“He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.  Until there are none, rescue one.” Unknown

Yes, I agree, signature quotes can be super pompous and annoying and are often worth reading over.  And I am sure that most people read right past my quote as well (but the fact that gmail puts it in grey and often minimizes it in threads doesn’t help either).  But I just can’t get over the sentiment of this quote.

My pets offer me a love that is so hard to describe.  They teach me so much.  So much.  And there are so many homeless pets that could offer the same sort of life lessons to people that my guys have offered to me.  And I want to remind people of that so that’s why I keep that quote in my email signature.  It doesn’t just apply to dogs.  It applies to cats and of course horses.

(I love this picture of Cinco and the Omnivore.  They are both smiling.  Anyone who has had the joy of loving a pet knows that smile.)

Last year I hosted a charity event on Branny Boils Over to raise money to donate to the ASPCA, our family’s charity of choice.  I’m doing it again this year and I need your help.  Yes, I could write a check for any amount I please, but I’d rather enlist you guys to spread the word about animal love and well-fare by making a bowl of soup in honor of a loved pet and telling me about it.  Details will be posted below but first I want to show you guys a few pictures of the pets from the past year, especially since we’ve doubled the number of animals running around here since Souper Bowl #1.

Vinny, our newest pet and a pit bull, one of the most abused breeds of dogs around.

Blue, our first dog, the oldest of the bunch coming in at over 9 years old.

Lucy, the Omnivore’s little bundle of joy.

Lucy, again.

Flo.  The mutt that has my heart.  Cinco is in the background.

And Fahrney, whose extreme coolness cannot be described in words, at all.  Don’t try.  He begs you.

So here’s how it works.

1) You make a bowl of soup, take a picture, and record the recipe.
2) If you have a blog (food related or not), you dedicate an entry to a pet you love(d) (and, yes, it can be the same pet from last year!), including a picture of the soup (and the pet if you’d like) and the recipe.  You let me know you’ve done so by linking to THIS BLOG POST within your own blog post and emailing me at brannyboilsover at gmail.com
3) If you do not have a blog you simply take a photo of your soup and email it to me along with a recipe and a short blurb about the pet you are dedicating your soup to.

For every entry I receive, I’ll donate $1.00 to the ASPCA.  Last year we reached over 50 dollars.  Let’s beat it this year!  The deadline is January 31st and the final round up will go live on February 5th, 2012, the date of the SuperBowl.

I won’t tempt you by telling you about the pretzel chocolate chip cookies, the healthy soba noodle salad, and the luscious roast chicken recipes that I have in the hopper waiting to share with you.

The reason for this week’s hiatus?

I’m gonna be incapacitated while learning to better myself for you and my first ever blogging conference.  I’ve popped a meatloaf in the fridge for the Omnivore to survive on and hit the road.  I’ll be tweeting updates using my handle @brannyboilsover and updating my Facebook page with event goings-on.

In honor of Jey’s mom, Jey is collecting heart healthy recipes that will culminate in a blog round up similar to mine, with her donation going to the American Heart Association.  You can read and Jey’s event and her mom here.

I was happy to participate in this event.  Most of the recipes on my blog are “heart healthy” but I wanted to be sure to pick something really special for Jey.

I decided to play off the idea of a beating heart by making something with beets.

Beet chips!  No, they aren’t potpurri, although they look like some sweet smelling flower petals.  These are a heart healthy, and easy, snack to whip up when you have the munchies.  They taste great without salt (if you have a heart condition) and are slightly sweet.

They are a heart-healthy side dish to a sandwich!

One Year Ago: Pasta with Spicy Cauliflower and Walnuts
Two Years Ago: Spaghetti and Wheatballs

Beet Chips
2 beets

Preheat oven to 250*.  Wash, peel, and slice beets.  Make sure the slices are very thin (I used my mandoline slicer).  Arrange beet slices on a cooling rack over a baking sheet.  Bake for 30 minutes.  Turn oven off and leave beet chips inside to cool completely, about 1 hour.  Enjoy!

Often times, that is okay.  In the case of toilet paper, it is not (the Omnivore taught me that lesson.  Thanks, hon!).

I am growing and learning how to spend money more freely and recognizing when buying the most expensive option is actually better.

Canned tomatoes are something that I use a lot of.  Give me an onion, a can of tomatoes, and my spice cabinet and I’ll give you 7 different dinners for each night of the week.

By the way, have you ever seen the canned tomato options at your nearest supermarket?  Who knew that something seemingly so basic could come in so many incarnations.  Naturally, I have the tendency to buy the cheapest variant.  And for so long, I never gave it two thoughts.  When was I ever actually even eating the tomatoes without gussying them up with spices, vegetable additions, and the like?  Nearly never.  So did the quality of the tomatoes matter?

