Heather in the Kitchen

EUREKA!

2010-01-30T16:38:00.004-05:00

There's a family-owned bakery in my hometown that makes the most delicious smiley face cookies. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find one anywhere in my current town that tastes quite the same.

But thanks to a cookie recipe my sister Gretchen emailed me, and lots of googling to find just the right frosting recipes, I think I have finally succeeded in duplicating Liebermann's smiley face cookies (or at least as close as I can get at my house).

Obviously I need a little work with making the fudge smiles and eyes... but I intend to make these again and will get lots more practice.

Sweetheart Cookies
Source: Columbus Dispatch

1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup milk
3 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg, vanilla, and almond extract, and beat well. Sift the flour, salt, and baking powder together. Add alternately to the butter mixture with the milk.

Roll out the dough. Cut out. Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until lightly browned at the edges.

Glace Icing
Source: www.ourbestbites.com

1 lb powdered sugar (about 3 3/4 cups)
6 Tablespoons milk
6 Tablespoons light corn syrup
1 teaspoon extract (I used half almond and half vanilla)

With a whisk, combine sugar and milk until smooth. Then stir in corn syrup and extract.

Fudge Frosting
Source: Betty Crocker.com

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup milk
2 Tablespoons butter
1 Tablespoon corn syrup
1/2 to 3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

In a 2-qt saucepan, mix granulated sugar and cocoa powder. Stir in milk, butter, and the corn syrup. Heat to boiling, stirring frequently. Boil 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat. Beat in powdered sugar and vanilla with spoon until smooth and spreadable.

What I did on my winter break

2010-01-05T18:29:00.002-05:00

I had the week off between Christmas and New Years, and it was wonderful. I didn't go anywhere or do anything special. I just did whatever I felt like around the house, and that included a lot of sewing.

This time, I worked on a quilt top. I used some fabric I had purchased as a charm pack, which is a packet of precut squares (I think they are 4-inch squares). This particular charm pack had a total of 72 squares, two of each fabric in the line.

The type of quilt I decided to do was a disappearing 9-patch. I took a few photos of the different stages of the quilt top, but if you want more information you can just google "disappearing 9-patch tutorial" and you can find a ton of great resources.

First you sew three rows of three squares together to make your 9-patch. I choose to use a plain white fabric as the center square of each patch. I've also seen versions where the same fabric is used for the middle square on each edge and that has a really cool effect. (I laid out the patches on a piece of white scrap fabric so they were easier to see... that's not part of the quilt though.)

Next you take a rotary cutter and cut through the center of your 9-patch in both directions, vertically and horizontally. This divides each 9-patch into 4 smaller pieces. Each of these 4 smaller blocks ends up with a corner of the center white square. After cutting I turned all the pieces so the white corner was pointing the same way, and laid them out again.

Then you take all of these smaller blocks and twist and turn them and arrange them however you choose. This photo was from when I was playing around with the layout. I changed it up a few times until I was sure I was happy with it.

This photo shows the final layout after all the blocks have been stitched together.

Though I'm done with the disappearing 9-patch, the quilt top isn't done yet. It is a pretty small square, so I want to frame it with something to make a larger top. I might end up using the same white fabric I used for the center squares. I liked it a little better than the white fabric it's lying on top of in the picture.

And of course then I will have to purchase fabric for the back of the quilt and make the binding strips. And then it will all be sandwiched with some batting and machine quilted before it becomes a real quilt. So it's still an unfinished project, but I was really happy to have this chunk to work on and finish during my break.

New Hobby

2009-12-28T13:10:00.005-05:00

I haven't been blogging here about food because I hadn't been cooking much at all lately. And when I did cook it was just 'make do' meals; nothing new or special. There just seemed to be too much else going on to get ready for the holidays. What I was doing a lot of was sewing, but couldn't make a peep about it until now because I didn't want to spoil the surprise of what I was making! I made two purses for Christmas presents. The one in the top picture was for Gretchen and the one in the bottom picture is Rachel's (being modeled by her).

The bag pattern is from Amy Butler and it's called Birdie Sling. The fabric on Rachel's bag is Amy Butler as well, and the fabric on Gretchen's is Joel Dewberry. I highly recommend the pattern... if you know how to use your sewing machine then it should be easy to make this bag because everything is spelled out very clearly in the pattern. Even things I had never done before, like the pleats, were no problem.

This isn't really a new hobby... I've been sewing since I was in 4-H as a kid. I just haven't been doing it very often. But I'm kind of on a kick right now.

Cal

2009-11-05T17:28:00.011-05:00

I haven't posted for quite awhile, due to lack of time as well as lack of any blog-worthy recipes. But today I was looking through some old photos on my external hard drive, and felt like sharing some of them and writing.

As many readers know, we have two dogs in our house: Foxy, a Shiba Inu, and Stitch, a Greyhound. We adopted Stitch from a local rescue group after his 5-year racing career. But a few years ago, for a few months, we had a third dog: another Greyhound named Cal. We were only his 'foster parents' for a brief time before he went to his permanent home, but based on the number of pictures I have of him he was obviously really special to us during that time. (The pictures I'll include below are only a small sample of the total.)

We never would have considered bringing a third dog into our home. Foxy was notoriously aggressive towards other dogs, and it took weeks for her to warm up to Stitch. Foxy was adopted as an adult dog from the humane society, and I don't know what her issue was with other dogs, but any time we were on a walk and passed by another dog she would growl and lunge at it. Jason adopted Stitch while we were still dating, before we lived together, and we knew we would need Foxy to accept him if we were ever going to spend time together with our dogs in the same place. We used to meet on neutral territory at a local park to get Foxy used to the idea of just being in the same area as Stitch. With most dogs you start out with letting them sniff each other, but with Foxy she didn't want Stitch to even come close, and would snarl at him if he did. So we literally had to started with just being in the same vicinity. Then, at separate sessions, gradually we would move closer to each other. Eventually they worked up to being able to sniff each other. Then Foxy decided that she would tolerate him being around her as long as he left her alone. Their relationship is pretty much like that to this day. He generally leaves her alone, and she tolerates his presence.

So anyway, with Foxy being so difficult we would have never considered bringing another dog into the picture. But we got a desperate call on Jason's cell phone from the Greyhound adoption group rep, Maria, one November afternoon (we were actually at an OSU/Michigan party), BEGGING for help. A group of dogs had just come in off the track and needed temporary housing for just a week before they could go into the prison program to live with and be trained by inmates. This was around the time of Thanksgiving, and the people who would normally take in foster dogs had plans to go out of town and couldn't. We were reluctant to do it, but Maria was desperate and we knew it would only be for a week, so we decided we would try to make it work.

We went straight from the OSU/Michigan party to pick up Cal from a local vet's office. Cal came off the track with horrible teeth (many Greyhounds do) and while at the vet's office that very day he had a big tooth pulled. He was on pain medication and would have to eat soft food for a few days. We were also told that he had worms, and consequently had bad diarrhea. At this point I was starting to feel slightly duped since none of this was mentioned to us over the phone. But he looked so sad and sickly and my heart went out to him. There was nothing we could do but take him home with us and take care of him as we had been asked to do. And he was SO SKINNY. Greyhounds naturally are very slender dogs, and it is normal to see one or two of their ribs. But on Cal you could probably count at least six ribs. He really was a sad sight.

We brought him into the house, with Foxy and Stitch on leashes so we could pull her back if she tried to attack Cal. We did have to restrain her a bit until she got the idea that it wasn't okay to go after him. She did growl at him a few times when he came too close, and fortunately he got the message to stay away. And then they were fine. And I had another moment of anguish when Cal walked into our living room, promptly lifted his leg, and peed on the side of our couch. He was definitely a handful.

He whined a lot during that week. It was understandable, considering his life had been turned upside down and he was probably scared, plus he was in a lot of physical discomfort due to his tooth issue and the worms. There were a few nights I slept on the floor next to his crate because it seemed to calm him down somewhat.

After a long, stressful week, he went to a local women's correctional facility where he would live for a few months. There they taught him basic commands, how to play with toys, how to go up and down stairs, and that it's not okay to go to the bathroom inside the house. (Remember that Greyhounds grow up on the track learning none of these things.) They did a fantastic job, and eventually it was time for him to be "paroled." But since the rescue group didn't have an adopting family lined up for him, they asked if we would consider fostering him again until he could be adopted. Cal had a great personality and actually got along pretty well with Foxy and Stitch, so we agreed. We knew most of the previous difficulties we had with Cal were probably due to him being fresh off the track and not healthy.

And we were right. When he came to us the second time he was a transformed dog. He had gained some weight and learned how great it is to live with a human who loves you. His personality sparkled. He was so goofy and funny and sweet. We really could have kept him. We thought long and hard about it. He was a great dog for our little 'family.' But we just couldn't bring ourselves to commit to being a three-dog family. There were too many issues, not with Cal himself, but with having a third dog. Such as not being able to transport them all in one vehicle. Little things like that that made us hesitant. So we decided to keep taking him to adoption events, and see if anyone came along who had just the right place for him in their lives.

Eventually Cal got a family of his own, with a few young children who loved him a lot. (They even changed his name to Guido. But he'll always be Cal to me.) In the meantime, we had a lot of fun with him. I know we made the right choice, but I still think about him and what a great dog he was. Here are some pictures that show you a little more about our time with Cal.

This is Cal.

We always thought Stitch was a big dog, but Cal dwarfed him.

Obviously Stitch and Cal felt pretty comfortable with one another.

Foxy also tolerated him surprisingly well.

Cal was not supposed to be on the furniture, but there was no stopping him. He loved to make himself comfortable, especially when it meant curling up next to you (or on you, in my case).

We were able to transport all dogs in the same vehicle once.
We took them up to Walton Lake in Jason's parents' SUV.

So handsome.

Margaritas

2009-09-13T22:03:00.003-04:00

So in my last post I mentioned how the margarita jello shooters made me want an actual margarita I could sip on. I found a great recipe and wanted to record it here.

The main component is homemade sour mix. To make, dissolve 1/4 cup sugar in 1 cup hot water. Then add 3 tablespoons lemon juice and 3 tablespoons lime juice. Chill.

To make the margarita, mix the components using this ratio:

1 part triple sec
2 parts tequila
4 parts sour mix

I used a shaker and served on the rocks.

Margarita Jello Shooters

2009-09-04T12:21:00.005-04:00

For some reason I had a craving for jello shots a few weeks ago. I had never been a big fan of jello shots, or shots in general, I guess because I prefer to enjoy my alcoholic beverages in larger quantities over a longer period of time! But I had tasted some delicious margarita jello shots at an OSU/Michigan party a few years ago, and decided it might be fun to make some myself.

They were easy to make, and DELICIOUS. Which was a problem, because I wanted to just keep eating one after another. Eventually I gave up on the margarita jello shots and made myself an actual margarita to sip on. So the verdict was that the recipe was a success, but better suited to an occasion where there might be a large crowd to help me enjoy them. Like an OSU/Michigan party. =)

The recipe I used is here.

And from there I found this fantastic web resource of a bunch of OTHER alcoholic jello shots. I'm looking forward to trying something else before too long.

Coffee Ice Cream

2009-08-04T12:56:00.003-04:00

I don't have a photo to post with this entry because the photo is still inaccessible on our home laptop that won't take a charge (note to self: get your butt to MicroCenter and get this taken care of!). But I wanted to go ahead and post the recipe before I have to return the cookbook to the library.

This was my second attempt at making homemade ice cream. The first recipe I made was the easiest one I could find (a no-cook basic vanilla) just so I could get a feel for the use of my new Cuisinart ice cream maker (purchased as a 'reward' to myself for all the hard work Jason and I had put in on our flooring project over the past six months). The basic vanilla was good, but this recipe was OUT OF THIS WORLD. A custard-based ice cream really does taste richer and creamier, and while it requires a little more effort I think it was totally worth it. I also used really good coffee beans: Kona. They were pricey but I just love the flavor so much.

The recipe comes from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz. The book has great recipes and is also an excellent resource about the basics behind making ice cream at home. I may have to buy this book because there are so many recipes I still want to try. This one was messy and complicated: lots of bowls and pans and careful choreography to move between them. That's what I should have taken a picture of rather than the finished product!

1 1/2 cups whole milk
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups whole coffee beans
pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
5 large egg yolks
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon finely ground coffee

Warm the milk, sugar, whole coffee beans, salt, and 1/2 cup of the cream in a medium saucepan. Once the mixture is warm, cover, remove from the heat, and let steep at room temperature for 1 hour.

Rewarm the coffee-infused milk mixture. Pour the remaining 1 cup cream into a large bowl and set a mesh strainer on top. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm coffee mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly, and then scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan.

Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula. Pour the custard through the strainer and stir it into the cream. Press on the coffee beans in the strainer to extract as much of the coffee flavor as possible, and then discard the beans. Mix in the vanilla and the finely ground coffee and stir until cool over an ice bath.

Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, and then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

McStitch

2009-08-01T14:12:00.006-04:00

This post is totally unrelated to food, but that's okay right? I wanted to share a new purchase and recommend a website if you are interested in making a similar purchase!

This weekend is the annual Dublin Irish Festival. Jason and I love to go every year. It's a great place to hear some fantastic music, running the gamut from "Celtic rock" to classic bagpipe-and-drum corps. We also like to watch the Irish dancers, enjoy beer and food, visit the "Celtic Canines" exhibit, and browse the vendors' booths.

