Cooking With The Wolfes

2009-11-03T19:59:00.000-05:00

Na Na Na Na...Na Na Na Na...Hey Hey Hey... Good Bye.

For me, the beginning of my 2nd year of teaching has been about trying to find balance. I knew that the first year would be really hectic, and that school would pretty much dominate my life. I was okay with that. But I was convinced that the reason that my house was always a mess, the reason that my personal relationships suffered, was because I wasn't good enough. I just needed to work a little harder, get up a little earlier, find more energy from somewhere deep inside me. But now that I'm trying to reclaim my life, I am starting to realize that I cannot do everything.

I know, what a shock!

I tried to do too much last year. I know that now. So I've been trying to find things that I can cut from my life. And, unfortunately, this blog is one of them. I started this blog because I felt like I had something to share. I loved cooking, and I loved trying new things and sharing them. I still love trying new things in the kitchen, but I no longer have the time to be in the kitchen AND write about it. I have a hard enough time making it into the kitchen! So I've decided to put this blog to rest for now. I'll leave it up for reference and posterity, but future food-related posts will be featured on my regular blog. I absolutely loved creating foods that were innovative and sharing them with others. I especially loved when other people would compliment my blog and tell me that they tried my recipe. I found that very fulfilling, and I hope to one day have the time to do it again!

2009-07-11T20:57:00.004-05:00

Good Advice:

pikshur from www.icanhascheezburger.com

2009-07-01T13:03:00.003-05:00

Grilled Tuna, Plank-Style

I love cedar plank grilling! Although the plank is traditionally soaked prior to grilling, we chose to grill on a dry plank for two reasons: the coals were set very low in the Big Green Egg, and I didn't set the tuna directly on the plank. Instead, I layered the fish atop fresh ingredients:

The first layer was thin-sliced lime. The lime was the impetus for the whole recipe, because I really needed to use it!

On top of the lime went some fresh rosemary, straight from the garden.

The tuna was a shashimi cut from The Fresh Market, prepared with olive oil, fresh cracked pepper, and Chardonnay Oak Smoked Sea Salt from the Spice and Tea Exchange.

Just before going on the grill, I sprinkled the fish with Sweet Onion Sugar, which was perfect for grilling because of the carmelizing action!

The finished product: seasoned rice, green salad, and herb rolls from the Fresh Market. I didn't realize how boring my color palate was until I took the picture - I'm glad I threw the salad in there for some color!

Time for a Shameless Plug: both the Chardonnay Salt and Sweet Onion Sugar came from the Spice & Tea Exchange, a growing company with a brand-spankin' new location in Winter Park, Florida which I visited today with my dear mother and Dee. I must say that Jeffrey and Bryan are most gracious hosts and have a lovely store. I walked away with Baker's Secret, Grilled Fish Blend, Alderwood Smoked Sea Salt, and more of the Sweet Onion Salt. I'm sure you'll be seeing those in future posts! I have yet to find anything from that company I didn't like.

One final thought: if you decide to try your hand at plank grilling, do NOT go to an outdoor store and pay five bucks for a single plank. Go to a Home Improvement store and buy a piece of UNTREATED cedar. Ask them to cut it into 12-inch pieces for you, and you will have enough to sustain you for years and share with the neighbors.

That's it. Grill. Spice. Plank. GO!!

2009-06-30T18:34:00.004-05:00

A Math Equation Fer Ya:

What do you get when you take an oatmeal cookie:

With pair it with a luscious, creamy filling?

Answer: You get what Little Debbie only WISHES she could be!

I made these Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies to take to a friend's house for dinner.

This is a Taste of Home recipe, and the website says that they would be great for bake sales - I agree! When I was putting them out at my friend's house, her husband, Bob, stopped mid-sentence and said "Are those.....homemade Little Debbies?" Needless to say, he was intrigued! And they were very tasty. The filling is light and not overpowering, complimenting nicely with the cookies. Bob (and Jennifer, too, I'm sure!) was happy to keep the leftovers I brought!

Oh and by the way, when I searched for this recipe on the Taste of Home website, I also came across a recipe for Chocolate Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies........hmmmmm......

2009-05-18T18:52:00.003-05:00

Fish and (kind of) Chips

I was able to get my hands on some Icelandic cod, so we decided to try Alton Brown's Fish and Chips recipe for dinner. Mike handled the frying, as usual. He's the fryer in the family!!

We didn't notice that we were out of potatoes until we had already decided to make the recipe, so we made some tater tots instead. Everything was so good, we kept sneaking bites before we sat down!

Wow what a great meal! Better than anything I've had in any restaurant! The tater tots were good, but next time we'll definitely be trying the chips! Plus the salad balanced out all the fried foods, right........right!?!

2009-05-09T19:06:00.002-05:00

Things I Love....

Mike had a great idea the other night: Coke slushies!!

All we did was pour some Coke into our ice cream maker and let it churn for about 10 minutes. Genius!!

Mmmmmmm......the perfect treat for our rapidly-getting-hot-as-blazes Florida weather!!

2009-05-02T19:41:00.003-05:00

Bad Dog!!!

Mollie is such a michevious little dog! I am not used to having to put food out of reach of the animals, because Sophie would have never dreamed of snatching even the most tempting foods off the table or counter. Not so with Miss Mollie! I turned my back for two seconds and she managed to wolf down two of my homemade chocolate chip cookies.

"It was totally worth it!!"

I can't believe I've never posted about these cookies! They are an all-time family favorite and my go-to cookie recipe. They have instant pudding mix added to the batter, which makes them the ultimate soft cookie. It's also not a very fussy recipe - none of this mixing the dry and wet ingredients seperately! I should have known to double this recipe in order to feed both boys!

2009-04-05T20:11:00.003-05:00

Grilled Shrimp Kebobs

Nils made these grilled shrimp kebobs for Sunday dinner - he did a great job! He used wooden skewers and paired the shrimp with zucchini. He also threw on some red potatoes. Everything was delicious!!

Have you ever had grilled pineapple? It is one of the best desserts out there! We just brushed on a sauce of bourbon and brown sugar and let them cook while we ate dinner.
We enjoyed them plain this time, but it's also delicious with vanilla ice cream!

2009-03-23T18:55:00.002-05:00

This Website is Hilarious.

http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

Funny thing is, I actually ate something very similar to "The Meatlog" this weekend at the Florida Eggfest. And it was....interesting.

2009-03-01T19:08:00.001-05:00

I Still Love My Food Processor...

Nothing beats fresh salsa....except maybe fresh salsa with homemade tortilla chips!

2009-02-24T20:35:00.003-05:00

Valentine's Day Dinner

We kicked Nils out of the house for the night and took a special trip to the Fresh Market for some free-range beef, salad greens, and herbed yeast rolls. We've been so busy lately that it was nice just to go shopping and make dinner together.

The final product: steaks cooked on the Big Green Egg, mashed potatoes, salad, and those yummy yeast rolls!

For dessert I made Homemade Chocolate Pudding, a Taste of Home recipe that I've been meaning to try for a loooong time. It was good with the strawberries and whipped cream on top, but since it was a lower-fat recipe it wasn't very good the next day.

It made for a pretty picture, though! And we enjoyed the time spent together. Hope you had a nice Valentine's Day!

2009-01-23T20:42:00.011-05:00

New Year's Eve Sushi

I have tried and tried to post these pictures, and for some reason Blogger has NOT been cooperating with these particular pics. But, 24 days later, it looks like it has decided to not make them all wonky, so now I can finally share my beautiful pictures with you! I had so much fun playing with my new camera, and Nils was a good sport about me sticking my camera in his personal space while he was making the sushi.

We got our hands on some sashimi-grade sushi, thanks to our new Fresh Market!!

Sophie became very interested in what Nils was doing once she caught a whiff of the fish...

One thing I never realized about sushi is what beautiful pictures it makes! It was almost like art, what with the vibrant colors and contrasts!

2009-01-19T20:21:00.007-05:00

Nils vs. Wasabi

A little red-faced, but otherwise no worse for the wear!

2008-12-30T19:48:00.006-05:00

Christmas Food

Christmas is always a big time for food, no matter where you are! This year featured a few old favorites, as well as a few new recipes.

First up, Christmas morning breakfast. We had Sausage Balls, Alton Brown's Overnight Cinnamon Rolls, and fruit. The Sausage Balls are a Cook family traditional Christmas recipe, but Mike loves them so much he would revolt if I didn't make them!

Next up was a new recipe that I've been wanting to make forever: Alton Brown's Overnight Cinnamon Rolls. Alton Brown always has such excellent recipes, but this one is so involved that it's definitely a special-occasion type of recipe!

These were unbelievable! Definitely worth the calories and time, especially since it's shaping up to be a Christmas recipe (hence once a year!)

The only other thing I actually remembered to take a picture of was the poached garlic I made for the relish tray my mom asked me to bring to Christmas dinner. This was the first time I've ever had to make a relish tray, and to be honest I didn't exactly know what it was at first. Apparently it's made up of pickles and pickled peppers and other gross stuff. I decided to try poached garlic because it sounded like an addition that I'd actually like, and it was delicious! The smell as it was cooking was fantastic!

It's cooked in white wine, olive oil, and a little fresh thyme. The smells melding together were enough to tempt me to dunk my hand in the hot oil and try one!

2008-12-06T17:34:00.002-05:00

Gingerbread

When I think gingerbread, I think store-bought, hard cookies in the shape of little men, not soft, moist,wonderfully spicy cake, but that's exactly what this is! And lemme tell ya, I've discovered that there is nothing better than the smell of gingerbread in the oven to get you in a holiday mood! The great thing about this recipe is that it can be made with white-whole wheat flour and it still tastes delicious. I decided to add about half a teaspoon of the optional fresh-ground black pepper to this recipe, and I think it complimented the ginger-y flavor perfectly.

It came together easily, although I did take the extra time to grate the fresh ginger and crush the black pepper in my mortar and pestle - totally worth it!

Fresh out of the oven!

I highly recommend you serve it with some real whipped cream on top. The simple-ness of this dessert is refreshingly comforting. I definitely plan on making this recipe again!

2008-11-25T20:38:00.002-05:00

Cinnamon-Streusel Coffee Cake

Coffee cake is one of those things that I really enjoy, but rarely make. For starters, I don't drink coffee, and secondly, it doesn't have the allure of a real cake or a rich brownie. However, I have yet to find a King Arthur recipe that didn't come out delicious, so I gave this coffee cake a try.

Even though coffee cake isn't the most flashy of treats, it is incredibly easy and satisfying to make. It pulls together quickly and comes out beautifully - especially with the glossy glaze that this recipe calls for.
I didn't use quite enough of the streusel for the middle, so I had a LOT for the top. But the cake was very tender, cinnamon-y, and yummy. I definitely plan on making this coffee cake again!

2008-11-23T18:09:00.002-05:00

French Onion-Pork Chop Skillet

I don't make pork chops very often, mainly because I'm very picky about them - I think that they are often dry and tasteless. But when I saw this recipe in a Kraft magazine, I thought I'd give it a try. I liked that the recipe cooks up quickly, keeping the chops from getting dry, plus the use of onions is always a plus, now that I have two onion lovers in the house. Topping off the dish with mozzarella cheese is a plus, too!

This recipe was really good! It was quick and easy - give it a try!

2008-11-08T22:39:00.002-05:00

Orange Chicken

I know this practically makes me un-American, but I never really tried Chinese food* until I met Mike. I was turned off by a very bad experience at a Chinese buffet as a fourth grader, so since my parents hate fast food in all forms, I had never tried it. I never knew what I was missing until my dear husband turned me on to the wonders of cheap Chinese food - BUT it was enjoyed only occasionally, because really, there's nothing nutritionally redeeming about the kind of Chinese food I like. I love Chinese food partially because it's something I never thought I could re-create at home, but that all changed when Mike decided to try this Orange Chicken recipe from Annie's Eats.

Oh. My. Goodness.

This was SO good! It tasted even better than the stuff you can buy! Mike actually used Clementines instead of oranges, but since he used fresh-squeezed juice, the taste was unbelievable. There are quite a few steps in this recipe, but they are all pretty easy to follow. this is definitely a "worth the splurge" meal!!

*In this post, "Chinese food" will refer to the hole-in-the-wall type of take-out restaurants that are always next to a grocery store in strip malls. I realize that this does not even closely resemble authentic Chinese food, but that's another post. Bear with me, here!

