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New England Hot Dog Buns 1 Jul 2020 11:00 AM (4 years ago)

Independence Day is coming up. All the local festivities are cancelled, so we’re heading out on the road in our camper to see how the rest of America is doing. It’s been over 100 days spent within a few miles of our home, around family only, so this feels particularly adventurous.

Apparently, RV sales are insane right now as Americans pivot to socially distanced domestic travel. While it might make the campgrounds and roads more congested, I really think this is a good thing for us as humans.

We’ve been camping with our little Airstream for 7 years now, and one thing we noticed immediately is that American families don’t road trip anymore. We’ve camped from coast to coast, and especially in the southwest National Parks, most of the visitors are international travellers renting RVs or retired people. Very few families with kids.

Maybe American families work too much, maybe we take our National Parks for granted, maybe youth sports make family time difficult, maybe camping isn’t cool, maybe plane tickets are quicker and cheaper. Probably a combination of those things. But the pandemic might just change that.

Driving through our country, rather than fly over it, gives a very different perspective of who we are, how big and diverse our United States is. I remember one road trip where we took the kids up the coast from San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle….then over to the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo and the Iowa State Fair. It was complete cultural whiplash, and it was wonderful.

I can’t help but think this stateside travel and camping boom will be good for our country and our nation’s kids. It’s good to see different parts of the country, good to see different people, good to see the outdoors. We have a strict no-digital-device rule when we road trip, so it will be good to disconnect too.

Which brings me back to the title of this post.

Regional food quirks are my favorite part of domestic travel. When you travel out of the country, you expect food adventures. But I’m telling you, travel a few states away, even simple groceries and farmer’s markets are different. It’s crazy.

Even the gas station foods are different: Midwest pop gives way to soda, peanuts get bigger as you travel South, and strange things like Whoopie Pies, Pepperoni Rolls, and Pasties are sold near the checkout counters.

But who knew HOT DOG BUNS are better in Maine? I did my residency in Maine, the girls were born in the hospital I trained in. I remember buying hot dog buns the first time and I was baffled.

They come in a slab. A big slab of bread with partial cuts in the top.

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It seemed like the laziest thing ever. And then I realized the Yankee Ingenuity of the whole situation–super easy to make, top-loading, self-standing, born-to-toast…brilliant.

Now that we’re back in the Midwest, we have to make our own, which is very easy to do with the perfect pan. Upside of being back in the Midwest, it’s much easier to find the sport peppers and neon green relish to make the proper dog.

Because even though New England has the best buns, Chicago still has the best toppings. Combine the two and it’s the best of America in a hot dog.

Enjoy summer!

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Milk Bar Birthday Cake 6 May 2020 12:57 PM (4 years ago)

This is a ridiculous cake for ridiculous times. This past weekend marked 50 days into the Michigan stay at home order. Other than a daily walk around the neighborhood, the kids have not left the house for 50 days: no school, no church, no stores, no friends, no sports, no driving practice.

I’m still going to work seeing kids, and doing all the shopping. No one else at home has been to grocery store to see the dystopian scenes of empty shelves, people wearing makeshift masks and face shields, directional paths to walk through the stores, and 6-foot markers everywhere.

Sometimes, the ridiculousness is too much–like the couple I saw this weekend wearing bras as facemasks, and welding face shields—trying to make a decision on what box of tea to buy. Sometimes it’s just so sad– watching the elderly walk warily around stores, struggling to reach an item and feeling like you shouldn’t help.

Many items are in short supply, but one thing we have plenty of right now, is time. We have time to learn sourdough bread that takes 3 days, time to take a week making the nine components in a single bowl of Ivan Orkin’s Shio Ramen, time to learn how to juggle and play the harmonica. Time to watch Netflix, and Disney Plus, and PBS. Plenty of time.

And time is all you need to make this cake. Christina Tosi’s Milk Bar Birthday Cake has to be the most Instagrammable Cake in America, but it’s not a technically difficult cake to make. You could completely mess every layer up, and it will still turn out fine. You just need time to order the oddball supplies, time to make the components, and time to let it sit.

