Rainbow Jello

Mmmm.....rainbow jello. I remember when I was a kid, rainbow jello was one of my favorite foods at family potlucks. I used to pull apart the layers like string cheese and eat it layer by layer. My mom used to tell me that a properly made rainbow jello could not be pulled apart into layers. I guess she didn't like it so much when I could pull apart the layers of jello...because she was the one who made it.

If you want to make a dish will be a crowd-pleaser with the kiddies, bring rainbow jello to your next potluck.
You can choose the flavors and colors of jello for your rainbow jello. The standard combination my mom makes includes: Red-Strawberry, Orange-Orange, Yellow-Lemon, Green-Lime. Although you can be creative and make "themed" jello:
Red (strawberry or cherry) or Pink (watermelon) and cream -Valentine's Day
Red (strawberry or cherry), blue (berry-blue), cream-=Fourth of July
Green (Lime) and cream-St.Patrick's Day
Orange and cream- Halloween

Or school colors...I remember once in high school I attended a grad party and the jello was layers of blue-berry blue and cream. It was yummy!

Recipe
4- 3oz. boxes of jello (4 different colors of jello)
6 packets of knox gelatin
1 - 14 oz can condensed milk
Water

*Makes a 9"13" pan of jello.
Takes about 2 hours to make (including wait time between layers).

Each Jello Layer
1 packet know gelatin
1/4 cup cold water

3/4 cup water
1 3oz box jello

1. Gelatin Mixture-Stir in 1 packet of knox gelatin in 1/4 cup water. Let sit for 5 minutes.
2. In a sauce pan, heat 3/4 cup water to a boil. Take off the heat and stir in the gelatin mixture until dissolved. Then stir in the box of gelatin (~2 min) until completely dissolved.
3. Set aside and let cool. Makes ~1 cup of jello
If you are limited in sauce pans or want the jello mixture to cool down faster, transfer mixture to another bowl.
4. Repeat process for all four flavors/layers of jello

Cream Jello
1/4 cup cold water
2 packets of Knox gelatin
3/4 cup water

1 can condensed milk
1 cup hot water

1. Gelatin Mixture-Stir in 2 packets of knox gelatin in 1/4 cup water. Let sit for 5 minutes.
2. In a bowl, mix together the condensed milk and 1 cup of hot water.
3. In a sauce pan, heat 3/4 cup water to a boil. Take off the heat and stir in the gelatin mixture. 4. Pour the hot water gelatin mixture into the condensed milk mixture and mix well.

Gelatin and cold water mixture. Make sure all the gelatin interacts with the water (not like this picture).
Cream Jello Mixture

Assembling the layered jello
1. Pour first jello layer into the pan. Place in the refrigerator and let gelatin set for 15-20 minutes.
2. Pour ~1 cup cream mixture into the pan. Place in the refrigerator and let gelatin set for 15-20 minutes.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 for all the jello flavors, until you have 4 layers of colored jello, and 3 layers of cream.
4. Let jello set for a couple of hours before serving.
5. Cut into squares or rectangles and serve.


Tips-
1. Make sure you have enough flat space in your refrigerator for a 9"x13" pan.
2. If your jello mixture is too hot, it will mix together with the cream mixture, and you will lose your layers. Cool down jello to room temperature before pouring over the next layer.

Daring Bakers~July Challenge~Milano Cookies

The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

I chose to only make the Milan Cookies this month.
Recipe courtesy Gale Gand, from Food Network website

Prep Time: 20 min
Inactive Prep Time: 0 min
Cook Time: 1 hr 0 min
Serves: about 3 dozen cookies

• 12 tablespoons (170grams/ 6 oz) unsalted butter, softened
• 2 1/2 cups (312.5 grams/ 11.02 oz) powdered sugar
• 7/8 cup egg whites (from about 6 eggs)
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons lemon extract
• 1 1/2 cups (187.5grams/ 6.61 oz) all purpose flour
• Cookie filling, recipe follows

Cookie filling:
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
• 1 orange, zested

1. In a mixer with paddle attachment cream the butter and the sugar.
2. Add the egg whites gradually and then mix in the vanilla and lemon extracts.
3. Add the flour and mix until just well mixed.
4. With a small (1/4-inch) plain tip, pipe 1-inch sections of batter onto a parchment-lined sheet pan, spacing them 2 inches apart as they spread.
5. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 10 minutes or until light golden brown around the edges. Let cool on the pan.
6. While waiting for the cookies to cool, in a small saucepan over medium flame, scald cream.
7. Pour hot cream over chocolate in a bowl, whisk to melt chocolate, add zest and blend well.
8. Set aside to cool (the mixture will thicken as it cools).
9. Spread a thin amount of the filling onto the flat side of a cookie while the filling is still soft and press the flat side of a second cookie on top.
10. Repeat with the remainder of the cookies.

