I hope everyone is gearing up for a fantastic New Year’s Eve. I know we are. We are heading out to have dinner with my parents, and then hopefully out for a couple drinks, after. Weather dependent, course. I am just enjoying this little cocktail before we go. It’s not too sweet, a little bit tart, actually, and just a few ingredients. I am going to keep it short and sweet today, with just this quick holiday cocktail, and a brief reminder to stay safe tonight, and to wish you the merriest, and most prosperous of New Year’s.
Tbis simple champagne cocktail is easy to whip up in the blender with some frozen mango, fresh pineapple, and canned mango and guava juice, a sample sized bottle of Deep Eddy Orange, and Moscato Spumante. Our favorite is Barefoot.
Ingredients:
Bottle of Barefoot Bubbly Moscato Spumante Champagne
1/4 cup frozen mango
1/4 cup fresh pineapple
1/2 can mango juice
1/2 can guava juice
Sample sized-bottle of ‘Deep Eddy’ brand Orange flavored vodka
Combine all ingredients aside from vodka into a blender and blend for about a minute or until thoroughly combined. Pour into serving glass and top off with vodka. Garnish with fruit if desired. Enjoy!
If you have a favorite New Year’s cocktail, feel free to share in the comments, or on insta@canigetaramen. Find us on FB or Pinterest @canigetaramen.food.blog. Happy New Year!
Be honest, who else tends to pamper their dogs? Okay, everyone put your hand up… Can you blame yourself though? In our search for hunting partners and companions, we chose a ball of fluff… Fluff or not, that doesn’t stop us dog owners from spoiling our pooches from time to time.
Here’s our a-dork-able little pup.
With Thanksgiving on the way and Christmas right afterwards, we felt it was time to give back to our own little pupper and make her some Christmas-time treats. Keep in mind, these are 100% dog-safe and human-safe too!
Here’s what you’ll need:
1 Banana
3 Cups of all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/3 cup of olive oil
1 cup of water
1/4 of molasses
1 cup of cranberries
In a handy-dandy stand mixer, combine flour, sugar, cinnamon, a banana, molasses, water and cranberries. Mix thoroughly until it becomes clumpy and create two balls of dough, storing both in zip-top bags or plastic wrap.
One goes into the fridge to chill for one and a half hours and the other goes into the freezer to freeze for another day. Once chilled, you’ll want to cut the treats to shape using a cookie cutter or otherwise of your choice.
Set your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and place the treats in for about 12-15 minutes.
Our dog loved these little morsels and funnily enough, they don’t taste bad for humans either. (Yes, I did shamelessly try one out of curiosity.)
“Give me them all!”
I only have on regret in making these; the only way she’s going to listen to me now is if I schmooze her with these… What do you think? Do you pamper your pets as much as we do, or do you think we may be a bit psycho? Leave us a comment down below and be sure to shoot of any pictures you took on Instagram at #CanIGetaRamen. Thanks for reading!
There is nothing better on a snowy November-December morning than to sit down with a bowl of hot oatmeal and watch the flakes fall. However, sometimes it can be a bit over-indulging when constantly having the same type of oatmeal every time. Sweet oatmeal by far is the king of the two types, with savory oatmeal being the underdog. At least in the East U.S., we go sweet with our oats nineteen times out of twenty, but that can get a little boring. This is where the underdog comes in and it comes in with a bang. This little bit of salmon and a poached egg or two can really bring a brand new experience to the bowl and make it that a little more fun to bring around for your next holiday-time brunch.
Here’s what you’ll need:
2 cups of Oatmeal
Smoked Salmon
1-2 eggs
Spinach
In a pot, add 2 and a half cups of water and set it to medium heat. Add your 2 cups of oatmeal to the pot and thoroughly cook through. In a small pot, begin to boil enough water to hard boil an egg. Instead of placing the egg into the boiling water, crack the egg into a measuring cup or other small vessel. Lightly stir the boiling water to form a whirlpool and then place the cracked egg into the middle of it, stirring lightly as it boils. Once the white is fully cooked, evacuate the egg quickly and set it aside. After dishing up your oatmeal, place the smoked salmon, poached egg and a few leaves of spinach. For garnishing or for the extra flavors, shake a bit of Spanish smoked paprika and ginger to give it some spice to go with your savory.
Overall, this is a simple dish that, while not an entirely new concept, can bring something new to that daily breakfast grain and may even spark you to experiment with this daily breakfast grain and it’s near endless potential to be sweet or salty. Be sure to shoot us off a pic of your finished oatmeal or even your own concoctions we’ve inspired you to cook up on Instagram with #CanIGetaRamen. Thanks for reading!