If you’ve never heard about this cake, take a few minutes to watch Christina Tosi talk about her theory on cake. If you have Netflix, it’s worth watching her entire episode on Chef’s Table. Because you’ve got time right now.

The even crazier thing about this cake, and pretty much everything else sold in Milk Bar, is her transparency. She posts the recipes for everything in the bakery. She’s like the Penn and Teller of bakers. She openly shares her secrets, and somehow the magic is stronger.

So if you can eat dairy and egg, just head over to the Milk Bar website and follow her directions. If you can’t…then stay tuned for a dairy-free and egg-free version–a milk-free Milk Bar Birthday Cake–if you will.

So what do you think? It’s a really cute cake. It’s sweet, and salty, and crunchy, and homey. It has a Netflix episode devoted to it. You have time to order up the supplies from Amazon and putter around in the kitchen. And if you’re worried about gaining that COVID#19 pounds…it’s only a little 6 inch cake.

This is the perfect cake to celebrate….something. I don’t know what. Celebrate all the celebrations we’ve missed.

Have I made my case on why this is the perfect time to make this cake? Ok, let’s go!

First off, you’re going to need to order some supplies, because this stuff is not normal. 1.) 1/4 sheet pan 2.) 6 inch cake cutter 3.) 4 inch acetate cake collars 4.) Glucose Syrup 5.) Citric Acid

Secondly, you’re going to need some slightly odd ingredients from the grocery: 1.) Sprinkles 2.) Cake Flour and 3.) Grapeseed oil.

You could swap out canola oil, but why not try something new? I found grapeseed oil in the olive oil section of my grocery. It’s a spacy green color, but doesn’t taste green.

The rest of the ingredients are pretty basic pantry items.

There are 4 components to the cake: the actual cake layer baked in a 1/4 sheet pan and cut into the round shape, the addictive crunchy cake crumbs, the cake soak, and the frosting. You can make all these components at your leisure and store them in the fridge until you are ready to assemble the cake.

Once you assemble the cake, it freezes for at least 12 hours and then it thaws in the fridge for about 3 hours before eating.

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And if it weren’t enough…this cake actually tastes better with time. The first day, it’s great. Well actually, it’s ridiculous. It’s so sweet and silly, you mostly just laugh at it and yourself for making it.

But the next day around coffeetime, when the need for another taste of the sweet bomb starts haunting you, and the salty-sweet crunchy bits have soaked up some vanilla cake soak and the cake layers start melding into the tangy cream cheese frosting…oh man.

In that moment, the stay-at-home order is just a little easier to bear.

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Hot Cross Buns 8 Apr 2020 12:04 PM (5 years ago)

First off, I don’t even know what to say, other than…the world is upside down. Kids have been home for 3 weeks now, school was just canceled for the rest of the year. I’m obviously still going to work, caring for kids. Babies are being born, kids still need their immunizations, but the majority of my visits are now telemedicine.

Thankfully, some local factories donated face masks to our office. I don’t know what we’d do otherwise, we can’t even order masks from our medical suppliers. It’s just so crazy, everywhere.

It’s Holy Week in lockdown, without services to attend, just adding to how odd this whole situation is. Just…keep…swimming, right?

Anyway, today I taught kid #2 how to make our egg-free, dairy-free hot cross buns and she did a really good job.

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My original recipe uses currants and maraschino cherries instead of candied citron.  The pantry was little bare today, and I didn’t want to brave the grocery store, so I just used golden raisins, the last of the maraschino cherries, and a few frozen cherries. It still worked out fine. A little juice from the cherries gives the dough a light pink color.

Of course, they were devoured immediately, so if you plan on having these for Easter Morning, you’ll have to hide them from the homebound hungry hordes!

We have other Easter traditions to fill this week, homemade Cadbury Cream Eggs and Carrot Cupcakes, so even if we don’t get to making another batch, it will be ok.

