Spicy Honeyed Sweet Potatoes

How does Thanksgiving sneak up on us? With clever disguises

It's Thanksgiving time again. And that means it's time to shove some delicious food into our mouths. As much as we can as fast as we can in the hopes that it appeases the angry ghosts of our ancestors who probably lived and died in some beet-heavy country like Serbia and never dreamed of being able to come to a land of limitless opportunity and eating a giant stupid chicken that drowns in the rain. But not everything is turkey and gravy. For every flower there are weeds, there only to sow dissent and destruction. On Thanksgiving, this is the sweet potatoes which, for reasons nobody can adequately explain and is probably some sort of ancient curse inflicted upon colonizing Europeans, tradition demands get covered with marshmallows and baked. Kids love this idea, because kids are stupid. They hear marshmallows, and they stop listening. You could offer kids marshmallows covered in chalk and they'd ask for more. But sweet potatoes have potential. They've got a good flavor that pairs well with a lot of things, and they can make a great addition to your meal. Assuming you don't cover them with marshmallows.

Ingredients:

3 largish Sweet Potatoes
1/2 cup Walnuts
3 TBSP Honey
1.5 TBSP Olive Oil
1 tsp Cinnamon
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
1/4 tsp Cumin
1 largish human's pinch of Salt

The first thing you're going to need to do is stop freaking out. People treat Thanksgiving like it's some crazy marathon of cooking that they need a full month to prepare for. It's one day with family and a large meal. This is a weekly occurrence for tons of Americans who descend from Italians, Greeks, Jews, and tons of others. Any culture with a food and family tradition. We all laugh at the rest of you every year, because it's really not that big of a deal. Just take a breath, make your food, set your table, and don't be afraid to remind any drunk or abrasive relatives that they're completely expendable. Once your tears have dried, start pre-heating your oven to 375 degrees. Spread your walnuts evenly on a baking sheet and put them in the oven for 5 minutes while it's heating. Keep an eye on them, because nut are jerks and they like going from "not cooked at all" to "charcoal" in about 3 seconds while your back is turned. Don't give them the satisfaction. Once your nuts are toasted it's time to peel your sweet potatoes. Technically you could leave the skin on them. They're not harmful to eat and they have fiber. Then again, the same thing could be said of cardboard, so use your own judgement.

I'm not saying these are delicious enough to make up for
centuries of oppression, but they definitely don't hurt.

Cut your sweet potatoes in half lengthwise, and then cut them in to "half moon" shaped chunks, each about 1/4 inch wide. The goal is to get them all the same size so that they cook at the same rate. Some pieces probably won't conform, but that's okay. It's not like your guests are going to be judging you silently while they eat and talking about all of your failures in the car on the ride home. Once you're done cutting, throw your sweet potatoes in a bowl along with your salt, black pepper, cayenne, cinnamon, cumin, oil, and 2 TBSP of your honey. Mix that nonsense together and then spread it flat on a baking sheet in one layer. If it doesn't find, use two baking sheets. If it still doesn't fit, you may need to re-evaluate what you've been calling a "baking sheet." In any case, throw toss your sheets of sweet potatoes into your oven and let them cook for about 20-25 minutes. Once they're soft enough to easily stick a fork through, take them out of the oven and throw them in a bowl along with your walnuts and your last TBSP of honey. Stir that together, and then serve it to your ungrateful friends and family. It's a little spicy, a little sweet, and a whole lot of delicious, and will totally distract from the fact that a bottle of wine disappeared and the kids' table is starting to look a little too festive. Happy Thanksgiving!

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Who doesn't love a nice gourd lobotomy?

It's the end of October, which means that it's that time of year again. That time of year when we have feasts and celebrations, sprinkle the blood of an animal sacrifice on our doorway, and light some bonfires to ensure good luck and keep our cattle alive through the winter. Or at least that's how we did it back in the middle ages in various Celtic countries. Nowadays we celebrate Samhain mostly by freaking out about somebody slipping a razor blade surreptitiously into our kids' M&Ms, and by dressing up as a sexy meerkat. Oh, and pumpkins. We carve human-ish faces into pumpkins, kind of like some sort of grotesque gourd serial killer, and then leave the mutilated pumpkins outside of our houses as a warning to the other vegetables. Which means we're left with the classic serial killer dilemma: what to do with the goopy insides that we methodically removed from our victims.

Ingredients:

1 Pie Pumpkin (A pie pumpkin is a pumpkin typically used for pie making. We've genetically bred them to have characteristics that make them ideal. If sentient gourds from outer space ever visit the Earth, this is what will spark intergalactic war)
1/4 tsp Chili Powder
1/4 tsp Garlic Powder
1/4 tsp Onion Powder
A largish human's pinch of Salt

 The first thing you're going to need to do is dismember an innocent pumpkin. But I've been pretty open about that up to this point and you've made it this far, so I'm going to assume that you're OK with that. So let your pumpkin say goodbye to its loved ones, eat a final meal, and then chop its head off like your name is Robespierre. Or the guy who killed Robespierre. Either way. The point is, pull out all of those gross pumpkin innards. This is where we encounter our first problem. Namely, the fact that pumpkin innards like being innards, and have little-to-no interest in making the leap towards being outards. So, using some unholy combination of kitchen implements, your hands, and more gumption than you can shake a stick at, just do your best. Remember, they say that nobody's perfect. Which just goes to show that there really isn't any excuse for coming in second place. Take your pumpkin guts (Or maybe pumpkin brains? I never really thought about it before) and separate the seeds from the other nonsense. Rinse your seeds off and then get ready for the trouble you're going to have with the rest of the ingredients.

Perfect for snacking while you watch TV, read
a book, or lie to friends about reading books

Haphazardly throw the rest of the ingredients on top of your seeds and mix them together. Not everything has to be a challenge. Spread your seasoned seeds down on a baking sheet. It's important to keep them as close to a single layer as possible. If your pumpkin is abnormally fertile or you're just doubling the recipe, use multiple baking sheets rather than clumping your seeds all together. Bake them in a 300 degree oven for about 30 minutes, making sure to wangjangle them around every ten minutes or so to get even crispiness and no burning. And there you have it! Delicious spiced pumpkin seeds! You also have an entire hollow pumpkin which you can mutilate to your heart's content and leave around neighborhood. Or you can cook it. But more on that next week. Happy cultural appropriation holiday!

Savory Sweet Potatoes

Cayenne is shy, but was socially obligated to be in the picture

Happy 4th of July! It's a special time of year when we Americans prepare burnt offerings for Uncle Sam in hopes that he wakes from his enchanted slumber and smites our enemies. And like any good holiday, it's got a pretty heavy food component to it. The traditional fare is usually grilled meats, like burgers, hot dogs, chicken, which are awesome, but it's side dishes that really make it in to a festive event. Think about it this way: if you were on the run from zombies, or ninjas, or gluten or whatever, and you had to stop briefly to make food, you'd totally char some meat over a trash can fire. But you probably wouldn't make cole slaw, potato salad, and succotash. Or sweet potatoes, which brings us to today (roll credits).