“They say that blood is thicker than water, but maple syrup is thicker than blood. Therefore my loyalties lie with pancakes.”
Abigail Pamela Taylor
I’m inclined to agree with Abigail, though maple syrup also makes great cupcake batter AND frosting!
Here’s what you’ll need for the cupcakes:
6 tbsp of butter, softened
1/12 cup of flour
3/4 cup of sugar
2 eggs, separated
1/4 cup of sour cream
1/2 + 2 tbsp of milk
2 tsp of maple extract
1 tsp of baking soda
1/4 tsp of salt
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Separate your egg whites from your yolks and mix the yolks with sugar and butter in a stand mixer. (Hand mixing not recommended.) Add milk, sour cream, baking soda and salt to the mixing bowl all at once and mix at medium speed. Add flour slowly in as you mix and fold the egg whites after most of the flour has been mixed in. With a spoon, scoop the cupcake mix into your tin or a silicone cupcake mold and bake for between 12-15 minutes.
While those maple joys are baking, why not get to work on the better part of the cupcake duo, the frosting?
Here’s what you’ll need:
4 cups of Powdered Sugar
2 tsp of maple extract
2 sticks of butter
1-2 milk
Combine all the ingredients into a the stand mixer and churn at low speed until smooth.
From here, it’s all what you want to make of it with frosting the cupcakes.
Be sure to show us your pictures on Instagram with #CanIGetaRamen
Welcome back to Geeky Grub! This month, we’re celebrating the release of Banjo and Kazooie as part of Challenger Pack 3 for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate!
The series of Smash Bros. has a long history of bringing some of the biggest icons in gaming together to duke it out and Banjo-Kazooie are no exception to this. Banjo and Kazooie are legends in their own right; they are some of only a few ‘Mario’ series characters that belong to a rival company and therefore makes them unique in that regard. Their series was originally a Nintendo-exclusive franchise and then went on to Xbox platforms from then on.
Banjo-Kazooie is a platforming game known best for the titular characters collecting three things: Jigsaw Pieces to access new game worlds, Musical Notes to open doors and Honeycombs for restoring health. We chose to make a Greek-style honey cake in the shape of a honeycomb and complete with honey pooled in the middle. Sound like Honey Bear heaven? Then here’s what you’ll need:
Honey, about half a cup
All-Purpose Flour, 3 cups
Eggs, 6
Granulated Sugar, 2 cups
Baking Powder, 2 teaspoons
Butter, 1 whole stick
Warm Milk, 1 cup
Baking Soda, half a teaspoon
Freshly-Squeezed Lemon Juice, 1 tablespoon
Confectioner’s Sugar, 1 cup
White chocolate candy melts, one bag or 12 ounces
Heavy whipping cream, 4 oz
Preheat your oven to 350′ degrees Fahrenheit. In a medium-sized bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add your flour to the butter cream and mix by hand until it is mealy and sticky. Add the eggs one at a time mixing between each addition. Combine baking soda and the lemon juice into your new mixture and mix thoroughly. Finally, add together your baking powder and milk in a separate bowl, adding it to the batter gradually until all mixed well. Place this in a square or rectangular pan. (Hexagonal if you can find it is ideal for this. We could not find one ourselves so we had to fold ours over, fill it with frosting and cut it to shape. We have a template for this right below.)
Be sure to cut along the black lines. Make a half-inch indentation where the slightly blurred line is, about an inch inward from the outer border.
(Because we used a long rectangular pan, we cut our cake in half and made it a layer cake. If you chose instead to use a square or hexagonal cake pan, you can skip this next paragraph.)
Next, we will make the filling that goes between layers. Combine 1 cup of confectioner’s sugar, 3 tbsp. of milk and 2 tbsp. of honey in a bowl and mix until it is stiff, but not set hard. Once your cake has finished baking, let it cool, then frost first layer, set second layer on top and secure in place with a few tall toothpicks .
From here, you’ll need to cut the cake into shape using the template above. Use a large, sharp knives this cake is pretty thick. We used the scraps from the cutting of the cake to create the borders so we could fill the cake basin with even more honey.
Finally, we’re going to create a white chocolate ganache to frost the top. Take your white candy melts and heat them for about 30-45 seconds in microwave, until just melty, but not completely melted. Combine this with your 4 oz. of heavy cream and let cool for about 20 minutes or until a firmer frosting like consistency has formed. Add some Wilton’s Buttercup Yellow and Wilton’s Copper Icing Color until it is a warm honey color, then begin to frost your cake, applying ganache in a thin layer, you can used a tiny bit of warm water to smooth ganache, but too much will ruin it so using it very sparingly. From here, let the cake set after being frosted for about 20 minutes. This is so the ganache will stiffen up a bit and not soak up the honey you will pour into the small basin in the middle of the cake.
