Mama H's Famous Sloppy Joes

As mentioned in a previous post, J and I make Sloppy Joes for Halloween every year.  This year, due to our friends' wedding this weekend, we made them on Monday night instead of Sunday night.

Now Sloppy Joes may sound a little unappealing and for some, may conjure up memories of Billy Madison and the cook telling Billy she made the sloppy joes extra sloppy for him.  But trust me.  They are good.  Just ask J, a former non-believer.

Here's the story behind the tradition (and the name).

My mom (Mama H) would cook these for us every year on Halloween.  Usually we were so excited to go trick or treating we would eat one small one before we left (there was no leaving until we had eaten something!) and then it would be there, warm and waiting for us to devour after we got home.  This was usually followed by sorting and trading our candy.  Each of us siblings would have a shop where you could trade your not-so-favorite candies for more desirable one.  My favorites were always Snickers, Sweet tarts, and Reeses peanut butter cups, but I digress.

So it's not a Halloween picture of yore, but it is a Fall picture circa 1993.

Here is the recipe:

Mama H's Famous Sloppy Joes

Ingredients:
1 1/2 pounds of ground beef
3/4 cup of onion
1/2 cup of green bell pepper--note: I used fire roasted bell peppers this time because I forgot to get a fresh one at the store.  It worked great!
1/2 cup water
1 cup ketchup
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup worchestershire sauce
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
Hamburger buns


Kitchen Supplies:
Large skillet

Brown ground beef, onion and bell peppers (if using fresh) in a large skillet over medium heat.  Once meat is cooked through, drain and return to pan.  Add rest of the ingredients: ketchup, water, brown sugar, worchestershire sauce, and red wine vinegar to beef mixture.  If you are using roasted bell peppers, this is when you would also add them to the pot.  Cook until juices reduce and thicken, approximately twenty minutes.  Top the joes on hamburger buns--this sandwich also works as an open-faced sandwich for those of us that are watching our carbs :)

Serve with pickle spear and cottage cheese, if desired.

This makes enough for 4 to 6 people, or in our case, 2 dinners and 4 lunches.  Enjoy!

Halloween Recap

Halloween this year was a bit different in the Pieces household (that's our friends' nickname for J.  I am by default Mrs. Pieces).

For the last several years, J and I have picked out our own pumpkins at a pumpkin patch, carved them and then eaten Sloppy Joes for dinner before passing out Halloween candy to our trick-or-treaters.  More about the Sloppy Joes tradition and a recipe to follow! We even managed to carry out this tradition the year I was in California and J was here in St. Louis by carving pumpkins over J's Fall Break in mid October.  Here are some of the pumpkins J and I have carved over the years.

J's pumpkin the year the Cardinals won the World Series

My fairy tale pumpkin--I always pick unusual pumpkins to carve

Our pumpkins last year, including one for Woods

Woods' first Halloween

This year, we did not carve pumpkins.  Instead, we were at the wedding of two of our close friends in Chicago.  It was a beautiful wedding and the reception was an absolute blast, so it was well worth compromising our tradition to witness and celebrate with our friends!

That doesn't mean I didn't dress up for Halloween, however.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was Violet Beauregarde from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  Here is a picture to refresh your memory.

While I didn't paint my face blue, I did have a blue suit, red (and white) belt and had begun to turn into a blueberry, hence the really wide hips, just like Violet.  The blueberry part was achieved by wrapping a large bath towel around my hips and using the elastic bottom of my tunic top to hold it in place.

The best part of this costume, however, was that I had all of these items in my closet!  Got to love work-with-what-you-got costumes!

J and I spent Halloween night re-watching Final Destination with a big bowl of popcorn and recovering from our busy weekend. I am making Sloppy Joes tonight to continue our Halloween celebration.  It wasn't our yearly tradition, but it wasn't bad! 

How was your Halloween everyone?  Got any images of your pumpkins from either this year or years past on your Flickr account or blog?  Let's share pictures!

Ch-ch-ch-changes

There have been a few changes around here you should know about.  First, I have been tooling around www.ktrefinishingschool.blogspot.com and trying to make it more streamlined and pleasing to the eye with a new color scheme.  I also added a few items that I think are really fun!  If you haven't visited in a while, or view my blog through Google Reader or a similar program, I suggest checking out the home page and some of my links.  If you do, you will learn:

What I'm reading currently
What I'm playing on my guitar
What I'm cooking, in the form of a weekly menu
What inspires me

This lists will be updated at least weekly, so be sure to check back often for new material!

I can also crossed off another 130 Before I'm Thirty goal off my list: I dyed my hair brown!  A light brown with a hint of auburn to be exact.  I also finally got bangs, something I thought about doing way back in this post. 

Here is a self portrait in my Halloween costume just before Clever Betty's Halloween party.  I was Violet Beauregarde from Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. 

And a close-up.  Lesson learned here: self portraits using a mirror are difficult and my mirror is clearly dirty.  Oops!

