Posted March 9, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 3 Comments
Of all the characters in Firefly, Hoban Washburne is my all-time favorite. “Wash”—as he’s known by the crew of Serenity—is the ship’s pilot and resident goofball. There’s lots to love about Wash, but I think the best thing about him is how different he is from the rest of the crew, who’re all hard-bitten warriors (including his wife, Zoe).
When we first meet Wash, he’s playing with dinosaur toys at the helm of Serenity, acting out a narrative in which a T-Rex horribly betrays a kind-hearted stegosaurus. Like many people, this was the moment when I knew I was going to love his character, so I decided to make a dish in honor of his dinos!
These homemade dino nuggets are made from thin-cut chicken breast cut into shape with dinosaur cookie cutters, coated in bread crumbs, and baked. The ketchup recipe is one I found in a Zagat video, and I LOVE it! It’s more tomato-y than storebought ketchup and super easy to make!
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Posted March 2, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 4 Comments
Howdy, folks! Today’s recipe marks the start of our first TV show menu of the year. It’s themed after one of my favorite shows: Firefly!
The show is set in a dystopian future when mankind leaves Earth to terraform the universe. The arm of the law doesn’t really reach the outer systems, which have taken on an attitude toward law and justice reminiscent of the Wild West. The show follows the travels of the crew and passengers of the spaceship Serenity.
In the first episode, the ship’s mechanic convinces a preacher named Shepherd Book to travel with them, and he pays for his passage with something unusual: a small box of strawberries.
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Posted January 26, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 6 Comments
There are lots of great desserts in the Little House books, but I had my heart set on snow candy from the very beginning.
This is one of the fastest and most rewarding recipes I’ve ever made. Start to finish, it doesn’t take more than 5-7 minutes, and the resulting maple candy is delicious. The version I made (a recipe from Happy Hooligans) is truthfully nothing more than boiled maple syrup, but there’s something about the chill from the snow and the texture from the few remaining snowflakes still clinging to the candy as you lay it on your tongue that just make it so darn satisfying. ^.^
This is a fun, quick snowy day recipe to make with kids. I highly recommend eating the candy straight off the snow, as it tends to go soft a few minutes after being removed from the snow (the melting snowflakes start to dissolve it).
NOTE: You’ll want to be careful to use “food safe” snow—clean snow that hasn’t been walked or touched by animals. We had a big snow the weekend I made this, and I went out while it was still snowing and gathered some fresh snow off our back porch railing. If you’re sending out kiddos to gather the snow, make sure they know a safe place to get it.
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Posted January 19, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 3 Comments
In the Little House books, many of the foods are simple and hearty, but they’re also a little unusual. You don’t see many people eating smoked venison or salt pork these days, and Johnny cake is even more rare. So I thought it would be fun to take some time to make a pioneer food that’s a little more familiar to modern palates: roasted sweet potatoes.
Like most Midwesterners, I’ve eaten sweet potatoes all my life, so it was fun for me to read about a food I recognized in the Little House books. In Little House on the Prairie, a friend brings some sweet potatoes to Christmas dinner, and the Ingalls family bakes them whole in the ashes of the fire. I wanted to make something a bit more involved that still remained true to the simple, natural way the Ingalls cooked, so I diced my potatoes and roasted them (skins still on) with a little salt, pepper, garlic, and fresh thyme.
The end result was a hearty dish perfect for a pioneer kitchen! 🙂
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Posted January 12, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 10 Comments
Today’s post is more of a technique than a recipe, but it’s one I’ve been wanting to try for months now! 🙂
This past weekend, I got to do something super fun and pioneer-y: I made smoked venison! When my brother got his first deer this year while hunting with my dad, I begged for a hindquarter steak to use on the blog, since nothing could be more perfect for a Little House on the Prairie menu than smoked venison. 🙂
Then I called up my friends David and Gina, who were kind enough to let me use their smoker. I’ve included details about our process below. Enjoy! 🙂
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Posted January 5, 2017 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 14 Comments
Welcome to our very first menu of 2017! I’m proud to announce that our new Book of the Month will be Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books.
I love all the hearty frontier food featured in the books—smoked venison, corn cakes, snow candy, and so much more! One food that stuck out to me in the Little House books was “johnny cake.” I’d never heard of it before, but the Ingalls family eats it while traveling to their new homestead, so it sounded like perfect pioneer food.
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Posted December 29, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 4 Comments
Welcome to our Nutcracker bonus recipe! I actually stumbled across this punch recipe while looking up how to make sugar plums, and it just sounded too delicious to pass up. Plus, it’s so easy. You just stir the ingredients together and serve! Talk about a no-hassle punch recipe…and just in time for New Year’s! 🙂
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Posted December 22, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 3 Comments
Ok, you probably knew this was coming. We’re making a Nutcracker menu, so there’s gotta be sugar plums, right? Of course right! 🙂
Full Disclosure: When I first started planning this menu, I actually had no idea what a sugar plum was. I assumed it was dried plum that had been rehydrated in wine and rolled in sugar (which sounds delicious). But as it turns out, “sugar plum” is kind of a misnomer. It CAN involve plums, but it doesn’t have to. And they’re rarely the main ingredient.
Traditional sugar plums are hard candies that have been colored purple and surround a nut or spice. But there are also “Byzantine sugar plums,” which are made of a mix of chopped nuts, dried fruit, various spices, and sweetener (usually sugar or honey). This is the kind we’ll be making today.
Though I found lots of good recipes online, I decided to go with a slight variation on one by Bryt from Food in Literature since it had one of the shorter ingredient lists and her dried fruit combo sounded delicious (plums, apricots, and dates—oh my!).
So eat up, sugar plum fairies! We’ve got some dancing to do! 🙂
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Posted December 15, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 12 Comments
These cute little cheese wedges are my tribute to The Nutcracker’s main antagonist: the Mouse King! They’re super easy to throw together and simply delicious. They’re also really easy to customize based on what you’ve got in your fridge (I found lots of different versions on Pinterest and altered them to suit my needs). Whip some up to enjoy while watching The Nutcracker…or for your next Christmas party!
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Posted December 8, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 8 Comments
One of my favorite parts of The Nutcracker is when the Christmas tree grows to giant proportions. I wanted to include a tribute to the tree in our Nutcracker menu, and before long I stumbled across this clever pastry recipe from a website called Tavolartegust. I made a few changes to make it my own, and before long I had a delicious prosciutto and pesto Christmas pastry to snack on.
I think one of the best things about it is that is has that visual wow factor while still being really easy to make. You just put your filling between two layers of puff pastry, cut the pastry in a simple pattern (I’ve included visuals in the instructions below), and twist the sides into branches. Presto: instant Christmas meal! 🙂
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