“Mmm, I’m sticky, tasty honey energy!” -Honeycomb
This cake isn’t only good for celebrating a specific bear and bird’s introduction into the ultimate crossover game; it can be used for birthdays, gaming parties, or just an afternoon surprise for the kiddos . This Greek Honey Cake, plain makes for a great after-school snack as well, but if you follow this recipe exactly it has the added bonus of being themed after the most iconic bear and bird in gaming.
What do you think of the cake? Are you willing to give it a try? Are you or your kiddos excited for Banjo-Kazooie in Smash Ultimate? Most importantly, do you have any geeky food suggestions for us to give a whirl? Leave us your thoughts down below and be sure to drop your pictures down there too!
Sounds a little weird, huh? Mexican and Thai don’t mix, do they? I’m here to tell you now; maybe. Like most excellent ideas, this came to us after recovering from a pierogi-induced coma. On the back of the package of pierogies, we stumbled upon the recipe given to us to try, pierogi nachos. A good effort, but we thought instead: “What if we took frying cheese and made nachos with it?” One thing led to another and now we’re here. We’ve been on an Asian-cuisine kick as of late, (as evidenced by our previous post) so our first choice was to take a simple food like nachos and Thai-ify it. (We’re coining that term, by the way.)
Thai food is instantly recognizable from other Asian cuisine due to their love for aromatics and spice, so we decided to pick the arguably, best of the two, spice.
Here’s what you’ll need:
Frying Cheese, sliced thinly and preferably into triangles.
Crab Meat or other seafood.
Avocado
Cucumber
Onion
Lime Juice
Jalapenos
Thai Chili Sauce, sweet is recommended
Basil to season/taste
We used corn flour to aid frying but it’s not required.
This recipe is as easy as frying your cheesy nachos and tossing everything onto a plate. A small sauce pan gives the best result for the frying cheese. Set about an inch of olive oil in the bottom of the pan and set to medium-high heat. Your nachos should be crispy and dark, but not black.
Once you’ve finished frying, evacuate your nachos and place them on a plate. Over top of your delicious nachos, place your seafood, cucumber, onions and avocado, Use jalapenos and Thai chili sauce sparingly, because that will bring up the heat by quite a bit.
Another food coma later and I believe it is self-explanatory that this is an unorthodox but exceptional pairing. It’s funny to think that two completely different food cultures could combine to make something better than the two could achieve alone and therefore makes it satisfying to discover the little niches.
What did you think of the nachos; did you try them out? Leave us your impressions down below!
“Before I let my gaming obsessed son take over this article, never ever attempt to make this sandwich. Ever.”
-Mdbridge81
Welcome to the first Geeky Grub, where I will be taking over the blog for one geeky, entertainment based food item and I thought what better way to start off this monthly tradition than recreate one of the simplest, but most iconic foods in all of gaming history.
*Insert loud munching noises here* (Render by CaptainKodachrome)
That’s right, we’re talking about the ‘Sandvich,’ a simple sandwich which The Heavy from Team Fortress 2 uses to replenish all 300 of his health in a single bite. That thing’s gotta be packing a whole lot of punch if it can heal bullet wounds and third degree burns with just a single swallow. So begs the question: “What actually is the Sandvich made of?”
According to the Team Fortress Wiki page on the lunchbox item, which will be linked to at the bottom of the page, the Sandvich consists of white wheat bread, cut into triangles. Between the slices of bread are lettuce, tomatoes of indeterminate type, Swiss cheese, and a few slices of both ham and bologna. Wait… Bologna!? I haven’t eaten that stuff in years and for good reason. Most bologna made nowadays is pretty bad for you, being made from about 30% pork fat and all, so sourcing a somewhat healthy bologna isn’t gonna be as easy as picking off a Medic as Sniper. (If you’re competent with him, that is.)
“Thanks for standin’ still!” (Render by CaptainKodachrome)
But what if we went with a sort of ‘faux’ bologna, meaning we can still make a game accurate and yummy Sandvich with the added bonus of not losing 20 years off of our lives? Oscar Mayer creates a bologna that is instead made from turkey, making it leaner and much healthier than pork, just as turkey bacon is better for you than pork bacon. However, if you cannot find the stomach for either type of bologna, I don’t blame you, but for the sake of accuracy, my recreation pictured down below will indeed be filled with both ham and bologna. Putting my health on the line for accuracy and views, ‘that’s the way ya’ do eet!’