The only way I could continue to sleep at night once my mind was latched to this query was to embark upon a comparison of my own.  I aimed to purchase Muir Glen tomatoes, organic tomatoes, and generic tomatoes.  The biggest supermarket around, however, did not stock Muir Glen.  I settled on the three brands you see above.

They were priced as follows
$3.29 for the Pomi- the box contained nearly twice the content of the cans, so let’s go with $1.64.
$1.39 for the organic Publix tomatoes
$0.60 for the generic non-organic tomatoes

I aimed to make a simple tomato sauce to be served over whole wheat pasta to test the character of each tomato type.  Each brand of tomatoes was spiced in the same exact way: 1 clove of garlic, 1/2 cup of onions, 1 tsp olive oil, 1 tsp dried basil per 15 oz of canned tomatoes.  I add 1/4 t of salt to the Pomi tomatoes because it was advertised as “salt-free” while the other brands were not.

As you can see from the picture, the results are all visually similar.  The generic, non-organic tomatoes were packaged in a larger dice than the other two types.

Using leftover whole wheat pasta I created a pasta crust as a vehicle for the sauce.  I combined 1 egg, 3 T Parmesan cheese, 1/3 cup milk, and 6 oz cooked, chopped pasta.  I spread this mixture into greased baking dishes and baked the noodles for about 20 minutes.  I then added the sauce and baked again for 10 additional minutes.

I cut each portion in half and the Omnivore and I settled in for a taste test.  I knew the identities of each sauce while the Omnivore did not.

Here are the results:
Pomi: deeper flavor, tastes like it has been cooked longer
Organic Tomatoes: sweeter, most tomatoe-y, most acidic
Generic tomatoes: brightest, sharpest, taste most like fresh

In the end, the Omnivore declared the generic tomatoes his winner while I preferred the organic canned tomatoes.  He also mentioned that no sauce was remarkable enough to declare a huge difference.  I guess it was a draw.

As the primary cook in the house, I can see myself leaning towards one or another variety depending on the meal I am making.

If I need a deeply flavored sauce with little cooking time, I’d go for the Pomi.
If cooking with red wine or beef, I’d also go for the Pomi.  The deep flavors seem like it would pair well those ingredients.

For other cooking applications, I’d prefer the Organic tomatoes.

If making a fresh salsa or the lightly cooked sauce using canned tomatoes, I’d use the generic, which seem to be least cooked in the canned state and most brightly and sharply flavored.

But, if no one can really identify a striking difference (as the Omnivore and I couldn’t), I’d probably rely on the cheapest most frugal option.

The only thing, of course, other than our pets.  The Omnivore and I just returned from a 1400 mile road trip and I swear, not 2 miles into the trip, we were telling each other stories about our pets.  Stories that of course we’d both witnessed, heard, and retold time and time again.  But these knuckleheads really mean the world to us.  And that’s why the Omnivore and I have decided to make our New Year’s Resolution pet related.

We’d like to give more money to pet related charities.  But we need your money help.  So here’s the deal.  I am holding a charity Souper Bowl event here on BrannyBoilsOver.  The event will debut on February 6th, the date of the football SuperBowl.  Your job is to blog a soup recipe and submit it to me for the recipe round up in February.  For every entry I receive, I’ll donate $1 to the ASPCA. Please don’t make me write a check for $13.  Participate!

So here are the details.

If you are a blogger
Blog a soup recipe sometime before January 30th.
Mention the Charity Souper Bowl in your blog post AND dedicate the post to a special animal.
Email me the link to your blogpost before January 30th.

If you are NOT a blogger
Make, eat, and photograph a soup recipe.  Email me the photo AND the recipe along with the name of the animal you choose to dedicate your donation to to brannyboilsover@gmail.com.  This all must be done before January 30th.

Okay, people, the ball is in your court.  Get cookin’ so I can get donatin’!

You might have noticed that I’ve been posting far less frequently than usual.  If you haven’t been visiting my blog, you might have noticed that I’ve been commenting on yours much less frequency.  You might not have noticed anything at all.

It is true; this happens in the food blogging world a lot.  Bloggers take leaves of absence.  Being that the population of food bloggers is largely female and of the reproductive age, you might suspect that a bun-in-the-oven is the culprit.  But, no, the Omnivore and I are SINKs.

You might know people like us as DINKs. I prefer SINKs for a couple of reasons.  Let me remind you that “S” stands for single.

