Posted by Jamie Stahl

Back To The Future Day!

Happy Back To The Future Day!

Today is Wednesday October 21, 2015 and at 4:29pm pst, Marty McFly, Dr, Emmett Brown, and Jennifer Parker arrived in Hill Valley, California via a flying DeLorean.  Thirty years ago, the first Back To The Future film came out and in order to celebrate the anniversary, the world has McFlipped Out!  Some of the focus of today is the fact that there will no longer be a “future” in the franchise and a lot of people have been discussing what the second film predicted would be normal life in 2015.  Others are focusing on the trilogy as a whole.  Regardless of which movie you like best or year you were born, unless you are living under a rock, you have probably heard at least once that today is Back To The Future Day.

I thought it would be a fun way of commemorating the event by baking a cake from the original film.  In the beginning of the movie, in 1985, the McFly family is having dinner and all of the dysfunction between everyone is clearly visible.  Lorraine (Marty’s mother) casually throws a homemade cake onto the table to let her family know that their Uncle Joey won’t be coming home from prison, so everyone can just help themselves to the wasted “welcome home” cake.  It doesn’t seem like a very important scene, but it foreshadows some familial relationships that Marty encounters in 1955.

“Uncle Jailbird Joey” Cake 

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9in x 13in cake pan

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 9in x 13in cake pan

Pour contents of cake mix into large mixing bowl.

Pour contents of cake mix into large mixing bowl

Add in eggs, oil, and water

Add in eggs, oil, and water

Mix ingredients until wet

Mix ingredients until wet

Beat with mixer on medium speed for 2 minutes

Beat with mixer on medium speed for 2 minutes

Pour cake mix into pan and put it in the oven for 34-38 minutes.

Pour cake mix into pan and put it in the oven for 34-38 minutes

Poke the inside with a toothpick to make sure it is completely cooked. Remove from oven and let cool 10-15 minutes.

Poke the inside with a toothpick to make sure it is completely cooked. Remove from oven and let cool 10-15 minutes

Once the cake is cooled, frost it with white frosting and use black icing to draw a "jail cell"

Once the cake is cooled, frost it with white frosting and use black icing to draw a “jail cell”

fill in the background of the jail cell with blue icing

fill in the background of the jail cell with blue icing

Using red icing, write "Welcome Home" on top and "Uncle Joey" on the bottom of the cake

Using red icing, write “Welcome Home” on top and “Uncle Joey” on the bottom of the cake

Draw in "Jailbird" using black, blue, and yellow icing.

Draw in “Jailbird” using black, blue, and yellow icing.

Enjoy!

 

*Food Network Star Season 12*

FNS12 New York

Hi readers!  This is a pretty exciting announcement.  I just received information about casting for the upcoming twelfth season of Food Network Star.  If you are interested, there is an online application to fill out that you can find on www.FoodNetwork.com/Casting.  Make sure to bring a resume and photo of yourself to the open casting call that will take place in New York City on Monday November 2, 2015 from 10am to 1pm.  The location is Social Bar & Grill in Hell’s Kitchen.  For additional information you can visit www.JSCasting.com.

Good Luck!

I Had Such A Lovely Evening With The Whole Family

12080449_1636732169939054_798464674_nI’d like to take the opportunity to share with my readers about a not so pleasant food adventure.  Using my blog to my advantage, I have the platform to promote food I really enjoy and warn you about food experiences that have not been pleasurable.  I think that math was probably my worst subject in school, but if I understand the concept of probability correctly, with the amount of food adventures I go on, I’m bound to land on a dud every now and then.

There could be a million (that number might be exaggerated, but again, I’m not good at math) reasons that a food adventure could go wrong.  Without making things too complicated, here’s a breakdown of what I deem to be the most common causes of food misadventures.

  1. dirty location

  2. rude staff

  3. gross food

  4. obnoxious fellow customers

  5. a long wait

Though, witnessing one of these issues may ruin your entire outing, a combination of them is almost a guarantee that you will have a shitty experience.  And if having an “almost guarantee” is not what you are looking for, then I recommend going for the “two-for-one special.”  The twofer is when you decide to leave the current food adventure you are on due to the miserable situation and embark on a new food adventure that is either equal to or worse than the first.