Ingredients:

4 Sweet Potatoes

1.5 TBSP Olive Oil
1/2 tsp Chili Powder
1/2 tsp Cumin
1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
1/4 tsp Onion Powder
1/4 tsp Smoked Paprika
1/4 tsp Oregano
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
Salt
Black Pepper

The first thing you're going to need to do is get over your hangups. There's often a stereotype of men doing the grilling of meat, and of being weirdly territorial over their grills. Other men are forced to sit in huddled groups talking about classically manly things (killing spiders, Babe Ruth, and Monty Python), while women are relegated to the kitchen to prepare vegetables and talk about traditionally female things (eating salads, dealing with Time Warner Cable, and multi-tasking). Personally, I doubt that this is an actual phenomenon that ever happens outside of television ads and sitcoms. Don't get me wrong, I know plenty of people stupid enough to insist based on some weird gender-based pride that they have to do a specific job. I just don't know anybody willing to play along, especially when that means eating subpar food on a rare day off in the summer, just to satisfy some idiot's need to feel important and special. Anyway, the point is peel your sweet potatoes, and cut them in to long thin wedges, roughly shaped like french fries. Congratulations, you've done like 90% of the work for this recipe.

Delicious, healthy-ish, and orange. Living the dream.

Take all of your spices and mix them together into a giant spice concoction. Or blend. Or whatever. Dump that nonsense into a bowl along with your sweet potato wedges and your oil. Mix until everything's coated, and then spread your sweet potatoes out on to a couple of baking sheets, keeping them in one layer as much as is possible. Throw that into a 400 degree oven for 35 minutes, and you're pretty much done. All that's left is to eat your delicious sweet potatoes along with your traditional meal of beer, charred meats, pickles, and beer. And to watch a fireworks display, in which we fire explosive devices into the sky, symbolizing the American dream to eventually wage war on the clouds and bring their sky-treasure back as tribute. Happy 4th of July!

Chicken Paprika

Sure, why wouldn't you walk
that distance for chicken?

This is a valued and cherished family recipe that the Polish contingent of my mom's ancestry almost certainly stole from a famous Hungarian dish called Chicken Paprikash. Why would these old-timey Polish beet farmers (I assume) steal (I assume) a recipe from a country that's like 150 miles away (I google)? Well, apparently the two countries have pretty good relations, and a polish general even became a Hungarian hero after he defended Transylvania in a war. I'm not kidding. To paraphrase, Hungarians and Polish people like each other and probably shared bits of culture and cuisine because a long time ago a Polish man helped defend Hungary's treasured natural supply of vampires. Apparently the Hungarians were so incredibly thankful that they entrusted to Poland the recipe for Chicken Paprikash, a dish which contains no garlic whatsoever. They probably also gave the Polish their advanced neck washing technology, and their relaxing method of self massage via meat tenderizer. My family's Chicken Paprika recipe is a little different than a traditional Chicken Paprikash, but it is similar in a number a key ways, such as its inability to protect you against the undead.

Ingredients:
2 lb. Chicken Breast (You're looking for boneless, skinless chicken cutlets here. You can butcher them yourselves, or buy them pre-butchered from a butcher, or the butcher shop of a supermarket. Butcher butcher butcher.)
2 cups Flour
3 standard-issue Onions
1 lb. Carrots
2 cups Vegetable Stock
1/4 cup Vegetable Oil
1/2 tsp Black Pepper
Paprika (Traditional chicken paprikash tends to use sweet paprika. My mom's recipe calls for whatever paprika you get at the store. I use smoked paprika because I like that flavor. And so the evolution of cuisine continues.)
Salt

So I'm going to get the religious jargon out of the way right off the bat. It's currently the Jewish holiday of Passover, where religious Jews eschew such fancy modern things as...the vast majority of all foodstuffs, and instead eat flavorless crackers called matzoh, because nothing says "festivity" like "flavorless crackers." This is a dish that my family traditionally has on Passover, but regular old flour isn't so much allowed. So if you're in the same religious boat as me, replace the flour with finely ground flavorless crackers, and be on your merry way. Regardless of what floury substance you're using, combine it with a gentleman's pinch of both salt and pepper, along with a teaspoon of paprika. Toss your chicken in the seasoned flour mixture to give it a loose coating and a false sense of security before you unceremoniously toss it in to a pot with your hot oil in it over medium heat. Cook it for a couple minutes on each side, without fussing too much with it, so that it develops some nice browning. Work in batches if you have to, because it's better to wait an extra 10 minutes for delicious food than to have your food come out like hot garbage. That's an ancient Polish-Hungarian saying. Well, the original saying was more about leaving your windows unlocked at night, and not keeping wooden stakes around the house, but I'm sure this is what they meant.

Ok, we may have different definitions on what constitutes a
"bite-sized" chunk of carrot

While this is all going down, thinly slice your onions, peel your carrots, and chop them (The carrots) in to bite-sized chunks. Once your chicken is properly browned, take it out of the pot and toss your onions in to replace it along with another average-sized human's pinch of salt. Let that cook down for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. While they're cooking, combine your vegetable stock with...just a bunch of paprika. I think the actual recipe may call for something like 1.5 tablespoons, but when I've watched my mom make it she usually opens up the jar of paprika and just glops out about half the container. What's the worst that will happen? People will complain that your chicken paprika has too much paprika? Then knew what they were getting in to. Once your onions are soft and weak, like unsuspecting villagers, throw everybody in the pot. Your paprika stock, your chicken, your carrots. Everybody. Bring that whole mess up to a boil then cover it, reduce the heat to low, and simmer that sucker for 45 minutes. Once you're done, dump that pot of deliciousness into a pan and bake it, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. And that's it! Enjoy it on a picnic, at a passover seder, or while mourning the loss of another beloved neighbor or friend who mysteriously disappeared from the village last night. The choice is yours!

Eggnog Milkshake

Desolate winter snowscapes: the cause of adding booze to
things for roughly 1000 years.

Eggnog, it's commonly believed, was derived from a British drink popular in the middle ages called Posset. It is a classic British recipe consisting of taking stuff that doesn't have alcohol in it, and throwing some alcohol in it because it was Britain and the middle ages, and life wasn't especially worth living unless you were drunk enough to forget those things. Some people have theorized that alcohol was added in to preserve the drink and prevent people from getting sick. This is technically possible, but seems to be crediting a fair amount of scientific and medical knowledge to a group of people who literally used to bore holes in to each other's skulls to try and cure migraines. A more likely scenario is that alcohol was added to proto-eggnog in order to give people something to look forward to during the year so that they could better cope with the constant ridiculous insanity of their daily lives. It's used for pretty much the same purpose today. Adding ice cream and making it into a milkshake helps too.

Ingredients:

1 Cup Eggnog

1 Cup Vanilla Ice Cream (You want to get a decent vanilla ice cream here. The sort of vanilla that makes you think "delicious" instead of "boring.")

