Lazy Girl's Key Lime Pie

It doesn't get easier than this but it CAN be considerably more tasty if you use good ingredients instead of the schlock I've listed here.

1 can of sweetened condensed milk
Three limes
Cool Whip (none of that yucky Fat Free or French Vanilla or Mocha Sod flavor or whatever they're pushing at the minute.)
Graham Cracker pie crust.

Grate rind of limes (green part only) and squeeze juice, including the odd bit of pulp, into a large glass bowl. Add contents of can of sweetened condensed milk and stir until it thickens, about one minute.
Fold in one container of Cool Whip. Mix gently until all ingredients are incorporated evenly. Spoon gently into prepared pie crust, preferable a cookie crumb pie crust (such as one made from graham cracker crumbs, or better yet, gingersnaps.) Put in fridge to "harden" for at least 20 minutes or throw at guests immediately if they can't wait that long. Freezes well.

Ugh, I hate Cool Whip and I dislike the film of plastic waxy coating that graces my tongue after eating anything made from it. However, I must admit, the lime juice goes a long way in counteracting said wax effect, so if you need something impressive QUICK, and you have the ingredients on hand, go for it. It's unlikely that these are ingredients an expat just happens to have on hand--Cool Whip is like diamonds out here and almost as expensive--but if you do, more power to you.

Am thinking of way to incorporate this into my Mad Man Cocktail Supper (a dinner party consisting entirely of what my friend calls "whore durves" ) and perhaps tiny "cookie lime pies" are the way to go--this, served on a tiny Vanilla Wafer. What do you think?

White Chocolate Chunk Peppermint Brownie Recipe Recap

I am reposting this recipe because the brownies are just that damn good. No white chocolate chunks with Candy Cane bits lying around the house? Then omit--or, throw in a handful of chunks of white chocolate from a smashed-up Dove bar, and perhaps add some toasted almonds and raisins you've plumped up in brandy, in which case the name changes from Brownies to "TDFs" which stands for To Die Fors. (This explains my college weight gain, for sure.)

Brownies: These microwave BEAUTIFULLY. Melt 9 tablespoons of butter (half-cup plus one tablespoon). You can nuke it or do in on the stove top, but whatever you do, you must let it get back to room temperature before you mix in other ingredients. Otherwise, as  women wiser than I have noted, your brownies will be very heavy and kind of dry. Since you're nuking these, and it's awfully easy to dry out anything being nuked, err on the side of caution and leave the stuff strictly alone for at least ten minutes. Go do your nails or something while it's cooling off. (This also gives any toast crumbs that may have accidentally been scooped into the pan a chance to settle, so you can fish them out.) Don't use bacon grease or olive oil. Bacon, which is actually delightful with chocolate, does not enliven baked goods (although it's a marvel on a Maple Bar.) Olive oil and chocolate--not a good combo either. If you have to go cholesterol-free, just don't bother with this recipe and make yourself some hot fudge (zero fat, if you use skim milk) and pour it on some fat-free ice milk and be happy.




When you return, stir in a cup and a half of white sugar, three eggs, a generous dollop of vanilla (at least a teaspoon, but not a tablespoon) and a pinch of salt. If you have the time and patience, you can then beat the shit out of this until it's light and fluffy and glossy and pours like a ribbon, which will ensure brownies with a lovely meringue-like top. If you're me, you say the hell with it as you don't even have a proper wooden spoon anymore (thank you, Blessed Herbs Colon Cleanse) or some big-ass fancy mixer and so you just mix it up until it's fairly smooth and no yucky yellow lumps are showing. Now add 9 tablespoons of cocoa (that's a half-cup plus one tablespoon) and stir in 12 tablespoons of flour, which is 3/4 of a cup or a half-cup plus a quarter cup or a half-cup plus four tablespoons (I spell this out as some of the women in my family are not really good at maths.) Gently fold this in--do not beat--and as soon as it's more-or-less incorporated, pour it into a greased and floured ( or cocoa'd) microwaveable pan--8 by 8 inches is good, but a round pie pan made of Pyrex is even better, as you can slice it into pie wedges when finished. Regardless, spread it in the pan, then sprinkle a bunch of cut-up Hershey Candy Cane Christmas Kisses on top: sort of squish them in a bit so they're not all at the very top. Nuke on high power for six minutes, then check: done? Still squishy? Try another minute. Then another. Keep going until it's more or less set in the middle. There will indeed be some slightly wet places when you pull it out but these will dry up a few minutes out of the oven, because it's still cooking a bit. If you have used Pyrex (and I HEART THE STUFF!) the glass will retain quite a bit of heat and give your brownies a more finished appearance. Truthfully, you should let the stuff cool before attacking it. I mentioned earlier that I don't really like to eat brownies--I get a sugar rush, then I get cranky, and then I need a nap which is filled with my recurring dream of speeding along back country roads in search of a house I can call my own...I've had this dream so often that I know which road to take to go to which house and yet I somehow never get inside any of the houses...



