The Cupcake Story

A couple weeks ago, I embarked on a project with my daughters because we wanted something sweet to eat. We chose to make up some cupcakes; I had bought a mix (gosh forbid, I did not make them homemade! Oh the shame! haha) initially for making cupcakes for a school function but I can always buy another mix (or make them homemade) the closer it gets to the school function.

I let them measure everything out and mix it themselves. Nessa filled the muffin tins with the paper liners, she is very proud of that as you can see here. She would not let anyone touch the cupcake liners and her famous phrase was "Back Off Jack!". She is a funny girl, I still cannot believe some of the comments that come out of her mouth.

Finally, when they were done baking and cooling, it was time to frost. Kids + Frosting = HUGE MESS;(sure wish I could snap pictures of the mess we had before it was cleaned up, I just thought of why I did not do that, I guess hindsight is 20/20) but it is an equation that was well worth the picture effort. They really enjoyed themselves; it was a great project for us for some great quality time and gave them a treat too. Other than Nessa's snide comments when anyone got too close to "her" cupcakes, it was a lot of fun. Except now I need to train them to clean up their mess... they still get Mom to do it!

This is Nessa licking the beaters, it is the fun part of baking.

Nicole loves to frost cupcakes.

Nessa ate more than she frosted, which goes with the territory with being 3 yrs old. This is how she normally eats cupcakes and these were so moist that we had a huge mess every time she wanted to eat a cupcake. Oh well, that is what happens with kiddos. Good thing they wash well.

My Dill Pickle Recipe

Here is a great recipe for dill pickles. I make these about every 2 years and I have never had to buy a jar of pickles in about 6 years. It sure is a money saver as well as tasting better than commercial pickles since you do not have to buy individual jars at the store. My recipe makes about 7 quarts so I just double it and make about 14 quarts of dills. I also make my own sweet pickles and my own bread and butter pickles, but we will just start with the dills here. I got my recipe out of my grandma's old cookbook called Freezing and Canning Cookbook by the Food Editors of Farm Journal; copyright is 1963 and if you can find this at a used book store or a vintage book store, it is a great book (and no my store does not have it, I already checked).

In this picture, on the left is my sweet pickle slices and the right is my dills which uses this recipe.

Fresh Pack Dill Pickles

17-18 lbs (3"-5") pickling cucumbers
2 gallons of water
1 1/2 cup salt
6 cups vinegar
3/4 cup salt
1/4 cup sugar
9 cups water
2 tbsp whole pickling spices
whole mustard seeds
dill heads, fresh or dried

1. Wash cucumbers; cover with brine made by adding 1 1/2 cups salt to 2 gallons of water. Let stand overnight. Drain.
2. Combine vinegar, 3/4 cup salt, sugar, water, and pickling spices (tied loosely in a cloth bag). Heat to boiling.
3. Pack cucumbers into hot quart jars. Add 3 dill heads and 2 tsp mustard seeds to each jar. Pour boiling vinegar mixture, spice bag removed, over cucumbers to within 1/2" of jar tops. Adjust lids. Process in boiling water bath (212 degrees F) for 20 minutes.
4. Remove jars from canner and complete seals unless closures are self-sealing type. Makes 7 quarts.

Notes:
A. Letting the cucumbers stand overnight in the salt water gives them their crunch. Do not skip this step or else your pickles will be soft and not at all crispy.
B. You can not only pack these as whole pickles, you can slice them or make spears out of them and do the same for the other directions no matter how you cut the cucumbers.
C. Utilize your farmer's market for your dill heads and cucumbers, they are willing to cut deals on bulk purchasing. I usually buy about 40-50 lbs of cucumbers at a time since I make 3 different kinds of pickles.
D. Beware of the boiling vinegar mixture, the fumes will knock out a horse, they are very strong. Ventilate your kitchen well when making pickles.
E. I NEVER open my pickles until 2 weeks after I pickle them, that way it makes sure they have a great dill taste when you do open them, sometimes cucumbers need the time in that confined space of the jar to soak up that great dill flavor.

Marinated Cucumber and Tomatoes

This is an interesting little dish that my daughters just love. It is very simple and easy to make. They could snack on these all the time. When my oldest daughter takes a bowl of them to school, kids look at her funny because she brought veggies for her lunch or snack. What a concept, a kid that eats her veggies! This works well with an abundance of tomatoes and cucumbers that you have in the garden. The kids raided Grandma's garden for the cucumbers and tomatoes that I used here. You can add onions to this also.