This year we were pleased to find a booth that sells Irish dog accessories! While our greyhound Stitch doesn't have an Irish heritage, his "dad" Jason does. And I have a Scottish heritage, so I also love all things tartan.

We settled on a Martingale collar (a special type for sighthounds; it has a double-loop so the collar can't slip off their skinny heads) with a beautiful orange and white knot design and shamrocks on top.

If you are interested in an Irish-themed dog collar or leash for your dog, please check out the vendor's web site: www.mackenziebelts.com. We enjoyed talking with the owner, Heather, because she is also a greyhound owner! In addition to the dog accessories, Heather sells jewelry and belts for humans.

Here is Stitch sleepily modeling his new collar.

"You came over here to rub my belly? Here, let me move my legs out of the way for you."

"Oh, that's not what you came over here for? SIGH."

Quick update

2009-07-22T17:12:00.002-04:00

I wanted to apologize for the lack of posts lately. I actually have a cache of pictures and recipes I want to post about and was just waiting to get around to it, and then... the computer zonked out on me at home. The computer itself is fine but it has stopped receiving power from the A/C source and the battery has completely died. This happened before and the technician determined that we needed a new A/C adapter. Things worked fine for awhile and now the exact same thing has happened again. So I need to get some power to the laptop and as soon as I can access my photos I will post! Stay tuned.

I Heart Sea Gummies

2009-06-23T13:16:00.002-04:00

I was just taking some of my Sea Gummies supplements after eating lunch, and decided to share my love of them with anyone who cares to listen.

Sea Gummies are made by Trader Joe's and, as you can see from the picture, are an Omega-3 dietary supplement. According to webmd.com, the benefits of Omega-3s include:

" . . . reducing the risk of heart disease and stroke while helping to reduce symptoms of hypertension, depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), joint pain and other rheumatoid problems, as well as certain skin ailments. Some research has even shown that omega-3s can boost the immune system and help protect us from an array of illnesses including Alzheimer's disease."

Omega-3s are a type of "good fat" typically found in fish. Most people don't get enough Omega-3s from their diet so it's a good idea to supplement. A common form of Omega-3 supplement is fish oil capsules. I tried these for awhile but experienced a gross side effect: fish burps. This problem is so common that some manufacturers produce Omega-3 supplements (such as Coromega) that claim to have no fishy aftertaste, but I still wasn't completely happy with those.

The Sea Gummies are great because they are not made from fish oil. Instead they contain a "marine algae extract" which is another source of Omega-3s. They taste like a less-sweet gummy bear! That may be my favorite part: I can eat some after a meal and I get a little bit of sweetness that makes me feel like I've had a mini dessert. All while getting the health benefits of omega-3s. It's just another reason why Trader Joe's gets an A-plus in my book.

Raising Awareness

2009-06-06T13:13:00.003-04:00

This weekend, June 6 and 7, are Batten Awareness Days. I am writing here to raise awareness about Batten Disease because I know a beautiful little girl who has it. Celia and her family attend my church, and Celia's Aunt Vicky also used to work with me.

What is Batten Disease? From the website of the Batten Disease Support and Research Association:

Batten Disease is named after the British pediatrician who first described it in 1903. Also known as Spielmeyer-Vogt-Sjogren-Batten Disease, it is the most common form of a group of disorders called Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinoses (or NCLs). Although Batten Disease is usually regarded as the juvenile form of NCL, it has now become the term to encompass all forms of NCL. The forms of NCL are classified by age of onset have the same basic cause, progression and outcome but are all genetically different. Over time, affected children suffer mental impairment, worsening seizures, and progressive loss of sight and motor skills. Eventually, children with Batten Disease/NCL become blind, bedridden, and unable to communicate, and it is presently always fatal. Batten Disease is not contagious or, at this time, preventable.

If you want to read about Celia's story, you can read this entry from her blog.

What can you do about Batten Disease?

You can support Batten Disease research.

1. Visit the BDSRA web site to make a donation.

2. Register your Kroger Plus Card for BDSRA. Here's how:

Just sign in to or create an account at www.krogercommunityrewards.com for your Plus card and do the following: Click on Edit Kroger Community Rewards information and input your Kroger Plus Number located on the back of your card. Enter the new NPO (non-profit organization) code for BDSRA which is 83592 and click on Confirm. To verify you are enrolled correctly, you will see our organization's name on the right side of your information page.

3. Visit GoodSearch to learn how a few mouse clicks can earn extra money for BDSRA.

You can support Celia.

1. Visit the Care for Celia web page to make a donation on behalf of Celia.

2. Keep Celia and her family in your prayers.

3. Tell others about Batten Disease and ask them to pray for Celia as well.

Thanks,
Heather

Sick Day/Old Drafts

2009-05-06T18:24:00.003-04:00

I stayed home sick from work today because I woke up with a killer sore throat. While trying to rest but unable to sleep I thought I would catch up on some blog posts. I was looking through some of the drafts of posts I had started but never finished, and I started thinking about "finishing things"... Jason complains from time to time that I "start things but don't finish them." He's right about that, but I'm not quite sure exactly why I do that (or rather, DON'T do that!). It could be a number of reasons: I'm easily distracted; I have so many interests that it's hard for me to focus on just one thing at a time; I attempt to take on more than I can handle; I spread myself too thin; I'm a perfectionist so I would rather have something unfinished than finished poorly.

I think that any of those could be accurate statements about me, but I think that the root of the problem is that when I look at these works in progress, I don't seem them as projects that have been abandoned, but rather things that just have not been finished yet. I think that maybe I just operate on a slower timeline than other people for finishing things, and I am okay with that.

So anyway, I had a few unfinished blog posts. Most of them were about recipes that weren't really that great anyway, so I just deleted them. But one of the draft posts made me laugh, because it was my notes from our vacation last summer. Each day I logged in and made little notes about stuff that we did or things that happened, with the intention of eventually writing a vacation recap. But I didn't want to spend the time to actually write the recap while we were on vacation, and when we got home I was a little daunted by the enormity of the task, so I just let it go. But I wanted to share the notes because I think they are funny to read, especially without the context behind them!

To give a little background: Jason and I had driven down to Nags Head, NC with our two dogs to celebrate him being finished with taking the bar exam. One of my coworkers teases me because when I returned from our trip and I was asked how my vacation was, I responded with something like, "It was nice but there wasn't really anything to do there..." He said, "well isn't that the point? You are just supposed to relax!" He's right, but I need a little mental stimulation in addition to my relaxation time. And unfortunately Jason and I have different desires when it comes to vacationing. I like to go sightseeing and do things that I couldn't normally do in my daily life in Ohio... not sit in a bar for hours and watch a televised sporting event while my husband slowly gets drunk. But marriage is about compromise, so he has learned to humor me when I want to do touristy things, and I have gotten a little better about at least TRYING to relax and have a good time doing nothing. And I think our Outer Banks vacation had a decent balance of the two. Judging from my notes below, apparently the most notable thing was where and what we ate. So there, I've brought it back full circle to my food blog. :-)

to recap:

- newport news hotel, stitch nervous

- dinner at baileys (?), french fries/tall beer

- forgot toothpaste/toothbrush

- arrive at rental unit, directly behind office

- stitch's stairs freak-out

- walk to slammin sammys for lunch

- nap

- groceries at food lion

- walk to red drum for dinner

- drinks at slammin sammys but last call at 11

- wake up around 7, drive around next morning (Monday) to orient, park and walk to beach just for a few minutes, go home because forgot cell phone

- coffee and bagel from dunkin donuts

- wake jason up and we head to beach around noon

- head back after about 45 mins because so hot, eat sandwiches/leftovers for lunch

- jason naps while I... read?

- drive to Ben Franklin to buy beach chairs/flip flops for him/spray sunscreen

- dinner at OBX brew station, wind powered

- few more groceries at Harris Teeter

- drinks at Slammin sammys

- Tues morning: wake up later, drive to get coffee and cinnamon roll around 9

- head to beach around 10:45, still freaking hot, leave around 12:30 because few groups of people spot jellyfish

- go shopping while Jason naps; get some Sanctuary Vineyards wine

- Jockey's Ridge State Park to watch sunset

- New York Pizzeria Pub for dinner

- Karaoke at Slammin Sammys and then to bed

- Wednesday; up at 7, get ready to take dogs to beach, leave by 8. Stitch gets tired, Foxy loves running back and forth with water

- Breakfast at Stack Em High

- naptime

- beach, really choppy and rough waves

- dinner at Kelly's

- drinks and us nat'l soccer game at Slammin Sammy's, but close early

- Thursday; sleep in, sunbathe on deck and get BURNED

- shower and drive up to Duck, visit Outer Barks, also buy fudge and nuts

- attempt to go to sunset grille but parking was mess, ate at Barefoot Bernie's instead

- hang out at home to watch Project Runway, decide to have night in (to Jason's disappointment), try to play Sorry but directions only in Spanish, look up card games on internet but not much fun

- at some point did laundry and found boogie boards

- Friday; head to beach by 10:30, back around 1

- lunch at lucky 12 tavern

- shop at ocean's 1/11 and jockey's ridge candies, buy more AMAZING fudge

- relax at home for a few hours, jason naps

- head to port o'call for dinner; weird antique store vibe and okay food. stay to see band in the saloon

- Saturday; Jason REALLY sunburned, sleeps in and sleeps a lot of the day. Buy hemhrroid cream to help. It had also rained and was cloudy so no beach.

- lunch from NY pizzaria again: superoni and buffalo wings carryout

- drive back to port-o-call to buy t-shirt, then take walk on beach last time

- walk to red drum for dinner and eat at bar

Pretzel Mixes

2009-05-06T17:34:00.000-04:00

First, a house update for those of you scoring along at home: we have finished replacing the carpeting with wood laminate flooring in four out of the five rooms we are doing. The fifth room is prepped and ready to go (as in carpet and padding removed, tack strips/staples/baseboards removed, and walls freshly painted) but it's a big room so we've been waiting until we have a solid weekend to devote to doing the floor. We also still have to do a few closets (wanted to save those for last so we could try to use up scrap) and all of the baseboards (we are going to hire someone to do those for us after many frustrating failed attempts to install them ourselves without gaps). Then there are some various to-do's left, like hanging some framed items that are either new or things we took down when we painted. It still feels like our list of things to do is about a million items long, but at least it's been shortened from the ten million it felt like we started with! Someday I will share pictures here of the fruits of our labor.

Okay so onto the food. Recently I tried two different recipes for pretzel mixes: one sweet, and one savory. I think they were both from allrecipes.com, where I was searching for a recipe to use up the rest of a big bag of pretzels. The sweet one was interesting, but I probably wouldn't make it again. I made it because I saw the recipe and was intrigued. The savory one was delicious. I made it because when I saw the recipe I immediately thought "My dad would like that!" So I made some and sent it off to him in a container for his birthday.

(The photo above is of the sweet mix, but the savory one pretty much looked just like it: stuff baked onto mini pretzels!)

Here are the recipes:

Cinnamon Bun Pretzel Mix

1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 egg white
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/3 cup pecans or walnuts, roughly chopped
4 to 5 cups miniature pretzel twists

Preheat oven to 275 degrees F and line a baking sheet with sides with parchment paper. (I used a jelly roll pan.) Combine brown sugar and ground cinnamon; set aside. Whisk egg white in large bowl. Add dried cranberries and nuts. Stir. Add miniature pretzels. Sprinkle with brown sugar mix and gently fold until combined, being careful not to crush the pretzels. Spread onto prepared baking sheet. Bake for 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes. Remove from oven and stir, evenly distributing nuts and berries. Spread in a single layer to cool completely.

Bar Stool Pretzels

1 cup butter
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons garlic powder
1 envelope dry onion soup mix
1 dash Tabasco
20 ounces of miniature pretzels

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F. Melt butter in saucepan. Stir in the next four ingredients. Coat pretzels in mixture and spread onto baking sheet with sides. Bake for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Cool completely.

Another version of the Easter Cake story

2009-04-17T16:04:00.002-04:00

I hope she doesn't mind me sharing this but my sister Gretchen also wrote a funny blog post about the cake we made for Easter, and it has some great pictures including a reaction shot. =)

Check it out here.

Easter Cake

2009-04-14T22:54:00.003-04:00

So, I'll try to keep this brief, because the pictures really tell the story better than I could. In a nutshell:

I was going to my Mom's for Easter dinner. I decided to use this as an opportunity to bake a new recipe.
I made an easy but impressive recipe that I found here.
Something went wrong with the icing... I followed the recipe to a T but apparently it needed to set up longer before I used it to ice the cake. It gradually melted and slid right off the cake.
I had gotten an awesome book from the library called "Hello, Cupcake!" which included instructions for making some cute candy butterflies. I thought it would be fun for my sisters/mom and me to try making the butterflies and put some on top of the cake for extra decoration. See a successful execution of those butterflies here.
Once we realized how unsophisticated our butterflies were turning out, and that the cake was melting away into a puddle of ugliness, Gretchen and I got the idea that it would be funny to just go all out and stick butterflies all over the cake, thus making it the gaudiest Easter cake ever.
It actually tasted ok. I will probably make the recipe again but do it right. =)

Bad Cakes and Better Cakes (but still not Good)

2009-03-25T16:23:00.007-04:00

Bad Cake
On March 17 I had my third of four cake classes, decorating the second of three cakes we would do in the course. In this class we learned shells and dots, which could be used for decorative touches and borders, as well as to pipe figures like the clown bodies shown above (the heads are little plastic pieces on stems that you stick into the icing). I was having a very "off" night and things did not go quite as well as I felt they had with my first cake-decorating attempt. There were probably a number of factors involved but one of them was definitely the fact that I was not looking forward to doing that week's clown cake. I think clowns are creepy! But I tried to make it fun and used white, green, and orange icing in honor of St. Patty's Day.