These brownies are plain, simple, good, and can be dolled up a number of ways, such as using brown sugar and rum (instead of the vanilla), adding nuts, adding dollops of peanut butter, using a different liquor in place of the vanilla, using crushed-up peppermint sticks, adding a tablespoon of espresso powder, mint chocolate chips, plain semi-sweet chips, peanut butter chips, ad nauseum. They're the sub to a dominatrix dessert menu: they seem sweet and submissive but when all is said and done, they're really just there to make you their bitch.

Lays, Lays, and More Lays, plus Key Lime Pie

All right, you know how I have been slagging off Lay's Flavored Potato Chips? Well,  I sampled two more types and found one to be flat-out-fall-on-the-floor delicious. The two types are pictured below. Which one gave me mouthgasm?

The first, Lay's Intense and Stimulating Numb and Spicy Hot Pot Flavor. The second, Italian Red Meat Flavor. You'd expect the second one to be spaghetti bolognaise on a chip, but you'd be wrong: it has the same pissy sweet slightly red flavor found in other Lay's chips. As for the first chip, well... since I had experienced another "Intense and Stimulating" potato chip flavor and found it about as intense and stimulating as a shy but drunken teenage date, I wasn't expecting much. But oh my my my my my, to my surprise, this was a crisp ridged chip which delivered a powerful punch of flavor. As promised, some of the pain receptors on my tongue were knocked out by the presence of ma, the coating found on peppercorns which is used a lot on Hunanese and Sichuan cooking. Ma reduces sensitivity in order to allow the tongue to accept food normally too hot to bear. The flavor was intense indeed, a bit on the hot side for me, but beautifully complemented by the sour cream I dipped it into to cool down my mouth. Ah, bliss! I will work out some dip recipe to complement this chip--possibly something with spinach--it's that good. However, since I have to watch the salt intake, I contented myself with a few bites, then tossed the contents. Of course, once I did that, someone who likes spicy food popped by for a cocktail and I was forced to serve the old standby, peanuts liberally coated with cayenne pepper. (Don't ever throw anything away.)

I have dinner guests coming over, one of whom is NOT a fan of the hot and spicy, the other one disliking chocolate. One is also allergic to nuts. This limits the menu somewhat but not so much as when vegan friends come over the same evening that your friend on Atkins is staying. (Worst night of my life, by the way.)  The menu will be simple: they order the pizza they like, I have a killer salad with three different dressings, devilled eggs, asparagus in citrus butter sauce, and for dessert, my killer brownies with white chocolate mint bits, aka Hershey Candy Cane Kisses. I just invested in two bags' worth--about 12 dollars worth of chocolate--which will cover four pans of brownies. The last dessert is Key Lime Pie, made simple for the Chinese kitchen.

Here goes. Chill two boxes of cream, 500  grams total. I use Nestle Whipping Cream, which comes in cute little 250 gram boxes. Chill your beaters (or wire whisk if you're using one) and the bowl as well. While this is chilling, grate the rind of three small limes into a bowl (mine came from Jenny Lou's, you can get them at the Marketplace as well) and add their juice. Add one regular sized can of sweetened condensed milk and stir 'til thick.

