Two New Recipes FYE (for your enjoyment)

I know that I have been a bit behind with recipes, so I'm posting two today. The first is one from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook: zucchini bread. My garden is doing very well and I'm picking zucchini and squash faster than I can eat it. To help use up all the zucchini, I tried this recipe--which ended up being a big hit!

What you'll need:
1 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 egg
1 c. sugar
1 c. finely shredded zucchini (unpeeled)
1/4 c. cooking oil
1/2 c. pecans

What you'll need to do:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease an 8x4x2-in loaf pan.
2. In a large mixing bowl, add the flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, salt and nutmeg.
3. In a medium mixing bowl, add the egg and gently beat it. Add the sugar, oil, and shredded zucchini. Mix until completely combined.
4. Add the zucchini mixture to the flour mixture and stir until just moistened. The batter will be lumpy, so an electric mixer is not necessary. Add the pecans and mix until well-combined.
5. Pour batter into loaf pan and bake for 50 to 55 minutes. A toothpick inserted near the center should come out clean. Cool on a wire rack. Remove from pan and store.

A couple of tips about this recipe:
1) It is really easy to make 2-3 batches of this at once to give away. If you do this, use disposable loaf pans--you will not need to remove the loaves from them before gifting and the loaf pans will make transportation easy.
2) If you have a small oven, do not cook more than two loaves at a time. Otherwise, you may need to increase your cooking time as much as 15-20 minutes.
3) This is great when eaten warm, and it's a perfect compliment to coffee or tea (according to my mother).

OK, now to the next recipe. This was something Scooter and I managed to pull together with no prep time using only what we had on hand. It was inspired in part by a recipe that we made one night awhile ago when cooking for my parents. This is our "Beat that Hamburger Helper!" recipe--named such because I had suggested getting Hamburger Helper from the store for an easy dinner and Scooter replying that we could do better--and he was right!

What you'll need:
1 lb. hamburger meat
1/4 purple onion, chopped into large chunks
1 1/2 Tbs. garlic powder
1 Tbs. cinnamon
2 tsp. dried sage
1 c. beer
3 heaping Tbs. tomato paste
1/2 to 2/3 c. tomato sauce
1 Tbs. brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste

What you'll need to do:
1. In a large frying pan, brown the hamburger meat until almost all the pink is gone. Drain the excess fat.
2. Add the onions and saute over med-high heat until softened, about 5 minutes.
3. Add the garlic powder, cinnamon, and sage, mixing well. Add the beer and simmer until nearly all the liquid has cooked off, about 3-5 minutes.
4. Add the tomato paste and stir until mixture is well-combined. Sauce will be thick.
5. Add the tomato sauce a little at a time and mix well until sauce has thinned to desired consistency (about as thick as chunky pasta sauce).
6. Add the brown sugar, salt, and pepper. Mix well and simmer for 2-3 more minutes. Remove from heat and serve over rice.

The flavor of the beef in this recipe ends up being similar to a Greek dish I posted about before. Of course this improv recipe uses beef instead of lamb, and we used sage in place of the more traditional Greek flavor of oregano. We did keep the cinnamon, which provides a very complex and wonderful flavor to the dish, in conjunction with the beer (I would recommend a dark or stout beer) and the brown sugar. I was quite pleased with the result, and I think Scooter was too, judging by how fast he was trying to eat his dinner that night.

Enjoy!

Late Night Musings

I know that other women will understand what I mean when I mention how the mind can wander and roam with no end in the wee hours of the morning. Unfortunately, this seems to be a more common occurrence as of late, but on the up-side I've had a chance to mull over where I am in my program and where I really want to go.

No longer a "noob" in my program, I have gained some knowledge and exposure to the profession to help me become a little more focused in how I want to shape my future. I still have a lot to learn, and after this upcoming semester, all the other classes I choose to take will shape my focus. After becoming more involved with various groups within the profession and reading more comments/blogs/etc from individuals in the profession, I've learned that there is a much broader field of positions available to someone who holds an MLIS than I originally thought. I'm connecting with and reading about "librarians" or "information specialists" in nearly every industry. My options for the future have really opened up.