For some reason I was having a really tough time doing the shell decoration, which is embarrassing because that is supposed to be a pretty easy one! But they just weren't coming out right. When I went to pipe the shell border on the cake I tried using a color-striping technique, where you paint strips of the dye on the inside of your pastry bag so it makes stripes when you squeeze the icing through it. I used green stripes and white icing. But I was doing so poorly on the border that my teacher actually made me stop (more than once!) and practice on our practice boards before going back to the cake. But in doing so I ended up with noticeable differences in the placement of the color stripes and in the strength of the color on the cake. Towards the end, when I got to the bottom border there is almost no stripe at all! FAIL.

The second FAIL is those awful green dots on the top of the cake. The sample clown cake they showed in the book had dots on the side of the cake, but something was weird with the tackiness/consistency of my icing that night and when I tried to do dots on the side of the cake they were actually falling off!!! So I just sprinkled a bunch of them all over the top of the cake to fill up the empty space around the clowns. Ugh, it's so ugly it seriously belongs on Cake Wrecks. You know what though? Cake is cake, and when I set it out at work the next morning it was gone by lunchtime!

One bright moment in the class happened when I was trying to add hands and feet to the clowns. The icing kind of sputtered out in a weird way on one of the hands, and it looks like the clown is giving a thumbs up!! I couldn't have done that again if I had tried! Everyone got a good laugh out of it.

Better Cake
On March 24 we decorated our "graduation" cake. This class was devoted to learning how to make roses. I thought it would be difficult because of the intricacy involved, but I never considered that I would have trouble due to hand cramps! Seriously, my hand got so tired from squeezing that pastry bag. I had a bunch of trouble with these at first. The icing was cracking, falling off, etc. I couldn't make anything resembling anything close to a flower! But towards the end of class I was able to at least put something together that had multiple petals, despite the fact that they were cracked, stumpy petals. And I was proud of myself for persevering. A lot of women in the class (yes, it was all women) were frustrated as well but one of them went so far as to give up completely.

The cake was decorated with an arrangement of roses on top, and I did dots again which were a little better this week. I will say that doing the leaves on the roses was really easy!

All in all, I did enjoy taking this class, despite my frustrations. I don't think I'll be selling cakes, which some students come out of that class wanting to do, but I think that with a little practice I could get better at this. I am looking forward to making my next cake that is NOT for class and decorating it however I like. I would also like to experiment with using different types of icing as well, because I didn't really like the icing recipe that was used for class.

I learned a lot and now own some supplies that I can use again and again. One conclusion I came to after trying a different brand of cake mix each week is that I felt the Duncan Hines mix made the best cake. I thought Pillsbury was the worst because it was really crumbly. The Betty Crocker mix was somewhere in the middle.

There are three more levels of cake decorating courses offered at the craft store, and I may choose to take another one in the future. For right now though I'm a little "caked out."

Cake Class

2009-03-14T21:37:00.012-04:00

A few weeks ago I decided to enroll in a cake decorating course. I have always enjoyed baking and this was something I had thought would be fun to do for a long time.

It's a 4-week course being offered at a local craft store. Each class lasts two hours. During the first week's class we didn't actually do any decorating but just learned about how to make the icing, how to make it in different consistencies that would be useful for different types of decorations, how to level a cake, and we got some guidance on what supplies to buy for class.

For the second class, we had to bring an 8-inch cake that had been iced with a base coat. In class we would practice techniques for a few types of decorations, and then we would decorate the cake.

In the first class we learned a few tips for baking and prepping the cake that, as one girl in the class said, were "worth the price of admission alone." One tip was for greasing the pans: rather than spraying the pan with Pam, or messing with greasing and flouring the pan, we learned to make a "cake release": mix well equal parts of shortening, vegetable oil, and all-purpose flour and then brush this mixture all over the pan with a pastry brush. It worked really well and my cake came out of the pan with nothing sticking to it.

Another tip we learned was to ice the cake with a "crumb coat" first. This is a really thin layer of icing that traps in it any crumbs on the outside of the cake. You let it set up for about half an hour, and then when you put on the 'real' coat of icing you get a smoother finish. Here is a picture of my cake with the crumb coat on it:

Now here's what I felt was the most useful tip I learned. After you put on the final coat of icing, here's how you can get a really smooth finish: wait about half an hour for the icing to set, and then place a piece of parchment paper on top of it. Rub your spatula on top of the paper to smooth out the icing. Here's a shot from before and after I did that:

So once my cake was ready to go, I had to pack up all the supplies that were needed for the 2nd-week class. And it was a LOT of stuff. That is one minor complaint I had about this course. The course itself is not expensive, but you have to buy a lot of supplies. Here's a picture of everything loaded up and ready to go to class:

In class we practiced making stars, curved lines, zigzag, dots, outlining, and writing. Then we used some of those techniques to decorate our cake. The sample cake in the book had a big ugly rainbow on it, but I decided to make a hot air balloon instead. Class was actually slightly stressful because we didn't have much time to finish everything, but I finished it when I got home.

There were a few mishaps as I was decorating... I kept accidentally putting my fingers in the sides of the cake. Exhibit A:

So when it was time to try the cake I just cut out a piece that had my giant thumb gouge in it.

It was pretty good! I'm looking forward to doing the cake for week three, although it involves creepy clowns... stay tuned!

Smoothies

2009-03-03T17:03:00.002-05:00

My work is kind enough to allow employees to telecommute one day a week. Once nice perk of telecommuting is that I can whip up something in the kitchen for a meal or snack if I choose to. I took the above picture while I was on a conference call, with my work and a big orange smoothie in front of me. (That big Samuel Adams glass stein is the perfect size for a smoothie!)

One thing you may or may not know about me is that I LOVE DRINKS. I am pretty much drinking all day long. I'm the girl at the continental breakfast who has a coffee AND a water AND a juice. (However there are two drinks that come to mind that I don't particularly like... milk or tea.)

I've recently taken a liking to smoothies. I got a number of smoothie books from the library and I've been trying a few recipes. I've never been a big fruit eater, but I will drink fruit that's been blended into a drink. Take the one in the picture above... it has bananas in it. My mom will be shocked to know I actually bought bananas at the grocery store... I haven't eaten one of those since I've been old enough to feed myself! It also has mango in it. Trader Joe's has bags of frozen mango cubes that are perfect to use in smoothies.

The downside of smoothies is that the ones that taste the best often have sugary extras added, which probably cancel out the benefits of the fruit. This one had orange sherbet in it. But I could make it without adding the sherbet, or I could try it with some low-fat vanilla yogurt instead. I think I'll continue to experiment until I find something that is healthy but tasty without having too many calories (I'll have to cut back on the amount of ingredients used to achieve that last part. I certainly don't need a stein-full of smoothie every time.).

Here's the recipe for the smoothie I made today. I adapted it from a similar recipe in the book "Jamba Juice Power" by Kirk Perron. What I do is use frozen, chopped fruit, either like the frozen mango cubes I bought at Trader Joe's, or fruit I have purchased fresh and then chopped and frozen (like the banana). When I use frozen fruit I don't need to add ice.

1 cup orange juice
1/2 cup bananas
1 cup mangos
1 cup orange sherbet

Put everything into a blender and then blend until smooth!

Brunch

2009-03-01T17:23:00.004-05:00

Breakfast casseroles usually aren't the prettiest looking dishes, but they definitely are tasty!

But first, an update on how the home improvements are coming along. As I mentioned previously, Jason and I are replacing our carpet with wood laminate... ourselves. It's been a learning experience at every step of the way. We decided to start with our old guest room/new office since it's a low traffic area and it could be our "practice room." We were able to finish putting down the floor in about a day and a half. There were a few kinks along the way but we learned (often through trial and error) some valuable tips that will help us complete the other rooms more easily.

Where we really ran into trouble was with the baseboards. Jason measured and cut all the molding, and was going to nail them in by hand, but this proved to be really a pain in the butt because the boards were shifting as he was nailing and didn't line up properly in the end. So after only doing two small boards in a corner he decided we were going to have to use a nail gun instead. We considered renting tools from our local Home Depot or Lowes, but decided to buy instead so we wouldn't have to worry about renting multiple times as we finished the floor in each room (or have to wait to put the baseboards up until we were done with all rooms so we could rent only once and do them all at once).

After doing a lot of research I thought we would end up having to get a pneumatic finish nailer and a compressor. I bounced the idea off of a college friend who is a big DIYer, and he said we could probably get away with using an electric nailer which would be much cheaper. I am a big advocate of reading reviews before purchasing anything, so I looked for an electric nailer that got good reviews. This was very difficult to find. Most people complained that the electrics didn't have the same oomph behind them that a pneumatic gun had, and often couldn't sink the nails in all the way. I finally found one that had decent reviews and purchased it. Our concern was that the biggest size nails it could hold were 1 3/16 inches (it was a brad nailer), but the packaging said it was good for trim, molding, baseboards, etc., so I figured it would be okay. When Jason started to use it though he realized that it wasn't... he was having problems with boards pulling away from the wall after they had been nailed in. (I should also mention that we lost over a week's worth of work time on this while I tried to find that biggest sized brad nail in a local store... it was like a wild goose chase.) So we decided to suck it up and buy a compressor and finish nailer when we saw a set on sale in today's Sears ad.

So here we are, hopefully with the proper tools so that we are ready to get these baseboards up there for good, and then we can move furniture in and pronounce that room DONE. And then move on to one of the other four rooms we still have to do. We did get started on some prep work for the next room last night (Saturday). We pulled up all the carpet and padding in the living room and removed all the nails/staples that were sticking out of the floor. We worked hard (there was a lot of furniture to move out of the way, and then a LOT of staples stuck in the subfloor) and ended up working on this until almost 2 in the morning.

Consequently, I didn't get out of bed until close to 11 this morning!! When I woke up I decided that brunch was in order, and fortunately I had everything I needed to make this casserole. This was a recipe I had torn out of a Kraft "Food & Family" magazine. It's very similar to other breakfast casseroles I have made in the past, but unlike other recipes it doesn't require being refrigerated overnight. It's quick and easy. I would definitely make this again. (One tip though... it took longer than 25 minutes for the center to set up. I probably had to bake it for about 35 minutes.)

Breakfast Bake

1 can (8 oz) refrigerated crescent dinner rolls

1 package cubed ham

6 eggs

1/2 cup cold milk

1/2 tsp. pepper

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Unroll dough in 13 x 9 inch baking dish; press to cover bottom of dish, firmly pressing holes and seams together to seal.

Sprinkle ham over crust. Beat eggs, milk, and pepper with whisk until blended; pour over ham. Top with cheese.

Bake 25 minutes or until center is set.

Penne, Sausage, and Meatball Bake

2009-02-27T19:53:00.006-05:00

Bring back the gluten! This is a recipe I've had in my binder for a very long time, but hadn't made it because I knew it would be very labor intensive: meatballs are made by hand, sauce is made from scratch, sausage and pasta are cooked separately, and then everything is assembled. But it looked so tasty I knew I would make it eventually.

What prompted me to get around to making it is that Jason had "chosen" it. I get frustrated with him sometimes because he is so picky... he complains about not liking stuff I want to make, but when I ask him what he wants to eat he can't give me an answer. So on occasion when he has complained about not liking things I've made for dinner, I've asked him to go through my cookbooks or my binder (where I keep copies of recipes from the internet or newspaper, or photocopies from library cookbooks) and flag stuff that he would like me to make. This was one of the recipes he had flagged quite a few months ago. I had to laugh when he made a comment about how it seemed like this recipe involved too much work, and I asked if he hadn't noticed that it involved a homemade sauce, and he said "no, I just looked at the titles of the recipes and that's it." (And please know that I'm not trying to make fun of my husband, I just think it's funny that something I am so interested in is just an afterthought to him.)

This recipe was from a cookbook called "You've Got It Made" by Diane Phillips. It's meals that can be prepared ahead and then frozen, to be defrosted and baked later. This dish was meant to be made in a 9 x 13 inch pan, so instead I made two 8 x 8 inch pans, cooked one right away and froze the other one for later.

I made the meatballs and the sauce on Thursday evening, and then tonight I cooked the sausages and the pasta and assembled everything. None of the prep was that difficult, but when you look at the number of dirtied pans it was really a lot!! I did have a little trouble with the sauce not thickening, but I just ended up simmering it longer than the recipe called for and it was fine. When I was assembling the dish (casserole? is this considered a casserole?) I thought I had too much meat, so I didn't use all of it. But I realized when we were eating it that I should have really piled it on there instead of worrying about making a neat single layer. Jason and I both agreed that when you took a bite of pasta with a bite of meatball or sausage it tasted amazing, but when you took a bite of just pasta with no meat it was kind of blah. So the meat is really crucial to the dish.