The first and most obvious choice for SINK rather than DINK is the kitchen reference.  The second and more appropriate reasoning for my choice of SINK is that while both the ‘Vore and I are gainfully employed in a full-time capacity, our incomes are vastly different.

The Omnivore and I discuss math a lot.  The number of books in our house on the subject of pure math surely rivals the number of cookbooks on our bookshelves.  So you may or may not be aware of the concept of infinity, but we surely are very familiar with it.  So let me get to the heart of the matter:

Infinity + 1 = infinity.  So consider the Omnivore’s salary to be infinity (which it is NOT) and mine to be 1 (which it IS).  Thus, my income is basically nothing compared to the Omnivore’s.  Therefore, we are SINKs. Single income.  No kids.

So why were we talking about that anyway?  Oh, right, we (I?) aren’t pregnant.  But I feel like we’ve had a baby.

Nine months ago we spied this little house on a hill:

Note: it is best when describing small, humble homes to qualify them with cutesy comments like “on a hill” and focus on big red barns in the pictures rather than the house itself.

The house overlooks a lake from above…

and you might have noticed the big red barn in the picture above.  That is the real reason for our purchase.  We’ve got a 12 horse stable, acres of pastures, and two horse arenas as well.

You might be thinking, “Wow, Branny, I’ve never seen you mention horses.  I didn’t know you were such a horsewoman.”

Well, I’m not.  I’ve got a lot to learn.  It’s like a new mother giving birth to her first child.  You feel lost, without information, and unsure of where to begin learning.  We are all of those things.

9 months ago we put a contract in to purchase this horse farm and I have just moved into our new home.  The labor and delivery part of this “pregnancy” has been particularly trying.  Since October 22nd, I was living in the barn, not the home, on our property.  Well, not the barn-barn, but an apartment portion of the barn.  There was no television, no radio signal through the metal walls, no internet, NO KITCHEN, and no bed.  Wow.  It was a trial.  I will look back in 20 years and laugh still cry.

But now I’m back.  And I’ve got a burning desire to get cooking and so expect more from me!

Luckily, this 5-question Getting-to-Know-You exercise lets me do most of the talking and you, the reader, can just lurk in the shadows, without needing to comment.  Of course additional questions are welcome.

1) What was on your To-Do list today:

• go for a nice jog outside (13.3 miles completed).  This past weekend was actually my 1 yer anniversary of being a runner.  Prior to that I just focused on getting exercise: tennis, spinning, ellipitcal-sizing (??), whatever.  But I think I’m a runner now. 
• stage the house for a Realtor who is taking pictures for our house listing
• Go to the bank
• Enjoy some time with the resident carnivores (pets!  Fahrney, the cat, not pictured)
• Go to the DMV (WHY ME!?!?!  *tear*)

2) 5 Snacks you enjoy:

• oatmeal
• popcorn
• fruit + cottage cheese
• hummus and veggie dippers
• apples

3) 5 Places you have lived:

• A tiny starter home with my parents as an infant
• my parents’ forever home for the rest of my childhood
• dorms at college
• my first home with my husband (trying to sell this sucker now!)
• Nairobi, Kenya as an 11 year old for a summer with my best friend

4) What were you doing 5 years ago:

• Got engaged
• declared my Biology major
• was on a collegiate crew team as a coxswain
• adopted my gem-of-a-dog Flo (she’s now a certified Therapy Dog)
• worked in a veterinary hospital

5) 5 things you would do if you were a Billionaire:

• Give to the ASPCA – earmarked for Pit Bull Advocacy.  This is the Omnivore’s and my main cause.  This breed truly gets a bad rap by media and pop culture.  Many pit bulls are loving, dedicated pets and the entire breed as the potential to be man’s best friend.
• Give to education causes (I’d let the Omnivore pick out his favorite – he’s in teaching)
• Travel.  Visit places in the US first, then go abroad.  I feel like I’m so inclined to jump overseas for vacationing, but I’d really like to appreciate what America has to offer
• Savings account.  I can’t help it!  I’m such a saver.
• Take care of family, where applicable

And now, I’m going to pass this list of questions onto 5 food bloggers:

Brit at Duke’s House
LovesToEat Foodblog
Kerstin at Cake, Batter, and Bowl
Erin at Milk & Honey
Ash at Delish

I also lack the motivation to make pie.  I have a sneaking suspicion that the lack of motivation to make fattening desserts is not as common as the lack of motivation to run around in the blistering sun for no apparent reason.