2008-11-08T22:25:00.004-05:00

Pumpkin-Craisin Muffins

Continuing on the pumpkin theme, I decided to try these Pumpkin-Craisin Muffins for breakfast. Don't look too closely at the picture below, or you can see how much I was in need of a good breakfast that morning - sheesh, I've never seen such a messy muffin tin!

These muffins were delicious - I've discovered that they're good plain (or with butter!) in the morning, and yummy with cream cheese as a snack. They seem like they would freeze well, but they didn't last that long in this house!

2008-10-25T12:49:00.004-05:00

Pumpkin Waffles With Maple-Cream Cheese Sauce

One of the things I love about cooking is changing with the seasons. Even though we don't get much change in the weather here in Florida, I find that my cooking style definitely changes!

Fall has definitely come to Florida - I'm sitting on my couch, watching the Gator game, while a breeze from outside tickles my toes. When the weather reaches this point, I get the urge to make everything pumpkin. When I checked out How to Cook Everything Vegetarian (a great book by the way) from the library back in June, I just had to set this recipe aside to try when it cools off! I made breakfast for dinner recently, and these Pumpkin Waffles were the main dish - they were light and fluffy and WONDERFUL! They were definitely different from the traditional waffle recipe I usually go for, but they were a nice change. And they came out such a beautiful, golden-orange color!

The recipe was a little fussy - you have to prepare the dry and wet ingredients seperately, which is par for the course, but you also have to whip egg whites (below) to add to the batter at the last minute. This really makes them fluffy, but it's also an extra step. But with my Cuisinart Smart Stick Hand Blender, it was no problem.

The last step - making the cream cheese-maple sauce! I let the cream cheese sit on the counter while I made the waffles so it could get to room temperature, then used the tiny food processor attachment on my Smart Stick to whip it up in a jiffy. By the way, I'm not getting paid to advertise for Cuisinart or anything - I just love my hand blender!! The maple-cream cheese sauce really completes the waffles. Yummy!

2008-10-11T13:39:00.003-05:00

I Still Cook....

But not as much as I used to. Now that I work full-time as a first-grade teacher, my cooking has changed a lot. I use my crock-pot a lot more now:

This is a really good chicken recipe, and it couldn't be easier! All you do is take a whole chicken, dump it in the crock pot, and pour some Hoisin sauce on top*. You can get more complicated if you'd like by marinating it overnight and pouring some of the sauce in the cavity, along with a few garlic cloves, but that's optional. Then let it cook all day on low in your crock pot, and when you walk in the door exhausted (or is that just me?!?), dinner's done! Lately, that's the type of dinners I like!!

My cooking style has definitely changed, and it's taken some getting used to. I used to almost never buy convenience foods, but now I buy things like refrigerated pasta and frozen skillet meals. At first I felt guilty buying those things...but then I realized that something had to give. As a first-year teacher, I just plain don't have time to make bread from scratch anymore or spend hours crafting a meal. Yeah, the bread from the tube isn't quite as good, but it's better than eating out every night - which is what we were doing until I realized we needed to change. I still like to cook when I can, but I had to make some allowances! Mike has been great helping out with cooking - I have a list of meal options on the side of the fridge, and there have been nights when I'm pulling out of the school at dinnertime, and he's glad to step up and help out. Lucky me!

*Hoisin can be found in the Asian section of your local supermarket. I really like Soy Vay's Hoisin Garlic sauce.

2008-09-20T12:22:00.002-05:00

Pan-Fried Flounder with Squash Saute and Roasted Potatoes

I was in the mood for some seafood this week, and while we usually go for salmon (because we all like it and it's on sale often), the local grocery store surprised me by having flounder that looked relatively decent at a relatively low price. Plus, it was wild caught - bonus!!

I actually had very little to do with this meal, but it was so good I just had to share. Plus, I haven't been doing much cooking at all lately, what with my new job and all. Mike decided to pan-fry the flounder with panko breadcrumbs (I finally found some!) and roast some new potatoes, while Nils did the Squash Saute. That squash recipe is excellent - I like zucchini, but it had to be done right - it can NOT be slimy or squishy!! I highly recommend that you try this recipe!
On top of the fish is minced garlic and parsley - a great way to give it a little more flavor! The fish was crispy and delicious. I think Nils enjoyed dinner, because I caught him doing this with the leftovers:

2008-09-02T19:23:00.003-05:00

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake

I saved this recipe from a Taste of Home magazine a while back and finally decided to give it a try when my mom asked me to bring a dessert to a family dinner. I made sure the butter was room temperature before I started - I'm always glad when I do that! It makes the batter even lighter and more fluffy. Adding the sour cream only makes it more so!

I used dark chocolate cocoa powder for the cake - go big or go home, right?!?

I almost decided to make a cream cheese icing (my favorite!), but since this cake has three layers I was concerned about having enough to cover the whole cake. I made the icing that the recipe called for and had just enough. It was mild, which went well with the rich taste of the cake.
I thought that the icing went on beautifully - I covered it first with a very thin layer, then let it harden in the fridge. This seals in all the crumbs so the second layer goes on nicely.

Three layers of chocolate-y goodness!

2008-09-02T19:12:00.003-05:00

German Cooking

I don't know how "German" this dish really is, but it was made by our German foreign exchange student, so I'm going to call it German. Nils has surprised me with his wonderful cooking skills - he made me some eggs with red onions and feta cheese.

I don't really have any more information on this dish, but I just had to show it off :)

2008-08-22T20:17:00.003-05:00

Bavarian Pretzel Rolls

I found this recipe from a new blog I've been reading called A Year in the Kitchen. I've printed several recipes from Ashlee's blog (thanks, Ashlee!), but this is the first one I've tried. Mike loves the pretzel rolls from the Yalaha Bakery, so I thought I'd try my hand at making them myself. It took a bit of work, but I really enjoyed the process. It was a great way to stretch myself! And they were SO good!

I used the dough hooks on my stand mixer, and after a rising I rolled it up and cut it into pieces.

After another rising, they were ready to be boiled.

You have to add baking soda to the water to make it very bubbly. The boiling process cooks the rolls on the outside, giving them that pretzel look - browned on the outside and chewy on the inside. I guess the baking soda keeps them moving constantly?

Ready to go in the oven.

Oh man, they were SO good right out of the oven! I put some of them in the freezer for later, and the rest disappeared pretty quickly. They make great sandwiches!

2008-08-09T20:30:00.005-05:00

Note: As I have previously mentioned, Blogger has been acting up for me recently. It is not uploading pictures (as opposed to just flat-out refusing!), but some of them are coming out sideways. I have decided to just keep blogging and ask you to turn your heads ninety degrees when the occasion calls for it to properly view the picture!

Anniversary Dinner: Meat Loaf Wellington

This week Mike and I celebrated our third anniversary, and I wanted to make a special dinner to celebrate. Meat Loaf Wellington is one of Mike's favorites - it does have a lot of steps, but if you follow them closely it's not particularly hard, but the result tastes and looks like it's very complicated!!

I decided to try using ground buffalo, which my local Publix recently started carrying. I was using a little less than the recipe calls for, but I mistakenly used the original amount of cheese, so you will later see that it came oozing out a little! Otherwise I was very happy with the buffalo.
With the meatloaf ingredients mixed in. Ground buffalo does have a bit of a different feel to it - it's less "granular" feeling, more....moist, maybe? I think the finished result is also a little more moist than beef.

You put down a piece of aluminum foil (that Reynolds Release nonstick foil stuff works especially well if you have any) and form the meat into a rectangle, then sprinkle the cheese to within one inch of the edges.

This is the tricky part - using the foil, you have to roll up the meat like a jelly roll. If you go slowly it'll be fine, it's very forgiving. I usually have to fix some bare spots after I'm done!

You put the loaf in the oven to cook almost all the way, then pull it out to drape crescent roll dough over it.

This new prodcut from Pillsbury is perfect for a recipe like this - it's crescent roll dough without any seams! I draped it over the meatloaf and tucked over the edges, but next time I will probably trim it to fit with my kitchen scissors.

Twenty minutes later, THIS beauty comes out of the oven! Fair warning: this smells absolutely wonderful while baking, so keep a cattle prod around to drive away any husbands or animals you may have in the house.
I paired the meat loaf with roasted garlic green beans.
The finished product!* This is an excellent treat - the buttery crescent rolls, paired with the cheese and meat.....yum!! A great anniversary meal!!

*Note that the original recipe calls for topping the meat loaf with cheese and parsely, but I don't do this.

2008-08-08T14:00:00.003-05:00

White Cupcakes

Blogger has been misbehaving for the last several days, but we appear to be back to normal. I have a lot to catch up on! First, I made another Lemon-Curd Trifle with Fresh Berries to bring to a friend's house for dessert, which only uses egg yolks. Well, the cheapskate in me can't stand to waste anything, so I had to find a use for all those egg whites...enter Taste of Home's Berry-Topped White Cupcakes! Using only egg whites creates a very delicate, smooth tasting, yummy cupcake that goes perfectly with the cream cheese icing.

I got REALLY adventurous and decided to try making some of them in my new mini-bundt cake pan. As you can see, they rose quite a bit, which was great for the regular cupcakes, but I had to trim it off the mini bundts so they would sit flat.

I piped icing right into the middle of the mini bundts, and since I already had the pipe bag out, I did the regular cupcakes, too. The cream cheese icing was the perfect consistency to do this! I have absolutely no experience with piping, whatever I do is the result of me plodding my way through figuring it out.
I think it makes the cupcakes so special looking! It really was worth the extra time, plus it was a lot easier than it looks! You just have to go slow and turn the cupcake in your hand, not the pipe bag.
I decided to top the mini bundts with blueberries at the last minute because I thought they needed a little extra something, but the cupcakes were so pretty as they were I decided to leave them alone. I think I liked the cupcakes a little better than the mini bundts, but that's just because they had more icing and I LOVE me some icing! If you're not a big icing fan, using mini bundts would be a great way to enjoy more of the cake with less icing.

I love this recipe - it's so unlike any other cupcake! Nery said it was the best cupcake she's ever had....I don't know about THAT, but they are very tasty!!

2008-07-30T12:46:00.005-05:00

Book Recommendation: Hungry Planet

I don't usually recommend books on this blog, but I do read a lot of cooking-related books. I am a huge library aficionado, and I usually walk out of there with a huge stack of cookbooks to page through. This book caught my eye, although it's not exactly a cookbook. Hungry Planet does contain some recipes, but mainly it's a photo book that shows families from around the world with a week's worth of food. It's interesting to compare the family from a refugee camp in Chad to a family in North Carolina - their ideas of a week's worth of food are very different!

If you know me in real life, you've probably already heard me talk about this book. I found it so interesting because I have always felt that one of the best ways to get to know someone is to get to know their eating habits. This book is a glimpse into the lives of people all around the world, and the authors make it very interesting. Plus it makes you re-think your own eating habits! It really got me thinking about what would our food supply for a week look like - what would the proportion of prepared to fresh food look like?

If you have later-elementary aged kids, this would be a fantastic book to go through with them. The pictures of the families with their food make it very easy to understand how people from around the world eat differently. Plus, the look on your kid's face when they discover that people in Ecuador eat guinea pigs will be priceless!!

A synopsis, reviews, and an excerpt from Hungry Planet are all available at Amazon.com.

2008-07-29T19:39:00.003-05:00

Fried Chicken

I grew up hearing stories of my grandmother's legendary fried chicken. I've been trying to convince her to make some, but so far haven't succeeded. So I decided to give it my own shot!

I started with chicken pieces (everything but the thighs, which were saved for another recipe) and seasoned flour. Mike was the one who did the actual frying - he usually lets me do my own thing in the kitchen, but he likes to fry. I guess he enojoys handling oil hot enough to burn your face off!

The cast iron skillet is from his grandmother. We both love using it!
Mike also decided to make hush puppes. I decided to steam some broccoli and green beans to offset the rest of the meal :)
The chicken, in all it's shiny, crispy goodnes.

The chicken was very good, but the hush puppies...oh, the hush puppies! I could have eaten a whole pile of them. But I'm glad I didn't, because what I DID eat has been sitting heavily in my stomach ever since. Was the heartburn worth it? Probably, but I doubt we'll do this again. Now we can say we tried it, but I don't understand how people can stomach eating fried food more than once in a blue moon.

