What type of excuse is that?

Not a very good one! Lately I have been a very lazy cook. The rest of my apples I just let rot, I made a cake but didn't blog about it because as as my brother told me "this cake is the driest, nastiest piece of shit cake ever, but the frosting is good." I have recently ruined not one but 2 curry dishes. I'd say I'm in a slump which is why I haven't been blogging. If you were thinking why I didn't do a post for Thanksgiving it's easy I only cooked one thing because I was at my S.O.'s parent's house. Guess what I even ruined the one item I cooked. I made a sweet potato souffle and it was runny and gross. However all of this will change. It will change Saturday because I'm cooking am awesome Christmas dinner! I will post pictures when it is is done but let me divulge the menu of my epicurean adventure. (I didn't do anything at all of Hanukkah because I'm a bad Jew and it's not a major holiday) 

Christmas Dinner 
Sausage cheddar balls (a southern tradition)
Classy Rotini and cheese (I couldn't find dreamfields* elbows)
Broccoli
Carrot Vichy
Rolls
Southern style green beans
Chicken cordon bleu
and for dessert I'm making my Great Grandmother's Pound cake, although it should be called a 10 pound cake because that thing is heavy.

I am prepared to fail at making my great grandmother's cake, it's very difficult without a stand up mixer to make. Also I watched my mother who was a great cook (horrible mother) fail at this cake very often. It's so dense then when you go to flip the cake it often rips apart from itself. I refuse to become upset if this cake messes up because even if we just pick at it it will be good.
Wish me luck!



 
*Dreamfields pasta is a low carb pasta which is delicious it an be difficult to find in stores but if you know anyone who is on a low carb diet I highly recommend it. 

Un merry mushrooms

So I ordered some Merry Mushrooms after my post about my desire to have a Merry Mushroom kitchen. Friday the shipment arrived and just about everything in the box was broken. Great sadness loomed. Now I'm going to have to take the broken items to the post office so they can see the shattered goods. Luckily I bought insurance on my items. Hopefully I will be able to get a full refund. True many of the lids are in tact but what good is a lid to a broken canister?Oh in case you were curious what the little blue thing is, it's a tiny copy of the new testament. The seller boasted being a good christian man and woman. That's cool as long as the post office pays me in full. the seller wanted to give me an additional 10 dollars for my trouble but I told them not to bother that it wasn't their fault that it broke in transit. Sigh back on the hunt for Merry mushrooms.

Finished apron and a new goal for my kitchen.

So Today I finally finished sewing an apron I had been putting off for quite some time. It looks....decent, I guess. Anyway I am uploading pictures of my Cornish Game Hen meal and will post about that soon. I've become completely distracted today by my new kitchen goal.

I want a Merry Mushroom Collection. 

I want to go all out too. It's a style from Sears in 1978 my Grandmother Buna* had it. Well what she had was this. (above) She also had matching glasses. I have been searching for this style of things on Ebay and Replacements.com for about 2 hours now. What surprised me is that the above image is one I found on Amazon. This is the only full set of canisters I have found. It has one for flour, sugar, coffee and tea. most of the sets I have found online are only the larger 3. What happened to everyone's tea canister? I'm very curious. I also wish my family hadn't thrown away my grandma's set. She had trivets and pot holders that matched. I want this all. I am now obsessed the only thing that might stop me would be my S.O. telling me it's too tacky.


*My grandmother's name really was Buna. Like Buena except she spelled it wrong her entire life and didn't know she had until she was 65. She grew up in the North Georgia Mountains until she moved down to Atlanta when she was 18. She had 17 siblings. She only met 14 of them. Her sister Mary was the youngest and at 83 the only one still living.

Meeting a great author.

So tonight is very exciting because my S.O. and I are going to the Atlanta History Center for a night with Amy Sedaris. She is a great author and has influenced my writing in many ways such as this blog that no one reads. I'm excited to meet her and get her new book autographed, her last book was really great and I have read it several times now. If you haven't picked it up I recommend it very highly. If you like this blog then you will love her book for she is much more creative then I. Of course I will tell you all what I think of her new book as well, I'm sure it will be very entertaining.