1/2 Cup Heavy Cream

1.5 TBSP Sugar

1/4 tsp Allspice

Cinnamon

Nutmeg

Whiskey!

So the first thing you're gonna need to do is find some eggnog. You can make it yourself, steal it, or buy it from a store. Homemade stuff will probably have a somewhat richer flavor and consistency, but we're mixing this with spices and ice cream, so it doesn't make that much of a difference. Though I've heard that eggnog won is twice as sweet as eggnog earned, so if you see any contests with an eggnog prize they might be worth entering. In any case, take your eggnog and toss in your allspice and cinnamon. If you want the best cinnamon flavor you can get, take some cinnamon sticks and throw them in a saucepan with your nog while heating it (Gently heating it. It's got dairy and eggs in it, neither of which you want curdling) for 20-30 minutes, and then let the mixture cool completely. If you have better things to do than spend upwards of an hour teasing out the the best flavor from your cinnamon, just add in half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon and call it a day. Sure, it won't taste quite as deliciously cinnamon-y, but again: we're mixing this with ice cream and whiskey. Take your spiced nog and throw it in your fridge while you whip up your cream. 

Alcohol, ice cream, and eggnog. That'll hold you over until
it's warm outside again.

Take your cream, sugar, and a small sprinkling of nutmeg, and whip that nonsense together until it forms a thick and delicious cream. This should take about 5 minutes, or roughly until your arm has wanted to fall of for a minute and a half. Now it's time to talk about whiskey. Traditionally (at least in the USA), bourbon is added to eggnog. Personally, I think that Irish Whiskey has a much better flavor for a drink like this, but feel free to experiment. There are no wrong answers with whiskey (there are so many wrong answers with whiskey. Evan Williams happens to be one.) As for how much of it to use, you can really add in as much or as little as you'd like. It's just about personal taste and your specific level of alcoholism and depression. Personally, I like it when the whiskey is one flavor that melds with the other flavors in the eggnog to make something new and awesome. That's about 2 TBSP of whiskey in this recipe. But if you drink eggnog more to forget the pains of all the times that Santa wronged you than to drink delicious drinks, feel free to up that to 2 liters, or whatever amount of whiskey soothes the violent raging storm in your soul. Then add your whipped cream on top and maybe some sprinkles because sprinkles are fun, especially when alcohol is involved, and maybe I've already had a few. Enjoy! 

Stuffing Muffins

It doesn't matter if you know the muffin man. It matters
that he knows himself.

Thanksgiving times are upon us, which means that it's time to break out the most treasured of all holiday traditions: lying to each other about how good the food is. Because let's be honest here. A lot of classic Thanksgiving food is somewhere between unimpressive and super gross. You've got marshmallows melted on to overcooked yams, green bean casserole that pretty much comes out of a can, and usually some stuffing that amounts to dried out crusty bits of bread loosely held together by a mass of onions and disappointment. Which is a shame, because it really isn't that hard to make some delicious stuffing. And I should know, because I made some this morning. The whole process took about 45 minutes from start to finish, and at no point did I feel like my mouth had turned into a desert fortress from which escape is impossible, which isn't always the case with stuffing. Making it into individual muffins is a fun twist that makes everything self-contained and helps ensure that everybody actually gets some. Also it'll help you deceive your friends and family into thinking that you're creative and whimsical.

Ingredients:

Approx. 8 Cups of Bread (You've got some decent leeway here. Use something hearty, but really whatever bread makes you happy. Tear it into chunks, throw 8 cups of them in there, and be merry)
2 Eggs 
4 Crimini Mushrooms
3 ribs Celery
1 standard-issue Onion
1.5 TBSP chopped Parsley
2 tsp rubbed Sage
1 tsp dried Thyme
1/4 tsp Black Pepper
Salt 
Oil
Water

The first thing you're gonna need to do is learn to ignore people. Because undoubtedly there are already people constructing angrily worded letters about how stuffing is only "real" if it's stuffed into a turkey, and that otherwise you should call it "dressing." It's easy to get angry or annoyed with these people, but remember that they serve an important role in the evolution of our species. Without having obviously terrible people to be a focus for our communal rage and disgust, those feelings would fester and eventually turn into something negative, like dysentery or a world war. Once you've blocked out the voices, it's time to grab your bread. A lot of stuffing recipes start off by having you toast the bread to dry it out. We're not doing that. We're doing the opposite of that. Moisten your bread with a little bit of water until it starts sticking together just a little bit, and set it aside. You don't want it to be soaked and gloppy, so be careful with it.

Just look at those things. I can practically hear a drunk uncle
ruining a pleasant family moment already.

Now dice your onion and sauté it over medium heat along with an average sized human's pinch of salt. Let it cook down for about a minute. You can use that minute to chop up your celery, because now it's time to add it in with the onions and cook them for another 2-3 minutes. Then choppity chop up your mushrooms and add them in along with your thyme, black pepper, and another pinch of salt. It should take about 2 minutes for some of the moisture to cook out of the mushrooms and for the whole thing to start smelling crazy good. Take your vegetable mixture and stir it into your bread along with your parsley, eggs, and one final pinch of salt. Buy or steal a standard muffin pan and grease up the cups before filling them with your bread and vegetable mixture. Pack it in there and try to overstuff them a little bit if you can (you can). Throw those suckers into a 375 degree oven and let them cook for 15-20 minutes, until they start to get a little crispy on top and your entire home smells like condensed holiday awesomeness. Then take them out of the oven, take them out of the pan, and serve them. Or make them ahead of time in which case wait until your actual meal, heat them up, and then serve them. Bonus points if you don't make up an obnoxious cutesy name for them like "stuffins." Happy holidays!

Sugar Cookies

Anything can happen on Halloween. From London to Idaho.

It's Halloween time again, full of festivity, cheer, and little kids dressed up in costumes that cost more than the price of all of the candy they'll get from trick or treating. Also angsty teenagers who vandalize people's houses because they're angry that society has deemed them too old to trick or treat. It's a fun time! So make sure to start partaking in the traditional Halloween activities, such as extortion, alcoholism, and protesting Halloween because it was originally a pagan holiday (So was pretty much every other holiday, but let's pretend we don't know about that to help fuel our outrage). And nothing's quite as in the spirit of the holiday as parents freaking out over the contents of the homemade treats that some creepy neighbor gave out, despite the fact that pretty much nobody has ever tampered with Halloween candy. Who are you to deny them this holiday tradition?

Ingredients:

2.75 Cups Flour
1 Chicken Egg (Raw, by preference)
1 Cup Sugar
1 Cup Butter (For some reason, there seems to be some sort of holy war concerning butter among people who write recipes. Some people measure it in sticks. Others in cups. Neither of them are willing to admit that the other side exists, never mind how much of one equals the other. Our nation needs some unity and healing. One cup equals two sticks of butter.)
1.5 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 small human's pinch of Salt

Optional Frosting!