I did tweak the recipe a bit, but it was due to shear panic. I had printed out the recipe and while I was following the recipe, I thought, "FOUR TABLESPOONS OF EXTRACT???" I don't remember ever using four tablespoons of extract in a recipe before, so I quickly cut down the recipe to 4 teaspoons of extract. Even then, 4 teaspoons as extract seemed like a lot for a recipe only containing 1.5 cups of flour.
The cookies ended up coming out okay, so if I make the recipe again, I might try to incorporate 4 tablespoons of extract and I might try to use cake flour to make a lighter cookies.
My first batch of misshapen and burnt cookies.
My next attempt.
The filling that I chose to use were Wilton's pink candy melts and Giradelli chocolate. Mmmmm....the finished products. Milan cookies. The cookies were not as professional looking as Pepperidge Farms cookies, but they still were yummy!

Sick!

I do not think I've had a cold for over a year. Allergies got me in the Spring, but this past weekend some nasty bug hit me fast. I was in bed all weekend, drank a whole bottle of cranberry juice, a half-gallon of orange juice, gallons of water, and went through a box of kleenex. Maybe my cold wasn't so bad, but I was a pansy about it because I haven't been sick for a while.
It's funny, when I did feel like eating, all I wanted to eat were plain foods like white bread or tea and rice. I hate being sick because eating isn't pleasurable, it's more of me thinking I need to get some Calories in my body.

Being sick put a damper on my dissertation process, and I've lost a bit of my momentum. But I did manage to submit my thesis title page to the Thesis Office for review today, so I guess I accomplished something.
I was trying to edit a paper and spent half an hour trying to figure out what "wan" meant:
"The MDS plot program used to analyze the data wan multiple iterations of the data to create a MDS plot containing..."
I then realized I meant to write "ran." Ugh.

Mike thinks I got sick because I was lacking sleep and overworked myself at the gym, so my body's resistance to disease was caught off-guard. I'm getting better, but now have that froggy voice. Mike and I are now on this "get healthy" kick because we're trying to trim up before we head off to Italy so that we can gain all the weight back eating tons of pizza and gelato. We're basically both pretty healthy people, but we're trying to be extra good.
Mike's Plan
*Go to the gym 4 times a week, play ultimate frisbee once a week
*Limit fast food to less than two times a week
*Limit full Calorie soda

Lauren's Plan
*Go to the gym at least 3 times a week (but really I was going like 5 times a week until I got sick)
-my weekly plan included: lap swimming-once a week, kick & core class-twice a week, cardio camp class-once a week, workout with advisor-once a week.
*Cut out my refined sugar intake (cookies, cakes, etc), cut out potato chip binge-eating
I read all these blogs and wonder how people can stay healthy while consuming all those tasty treats they post about. What's your exercise/diet plan? How do all you foodies balance eating yummy food with a healthy lifestyle?

Whataburger

What restaurant is this? Nope it's not the symbol for Wienerschnitzel, it's Whataburger!!! On one of the trips Mike and I took while he was visiting me in Illinois was to a "Whataburger."
Apparently Whataburger is only located in 10 states.
So, short story of why we had to eat at a Whataburger. At Mike's workplace in Hawaii some co-workers (who were being trained in Hawaii before being sent back to the mainland) would receive phone calls from friends when they were eating at a Whataburger. Apparently the burgers were so good, that these calls would make people jealous.
Common trend in this blog, I don't eat a lot of meat. Other common trend, Mike eats meat like there is some kind of shortage that I do not know about. While he's visiting me in Illinois, spam, hotdogs, steak, sausages somehow end up finding a place in my kitchen.
I ordered the chicken strips combination meal which was served with toast. I enjoy chicken strips in which you can see the actual piecs of chicken breast...and these were good chicken strips. Mike, however, loves those overly processed chicken nuggets (surprise surprise), so he didn't care for these chicken strips as much.
But if I had to order something from Whataburger again, I'd go with the hamburger, because it was a pretty tasty burger.
Apparently you are not allowed to take pictures in the restaurant (come on, seriously, it's a fast food joint!), but I quickly snuck some pictures in before I got scolded again.