 

The new hair has also inspired another change.  I am going to try to complete another one of my goals, this one involving make-up.  Between now and December 2nd, I am going to try to meet my goal of wearing makeup every day for 1 whole month.  I am fairly lazy when it comes to makeup and usually prefer to sleep in instead.  However, with my new hair color, I finding myself wanting to enhance it with some makeup on my face.  So far I am on day four and going strong!

What do you think?  Have any of you undergone changes recently?  Let's hear all about it!

Book Review: The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

As I mentioned in my reading list post, I have been waiting quite a while to get my hands on this book and it was definitely worth the wait!  When I saw that Matthew Pearl who authored The Dante Club, a book I really enjoyed, wrote a review of it that was featured on the back cover of the book, I knew I was in for a treat.

Let me start by sharing with you something about the author.  According to her biography on the back flap of the book cover, Katherine Howe is a doctoral candidate in American and New England Studies who can trace her lineage back to not one, but two, women who were accused as witches during the Salem witch trials: Elizabeth Procter, who was made famous as John Proctor's wife in The Crucible and survived the trials, and Elizabeth Howe, who did not survive.  This blew me away! I am always fascinated by family trees and often wonder what sort of interesting characters there are in my background.  I suppose that's why one of my 130 Before I'm Thirty goals is to research my family tree.  You never know who might be back there just waiting to be discovered!

Back to the book.  The protagonist, Connie Goodwin, like Katherine Howe, is a PhD student in New England studies at Harvard.  What starts out as a reluctant favor for her mother when she is supposed to be researching her dissertation becomes a hunt for a book, a physick book, that puts her life and the life of those around her in danger.  It appears that the Salem witch trials, long over, are closer to Connie that she may think.

The book manages to move seamlessly from Goodwin's story in 1991 and that of Deliverance Dane, whose physick book Connie is trying to find.  One difficulty, one that perhaps readers who are accustomed to either reading books written in a Bostonian/New England accent or are more familiar with the accent than me (i.e. live or have lived on the East Coast) may not struggle with, was understanding some of the dialect as Howe wrote it.  At first I was a bit frustrated and confused, but once I pictured how John F. Kennedy (or any Kennedy for that matter) would pronounce the words, I did a lot better.

Spoiler alert!  For those readers who have read the book, please highlight the text below for a brief discussion:

I enjoyed the twists and turns in this novel very much.  I also appreciated that the chapters were substantial in length, something that annoys me about Dan Brown's books.  One and a half pages does not a chapter make, at least in my opinion.  This was especially helpful since the book moves through time fairly often. 

I must admit I suspected early on that Connie was related to Deliverance somehow.  At the very least, I suspected that the house once belonged to her or a relative.  I did not make the connection regarding the names, however (Deliverance, Mercy, Prudence, Patience, Sophia, Grace, and Constance).  That was a great twist and a fun discovery! 

I also enjoy in books and in film when the reader or viewer knows something the characters do not.  I appreciated Howe's effort in this regard when the reader learns what happened to the physick book before Connie does.  You want to scream at Connie: she sold the book!  It's not there!  But alas, you must keep reading to see what happens.

Overall, The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane is a great book and definitely worth reading.  You will learn a great deal about early New England life, academic culture at Ivy League colleges and yourself, all while enjoying a thrilling and fast paced yarn.

Happy (early) Halloween everyone!

Fall into Decorations

With October in full swing, it was time to bust out our Halloween decorations.  Last year, I was given a few items from my aunt who was lightening her load before her big move to South Korea.   This year I was determined to use as many of these decorations as possible, as well as keep any additional spending I did low.  Friends, take a look at what I've done and let me know what you think.  I think I've succeeded on that front!

First, I bought three small pumpkins from Trader Joe's.  The two larger pumpkins are pie pumpkins, which means I can turn them into pumpkin bars, pumpkin bread or pumpkin pie in a few weeks when I get tired of the decor.  I love it when decorations multitask like that!  Total cost: under four dollars.

Next, I layered two green place mats over each other to serve as a table runner.  On top of this I put a brown woven mat for added texture.  I finished it off with some green tea lights and small candle holders, which I removed from their iron bases and turned upside down to resemble bell jars.

After the dining room table had been set, I moved onto the living room.  I placed my two light up pumpkins strategically throughout the room, moving the floor lamp by the couch to make room for the stack of pumpkins.  I know the stack would normally be seen outside of a home, but with no overhead lighting in our living room, both of these lights add a lot of light and warmth to the space.



Finally, I took the covers off of three books with scary-sounding titles and topped the stack with a larger bell jar and apple.  I love this display: it reminds me of Snow White's poison apple and I like that the "theme" of bell jars has been carried throughout the space.  Also, these chairs face our fireplace and little library, so it is the perfect display for this corner of our home.

So there you have it, that's how I, with under four dollars of new materials and a little creativity, decorated our space for Halloween!