The first thing you're gonna need to do is get in the holiday spirit. If you're a strict originalist, you can accomplish this by harvesting your crops, dancing around a bonfire, and carving a turnip. If you're not that odd mix weirdly fascinating and incredibly boring, just drink too much at a party and confess romantic feelings to someone who doesn't reciprocate them. Now you're ready to make some cookies. Start by creaming your sugar and butter (mixing the crap out of them so that the sugar crystals tear into the butter and make little air pockets, for those of you who haven't made my chocolate chip cookies before) in a bowl. Then mix in your egg and vanilla and set it aside. In another bowl, whisk together your flour, baking powder, and salt. Then take your dry ingredients and slowly mix them into your wet ingredients. It's best to work in batches so that you can incorporate all of the dry stuff into the wet, and so that flour doesn't fly out of the bowl dousing everything in your kitchen in a fine white powder. This is a pretty thick cookie batter, so for those of you mixing this manually, by the last batch you might need to abandon your whisks and just mix it with your hands despite the very real risk that you may need to lick batter off of your fingers.

Pumpkin sprinkles added to remind you that pumpkins exist.

Once your dough is formed, roll it into balls and put them on a greased up cookie sheet. You should get about 24 out of this recipe. If you're off on that number by one or two it's no big deal. If you're off by 5 or more then re-roll your cookies. If you're off by 10 or more, re-think some major things about how you live your life. Now, personally, I like a big fluffy cookie, so I leave mine as balls. If you prefer a thinner, crispier cookie, flatten them down with a weird gadget you can buy for about 30 bucks. Or, you know, with your thumb which is usually free. In any case, throw those suckers in a 375 degree oven for 10-18 minutes, depending on the thickness of your cookies. Pretty much, about 5 minutes after your house starts to smell delicious, take them out. Make sure to neurotically check on them every couple of minutes to really give them that homemade touch. When they're done, they should just be starting to brown around the edges. Now you've got some delicious homemade cookies to freak out the neighbors! They (the cookies) have got a mild sweetness going that's super awesome for other days, but this is a holiday predicated on threatening your neighbors into giving you sugary treats. So, once your cookies are cool, feel free to douse them in chocolate frosting. And since we've talked a lot about giving these cookies to kids, I'm not going to tell you to add a little bit of bourbon into the frosting. So don't even think about adding in specifically two tablespoons of bourbon into one standard sized can of frosting. See you next week, assuming you haven't been egged into oblivion!

Apple Pomegranate Crumble

One of these things is not like the other, one of
these things is 90% seeds.

So the new year is upon us. Not the fun new year at the end of December that starts full of excessive alcohol consumption and excitement, and ends in hilarious tragedy or boredom. The Jewish new year, which is pretty much a time for merriment, introspective self-evalutation, and eating delicious foods until we can't lift our arms to eat any more, at which point a trained staff of hired help will continue to stuff food down our throats until we (or they) pass out. Also, there's a more recent tradition to eat some specific foods for the symbolism, such as pomegranates for a multitude of blessings, or apples and honey for a sweet year. There are like 100 more of these. I won't bore you or me by listing them. Especially since I've already taken this "Jewish Traditions 101" class to its intended conclusion, which was saying the words "apple" and "pomegranate."

Ingredients:

4 Granny Smith Apples
3 Honey Crisp Apples
3/4 Cup Flour
3/4 Cup Oatmeal
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
6 TBSP Butter
1.5 TBSP Grenadine (Real grenadine. Made out of pomegranates. If you can't make or find it, use Pomegranate Molasses)
1 TBSP Cinnamon
The juice from 1/2 a Lemon (How you convince the lemon to give you its juice is between the two of you, however bribery is the preferred method.)

The first thing you're gonna need to do is skin your apples. This may seem like adding insult to injury after having climbed up into their ancestral homes and kidnapped them by the bushel. But it actually serves the very real purpose of being a warning to the other fruits that you're not to be trifled with. Also something about the skins not softening when the flesh does and creating a tough dish to eat, but that sounds like heathen nonsense to me. Now here's the thing. The second that the flesh of an apple hits the air, it starts to turn into disgusting brown goop. The entire process takes about 3 minutes, so it's time to work fast. As you peel each apple, take a knife and cut it off of the core. Then thinly slice it and toss it in a bowl with a splash of your lemon juice. The lemon juice helps keep the apple from falling completely apart. Sort of like an apple version of a security blanket, a savings account, or functional alcoholism. Repeat until you're out of apples, and then add in your grenadine, cinnamon, and any lemon juice you've got leftover. Stir that sucker up and throw it into a 9x13 pan preferably, but really just any oven-safe containment vessel you have that can hold it. Now the time has come to deal with the crumbly part of this crumble.

Looking at this, all I can think of is that I really need to get
me some of those servants to stuff food down my
throat that I made up in paragraph 1.

Whisk together your flour, oatmeal, and brown sugar. Then chop up your butter (Or butter substitutes, for those intolerant folk who can't abide by dairy) into little bits and add it in. Now it's time to "cut in" the butter, which essentially means to squish it thoroughly into the flour mixture until it incorporates into little crumbs of deliciousness. I've been advised by obvious lunatics to use something called a "pasty cutter" for this task, but I've found that my hands work better and faster. For those of you who don't have access to my hands, use your best judgement. Take your crumbly crumbs and sprinkle them on top of your apple mixture. Then toss that sucker into a 350 degree oven for about 40 minutes, once it gets golden and awesome looking. Then just sit there and let it taunt you while you wait for your guests to arrive. Make sure to ask them to bring dessert, because there's no way this thing is lasting until then.

Matzah Pizza

Here we have Matzah, in its natural habitat. Notice how the
ridges camouflage it, helping the matzah to better elude flavor.

For the...less semitic of my readers, saddle up because this is gonna, without a doubt, be the most jewish-y post I've ever posted. Because, as you may-or-may-not be aware, we're currently deep within the bowels of the Jewish holiday known as "Passover." And, as you may-or-may-not-but-I'm-betting-on-not be aware, one of the key elements of this holiday is eschewing a vast array of foods, including leavened breads. Another is drinking large amounts of wine, which is pretty much the only way to get through a week without leavened bread. What does this all mean, practically? Well, for starters, it means that you should be nice to your Jewish co-workers this week, because they're cranky. It also means that for the more observant Jewish people out there, there's pretty much nothing to eat, so you have to make due with weird facsimiles of real food. Which brings us to Matzah Pizza.