2008-07-27T13:09:00.011-05:00

King Arthur's Choco-Nilla Cake

King Arthur Flour puts out an excellent baking blog from which I've printed out many recipes. Cuban Sandwiches, McMuffins, Focaccia...they're all sitting in my recipe collection, waiting to be tried. The problem with that blog is, they put so much detail into it, they trick you into thinking you know enough about the dish to try it yourself. And if that doesn't get you, the beautiful pictures will kick your craving into high gear. But when I saw this Choco-Nilla Cake, I knew I just had to try it. It looked just complicated enough to be an enjoyable challenge. You have to make up two cakes:

One vanilla...

...and one chocolate. The vanilla cake is easy enough to mix up by hand, but I used my mixer for the chocolate layer. No boxed mixes here! The secret to the chocolate layer is the espresso powder that is added to the batter.

Even if you don't like the taste of coffee (which I don't), adding a little coffee (or espresso in this case) heightens the flavor of the chocolate. I've seen this trick before, and it really does work. My favorite chocolate cake recipe calls for hot coffee, and yuuuummm...

After baking up the cakes and gingerly removing them from the pans, I faced the dauting task of cutting both of them in half lengthwise. Toothpicks helped, along with a lot of prayer! I was really nervous about this part, but I took it slow and it turned out okay. I found that taking a deep breath, then holding it as I cut helped.

YES!!

After all the cutting, I was ready to assemble the cake...or was I?!? Actually I had to make up a ganache to put between the 4 layers, but that's just cream and chocolate chips melted together in the microwave, so it didn't take long.

After arranging the first layer on my parchment-covered cake stand (you'll see why I needed the parchment in a minute!), I spread some ganache to within one inch of the edges. This is to keep the weight of the second layer from squishing it all out.

See? Perfect!!

It's perty, aint it?

The last two layers didn't stack up quite as well as the first two, even after I tried to smooth the top of the last vanilla layer out a bit with my knife. All I could do was hope that the icing would cover up the gaps! The recipe recommends inserting skwers to hold the cake together until the ganache hardens, and I highly recommend taking that extra step. In fact, I left mine in until it was ready to serve, since it had to survive the transport to my grandmother's house.

I just spreaded the icing around the skewers, and it worked fine. Remember a few minutes ago when I told you that you'd understand why I needed the parchment under the cake? Now you see why! The ganache icing is MESSY!

After pulling out the parchment strips, it looked a lot better.

The finished product:

This cake is definitely geared more towards adults, especially with the not-overly-sweet ganache icing. To me, the ganache filling was perfect - it complimented the cake wonderfully. However, next time I may try this cake with the same ganache filling and a more traditionalchocolate buttercream icing. It would definitely need to be dark chocolate icing, though, to go with the taste of the cake. Overall, I am very proud of this cake, and I enjoyed the process. It's not a throw-it-together-in-ten-minutes type of cake, but for an occasion where you really want to wow people, it's perfect! My family really enjoyed it, especially my brother (who was visiting from Kentucky, thus the reason for the get-together) and dad, the resident chocoholics! The leftovers were a hot commodity!!

2008-07-18T17:48:00.002-05:00

My New Toy

My grandmother gave me her electric wok while she was going through some things, and I was eager to give it a whirl. It cooked my Honey-Chicken Stir-Fry so well! It got hot quickly and fried up nicely. Too bad I burned the rice on the stove....

Yum! Even over instant rice!!

2008-07-05T15:57:00.007-05:00

Lemon Curd Trifle with Fresh Berries

For the Fourth of July I tried Tyler Florence's Lemon Curd Trifle with Fresh Berries. It turned out delicious, but it did take awhile. However, if you can find a lemon pound cake (which I was not able to do), this recipe would not require any baking, which would cut down on your kitchen time.

I found that the bowl to my Kitchen Aid mixer worked perfectly to prepare the curd over a pot of simmering water. Then I could stick it straight in the fridge to chill and whip the Cool Whip in without changing bowls!

The recipe called for sweeted Whipped Cream, but I used Light Cool Whip with delicious results. Using real whipped cream MAY have made the curd easier to build the trifle with, but I was going for slightly less fat :)

As mentioned before, I could not find a lemon pound cake for purchase, so I decided to make one from a regular pound cake mix and replace about 2/3 of the water in the cake with lemon juice. I also made one other change to the cake: you're supposed to drizzle Lemoncello over the cake after cutting it into cubes, but I used Jim Bean bourbon. It produced a different taste, but it was very good in my opinion. Lemoncello just isn't something I keep handy!

As far as actually building the trifle, the first challenge I faced was the fact that I don't own a trifle bowl, which has straight sides to show off all the pretty layers. But I DO have a tall, cylindrical vase, so I decided to be adventerous and try that. This was my first real attempt at building a trifle, and I learned one thing: the curd spread out a LOT once it sits for a few minutes! It didn't make for a very pretty trifle, but we all agreed that it tasted good!

Mike and I had some after lunch today, and it tasted even better than yesterday. When I make this again (and I plan on it!) I'm going to make it the day before. The lemon and the berries went perfectly with the bourbon-drizzled pound cake. A perfect summer dessert!!

2008-06-30T17:53:00.004-05:00

Santa Maria Tri-Tip Roast

We've never tried a beef roast on the Egg, so we decided to try this recipe, which features a crust of cayenne and black pepper, garlic, rosemary, and salt. I have a nice picture of the roast ready to go on the Egg, but for some reason Blogger is not cooperating. But you can see what it looked like right before we devoured it:

And yes, it was just as good as it looks! It was pretty pepper-y, so we'll scale that back next time, but it was succulent and juicy and quite a treat! There was enough left over to make one of Mike's favorites, French Dip Sandwiches:

I'm not sure which was better - the roast or the leftovers! We plan on doing this often - it makes a great weekend treat to have a roast, and the leftovers make a great weekday meal.

2008-06-28T15:53:00.004-05:00

Salsa!!

(sorry about the bad picture!)

I love making my own salsa, especially since I now grow a lot of the ingredients myself.

My Patio Princess tomatoes have kept us well-supplied with salsa this year, and with what I planted for next year, I should have enough to make salsa and homemade tomato sauce:

Those are my baby tomato plants in the bottom right-hand corner, and the big plants along the left side are my peppers - another delicious addition! I have green bell, banana, jalepeno and cayenne. The banana and bell peppers are pretty mild, but we tried our first jalepeno in our latest salsa batch. Jalepenos are funny because plants vary in their level of heat. They can be very mild to pretty darn hot (although nothing like what Dee's husband grows!) I'm glad I grow my own now, because I know the heat level of that particular plant.

And lemma tell ya, I don't know if it's because they're home-grown, but mine are hot! We had three fairly small peppers, so I decided to put them all in. We actually had to wait until more tomatoes ripened to add to the salsa batch before we could eat it! When something is too spicy for Mike, you know it's hot!

My good friend Jennifer asked me about making salsa, so I wanted to share how incredibly easy it is to make your own. It's also much better than the canned stuff you get at the grocery store. Salsa is great because you can put lots of different things in it, and as little or as much as you like. You need to start with 4 or 5 good-sized tomatoes. You need to decide beforehand whether you want your salsa to be chunky or smooth. If you want it chunky, just chop all the ingredients as fine as you want. If you want it smooth, you will need to put all the ingredients through a food processor (you could use a blender, too). Just a few pulses will do. Chop up the ingredients in rough, large chunks before doing this. Now you need to think about what else you want to add to your salsa. Here is a list to get you started, add as many or as few as you like.

One small-to-medium onion (I think red onions are delicious in salsa!)
One bell pepper (any color)
One pepper of any other type, including banana, chile, cayenne....just be sure you know what heat level you're dealing with!
One jalepeno pepper (to me, salsa with a jalepeno tastes more authentic; see note above)
1/2 Cup corn (either frozen or cut off the cob fresh. If you're processing the ingredients, add this afterwards).
1/2 Cup black beans (again, add after processing)
1/2 a zuchinni (I learned this trick from a sneaky mother whose son hates zukes but loves salsa).
1-2 garlic cloves (a must in my house!)

That's all I can think of for now. If you have any other ingredients you add, I'd love to hear about them! You might find your salsa to be very watery, depending on how juicy your tomatoes were. If it is too juicy for your taste, you can always strain it. Catch the juice and freeze it for the next time you make soup - it will blow your mind!

There is one more step that is completely optional, and that is cooking the salsa. Some people like to do this if they are serving the salsa immediately. Cooking helps the flavors meld together. Taste it and see if you think it's necessary; if you think it's fine the way it is, then just enjoy! If you decide to cook it, do it in a saucepan on the stove over medium-low heat for 10 minutes. If you put the salsa in the refrigerator overnight, this will also meld the flavors.

Try out your salsa-making skills - you won't want to go back once you do!!

2008-06-23T19:54:00.002-05:00

Jalepeno Heaven

Mike picked some jalepenos off our plant and I was so taken by the waxy, vibrant color that I just had to take a picture. These went into the freezer until our next batch of tomatoes is ripe for some SALSA!

2008-06-23T19:29:00.005-05:00

Blueberry Streusel Coffee Cake

Every blueberry season, I have a collection of fresh blueberry recipes waiting in the wings. I absolutely LOVE blueberries, so I was eager to try this recipe. Dee over at The Daily Stitch first got me interested in the recipe, and since it originally came from Penzey's I figured it had to be good. I made one modification by skipping the walnuts in the struesel topping.

The coffe cake came out very with a very pretty golden top. It was also very fluffy and light - the only thing I would change about the recipe would be to add more blueberries - I like it loaded!

I served the coffee cake at my stitching group get-together last week, and it went over well. Lynn said that her son devoured the pieces I sent home for her, so it has the kid seal of approval, too!

And it almost had the kitty seal of approval!

2008-06-19T19:53:00.009-05:00

Black Bean Croquettes

I've made these once before, but apparently I never posted it. Mike actually made them the first time (which may explain why I forgot to post about them), and here they are:

Obviously we enjoyed them, since I made them again. This time I took a lot more pictures:

I had some black beans leftover from the Beef and Black Bean Burritos, so instead of canned beans I used dried (rehydrated, of course). Once I mashed them I worried that I should have cooked the beans, but it turned out fine. They were a little harder to mash, though. I also just threw in some of my homemade salsa instead of messing with their salsa recipe. The corn is frozen and I also threw in some chives instead of scallions....close enough.

You have to take the black bean mixture and make little mounds out of them, then roll in breadcrumbs. Don't mind my messy hands.

Mike used Italian breadcrumbs when he made them, and I used panko. Both were good, but I think I liked the panko a little better.

Plated up after a quick trip to the oven. I served them with fresh salsa on the side and some tortilla scoops, along with some steamed broccoli.

If you did them like this, they'd make great tapas!!

These croquettes made for a satisfying, guilt-free meal. I plan on making these often to stretch our budget, because it doesn't feel like a "cheap" meal. And get this: even Sophie liked them!!

2008-06-16T19:23:00.007-05:00

Beef and Black Bean Burritos

I decided to try a twist on the traditional beef burritos that are pretty common in this house. I'm always looking for ways to stretch our food budget, so the addition of black beans to the beef seemed like a great idea to me!

I had a lovely picture of the beef/bean mixture to show you guys, and for some reason Blogger keeps downloading it sideways. So just imagine a nice mixture of beef and black beans with cumin, coriander, and chili powder. I also added some corn I cut off the cob, and the reason I did this is because of these guy:

I had some salsa ingredients I picked from the garden, and I wanted to add some of the corn that my in-laws brought from St. Augustine. Since I had about half a cob's worth of corn left, I decided to add it into the beef and beef mixture.

Here's the end product, along with some green beans. We both really enjoyed this - it was nice change. Mike ate three of them, I had two, and I still had enough left over to make five more! We'll have enough for two lunches, so for two meals feeding two people, it costed me:*

$4.00 for 1.25 lbs. lean ground beef

$2.00 for 10 flour tortillas

50 cents for the seasonings and onion

Since the tomatoes and peppers for the salsa came from my garden, we'll say about $1.00 for the seeds, plus irrigation, etc.

$2.00 for the toppings - cheese, sour cream, etc.

50 cents for the black beans - I used dried instead of canned

NOTHING for the corn (thanks, in-laws!)

The green beans were brought fresh, and I washed, snapped and froze them myself. I'd say the 2 servings we ate cost about 50 cents.

For a total of $5.25 per meal for two people, or $2.62 per person, per meal! How's THAT for frugal?!?