One more note before I give the recipe: I didn't actually use penne, as you can see from the photo... I used wagon wheels because that's what I had on hand! I also made a few other substitutions that you will probably make at your own discretion, like bread crumbs instead of the slice, dried parsley instead of fresh, shredded mozzarella instead of fresh, etc.

1 slice crusty bread
2 tablespoons milk
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese
1 large egg
1/2 pound lean ground pork
1/2 pound lean ground beef
1/2 cup olive oil
5 sweet Italian sausages
1 pound penne, cooked according to package directions
Carol's Spicy Vodka Cream Sauce (recipe follows)
8 ounces small fresh mozzarella balls, drained, or 1 large ball fresh mozzarella cut into small cubes
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1. To make the meatballs, soak the bread and milk together in a large mixing bowl for 5 minutes. Add the onion, garlic, parsley, salt, pepper, Romano, and egg, and stir until blended.

2. Add the pork and beef and mix by hand until the meatball mixture is combined. Shape into balls 1 inch in diameter. (At this point, you may refrigerate for up to 2 days or freeze for up to 6 weeks.)

3. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Set a wire rack on a baking sheet. Heat the oil in a large skillet. Brown the meatballs on all sides, until they have formed a nice crust, about 10 minutes. Remove from the oil to the rack set on the baking sheet, and bake for 15 minutes, until the meatballs are cooked through. Remove from the oven and allow to cool. (At this point, you may refrigerate for up to 2 days or freeze for up to 1 month.) Cut the meatballs into quarters.

4. In a medium skillet over the medium-high heat, brown the sausages on all sides. Prick the sausages with the sharp tip of a paring knife on all sides to allow some of the fat to drain off. Add 1/3 cup water to the pan, lower the heat, cover, and simmer until the sausages are cooked through and the water is absorbed. Cool the sausages and cut into 1/2-inch rounds.

5. To assemble the casserole, coat the inside of a 9 x 13 inch baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. Combine the penne in a large bowl with 1 1/2 cups of the vodka sauce, stirring until the penne is coated with the sauce.

6. Spread half the penne in the dish and top with the meatballs, sausage, and mozzarella cheese. Spread 1 cup of the vodka sauce over the mixture, then top with the remaining penne and vodka sauce and the Parmesan cheese. Cover and refrigerate for up to 3 days or freeze for up to 6 weeks.

To Bake it Later:
1. Defrost the casserole in the refrigerator overnight, if necessary.

2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Allow the cassrole to come to room temperature for about 3o minutes.

3. Bake, covered, for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake for another 20 minutes, until the sauce is bubbling and the cheese is golden brown on top. Allow to rest for 15 minutes before serving.

Carol's Spicy Vodka Sauce
1 cup vodka
2 teaspoons red pepper flakes
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 1/2 cups whipping cream
one 32-ounce can crushed tomatoes (do not drain)
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1. Pour the vodka into a small saucepan, stir in the red pepper flakes, and let sit for about 1 hour.

2. Bring the vodka to a boil and boil for about 4 minutes. Add the butter to the saucepan. When it has melted, stir in the cream and tomatoes and bring to a simmer. Simmer, uncovered, for about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and whisk in the Parmesan cheese. (At this point, you may cool the sauce and refrigerate for up to 3 days or freeze for up to 1 month.)

Tastespotting

2009-02-24T17:15:00.003-05:00

I wanted to share this web site because it's become my new favorite diversion:

http://www.tastespotting.com/

I apologize in advance if any reader out there should take credit for telling me about this site. I feel like someone has recommended it to me in the past but I don't remember who. Wherever I heard about it, I'm glad because it's so much fun to look at and I've already found a few recipes I can't wait to try.

Basically the site is just luscious photographs of food folks have made, about 80-odd photos displayed on the front page in little squares that make them look like Polaroids. If you see something that looks appetizing you can click the photo and it will take you to the external blog entry about that recipe from the person who submitted it. It's entirely reader-contributed, although there are moderators who decide which submissions to post. New posts appear throughout the day.

There is a search bar if you have a particular recipe in mind and would like to search for it, but I think it's more fun just to see what serendipitously appears on the front page each time you visit. You might find something you want to try that you never even thought of.

I am addicted. The other night I was scrolling through and I was practically drooling.

Orange Dreamsicle Margarita

2009-02-19T18:20:00.002-05:00

This is a recipe I came across on allrecipes.com when I was trying to find a good margarita recipe (which I still haven't found, by the way). I was intrigued but didn't get around to trying it for a long time because it uses a few ingredients I don't often have on hand (orange pop and ice cream). If you like orange creamsicles I recommend this! It didn't seem very margarita-ish but honestly tasted like an orange creamsicle in smoothie form with an alcoholic kick. And I made the rookie mistake of saying to Jason as I was making this, "hmm, proportionally this just doesn't seem like it has enough alcohol in it." But like a smart girl I didn't add any more, which was good because it ended up being just right.

1 1/2 ounce tequila
1 ounce triple sec
3 ounces orange pop
1/4 cup frozen orange juice concentrate
1/2 cup vanilla ice cream
1 1/4 cup crushed ice

Process everything in blender until smooth.

My Gluten-Free Experiment

2009-02-15T19:23:00.005-05:00

This weekend I ended what I consider to be a 10-week experiment in living gluten-free, and I thought I would write about it here. I decided to try out a gluten-free diet in early December, for a number of reasons. The idea was spurred after I read an interview with Carol Alt (the supermodel, who is almost 50 and recently posed for Playboy) in which she raved about how a raw diet changed her life and gave her an amazing body and lots of energy. I didn't know much about what a raw diet was, but was intrigued by the amazing benefits she described. After doing some internet research on the raw diet I realized it would never work for me (it is what it sounds like... eating food that hasn't been cooked), but in the process of googling about it I came across another diet that people raved about the benefits of: gluten-free.

Gluten is a protein found in grains like wheat, rye, and barley. Foods that contain gluten include anything made from flour, such as bread, pastries, and pasta. Beer has gluten too! Many people who start a gluten-free diet do so out of necessity, either because of a gluten allergy or celiac disease, which is an autoimmune condition in which the presence of gluten causes an unpleasant reaction in the intestine.

As I was reading about celiac diesease and gluten-free diets the wheels in my brain started turning. I read that folks with one autoimmune condition often tend to have multiple autoimmune conditions. (My thyroid disease, Hashimoto's, is an autoimmune condition.) I read the symptoms of celiac disease and could relate to some of them. I didn't believe I had celiac disease, but I read that some people just felt better after adopting a gluten-free lifestyle, just as some people might thrive on vegetarianism. I hadn't been feeling my best lately, so I figured I would give it a shot and that it couldn't hurt to at least try.

It was actually very easy to go gluten-free. Yes, it required breaking some habits, like no more beer. I didn't miss the gluten-laden foods as much as I thought I would. In fact I found myself craving some foods that I rarely ate, like donuts and pretzels, rather than staples like pizza and pasta. What I missed more than the foods themselves was the convenience of them. It was always so easy to order a pizza or throw together a pasta dish when time was short. Meals now required a lot more planning. But I loved what I was eating: grilled meats, lots of veggies on the side. Potatoes. Rice. Rice krispies treats! Another benefit was that I could eat more of the good stuff, since I wasn't filling up on bread.

It was strange to find out what foods had gluten in them that you would least expect, such as soy sauce or chicken broth. Fortunately I could find gluten-free versions of each. There were also gluten-free versions of flours that could be used to bake brownies, cakes, etc., and gluten-free pastas made from rice flour. I gave these a try (using a gluten-free brownie mix and gluten-free macaroni and cheese, both from Trader Joe's) but wasn't happy with the results, so I just stuck to foods that were naturally gluten-free.

In the first few weeks I loved this diet. I did feel healthier and think I went through sort of a detox phase. Over time I relaxed somewhat and stopped caring about tiny sources of gluten in my food, like if a chicken tender had breading on it, so I was getting some gluten here or there. (Since I don't actually have an allergy I am fortunate to not have to worry about that.) I still avoided the obvious gluten sources, like bread and beer.

I don't think I would have necessarily chosen to end my gluten-free diet, if it weren't for a few factors. First, it wasn't the miracle cure I had hoped it would be. (I have suffered from sinus problems since I was a kid and I secretly hoped that maybe an undiscovered gluten sensitivity was the cause... it wasn't.) I didn't notice any major health benefits beyond the immediate detox, except for a slight weight loss. Second, I had been sick much more than I can remember in recent years. I had a major cold for a few weeks, got a few weeks reprieve, and then my cold came back with a vengeance and brought a fever with it. After spending both three day weekends in January and February (MLK JR. weekend and Presidents Day weekend) sick the whole time, I started to consider why this was happening, and I started to wonder if my body was asking for gluten.

So, on Saturday night I ate a slice of pizza. And honestly, I thought it was kind of gross. But it didn't make me sick and I didn't have any noticeable reaction to it. And then tonight I ate some pasta. I'm going to try to ease back into this, because I don't want my body to go haywire and gain back the weight I lost. I think this diet was a great experiment for me. I recognized that I don't like pizza and sandwiches as much as I thought I did, and I'll try to limit those in my diet from now on. But I definitely foresee gluten in my future. Plus I missed baking too much.

What's Been Happening

2009-01-11T22:23:00.002-05:00

It's been quiet around here lately... I thought I would pop in to say that I haven't given up on the blog, I've just been really busy with other endeavors. Jason and I decided a few months ago to replace the carpet on our first floor with wood laminate, and we've been taking baby steps towards that goal ever since!

What began as a lofty project has become even more so because along the way we decided to re-purpose a few of the rooms, and figured that while we have carpet ripped up and baseboards pulled off we might as well repaint the walls while we're at it. So far we've actually accomplished a decent number of tasks: moved the workout equipment out of the small room in the basement and into the larger part of the basement, moved our guest room furniture into that small basement room and started to transform it into our new guest room, ripped up carpet and prepped the subfloor in our old guest room (which will be our new office), painted the old guest room (just finished that today!), ripped out the carpet and prepped the subfloor in the hallway, painted the hallway, and painted the living room and installed new blinds, curtain rods, and curtains. It feels like we've done so much, but we've yet to even start on the floor itself! We have a three-day weekend coming up so hopefully we can finally start on that.

So anyway, I've still been cooking occassionally, but just haven't taken the time to post about it. Maybe in the near future I can post some before/after pictures of what else I've been busy with.

Happy New Year!

Hot Pretzels

2008-12-04T09:32:00.004-05:00

Nice picture, huh? My sister Gretchen came over on Sunday and we spent hours making recipes so she could photograph the food. We thought this was a great plan because 1) she gets a new genre of photograph to add to her portfolio, 2) I get better photos to use on my blog and eventually in a family cookbook I am creating through blurb.com, and 3) we got to eat some of our favorite yummy foods, like these hot pretzels. I found this recipe on allrecipes.com and it actually tastes a lot like the kind of hot pretzels you get at the mall. It was easier to make than you might think, and the result is so delicious. (The secret is to brush them with unsalted butter.) We dipped them in nacho cheese and honey mustard.

1 (.25 ounce) package active dry yeast

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 1/8 teaspoons salt

1 1/2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup bread flour

2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)

2 tablespoons baking soda

2 tablespoons butter, melted

2 tablespoons coarse kosher salt

1. In a large mixing bowl, dissolve the yeast, brown sugar and salt in 1 1/2 cups warm water. Stir in flour, and knead dough on a floured surface until smooth and elastic, about 8 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, and turn to coat the surface. Cover, and let rise for one hour.

2. Combine 2 cups warm water and baking soda in an 8-inch square pan.

3. After dough has rise, cut into 12 pieces. Roll each piece into a 3-foot rope, pencil thin or thinner. Twist into a pretzel shape, and dip into the baking soda solution. Place on parchment covered cookie sheets, and let rise 15 to 20 minutes.

4. Bake at 450 degrees F for 8 to 10 minutes, or until golden brown. Brush with melted butter, and sprinkle with coarse salt, garlic salt, or cinnamon sugar.

Election Night Chili

2008-11-04T20:14:00.003-05:00

It's 8:15 pm on election night, and Jason and I just finished dinner and are glued to the TV for the results. I decided that tonight would be a good night to have some comfort food so I tried a new chili recipe. I love chili because there are so many different things you can do with it. I think the past three times I've made it I've used a different recipe each time. This recipe was from a library book, "What's for Dinner?" by Maryana Vollstedt.

I was really apprehensive after I added all of those spices... it smelled rather sweet and I was worried I would end up with something along the lines of Cincinnati-style chili, which I don't really like. But in the end, I LOVED this chili. The sweetness mellowed out as the chili simmered, and it tasted a lot like the chili that is served at the cafe at work, which I have always enjoyed.

I'm going to type out the recipe as it is printed in the book, but I want to note something that I think is key: after browning the beef and onion, I combined all of the ingredients (except for 1 can of kidney beans) in the crock pot and let it simmer on low for about six hours. I added the second can of beans (drained--the first can that I added with the rest of the ingredients was not drained) about 45 minutes before I wanted to serve the chili. I believe there is NO WAY you can get the wonderful flavor with only 30 total minutes of simmering, as the recipe indicates.

Another deviation from the recipe is that I could not find a 14.5 ounce can of whole tomatoes, so instead I used a can of petite diced tomatoes and then I didn't have to worry about chopping them. As you can see in the picture, I served the chili with cornbread. I used a box of Jiffy corn muffin mix.

