Updates #1 and 2: Cranberry Lemon Mint Granita

Hey all - just a quick update on the granita making!  I tasted the granita when it started to get a little ice crystaly (yes, it's a word) and it was still a little too sour for me, so I added another healthy squirt of light corn syrup and now everything is sweet and lovely.  Here's what it looks like three hours into the freezing and scraping process!

Hellooooo gorgeous.

It tastes as good as it looks, I promise.

Happy Independence Day! <3

Update #2:  Granita is GORGEOUS.  Check it out after 5 hours:

Yum.

Yes, I ate it.  It's DELICIOUS.  It tastes like a pink lemonade snow cone with a side of awesome.  I will absolutely make this again, and I suggest that you make it as well!

<3

Cranberry Lemon Mint Granita

Hellooooo long lost blog friends, can you hear me out there?  Well, yet again, I'm sorry for my prolonged absence, but finishing up a Master's degree and taking three more graduate classes over the summer does not leave me with a ton of time to blog about my feasts and foodasters (yes, another word smash, the man sure does love those).

Well, in celebration of tomorrow's delightful holiday - my favorite one of the whole year, in fact! - I have created the simplest, no frills, stress relieving summer dessert: my Cranberry Lemon Mint Granita.  Okay, first things first, if you don't know what a granita is, it's basically shaved ice.  Second, I know Cranberry Lemon Mint Granita sounds like quite a mouthful, but I promise you it's WAY easier than a flag cake or any other frilly dessert that's just waiting for a culinary mishap.  No thank you, I would not like to end up in the ER on the Fourth of July with third degree burns from fireworks or anything else (much less caramelized sugar that is 200 degrees hotter than the surface of the sun that I'm trying to use to make icing for a stupid flag cake).

So here's what I did.  I went in my fridge and found store brand cranberry juice cocktail and had an epiphany.  This will totally work to make one of those granitas I've been seeing millions of on food blogs and the Food Network lately!  So I poured four cups of the cranberry juice into a large measuring cup with the juice and zest of three lemons.  I unceremoniously dumped in 1/4 cup-ish of sugar and 1/4 cup of light corn syrup (more of both if you like it sweeter).  Then, I walked out into the garden, barefoot in the rain, and picked like 25 to 30 leaves of mint.  I came back, wiped off my feet, and chopped up the mint and dropped it in.  I poured the whole magenta mess into a pot and stuck it on the stove to melt the sugar (literally 2 minutes tops, it doesn't need to boil or anything).

Once that's done, I popped it into my trusty Temptations dish from QVC - seriously, a must have in my kitchen - to cool off.  (Seriously, Temptations!  It's freezer safe, oven safe, dishwasher safe, microwave safe... and GORGEOUS!  What's not to love?!)  Once it was cooled off, I had a fight with some frozen chicken and finally found a spot in the freezer for the granita (finding a place in the freezer to put this was the hardest part by far).

Here's what it looked like once it was in the freezer:

It's ready for its close-up...

Delicious.  Now, every hour or so, I'm going to open that freezer and scrape that little darling with a fork to break up the ice crystals (this will be my stress relief for the day, attacking unsuspecting ice crystals with a fork haha).  Tomorrow, it will be a fluffy mess of refreshing icy goodness.  So excited!




Cranberry Lemon Mint Granita

4 cups cranberry juice (any kind you like)
1 cup water
A handful of mint, chopped
Zest and juice of three lemons
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup light corn syrup

Mix all ingredients together and put in a pot on the stove to melt the sugar.  Then place in a shallow freezer safe dish and scrape once an hour with a fork.  Serve in small ice cream cups or other such simple and cute serving dishes and enjoy!


Happy Fourth of July, everyone! I'll let you know what the man thinks of this dish after tomorrow is over.  :) <3

Poor (Wo)man's Potato Salad, Take 2... Let's try this again!

After the bowl of potato salad was empty yesterday, I got a question from my father.

