cakes back up wonderfully, and they're moist and delicious.  It tastes better than using a box mix, is probably healthier, and sounds a lot fancier too.  Plus it's cheaper!

I used this mix last week to bake up some cupcakes.  We had strawberries coming out our ears at that point, so I cooked up a little of our Strawberry Sauce to fill them.  I added a little extra cornstarch so it gelled up a bit more, then cut the tops off the cupcakes.  I scooped out the centers (and promptly ate them, of course) and spooned in some of the strawberry filling before placing the tops back on.  I frosted them with some buttercream frosting, and then decorated the top with a chocolate-covered strawberry.  Yum!  The only thing wrong with this dessert is that fresh strawberry season is far too short!

Fresh Strawberry Sauce

Amanda's favorite food is ice cream. I'm pretty sure she would sell her soul if there was a shortage.
And the addiction runs in her family - there was a time when it seemed like every time I came to visit we went out for ice cream. (I am not complaining by any means, but I prefer other desserts - chocolate chip cookies are probably my favorite.) After picking so many strawberries for jam, we had a bunch left over. We are way too broke to let anything go to waste, so we made a really tasty strawberry sauce to put on top of Amanda's favorite dessert!

We took about a cup of cut strawberries and added them to a sauce pan with about a teaspoon of lemon juice. Once the strawberries were warm and their juice had accumulated on the bottom of the pan, we added in about three tablespoons of sugar and about a tablespoon of corn starch. We just cooked the sauce on medium heat until it was thick and bubbly. You can always add more or less corn starch depending on how thick you want the sauce to be.

Enjoy!