Ingredients:

2 standard-issue Matzahs (A Matzah is an unleavened wheat cracker. Essentially, it's big cracker that has slightly less flavor and nutritional value than the box it comes in. Any supermarket with a kosher section likely has them.)
4 TBSP Marinara Sauce
4 oz. Cheese (What kind of cheese? That's a whole pit of nonsense and terror we'll get into later. But the short answer is, Mozzarella if you can get it)
1/4 tsp Red Pepper Flakes
1/4 tsp Dried Oregano
1/4 tsp Garlic Powder
1 average-sized human's pinch of Salt

The first thing you're gonna need to do is abandon all hope of this thing you're making looking or tasting like pizza. Unless you live in California, in which case this will probably be the most authentic and delicious pizza you've ever had in your life. Take one of your matzahs and slather it up with half of your marinara. Fun fact: because of all of the dietary restrictions involved in Passover, many people won't eat any processed foods that haven't come from a factory specifically monitored to make sure that it's Passover compliant. Another fun fact is that pretty much all of the companies that make food specifically for Passover have absolutely no idea what they're doing when it comes to the making food part. Which is why you'll see a bottle that says something like "Spicy Tomato and Basil Marinara" and take it home, only to realize that it's essentially plain tomato juice with sugar added in for some reason. Anyway, back to our Matzah, which we just spread "marinara" on top of. Take half of your red pepper, oregano, and garlic, and add them on top of the marinara to help make up for its many flaws.

"Pizza cheese." Because who doesn't put a weird combination
of cheddar and mozzarella cheeses on their pizza?

Now we're up to cheese. Which often suffers from the same Passover-related maladies as things like marinara. If you're lucky, you'll be able to find actual cheese, with standard names like "mozzarella," "cheddar," or "whiz." But, often times you'll have to suffer through weird pseudo-cheese blends like "fancy shreds" or "pizza cheese." I prefer "pizza cheese" over the various shreds, because they're at least confident enough that they won't be sued for putting cheese in the name. Add 1 oz. of it on to your marinara. Next, add your second matzah on top of the cheese, and start repeating this process. Because matzah is horrible stuff, and if you want it to have enough sauce to be flavorful, it'll lose all structural integrity, so we need layers. Or pacts with your friendly neighborhood deity. Or both. Anyhow, slather up your second matzah with the rest of your garlic, oregano, and red pepper, along with your salt for good measure. Add on the rest of your cheese, and toss that sucker in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes. And that's it! Aren't you glad you got sucked into the terrifying world of Jewish cookery during Passover? Me neither

Mashed Maple Yams

Sure, this is adorable, but it raises some disturbing questions.

It's Thanksgiving time again! Which is exciting for me, because it's my favorite holiday, despite the fact that it's basically celebrating the prequel story to genocide and oppression. Which, when you think about it, so is New Years. The point is, Thanksgiving is upon us and that means that along with eating copious amounts of Turkey and stuffing, we all subscribe to the mass-delusion that is yams with marshmallows on top. If you're one of those guilty parties, who always makes sure that a dish of sliced up yams covered in an impenetrable layer of marshmallows is at whatever Thanksgiving meal you're attending, stop it. Just stop. If I could smack you with a rolled-up newspaper via the internet, I would. Nobody wants that nonsense. Which is not to say that yams aren't awesome, but if you're gonna add sweet on top of sweet, you've got to be more nuanced in your flavors. Otherwise you end up with this gross cloying sweetness that's super off-putting. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is: your food is bad, and you should feel bad.

Ingredients:

3 lb. Yams (Or Sweet Potatoes. Or...whatever. They're really the same thing on this continent)
4 TBSP Vegan Butter 
1/4 cup Soy Milk
3 TBSP Maple Syrup
1.5 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
Cinnamon

You may be asking yourself "why would anybody willingly use vegan butter and soy milk in a world where cows have not enslaved humanity? Well, some people are vegans. And we want to make them feel like they're welcome in our houses on Thanksgiving by having food they can eat, even though we secretly judge them. Also, some people of the more jewishy variety, like myself, don't eat dairy products and meat together. Which means that we're either sacrificing the butter or the turkey. And I am not sacrificing eating turkey. The point is, shut up. It's happening. Get over it. Now fill up a large pot about half way with water. Then peel the skin off of your yams and toss them in the water, teaching them the valuable Thanksgiving lesson that they were wrong for having skin, and should try harder not to have any in the future. Then, as a warning to the others, crank up the heat and boil them until you can easily jab a fork into them with no resistance.

It may look weird, but it's awesome. Kind of like Jack White.
Exactly like Jack White.

Once your yams have been sufficiently skinned, drowned, boiled, and stabbed, drain the water out of your pot. Mash them into a pulp using any combination of: a potato masher; a large fork; several small forks; your hands, because...you know, you're a man; your mind; the will of a true warrior. Once your yams are mashed, and the burns you got establishing your masculinity have eased, add in the rest of your ingredients and stir until everything's incorporated. Throw that whole mess of gloppy goodness into a bowl, sprinkle some cinnamon on top of that sucker, and go to town on it. By which I mean serve it to your friends and family. Unless you're eating alone on Thanksgiving, in which case you should shovel all of it into your mouth using your already burnt man-hands, and then lie to your co-workers on Monday about what went down. Happy Thanksgiving!

Peppermint Scnogg

Dramatization

Some of you may have noticed that I didn't post anything last week. This may or may not have to do with the Cubs being in the World Series for the first time in generations. All we know for sure is that during the unscheduled break, Halloween happened. Which means that, legally speaking, it's now the Christmas Season. You can tell from how I was totally able to go buy Eggnog at the supermarket. That's one of the main characteristics of the Christmas Season. The others are trees smothered in pounds of tinsel, popcorn strung up and hung as a warning to the others, and people in weird hats asking you for money. And what better way to celebrate a new season (or month, or day) than with booze?

Ingredients:

3 Parts Eggnog
1 Part Peppermint Schnapps (Sure, you could totally buy this from the store like some sort of fancyman who likes spending more money on less quality. Or you could be a man and make it yourself)
Mini Chocolate Chips

The first thing you're gonna need to do is find or steal some holiday cheer. Because it's barely even November, and we're gonna be stuck with obnoxious music and displays in our stores for a long time. Once you're done storing up cheer for the barren winter months, go get some eggnog. I'm experimenting with some eggnog recipes, and may end up posting one in a week or two, but for now anything you find in the store is fine. Within reason. Don't get some weird unmarked carton that has "nog" scrawled on it in crayon. Also don't get some weirdly flavored, artisan, vegan, cruelty-free, fair-trade, bespoke "egg"nog that costs 12 dollars per ounce. Just regular eggnog, like a normal person would.

Santa hat I wore through Ireland added for nostalgia purposes

Take your aggressively neutral nog and mix it with peppermint schnapps. The amounts don't really matter. It all depends on how many people you're serving, or on how sad and alone you are. The important thing is the proportions. For every 1 part of schnapps, add in 3 parts of eggnog. Mix it together and pour it into some glasses. Top it with mini chocolate chips to make it look all pretty and delicious. Because we're full of holiday cheer, and so we're gonna be festive and decorative, you hear? Or else I'm gonna turn this car around and nobody gets to go to Santa's village. It's gonna be a long couple months.