Beat the two boxes of whipping cream with the chilled beaters (about four minutes with my wussy little handmixer, or ten minutes by hand.) Beat until fairly stiff but don't tip it over into the "Come butter come" stage. Fold in the thickened milk-lime juice mixture. Fold gently until mixed. A few drops of green food coloring enhance the finished product but I don't go for the artificial stuff (despite the forays into Lays) so I don't add it. Gentle scrape into a prepared cookie crust of some kind--for example, a crust made of crushed gingersnaps, or even Oreo-type cookies. You can make your own crust-- 1 1/2 cups or so of smashed cookie crumbs or Digestive biscuits, two spoonfuls of sugar, about three tablespoons of butter, mixed, smashed into a pie plate, and microwaved for about a minute. (I adjust the recipe according to how big  my remaining knob of butter is, and other factors.) Make sure it cools thoroughly before you add any filling.

This pie is best kept frozen, or refrigerated in a very cold refrigerator. Frozen, it lasts as long as you don't have guests with spoons who like to hang around the fridge at night. I wouldn't keep it more than a day or two in the fridge, however. (Not that that's a problem around here.)

To serve, garnish with finely chopped candied ginger, especially delightful if you have put in in a gingersnap crust. Especially good with a tiny, piping hot cup of espresso.

By "Lays" I Meant Potato Chips, You Perv

I had a delightful morning spent first at brunch (eggs benedict, excellent fried potatoes, tea, only 50 RMB at The Den) and then with a friend doing girly stuff. By that I don't mean anything of a Sapphic nature (damn) but rather some quality time at the hands of beauticians. As we lay stretched out next to one another on a long divan I commented to my friend--who had three different staff members working on her at the same itme--that this was probably the closest to group sex that we'd ever get, a remark that so shook her that I think she would have walked out if not for the fact that her eyelids were taped shut and a weary-looking beautician was rasping her naked feet with a cheese grater. I don't know what's so awful about the comment, which was true, after all. But I hastily changed the subject to today's taste test, Hot and Sour Fish Soup Flavor Lay's, versus Blueberry Flavor.



The Challenger: Hot & Sour Fish Soup Flavor



Friend then starting showing signs of interest (rather than say, disgust.) While I rambled on about how shocked I was at the "weird" range of flavors (French Chicken, anyone?) she responded that most of those flavors are available in the UK. My turn to be shocked and horrified. In the US we have regular, barbecue, and maybe some salt-and-vinegar for the super fancy. Oh, you might find sour cream and onion, or cheddar ranch, but they're not that commonly found. OR ARE THEY? Is it possible that I have been away for so long that infidels such as Italian Red Meat Flavour have penetrated the local 7-11s and become the "new" standards? I was pretty shaken, actually, and started to describe my tasting process. First of all I don't bounce from one type of chip to another--I eat a fair share, then have a neutral chaser, such as a big slug of milk, before brushing my teeth, drinking a cup of tea, then starting on another batch. If something smells so foul that my dogs pass out when I rip open the bag, I don't bother to sample it. I was rather hoping that Hour and Sour Fish Soup Flavor would knock out one if not both of the dogs, but to my surprise they were unnaturally mellow when I opened the pack. and even less interested when I tipped the contents into a bowl.

These chips are thicker than the regular Lay's chip, and ridged to boot, possibly to hold more of that delicious fish soup goodness. I was intrigued by the fact that the package offered up the words "Intense & Stimulating" thinking that this was a description of the flavor, but these words probably just apply to the skank "singing star" who is pictured, chip aloft, chopsticks coyly posed, in front of a bowl of fish soup which has appeared like a burning bush in the lower right quadrant of the package. Taste? Hotter than hell, right? No. Kind of bland and mild. More like a barbecue taste, very light on the fish. In fact, I didn't really detect any fish flavor, and this batch of chips (crisps to you Brits, but by now you should have figured this out) was fairly fresh and had a good crunch to them. The dogs wouldn't touch them, which is an omen, perhaps,  but after stuffing two down my gullet, I was able to have a refreshing palate cleanser in the form of a Cadbury Creme Egg (it IS Easter after all) before trying Blueberry Flavor without any noticeable ill effects.