Marinated Cucumber and Tomatoes

2 cups vinegar
1 cup water
2 Tbsp sugar (if desired)
2 medium sized cucumbers, sliced
2 tomatoes (any variety, cut into wedges)

Mix together the vinegar, sugar, and water. Peel cucumbers and slice, then slice the tomatoes into wedges. Add sliced cucumbers and tomatoes. Marinate for at least a day. Then enjoy!

Notes:
1. You can use a mix of plain white vinegar and apple cider vinegar or red wine vinegar for extra flavor.
2. You can omit the sugar if you want to. It just gives a little bit of sweetness against the tangy of the vinegar.

Lip Smackin', Finger Lickin', Mouth Waterin' BBQ Ribs

We love ribs! Those 3 little words say it all. Every chance we get, we BBQ up some tasty ribs. In this recipe is my husbands signature BBQ rub, and the directions to get some of the best ribs out there ready on your dinner plate. If you have access to a smoker (which we do sometimes as we have an electric smoker and smoker box), you can smoke these with the rub on for about 2 hours before cooking. This helps to tenderize the meat and get flavors to smash together. The wood that we use are alder chunks, but you can use any flavor wood you want. Other flavors that we like are apple, cherry, hickory, mesquite (great for chicken), and cedar (great for fish).

Rich's Signature BBQ Rub

1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup raw sugar or white sugar (using raw sugar makes it not too sweet)
1/2 cup coarse salt
1/4 cup paprika
2 Tbsp seasoned salt
2 Tbsp dry mustard
2 Tbsp freshly ground pepper
1 Tbsp chili powder (not a blend)
1 tsp dry parsley flakes
1 tsp celery salt
1 tsp onion salt
1/2 tsp pepper flakes (if you like a little spicy)
1/2 tsp dried basil

Mix together and store in airtight container.

For the ribs: We use a beef rib whenever we can, yeah there is more bone to deal with but if you do this just right, the meat will just fall off the bone. You can also use pork ribs and they taste good too. Note: Remember with pork ribs you need to make sure the internal temperature is 160 degrees or above or else you can get food poisoning from undercooked meat.

Rub your ribs as a slab or you can cut the slab up into individual ribs and rub that way also. We always keep the slab intact, but you have to strip the membranes off the back so they do not become tough and chewy. To do this just take a knife and get it started and then just pull it off until the ribs are very pliable (meaning you can bend the slab in half then you know all the membranes are off because the slab is not very pliable with the membranes intact. It just looks like a thin white skin on the underside of the ribs. The rib rub will not penetrate the membrane so do your best to get it off). Rub liberally with BBQ rub and put in the refrigerator for minimum 8 hours, but 24-48 hours is best for optimum flavor.

If you are going to smoke the ribs, put them in the smoker with your wood chips and turn it on, smoke for about 2-3 hours, changing chips at least twice when they burn down. You can tell you need more chips when the smoker stops showing visible smoke. If you have a charcoal grill, you can get a smoker box and smoke them as you cook them, that works well also. Just get a smoker box (take a look at this picture to know what you need to get if you are not sure about what a smoker box looks like: Smoker Box Picture ) and you put the chips in there and put it on the BBQ rack in the center and place ribs around the smoker box so all the ribs get evenly smoked while cooking.

After you smoke them, or if you are skipping the smoking; turn on the BBQ grill on low and let it heat first. Place ribs on rack and cook it very low heat farthest away from the BBQ burner if you are using a gas grill. Cook it about 4 hours or until done, some grills cook at different pace so check them frequently.

If you like wet ribs, put on your sauce in the last 30 minutes of cooking so it carmelizes on the ribs. Here is the link to the sauce that we make and enjoy frequently: Sweet and Smoky BBQ Sauce Recipe. IF you like dry ribs, just skip the saucing and have some on the table just in case you like a little dipping sauce.

**Note: if you like corn on the cob on the grill: Husk and corn making sure you get the threads off as best you can, butter your corn (we use a honey butter consisting of butter and honey until a spreadable consistency), wrap your corn in foil and place on grill rack with ribs in the last 40 minutes of cooking to get some great BBQ corn to go with those ribs**

Are you hungry yet? I thought so, now go and BBQ up some ribs and corn!