Yom Kippur 2016

Sadly, today there will be no hilarious recipe, full of the wit and charm you've come to love and expect. I know, I know, but I think one week off won't kill anybody. Probably. I'm like 60% sure. The point is, tonight starts the culmination of the Jewish High-Holy Days. A day called Yom Kippur, which, aside from being a day on which it's custom to refrain from food or drink, is considered the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. It's traditionally a time for repentance, sorrow for past misdeeds, and a commitment to real change for the future. Sadly, often these vows to change, to be better, fall by the wayside in the coming year, but my personal belief is that the constant struggle to better ourselves is just as valuable, if not more so, than any specific change we could make. Working to better ourselves is a never ending journey. I tell myself that often, while sitting on the couch, watching TV, and eating chips directly from the bag. The goal is worthy, and in many cases achievable, but it's the desire to be better and the work we put in that is truly impressive. So good luck to each person moving forward this year, may you have peace within and without, and you stay classy, San Diego.

Matzah Balls

They bled yer mama, bled yer papa, but they won't bleed you

Matzah Balls are kind of interesting. They're, by Hollywood's dumb standards anyway, the quintessential Jewish foodstuff. They taste awesome, aren't particularly hard to make, and still, pretty much the only time any of us has any is when we're at a jewish holiday meal in the certified home of a genuine Jewish grandmother. And I, for one, am sick and tired of hiding in their attics hoping for a scraps (The creepiest thing I've typed on this blog to date, ladies and gentlemen. Let's see if we can beat that record.)

Ingredients:

1 Cup Matzah Meal (For the "differently Jewish" among you, Matzah is a terrible terrible cracker Jews consume for religious reasons during Passover. Matzah Meal is what happens if you crush it into itty bitty pieces over and over, so that you never have to see its stupid matzah face again.)
4 Eggs
2.5 TBSP Schmaltz (As I've mentioned before, schmaltz is rendered chicken fat. For an inauthentic version of how to achieve this, demonstrated by a woman who is clearly writing a novel in her free time in which she murders absolutely everybody she knows, click here!)
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Ground Ginger
1 Average Sized Human's pinch of White Pepper
Chicken Stock!
Water!

The first thing you're gonna need to do is channel your inner Jewish grandmother. This mostly involves hinting to every relative you have that they really should call and visit more often unless of course they want you to sit alone and forgotten in your big empty house, and dropping the hint that they'll die of a wasting sickness if they don't start eating more. Also some light housework. Once it's all done, collect your eggs together, tearfully explain to them what they're about to go through, and then beat them until their insides are all mixed together. Add in your matzah meal, schmaltz, salt, ginger, and pepper, and stir to combine. Then cover that weird glop, shove it in the fridge, and let it think about what it's done for at least 15 minutes.

Not pictured: thousands of years of persecution, soup

While your gunk is in the fridge getting to know itself, heat up a pot full of chicken stock until it boils. Fill up a cup with water, and set it to the side. Take your matzah sludge out of the fridge (Assuming it's been at least as long as I told you to wait. Don't be using that statement as an excuse to ignore my instructions and still blame me for your inevitable demise. I'm looking at you, the entire nation of Zambia). Dip your hands into the water that you totally didn't forget to set aside, and form your matzah goop into balls about the size of a golf ball. Let them sit for a minute to get a false sense of security, and then dump those suckers right into your boiling chicken stock. Cover them and let them boil for about an hour, when they've doubled in size, are soft and fluffy throughout, and are no longer calling out for help or whistling. And that's it! Serve them in delicious soup if you're authentic. Serve them on their own if you're trying way too hard. The point is, you're not gonna have any leftovers. Also, regardless of who you are, you're like one eight more Jewish now. You're welcome.

Irish Soda Bread

This is Ireland. Leprechauns and green beer, not so much

It's that time of year again. The time of year when people dress up in green, drink alcohol, and pretend like they've known the absolute terror of driving down the wrong side of the road, a road about as wide as just one horse and buggy, while a string of trucks come at you at some stupid number of kilometers per hour. Who knows with kilometers? The point is these trucks are coming at you fast. And you can't swerve out of the way, because some Irish maniac built walls on the sides of the roads. Where was I? Oh yeah, Ireland. I went to Ireland somewhat recently, as people who stalk me through obsessive reading of this blog to glean precious geographic details about my location may be aware. And while I was there, I managed to avoid touristy and inauthentic nonsense, or what we referred to as "shillelaghs and shamrocks," to a great degree. And in that spirit, instead of giving you a recipe for some green booze or nonsense like that, I'm making some traditional Irish Soda Bread. And when I say "traditional," I mean "there are websites dedicated to preserving the heritage of this stuff." Irish people, or at least the ones who make crazy websites, take this stuff seriously. So this St. Patrick's day, when you're drunkenly pretending you're Irish to try and impress somebody in a bar, whip out a loaf of this authentic Irish fare. I'm sure they won't think you're creepy for carrying food around in your pockets.

Ingredients:

4 Cups All Purpose Flour
1.75 Cups Buttermilk
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt

Yeah, there's not much in the ingredients department. Way-too-intense Irish website builders are pretty firm on the concept that true Soda Bread only has flour, buttermilk, baking soda, and salt in it. I've lost track of how many times I read the phrase "if it has more than 4 ingredients, it's a tea cake." I don't know what a tea cake is, but that seems like a super broad statement. Are buttermilk pancakes with steak and eggs a tea cake? Apparently. Anyway, the point is, that if you were expecting sugar, raisins, currants, or any other nonsense, too bad. Your tea cakes aren't welcome here, and Erin's Isle apparently has a thing or two (or way more than two) to say about where you can stick your currants.

Extra special bonus points if you burned yourself on the oven
making muffins last week, and avoided doing it again.

The first thing you're gonna need to do is dump your flour, baking soda, and salt into a bowl. Whisk it around to mix everything together, and to aerate the flour. Add in your buttermilk, and stir by hand until it forms a dough. The longer you leave it and the more you knead it, the tougher your final product will be (because gluten), so you want to work quickly and work the dough as little as you can. Once you've freaked out several times about overworking the dough, but then gone back and worked it a little more anyway because of your crippling indecision, plop it onto a pan and form it into a disk. If you want to be super authentic, cut a cross into the top of the bread. This allows the dough to expand without forming cracks, and it allows the bread to be easily split into smaller bits. Also, if you imposing religious symbolism onto baked goods, well that's a happy bonus. Throw that mess into a 425 degree oven for 25 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350 and let it cook for another 20 minutes. And that's all there is to it. You can totally chop up some garlic and mash it with salt and butter to slather on this stuff. Or not. Either way, you've got some authentic Irish awesomeness to carry with you through the never-ending throngs of shillelaghs and shamrocks, like elvish lembas into the dark heart of Mordor. Bonus points if you trade a hunk of your bread for green alcohol to consume, thus ruining the value of having made something authentically Irish in the first place. Further bonus points if you throw a loaf at somebody's head from off of a parade float.

Pumpkin Pie

Alice's Restaurant is one of many traditional
Thanksgiving songs passed down from the
pilgrims to Arlo Guthrie, and then to us.

