Happy Veterans Day! Plus a chocolate pistachio tart, blueberry yogurt granola pie and homemade Oreos

I know I start every post with a food picture, and I suppose that's fitting since it's a food blog. But even more important is that today's Veterans Day. In honor of that, some very special photos:

To my Grandpa Hawley, who was in the Army Air Corps during World War II and based in Utah. I got to visit his base just a month ago. He was the next in line to be shipped out to Europe, but luckily wasn't. He mostly flew B-24s and A-25s but also flew some other planes, like the Memphis Belle.

And to my Grandpa Hofmeister, who was already in his 30s when he went to Germany and France under Gen. Patton in World War II. I always remember him as a quiet man, but he saw some crazy stuff when he was overseas. I'm so grateful to have a few records of it. This is my post from last year, that has more photos of both of them.

And finally, to my cousin Jon, who went to Iraq very soon after the U.S. went in there. Sometimes it doesn't cross my mind, but I'm lucky to be able to see him fairly easily now, especially when Aunt Betty, Uncle David and I drop sweets by at his and his fiance's house. For the longest time, we couldn't see him. So happy Veterans Day to all of them.

All right, back to the food. This is one of my most favorite desserts I've ever made. Seriously. Salty+sweet is one of my favorite things, and this chocolate pistachio tart fit the bill. Thank Martha, yet again. The crust is chocolate with chopped pistachios, and then you make the pistachio paste layer (I made a lot more than the recipe called for because it made it a lot easier to spread). Then the top layer is a basic chocolate custard. I think this might be my birthday cake (tart?) next year!

I made that tart at Aunt Betty's, and this second pie we made at her house as well. This one is a yogurt blueberry pie with granola crust. Yet another Martha recipe. The granola we used was from the Merc and it was a maple pecan one, which I think I might use in a future crust. It made for a nice crunch and some good flavor. I think this looks like breakfast, no?

And for my only non-pie-style dessert this week, homemade Oreos. I made these once but was a little too impatient with the dough, I think, and didn't roll it out as well. But I'd forgotten how good these are, and so much better than the commercial versions. The cookies themselves are almost salty, but with the filling, it works out perfectly. I don't have the patience to follow the recipe and let the filling sit for six hours (!) so I let it go for a while and then add in sifted powdered sugar, which makes a more frosting-y texture rather than the ganache, which the recipe wants. I prefer it that way. And so does everyone at work, because I'm at three requests for the recipe. Always good to know people are satisfied.

Boulevard Brewery tour

To anyone not in the Midwest, it may be hard to come by Boulevard beer. And to you I say, I'm sorry. 

Boulevard is the 10th largest craft brewer in the U.S. and happens to be approximately 10 minutes away from me. Darn.

I've actually been lucky enough to tour Boulevard three times now, most recently this weekend with Dad and Cathie. To anyone in the area or even visiting, I highly recommend it (and recommend planning far ahead because it tends to be booked months in advance).

It's pretty fascinating to see what it takes to make this beer. The barrels a few pictures above are for their specialty smokestack beers. This bottling line is fun to watch and bottles something like eight beers per second.

The whole tour is filled with lots of metal, lots of pipes, and obviously huge tanks of beer. One of my tours I went on was for work, when I interviewed the brewery's brewmaster, who's from Belgium. He gave an interesting insight into how to stay relevant as a craft brewery when they're popping up all over the country, and now breweries here differ from his home country's.

The brewery opened a new addition in 2006 that was way bigger than the old portion of the brewery, which they still use. This awesome floor is in the new building.

Naturally, at the end of the tour is a tasting. Meet my stepmom and nutty father.

And now a normal photo. It's definitely a fun trip and a good way to spend an hour. The beer ain't bad either :)

Salt Lake City vacation

I just got back from vacation in Salt Lake City. Beautiful, no? One of my best friends, Keane, lives there, so I took some time off to go hang out.

See? Keane. (Disclaimer: lots of pictures in this post, both of yummy food and beautiful sites, like mountains and such.)

We had some awesome doughnuts at Beyond Glaze. We got: cherry limeade, peach cobbler, cookies and cream and chocolate peanut butter.

Went to two different places on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives: Lone Star Taqueria, and...

Blue Plate Diner, which had the best breakfast ever. And an old fashioned soda fountain.

Raspberry soda.

We went to Park City, where we toured High West Distillery and tried some whiskey, and...

saw some Banksy.

We saw the Mormon Salt Lake Temple. It's very pretty lit up at night.

And walked around the Capitol.

We visited Hatch Family Chocolates, which was on TLC. 

We drove up to Ogden to Hill Air Force Base Museum, where my grandpa was stationed during WWII. It was incredible to see where he spent so much time. 

There was a display about the Doolittle Raiders there. That tall one? That's Jacob Manch, aka Shorty, one of my grandpa's friends. One time my grandpa picked him up in LA in a bomber in the '40s.

And then there were the mountains.

In the snow...

and when it was clear. It was still sort of fall up there, but the first snow of the winter came the same day I did.

We hiked up into them a bit on one of the nicer days.

And just wandered around admiring them. It's a lot different than Kansas, that's for sure.

It was a great trip and a much-needed break. Here's to vacation!

24th birthday celebration

Sunday was my 24th birthday, but I celebrated it (for the most part) on Saturday. It was an incredibly long day, but filled with great time with family and my wonderful friends.