*all figures are approximate

2008-06-11T21:09:00.003-05:00

The Bounty for Today

My banana pepper is EXPLODING! I picked eight of them today, and there's lots more on the bush! Three of them were shared with the neighbors, three went into the freezer, and the others went into a salsa along with the tomatoes. This year is my first growing tomatoes, and I remember reading that once your tomatoes start to ripen, it's like a tidal wave. Whoever said that was right...I picked these this morning, and by evening four more were ready to be picked! But we're not complaning - just making ourselves fat on chips and salsa!

2008-06-11T20:37:00.006-05:00

Pork Chops in Garlicky Sauce

This recipe came from Cooking from the Heart of Spain, a cookbook I got from the library. I was drawn to the use of fresh herbs. Pork chops aren't usually something I am enthusiastic about, which is partly the reason why I chose this recipe - garlic makes everything tasty!

I did make several adaptation to the recipe, including not peeling the potatoes and skipping the bitter pimenton, which I've never even heard of. All of my adaptations are in italics. In the above picture I had just added the potatoes, and on the back burner is brown Basmati rice, a recent find of mine at Publix. Mike LOVES Basmati rice, so I was happy to find a brown version. It was called "popcorn rice" on the package, and I couldn't figure out why until the fragrance filled the house - it really does smell kind of like popcorn!

Just about ready! At this point Mike and I were both standing over the stove about ready to reach in the skillet and dig in! The combination of garlic and parsley added at the last minute smelled SO good!

I didn't realize until I got to the table that I prepared two starches...whoops! I don't think I've EVER made that mistake! This was the first time that I really, truly enjoyed pork chops - I definitely plan on making these again! TRY THIS RECIPE!

2008-06-04T12:58:00.010-05:00

In the Garden

We're still getting some growth in the garden, depsite the full onset of summer here in sunny Florida!

My banana pepper plant continues to surprise me with how well it's doing. Clickity for biggity to see all the babies on that plant!!

Snap beans - waiting for a trellis! :)

In the background is the basil, which I've been religiously pinching off to encourage bushier growth. I swear, one day I trim it down and the next it looks exactly the same! The mint in the foreground isn't quite as fast a grower, but it's starting to spill down the sides of the pot! Time to make more Mint Ice Cream!

My Patio Princess tomatoes. I've been thrilled at thier production! They produce a fruit that's a little bigger than a cherry tomato. I got these from Burpee before I decided to grow mostly heirloom and open-pollinated seeds, but I've been so impressed with them that I planted the rest of the seed packet I had! I am also starting some Brandywine (heirloom) and Salsa tomatoes, which are specifically for making one of the very favorites foods. Mmmmm...salsa!

This morning I re-potted this orange tree into the tub you see here. I got the tub on sale, and although it's not really for growing plants, I put a layer of river rocks in the bottom for drainage and I think it will work just fine. Much cheaper than the other options I was looking at! It will make a fine home for this Page orange until it's big enough to go in the ground.

The bounty for today!

All washed up. The banana and bell peppers and the carrots will go into a stir-fry for tonight (stay tuned!) and the tomato will most likely go into Mike's mouth before I can do anything with it :) Our bounty is small this year, but hopefully next year we will have enough to really make a dent in our grocery bill and health goals!

Howie the guniea pig was more than happy to take care of the carrot tops for me. Gardening benefits us all!!

2008-06-01T20:40:00.002-05:00

Just a quick post to share some pictures from a recent family get-together. My mom made her famous Fruit Pizza - a perfect summer dessert!

The beauty of this recipe is the pairing of the sugar cookie crust with the cream cheese. The fresh fruit and orange glaze make it absolutely perfect!

Living in Florida, Memorial Day represents the start of summer for my family. Usually my great-aunt and uncle host a shindig at their place in Dunnelon, but they're away this year, so we hosted a shrimp boil. Yum!

2008-05-28T20:38:00.008-05:00

Heaven on an Egg...

The grocery store had a steak sale last week, and I took it as a sign. You see, ever since we got the Big Green Egg, I've been wanting to try a filet mignon. However, I'm just too darn cheap to buy them full price...really I'm too cheap to buy ANYTHING full price, but that's another story. But they were cheap enough for us to indulge, so indulge we did! I found these directions at Naked Whiz's web site, who is kind of a hero in the Egg world.

On the Egg.

This is after the searing, which seals in all the juices. After a rest, you're supposed to roast the steaks to get them to the done-ness you want.

This just might be my new favorite picture of Mike. We also had the first sweet corn on the season, also on the Egg.

The finished product. Along with the steak and corn, we had some mashed red potatoes and the carrots from our garden.

The steak was good. REALLY good. But I gotta say that this meal as a whole was really satisfying, too. Everything was very high-quality - home-grown carrots, potatoes from St. Augustine (3 hours away), corn from Zellwood (1/2 hour away). I LOVED this meal.

Everything except this disaster. We got some locally grown peaches from an employee, and I decided to make a mouth-watering cobbler in a Dutch Oven to try on the Egg.

Beautiful, isn't it? You should have seen it once it came off the Egg! It was burned almost completely black. We forgot (okay, I forgot) to put the Dutch Oven on what is called the Indirect Method. Kinda important. Oh well...live and learn.

2008-05-28T20:03:00.006-05:00

Alien from Outer Space?

Nope, it's a CARROT! From my GARDEN!!! I can't tell you how satisfying it was to pull these out of the ground. These guys were part of the "stick some seeds in the ground and see what turns out" experiment we did on the patio. They're being harvested a little late because it took me awhile to realize that, um....carrots need water. They're Little Finger carrots from Burpee, and they had a delicious spicy flavor.

This carrot sprouted under my pepper plant. The science geek in me thinks it's interesting how it turned out white due to the lack of sunlight.

Speaking of pepper plants, this is my bell pepper, almost ready for its first harvest! Oh, and that is NOT a weed you see....NOT a weed!! :)

2008-05-19T19:01:00.003-05:00

German-Style Lentil Soup

Today I made dinner for the first time in a week. I feel like I should be making that confession while standing up at an AA-type meeting. I have never spent that amount of time out of the kitchen, but when a mystery illness knocks you on your back, what choice do ya have? I gotta tell ya, though, hearing Mike bang around in my kitchen and not getting up to supervise was quite possibly the hardest part of being sick.

Anyhoo, for my first meal since re-joining the living, I decided to try a new recipe: German-Style Lentil Soup. I've been wanting to give lentils a try - they're economical and healthy, both of which I'm always looking for. This recipe called my name because anything German is usually okay in Mike's book. It features two of his favorite ingredients - kielbasa and potatoes, so I figured a little bit of lentil in there wouldn't bother him.

I bought the ingredients right before I got sick, and my still-addled mind assumed that I still had all the ingredients. I was wrong. We had no onions, no celery, and not enough chicken broth...oh well! I didn't have enough energy to think of something else to make, so I gave it my best shot. I re-hydrated some dried onions, skipped the celery, watered down the broth, and hoped for the best.

Sorry for the sloppy picture! This meal still wasn't quite up to par - Mike had to pick up some bread on the way home, and for a side I just threw on some baby carrots and cherries. Usually I would, er, plan ahead (what a concept!) to make some homemade bread and cook a veggie, but that's okay, I'll start slow. All in all, the soup came out pretty good. I think next time I will try beef broth (not watered down!) Mike helped himself to seconds and asked if he could have the leftovers for lunch tomorrow, so I guess he enjoyed it! I enjoyed the good feeling I get from watching him eat a meal he likes....I didn't realize how much I missed that!

2008-05-19T17:32:00.005-05:00

Mother's Day Desserts

I was in charge of making desserts for our family gathering to celebrate Mother's Day and my father's birthday, which was two days after. I won't tell you how many candles were on dad's cake...because I forgot to bring candles :) But it was a big one (50 times as big as the last one, ahem), and so I made not one, but two desserts: the incredibly easy Oreo Cookie Cake and the equally easy Chocolate-Covered Strawberries.

This is the first layer of the Oreo Cookie Cake, which I had to trim a little so the rest of the cake wouldn't be crooked:
The actual cake part is just a Devil's Food Cake mix, but paired with the cream cheese filling and chocolate glaze, it makes it delicious.

I love how the filling is so thick but stands up to the top layer.

A hint if you decide to make this cake, which I highly recommend that you do: use a serrated knife to cut the cake. You have to lightly saw through the chocolate layer a little. This cake is gooooooood with a frosty glass of milk!

I did half of the strawberries in milk chocolate and half of them in semi-sweet.

Chocolate-covered strawberries are so simple, yet so good! My dad would agree :)

2008-05-10T14:14:00.003-05:00

Blueberry Coffee Cake

I pilfered this recipe from my mom's May 2008 issue of Cooking Light. I think I used to get that magazine, but I must not have been very impressed, because I obviously never renewed it. The recipes always called for ingredients I never had on hand, but now that I have more room I guess I have more baking supplies! I was really impressed with this recipe - most coffee cake recipes call for enough butter to make my heart stop just by reading them. I still wouldn't call this health food, but it sure was tasty!

It calls for fresh blueberries, but I used Europe's Best Frozen Wild Blueberries, tossed in some of the flour mixture. The pieces I sent with Mike to work disappeared fast, according to Mike.

The only thing I would say about this recipe is that it doesn't say anything about keeping it in the refrigerator, so I kept it out like I would most coffee cakes. Trust me...keep it in the fridge! Guess all that extra butter serves more than one purpose...

2008-05-08T18:56:00.007-05:00

Spring Mix Salad topped with Parmesan-Crusted Chicken and Creole Buttermilk-Black Pepper Dressing

A rather lengthy name for a delicious attempt to make up for The Meal of Sin we recently. I've made the Parmesan Crusted Chicken several times before...always a classic on salads! The Creole Buttermilk-Black Pepper Dressing is the second new recipe I've tried from the Crescent City Cooking book I got from the library.

This is my first attempt at making dressings that I've actually been pleased with, and it was even better the next day after having all night to sit in the fridge. The only thing is, I'm not sure that the final product was actually "Creole" - the only thing I can see that was Creole about it was Creole mustard - who the heck has Creole mustard lying around? I don't even know where I could get some, short of traveling 9 hours to New Orleans. So I used some stone-ground maple sugar mustard, and it was delicious.

I did use a little less mayonnaise (Miracle Whip, actually) and a little more sour cream to better suit it to our taste. I also used about half the horseradish that the recipe says is optional. The only thing I would do differently is not get lazy and actually grind the pepper myself!

2008-05-05T19:28:00.009-05:00

Mint Julep Ice Cream

I recently checked a book out of the library called Crescent City Cooking by Susan Spicer, a restauranteer in New Orleans. I thought I didn't care much for Creole cuisine, but this book intrigued me, and I was pleasantly surprised. So far I've tried two recipes, both of which I've been happy with. This is called Mint Julep Ice Cream, and I decided to make it in honor of the (rather depressing) Kentucky Derby this past weekend.

First, we start with fresh mint from the porch. This is already an improvement on the Fresh Mint Ice Cream recipe I tried before, because it doesn't call for stemming the leaves, which saves a LOT of time. Plus, I didn't have to steam and cool multiple times - only once. I must say that there was slightly less mint taste to this recipe than the other one

While the mint and cream/half-and-half mixture is cooling, I whisked the sugar and egg yolks together.

Here's the mint and cream mixture, ready to be strained and have the sugar concontion added.

Now the hardest part: you have to cook the custard until it coats the back of a wooden spoon, watching it carefully to make sure you don't overcook and wind up with minty scrambled eggs.

Ready to go in the ice cream freezer...almost there!

The finished product, with shaved semi-sweet chocolate mixed in the last few minutes.

The recipe description states, "My rule of thumb is, 'If something tastes good, it will taste even beter if you turn it into ice cream.'" I tend to agree! Homemade ice cream tends to get even better as it ripens in the freezer, but I'm afraid it will disappear before it reaches its' peak! The bourbon gives it a wonderful flavor and keeps the ice cream soft, but next time I may reduce it just a bit to make it firm up a little more. And I should also mention that I halved this recipe to make 1 quart, because I don't know anyone who has a home ice cream maker that makes 2 quarts. Mmmmmm...