The dinner was great. Let's hope the election results come out just as wonderfully.

1 pound lean ground beef
1 cup chopped yellow onion
1 can (14.5 ounces) whole tomatoes including juices, chopped
1 can (16 ounces) tomato sauce
1 tablespoon chili powder, plus more to taste if desired
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
2 cans (16 ounces each) dark red kidney beans, partially drained

Toppings
Grated cheddar cheese
Plain nonfat yogurt or sour cream
Chopped green onions including some tender green tops

In a large saucepan over medium heat, cook meat with onion until meat is browned and onion is soft, stirring occasionally, about 10 minutes.

Add tomatoes, tomato sauce, and seasonings and mix well. Simmer, covered, 10 minutes.

Stir in beans and simmer, uncovered, until flavors are blended, about 20 minutes longer. Ladle into bowls and pass the toppings.

Bow Ties with Sausage, Tomatoes, and Cream

2008-10-15T21:39:00.003-04:00

This is a recipe I printed from allrecipes.com a few years ago, and I often come back to it. In fact I was kind of shocked I haven't blogged about it yet (...or maybe I have, but I just didn't find the post!!!). It's really easy to make but especially delicious. It's slightly spicy, slightly sweet, with a creamy pink tomato sauce.

I make a few slight alterations to the recipe below: instead of Italian-style plum tomatoes I like to use a can of diced tomatoes with basil, garlic, and oregano (this time I used Hunt's), and instead of diced onion I like to use 2 tablespoons of minced dried onion, the kind you buy in the spice section. I also leave out the parsley at the end. I like to serve it with some garlic breadsticks and a tossed salad with Italian dressing.

1 (12 ounce) package bow tie pasta
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound sweet Italian sausage, casings removed and crumbled
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 cup diced onion
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 (28 ounce) can Italian-style plum tomatoes, drained and coarsely chopped
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Cook pasta in boiling water for 8 to 10 minutes, or until al dente; drain.
Heat oil in a large, deep skillet over medium heat. Cook sausage and pepper flakes until sausage is evenly brown. Stir in onion and garlic, and cook until onion is tender. Stir in tomatoes, cream, and salt. Simmer until mixture thickens, 8 to 10 minutes.
Stir cooked pasta into sauce, and heat through. Sprinkle with parsley.

Ramen!

2008-10-10T22:51:00.002-04:00

Ramen noodles are one of those stereotypical "college" foods, because a package of the noodles and seasonings usually sells for something ridiculous like 5 for $1. While I didn't live on them in college like some people I knew, I had definitely tried my share of them, so I was intrigued when I came across a cookbook called "101 Things To Do with Ramen Noodles" while perusing the shelves at my local library.

So far I've tried one of the recipes, called "Spicy Chicken." It wasn't really spicy, and it wasn't that pretty (as shown in the above photo), but it did taste surprisingly good! The recipe is below. I plan on trying a few more recipes before I have to return the book. There are even dessert recipes that involve using uncooked noodles!

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into strips
3/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1 can (14.5 ounces) diced tomatoes with green chiles, drained
1 cup chopped green bell peppers
2 cups water
2 packages chicken ramen noodles, with seasoning packets

In a frying pan, brown chicken until done. Add garlic powder, tomatoes, peppers, water, and seasoning packets. Simmer 10 minutes. Add noodles and cook 3-5 minutes more. Makes 2-4 servings.

Steaks

2008-09-25T13:33:00.002-04:00

Jason participated in a golf outing last week and won a box of steaks. We are now the proud owners of ten Michael's 10-ounce New York Strip steaks, which currently reside in our freezer. I have never cooked a strip steak, and haven't cooked any other kind of steak for a very long time since it's one of the foods on Jason's do-not-eat list. Seriously. But now he thinks he might actually like steak, because he ate one at said golf outing and, "whatever it was they did to prepare it made it taste really good."

Does anyone have any suggestions for preparing a NY strip steak? I know how to cook one but I guess I'm looking for tips on seasonings. Please leave a comment if you do!

Salsa

2008-09-21T16:45:00.004-04:00

I came across a recipe for "Spicy Bean Salsa" on allrecipes.com awhile back. It averages a 5-star rating (out of 5) with over 600 reviews so I figured it must be good. I made it to take to bible study one night and it was a hit. I served it with Tostitos Scoops which worked great for holding everything (and no I didn't actually scoop out individual servings... I just did that for the picture because it was more attractive than showing the salsa in the bowl).

Here is the recipe as it is listed on allrecipes.com. The only things I did differently were to drain the black-eyed peas (since it doesn't indicate to do that), used diced green chiles since I couldn't find jalapenos, and I used "fire-roasted" diced tomatoes instead of regular. It really didn't seem very spicy to me. Next time I might try to add some tabasco, cumin or chili powder to kick it up a little.

1 (15 ounce) can black-eyed peas
1 (15 ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 (15 ounce) can whole kernel corn, drained
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper
1 (4 ounce) can diced jalapeno peppers
1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes, drained
1 cup Italian-style salad dressing
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt

In a medium bowl, combine black-eyed peas, black beans, corn, onion, green bell pepper, jalapeno peppers and tomatoes. Season with Italian-style salad dressing and garlic salt; mix well. Cover, and refrigerate overnight to blend flavors.

Amazing French Toast

2008-09-14T22:28:00.002-04:00

4 eggs
2/3 cup whole milk
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
6 slices Texas toast thick bread

3 tablespoons butter

powdered sugar
butter
syrup

1. Mix together the eggs, milk, flour, sugar, vanilla, salt & cinnamon.
2. Heat a large skillet, or griddle. When the skillet is hot, add 1 tablespoon butter. If the butter smokes, your pan is too hot; turn down the heat.
3. Dip each slice of bread into the batter for 30 seconds on each side. Let some of the batter drip off, then put in skillet.
4. Cook each slice 1 1/2-2 minutes per side until each side is golden brown.
5. Add more butter, if necessary, to cook all of the slices.
6. To serve, put on plate, dust with powdered sugar. Serve with butter & hot syrup.

Pure Sugar and new fave blog

2008-09-04T11:57:00.009-04:00

I've always been a fan of pure sugar. For instance, as a kid I was always a huge fan of cotton candy, and I also never understood why I couldn't (well, wasn't allowed to) just open a sugar packet at a restaurant table and pour it directly into my mouth. This love of sugar has carried over into an appreciation for a more socially acceptable dessert (which is still basically pure sugar): the meringue kiss.

I made a batch last night and was reminded why I like to make them so much. They are really easy, but look impressive and have a texture like nothing else. They literally melt in your mouth.
Then I was reminded of another dessert I love to make that is really easy (albeit more time consuming than the meringue kisses) yet impressive AND basically pure sugar: homemade marshmallows. At some point in the near future I'll have to make a batch of marshmallows and blog about them. But on my lunch break I started looking online for some inspiration. "Gourmet" homemade marshmallows are popular among food bloggers because you be creative with flavors and appearances. Case in point here.

In the course of my clicking through various food blogs looking at marshmallows, I somehow stumbled across a blog called "Blake Bakes." It's written by a guy named Blake who... bakes. It's a pretty great web site, but from there I discovered what may be my new favorite food blog (and it's not even about food, really): Blake Sips. It's only been live for a few months so there is not much there, but what's there I LOVE. Blake and a guest blogger named Jason review drinks and post recipes. The recipe for Papa Gator's Margaritas sounds delicious so I might have to try that before autumn comes. And there is a beer review that my dad might enjoy reading. (Come to think of it, Dad... I should talk to you about contributing as a guest blogger on here!) And coincidentally, tomorrow (September 5) is the one-year-anniversary of my first blog entry, which was about a beverage!

So, lunch break is over and it's time for me to get back to work, but in the meantime enjoy Blake's blogs and I'll try to post more sugar-filled recipes soon. Here's the recipe for the meringue kisses:

4 egg whites, room temperature

2 teaspoons almond extract

1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

1 cup sugar

Heat oven to 225 degrees. Combine egg whites, almond extract and cream of tartar in large bowl. Beat at medium speed, scraping bowl often, until soft peaks form (about 1 minute). Increase speed to high. Beat, gradually adding sugar 2 tablespoons at a time and scraping bowl often, until stiff peaks form and sugar is almost dissolved (2 to 3 minutes).

Spoon level tablespoons of meringue, 1 inch apart, onto parchment-lined cookie sheets, using a knife or spatula to remove meringue from spoon. Swirl top of meringue with knife or back of spoon. (I actually used an icing piping bag and tip to squeeze the meringue into the swirly shape.)

Bake for 1 hour. Turn off oven; let stand in oven for 1 hour.

few photos from vacation so far

2008-08-21T11:39:00.001-04:00

Dill

2008-08-13T21:45:00.004-04:00

I love dill. I love the flavor and the smell. There's something about it that evokes a feeling of freshness and comfort for me.

On Sunday I went to the Ohio State Fair with my friend Kate B. She and I are both former 4-H'ers (of the cooking and sewing variety... not farming or livestock) so I figured she would be able to appreciate it. While we were wandering the exhibition hall someone offered us a sample of cucumber dill dip. The booth was selling mixes to make dips and cakes as well as things like liniment and cough syrup. The dip we tasted was delicious, but I didn't want to shell out $9 for the jar. Instead I came home and searched online for a cucumber dill dip recipe I could make at home. I made it tonight for bible study, but forgot to take a picture until afterwards... hence the shortage of carrots and the Wheat Thin crumbs. I think the dip was a hit. It had a light, delicious flavor and went well with both the veggies and the crackers/pretzels.

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup sour cream

1/4 cup finely chopped onion (I used 1 tablespoon of dried minced onion instead)

1 teaspoon dill weed

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

2 cups finely chopped seeded peeled cucumber

assorted vegetables and/or crackers

Combine the first six ingredients in a bowl. Cover and refrigerate for at least two hours. Just before serving, stir in cucumber.

I think one of the reasons I like dill so much is that I've always loved my mom's veggie dip recipe. It has more of a kick than the cucumber-dill dip recipe above, and it's ADDICTIVE (perhaps because of the MSG??). Here's that recipe:

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

8 ounces sour cream

1 cup Hellman's mayonnaise

2 tablespoons dried minced onion

2 tablespoons parsley flakes

2 teaspoons Lawry's seasoned salt

2 teaspoons dill weed

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

2 teaspoons Accent flavor enhancer (MSG)

5 drops Tabasco

Mix all ingredients well in a food processor. Refrigerate for a few hours to allow flavors to blend.

new car

2008-08-11T16:24:00.002-04:00

This post has nothing to do with cooking or food, but I just had to share the exciting news that I got a new car! It's a 2008 Passat Wagon in "blue graphite" with a black interior. This is the first car I have ever picked out by myself. I actually have never had a car payment before because I have always driven a hand-me-down, and for that I am extremely grateful. But the thing about a hand-me-down is that you take what you get. It's weird (and great!) to actually figure out what you want in a car and then find the one that suits you best. In this instance I decided that what I wanted was something big enough to actually tote more than two passengers PLUS our dogs, but something that would still get decent gas mileage and be easy to drive (i.e., not an SUV). I researched about five different models, test drove three, and settled on the VW pretty easily. We are driving it to North Carolina for our vacation, so hopefully it will serve us well!

Breakfast for Dinner!

2008-08-02T15:25:00.005-04:00

As you may have guessed from reading, a lot of the recipes I make are collected from various places, whether that be clipped from the newspaper, printed from the web, or copied from a library cookbook. I keep everything organized by putting the recipes in plastic page protector sleeves and keeping them in a 3-ring binder. The recipes are in some sort of order in the binder (I think it goes breakfast/breads, pasta, chicken/pork, appetizers/soups, veggies, Mexican, Chinese, beef, and desserts) but the sections aren't separated by tabs or anything. Often when I am looking for a recipe, I just flip through from the beginning to make sure I don't miss anything.

So one night when I was doing that while sitting next to Jason on the couch, he said, "Wait, what was that? Go back a page." A recipe for Sausage Stuffed Biscuit with Gravy had caught his eye. I said, "But that's a breakfast dish!" He reminded me that it's okay to have breakfast for dinner, and he's right; my mom makes a mean breakfast-for-dinner.

This recipe, from a Sandra Lee cookbook, was easy and DELICIOUS. Jason loved it, so much so that he told his parents about the dish a few days later! I'm glad the recipe he picked out was a hit. Hopefully this will get him more involved with meal planning in the future.

1 package (6-pack) brown-and-serve sausage patties
2-1/4 cups baking mix (Bisquick)
3/4 cup milk, plus more for brushing
6 tablespoons cheddar cheese, shredded
1 package (2.64-ounce) country gravy mix (McCormick)
1 teaspoon garlic powder (I would actually omit this... I think it makes the gravy too strong)
2 cups water

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Spray large 6-muffin tin with cooking spray.

2. In a medium skillet, brown sausage patties on both sides. Remove from skillet and reserve drippings. In a medium bowl, stir together baking mix and milk to a soft dough consistency. Divide dough into 12 equal pieces. With clean hands, flatten into disks. Line the bottom of each muffin cup with one dough disk.