Later this week I promise I will have more adventures from my kitchen when I make Cornish game hens. I don't think I'm doing anything fancy but if I do it right maybe I will get the balls to do a turkey I mean hens are just little turkeys right?

Whatever happened to Halloween? A rant by The Domestic Deviant.

So I haven't been cooking because of the large amount of Apples I'm taking care of. However with Halloween upon us I have an important rant.

Please stop killing Halloween
Halloween use to be one of the biggest holidays for children in America. Few days holidays were as much about children having fun as Halloween. However now for whatever reason we have turned away from that. Your local news has convinced parents that it simply isn't safe for your children to participate in this tradition. Perhaps it was teaching kids not to take candy from strangers, and now in these times strangers include your own neighbors. Why did we turn away from our own neighborhood culture? Why is it that a child should call someone on his cellphone if he has forgotten his key before he knocks on his neighbor's door to wait on mom or dad to come home?  It isn't just the parents either "Safe" Trick or Treat alternatives are also culprits here. Your Church's trunk or treating event might be fun but shouldn't your church be telling you to love thy neighbor? Instead you are going to the Church because there is a good chance you don't even know your neighbor's name. Perhaps your Church taught you that Halloween in a holiday for the Devil? To which I say hogposh! How can a national holiday that people don't even get with their family be a holiday at all it's a custom and nothing more at this point!  Plus the local news has taught you your neighbors probably put razor blades or drugs in the Halloween candy.Of course your Church isn't the only one with a Trick or Treat alternative now either. Your grocery store and even your mall is probably holding one as well. It might even cost money to participate. This is ridiculous! what is so scary about going down shopping aisles to ask someone who works at the store for candy? The Store is barely decorated at all. There is nothing scary about it either. Please do your future grand kids a favor and give your child a memorable Halloween out trick or treating on their street because at this rate your grand kids might not have the option to go out at all because Halloween is dying fast.

Adventures in home canning

I have always heard how easy it is to do your own canning. I never believed it until yesterday and now I think it's fairly easy for such a pain in the ass. So as you have been reading I have been working with a lot of apples. I need to figure out a way to store these things. I am very concerned about my apples as I'm going to be going out of town to High Point North Carolina Thursday afternoon. As for tomorrow I have to take care of my ailing S.O., go buy a pillow, go to a job interview and then go to my friend's wedding reception. So I'm hoping my apples won't soften up too much while I'm out of town. So yesterday I made some applesauce in a crock pot and then attempted canning.
I didn't just attempt I succeed so as previously promised since I didn't screw it up here is how I pulled it.
I should also give a big mention to Matt who helped and most of all my Grandma who told me the basics.

Canning 
Take your jars lids and rings. Wash them all with soapy water, dry them with clean paper towels.
Put jars in boiling vat of water I used a big stock pot. Place lids in warm/simmering water. Take scalding hot jar out of the water fill it with sauce leaving about 1/2 an inch from the top. Run a butter knife around the sides to let extra air out of the applesauce. Place the warm lid on the jar and screw the ring on. Repeat until you run out of applesauce. 
(Now for the fun part) 
Put all of your filled and closed jars back into the vat of boiling water. Make sure the water is high enough to cover the top. Let the jars sit in the boiling (like crazy rolling boil) for 20 minutes. Take them out of the water and let them relax on the counter. Within a few minuted you will begin to hear the lids pop. This means you did it right!

Apple Bread

So this is the Apple Bread I mentioned before the one that I had to make a giant loaf instead of two 8 inch loafs. It is a beast. It's also delicious. It took me about an hour to bake it. Anyway it qualifies as a success so as promised here is the recipe.


Beastly Apple Bread
3 cups flour (all-purpose)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
Add these things together and ignore them. 