2008-05-03T18:51:00.005-05:00

Meat Loaf Wellington

My grandfather, an Iowa farmboy, had a favorite meal - fried chicken and mashed potatoes. When my grandmother made her legendary fried chicken and mashed potatoes, grandpa knew he was doing okay by her. The same goes with Mike and my Meat Loaf Wellington. It's a Taste of Home recipe, and for the amount of euphoria it produces in my husband, the level of work involved is actually very low. It's just regular ol' meatloaf, which you spread out on aluminum foil and put mozzarella cheese in the middle. Then you roll it up and stick it in the oven. Easy-peezy.

Then, you take it out of the oven (I use a meat thermometer and take it out when it reaches rare) and drape crescent roll dough over the top. The recipe calls for using the whole roll of dough, but I find I only need half. I probably could use the whole thing and completely cover it, but I prefer to use the leftover rolls for breakfast the next day :)

That, my friends, is my recipe for a happy husband!

2008-04-30T17:57:00.005-05:00

Did You Know...

How easy it is to make your own whipped cream? I had no idea. I feel embarrased admitting that, because it identifies me as part of the generation of convenience foods. I think I grew up with a better awareness of where food comes from than most kids, but this was one of those things that slipped under the radar. But last week, I took out my whisk attachment, poured some heavy cream into my trusty stand mixer, added a pinch of salt, and watched it turn into this:

It was really neat to watch. I was tempted to keep letting it go and watch it make butter!

Glorious.

Even more glorious when there is homemade chocolate cheesecake under it.

2008-04-30T17:42:00.004-05:00

One Sauce, Many Uses

I made this black bean sauce as an accompainiment for a Grilled Lime Chicken recipe I wanted to try, but I've found it handy for other uses as well. Like tucked into soft tacos alongside browned ground beef and the other usual suspects. Or in my taco soup, which gave it a darker color but a thicker texture and interesting taste.

Having an immersion blender was nice in making this. I rarely use that thing, but I'm always glad to have it when I need it!

The chicken, along with grilled red onions and new potatoes.

I love it when I can make something once and use it for lots of different meals!

2008-04-27T18:46:00.010-05:00

The Meal of Sin

We tend to eat pretty healthy, but sometimes, you just gotta live. When Mike's mom brought us some Creamy White potatoes from Hastings, which have a somewhat legendary status in his family, I knew that this was one of his times. We decided to make REAL french fries - none of that baked-in-the-oven junk. And since we were already on the slippery slope, we decided to have hamburgers, too! Awwwwwwww yeah!

Mike set up the oil and basket for frying and set to work.

Tell me that doesn't make your mouth water!

I decided to try to offset our bad-ness a little with some broccoli. Really it was just to alleviate our guilt a little.

Fresh out of the oil....[drool]

We thoroughly enjoyed our Meal of Sin, but we had three furry children right under our noses the whole time:

Sophie caught mid-chew enjoying a french fry. This facial expression slays me!

Hoping daddy will share the wealth, too.

2008-04-23T20:02:00.002-05:00

Panko-Breaded Chicken Fingers

I picked up some panko breadcrumbs impulsively on my last trip to the Fresh Market. Unfortunately, I realized that I had no idea how to use them. Of course, I could always use them in place of regular breadcrumbs, but I hardly ever use those, either. So after some searching on the internet, I came up with this recipe. The panko breadcrumbs were a little different from regular breadcrumbs - the strips were crispy and delicious, and Mike ate them with much gusto. I whipped up a honey-mustard sauce to go with them, along with a green salad with the last of the greens from the garden. If anyone has any other panko recipes, please feel free to share them, because this was pretty much it!

2008-04-22T20:14:00.003-05:00

Fresh Berry Tarts, Part Trois

Okay, I admit it: I am actually a little embarassed that I have made the SAME recipe three times in one week. I have never done anything like this before! I even had to look up what the French word for 'three' is for the title of this post! Really, I can't believe I'm writing about this recipe again! But I did do something a little different this time - instead of bothering with making my own glaze, I just picked up some strawberry glaze from the produce section of Publix. They had it right next to the strawberries (clever marketing ploy - which I totally fell for!)

All I did was glop it on top, but when I make this recipe again (and it WILL be awhile!) I will probably warm it up slightly to make it a little prettier and cover the berries better. Using the store-bought glaze held everything together nicely. I made these for a meeting at the family business, and there were no transportation problems whatsoever - I don't even think I lost one berry!

For some reason, all the diners thought these were cherry. I guess the glaze is a little cherry-ish, in a fake kinda way. But everyone seemed to enjoy them.

We now return to our regularly scheduled, more varied programming. Even I'm getting a little tired of looking at tart pictures!

2008-04-12T19:25:00.002-05:00

Fresh Berry Tarts, Part Deux

I made the Fresh Berry Tarts again for a "Welcome Matt" party we had on Thursday for our church's new music director (whose name just happens to be Matt - imagine that!). This time I picked up some fresh blackberries, which made them even prettier than the frozen ones. They were a big hit! They came out so beautiful, I just had to share a few pictures:

2008-04-12T16:42:00.002-05:00

Oven-Crisp Black Bean and Corn Flautas

I've been on a quest for some tasty meatless recipes, and this recipe seemed to fit the bill. Mike and I both love black beans!

The recipe tasted good, but wrapping the black bean mixture in the corn tortillas didn't go so well, as you can see. Once they baked in the oven, the tortillas flaked out on me!
I posted this recipe so my dear readers could take a look at it and tell me if there's anything different I can try. Mike suggested brushing the tortillas with oil, whaddya think?

2008-04-08T20:12:00.002-05:00

Fresh Strawberry Ice Cream

After making the Fresh Berry Tarts from the previous post, I had a lot of sliced, macerated strawberries left over and nothing to do with them...well, I fixed that problem by making strawberry ice cream! I just prepared the sweet cream base and threw in the strawberries that I had used to make the topping for the tarts, then let the ice cream maker do the rest. I know I added more berries than the recipe calls for, but I didn't think I added enough to make the freezer overflow. I was wrong. That was a fun clean-up, but the ice cream was good. I mean, LOOK at that picture!

2008-04-07T19:50:00.005-05:00

Fresh Berry Tarts

I tore this recipe out of my Penzey's catalog a long time ago - long enough ago that I don't remember exactly when and the recipe isn't on their website anymore. The berry harvest was incredibly disappointing last year, so if I did have this recipe last year, I didn't get to use it. This year, however, the strawberries have hit the stores just how I like them - cheap and sweet - so I decided to give this recipe a try. It features a crust that is similar to sugar cookie dough, and although it is a bit complicated, the result was so pretty and elegant that it was worth it:

The recipe calls for rolling out the dough and cutting it with a biscuit cutter, but the only thing I had was a wide-mouthed jar, which I believe was not quite as wide. But that worked out perfectly, because about halfway through baking them I realized that I could use my mini-muffin pans rather than the standard-size the recipe calls for, which made things go a LOT faster. You can see in the picture below the size difference:

Like I said, this recipe took some time to make: you have to mix and chill the dough, then roll it out and cut the circles of dough, drop the circles into the pan, top with the filling (cream cheese-based), bake, arrange the berries on top, make the berry topping, and drizzle that on top...whew! However, no part of the directions is incredibly complicated, and you can work on one part of the recipe while you're waiting for other parts to chill or bake. I used mostly strawberries for the top, because that's what I had fresh. The other berries are from the frozen medley that I mentioned in my last post, and as you can see they look fresh.

These tarts were SO good! I plan on making more for a get-together we're hosting Thursday. I recommend making these the day before you plan serving them, because they get even better when they sit in the fridge overnight!

2008-04-07T18:49:00.010-05:00

Playing Catch-Up

WOW I have been a bad blogger lately! Sorry 'bout that. It's just that by the end of a long day, I don't have a whole lot of brain power to write my usual clever prose. This post has been in the works since we bought a ham on sale after Easter. First, Mike smoked it on the Big Green Egg, which we enjoyed with mashed potatoes.

Mike LOVES ham....really, really loves it. He never says "ham," he says "haaaaaaaaaaaaam," complete with a dreamy look in his eye. Part of the reason why is because of the LEFTOVERS:

First up, ham buns. They feature swiss cheese, with dijon mustard and poppy seeds. These were done on brown-and-serve dinner rolls, because I had some in the freezer that needed to be used, but I usually do them on hamburger buns. They make great appetizers on mini buns. And great lunches for Mike the next day :)

Next up, White Cheddar Scalloped Potatoes. This was a new recipe from Taste of Home, and since I had a LOT of ham leftover, I was glad this recipe calls for a full 3 and a half cups. This recipe was a lot of work - slice the potatoes, chop the onion and ham, shred the cheese...not something I'd make all the time, but it was so worth it!

Yum.

I decided to make this into a breakfast-for-dinner, along with fruit salad and what has quickly become my favorite pancake recipe, Blueberry-Buttermilk Pancakes. Unfortunately, the casserole and the pancakes weren't done at the same time, but it was still delicious.

As an aside, the berries I used were a new product, and I just had to say how good these berries were. It had a blend of strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries, and they taste almost like fresh. I am totally addicted!

2008-04-01T19:18:00.008-05:00

Dill, dill, and more dill...

My first attempt at growing dill in my greenhouse window didn't go so well, so I was very pleased that my second attempt on the porch has been a raging success. Maybe it's due to the constant vigil provided by Morgan the cat.
Here's the plant - you can see that it's so bushy, it looks like I cut practically nothing off of it - but really I cut it nearly in half! Morgan was very interested in my snipping, as you can see :) I used the dill in two different recipes, Dill Roasted Salmon and Dill and Cheddar Beer Bread.

The Salmon cooked on a bed of dill. The recipe calls for smoked paprika, but in my last Penzey's order I got a sample of chipolte pepper, which is also smoky, so I put that on instead. The recipe also lists an optional Lemony-Dill mayo that can be served with the fish, but I skipped that part.

The Dill-Cheddar Beer Bread recipe intrigued me, because it lists lots of other interesting sounding varations on the basic recipe (Rosemary-Feta Beer Bread, anyone?) I cooked the bread in a cast-iron cornbread pan from Oma (Mike's German grandmother).

Below is the final product, along with a homemade salad (with greens that I grew!!) with homemade croutons.

The bread came out incredibly light and delicious, and the salmon had just the right amount of kick - I'm glad I didn't overdo it with the chipolte (as I am prone to do). I was concerned that simply cooking the fish on a bed of dill wouldn't impart enough flavor, especially with the skin still on, but it imparted a nice dill-y flavor. I also made a salad (with greens that I grew), and while I burned the homemade croutons on one side, I DID figure out a nice trick for making homemade croutons much easier - frozen bread! The only bread I had was in the freezer, so I just smeared the whole piece of bread with butter (I usually use olive oil, but hey, ya gotta have SOME fun!), then some garlic salt, then cut it up and popped it in the toaster oven. It made it very easy to cut the bread into perfect little cubes. Maybe that's how the restaurants do it!

2008-04-01T19:01:00.003-05:00

Black Bean Burgers!

Last week, Mike and I went to a party where black bean burgers were served, along with hot dogs and hamburgers. While I would usually go straight for the meat, I guess I felt adventurous that night, because I tried one. And....it was pretty good! It was Morningstar Brand's Spicy Black Bean burgers, and it had a little kick to it, which I especially enjoyed. I picked some up today, and while Mike had Zesty Grilled Ham (which I also like), he threw on a burger for me. He also grilled some corn, seasoned with butter and Penzey's Tuscan Sunset seasoning - my absolute favorite! I also wanted to show tonight's dinner because we had a salad with lettuce from the garden! That is so exhilarating for me - we ate something I GREW! Woo-hoo! I love it!

2008-03-28T14:47:00.002-05:00

Spice-Rubbed Grilled Tuna with Short-Grain Brown Rice

I'm catching up on a backlog of pictures, so bear with me here. Last week, my mom and I went to Orlando for stitching day. Dee, Lynn, and Debbie were also there, and after stitching at Needle Orts, we all went for lunch. We all had a very nice time, and once Dee told me there was Fresh Market near where we were, I pretty much dragged my mom there! I miss the high-end grocery stores of Gainesville. Not that I shopped there all the time, but there's some stuff that I just can't get anywhere else. Like decent fish. Take this sushi-grade tuna, rubbed with spices according to the butcher's recommendation (another thing I miss - competent butchers!) The spice rub consisted of equal parts:

-coriander
-brown sugar
-curry
-blackening seasoning

I actually made the blackening seasoning out of this recipe from allrecipes.com, but I halved the amount of salt called for. Look at how the filet came off the grill in a heart shape:

Sophie faithfully guarded the fish while I finished up the short-grain brown rice (another Fresh Market buy!) and steamed broccoli:

The finished product. The seasoning was great - had a little kick, which paired nicely with the mild meaty-ness of the fish. Ahhhhh...a delicious, healthy meal - there's nothing better!