For awhile, I blamed the lack of pies in my life on the fact that I didn’t own a pie plate.  And then I bought a pie plate.  And there were still no pies.  Not that it really mattered, of course.  The Omnivore claims to not like pie.  He especially avoids pumpkin pie (which would be my favorite, if I had to choose) and pecan pie (which would also be my favorite, if I had to choose).  He can’t be bothered with messy fruit-filled pie, and quite frankly, pie just isn’t chocolatey enough for him.  So, I made no pies.

And then I joined the You Want Pies with That? blogging group.  Once a month, we are forced into pie production.  Strong armed, really.  There are super strict consequences should you not participate.  Something to do with force-clipping your fingernails, I’ve heard.

For the month of June, the theme instructed us to make a pie based on our favorite summertime drink.

So I based my pie off of a delicious chocolate milkshake, because, well, the Omnivore only perked his ears up at the mention of chocolate pie, and he was the only one really eating the pie, so…yeah.

Oh, by the way, taking pictures of a chilled pie with fresh whipped cream on a weltering summer day led to less than stellar picture results.  Hello melting!  Hello steamy camera lens!  Goodbye pie, melting away to oblivion!

I could have done a round two photoshoot, I realize, by the pie was devoured amidst groans of pleasure.  Them mellow chocolate filling, with its perfectly silk consistency, was just irresistible.

One Year Ago: Not Yo Mama’s Potato Salad

French Silk Pie (Betty Crocker)

1 9″ baked pie crust
1/4 cup butter
3 oz unsweetened baking chocolate
1 cup sugar
3 T cornstarch
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup heavy whipping cream
additional whip cream for garnish

Melt butter and chocolate in a double boiler over low heat, stirring occasionally.  Remove from heat.  Mix sugar with cornstarch and stir into chocolate mixture.

Beat eggs in a small bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed until thick and lemon colored.  Stir eggs into chocolate mixture.  Return chocolate mixture to double boiler and cook 5 minutes, stirring constantly, until thick and glossy.  Stir in vanilla.  Remove from heat and allow to cool 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Beat whipping cream in a chilled electric mixer bowl on high speed until stiff.  Fold chocolate into whipped cream.  Spread into baked pie shell.  Cover and refrigerate 4 hours or until set.  Garnish with whipped cream.  Keep refrigerated.

**to make a Mocha French Silk Pie, stir in 2 tsp of instant coffee with the chocolate**

We’ve been forced into buying those special little bags (what’s so special about them anyway?) with a portion size too large for a single person’s serving (unless you buy the minibags, which cost more, *scowl!*).  We’ve been strong-armed into these companies’ choices of seasonings (butter, fake butter, and more butter) all because we thought there was no other way.

The Omnivore and I always bought the lower-fat, less-butter microwave popcorn bags until we purchased one of these back in June of 2006.

It broke in July of 2006.  Rats.

So, I picked one of these up at a second-hand store.  The day was saved *heroic fistpump.*

Inherent to this type of popcorn-making machine, though, is the addition of a significant amount of butter and oil.  Popcorn eating became less frequent and more indulgent around the house o’ Branny.  And then it became non-existent.  The old Whirly-Pop broke.  It was claimed by the dishwasher.

And the Omnivore and I, well, we’re stubborn.  We’d made the break from microwave popcorn and we weren’t going back.  But we were craving tender white kernels.

And then my dear husband developed a skill that I could never match in the kitchen.  He began making stovetop popped corn with merely a stainless steel soup pot and a glass lid.  Why could I never manage to master this?  I refused to be as heavy-handed with the SmartBalance “butter” required to get those kernels popping.  The Omnivore’s love affair with popcorn flourished.  Mine fizzled and died.

That stuff was too darn delicious and too darn bad for me.

And then I got to thinking.  What’s so special about microwave popping corn anyway?  Can I recreate it at home?  What do I have to lose?  (only an expensive microwave, I guess).  So I started googling.  And I discovered I could make popcorn with no added oils, fats, or flavorings in my own home!  And I got angry at the microwave popcorn conspirators companies.  And I got over that quickly, because my homemade popcorn is just peace, love, and lollipops.

One Year Ago: Crash hot Potatoes

Homemade Microwave Popcorn (1 serving)
1/4 cup white popping corn
brown paper bag

optional additions: olive oil, salt, garlic salt, parmesean cheese, cayenne pepper, cinnamon and sugar

Place popping corn into a brown paper bag.  Add 1 tsp of oil, if desired but the addition is not necessary for effective popping.  Add 1/4 tsp salt, if desired.  Fold lip of bag over tightly and refold one time further.  Place folded side down in your microwave.

Microwave at full power for 2 minutes and 30 seconds or until popping sounds are infrequent, about 2 seconds between pops.

You may adorn popcorn after popping with seasonings, butter, or other oils of your choosing.