Really, everyone, it will be ok. Happy Easter!

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Not exactly a t-shirt to wear on Easter, but it worked for today.

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Irish Soda Bread 10 Mar 2020 5:57 PM (5 years ago)

The first time I had Irish soda bread was as a 4th year medical student at Mott Children’s Hospital on a dreary Saturday morning in March. I was on my sub-internship in pediatrics. I’d been up all night with really sick kids, completely over my head, running scut work to (hopefully) help the busy pediatric residents and fellows while managing my very small panel of relatively simple patients.

I was at the end medical school, months from being a pediatric intern myself. The more I learned, the more I realized I didn’t know. There was so much to know. I was begging the morning to come while subsisting on hospital-issue saltines, peanut butter, and coffee.  

The morning came, and so did our attending physician, a wonderful pediatric rheumatologist with a basket full of hot bread, triple citrus marmalade, and orange juice.  She was like a personification of Mrs. Beaver from C.S. Lewis and her bread was pretty much heaven.

All my anxieties of the night before melted away. We had done our jobs well, the children were all well cared for. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I still had three more years of pediatric residency ahead of me. Three more years of 80 hour weeks to learn about children before I’d be truly alone and caring for patients on my own. Until then, I’d be guided carefully by calm and confident attendings, like Barbara Adams. I wasn’t alone.

Many years later, I was baking through my Martha Stewart Baking Handbook and made Irish soda bread for the first time. I was instantly transported back to that post-call morning and Dr. Adam’s heavenly bread.

Irish soda bread is a “quick bread”, meaning it uses baking powder and soda to raise, rather than yeast, and doesn’t need extra time to rise. It comes together in a similar fashion to scones.

This version is a touch sweet with the addition of golden raisins. I think this is technically called “Spotted Dog”, but that’s just a bit odd, so we’ll stick with Irish soda bread.

Regardless of technicalities…Irish Soda Bread or Spotted Dog…this warm loaf goes well with marmalade and tea. (Gray Michigan March and post-call pediatric residents are optional.) Enjoy!

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Chewy Whole Grain Energy Cookies 11 Feb 2020 3:35 PM (5 years ago)

Winter here in Michigan, there’s a volunteer-run indoor track season called the Michigan Indoor Track Series. Unlike high school athletic association regulated sports with all the rules we’ve become so accustomed to, MITS is pure running: any age kid from elementary to high school pays an entry fee, gets to compete in any event they want, wearing whatever they want…so long as it isn’t a school sports uniform. There’s a qualifying standard for the “state meet”. Run, jump, or throw that standard at any meet during the season, and you get to go to state. Simple.

It’s one of the coolest things I’ve watched. Without school uniforms to divide them, kids just mingle and meet each other. They try new events on a whim. Kids figure out what heat they should be in, based on a guess of how fast they run. They assemble relay teams on the fly, without regard to age or school or even knowing how fast their new friend is, just for the fun of passing the baton.

I can’t think of many things in my life that have become less regulated over time. School, parenting, home building, growing a garden, medicine, even food blogging–all choked under rules upon rules. Maybe that’s why I find MITS so beautiful.

Anyway, all that really has little to do with this recipe. We’re four paragraphs in, and I haven’t even mentioned the name of the recipe, and now I’ve torpedoed any hope that the Google Algorithm will rank this post. The only reason this story about MITS relates, is because I invented this recipe after a recent indoor track meet.

But here’s a teaser photo in case you haven’t “Jumped to Recipe” yet.

Now back to the backstory on the cookies.

It was after an indoor meet, my girls had raced the mile and a 4 x 200 relay (a motley bunch of distance girls trying their luck at a sprint, failing, but having a ball). The girls were doing some 800 repeats on the track to finish out the day while I chatted with the coach. My younger daughter came over to us, looking terrible.

Coach asked…um, when did you last eat? Apparently not since a banana at breakfast.

It was 3pm. She’d raced a mile, a 200, and three 800s on a banana.

Crying out loud, girl. So we fed her, and she perked right up.