Yes, that's right: Blueberry



Blueberry is, according to the package, "Cool & Refreshing" and does not need the sexy presence of a skank to sell its strange and honest contents. What are blueberry chips like? Well, imagine you've just chewed some artificially flavored blueberry gum. You spit it out. You take a fistful of thin-cut potato chips and cram them into your mouth. You chew and swallow. That's what these taste like. Is it dessert? Not really. Is it a refreshing savory? Not really. Blueberry chips reside in that overlapping area on a culinary Venn Diagram called Not Really Anything. It's sweet. It's savory. It's not delicious and I don't know why anyone would bother. But then again, I say the same thing about certain sexual activities and that doesn't stop other people from enjoying them. (Or so I'm told.)

I have to go back to work tomorrow and I'm kind of hoping that something pleasant will happen, such as being invited out to dinner so that I don't sink into my Chili Cheese Dog rotation again. Whatever happens, you can be sure it won't be accompanied by the crunch-crunch-crunch of any tasty Lay's product.

A note: I found this photo and was staring at it for a while, thinking "That girl must have been wearing a SHITLOAD of eyeliner!" when two things hit me: first, note the presence of a home-made suit of armour in the right edge of the picture. Second, the girl was me, and the unsuitably sardonic smirk on my face clearly reveals that I would indeed spend the rest of my life around the sort of people for whom it is entirely natural to make a suit of armour from old Crisco tins to perk up a dull corner of the house. This was WAY before Martha Stewart. I shouldn't have smirked: at that time, as my mother was making our lives hell with a King-Kong outfit she was designing and the modeling of the head in clay took almost a year: we ate Thanksgiving dinner at a table which featured a lovely stuffed turkey and the head of a model wearing 26 pounds of sculpting clay and thought nothing of it. Ah, 17, the year people  (eg, Grandma) finally stopped calling me "Sandy" and stuck to the name I  have preferred, which is "Zanne." (If you are unlucky enough to be named Alexandra, be grateful no one calls you Alex or worse, LEXIE.)  And yes, Smart Asses, they had colored film back then, but the butt monkey who took this shot was an art student and preferred black and white.

Get Your Chips On, or, Getting Lays

I bought several bags of chips the other day, all of them the familiar Lays brand, and am preceding to work my way through them. Bag number one, on the left: Mexican Tomato Chicken Flavor. Oddly, there's a picture of the cover of both a tomato and a gravy boat full of hollandaise sauce, neither of which seem particularly Mexican or chickeny to me. The taste is not bad: it's not loaded with oregano or cumin as you might expect, but is a rather sweet version of a barbecue flavored chip. It's pleasant enough, but nothing to write home about, although I do seem to be spending time on an Easter Sunday blogging about it. Yeah, well, it's worth mentioning in passing, that's the best I can say of this. Saucy treat number two: This is, and again, I am not kidding, French Chicken Flavor. French Chicken--to me this is a hint of  some delicious tarragon-infused treat. What it is, basically, is your basic Lay potato chip with some fussy, almost undetectable  powder clinging to it which tastes faintly of salt, powdered sugar, and MSG. It actually tastes more like a regular Lays potato chip than the plain ol'  "American" flavor we buy over here. Pleasant, but not worth it.

Since I had both of these bags (yes, I shared a bit with the dogs) during the course of a single day, you can understand why I chose to have beer for dinner, in an effort to rid my body of that much sodium and MSG. I have a brunch to go to today at The Den, which is normally a sports bar (precisely the reason we six single ladies chose to breach its perimeters on today, The Lord's Day) but which used to have good brunches. I don't know if their own particular and peculiar brunch special is still up--you used to have your choice of a milkshake or a mimosa as a side order at breakfast--but I will report back to you. Today's Chip Du Jour is the most horrific one I have ever seen and I am probably going to have to get sloshed at brunch in order to open the bag, let alone dump out and sample the contents.

What gastronomic horror can be causing me this much agony in advance? Is it the Green Tea with Lemon Flavor? Cucumber Flavor, or the other version available in the "lite" (Read: dehydrated) chip, Green Cucumber Flavor? Oh hell no: it's not even Italian Red Meat Flavor. It is--brace yourself--HOT AND SOUR FISH SOUP FLAVOR. Hey, try topping your next casserole with THAT.