And yet, even with knowing that I could conceivably end up almost anywhere doing almost anything, I see myself being pulling in two directions. As a children's and youth services librarian, I would be able to work with children (something I would love to do), create and manage programs for all ages and even families, and really promote learning for the youngest generations. As a librarian that specialize in community outreach and library social services, I would be able to help the less-fortunate members of our society and my community by providing services through the library that are specifically targeted for them--as well as building community ties between the library and its local area and helping to make the library a "community place" that its locals are proud of.

So which do I choose? It may come down to doing an unofficial internship at my local library through a children's librarian I connected with there (an official internship would be too demanding and require too many hours). Getting some practical experience in library services for children and youth would be, well, awesome (if I may use the slang term). From what I've gathered in some of my professional groups, internships are excellent gauging tools, can be a lot of fun, and are great for building experience. If I do end up pursuing a position as a children's/youth librarian, I will need the experience to get an edge when I apply for those positions.

This next year--Fall 2011 and Spring 2012--will hopefully bring clarity and better focus for my profession. I hope to have a better, more decisive idea of what kind of librarian I intend to be. In the meantime, I have a lot of academic and professional growth to undergo. I'm anticipating the upcoming semester with a lot of enthusiasm!

Catching Up Part 2

So here is my continued effort to catch up to the present day--and tomorrow will hopefully be the post that brings me fully up to date.

The holiday weekend at the beginning of the month gave Scooter and I the perfect opportunity to have another adventure on a day trip. We knew that we would be dealing with 1) the possibility of a lot of traffic because of like-minded people and 2) the definite reality of large crowds at our intended destination. We left extra early to avoid the traffic (and successfully did so, I might add), and debated the whole way to the coast about how many people would be there and how many rides we could expect to ride before 5:00pm.

The brief telling of the story: we got in a lot of rides and had an all-around good time. There were a lot of people where we were. The park we were at was right on the beach, giving us a good view of the crowds of people that had escaped to the coast for the holiday weekend. The vast number of not only people but tarps, umbrellas, and canopies made the beach look like a city of nomads had sprung out of the sand in a matter of hours (which I suppose it did). Scooter likened it to a huge flea market.

We left in the late afternoon to continue our way up the coast, and things made a turn for the worse once we left the park on the beach. I won't go into a lot of detail, just to say that we were tired, frustrated, and irrate by the time we were able to head home.

Independence Day itself was quiet. My parents had my sister and us over for barbecued hot dogs. My contribution to dinner was a homemade apple pie (recipe seen below). The evening was finished with several West Wing episodes--a Saturday night tradition we had to push back since my parents were out of town. We could hear some fireworks going off, which are not allowed in our area (you might call us a "dry" town). The only fireworks Scooter and I saw were some small ones a couple of people set off on the corner across the street.

Now for the recipe: all-American apple pie with crumb topping. The original recipe is from my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. I'll start with the pie crust first.

What you'll need:
1 1/4 c. flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 cup shortening
4 to 5 Tbs. ice-cold water

What you'll need to do:
1. In a medium mixing bowl, add the flour and salt.
2. Add in the shortening. Using your fingertips or a pastry blender, blend it into the flour mixture until it looks like large crumbs.
3. Add in the ice water one tablespoon at a time. Stir each addition into the flour mixture. Stop adding water when all the flour is moistened and the dough holds together.
4. Roll dough into a ball. If you are making the dough ahead of time, you can wrap it in plastic wrap and store it in the fridge up to 24 hours.
5. Lightly flour a flat surface and roll out the dough into a 12-in circle. Move to a 9-in pie pan and lightly press to mold it to all sides of the pie pan. Trim the edges of the dough to the edge of the pie pan.

Now you're ready for the filling and crumb topping.

What you'll need:
1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. brown sugar
3 Tbs. butter
2 Granny Smith apples
4 small Gala apples
3/4 c. sugar
2 Tbs. flour
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg

What you'll need to do:
1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.
2. In a small bowl, add the 1/2 cup flour and the brown sugar. Using your fingers or a pastry blender, mix in the butter until the topping looks like large crumbs. Set aside.
3. Peel, core, and thinly slice the six apples. Set aside.
4. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the sugar, the remaining two tablespoons of flour, the cinnamon, and the nutmeg. Add in the apple slices and stir until the apples are all well-covered.
5. Add the apple mixture to the prepared pie crust. Carefully sprinkle on the crumb topping.
6. Cover the edges with foil and bake in the oven for 40 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for another 20 minutes or until the filling is bubbly and the apples are tender.
7. Remove from the oven and let cool.

Enjoy!