Feeding athletes is a colossal challenge with food allergies. All the “strong” foods we think of are off the table. No high fat yogurt, nuts, eggs, granola bars, protein bars. So out of that event, these Energy Cookies were born. They’re whole grain, dairy-free, egg-free, and nut-free. They freeze perfectly and can adapt easily with any additional dried fruit, seeds, or chocolate you’d like.

I suppose my vegan friends can substitute out the honey, but I had to use honey in this recipe. Because it’s special honey. It’s Bonnie’s honey from her happy bees.

Bonnie is a nurse in our office, and she just doesn’t stop. She always says it like it is. She ran her first marathon at age 50. And then decided to take up beekeeping a few years ago. I challenge any vegan to find a sugar beet, corn kernel, rice grain, or sugar cane stalk more beloved and earth friendly than those bees. Honey from a friend with well-loved bees makes all the difference in this recipe.

So go super-charge your little runners, rowers, lifters, and swimmers. Teach them to fuel their bodies well so they can be strong, and encourage variety in their sport. There’s nothing more fun than watching a distance kid try their hand at a 60 meter dash or a long jump. There’s no better time than youth to sample a range of sport.

Fall and winter running is winding down and spring crew season is upon us. The girls are already itching to get out on the water. Over the next few months, wiry runner legs and arms will turn into thick muscle, as the intensely individual sport of running gives way to rowing, arguably the most team oriented sport on earth.

And this year, we have some pretty great cookies to keep them going.

Now this is a properly prepared track backpack!

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Hopefully this crew season will start out better than last year’s first novice race on the Grand River! 😂

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Peppermint Stick Ice Cream 20 Dec 2019 8:27 AM (5 years ago)

The arrival of peppermint stick ice cream in stores is the signal that Christmas has started. When I was a kid, the Schwan’s man would bring peppermint stick ice cream to our small town. Quantities were limited so one family couldn’t buy the truck out and stash it in the deep freeze.

I thought this was just a small town issue until today, in our big city grocery store, I saw a sign on the Hudsonville Peppermint Stick ice cream limiting people to 2 containers. This is serious business.

For better or worse, when you make this at home, there are no limits! This dairy-free and egg-free peppermint stick ice cream is very easy to make. It’s just my basic vanilla ice cream with some crushed candy canes. I add a little peppermint extract to punch up the peppermint, but you can skip it as well.

If you want to take this over the top, serve it up with some dairy-free chocolate syrup and hot cocoa. Merry Christmas!

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No Bake Pumpkin Cream Pie 25 Nov 2019 8:07 AM (5 years ago)

I love pumpkin pie. It’s always been one of my favorites. As a kid, I once asked for pumpkin pie instead of a birthday cake. I love it that much.

I’m going to save everyone the trouble and tell you straight off: it’s impossible to recreate the classic baked custard style pumpkin pie without any eggs or dairy. Impossible. The vegan blogs will try and tell you that concoctions of tofu, agar agar, agave, and pumpkin will bake up to taste “just like the real thing”.

It’s just not true. I’ve tried.

So this is not baked pumpkin pie. It’s not your classic pumpkin pie.

No, this pumpkin pie is the other pumpkin pie that shows up on Midwest Thanksgiving tables…because it turns out, most kids don’t like pumpkin pie. I was the weird one.

This is the creamy no-bake pumpkin pie, usually brought by an older aunt or lady from church who knows. She knows this pie only takes minutes to make, but will disappear faster than the other pumpkin pies that took hours of prep. She knows the kids will love this one.

And it’s all true. This pie takes minutes to make. It’s easy enough that the kids make it now. It doesn’t take up precious space in the oven on Thanksgiving Day when all heck is breaking loose.

And it’s always the first pie to disappear.

Happy Thanksgiving from the Midwest!

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Mini Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Maple Cream Cheese Filling 27 Oct 2019 12:20 PM (5 years ago)

Fall baking is in full swing here. Everything is some variation of pumpkin, apple, and spice. These mini pumpkin whoopie pies are perfect for the season, and are the cutest treats!