BTW--tomorrow is Anzac Day. If you don't know the story of the Anzac push in WW1, look it up. My grandmother lost her true love to World War One and it may or may not be true that on Anzac Day she wore black and walked around saying mysterious things like "Bloody Winston Churchill!" In any event, if you can attend an Anzac service, do so: very moving, very beautiful, and enough to turn you Quaker on the spot. The daughter of a long line of people who served in the military, I am convinced that making war is evil, but self-defense is mandatory. I'll do my bit to remember the boys by doing something other than making Anzac biscuits or picking up anyone from Down Under to share our breakfast. (Come to think of it two of my dining companions are Kiwi and Australian.) How about this: I promise to remember that I am a guest in this country and to act as a good ambassador by my cheerful and polite attitude. Yeah, I know, I do that perfectly every frickin' day. 

Passed Over

I've been in a fog all week due to slipped discs, plentiful drugs, and an incredibly stupid situation at work which exploded like a powder keg in hell. I also had a retraining/recertification process for MJN2 which added to the general stress. It's Easter this weekend and I missed Passover and sort of jerked awake in the middle of the night with the realization I had forgotten all religious observances and rose in a panic to smear a raw lamb chop (still frozen) across the door sill in the hopes this would placate the Powers That Be into letting the Peke (the only male in the house) live another year. Halfway to the door I realized the Peke is kind of a pain in the ass and probably not worth a belated sacrifice of a perfectly good lamb chop--what was I supposed to do, cook it and eat it afterwards?--and since  I'm not officially Jewish, I said the hell with it and had it for breakfast instead. He can take his chances, and I'll take mine. I seared  it over quick high heat, with a touch of olive oil, then added a knob of butter and a wisp of garlic to the top, put a lid on, and turned the heat way down. It was done to a lovely soft pink with a good brown charred crust within minutes and I ate it with a twist of sea salt and pepper. Mint would have been nice, or lemon, but it was good the way it was, and the dogs got the bones and fat to fight over, so all were happy.

It's Easter, and my baby girl isn't here, and for the first time in 47 years I am not dyeing a single Easter Egg. I'm kind of used to downer birthdays and Christmases but the thought of not putting together a basket for my girl sort of upsets me. I did send her something via See's, and sent my parents a nice Easter basket too, but it's just not the same.
I think I will break down and make cupcakes, with the traditional green coconut for grass and jelly beans for eggs and take them to brunch on Sunday. I just can't NOT do something. Once a Mom, always a Mom. Will take pictures if I do.

Food Ho! More Ice Cream Treats

I've had what is really a massively shitty day, through no fault of my own, and as soon as the legal smoke clears, I will write about it. In the meantime, continuing in the vein of "light-hearted ice cream snacks" I purchased the following:

He's so smiley! So friendly! Light-hearted ice cream man is FRIEND to foreigner! I unwrapped the bar, expecting something of a similar nature inside--I mean, HELL, if the Brits have managed to put the words "Holiday Rock" all the way through a stick of hard candy for the past hundred years, piping identical chocolate ice cream men into soft vanilla shouldn't be hard for modern manufacturers in China, right?After all, they invented noodles AND gunpowder and in 461 AD the concept of "pi", right? RIGHT???!??
Wrong. This is the horror that I got, all wrapped up in a little plastic coffin for verisimilitude:

Frankly, this scares the shit out of me--Demon Ice Cream!--and I am glad I didn't buy one for my godson. He's only six, and easily frightened. Note however that I did take a bite out of the creature--upper right quadrant--and I can report that not only is this a visual horror but it is a gastronomic one as well. It's not at all sweet, being sour, grainy, with a harsh chemical taste reminiscent of burning rubber. Also, in terms of the visual, he has no arms, and suffers from hydrocephalus, which is no laughing matter. Great--he's demon possessed, and Mom was on thalidomide. Is it asking too much that he's really a delightful companion, a good friend, a possessor of a great personality, or at least full of creamy goodness?
Well, I guess for a quarter, it is.

Food Ho, High on Life

Gentle Readers, I attach proof that I am indeed a Food Ho. That's me, aged five, dressed as a witch for Halloween. Why? Because witches are scary and frighten people into giving them more candy than say a princess would. (In truth, it's the other way around. But I digress.)

I am home sick today with a sprained back. This is Day Three of drugs and bed rest prior to a trip to the hospital to meet up with Dr. Q and his magic fingers. The drugs make me veer between nausea and a ravenous state in which I am willing to devour just about anything, including the item below.