What you will need:
As described above,
White wheat bread, sliced.
Swiss cheese, sliced.
Iceberg Lettuce, one to two leaves.
Tomatoes, thinly sliced. (I used cherry tomatoes as it is unknown what type is used in the Sandvich in-game.)
Ham.
Bologna, turkey or otherwise. (Skip this one if you like.)
Pimento-stuffed olive. (This is for authenticity; the Sandvich is held together by a toothpick with an olive poked through it.)
A condiment or two of your choice, if you’re so inclined. (Optional)
Building this Sandvich actually takes a bit of practice, as you are almost over-stuffing those two itty-bitty pieces of bread. First place down one slice of your bread and lay the meats folded on top of it. Next, lay one layer of your thinly sliced tomatoes over the meat, that’s right; there’s two layers of tomato. Add three slices of Swiss cheese all in a row along your sandvich, overlapping them and then add the second layer of tomato. Add your condiments here, if you chose any to add, (I always use a Dijon and Honey Mustard mix for my sandwiches.) and then top that with the layer of lettuce. Place the other slice of bread over the top. Done, right? Wrong; it wouldn’t be a proper Sandvich without it being cut into triangles! After doing that, add the properly tooth-picked olive and enjoy the savory taste of your brand new portable ‘Sandvich Edible Device.”
As for my impressions, I’m embarrassed to say… it was really good. The bologna even wasn’t that bad; not that I intend to eat it regularly, but if you’re looking for a nice geeky snack or a simple but filling sandwich, this one fits the bill for both situations and and will make you smile like the Russian mercenary himself.
Just be careful, as someone may want you to share…
“Moist and Delicious!” (Render by CaptainKodachrome)
The kids have been engrossed as of late with the Netflix series, “Blown Away”, a fairly interesting show about glassmaking. As a result, they are wanting to go to The Corning Museum of Glass, in Corning, NY. The Corning Glass Company has a history that dates back to the late 1800’s. While the history grabs me, the kids are all about seeing glass blowing in real life. As such, we are off today to make that happen for them. Field -tripping is rough though; most certainly not like what Ms. Frizzle and her 5th Grade class portrayed it as. Between the screaming kids and crappy traffic it can get pretty hectic, add in a little hunger it can get downright brutal. I’ve done a bit of research and gathered that it can be somewhat difficult to find a good meal in Corning. If I’ve learned anything in my 20 years of parenting boys it’s that, boy scout or not, you need to be prepared…with food. With that in mind, I’m preparing box lunches for everyone, which will be gone before we even arrive. Here’s what’s on the menu: a California Club-inspired sandwich with the works and spicy guacamole. We’re also, per the normal teenage boy diet, bringing the ubiquitous bag of road trip Cheetos, but that’s not as important as the sandwich.
Sounds good, huh? Here’s what you’ll need.
Sourdough Bread
Ham
Turkey
Provolone Cheese
Spicy Guacamole
Oregano
Broccoli Sprouts
Olive Oil
Mayo
Bacon (2 slices; cooked.)
Spring Onions
Grab two slices of bread and top one slice with 2 turkey slices and one ham slice. Add some mayo to the second slice, then hit it up with black pepper.
Then you add on the provolone, sprouts, spring onions, drizzle on a bit of olive oil over it and then a dash of oregano tops it off.
On the mayo-ed slice of bread, add a generous dollop of spicy guacamole and then smoosh them together to create bread and fillings perfection.
Now grab your cooler, toss in some fresh fruit, chopped veggies, these fantastic sandwiches, and any other road trip food that strikes your fancy. Top with some extra cold ice and then you’re off! If your family is anything like mine, they will demolish everything in the cooler about 1 hr and 23 minutes into the trip; then you will be frantically searching for the nearest pizza shop as you’re exiting the museum. I am planning ahead this time and Aniello’s pizzeria gets high marks on NY style pizza, so I’ve already plugged them into my phone. I am also looking forward to Poppleton Bakery because I’ve read that they have great cookies, and am always down for cookies. I am hoping to do some shopping in the Gaffer District, check out the Heritage Village, and see some of the architecture. However, I have learned not to overload my schedule when field tripping with the kiddos, so we will see how it goes…
Don’t forget to check back Thursbay- I mean ‘day’ for the promised Maryland crab cake post, that melds perfectly with last week’s Mish-Mash Potato Salad; that’s a plateful you’ve got to sea!
