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Our Kitchen
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| Spaulding in his chef cap. |
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| First, gather all your ingredients. |
Serving Up Our Kitchen Expertise
We are excellent chefs, preparing meals for Daddy and Mommy or for our family or
our buddies. Sometimes we prepare whole meals by ourselves, and sometimes we let Mommy and Daddy be our sous chef! (See? We
know what a sous chef is, so we have to be beary good chefs!) So, welcome to our kitchen, where we will give you
our favorite recipes, or show you how to make some of our favorite meals. Just remember, if you aren't allowed to cook on
your own, make sure you have someone old enough to be your sous chef for you! (If you're wondering -- a sous chef is an assistant
chef. It's pronounced "soos.")
If the recipe calls for cutting or using fire, make sure to have your beary own sous chef--an adult--to help you.
We don't want our buddies to get hurt.
There's more to kitchens, then just cooking, so below, we have some other stuff that's always good to know while you're
in the kitchen.
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Teddy's Raspberry Chocolate Cupcakes
Mommy's brother, Ed, is an honest-to-goodness gormet chef, who works in Virginia.
The first meal that Mommy ordered from him at his restuarant was perogies, a Polish version of stuffed shells, but stuffed with potatoes and onions. He served them with bell peppers and onions. Mommy
told him how delicious they were, and he smiled and said, "They're Mrs. T's Perogies."
If Chef Ed can used store bought food, we are still chefs when we start with mixes! Don't let anyone
tell you that you aren't cooking right, if you start with mixes!
For this recipe, we used a chocolate cake mix, but we like making them into cupcakes, instead of a regular
cake, because we can freeze some to eat whenever we feel like having a cupcake. (We add frosting right before serving it,
since frosting gets yudky frozen!)
| We're making a Devils Food cake mix, ... |
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| but changing it a bit. |
| First, gather all the ingredients. |
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| Spaulding volunteered to be my Sous Chef. |
| Blend the ingredients as directed. |
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| Since I'm changing the recipe, I have to make it differently. |
Mommy loves raspberries and its
raspberry season, so we decided to see if I could make this slightly differently from the original recipe. Don’t change
recipes until you have experience in making it the original way and, only change the recipe if it doesn’t matter if
the recipe works – like, don’t make it for a birthday party, if you are in charge of making the cake. If it doesn’t
work, you’ll feel badly. The only thing that would happen, if this change doesn’t work, is that we won’t
have any raspberry and chocolate cupcakes!
Instead of adding the one and
a third cups of water immediately into the mixer, I mixed all the other ingredients in first, and then added just one cup
of water instead of one and a third. We figured that raspberries are juicy, so we guessed on how wet we needed the mix to
become. Since we wanted as many whole berries as possible, we carefully folded (scoop around them to get the mix all over
them, like the pictures below show) the berries at the end.
| Dry and wet ingredients needed to mix. |
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| Be careful turning on the mixer. It can splatter all over! |
| Once the water was added... |
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| make sure everything is thoroughly mixed! |
| Turn on the oven ... |
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| about 15 minutes before putting the cupcakes into it. |
| Put the raspberries in last. |
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| Carefully fold them in! |
| By folding, I mean to carefully... |
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| push them in and cover them without smashing them. |
| Cupcakes are the perfect size for Stuffies |
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| The paper cups make cleaning easy. |
| Fill according to box directions. |
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| Our box said to fill it three-quarters full, like these. |
| While we wait ... |
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| Spaulding, my sous chef, cleans up. |
| When done, cool on a rack. |
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| We use stove burners as racks. Aren't they perfect? Yummy with burst of raspberries! |
Teddy's Macaroni and Cheese Special
4 oz. of macaroni
3 slices of American Cheese
1-2 teaspoons of oil (or some spray oil)
2 tablespoons Romano
1/8 cups milk
4 medium tomatoes
1 medium onion
dash of Splenda
2 baked chicken legs
1/4 cup tomato sauce
Heat water for pasta. Just as the water is starting to boil, carefully (watch out for splashing hot water) put
tomatoes in the water for one minute. Immediately after removing tomatoes, put them in a cold water bath. (Baths are good,
as long as the tomatoes are getting them, not Teddy Bears.) When tomatoes are cool enough remove the skin. (It should be easy
to do it with your fingers after they were boiled.)