2008-03-19T19:39:00.004-05:00

Oreo Cookie Cake

I made this cake for Mike yesterday. He's been working really hard on the yard and house, and hey, it was a great excuse to make a cake! I've made this cake before, and it is so good! I love this recipe because it's a great way to start with a boxed cake mix and end up with something that looks really elaborate and tastes wonderful.

The actual cake is a devil's food cake mix, the middle is made of cream cheese, Cool Whip, and crushed oreos (is there any more heavenly combination?), and the glaze basically melted chocolate. The recipe called for making the glaze out of chocolate baking squares, but I decided to use coating chocolate, which is used for things like chocolate-covered strawberries. I don't think I'll do it next time, because it made cutting a bit of a challenge. It would crack all over the place, not where I wanted it to! This cake is awesome because it tastes even better the next day!

2008-03-19T19:24:00.004-05:00

Strawberry Frozen Yogurt

After my last fat-ridden use of my ice cream freezer, I wanted to try something a little lighter. I tried this recipe, using the first of the strawberries from this season.

Here they are after macerating in a half sugar-half Splenda mixture and some clear vodka. Let me tell ya, it was hard to stop myself from snatching berries from the bowl at this point!

The finished product. It is delicious, but it turned out very hard. I was lazy and just eyeballed how much yogurt to put in, and I think that was my mistake. Still, it was sweet and slightly tart and very good. I may try this with other berries, and next time I think I will use all Splenda (I was afraid Splenda would not macerate the berries) and try bourbon as the alcohol. Strawberries and bourbon are like peas and carrots!

2008-03-18T20:04:00.002-05:00

Hoisin-glazed Smoked Chicken

I'm not sure what inspired me to throw a bottle of hoisin sauce into my shopping cart. I'm also not sure what inspired me to use the sauce as marinade for a whole chicken. Nevertheless, I did both things, and the end product was delicious. It was slightly sweet and tangy and the skin was crispy and wonderful. Mmmm...one of Mike's coworkers mentioned that he uses the hoisin sauce to make ribs, so that's next on the list.

For those of you who are interested, I poured the hoisin sauce over the skin and down the cavity of the chicken, and Mike used his ceramic "chicken sitter" over the plate setter of the Big Green Egg.

2008-03-10T19:46:00.006-05:00

Shredded Beef Tacos

When I saw that this recipe uses a Dutch oven, I decided to further my recent fascination with the old-fashioned thingy and give it a try. The part about using red chile sauce intrigued me - I used Mike's favorite sauce, Mae Ploy.

Not exactly what the recipe calls for, but it gave the meat a nice, slightly spicy and sweet taste.

The meat was browned in the dutch oven, then I poured the sauce over it and stuck it in the oven at 250 degrees for 4 hours.

Close-up of the fresh-out-of-the oven meat; pre-shredded

mmmm......

I plan on making more of the meat next time and making some burritos for the freezer.

2008-03-10T19:39:00.002-05:00

Fresh is Best

This meal was the perfect example of how fresh, locally grown foods are so much better and satisfying. The meatloaf came from the freezer (last time I made meatloaf I froze some extra), but the potatoes, corn, and sugar snap peas came from a produce stand that recently opened that is committed to supporting local farmers when possible. Just look at that corn! It was like candy. I chose to cut mine off the cob (I started liking it this way when I had braces as a teenager), but Mike prefers to gnaw his right off. We've also been enjoying the sugar snap peas in stir-fry! The mashed potatoes were perfect, which I was happy about, since my last attempt did not go so well (scroll down to beef stew).

2008-03-02T20:10:00.007-05:00

Fresh Mint Ice Cream

I decided to try my hand at making a custard-base ice cream. I don't think I've ever had one before (with having egg yolks in them, I don't think this is the type you can get in ice cream shops), and my peppermint plant on the porch has been growing like crazy, so this seemed like the answer for a lazy Sunday afternoon. The newest Star Wars book came out recently, so Mike was occupied while I spent most of the afternoon making ice cream :)

The recipe entailed steaming cream, milk, and the fresh mint (which was a pain to pick apart!) and letting it cool several times, then straining out the peppermint and cooking the cream/milk mixture into a custard:

In my ice cream freezer, calling my name. I'm so glad to be using my ice cream maker again...in the apartment, I didn't have the storage to make the box easily accesible, and I most definitely didn't have the room in my freezer to store the part that needs to be in there. Now, we have lots of cabinets, a chest freezer...life is good!

I decided to use chopped dark chocolate, but once I got it all chopped up, I was about two ounces short. The remainder of the Andes Candies baking pieces leftover from Christmas baking fixed that :)

Ohhhhh la la..........

I don't think I had quite the amount of mint the recipe calls for, so I'm glad the Andes candies lent a little more mintiness to the ice cream-y goodness. The custard base made it taste a little different than regular ice cream, but man, it was indulgently good! It took a long time, and I don't know how soon I'll do this again, but it was a new experience.

2008-03-02T19:48:00.003-05:00

Foccacia Revisited

The last time I made foccacia, I told you that I had two more balls of dough in the freezer for a later meal. Tonight, I pulled them out to see how they did from a frozen state. I was pleasantly surprised - I thawed them for about two hours on the kitchen counter, and although they were still slightly frozen in the center, it actually made it much easier to roll them out.

After I rolled them out, I brushed them with garlic oil (which I was disappointed wasn't a little stronger tasting in the final product).

Mike did the cooking and topping - whole milk mozzarella and parmesan with pieces of pepperoni. He must have liked them, because he asked if I have any more dough in the freezer for later this week :)

2008-03-02T19:36:00.003-05:00

Grilled Tuna

On the same day I bought the meat for the Buffalo Burgers, I also picked up some yellowfin tuna steaks. I modified a suggestion from Dee for using the Meyer lemon-infused olive oil I got from my mom by rubbing the steaks with the olive oil, then layering fresh, home-grown dill and lemon slices with kosher salt sprinkled on top.

Mike grilled the fish on the Big Green Egg, along with Florida sweet corn. We also had the one Green Giant boxed veggie that I really like; a blend called Healthy Weight. It's got sliced carrots (which are so sweet even Mr. Picky will eat them!), sugar snap peas, edamame, and black beans in a buttery herb sauce. Yummmmm.....

2008-03-01T20:29:00.002-05:00

Beef Stew

I found this recipe a few weeks ago (and for the life of me I can't remember where!), and it sounded like something Mike would enjoy. I've been trying to spend as little as possible on groceries, and that often means no beef, so when a cheap cut of beef went on sale this week, I bought some to give this recipe a try. For ten bucks, I made this meal and have three meals worth of beef in the freezer - two packages of thin-sliced beef that can be made into fajitas or stir-fry and another package of cubed beef for either barbeque in the crock pot or more stew. Not bad. The challenge for me is to make beef stretch - when I think beef, I think burgers and steaks! But back to the stew.

I liked this recipe because it talks about layering flavors, something I never realized could contribute so much to the flavor of the dish. I didn't realize that I needed to use the same pan to cook the beef and let it stew in the oven, so I deglazed the frying pan with some white wine and scraped all that goodness into the dutch oven below. Next time I'll just use the dutch oven for everything.

This cast iron dutch oven belonged to Mike's grandmother, "Oma," who is a German immigrant and one of the sweetest ladies I've ever known. She's too frail to lift heavy cast iron and doesn't cook much anymore, but I've heard Mike talk about the delicous German foods she used to make. I have a few of her recipes written down for posterity, but she's a "little of this and that" kind of cook, plus most of her recipes call for things like "one pound of lard" and "fry in bacon grease until crispy." But I know someday I'll be glad I have them.

Fresh out of the oven.

The beef part of this meal was good, but unfortunately, it was the only good part. I cooked some potatoes in the oven along with the beef to make mashed potatoes, and they FELT done, but apparently they were not. Once I started mashing them I discovered this, and after nuking them in the microwave, the best I could do was some very lumpy mashed potatoes. The broccoli was even worse - it was one of those new low-fat cheesy broccoli dishes by Green Giant, and it was so darn salty, I couldn't finish it. At least I'll always have the beef :)

2008-03-01T15:44:00.003-05:00

Adventures in Tofu

I figured since I was on a roll trying new things, I'd give tofu a try. My stir-fry fetish is reaching epic proportions, so really it was the next logical step.

I used the basic recipe for Honey-Chicken Stir-fry, except without the chicken. It sure smelled good while I was cooking. I added some broccoli, shelled edamame, and sliced carrots during the last few minutes and heated up some brown rice from the freezer (left over from a previous stir-fry meal).

I love it when a healthy meal is truly enjoyable. This was a great lunch, but I need to perfect my technique before I can get Mike to try it. I need to figure out a way to get the edges more crispy.

2008-02-28T19:59:00.002-05:00

New New New!!

Last week I inadvertently made a meal with not one, but TWO new foods. The biggest one was quinoa - I've been reading up on the health benefits of the grain and decided to start working on convincing Mike to let me try making it.

You should know that last time I made a new side dish, it was couscous and I didn't tell him that it was made from pasta and he was a little mad at me. But he was a good sport and gave it a shot. N0t only that, he also tried the edamame I made...I had to wipe away a few tears of joy...

The quinoa and edamame together with pork tenderloin (red ribs crock pot recipe). The quinoa was prepared fairly plain - I cooked it in chicken broth and seasoned with salt and pepper with a little butter on top. It had a slightly nutty taste. I plan on trying some more interesting recipes...so if you have any, please share :) The edamame was delish, although I think next time I buy it I'll get the shelled variety. The experience of putting the fuzzy pods in my mouth to get to the yummy soybeans was a little unnecessary to me. After the end of this meal, I felt very nutritionally satisfied, but I swear the quinoa expanded in my stomach, because I kept feeling fuller and fuller until I was afraid I might explode!

Here's to expanding our nutritional horizons!

2008-02-27T20:39:00.005-05:00

Buffalo Burgers! (aka, The Battle Between Good and Evil)

I went to a place called The Uncommon Market in nearby Minneola last week and came home with some ground buffalo meat. I decided to give it a try because I've heard that it's a very lean meat with lots of flavor. A nice, healthy indulgence, right? The lady pulled it out the the freezer in a little vacuum-sealed package that was so hard I could have used it to knock someone out, and it lived in my freezer until the weekend, when Mike discovered it and decided to give buffalo burgers a try. Thus the battle began.

These are my nice, healthy buffalo burgers. With ground bacon mixed in!! So much for healthy! But when Mike volunteers to cook and wants to try something new, I want to be a good wife and support that, so I just took all the rage I felt towards Mike for ruining my dream of a healthy indulgence and took it out on my body. How did I do that? I ate a bacon-filled buffalo burger. With cheese. And after I was done, I felt a little like this:

Some other dinner pictures Mike took:

The veggies on the Big Green Egg. Locally grown corn and zuchinni from the new produce stand in Yalaha.

Yum-ness.

2008-02-24T16:47:00.002-05:00

Key Lime Cake

I usually don't use boxed cake mixes, but this recipe intrigued me, and I decided to give it a try. The recipe includes a box of lemon cake mix and a box of instant lemon pudding, and it's been my experience that adding pudding mix can really improve the texture of a recipe. I got a mini bundt cake pan over Christmas, and this is the first time I've been able to use it, and I really like how they turned out. The first time in the oven, I overfilled the pan a little, and I had to trim off the tops. Guess which two members of this household were standing ready to take care of the excess cake? I'll give you a hint: one has four legs and is slightly more hairy than other one.

The only thing I might change about this recipe is the glaze. The above picture is right after I poured on the glaze, but after it cooled it seeped into the cake, making it very moist. But it was super-sweet, and I would have preferred a glaze that hardened over the cake and wasn't quite so hurt-your-teeth-sweet. If anyone has one that might work, I'm open to suggestions!

2008-02-24T16:18:00.001-05:00

I figured out why my pea plant isn't growing:

2008-02-19T20:04:00.002-05:00

It's All Who You Know

I have gotten some awesome gifts lately. First, I had mentioned to our salesman, Ray, that I have always wanted to visit Robert is Here, which is a legendary fruit stand in the Southern tip of Florida. Today Mike brought home a gift for me from Ray: a jar of black raspberry preserves from Robert himself!