These are--and NO, I am NOT KIDDING--"butter flavored" Chips Ahoy cookies. They were foul. I recall from my childhood that each Chip Ahoy is supposed to contain something like 17 chips minimum but these contained roughly five chips each and had a pissy chemical "butter" taste that was akin to the smell of microwave popcorn, extra greasy. Ugh. I paid 4.5 RMB for 9 tiny cookies that left a distinctly unpleasant aftertaste, not that they tasted that good going down. Thank God for the next item, a cheap Beijing standard known as the Bitter Coffee ice cream. I paid a whopping 2.5 kuai for this--about a quarter--for a standard popsicle size frozen dairy treat. There's a very, very thin layer of something on the outside that is almost chocolate, and the inside is a semi-sweet coffee ice cream. It's a bit grainy, and not as heavily coffee flavored as in the past, but it's pretty ok. It's actually less grainy than before, so there seems to be some trade-off involved: tastes great, less filling, perhaps.

Let's say you want a delicious quick and creamy treat--throw this with a splash of milk and a dash of Kahlua into your Magic Bullet (the blender, not the sex toy) and whirl it into an adult beverage.

At some point I nodded off due to a combination of Valium and Buffy Season 7, and when I awoke I was hungry enough to try this last one. It's corn-flavored ice cream which is actually shaped to resemble  an ear of corn. The texture is  creamy--almost as creamy as "real" ice cream and it has a thick sweet creamed corn taste which I found nauseating (down to the last bite, I might add.) The outer part is a thin sweet waffle cone which is imprinted cleverly to resemble an ear of corn. Since "corn" is a big flavor here--there's corn flavored milk, corn flavored yogurt, corn-flavored breath mints (yeech) it's not too surprising that in terms of texture, corn flavored ice cream is the creamiest, free of annoying chucks of ice crystal, well worth the quarter if corn--known to my nerdy friends as the "see you later food," a fact they proclaim loudly without stopping anytime I serve them anything with corn in it -- is your favorite taste sensation.Having overdosed on these "treats" as well as quite possibly the Valium, I am craving wholesome food in the form of potato chips. Whoops, that will have to be another post because it's damned hard to find plain ol' potato chips here--they're all flavored with Lime (not bad) or Green Tea or Italian Red Meat and what I want is this: someone to bring me food, no matter what it is, and to keep the dogs off me while I chow down. Staying after and walking those two little doggy bastards so I can stay in my pajamas for another twelve hours would be a bonus.

Food Ho Ho Ho

The Food Ho had a new gastric experience last night: Game Pie made with Wild Boar. Deee--lightful! I had no idea that Wild Boar was so tasty--I usually date bores, not eat them. My oh my--there was mouthgasm for sure. Although the chef claimed he made the pickles as well I noticed that the jar still had a label from Crosse and Blackwell which was perfectly intact--no sign of having been boiled off--so that's a bit suspect. However, the combination was intense and flavorful. If only all food could be like that. I'm about to hop on a train for Mysterious Job Number Two, going to the far frozen reaches of the frickin' freezing North, and trust me, for the next two days, will be dining on salt, instant noodles, MSG, and more salt. I loathe train travel, particularly here, but am Taking One For The Team  (Ah, the Job That Doth Not Dare Speak Its Name!) Yes, I'm pissed off about it, but memories of last night's Game Pie have soothed most of the ruffled feathers of my soul (but not all.)

Food Ho

You know you're a foodie and your friends are not when you bring a pan of brownies to a party and proudly announce they're "Magic Brownies" and your friends jump on them like a Lacrosse team on a three-way party girl and then are disappointed an hour later because they're not floating or seeing pink ponies swirling through their cocktail glass and you're bummed out because nobody noticed that by "Magic" you meant they are 1)baked in honor of Mr. Magic, whose birthday it is, and 2) "Magic" because you managed to bake whole marshmallows in without any of them melting. I bet no one even noticed the delicious hunks of mint-flavored white chocolate or the lovely pink and white swirls or the fact I TOASTED the damn walnuts first, either. Damned drugged out Philistines! (That's oughties-speak for "drugged-out hippy freaks."

This post brought to you by Food Ho. Most postings--and the brownie recipe--later.