Deep, Dark Chocolate Cake

One of my favorite types of cake is a moist chocolaty cake. The problem I find with cakes made from scratch is that they are not as moist as cake mix cakes. But this recipe resulted in a super moist chocolate cake!I just followed Shirley O. Corriher's Deep, Dark Chocolate Cake recipe in "Bakewise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking." The book is kind of neat and provides a scientific explanation of baking certain types of cakes or cookies. It's a bit Alton Brown-esque, and I think Shirley's made some appearances on "Good Eats."
Typically chocolate cakes have a slight red tinge to them. This cake, on the other hand, is as dark as oreo cookies! The secret? You have to use dutch process cocoa powder. I used Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa for this recipe.

Here's the science behind the deep dark color of the cake:
Dutch process cocoa and baking soda make the chocolate so alkaline (more basic, less acidic) that the cake is almost black. Alkalized chocolate is less bitter and has a more uniform dark color.
The addition of the extra baking soda, also made the batter more alkaline, which helped darken the cake's color.

I decided to dub this cake the, "Oreo Cake."I would definitely make this cake again.

I think it would be cuter and more manageable as cupcakes. I think it would be the perfect color for whoopie pies which are supposedly the next trend following the cupcake craze.

Bayern Stube and Harvest Moon Drive-In Theater (Gibson City)

So Lauren had been talking for a long time about how she wanted to go to a drive-in theater. There used to be a drive-in in Hawaii, but that closed down a while ago. Lauren found one in Gibson City. We were talking about it one day at her lab, and Aaron mentioned a German restaurant in the area called Bayern Stube. We'd never heard of it, but a lot of people had a lot of good things to say about it. We'd also never eaten German food before, so we decided to give it a try.

Actually, that's not entirely true. I did have German food before on a family trip to Epcot Center a long time ago. I don't remember much about it.......only that people on the adults table had sausage and meats, while I had a bunch of rye bread.
Walking into Bayern Stub is definitely an experience. Animals of all sorts adorn the walls and ceiling. Lauren asked me if I thought they were real. I'm no expert, but they looked real to me. The only one that looked suspect to me was the bear. You can see it in the picture in the left-center. It looked to small to me. If it was real, then it was definitely a baby bear.
***Mike is now currently back home in Hawaii, so I am finishing his post***
Bread with a smoked sausage spread. I thought it was a smoked salmon spread, but I guess my senses were off. Mike asked me what I thought was in the spread and I said, "smoked salmon and a lot of fat." I guess I got the fat part correct.
Fresh Nova Lox~ over a warm potato cake with Dijon horseadish sauce
Red Cabbage
Veal Schnitzel "Dietrich" Topped with Portabella mushrooms and Gorgonzola cheese on a bed of demi-glaze. Spatzle and German fries (potatoes fried with bacon and onions)

Mike thoroughly enjoyed himself at the restaurant. He drank two pints of beer and had fried beef...if he could have finished off a sausage, he would have. Since German food is characterized by meat, sausage, and beer, you can see why I was more excited by the apple strudel.
Although at one point of the meal Mike said that I was "going to town" on the schnitzel. But then images of the South Park episode kept creeping into my mind, and thought, "oh veal...baby cow."
Apple Strudel

Then we were off to the drive-in movie theater. It was about 90F and humid the night we went, but it was still an enjoyable experience. Prior to the start of the movie, Mike and I threw frisbee (apparently going to the drive-in theater is a family affair, and lots of kids were throwing frisbee or playing soccer). It's funny, Mike seemed to think that going to a drive-in theater was such an "American" thing to do. I don't know, but I've always been into watching outdoor movies whether it be a drive-in or on a big screen outdoors (like the IUB Summer Quad Cinema).
We watched Transformers 2 on the opening night, and the drive-in theater was crowded! Unfortunately, towards the end of the movie, I fell asleep. During the fighting scenes, all the machines started looking alike and I couldn't keep my eyes open. The same thing happened when I watched all the "Lord of the Rings" movies. But really, I think the falling asleep thing happens because I've watched these movies during the midnight or late night screenings.
Overall, this was a good "Mike date night." His tummy was filled with beer and meat and we watched a "boy" movie. Little does he know that our next date will consist of high tea and watching a musical or play...

Bayern Stube Restaurant
209 N. Sangamon Avenue
Gibson City, IL 60936
(217) 784-8304

Harvest Moon Drive-In Theater

1123 N Sangamon Ave

Gibson City, IL 60936-1058

(217) 784-8770