Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

Yes, it is March. With the month of March comes many things. For those of you with school age children you know that it is Reading Month and the birthday of Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known to us as Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss was born on March 2nd. It would be easy to do the Green Eggs and Ham, which I have done in the past. I've also done the Lorax pancakes. Since I just did a breakfast meal a couple of weeks ago, I thought I would go a different direction. So, upon much research of books and others themes I have decided to cook a roast beast (How the Grinch Stole Christmas), I added some Lorax trees, broccoli, orange colored mash potatoes, Dr. Seuss inspired three layer cake, and pink ink drink (as given to us in One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish). I almost forgot, my Hortan ear buns.



For our roast beast, aka Beef Pot Roast, I decided not to pull out my same old same old recipe. Because, isn't this whole endeavor about trying new things? I used about three pounds of bottom round in my slow cooker. I placed in the cooker for about seven hours on low. I added the ingredients for Cherry Balsamic Vinegar reduction sauce. The recipe came from a local olive oil shop. It includes, one cup of frozen dark sweet cherries, 1/3 cup dry red wine, 1/3 cup cherry balsamic vinegar, three shallots (which I forgot to pick up in the store, I just used a cup of sweet onion) pepper to taste, and a large clove of garlic minced. Can I just say, it was really good. My husband was ready to pull out the ketchup as he usually does, and decided that he didn't need it. It had a very slight fruit flavor. I added some carrots to it, not sure how it would go over. My daughter, wasn't a fan of the carrot. I thought they were alright, but the flavor doesn't lend itself well to the vegetables. This is okay, because as I have said before sometime when it comes to the slow cooker, everything tastes kind of the same.

As for the mashed potatoes, I took five white potatoes, pealed and boiled them. What I have learned about cooking potatoes over the last 20 plus years is this, dice them up small for them to cook faster. Not too small, if they cook too fast they end up soaking up too much water and taste that way. I added one cup of 2% cheddar cheese and milk. I'm hesitant to say how much milk, because I just poured some in. I should have had more milk. They ended up being a little dry. You can add orange food coloring if you want to make them orange.

For the Hortan ears, I used my favorite dinner roll recipe from Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. The recipe has been the same in all three versions that I have. I tried deep frying one, but even though it was brown on the outside and floating, it was raw in the inside. A fail. Fortunately, I baked the rest. To make the ear shape, I made them in a rosette. I rolled pieces of the dough like I used to have kids do to make snakes with clay. I tied them in knots, then wrapped the ends around to make the round shape. When they came out of the oven, I brushed them with three tablespoons of melted butter, mixed with garlic, oregano, basil, and onion flakes.

To drink, we had pink ink drink, aka Nestle Quik strawberry milk. My husband and daughter loved it so much they almost through the whole container in two days.

For dessert, we had a three layer cake. Two white cake mixes, with milk instead of water to make a more moist and flavorful cake and food coloring to make it great Dr. Seuss colors. I got lazy and didn't spend the five minutes to cut wax paper circles to lay at the bottom of the cake pans to ensure the cakes do not stick to the bottom of the pan. There was left over batter that I used for cupcakes. The frosting consisted of a container of store bought (my husband prefers it to anything that I make. :(), then sweetened condensed milk, a half cup of butter and a bag of white chocolate chips. Melt the condensed milk, butter, chips and stir until smooth. At first it seemed really thin and I was concerned, but after I let it cool and then whipped it some more, miraculously something happened, I walked away from mixer trying to think of something to thicken it and I came back and it was still stuck the beater and didn't drip down.

I made a pasty cream filling. The recipe came from the Joy of Cooking, 75th anniversary addition published 2006 copyright by Scribner a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. The recipe can be found on page 755. The thing I like about the recipes found in this cookbook are a joy to cook. It has complete explanations and directions for the recipe. The index has sections listing ethnic and holiday recipes. Because it is complete, it's a little long for this format and I'll give condensed instructions. For the novice cook, I would recommend going out and buying the cookbook. There are not any pictures, so, if you're like me and just enjoys looking at the pictures and dreaming of making it (knowing you probably won't, but it's fun to dream), you have to visualize what it's supposed to look like. The recipe is as follows:

1/3 cup sugar
2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp corn starch
4 egg yolks

Beat on high until thick and pale yellow.

Take 1 1/3 cup milk and bring to simmer in a medium sauce pan. Add about one third of the milk into the egg yolks mixture and whisk until blended (this will bring the eggs to temperature without cooking them). Add the egg mixture to rest of the milk and cook on low to medium heat, whisking constantly making sure to reach bottom and corners. I want to add here to make sure you have a slightly smaller whisk to get into the corners and get all of the bottom. Failure to do this will cause it scald and make brown spots and lumps in your filling. Continue until it is thick and starting to bubble, cook for an additional 45 to 60 seconds. Add a 3/4 teaspoon of vanilla. Place in a clean bowl and cool. You can place parchment, wax paper, or plastic wrap on the top to prevent the nasty skin on top. Once cool you can place the filling between layers and frost.

When assembling the cake, you may want to use some skewers to keep it together. Mine was slipping of by the end of the night after we cut into it. The cake itself was moist and very sweet. Plain glass of milk or ice cream is needed to break the sweet slightly. The pastry filling also helped break a little bit of the sweet.

There you have it, a Dr. Seuss meal. My husband said that he felt like it was Thanksgiving for how much he ate.