I have some bread in the bread machine so we can enjoy this stuff tomorrow! My mouth is watering just thinking about it! Thanks, Ray!!

This gift is from my mom and dad, who recently returned from a trip to California. They visited a winery that also grows olives, and brought me back some olive oil. One of them is lemon-infused, and I couldn't resist opening that one and putting a drop on my tongue. It was awesome! I tasted olive, then lemon, then olive ...no, lemon! Olive! And the bottles are so pretty! The only thing is, I don't have a whole lot of ideas as to how to use these high-quality oils. With good bread and dipping spices, yes, but what else? Suggestions are welcomed and appreciated :) Thanks, mom and dad, for for bringning me such a great gift!

2008-02-19T19:48:00.002-05:00

Good Booty

Mom took me to the World Market yesterday, and I went crazy in the food section. It made me miss the Fresh Market in Gainesville :-( I like living in Leesburg, but one thing I don't like is the lack of places to get good food. Take a look at some of my "booty:"

Stir-fry sauces. I had ordered the black bean sauce from a Thai market online previously, and I think with shipping and everything I paid about six dollars. Both of these cost me five. SCORE!!

They had an entire section of little sample-sized bottles that were like a dollar, and the raspberry conserve is from that section. I hope conserve is a fancy word for jam :) I almost got a little bottle of the garlic oil, but I decided on the big one. It's not like we're not going to use it all! The roasted garlic salsa was calling my name, and the fact that it was on sale did not help matters!

Tonight's dinner - chicken stir-fry using the garlic oil and chile garlic sauce. I found out too late that we're very low on frozen vegetables, so this stir-fry is a little unconventional: corn (I much would have preferred baby corn), green beans (not exactly a Chinese vegetable), baby carrots, yellow onion, and some red pepper strips. I followed the recipe on the jar, and this dish packed some HEAT!! I was glad I had milk to drink! My lips were burning after eating, but Mike enjoyed it. He's more couragous in that department. I think next time I'll cut the amount of sauce used in half.

2008-02-17T16:20:00.004-05:00

Weekend Breakfast

Last night I came across a new blog that had a yummy-looking recipe for blueberry pancakes that made me wish I had some blueberries. BUT, I realized, I do have some strawberries, so I decided to give the recipe a try this morning.

Sizzling on the skillet. The first time I overloaded the panckes with berries and they almost didn't cook all the way through, but this recipe was amazing. It's a little different in that it has cornmeal in it, and the change was refreshing and light-tasting. I decided to take the blog owner's suggestion and use sour milk instead of buttermilk, and it was easy to make and lended a nice flavor to the pancakes. I wonder if I can do that in other recipes, too? Instructions on making the sour milk can be found along with my version of the recipe here.

I also made a potato casserole, Mike's favorite, which I don't make very often. I shredded the potatoes, then tossed them with olive oil and mixed in some swiss cheese. After baking for 40 min at 350, I sprinkled some cheddar on top and let it brown, and the result was a simple, cheesy dish that Mike put away quickly, making me glad I only made a little!

pancake recipe adapted from Carrie's Kitchen Creations

2008-02-17T16:05:00.002-05:00

Garlic-Grilled Game Hen

Mike made dinner Friday night on the Big Green Egg. He also made the baked french fries and broccoli with cheese sauce (by Green Giant - yummy!) The Hen was excellent; garlicky and moist, with a bit of smoky flavor from the Egg. Mike got the recipe from a Better Homes and Gardens grilling cookbook, but it was originally for a whole chicken, so it required a bit of adaptation. All he really did was work some minced garlic and salt under the skin of the hen, then stuff the insides with lemon slices, red bell pepper slices, and garlic. The skin was brushed with lemon juice and oil, which gave it a lovely golden color. Beautiful. So as to waste nothing, I cooked the bones and what little meat was on them in the crock pot to make a nice broth for cooking rice at a later date.

Having a Cornish Game Hen so close to Valentine's Day made me smile. Our first Valentine's Day together, Mike requested one of these for his dinner, and I had no idea what is was. After a panicked phone call to my mother, the hen actually came out pretty good, but not as good as this. I've come a long way since then, but this dinner was all Mike! Way to go, hon!

2008-02-15T19:42:00.009-05:00

Valentine's Day Dinner!

I decided to make fondue for our Valentine's Day dinner in favor of going out somewhere, since a) any restaurant would be way overcrowded; and b) there are no good restaurants in this town! I decided to do it ALL myself, even make the french bread for dipping!

For the bread, I decided to try the dough hooks on my Kitchen Aid mixer for the first time, and I really liked it! It's a happy medium between doing it by hand and letting my bread machine do it. I may never use my bread machine again!

After kneading, before the rises (there were a total of three!)

Ready to be rolled out!

Right before visiting the oven.

The beautiful final product!!

We really enjoyed our cheese fondue, with the bread in cubes and pieces of carrot and celery (hey, we had to have vegetables somewhere!) Mike said, "I'm not trying to flatter you or anything, but this very well may be the best French bread I've ever had." High praise from Mr. Picky himself!

On to dessert: chocolate fondue, with strawberries, pineapple, banana, and angelfood cake. I used Hershey's Dark Chocolate chips instead of bittersweet chocolate like the recipe calls for, and it was soooo good!

This is Mike's version of eating fondue: with a spatula, to slop on even more chocolate! Coming from the guy who won't even use the trainer chopsticks at a Japanese Steakhouse, I shouldn't be surprised!

2008-02-12T19:43:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to take steps towards a simpler life, and the steps are manifesting themselves mostly in the way I eat. So Friday night, when I had to leave early for class, I decided to pack myself food instead of picking something up on my break:

Peanut butter, 5-grain Triscuits, an apple (brushed with lime juice to keep it from browning), a Laughing Cow cheese wedge (garlic and herb), and peach yogurt. To drink, fresh squeezed orange juice and water. Oh, and that MIGHT be a piece of Ghiradelli chocolate behind the peanut butter. Maybe. No comment. I didn't even have to buy a soda from the machine! Not only did I save money, it was much healthier than anything I could have gotten on the road. Maybe I'll bring my lunch when I have class on Saturday. There's at least one other person in my class who brings food in favor of going out, so maybe this will be a chance to make a new friend as well!

2008-02-12T18:35:00.000-05:00

Mediterranean Focaccia

My new favorite website is the King Arthur Flour home page. I spent way too much time going through their recipes and pulled out several, including this one. It caught my eye because the dough can be frozen, and I've been trying to build up my stock of meals in the freezer.

The recipe tells you to mix the ingredients together until you have a "shaggy mass," but I wasn't sure exactly what a shaggy mass is. So, after I did the mixing, I took a picture so I can remember exactly what a shaggy mass looks like:

After the rising, ready to be rolled out:

I decided to make two small focacce so we would have leftovers, so we had to do them in shifts. Mike grilled the first one until it was slightly crispy, then brought it inside for me to top while he put on the second one. I decided to make them like a pizza - with Newman's Own Vodka Sauce applied sparingly and an Italian Blend of cheese. Then I put on thinly sliced garlic and pepperoni strips. After topping, they went back on the Egg until melty and cheesy! Mmmmm...

The focaccia was healthier than pizza because the crust is much thinner. I think next time I'll try to find ways to make it more flavorful - maybe brush it with garlic butter before topping it? At least around the edges? Also, the garlic slices were not as soft as I would have liked. Next time, I'll roast it! Mike must have liked it, because those leftovers I was hoping for? Not so much. There are two more balls of dough in the freezer for another time. We'll see how they turn out!

2008-02-10T20:29:00.001-05:00

Steelhead Trout with Brown Jasmine Rice and Vegetable Medley

This was the most well put-together meal I've made in a long time, but I didn't really plan it that way. I dusted the trout with Penzey's Black and Red Hot & Spicy Salt-free seasoning and some coarse kosher salt, then Mike cooked it on the Big Green Egg while I prepared some brown Jasmine rice and a veggie. The vegetables were a new blend by Green Giant called "Healthy Weight." It seemed like a ploy to make more money to me, but hey, I had a coupon! It was a blend of sliced carrots, sugar snap peas, black beans, and edamame in a light butter sauce. It was quite tasty, and a good way to introduce Mike to edamame. The spiciness of the fish paired well with the mild taste of the rice and vegetables. I love it when we have a satisfying, delicious, yet healthy meal!

updated 2-11: Apparently there was a problem with the photo - I think it's fixed now!

2008-02-10T20:07:00.000-05:00

Classic 100% Whole Wheat Bread

I got this recipe from the back of the King Arthur Whole Wheat Flour bag, and since the flour is so good, I figured the recipe would be good, too. I was not disappointed - the loaf was slightly nutty and moist, and was wonderful with my mom's homemade peach jam. I decided to mix the dough by hand, because there is nothing quite so satisfying as doing it yourself. That is, when you're not in a hurry! I had the choice of adding either honey, maple syrup, or molasses to the dough; I chose molasses because it has the most nutritional value of the three. It imparted a nice, slightly sweet flavor. I think I'm going to go snack on a toasted slice now! Maybe with some Canadian honey this time...

[logs off quickly]

Recipe can be found here at the King Arthur flour website.

2008-02-04T20:37:00.001-05:00

The Best Things in Life are Free...

There are pros and cons to living in Florida, the cons including the heat, the humidity, the bugs, and the old people. But one of my very favorite pros to living in Florida is the CITRUS! My grandmother has a yard full of citrus trees, and I spent about an hour last week picking from the higher branches. I was rewarded with lots of free citrus which I have been squeezing like crazy since then. If you've never had fresh-squeezed orange juice, you haven't lived!!

mmmmm....oranges :)

Either a pink or red grapefruit, I'm not sure. I like to throw a few grapefruits in to the squeezing pile to mix in with the oranges.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is heaven.

2008-02-04T20:21:00.000-05:00

Ah, the Super Bowl...

The only time I blog during the show and watch the commercials. In honor of the occasion, Mike made some ribs on the Big Green Egg.

Ready to go on the Egg!

So beautiful I just had to share a close-up!

What you don't see is Sophie just out of the camera frame trying her best to practice her telekinesis skills.

These were GOOD! Easily the best ribs I've ever had.

Specifics:
Pork, Full Slab
Pre-Cooking Rub: Kosher Salt, Penzey's Brown Sugar
Cooking (3-2-1 method): 3 hours over indirect heat at 250 degrees (with drip pan underneath). Then 2 hours wrapped in foil with beer and BBQ sauce over direct heat, still at 250. Then, 1/2 hour out of the foil and 1/2 hour basted in sauce.

2008-02-03T17:52:00.000-05:00

Rosemary French Bread

Every once in awhile, even the best cooks have a misadventure in the kitchen. While I don't claim to be the "best" at cooking, I certainly had an adventure with this bread, if not a MISadventure. I found this recipe on allrecipes.com, but it was originally meant to be done completely in the bread machine. Well, in my book, french bread cannot be square, so I decided to have the dough mix in the bread machine and follow directions for rolling up and baking the bread in the oven, taken from a recipe for plain 'ol french bread. Thus begins the adventure.

I put the ingredients in the bread machine and set it to start. A minute later, I take a peek to see how the dough is mixing up, and instead of a shiny ball of dough, I see something resembling flour soup. So I tried adding flour in small increments until I had added at least a half-cup more. Okay, crisis averted.

Or not.

I happened to glance at the bag of flour on the counter and realized that I had used AP flour, not bread flour. DOH! I guess that had something to do with it. The flour/liquid ratios sounded about right to me in the original recipe.

The dough finally came out of the bread maker and looked pretty normal to me. I had never done the traditional rolling up the dough to make a French loaf, but it was pretty uneventful. The second one came out of the oven looking a lot better, though, so I guess practice makes perfect!

fresh out of the oven!

With spaghetti, meat sauce (pulled out of the freezer from the last time I made meat sauce), and green beans. I realized too late that I didn't have the ingredients to make the traditional spaghetti side dish - salad. You can tell this is my plate because you can see the spaghetti peeking out from under the sauce - if this was Mike's (aka Mr. Picky), it would be sans pasta.