This past Wednesday, October 14, 2015 was one of those lucky days where I got to participate in a twofer for dinner.  I had been famished, to the point where I felt like my stomach was beginning to cave into itself so that it could begin eating its own tissue and lining in order for me to continue to be alive.  The plan was to have dinner with my parents and brother at Hillstone in midtown.  We were told it would be a 35 minute wait for a table, which is a pain in the ass, but a doable amount of time.  Plus, since I eat so many cookies, I figured it would take my stomach a while to eat through the layers of fat before I passed out from starvation.

Let the record show, patience does not appear to be a common genetic trait along the Stahl side of the family.   Blessed as we are, my brother and I inherited, or I should say didn’t inherit the patience gene.  My brother was starting to get all “I’ll huff and puff and blow your house down” about the wait time and I was selecting engravement fonts for my tombstone, “here lies Jamie… all she wanted was a cheeseburger.”

Eventually my brother couldn’t wait any longer and decided to go home for dinner. I, on the other hand stayed because Hillstone makes the best baked potatoes.  52 minutes after putting our name down on the list, we were still waiting to be seated and apparently there were three tables ahead of us.  I believe there was a collaborative “Fuck it” that occurred as we decided to walk out of the restaurant.  Although I could see the Grim Reaper licking an ice cream cone out of the corner of my eye, I persevered and walked the few blocks back to the car.  We looped around the block and decided the best move was to grab something to eat in a diner.

Of course I was disappointed that I couldn’t get my yummy baked potato, but I figured diner grilled cheese and french fries was always amazing so there was a silver lining somewhere.  It turned out to be a grey lining.  My dad made friends with a small fly that was walking across our table.  I went deaf in my left ear because of these two assholes that wouldn’t stop talking in the booth next to us.  All of our food was gross.  Like borderline inedible.  I have to tell you, I was very impressed with this place for making such a terrible grilled cheese sandwich.  It’s pretty hard to mess up grilled cheese, but they did an excellent job.  Congrats!

On the bright side, I got another crazy food adventure story out of it.  I also decided that I will be going to the Hillstone on Park Ave from now on and am planning to keep my distance from diners in the East 50s for a while.  Another positive is that my stomach didn’t actually end up eating itself.  Though, that might have tasted better than my grilled cheese.  You know, I had such a lovely evening with the whole family.

I Can Recognize The Smell Of Cardamon From A Mile Away

IMG_0056I was at a Bachelorette Party this past weekend in The Hamptons.  The main focus, other than the bride-to-be, was food.  I’d say that’s partially because the bachelorette enjoys food and cooking, but also because I had a lot to do with the planning of the weekend festivities.  If you involve me in any sort of planning, I can guarantee that all activities will revolve around food.

We had a variety of events set up for the weekend which included wine tastings, apple picking, and a cooking class.  The cooking class was what I was looking forward to participating in most.  Having rented a house for the weekend, we had a pretty large kitchen area to accommodate a professional coming in to teach us some new food prep skills.  Being one of the planners, I had known the menu prior to the actual cooking class and had some reservations about what I would actually be eating for dinner.  I enjoy cooking and thought it was going to be a really fun experience, I just didn’t want to eat what was being made.

The menu was as follows:  potato and leek soup, broccoli salad, farro and mushrooms, roasted vegetables and salmon.  Notice how I didn’t mention the words “pizza” or “grilled cheese” anywhere.  I figured I’d pick at the various vegetable situations and eat dessert.  Dessert, as always, is my favorite part and we were going to be making apple crisp, one of my favorites!  So, I’ll binge eat apple crisp for dinner one night, it won’t kill me.

When the woman arrived at the house, we had a quick meeting to discuss how to utilize kitchen space and figure out who was going to make each dish.  Clearly I had no interest in learning to cook any of the “healthy” foods being served, so I volunteered to make the apple crisp.  My friend Leigh and I were each others sous chefs.  We also had to recruit some additional assistance in the apple peeling/cutting department due to the horrific condition the knives were in.  After almost slicing 3 fingers off, We managed to get all of the apples prepped.