3. Place a sausage patty on top of each disk and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon cheese. Top with another dough disk and press the edges together to seal. Repeat to make 6 stuffed biscuits. Brush tops of biscuits with milk and bake in preheated oven for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown.

4. Meanwhile, over medium heat, add gravy mix and garlic powder to skillet with reserved drippings. Slowly whisk in water. Continue to stir until gravy thickens.

5. Remove biscuits from the oven and cool for 5 minutes. Serve warm gravy over stuffed biscuits.

Parmesan Chicken and Rice

2008-08-02T15:11:00.003-04:00

I know it doesn't look like much in the photo, but this dish (towards the back of the plate) was really delicious. It's a recipe I had been saving from Cooking Light for about four years and for some reason just now got around to making it. I started doing Weight Watchers online about three weeks ago in an attempt to lose a little weight before our upcoming beach vacation, so I really appreciate 'light' recipes nowadays. I will definitely make this again. (The other thing you see on the plate is some Parmesan-crusted baked zucchini... it didn't have as great of a flavor as I had hoped so I don't think I'll be making it again.)

I also want to mention that Jason did a lot of work on this dish while I prepared the zucchini. He's getting better and better in the kitchen. Now if only he could say the same about my learning to drive a manual transmission!

1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 (8-ounce) package presliced mushrooms
3/4 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 cup uncooked instant rice
1 cup fat-free, lower-sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup grated fresh Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Heat oil in a large, nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion, garlic, thyme, and mushrooms; saute 5 minutes or until onion is tender. Add chicken; saute 4 minutes or until the chicken is lightly browned. Add wine, salt, and pepper; cook 3 minutes or until liquid almost evaporates. Stir in rice and broth. Bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat, and simmer 5 minutes or until liquid is absorbed. Stir in cheese and parsley.

Hazelnut Cheesecake

2008-07-27T22:34:00.003-04:00

I have a cache of dessert recipes that I am just waiting for a special occasion to make. Fortunately, my sister Rachel's birthday is this week, so I decided to bake something for her. I have a bunch of cupcake recipes I have been wanting to try from "Cupcakes: From the Cake Mix Doctor" by Anne Byrn, but wanted to make sure whatever I chose to make was something Rachel would like, so I sent her a list of flavors and asked which she liked best. This was her response:

mm chocolate and peanut butter! unless it's chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting, bc i'm not crazy about chocolate cake or frosting in general... then i would say chocolate cream cheese (unless that's the same with cake =chocolate and frosting=cream cheese), or maybe cinnamon toast? definately not lemon, margarita, or key lime. pry not orange-almond either.
So at that moment I gave up on cupcakes and decided to make a cheesecake instead. =) I had a recipe for hazelnut cheesecake from Maryana Vollstedt that I had also wanted to make. I really love Maryana Vollstedt's cookbooks because they are filled with recipes that are appealing, accessible, and easy, but also unique. This recipe did not disappoint. I did end up having to buy a bottle of hazelnut liqueur, which made this an expensive endeavor, but I'm sure I can find another use for the leftover.

Graham Cracker-Hazelnut Crust
1-1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs, about 20 squares, broken up
1/4 cup toasted hazelnuts
2 tablespoons firmly packed brown sugar
1/3 cup butter, melted

Filling
12 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature, cut up
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons hazelnut liqueur
2 eggs

Topping
1 cup light sour cream
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon hazelnut liqueur

To make crust, in food processor process crackers, nuts, and sugar until mixture is fine. With motor running, add butter through the tube. Process until mixture is blended. Transfer to a 9-inch pie plate and with fingers press against the bottom and sides of plate. Refrigerate 1o minutes while making filling. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

To make filling, in food processor combine all filling ingredients. Process until well blended, about 1 minute. Scrape down filling in food processor with a spatula to aid in mixing. Turn mixture into uncooked crust. Bake until filling is set, about 30 minutes.

To make topping, in a small bowl stir together all ingredients and set aside. Remove cheesecake from oven and spread topping over. Return to oven and bake 1o minutes longer. Cool on wire rack. When cool, cover and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight. Cut into wedges for serving.

Dr. Feelgood

2008-07-03T19:47:00.002-04:00

A few weeks ago, I went to the Columbus Arts Festival with my mom and sisters. It was an extremely sunny and hot day, and we were sweating like crazy. We decided to go in someplace to grab a drink and cool down, so we headed to the Surly Girl Saloon. Surly Girl has a great beer selection, so that's usually what I have. I'm not much into cocktails and usually don't order them because I prefer to have something less strong that I can sip more frequently. But on this occasion my mom ordered a drink called the "Dr. Feelgood" and I'm so glad she did because she let me taste it and it was fantastic. It was pretty simple: the menu said it was vanilla vodka and Diet Dr. Pepper.

I decided to try to recreate it at home, so I bought those two ingredients. I have found a combination that works for me: fill a pint glass about 2/3 full with ice cubes, pour in about 1 and 3/4 shots of vanilla vodka, fill the rest of the glass with Diet Dr. Pepper, and top it off with a maraschino cherry and a bit of cherry juice. It actually tastes even better when Jason makes it, although I haven't figured that out because he does it exactly the same as me as far as I can tell. I think my mom has tried to recreate this drink at her house as well so I'll have to find out what her recipe has been.

Raging Garlic Pork Stir-Fry

2008-07-03T19:16:00.004-04:00

And I'm back, with another underexposed and out-of-focus photo! This was another hit recipe from the "Fix, Freeze, Feast" cookbook, which also brought us the Cajun Braised Skillet Chops. I think I love this cookbook. I was a little nervous about making this recipe, because Jason is adamant about disliking Chinese food. It isn't necessarily Chinese food per-se, but I was afraid when he heard the words stir-fry Jason would assume it was and automatically dislike it. To my pleasant surprise, he actually liked it. His comments were, "It tasted a lot better than it smelled" and "I was glad it wasn't sweet." (Apparently one of the reasons he is so opposed to Chinese food is that he really dislikes sweet meat. I, on the other hand, love it... give me some Orange Chicken or General Tso's any day!)

This recipe was designed to make 4 frozen entrees that are cooked individually later. I'll give the recipe as written, and then explain how I made a single entree immediately.

1 pork loin (about 8 pounds; do not use tied pork loin roast)
1 1/2 cups soy sauce
1/2 cup white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
8 teaspoons minced garlic (about 24 cloves)
1 teaspoon (or to taste) crushed red pepper flakes
4 large onions, cut into 2-inch pieces
4 large green bell peppers, cut into 2-inch pieces
4 one-gallon freezer bags, labeled
12 one-quart freezer bags
On hand for cooking each entree:
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1/2 cup cornstarch

1. Rinse and trim loin as desired. Cut pork into bite-size cubes; divide evenly among four of the 1-quart bags. Seal.

2. Whisk together soy sauce, vinegar, and sugar in a medium bowl. Divide the marinade evenly among four 1-quart bags. Into each bag of sauce measure 2 teaspoons garlic and 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper. Seal.

3. Divide onions and bell peppers evenly among the remaining 1-quart bags. Seal.

4. Into each of the 1-gallon bags, place a bag of pork, a bag of sauce, and a bag of peppers and onions. Seal and freeze.

To cook one entree:
1. Completely thaw one entree in the refrigerator.

2. Pour off and discard any accumulated liquid from the bag of pork. Add 1/2 cup cornstarch; seal bag and shake to coat the meat.

3. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add pork and stir-fry until thoroughly cooked, about 10 minutes. Add vegetables and sauce. Stir-fry just until vegetables are tender crisp.

Making a single entree was actually really easy. Instead of getting a pork loin I used about 1 pound of boneless pork loin chops. I only needed 1 onion and 1 green bell pepper and used 1/4 of everything else (i.e., 3/8 c soy sauce, 1/8 c white wine vinegar, 1/2 T sugar, 2 t minced garlic, 1/4 t red pepper flakes). Once I mixed up the sauce and sliced the meat and veggies it was ready to go. I thought 1/2 cup of cornstarch was way too much. If I make this again I'll start with 1/4 cup, shake, and then see if I need any more.

I served the stir-fry with white rice. It was a really tasty meal and I will definitely make it again!

Southwestern-Style Torta

2008-06-24T20:54:00.002-04:00

This recipe is one I clipped from the Columbus Dispatch awhile ago. No photos of this one, unfortunately... it just didn't come out very pretty. I had trouble slicing through the bottom layer of tortilla and then when I tried to plate the slices everything spilled everywhere. So I opted not to photograph this dish because I didn't want to turn anyone off, but please know that it's delicious! I will definitely make it again and will try to resolve the messiness next time (although I'm not sure yet how).

Southwestern-Style Torta
3 to 5 tablespoons melted butter or olive oil
7 large flour tortillas
1 pound ground sausage
1 onion, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 jalapeno chili, diced (optional)
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 tablespoon cumin
1 can (15 ounces) black beans, drained and rinsed
3/4 cup (6 ounces) grated Monterey Jack cheese
8 eggs, beaten
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
3 green onions, diced

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9-inch springform pan with aluminum foil. Brush with 1 tablespoon melted butter. Use 5 tortillas to line perimeter of pan, then use 1 tortilla in center of pan to cover bottom. Brush more butter over the tortillas.

In a 12-inch skillet over medium heat, saute sausage until browned and crumbly, about 10 minutes. Add onion, bell pepper, jalapeno (if used), chili powder, 1/4 teaspoon of the salt, oregano, and cumin. Cook until onion is tender, about 10 minutes.

Spoon sausage mixture into tortilla-lined pan. Cover sausage with beans and cheese.

In the same skillet over medium heat, add remaining butter. When melted, add eggs and stir until softly cooked and still moist. Stir in remaining salt, pepper, and green onions. Spoon eggs over beans and cheese, pressing to firm layers. Place remaining tortilla over eggs and brush with remaining butter.

Bake 25 minutes. Cool 5 minutes before serving.

To unmold, loosen edges with a knife; remove pan sides. Loosen bottom, then remove pan bottom. Peel away foil. Cut into wedges and serve.

The Best Chili You Will Ever Taste

2008-06-03T21:21:00.003-04:00

The title of this post is actually the title of the recipe as it's posted on recipezaar.com, not my assertion. I was intrigued by this chili recipe because it contains coffee and cocoa so I had been wanting to try it for quite awhile. I finally made it last weekend, and it actually was really delicious, except for one key flaw: I realize now that I really don't like sirloin in my chili. I just don't like the texture of it and prefer only ground beef instead. So I would definitely make this again but without the sirloin.

(I'm posting the recipe as it was written, but when I made it I halved it and I didn't include the chili peppers.)

2	teaspoons oil
2	onions, chopped
3	cloves garlic, minced
1	lb lean ground beef
3/4	lb beef sirloin, cubed
1 (14 1/2	ounce) can diced tomatoes
1	can dark beer
1	cup strong coffee
2 (6	ounce) cans tomato paste
1	can beef broth
1/2	cup brown sugar
3 1/2	tablespoons chili sauce
1	tablespoon cumin
1	tablespoon cocoa
1	teaspoon oregano
1	teaspoon cayenne
1	teaspoon coriander
1	teaspoon salt
4 (15	ounce) cans kidney beans
4	chili peppers, chopped

Heat oil.
Cook onions, garlic and meat until brown.
Add tomatoes, beer, coffee, tomato paste and beef broth.
Add spices Stir in 2 cans of kidney beans and peppers.
Reduce heat and simmer for 1 1/2 hours.
Add 2 remaining cans of kidney beans and simmer for another 30 minutes.

Cream Cheese Squares

2008-06-03T21:16:00.003-04:00

I have no picture to accompany this recipe, but I have to share it. This is quite possibly the easiest and most satisfying dessert ever.

This can easily be doubled and made in a 13 x 9 inch pan instead.

1 (8 oz) can crescent rolls

1 (8 oz) package cream cheese

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoons butter, melted

2 tablespoons white sugar mixed with 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8 x 8 inch square pan. Unroll crescent rolls and press 1/2 of them into bottom of pan. In a medium bowl, mix together cream cheese, 1/2 cup sugar, and vanilla until smooth and creamy. Spread over crescent roll layer. Place remaining crescent rolls on top. Pour melted butter over entire pan and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar mixture. Bake 25-30 minutes or until top is crisp and brown. Serve warm. Can also be refrigerated once cooled.

Cajun Braised Skillet Chops

2008-05-21T18:35:00.005-04:00

The posts have been a little few and far between here lately, but last night I was inspired to blog again when Jason and I made this recipe for dinner. It was a hit with both of us. Jason usually doesn't help me in the kitchen. He often offers, but usually I've got things under control. And since he doesn't cook it's sometimes hard to figure out what to have him do. But last night he just jumped in and did about half the work on this dish. I think he felt a little sorry for me after the craziness of the past few days...

It started on Saturday, when I decided to do some yardwork. We have a very overgrown forsythia bush in our backyard that had a lot of dead branches, and I decided to thin them out. At times I was kind of crawling underneath and inside the bush, and I got scratched by branches a few times. Very early Sunday morning, I woke up because I was itching uncontrollably and was scratching myself in my sleep. My first thought was that we had bed bugs! I took some Benadryl and went back to sleep. When I woke up later I was still pretty itchy but also felt really sick to my stomach, possibly from taking the Benadryl on an empty stomach. Unfortunately it was the day of Jason's graduation from law school, and I was almost in tears because I couldn't believe I was feeling sick on such an important day. I was mostly itchy on my scalp and neck, and Jason could see that I had a little bit of a rash on my hairline. We deduced that it must be a poison ivy rash from the yardwork I had been doing the day before. I took some more Benadryl and some Pepto-Bismol and hoped I would make it through the graduation and dinner afterwards.