Meanwhile, boil pasta until it's tender and white. Heat large frying pan, spray with oil (we like the spray oils, like
Pam, or Crisco), and dump in the chopped up onion. (Chop the onion however you like it best. Sometimes we like big chunks,
and sometimes we like little squares.) Saute' (saute' is frying in just a little oil) onions until they are see through (translucent),
and then add the chopped up tomatoes and chicken. Add Splenda and simmer.
After the pasta is boiled and the water is dumped out, put the pasta back into the same pot and add the milk and cheese.
Simmer slowly (so you don't burn the milk, which is called scalding), until the cheese is all melted. Add that to your tomato
and chicken mixture, simmering it for an another three minutes. (Fill the pot that had the cheese in it with water, because
it's going to be gooky, and will take a bit of work to clean.)
Serves 2 adults, or four kids, or a large hug of Teddy Bears.
Do you have a meal that kids will like? Bmail us, and we might include it!
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Spaulding's Lasagna
The first step in making lasagna is shown in the picture above, but we like pictures at the top of our pages, so used
that for both purposes.
Also, for exact directions, look on your box of lasagna noodles (even if they spell it l-a-s-a-g-n-e)! The reason we
are showing how to make this, even if the directions are right on the box, is because the box sometimes only tells how to
make meatless lasagna, and, being bears, we needs our meat!
| Have your sous chef prepare the garlic. |
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| They need to cut the tips off with a sharp knife, before smushing it. |
| After the top and bottom are cut off... |
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| help by pulling off all the brown skin of the onion. |
| Have your sous chef turn on the stove... |
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| after you put in two tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan. |
| After the garlic browns just a little... |
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| add the chopped up onion. |
| When the onions are see through,... |
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| add your spices and a pound of ground meat. We use turkey. |
| Once you see no more red in the meat... |
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| add the tomato puree and tomato puree. |
If you prefer, just add
in spaghetti sauce and you don’t have to worry about spices. Where we live (in South Philly), spaghetti sauce is called
"red gravy."
| Lasagna pasta is big! Boil nine noodles. |
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| Try to find the best pot for them to fit in without being squished together. |
| When the pasta is wiggly and white... |
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| the sous chef spreads them out on paper towels to dry off extra water. |
| While waiting, mix ricotta cheese,... |
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| parmesan, Italian spice, and two eggs together in a bowl. |
This is fun and gooey,
so don’t let the sous chef do it!
| In a 9 inch by 12 inch glass pan... |
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| add one-third of the meat (or one-half, if the pan isn't high enough.) |
| Then place the pasta over that. |
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| It usually takes three pieces of the pasta, per layer. |
| Then add dollops of cheese around. |
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| One-third (or one-half). It gets yucky if you try to spread the cheese like peanut butter. |
A dollop is like half a spoon full. If you look at the picture carefully, you can see what dollops look like.
We meant to take a picture of the lasagna when it was done, but we ate it too quickly. It's enough for eight meals, so,
if you're family is smaller then that, you can freeze sections of it and have something quick and easy for another night.
From freezer to oven (at 350 degrees) it takes an hour or longer (depends on the size you'r baking) to heat it up enough.
Nutritional Stuff
Teddy Bears don't have to worry about keeping our bodies healthy, since our bodies
are filled with just stuffing and maybe beans! Peoples have to take better care of their bodies though, to keep them from
feeling yucky. We believe that dessert is always fun, and everyone can feel good and still eat dessert too. Here's a link
to the Department of Agriculture's newest Food Pyramid that does something that the old ones never did -- it tells how each People should eat accordng to their size! Yippie! Even
they know dessert is good!
Helpful Hints
- If you clean up as you are making something, it gives you more room to work and
makes Mommy and Daddy twice as happy to have you cook for them!
- When a recipe calls for baking soda or baking powder to raise the dough, let the dough rest for 20 minutes, so it rises
properly!
- Always bring in your Teddy Bear to your kitchen, if you're cooking something. We heko so much, I don't know how folks
cook without us!
If you have anymore helpful kitchen hints, please bmail us! Thank you!
Recipe Links
Do you know any other cool recipe sites? Please, Bmail them to us!
| Mommy got the chef's job here! |
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| For more good recipes, click the picture to visit ichef.com. |
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