Leigh and I followed the recipe (more or less) as written, with the utensils we had.  Meaning, the measuring cup indicating 1/3 was used for all kinds of different measurements of sugar and brown sugar.  Okay, so not every single recipe needs to be followed 100% exactly.  But, you should at least use all of the major ingredients right?  Well, Leigh and I found ourselves in a bit of a dilemma while making the apple crisp topping.

Have you ever smelled Cardamom before?  It’s a very potent spice that is typical used in a lot of Indian, Nordic, and Middle Eastern cooking.  Have you ever smelled Cinnamon before?  It has a strong flavor, but is often used in baking to enhance the taste of other ingredients.  Cardamom and Cinnamon do not smell or taste remotely alike nor are they interchangeable for cooking purposes.  These two spices do look very similar though.  When ground up, both Cardamom and Cinnamon are the same color brown and when you look at the name of the spice on the label, they can be easily mistaken for each other.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, the case of the mistaken spice identity was almost a cooking class crisis.  Leigh and I didn’t know what to do at first.  We started to look for cinnamon around the kitchen in cabinets and drawers, but we didn’t have any luck.  After taking a vote among all of the other girls, it had been decided that the apple crisp would be made sans-cinnamon.  So what did we do instead?  Oh, just poured on an abundance of brown sugar.  Because all brown grainy looking things taste the same?  I have no idea.  But, it was a cooking class and we did what we were told.

Leigh and I finished up the “sort-of” apple crisp and then it was time to eat dinner.  My aversion to eating things that swim prevented me from trying the salmon, but I tasted everything else (a big deal for me, thank you very much).  I wouldn’t say I was in love with anything, but I didn’t have the urge to vomit either, so I take that as a good sign.  Of course, when it came time to serve the “sort-of” apple crisp I was super anxious that it was going to taste like a hot and mushy candy apple, but in a bad way.  To my surprise, it was edible.  Not something I’d ever want to eat again, but not nearly as bad as I had anticipated.  If I learned anything from the cooking class experience, I can now recognize the smell of Cardamom from a mile away.

DIY Cheeseburger Cookies

12145239_939032276159064_181628637_nI was visiting my parents one day last week and after dinner, my mom and I decided we should do a project.  As part of our ever-growing repertoire of food creations, we felt the need to expand our cookie decorating skills.  Armed with more Funfetti cookies than we knew what to do with, my mom and I started to experiment with the various icings she had purchased earlier in the day.

Betty Crocker makes cake and cupcake decorating icing in a can that happens to be very convenient.  There are loads of colors and it comes with four different interchangeable tips so that you can make a variety of designs with the icing.  The key here is that you actually need to be good at making designs in the first place.  Not to knock my mom’s or my own skills, but we aren’t exactly the next Rembrandt.  I’d say our decorating technique looks a bit more Jackson Pollack.

While we were playing around with the different icings, one of the creations my mom had made, reminded me of a cheeseburger.  I don’t know why exactly, because she had put green and orange icing on top of a cook, but for some reason, I thought, “cheeseburger.”  I then thought that was a brilliant idea and began to make a cheeseburger out of cookies and icing!  I think it turned out to be pretty good so, I figured I’d share my technique with all of you!

Step 1.  On the flat (bottom) side of a cookie, squirt the green icing from the center to the edge all the way around.  Basically, you’re zig zagging the radius of a circle.  This is the lettuce.

Step 2.  Starting from the center of the cookie, in a circular motion, squirt the black or brown icing until it is about 1cm away from the edge.  This is the burger.

Step 3.  Take a second cookie and flip it over to the flat (bottom) side.  Squirt orange or yellow icing around the edge of the cookie in a circle.  This is the cheese.

Step 4.  Using red icing, start from the middle and squirt straight down until the circle is about half the size of the black/brown one.  This is the tomato.

Step 5.  Take the cookie with the red icing and flip it over on top of the other cookie.  Press down so that everything begins to come out of the sides, but not too hard where all of the icing colors mix and drip everywhere.

Step 6.  Fill in any gaps of color if necessary.  Once you do this, you should have something that resembles a cheeseburger.   You may need to practice a few times to get the right amount of icing color ratio.

It’s that simple.  Now, I won’t go into detail about some of the other creations I made or about ANY of the creations that my mom made because none of them were super pretty.  We were really excited and just got carried away, as usual.