During the day, Dad, Cathie and I went to the homecoming game at KU, and Kelly joined us there. Both my mom and dad went to KU (and both returned for graduate degrees), and I went to preschool on campus and grew up in Lawrence. KU is pretty much in my blood. My dad played in the homecoming band this weekend and had a blast (he plays sousaphone). We played — and lost to —Texas Tech, but it was a great day for football!

They even had a couple people parachute into the stadium! Very cool.

After the game was a cookout at my friends Joe and Brianne's house, full of burgers and kebabs. I had to make myself a birthday cake, which might be cheating, but I knew what I wanted: red velvet cake. I used a new recipe from my new Bobby Flay cookbook for the cake, then a classic cream cheese frosting. It was awesome and totally decadent, and I got to share it with some of my favorite people in the whole world.

And on my actual birthday, yesterday, my great server at Yard House gave me this: peach apple cobbler with caramel ice cream. Well, technically, I ordered it, but she put in the candle and the birthday part. So nice!

Thank you to my family and wonderful friends who made this birthday great!

To Michigan and Mom: Chocolate cream pie, chocolate meringue kisses and raspberry lemonade cupcakes

I swear, I'm bad luck on a plane. Or more like, in the terminal waiting for a plane. I went to Michigan to visit Mom this weekend...and ended up being in Wisconsin overnight with a hotel voucher that didn't work. A fan was broken in my plane from KC, and I'm pretty sure more than half our plane missed their connections. If I'd stayed in KC and flown out the next morning, I would have left the airport at 5:45 a.m. I don't know if this is well-known (it is to all my friends), but that time only exists to me if I'm still up from the night before. So Milwaukee it was. To their credit, Frontier was very, very helpful. The woman helping us, Cat, was incredibly chill. Go Cat! Anyway, around 11, I got to the hotel and spent the evening at the bar with my fellow travelers.

This is Lacey. She greeted me when I finally got to Grand Rapids. So did my childhood cat Ziggy and Mom's newer cat, Salem. During the weekend, we went shopping to my favorite food specialty stores up there, went to New Holland Brewpub and had a taster flight of beer (Ichabod Pumpkin Ale was my favorite!) and went to my favorite restaurant there, Graydon's Crossing, which is a combo of colonial English and Indian food and one massive beer list. All in all, a fun trip.

A few fun facts about my mom: she loves chocolate, she sucks at technology and she isn't a baker. So when I visit, she likes me to bake so she can have some and share some with her friends too. First on the list was chocolate cream pie, which I'd made once before at Aunt Betty's. It's from Martha Stewart's new Pies and Tarts book, and it actually holds its shape really well, courtesy of a lot of cornstarch and gelatin. Oh, and it's got lots of chocolate.

Then, naturally, I had some leftover egg whites, so I had to use them, right? In come the chocolate meringue kisses. I've never made chocolate ones before, but I have done some other flavored ones. These honestly tasted like hot chocolate to me, and they were divine. And more chocolate for mom.

And I didn't want to do just chocolate and of course had to make cupcakes, so I did raspberry lemonade ones. It's starting to get fall-like outside, so I'm trying to get in my last summery desserts. This is a lemon cupcake soaked with a raspberry lemonade syrup with raspberry lemonade icing. On top I put a fresh raspberry and a candied lemon peel. Apparently Mom's coworkers liked them.

It was a nice weekend, although cut short because of the darn airplane. Well, here's to hoping my next trip goes better. I'm officially less than a month from visiting Keane in Salt Lake City. Woo hoo!

(Posting to Hoosier Homemade's Cupcake Tuesday.)

Eat a cupcake, you shall

I still remember the first time I watched Star Wars. My dad introduced me to it when I was in third grade. I remember him pulling out the VHS with Darth Vader's face on it. And I remember really, really not wanting to watch it. For what reason, I dunno, but Dad was really into it, so I watched. And loved it. Pretty soon after, we watched the second and third, because that's all there was (no Jar Jar Binks yet).

Dad introduced me to a lot of movies I still love. The Indiana Jones movies were a couple — I say two because I only count Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade. Temple of Doom is stupid and annoying. Animal House is another. But Star Wars is where it all started. And I've always loved the movies since then.

No, the Empire Strikes Back is not my favorite, as it seems to be for everyone else. I understand that it moves along the plot more than the others, and Luke finds out about Darth Vader and all that, but whatever. Nothing happens. He stands on his head in a swamp. My favorite is Return of the Jedi. I imagine it has something to do with the Ewoks.

Speaking of Ewoks, in George Lucas' latest redux of the movies on Blu-Ray, apparently he makes Ewoks blink. Is that not creepy to anyone else? And he makes Vader yell "Noooooo" again, this time when throwing the Emperor down that shaft thingy at the end. I don't know why Lucas won't just leave the movies alone and let fans enjoy them as they originally were.

So Williams-Sonoma jumped on the Star Wars bandwagon a while ago. So when I saw these Rebel Alliance cupcake liners, I knew I had to get them (they have the empire's side too, but dammit, I wanted the good guys!). I've been saving them; for what I don't know. But last night seemed like a good time to use them.

Meet my baking assistant, Chewy. He's much more effective as decor, and the apron is much more effective on me so I don't get powdered sugar on myself (I got that at Williams-Sonoma the same day as I got the liners too).

So for these cupcakes, all I wanted was a light-colored cake so you could see the wrappers, which have "Star Wars" around the sides and these on the bottoms. I went with my favorite yellow cake recipe and fudge frosting, both from Smitten Kitchen. And voila! Star Wars cupcakes. Now, eat a cupcake you shall!

(Posting on Cupcake Tuesday)