Everything went great with the festivities, although I eventually decided that the itchiness was the lesser of two evils, so I stopped taking Benadryl and my stomach started feeling better. But my scalp was itching like crazy. By Sunday evening, the rash was starting to appear on my neck and I was getting a few blotches on my face. Jason and I decided that if things were worse the next day I should try to see the doctor. Well on Monday morning when I woke up, things were MUCH worse. My face was completely swollen. My eyelids were puffy and my lips looked like I had gotten some really bad collagen injections. I had splotches of rash on my chest, arms, and back. I couldn't get in to see my primary care doctor, so I went to the urgent care. The doctor there told me it wasn't poison ivy but hives (and that perhaps it was still from the yardwork if I had gotten exposed to something I was allergic to). He sent me home with a prescription for Prednisone, and said that it should help clear things up pretty quickly.

As Monday went on, my hives continued to get much worse. They continued to spread, and my trunk was almost completely covered. New spots appeared every few minutes and they were bright red and swollen. Jason said, "your skin looks really angry." And the itching was out of control. I felt like my skin was burning. At the rate things were going, I was afraid to see how bad it could get. At 1:00 am I asked Jason if he could take me to the emergency room.

The ER experience was okay, except that it was a little scary (and annoying) that the doctor obviously hadn't looked at my chart before she came in to see me. Despite the fact that I had given all the details about my situation to both the triage nurse and the ER nurse, the doctor came into the room, barely looked at me, and said, "Okay, what we're doing to do is give you a prescription for Prednisone. That's a steroid and it should help clear up your hives." I said, "I started taking Prednisone earlier today after I went to the urgent care, and things have gotten MUCH WORSE since then." Her reply was something like, "Oh, I didn't know that. Hmm...."

What she ended up doing was giving me some more steroids and antihistamines through an IV. After probably 45 minutes or so the itching had stopped and some of the swelling had gone down. I laid there for a few hours while all the fluids went though. I slept for awhile but poor Jason stayed awake the whole night sitting in a chair beside me. At around 6 am on Tuesday I left with orders to continue to take the Prednisone as well as Benadryl and Pepcid (apparently to prevent stomach irritation caused by the other two drugs?). I still had the hives but things looked much better and I felt much better. We went home and slept until early afternoon, and by late Tuesday afternoon my hives had completely disappeared. It was pretty amazing to see how quickly my skin could transform. The exciting conclusion of the story is that probably nobody at work believes I had hives (I really wish I had taken a picture before I went to the hospital... not that anybody would want to see it but just because it was so wild), and I'm being referred to an allergist to try to determine what caused the hives.

Okay so hopefully that little story didn't completely turn everyone off from thinking about food, because this recipe is fantastic! :-) It's from a cookbook called Fix, Freeze, Feast by Kati Neville and Lindsay Tkacsik. The idea behind the book is to make multiple batches of a recipe at once and freeze them in portions. I love this method of cooking, but I'm always hesitant to make multiple entrees of something we haven't tried yet, in case we don't like it. This was was difficult to halve because it required opening cans of vegetables, so what we ended up doing was making all of the veggies/sauce and freezing half, but only using half of the meat. So keep in mind that the recipe is written for 2 entrees, and the directions are for freezing it rather than cooking it right away, and adapt as necessary.

1 tray (6-8 pounds, or 12 chops) boneless pork loin chops
1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons black pepper
2 tablespoons Cajun seasoning
3 egg whites, lightly beaten
1 1/3 cups chicken broth
1 (15-ounce) can sweet corn, drained
1 (14 1/2 ounce) can petite-cut tomatoes
2/3 cup diced onion
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 one-gallon freezer bags, labeled
2 one-quart freezer bags

on hand for cooking each entree: 1 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1. Rinse and trim chops as desired.

2. Lay out two shallow dishes. Put the egg whites in one dish. Mix the Parmesan, pepper, and Cajun seasoning in the other. Dip the chops into the egg, then dredge in Parmesan coating.

3. Place each chop onto a rimmed baking sheet. When all chops are coated, place in the freezer for 1 hour. Discard remaining egg and Parmesan mixture.

4. Into each 1-quart freezer bag measure 2/3 cup chicken broth, 2/3 cup corn, 2/3 cup tomatoes, 1/3 cup onion, and 1 tablespoon garlic. Seal.

5. Divide frozen chops evenly among the 1-gallon freezer bags. Place one bag tomato mixture into each bag of chops.

6. Seal and freeze.

To cook one entree:
1. Completely thaw one entree in the refrigerator.

2. Heat oil in a deep skillet or Dutch oven over medium heat. Fry chops 3 minutes on each side; remove from the pan.

3. Pour broth and vegetables into pan. Gently scrape browned bits from the bottom; reduce heat to medium-low. Return chops to pan. Simmer, covered, 15 to 20 minutes, turning chops occasionally, or until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of a chop reads 160 F.

Veggie Pizza

2008-04-24T11:30:00.000-04:00

This morning we had a little breakfast potluck to celebrate the birthday of one of my coworkers in my new group at work. I brought some veggie pizza, and a number of people asked me for the recipe, so here it is (welcome to anyone from SP/CS who is reading this!). My friend Kate gave me the recipe, and I had been wanting an excuse to make it since I tried it at her house a few months ago.

If I made it again I probably would have gone a little easier on the amount of spread and veggies I layered on. The slices ended up being a little overloaded and stuff was falling off as I took bites. There was also a lot of spread left over, despite how much I had slathered on. I am thinking you could probably use three tubes of crescent rolls, divided between two cookie sheets, and the same amount of spread and veggies. It would make for lighter slices, but then you could just eat more of them. :-)

Here's the recipe:

2 (8 ounce) packages refrigerated crescent rolls
2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
1 cup mayonnaise
1 (1 ounce) package dry Ranch-style dressing mix
1 cup fresh broccoli, chopped
1 cup chopped tomatoes
1 cup chopped green bell pepper
1 cup chopped cauliflower
1 cup shredded carrots
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F
Roll out the crescent roll dough onto a 9x13 inch baking sheet, and pinch together edges to form the pizza crust.
Bake crust for 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Once finished cooking, remove crust from oven and let cool 15 minutes without removing it from the baking sheet.
In a small mixing bowl, combine cream cheese, mayonnaise, and dry Ranch dressing. Spread the mixture over the cooled crust. Arrange broccoli, tomato, green bell pepper, cauliflower, shredded carrots, and Cheddar cheese over the cream cheese layer. Chill for one hour, slice and serve.

heatherinthekitchen, travel edition

2008-04-23T17:39:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I traveled to Salt Lake City, Utah, to attend a national conference of teachers of mathematics. I was asked by our marketing manager to go and work in our booth in the exhibition hall. I've never done that before and found it interesting, somewhat disheartening (to talk to teachers who were solely interested in FREE STUFF), and tiring!

I didn't have any time to explore Salt Lake City and all of my meals were either in the hotel or nothing worth mentioning. The conference ran from Wednesday through Saturday, but due to a prior commitment I had to leave the conference on Friday. My prior commitment was that I was meeting some of my high school girlfriends in Las Vegas for one of their weddings!

I had been to Vegas previously with Jason, on our honeymoon. Prior to that trip I spent a lot of time researching the different hotels, places to go, sights to see, etc. (I should have spent a little more time learning and practicing card games, because I ended up only playing slots. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but it wouldn't hurt to branch out.) I primarily did my research at www.tripadvisor.com, which I found to be a great resource. In the weeks leading up to my wedding and the honeymoon, everything was pretty much in order as far as wedding plans went, so I spent a LOT of time daydreaming about what Vegas would be like and how fantastic it would be. I just had a great impression from what I had read and what I had seen on TV and in movies (my favorite Vegas-related movie would have to be Ocean's Eleven (the remake, not the original). In fact, the ending of that movie is what inspired my love of the Bellagio fountains). And I have to say that our trip really lived up to my expectations: Vegas was as fantastic and just as much fun as I hoped it would be. But Vegas is huge and we just didn't have enough time to see or do everything we wanted to. So I was really looking forward to this return trip with my girlfriends to get a different taste of Vegas.

This time I stayed with my friends downtown at the Golden Nugget. It was a beautiful hotel and my favorite part had to be the swimming pool with the aquarium in the middle: you can literally swim next to sharks! But overall I feel I prefer being on the Strip to being downtown. All of downtown just seemed so ridiculously smoky that most of the time I felt sick to my stomach. (There is smoking on the Strip too, but maybe the newer hotels have better ventilation systems?)

I didn't have any meals that were too notable downtown, but I did have some interesting dining experiences! The first night I was there my friends and I ate at the Chinese restaurant that was inside our hotel. We had a table for 6, and as the waiter was taking drink orders I asked if we could please have separate checks. In response he started making these faces and whining noises, like it was paining him that he had to answer that question. It was a simple question really, and if he had just said, "no, I'm sorry but we don't do separate checks here" we would have understood and just worked it out. But he didn't say no... he continued to make these faces and whine like he was hoping I would see the agony he was in and retract my question. But I didn't... I just sat there and watched him because I couldn't believe he was acting like that. Eventually he said something like "six separate checks is really a lot of work... would it be okay if I just did two or three separate checks instead?" Then my friends and I had to try to figure out how best to pair up. It really took a ridiculous amount of time to resolve what should have been a really simple question. And after the waiter left we gossiped about how doing six separate checks could possibly be that much worse than doing three separate checks. I used to wait tables and I can tell you that it really is not that big of a deal, especially if you are asked to do it before you take the orders.

But anyway, the weirdness continues! A dish I like to order a lot at Chinese restaurants is Beef with Broccoli, but I usually request that it be made spicy because I like spicy foods and I think it's too bland otherwise. So that's what I ordered at this restaurant (I literally said, "I'd like the Beef with Broccoli, and can you make it spicy?), and then the waiter says, "I bring you a cup of spicy sauce on the side?" Again, I was totally thrown for a loop here... this was not a complicated request. Chinese restaurants have some dishes that are spicy, some that aren't, and they can easily make any non-spicy dish a spicy one just by adding a little pepper sauce or whatever it is they use in the spicy dishes (or vice versa, by leaving that ingredient out if someone wants a spicy dish non-spicy). So I may have seemed a little b*tchy in my response, but I felt like I had stepped into some parallel universe where the most common restaurant requests had suddenly

become the most difficult ones! I said, "Umm... I'd prefer it if they can just make it spicy in the kitchen, when they're cooking it?" The waiter said, "oh, okay" and wrote some stuff down on his order pad. The rest of the meal wasn't too unusual, but the food wasn't that great (I didn't really expect it to be).

The rest of the weekend I didn't really eat very much... like I said, the smokiness of the hotel made me feel really sick to my stomach most of the time. The first meal I had where I really felt like I was hungry and could eat a real meal is the one pictured above! That was from my dinner on Sunday evening, when I ate at Trader Vic's. We had to check out of the hotel on Sunday morning, and my other girlfriends had early morning or afternoon flights. I had scheduled a red-eye flight back Sunday night, because I wanted to be able to spend the whole day Sunday at the Strip. It was a fantastic day... I took a cab from the Golden Nugget to the Venetian, checked my luggage there, and then spent some time gambling, shopping, and checking out the hotels within walking distance (the Palazzo, Treasure Island, and the Mirage). Then I retrieved my luggage, took a cab from the Venetian to Planet Hollywood, checked my luggage again, and visited PH, Paris, the Bellagio, and Casear's Palace. I did so much walking that day but it was fantastic to be able to see as many places as I could on my own schedule. And I was thrilled to be able to take in about 4 fountain shows, including one that I viewed from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Anyway, back to my meal. I had heard about Trader Vic's on the tripadvisor.com Las Vegas forum. Somebody had mentioned and at first I thought they must have meant Trader Joe's, the grocery chain. But I looked into it and discovered it was a Polynesian restaurant in the Miracle Mile shops, which are attached to Planet Hollywood. I always enjoyed eating at the Kahiki, which was a Polynesian restaurant in Columbus, so I thought I would check this out in hopes that it was similar. It wasn't really, but it was still a nice meal. (Sadly, the Kahiki was torn down after it closed, but you can check out some old photos of it here.)

I started my meal with a Bahia, which is what you see in the Aloha glass in the first picture. There were about a million different fruity cocktails on the menu, and I didn't know what to choose. I told the waiter I liked drinks with pineapple juice in them and asked if he had any suggestions. He suggested the Bahia, which according to the menu is "a snowy concoction of white rum with coconut and pineapple." I went with it, and it was pretty good, but I realize now that "snowy" must mean that it "has a lot of ice."

In the second photo you can see what they bring out as their bread basket. There is some kind of multi-grain rolls and a crispy cheese cracker, and they are served with four sauces: a homemade peanut butter, which was my favorite, wasabi mayo, barbecue sauce, and a hot Chinese mustard, which has twice in my life been the most offensive thing I have ever put in my mouth. I like mustard, and I like hot foods, so I tried this once on an egg roll at the cafeteria at my office. As soon as I took a bite, this caustic fire burned through my mouth, throat and lungs. It tasted like I had swallowed gasoline. It was awful, awful, awful. I don't know why on earth I decided to try to hot Chinese mustard at Trader Vic's, but I did (I guess maybe I assumed the mustard I had tried at work was just bad?), and I had the same experience. What's that classic George W. Bush quote? "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice... won't get fooled again." Well, hot Chinese mustard, you won't fool me again!