Pumpkin whoopie pies look fussy and difficult, but they’re actually no more difficult than pumpkin muffins…and take a look at the recipe…there’s some whole wheat flour in here!

Shh. Don’t let the kids know any of this!

Of course, you can make these into regular sized whoopie pies, but I love the tiny size. They fit perfectly in our little bento boxes for lunches, and it’s just more fun to eat tiny things.

These also freeze perfectly. Pop them from the freezer into a lunch box, and they’ll be thawed by lunch time. And even if they’re still a little frozen…they taste pretty awesome that way too!

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Caramel Apple Dip 16 Oct 2019 9:54 AM (5 years ago)

It’s fall here in Michigan, the varieties of apples at the market are astounding…Vestar, Zestar, Molly, Blondee…. to name a few new ones I saw today. I just finished making a batch of this dairy free caramel apple dip, and my parents stopped by with a new apple variety called “Smitten“. Never heard of that variety either, but we sliced it up and it’s fantastic. Especially with caramel!

I have a love-hate relationship with caramel making.

On one hand, I love the magic of turning sugar and water into caramel. My dairy-free salted caramel ice cream recipe still amazes me when I make it. How can such magic come from simple ingredients?

On the other hand, I’ve burned a lot of caramel (and myself) learning to make it properly. Cleaning burned caramel out of a saucepan in no small task.

This dairy free caramel apple dip is as foolproof a caramel method I’ve come up with, and I’ve made A LOT of caramel.

The most basic (and difficult) caramel recipes start with heating straight sugar in a saucepan. As the sugar melts, it starts to caramelize quickly. This might be good for some people, not for me. This method usually results in burning half the sugar while the rest is trying to melt. It’s a mess.

This recipe gives you two buffers against disaster: water and corn syrup.

The water dissolves the sugar first, and allows you time to calmly caramelize the sugar as the water slowly evaporates off. The corn syrup is an invert sugar and keeps crystals from forming and generally smooths the whole process out.

You still have to watch the caramel closely, but it’s not going to go from clear to burnt in the blink of an eye.

Some Michigan apples from the Fulton Street Farmer’s Market!

Some Dairy Free Caramel Apple Dip Tips

My kids are starting to cook from Speedbump. Until now, I’ve been writing recipes to other moms with some understanding of baking. Going forward, I need to be writing to the level of a 12 year old boy, in order to avoid disasters in my own kitchen. Hence…the baking tips.

• Wear long sleeves. Caramel can spatter, so protect your arms.

• When in doubt, heat slowly and err on the side of under-caramelizing the sugars. You can always keep heating the sugar to deepen the caramel, you can’t go back once it’s burnt. Sometimes it’s helpful to spoon a little caramel on a white plate to see the true color.

• If you mess up, try again. It’s just a cup of sugar and few squirts of corn syrup. No biggie.

• If you want more salt, add some flaky salt at the end. Vanilla is really expensive right now, so I swap out bourbon at the end.

• Dairy-free caramel apple dip is perfect for lunch-making. I mean, who really wants plain apple slices, when caramel is an option. We use 2oz condiment containers from the restaurant supply store.

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Blueberry Boy Bait 28 Aug 2019 4:15 PM (5 years ago)

I kid you not. 6:20am on Sunday morning and I’m enjoying the silence and a cup of coffee, hidden away in a corner of the house while this experimental blueberry crumb cake is baking.

“Pish pish pish pish.”

A little barefoot person is coming down the stairs.

“Pish pish pish“

Shuffling into the kitchen.

“Sniff sniff“

Smelling the baking buckle.

(Long pause)

“MOM!!! WHAT IS THAT AMAZING SMELL!?!”

And that was the end of quiet coffee time.

Of course he didn’t believe me when I said it was called “Blueberry Boy Bait”. And I certainly didn’t take the name seriously when I decided to bake it early in the morning during my quiet hours.

But here it is. Blueberry Boy Bait. For real.

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