"Why did you only make a little?"

So I proceeded to explain that I wasn't sure how it would taste and didn't know if anyone else would want any.  His response?

"Please make more."

How do you say no to that? :)  So I made more and took the opportunity to take a picture to share since all I got a picture of yesterday was the empty bowl. 

Enjoy!

Poor (Wo)man's Potato Salad

Some days, I wake up wildly craving something specific... today, it was potato salad.  Ever since I was little, my Aunt Kathy has made the BEST potato salad and would bring a vat of it to every family cookout and barbecue we ever had.  That potato salad tastes like summer to me; I can almost feel the sun on my shoulders when I'm eating it.  After a month and a half of almost non-stop snow in New York, I needed some summer - I NEEDED potato salad.  Of course, the ideal would be to have Aunt Kathy's potato salad miraculously apparate (yes, that's a Harry Potter term) into my fridge, but in the midst of an ice storm there was no chance of that happening.  I was officially on my own.

Now, I consider potato salad pretty low maintenance fare in the first place but after a birthday weekend vacation and two weird allergic reactions, even a low maintenance task like boiling potatoes was too much for me to handle this afternoon.  After exploring the contents of my refrigerator, I found my saving grace - left over roasted potatoes.  I proceeded to chop them up and throw them in a bowl... but they were cold and I think I speak for most of us when I say nine times out of ten cold potatoes are too dry to be delicious. I had to heat them up.  But how?  Oven - too time consuming.  Microwave would dry the potatoes out even more.  Stove it is.

Three slices of bacon later, I threw the potatoes in the pan with some onion powder and the bacon fat to warm them through.  While that was happening and the bacon was draining on paper towels, I chopped up some celery and a hard boiled egg and combined that with some mayo and some honey mustard (which was laying in my fridge calling to me to use it).  Potatoes went in next, got stirred up, and the crispy bacon was quickly crumbled over the top. 

Best. Potato Salad. Ever.  (Sorry Aunt Kat.  I still love you.)  Even my brother liked it and he is notoriously difficult to impress with food.  The best part?  I didn't have to venture out into the ice storm to spend money on a single, solitary ingredient AND I used up leftovers.  This recipe was ridiculously successful.  You can find all the approximate measurements and everything below.


I went back to take a picture after eating my bowl of potato salad (because it was extraordinarily good looking potato salad) and this is what I found:

I suppose that's the best critique of all.

[Just a note about my recipe writing - unless I'm baking, I am not very particular about measurements.  I think when cooking becomes about perfect measuring, the fun part just gets lost.  Nobody wants to stand there with a measuring cup and 8 measuring spoons when trying to make a quick meal, so I don't write my recipes that way.  When I'm following other people's recipes, I change them according to my own taste buds.  If I like a specific ingredient, I'll probably add more of it than the recipe calls for.  If I don't like something, I'll switch it out for something else.  If I absolutely hate an ingredient, I leave it out altogether.  Feel free to do the same with my recipes - after all, you're only going to use them if they taste good to you.]


Poor (Wo)man's Potato Salad Recipe

3 slices of bacon, cooked until crispy

4-6 cups leftover roasted potatoes, chopped (I should have used more, this was gone in a flash)

1 tsp onion powder

1/2 to 3/4 cup mayonnaise (depending on how much you like)

1/4 cup honey mustard

4 stalks of celery, sliced

1 hard boiled egg, chopped

Salt & pepper

 

Cook the bacon in a pan until crispy, then remove and drain on paper towels.  Add the chopped potatoes to the pan, add 1 teaspoon onion powder, and warm through.  Slice the celery and chop the hard boiled egg and place them both in a large bowl.  Add the warm potatoes, mayonnaise, and mustard, and stir.  Crumble in crispy bacon and stir to combine.  Serve immediately and pray that your family doesn't eat it all while you're not looking like mine did.


And a huge thanks to my boyfriend for the title of this post - he's so clever. :)