Well, we finally made it to the week of Thanksgiving. We made it through endless buzzfeed-style lists about things like "the best 450 ways to cook a Thanksgiving turkey," and "700 Thanksgiving Entrees that aren't turkey." And we've made it through the Christmas decorations in the stores which, by law, is blasphemy. I'm pretty sure you can be prosecuted for treason in the US for putting up Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving, but here these corporate jerks are, bold as brass, just flouting it in our faces like some sort of delicious pie. Not in my America. In my America, delicious pie is made out of actual pie, not out of department stores selling you things. It's made out of pumpkin, and spices, and it's so good that it makes all of the "pumpkin spice" everything that you've been guzzling down since the beginning of October taste hollow and meaningless. It's the flavor you finish off Thanksgiving with, and some things you just don't mess with. Don't even get me started about Black Friday.

Ingredients:

1 Can of Pumpkin (You technically can replace this with an actual pumpkin. It's kind of hard to work with, it doesn't taste much better, and it's a huge pain to get the texture right, but if you're the type of insecure person who needs to lord over everybody else how your pumpkin pie is more pumpkinny than theirs, go for it.)
2 Eggs
Approximately 3/4 Cup Soy Milk (Why soy milk? Because my pie is dairy free. Got a problem with that? Then use regular milk. What do I care?)
1/2 Cup of standard issue Sugar
1/3 Cup Dark Brown Sugar
1 tsp Ground Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Ground Ginger
1/4 tsp Ground Cloves
An average human sized pinch of Ground Nutmeg
1 Pie Crust (If you want to go traditional, just use regular pie crust. You can buy it in the store, or make your own. If you want to get funky, make a gingersnap crust. How? Take the graham cracker crust from my cheesecake recipe, and replace the graham crackers with crushed gingersnaps. You're welcome.)

The first thing you're gonna need to do is punch Christmas in the throat. It's started stretching all the way through November, and it frankly needs to learn to wait its turn. That's the lesson here. If you're a holiday, and you don't wait your turn, you get punched in the throat (I'm looking at you Valentine's Day). Once your holidays are straightened out, and have stopped acting like jerks, pour your Pumpkin, Eggs, Salt, Sugar, Brown Sugar, Cinnamon, Ginger, Cloves, and Nutmeg into a bowl and stir them together to combine. Did you catch that? That's all of the ingredients, except for the Soy Milk and the Pie Crust. And when I say "stir to combine" I don't mean "gently twirl a spoon into the pumpkin mixture with your dainty fingers." I mean stir. Until you can't point out any specific ingredients in the mix, and the whole thing looks homogenous. Then slowly stir in your Soy Milk, until your mixture is just liquidy enough to start making you nervous about whether it's still gonna turn into pie.

You ate twice your bodyweight in turkey and stuffing, and
you swore you'd never eat anything again. Then pie happened.

Now it's time to be terrified that something will go horribly wrong! Will it? Who knows? Because now it's time to pour your filling into your crust, throw the whole thing into a 350 degree oven, and let it sit for an hour. Without opening the oven and checking on it. Seriously, opening the oven will lower the heat which will change the cooking. So leave the oven shut and try not to think about all of the things that could be happening in there. After an hour, open your oven and check on it. It should be firmed up all around the edges, and just a tiny bit jiggly in the center. If it's not, it could be for a number of reasons, including the fact that you didn't listen and you opened your oven early to check on it. If despite your best efforts, you've got a puddle instead of "slightly jiggly," put it back in for another 15 minutes. Then let the pie cool for 2 hours, and then refrigerate it for another 2 hours. Because as awesome as it smells right now, it'll taste so much better once it's properly cooled. Trust me, your patience will be rewarded. Then slice it, top it with some whipped cream, and serve it. To yourself, and the other loyalists who haven't abandoned you in the name of shopping. Everybody else can put terrible nonsense pie into their mouths. The good stuff is reserved for the real Americans.

Stuffing

It's like an Escher of stuffing ingredients

As a child, we never really stuffed the turkey on Thanksgiving. Shoving bread goop up inside that bird's gross butt always seemed like a silly idea compared to concepts like stuffing aromatic herbs and vegetables up that bird's gross butt. You know, to actually produce some flavor. So when I'm talking about stuffing, I'm talking about what some people out there mistakenly refer to as "dressing." It's pretty traditional thanksgiving fare, and is often corrupted and mangled beyond recognition with nuts, berries, cornbread, and other heathen traps for the unwary. But in my mind, real stuffing is relatively simple. It's pretty much an intensely good herb and bread casserole, and since mine doesn't roast inside the grossest part of a turkey, even the vegetarians at your table will love it. Which is a nice change of pace from what they'll be feeling while eating their disgusting soy-turkey-substitute.

Ingredients:

1 lb loaf of Challah Bread 

3 Cups of Vegetable Stock

3 Eggs

1 Standard Issue Onion

5 stalks of Celery

1 TBSP Olive Oil

3 tsp of ground Thyme

1 tsp of rubbed Sage

1/2 tsp Black Pepper

An unspecified amount of Salt

The origins of this recipe are definitely my mother's. Years ago I asked her how she made stuffing, and she told me. Every year since then I've forgotten some parts and filled in the blanks myself instead of asking her again, because I can't be bothered to make multiple phone calls for the same recipe in one short lifetime. What am I, made of phone calls? I don't know exactly how close I am to the original, but I do know that what I've ended up with after all of this time tastes like my childhood memories of thanksgiving (Savory, delicious, kind of wistful, and possibly completely idealized. Who knows what it was really like?) and that's good enough for me. And now it's good enough for you. 

The first thing you're gonna need to do is to chop up your Celery and Onion, sauté them in your oil along with an AHSPS (Average human sized pinch of salt), your Black Pepper, and 1 tsp of your Thyme. Cook that hot mess over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for about 6 minutes. You want the onions and celery to be somewhat softened, but not cooked all of the way through. If you aren't sure about this, taste them, either by taking a spoon, removing a little bit, and blowing on a it until it's cool enough for your delicate mouth to handle, or by reaching into your hot pan with your hands and stuffing some onion and celery directly into your mouth and dealing with it. You know, like a man (I say things like this a lot, but in this case I totally did this).

All the delicious awesomeness of stuffing, none of the
turkey rectums

Once your vegetation is done, tear your Bread into roughly 1 inch chunks. If you've forgotten your culinary ruler and protractor, again, use your best judgement. And see me after class. Then take your Eggs, and lightly beat them until they submit to your authority by having their yolks and whites mingle together. In fear. Put your bread chunks into a bowl, and add the rest of your ingredients along with another AHSPS. Mix it all together gently. Sure, you want it mixed and you want your bread to absorb the moisture. But you don't want to squish it down too much or you'll end up with super dense stuffing. You know who eats super dense stuffing? Communists. That's why they don't have thanksgiving. Who would be thankful for that nonsense? Nobody, that's who. Take your bread gunk, shove it up in a baking dish if some kind, and then throw it in a 350 degree oven for an hour. Then take it out and eat it in front of your guests, offering bites only to those who brought suitable tribute (Alcohol). If anybody argues, challenge them to a contest to prove true ownership of the stuffing, using the traditional holiday weapons (Guilt. And alcohol). And if anybody tries to leave your meal early to line up for Black Friday shopping, hit them with the turkey carcass and disown them. Seriously.