1/2 cup (maybe a little more) criss cross applesauce
2 medium/largeish apples
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 beaten eggs (by beaten I mean just kind of scramble them before you put them in)
1/2 tsp vanilla (I never ever use imitation because it costs more but real vanilla is amazing and you will taste a difference)
1 cup of nuts (I wanted to use Pecans but my S.O. convinced me to use walnuts)

Go ahead and preheat your oven to 350.  Add these things and then add them to the flour mix that you were ignoring. Get them to play nice and stick all together. Well grease a 9 inch bread pan. If you want you could grease up two 8 inch pans and make smaller loaves. Some of us don't have 8 inch bread pans anymore. For greasing I use Pam for baking. It smells nice because it has flour in it and I have had tremendous success with the stuff. Put your batter into the oven and bake for 45 minutes test it with a toothpick (or a bamboo skewer if you are like me). I had to bake my bread for a full hour if not a little more.  Depending on the size of your pan it might be done in 45 minutes but I will let you be the judge on that.


The secrets of removing baked goods from a pan. After you have covered your pan in grease and then baked it comes the moment of anxiety. Right now you are looking at your Beastly Apple Bread and thinking "wow it's beautiful I am awesome". Well you are but, now comes the moment of truth all of your hard work that took you an hour and a half to do could come crashing down and ruin your hard work. I'm here to make sure that doesn't happen to you.

The trick 
When you take your read out of the oven place the pan on a wire rack and leave it alone for 10 minutes. Don't touch it. Don't do anything to it! It needs sometime to cool down it's had a hard day being created and all. 
After it's had sometime to cool off place a plate on top of it. Flip it over. Pull off the pan. Now take another plate repeat the previous flip action. It's now beautiful, happy and hopefully in one piece. 

Enjoy it.

Thieving bastard loaf pan gnomes.

So after a most successful trip to beautiful Ellijay Georgia I now am the proud owner of 1/2 a bushel of Golden Mutsu apples and a peck of winesap apples. So I have begun the work of turning these apples into sortable and delicious items. Friday I went ahead and made applesauce.
Criss Cross Applesauce
4 cored, peeled, sliced Apples
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup water
1/2 tablespoon cinnamon (or however much you feel like)
Put in pan cook to death (death may take up to 45 mins)
throw in food processor or blender and turn into applesauce
I then put said apple sauce into freezer quart bags, let it cool out on the cabinet and then threw it in the freezer for future plans.

Sunday is the future!
I went ahead and came up with something to do with my piles of apples. I made some apple bread. It's actually  cooling as I type. However this is not a story of my apple bread because I don't know if it worked yet. It may have just made the house smell like apple bread but in reality be a delicious smelling awful loaf of crap.
I have finished the dough for my bread and it is now time to put said dough into the loaf pans. When it comes to my attention that the pans are not where they should be. This is no cause for worry I often misplace things in my kitchen (I have a very very small galley style kitchen). I look beneath the oven drawer. I reach my hand behind the drawer it isn't uncommon for pans to fall behind the drawer. I burn my arm on my preheated oven. I curse and move on to the cabinets of darkness where pots, pans, griddles and the never used espresso maker live . I find one glass loaf pan, it isn't mine it's my boyfriends and it's 9 inch pan. I want my 8inch pans. I fall to my knees and skid them. It hurts. I curse I make my boyfriend stop his work and help me. They are gone.

Questions flood my mind. Who would I have loaned bread pans to?
How many deal of day bread pans didn't I buy because I thought I had these beautiful 3 pans?
Where could they have gone?

I settle down and just throw enough batter for two 8 inch pans into one 9 inch pan.

Why you should read this blog and what it's all about.

Welcome to the Domestic Deviant Party on Blogger. I am as you may have guessed the domestic deviant. Here is where I will tell you all about my triumphs failures in things that would be of great interest to a late 1950's early 60's housewife. Things like how to have the perfect dinner party and what type of toothpaste covers the odor of how you might have been drinking all day while your husband was at work. Things that were important then and the things that are important to me now. I hope you will join me on my adventures in baking, cooking and the occasional sewing I try to attempt. I promise to share all of my recipes with you and any party planning I plan as well. Please enjoy yourself a nice martini put on your apron and join in with me as I put gender roles back in place and turn back the clock on the feminist movement.