The thing about making bread at home is, I like to have the leftovers the next morning, slathered with Canadian honey or my mom's homemade jam. So, if I'm going to make a savory bread, it had better be really savory to justify not being able to eat in the a.m. This bread was just mild enough to tease me into wondering if it would be good for breakfast. And for all those curious minds that just have to know, the answer is...not so much. Maybe it would have been more strongly flavored if I hadn't had to add so much extra flour. I definitely plan on playing with the recipe and making French bread again!

p.s. - I don't know why Blogger is making parts of this post all funky, but if I could figure out how to fix it, I would! Sorry 'bout that.

2008-01-26T18:07:00.001-05:00

Root-Beer Barbecue

This is something I've heard of online and have been wanting to try: take some beef or pork (in this case, a piece of bottom round roast and some boneless pork chops that needed to be used), put it in a crock-pot. Cover the meat with root beer and cook all day. Drain the meat and shred, then add a barbecue sauce (homemade or your favorite bottled), heat through.

This was good, but I've gotta say it didn't taste that much different than other barbecues I've made in the crock pot. The root beet did a good job of tenderizing the meat, but you couldn't really taste it in the finished product. But still a good meal.

2008-01-26T17:50:00.001-05:00

Pork Stir-Fry

I found a neat little table in Kraft's Food and Family magazine that lists ways you can make stir-fry. I chose this combination of boneless pork chops, fried in a sauce mixture of sesame oil, soy sauce, Italian salad dressing, and sesame seeds (which I did not have). The article makes suggestions for vegetables to pair with the meat (in this case, sprouts and carrots), but I used a frozen stir-fry veggie mix. Layered over brown rice, this was a good way to enjoy pork chops, which I'm not usually a fan of. I like the idea of having an entire meal in one bowl. And I felt so sophisticated eating with my pretty chopsticks! The Food and Family table is a great tool to print out and have on hand. I think I am going to get some sesame seeds to try with this recipe next time.

2008-01-25T10:16:00.000-05:00

When did this happen?!?

I was in line at the grocery store yesterday, waiting for the lady in front of me to quit with the attitude, when I took a look at the contents in my cart.

hmmm......let's see .......organic, hormone-free milk ......organic rice .......cage-free eggs ..........eco-safe, chlorine and phosphate free dishwasher detergent .......natural tortilla chips .........and cloth bags to carry home my purchases.

WHOA! When did that happen?!? My husband took one look at my bounty sitting on the kitchen counter and officially declared me a "tree hugger." I don't think I've quite gotten there yet, but since I've started blogging, I've been introduced to the lifestyles of people who live differently from me. It all started when I stumbled across the what I believe is now-defunct blog called Vegan Lunch Box, which was written by a mother who packed vegan lunches for her first grader. She put a lot of time into it, and the lunches were always adorable. I realized that while it is a challenge, you CAN eat a healthy vegan diet and get plenty of protein, etc. It's not just salads! From there I moved on to more radical vegan blogs - ones whose doctrine I would never agree with, but nonetheless I enjoyed seeing how someone lives differently than me. I found a blog written by a lady who runs a small beef farm, and another who runs her own soap-making business. Then there's the guy who is completely self-sufficient, living hours away from civilization, tending to his garden made up entirely of plants that are native to the area - oh, to spend a day with THAT guy!

I started to think about how my food choices affect not only me, but me nation and the world as well. I buy organic milk because I like to support the small farms that produce it, plus the growth hormones regular cows are given scare me - I see too many fifth grade girls who look a lot different than when I was that age! I buy cage-free eggs because I would never think it's okay to keep a dog or a cat in a shoe-boxed size cage for it's entire life - why would it be okay for a chicken? Plus, both of these foods taste a LOT better than their mass-produced counterparts. But I'm getting ahead of myself. What I really wanted to do was thank YOU, the blogging world, for exposing me to the way other people eat! I am a better cook and a better person because of it!

2008-01-24T20:49:00.000-05:00

In honor of my 200th post: 20 food facts about me:

1. I started cooking as a preschooler

2. We have a picture of me standing on a chair in my diaper, helping my mom stir something.

3. If you want a good laugh and if you ask very nicely, she’ll probably post it on her blog.

4. I believe that there are very few things in life that cannot be improved with garlic.

5. For me, the hardest part of cooking is following through to the “cleaning up” stage.

6. I have not yet been able to bring myself to try sashimi.

7. I do not like the combination of peanut butter and chocolate.

8. I try really hard to like raw tomatoes.

9. My mother, grandmother and I all agree that if we had to live the rest of our lives on two things, it would be fruit and cheese.

10. One of the greatest joys of my life is to have other people enjoy my food.

11. I think that iceberg lettuce is a waste of time.

12. I am very picky about sweet things.

13. I can be dangerous around those sweets I like.

14. It would be weird for me to cook without my dog underfoot.

15. I need breakfast to function.

16. I love to try foods from different cultures (exceptions being lots of Asian “delicacies” – i.e., dog, cat, sashimi…)

17. My husband taught me that there is indeed a difference between the taste of Coke and Pepsi.

18. My favorite drink is fresh-squeezed orange juice.

19. I credit myself with expanding my husband’s palate in a major way.

20. The blog world has been one of the best things for me to expand my cooking horizons. Here’s to another 200 posts!

2008-01-24T19:48:00.000-05:00

Stromboli

We had another Big Green Egg first this week: Stromboli! The dough came from the pizza place across that recently opened near our house, but I didn't feel like doing a pizza. This Stromboli has provolone cheese, pan sausage, and pepperoni in it, served with a side of marinara.

Nothing fancy, but you can't tell me that doesn't look good! The dough came out crusty, with the Egg lending a slightly smoky flavor.

A very simple, satisfying meal!

2008-01-21T19:56:00.000-05:00

Rainbow Trout in Maple-Dill Brine

In my ongoing quest to try to expand our fish palate, I got some Rainbow Trout from Publix yesterday. Once I got home, I decided to try this brine, even though it called for 8-10 hours of brining in the fridge, and I only had about 3 hours. I also did NOT use real maple syrup like the recipe calls for.

Here's the brine ready to go, featuring fresh dill from my herb garden, brown sugar, garlic, and (of course) kosher salt.

The fish after brining. I don't know what 8 hours of brining would have done to this filet, because it had already started to cook a little.

Here it is, in a not-so-good picture on the plate.

We also had parmesan-crusted potato wedges and steamed broccoli with parmesan cheese. The fish turned out much better than the picture! I didn't think it needed any more time in the brine - maybe a more firm filet (tuna or salmon?) would require that extra time. This was very different, and we both enjoyed this recipe. I think we'll be trying it with other types of fish as well. Oh, and I got real maple syrup today, so we'll see if that really makes a difference :)

2008-01-15T21:13:00.000-05:00

Seriously.

I have been cooking...really. It's just that once I get it all over with, get the kitchen cleaned up, and do whatever else I need to do, blogging has lost it's appeal. Here's a look at what's been cooking at the Wolfe House:

I thought this was salmon, but according to the guy at Winn-Dixie, it's actually steelhead trout. It cooked up and tasted like salmon, but the texture was a little different...more flaky? It was a nice change. I wish I could find a REAL fish market that features more than tilapia and salmon. One more thing I miss about Gainesville!

Chocolate covered strawberry for dessert. Local strawberries are on the market right now, and I've gotta say they aren't as good as I was expecting. Maybe it's just the apples are so good I can't think of anything else. Have you ever had a Honeycrisp apple? As of today, I have, and HOLY COW.

Pizza on the Big Green Egg. Nothing special, but very tasty.

I came home from class on Friday night and this meatloaf was waiting for me. It was really good! AND I didn't have to make it!

By the way, I hope you all like my new look. I never actually said anything about it, but Mike put together the banner for me, and I think he did a bang-up job!

2008-01-05T19:19:00.001-05:00

Dinner Pictures

After Christmas I cooked down the carcass from the turkey and got two gallon freezer bags full of stock. This week I pulled out one of them and made a turkey soup with carrots, celery, sweet Florida onions from the farmer's market, and basmanti rice.

I had never tried basmanti rice in soup before, but I liked it better than regular ole rice. I'd really prefer pasta, but Mr. Picky won't have any of that!

Next up, another Big Green Egg adventure: shrimp! I marinated them for a few hours in beer, canola oil, lime juice, minced garlic and Trinidad Lemon-Garlic Marinade from Penzey's Spices.

Here they are plated up, along with some beer bread with cheddar cheese, and a green salad made with veggies from the Farmer's Market, along with a Roasted Garlic-Parmesan dressing I made that turned out very tasty. I get tired of the bottled stuff from the store!

2008-01-01T13:36:00.000-05:00

Christmas Food!!

Mike did the Christmas turkey for my mom on his Big Green Egg. It was a 20-pound turkey, and the instruction booklet says the Egg holds UP TO a 20-pound turkey, so he was a little concerned about fitting it on there, but he needn't have worried. He made a brine out of water, kosher salt, soy sauce, brown sugar, allspice, pepper, and garlic, then let the turkey sit in that for 36 hours.

Mike puts the finishing touches on the bird, right before letting it sit on the Egg for about 3 hours.

Isn't it beautiful?!? Mike cooked the bird on Christmas Eve, but had to leave right before it was done for band practice. He nonchalantly told me to "take it off in about 20 minutes," which is a lot more complicated than it sounds!! What he really meant is that he wanted me to lift a flaming hot broiler pan off a 375-degree smoker, which is full of boiling, popping water and grease, and oh yeah just happens to have a 20-pound turkey on it. No problem, hon! Luckily, my uncle was over for Christmas Eve dinner, and he was more than happy to help out. I wish I had gotten a picture of him almost burning his eyebrows off (he didn't realize you have to "burp" the Egg before you open it all the way)! We got it in the kitchen, despite the dog trying her best to trip my uncle, and wrapped it in foil until the next day:

Do they look like brothers? Not really, but then again they're only related by marriage. My brother and Mike expertly carve the turkey at my mom's house.

The bounty. Beautiful. And delicous!!

Mike followed Smokin Okie's Brining 101 instructions, which can be found at cookshack.com.

2007-12-30T21:09:00.000-05:00

Post-Christmas Roughage

I'm still waiting on Christmas food pictures, but we've been eating well since then. I always crave lighter, strong-tasting foods after a big holiday.

Here's Mike with a post-Christmas sale find: a chili-pepper light swag! I don't know what it has to do with Christmas, but it was still half off at Wal-Mart! He's also sporting his new apron: Too Hot to Handle!!!

Grilled Salmon with a spicy glaze that caramelized wonderfully on the Egg. With roasted red potatoes and steamed green beans.

Morgan approved of the fish!!

From tonight's dinner: I tried a new technique with the bread, based off a recipe I found in Taste of Home - I let the dough mix in the bread machine, rolled the dough into about 20 balls, and dipped each ball in a mixture of butter and minced garlic. Then they all went into a bread pan and onto the Egg for cooking! We haven't done much bread on the Big Green Egg, so this was a learning experience. I don't think using a half whole-wheat dough works too well with this recipe! It was good, but not as light as I'd like it to be.

This stuff redeemed the bread: roasted garlic! Mike lopped off the top of two head of garlic and wrapped them in double thickness aluminum foil with some olive oil, then threw it on the Egg for about 30 minutes. It went on the bread, and also on top of the sirloin steak, as you can see below:

Mike says he wishes he had marinated the sirloin, and I tend to agree. Still tasty, though, especially with all that glorious garlic!!

2007-12-16T21:38:00.001-05:00

Today we went to downtown Mount Dora and had lunch at The Frosty Mug, and Icelandic Pub. It was so cool! What a unique place.

Not food-related, but the wood floors were so beautiful I couldn't resist taking a picture!

And that was the lunch portion!! Me with my fish and chips. The haddock is imported from Iceland! I have now decided that I want to go to Iceland.

Onto tonight's dinner. Mike has been enjoying experimenting with his Big Green Egg, as you probably can tell from all the recent postings. Tonight he did a Cornish Game Hen.
Fresh off the Egg. My mom got Mike the Ceramic "Chick'n Sitter" for his birthday - you fill it up with beer and whatever else you want (onion in this case) and unceremoniously shove it the the bird's butt. Nice.

All plated up with brown rice and roasted green beans. The meat was tender and flavorful, but my favorite part of the meal was this:
Beer Bread from the Egg, with Garlic and Chipolte Cheddar Cheese from Sargento. This was sooooooooooooo goooooood! I highly recommend that you try the Chipolte Cheddar, by the way. It's great on everything!