Cranberry Sauce

Always spring for the fresh-premium cranberries. The
fresh-kinda-ok cranberries just look...wrong.

It's the holiday season, defined by Hallmark and Walmart as "the period between 1 AM on November the first, and 1 AM on January second when holiday music is played non-stop in all stores, festive decorations are placed strategically by sale items, and employees are forced to wear silly hats." The actual holiday season, at least to me and all other Americans who haven't yet submitted out wills to the enemy, starts the week of Thanksgiving. But who am I to say that we shouldn't be posting recipes for stuffing and turkey this early? I love Thanksgiving, so I won't complain too hard. Especially not after consuming all of that festive eggnog I bought on sale. Which reminds me, I need to go shopping. 

Ingredients:

12 oz Whole Cranberries

6 oz Whole Blackberries 

3/4 cup of Brown Sugar

1/4 cup of White Sugar

1/4 cup Orange Juice

1/2 tsp Ground Cinnamon

1/4 tsp Lemon Juice

1 smallish sized human's pinch of Salt

1 smallish sized human's pinch of Cayenne Pepper

Here's the problem with cranberry sauce. Despite being highly awesome, and surprisingly easy to make, it suffers from everybody having grown up with the canned glop (which is pretty much just gelatinous sugar goop), and not knowing that real cranberry sauce tastes exactly like holiday cheer and winning the big cash prize on your local radio station's phone-in contest. It's true. Look it up. For some people this means that they refuse to try legit cranberry sauce under any circumstances. For others it means they make weird fusion dishes like mango curry cranberry chutney. Either way these people should be banned from your holiday table. 

Once you've shunned the nonbelievers, throw all of your ingredients into a pot and crank the heat all the way up to...low. Cook the pot of goodness, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes at which point the sugar should be dissolved, the cranberries should just be starting to soften, and you should be wondering how this stupid pot full of very solid berries is ever going to turn into cranberry sauce. Then turn the heat up to medium, and let it cook down, stirring occasionally, for another 15 minutes when the cranberries start to burst. It's less dramatic than it sounds. At this point, it should look and smell like the holidays. And happiness. And cranberry sauce. Pretty much, it will look and smell like everything that 10 year old Harry Potter probably daydreamed of while he was living in a cupboard and eating spiders for extra protein, which I assume he did. 

Nothing says "holidays" like semi-gelatinous goop that makes
everything it touches taste incredible. Dickens said that.

Once you've got your sauce looking fictional-orphan-tantalizingly good, take the back of your spoon and lightly smash the remaining whole berries until most of them are crushed and your sauce has started to thicken. If it's still kind of thin, don't worry. It thickens up a lot as it cools down. There's very little chance of your sauce staying super thin and ruining your meal for everybody. The next part is gonna be the hardest. Wait. Without eating it. For what seems like forever, until your sauce is room temperature. Then put it in the fridge and wait some more. For no less than half an hour. It's gonna suck, but your patience will be rewarded. Take it out of the fridge, gather or make some friends (or bribe strangers, who will be friends after they taste this, assuming they're not crazy people who end up harvesting your organs), and throw together an awesome holiday meal. Bonus points if you really get in the holiday spirit by rubbing it in the faces of those people you were shunning earlier. Which means you'll have to Un-shun them for a minute or two, rub their faces in it, and then re-shun then before they know what hit them. Nobody said holiday bonus points came easy. 

Caramel Popcorn Balls

It looks innocent, but those kernels will mess you up man

The Halloween times are upon us again. Which means it's time to misappropriate a harvest festival as an excuse to drink and party! And that also means drunk people will be angrily trying to defend their costume choice. Or the assertion that their costume is a costume at all. And finally, that means it's time for the annual fear-a-palooza that news stations run each year about people putting crap in candy to harm trick or treaters. Which has almost never happened in history. But that doesn't stop us from freaking the hell out and watching the news, which lets them sell more advertising! But don't worry about fictional poisoned candy this year, because this year you're going to be that super creepy guy in the neighborhood giving out creepy homemade treats. Why? Because they're awesome.

Ingredients:

9 Cups of popped Popcorn
1.5 Cups Brown Sugar
1 Cup Water
1/2 Cup Standard-Issue Sugar
1 Cup Light Corn Syrup (No, this isn't the same as high-fructose corn syrup, and yes, you should actually use it. Unless you like grainy caramel and sadness.)
2 and 1/4 tsp of White Vinegar
3/4 tsp Salt
1/2 Cup of Butter
More butter
All of the butter

The first thing you're gonna need to do is take your popcorn, and dump it into a large pot or bowl. Wasn't that easy? Don't get used to it. Now combine your Brown Sugar, Regular Sugar, Corn Syrup, Water, Vinegar, and Salt in a sauce pan and get ready to not leave the kitchen for a while. Crank the heat up to around a medium-high, and, without stirring, move the pan around to combine the ingredients. And bring it to a boil. Oh, it's boiling? Good, now you get to freak out. Because it really really looks like you should be stirring it. But too much, or in some cases any stirring, will lead to crystallization, which leads to crappy foodstuffs, which leads to a life of depression and alcohol abuse, which leads to mixed dancing. So freak out, and maybe stir or maybe don't, but always feel guilty about it. For how long? Until your fledgling caramel reaches the "Hard Ball" stage. What the crap does that mean? It means that your mixture is between 250 and 265 degrees. Which is super useful if you have a candy/frying thermometer like me, and actually remember to use it....unlike me. For those of us without the financial or mental capacity to make our lives easier, we're gonna rely on the more archaic method. Drop a little bit of your mixture into some cold water. If it's at the "Hard Ball" stage, it'll form thick threads of sugary goodness, which you can pick up and form into a ball that maintains its shape when you set it down. Also, Keanu Reeves will be there for some reason.

Orr'Vill the Terrible, accepting tribute from his subjects

Once your caramel is playing hardball, turn the heat down to low, and add in your Butter. Stir it until it's fully incorporated, and then stir it a couple more times to make up for all of the pent up stirring you didn't get to express earlier on. Turn off the heat, and pour the goop on to the popcorn. Try not to spill any on yourself. Seriously. What's worse than burning yourself? Burning yourself with something sticky, that stays stuck to you and keeps burning you because it loves the way you taste, but wants you a little more well done. Once you've finished treating your burns and weeping softly in the corner, stir the caramel and the popcorn together and then let it cool for 5-10 minutes. Take some Butter, and lube up a cookie sheet, plate, or some other containment vessel. Also butter up your hands. Because this stuff is sticky. Form the popcorn goop into balls, and place it on your plate/cookie sheet/whatever. Re-butter your hands as necessary. And there you have it! Homemade treats that will creep out your neighbors, until they taste it, at which point they'll beg you for more. Assuming it hasn't pulled out all of their teeth. Maybe even then.