For my meal, I decided to order two small plates and a side. I got the lobster potstickers, crispy duck tacos, and the Szechuan broccolini. The potstickers and the veggies were pretty good. I didn't like the texture of the duck... it was a little too tough and a little too sticky. Overall, the meal wasn't bad, but it was nothing to write home about.

Now that I'm done traveling for the immediate future, hopefully I can start cooking/baking/posting more regularly! Stay tuned.

Quiet

2008-04-04T10:22:00.001-04:00

I apologize for how quiet it's been on the blogging front lately. I got a new job at work about a month ago (it's a lateral move within my company, not a promotion, but I get to work in a new group that's doing some innovative stuff) so I've been feeling busy in my work-life. At home I've been busy too... we did a little travel for Jason's spring break/Easter and I'm preparing for some travel (both work and personal) next week. So it will continue to be quiet for a little while longer.

I did want to mention that I finally found a store that carries the Rocks and Gravel wine I blogged about from my birthday dinner. I found it yesterday at Whole Foods. It was around $19 a bottle and I opted not to buy one because the checkout lines were ridiculous and I had a lot of other errands to run. But it's nice to know it's there for whenever I'm ready to purchase in the future!

Blizzard Chicken

2008-03-09T20:07:00.007-04:00

For those of you who don't live in the Buckeye state, or who haven't heard about it on the news, we had a blizzard over the weekend! It was pretty wild. When I left for work on Friday morning there was no precipitation at all. By Saturday evening, 20 inches of snow had fallen. In the first two photos, it's a little difficult to get some perspective on what you're looking at because pretty much everywhere you look is snow. But the first photo shows our grill buried in snow on our back deck. The second photo shows my car buried in snow on the street. The third photo shows the dinner we had on Saturday, after Jason finished shoveling.

The veggies are a frozen bagged "potato medley" from Trader Joe's. They were easy to make (microwave!) and pretty tasty, but would have been better if the carrots could have been as tender as the potatoes.

The other item on the plate (which almost looks like it could be mashed potatoes) is "Parmesan Chicken Saute." The recipe came from a cookbook called The Best of the Best from Ohio. I have issues with the name, because although the chicken is sauted, it gets covered in a cream sauce and is then baked, so I think "saute" in the title is a little misleading. In honor of this weekend's events, I'm renaming it "Blizzard Chicken." It was pretty tasty and I would definitely consider making it again. By the way, I substituted boneless, skinless chicken breasts for the chicken pieces.

2 1/2 -- 3 1/2 pounds chicken pieces
salt and pepper to taste
4 1/2 tablespoons butter, divided
1 1/2 tablespoons flour
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup Swiss cheese, grated
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
2 tablespoons bread crumbs

Brown seasoned chicken pieces for 20 minutes in 3 tablespoons butter. In a small pan, melt remaining butter and add flour; add milk and cream. Boil until thickened and smooth. Stir in nutmeg and Swiss cheese. Sprinkle a 9 x 13 inch baking dish with 1/2 the Parmesan cheese. Place browned chicken pieces in pan and spoon sauce over the chicken. Cover with the remaining Parmesan and bread crumbs, mixed together. Bake for 1/2 hour in a 350 degree oven.

Foods Long Gone

2008-02-27T10:46:00.003-05:00

I just had to hop on here and make a quick post about something that bugs me. It seems like the things I like are always getting discontinued. Maybe I just have unconventional tastes, but inevitably a new Bath and Body Works fragrance that I really like gets discontinued after a few seasons. And some of my favorite snack foods that I still crave to this day are long gone. The two in particular I am thinking of are Sonic Sour Cream Doritos and Trolli Dino Eggs. These are both junk foods I remember getting at Target when I was in college, so they would have been around in the late '90s.

The Sonic Sour Cream Doritos were really similar to Cool Ranch Doritos, but the flavor was a little sweeter, creamier, and less spicy.

The Dino Eggs were like a jelly bean that was coated in a soft sour shell. It was just the perfect amount of sour, so when you ate the beans and crunched through the shell the sour and sweet flavors melted together perfectly. It wasn't the kind of sour that made your mouth pucker.

I swear I can still taste each of these things and it's driving me crazy. :-)

(and fortunately, it is still possible to order some of my favorite discontinued B&BW products by calling their toll-free number and ordering from the warehouse, even if the products are no longer carried in the stores. but there's no way to do the same thing for my snack foods. I've done plenty of google-ing to no avail.)

Edited to add: There may be hope! I googled a little more and found out who produces Trolli candy in the US. Upon visiting their web site I found a candy that looks promisingly similar to the Dino Eggs... now I just have to find these Sour Brite Crawler Eggs!

Raspberry Cream Cheese Bars

2008-02-21T12:30:00.002-05:00

Last week was my friend Sue's birthday. Sue is currently a coworker but I have known her from college when we were both English majors. We both enjoyed editing and took a publishing class together in hopes that it would prepare us for future careers as editors. Instead the class was full of wanna-be writers who complained about editors and generally spent the class discussing other writers, pretentious literary magazines, and strategies for getting published. But it was a memorable experience. The most I remember from that class was a lot of discussion on how Raymond Carver's short stories were so heavily edited that his editor, Gordon Lish, should have taken writing credit for them. That actually was really interesting.

I have to digress for a moment and mention another memorable English class I took in college (but I don't think Sue was in this one). OSU had no sort of 'editor track' for English majors, and most specialties focused on different periods or styles of literature. I knew I wanted to be an editor and as a member of the honors program my advisor was able to craft some kind of customized specialization where I took classes geared towards working in publishing. So one of them was an upper level grammar class. I have a sickness where I actually really like grammar and especially like diagramming sentences. I have liked diagramming sentences since grade school. So one of my favorite and most memorable assignments from this grammar class was to diagram William Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Now, Faulkner was the bane of my existence in one of my literature classes, but I do appreciate this speech as one of the most beautiful pieces of literature I have ever read (yet really difficult to diagram!). So if you are in an "English class" frame of mind right now, check out the speech here. It's beautiful.

Anyway, Sue and I lost touch for a little while after college but eventually she joined me in the world of publishing and now we get to commiserate about deadlines, page proofs, comp houses, project-worker versus full-time positions, deadlines, authors, PMP, and deadlines. But aside from talking about work, Sue is someone I feel I just 'click' with and I consider her a dear friend. She has always been really supportive and she and her husband even helped Jason and me move into our home. So on her birthday, I wanted to do something to celebrate it at work and I planned to bake. (I also took her a card and a potted plant. I'm not that sure of myself that I think my baking is a gift unto itself.)

I had a recipe for some Raspberry Hazelnut Linzer cookies that I had been wanting to make for a long time, but was waiting for a special occasion because they looked so time consuming. I had been wanting to make this type of cookie since I saw it on the February 2007 cover of Martha Stewart Living magazine.

So on the night before Sue's birthday, I started making the cookies. I made the dough, and it had to refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before I rolled it out. While the dough chilled, I boiled the raspberry jelly and then strained it to remove the seeds. I had the cookie cutters all picked out. When the time came, I started rolling out the dough to cut out the cookies, and it just crumbled everywhere. It was sticking to the rolling pin but even when I could prevent it from sticking it was falling all over the place, to the point that it just wouldn't work. I don't know what went wrong, and I fought with it for awhile, but eventually had to give up and pitch the dough in the trash.

There I was with a bowlful of strained raspberry jelly, and trying to figure out how to salvage it. I searched allrecipes.com and found a recipe for Raspberry Cream Cheese Bars that I happened to have all the ingredients for. I only made half the recipe, and instead of slivered almonds I used some mixed-nut ice cream-topping I had. They actually came out like a raspberry version of the oatmeal carmelitas I love to make. I'm not a big fan of fruit, so I probably wouldn't make them again, but I thought they were okay, and the recipe definitely came to the rescue. [Oh, and as a somewhat ironic side note, I wasn't able to give them to Sue on her actual birthday anyway. We had a really bad snowstorm so I decided to work from home that day rather than risk the commute.]

INGREDIENTS
3/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 cups quick-cooking oats
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
11 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
18 ounces red raspberry preserves
1/3 cup chopped slivered almonds

DIRECTIONS
In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and brown sugar. Combine the oats, flour, baking soda and salt; add to creamed mixture and mix well. Press three-fourths of the mixture into a greased 13-in. x 9-in. x 2-in. baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees F for 11-13 minutes or until set and edges just begin to brown.
Meanwhile, in a small mixing bowl, beat cream cheese and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla; mix well. Spread over crust. Drop preserves by spoonfuls over cream cheese mixture; carefully spread evenly. Combine almonds and remaining oat mixture; sprinkle over preserves.
Bake for 25-30 minutes or until set and edges are golden brown. Cool before cutting. Store in the refrigerator.

Birthday Wine

2008-02-20T13:02:00.008-05:00

Apparently the theme of my birthday this year was wine since I chose two wine-themed restaurants for dinners to celebrate. I thought I would write short reviews. This entry is link-happy, so click away (especially you non-Columbus residents)!

The first was a visit to the Burgundy Room in the Short North. A few years ago I had gone to the Burgundy Room in Dublin with Jason's parents and loved it. Despite having a bad experience there with being seated at our table and then not being visited by a server for at least 2o minutes or so—we were too caught up in conversation to notice that we were being neglected at first, and when Sue finally pointed it out to the hostess an embarrassed manager apologized profusely and bought us a bottle of wine—we still had a delicious meal of many small plates, a few large plates, delicious wine and a warm ambiance. This year when we decided to make plans for my birthday dinner before going to a Blue Jackets game, I choose to go to the Short North location of the Burgundy Room since it would put us close to Nationwide Arena.

I should have investigated this option a little more thoroughly though. Apparently the Short North location has a different menu that is much more limited from the menu offered at the Dublin location. And unfortunately it was limited to many things I didn't necessarily want to eat. Even the seemingly 'safe' dishes ended up being a gamble. For instance, the bruschetta was purple (black olives, I decided). So we made do with a few small plates but joked that we would have to buy a hot dog at the hockey game. The ambiance wasn't as great either. It was still a great birthday meal, but just not up to my expectations after our previous visit in Dublin.

Fortunately we had a fantastic wine that Sue picked out. It was a red wine called Rocks and Gravel. I haven't been able to find it at a local store so I may have to have The Andersons fantastic wine department order some for me.

My second wine-themed dinner was to Vino Vino in Grandview later that week. My friend and coworker Carolyn said she wanted to treat me to dinner, and that was my choice. Vino Vino was created by the couple who created Figlio, which I love, so I figured it would be great, and it was! It's a very long and narrow space, and very crowded. If I were a claustrophobic I probably wouldn't have been able to stand how close together the tables were. We could basically hear all the conversations around us, and when the servers walked by I imagined them sucking in their guts to make sure they would fit. But despite the crowded setting, or perhaps because of it, the restaurant had a warm and cozy atmosphere. I should mention that despite how crowded and busy the restaurant was, we had a 7:30 reservation and when I arrived at 7:28 I was seated immediately. I really respect that. (I'll never forget the time my family went to Cap City Diner to celebrate Gretchen's graduation from college, had a 2:30 reservation and arrived around 2:23, and were told "Sorry, but we're going to have to wait to seat you until closer to the actual time of your reservation." We weren't seated for probably 15 to 20 minutes later. Jerks.)

One thing I thought was great about Vino Vino was the wine flights they offered. I had one called "My Fantasy Threesome" that was three 2-oz. glasses of wines from South America. I believe the flight cost around $9.95. The server brought the three glasses, each marked with a number on the base by a grease pen, along with a paper listing each wine and a description of it. When I tasted them one at a time I could tell right away which one was my favorite, which I then ordered a full glass of when I finished the flight. I recycled the paper with the wine descriptions on it so unfortunately I can't tell you what it was. It must have been a really good one though because I noticed that the full glass cost $11.25 (thanks, Carolyn!!).

Carolyn ordered a flight too, so on our tiny little table we had six wine glasses and two water glasses between us, in addition to the food when it arrived. The food at Vino Vino was worth mentioning... we started with a cheese plate with fruit and nuts, and then I had a portabello mushroom ravioli with prosciutto in a brown butter sauce. Carolyn had tilapia in a caper butter sauce with jasmine rice. We finished with the "Chocolate Flight" for dessert, which was chocolate creme brulee, some kind of fudgey chocolate cake, and a tiny chocolate candy mouse that neither of us ate because we couldn't break it in half.

All in all I would recommend the Burgundy Room only if you checked out the menu beforehand and were interested in the offerings. But I would highly recommend Vino Vino (as well as making a table reservation in advance).

I think I'm in Love

2008-02-14T10:55:00.003-05:00

It's Valentine's Day, and I think I'm in love... with the idea of these cupcakes!

http://www.bakerygingham.com/

This bakery is in German Village, and I am going to have to make a point to check it out soon.

Fajitas and Mexican Rice

2008-01-29T12:07:00.000-05:00

One day last week, I was really craving fajitas, but didn't have the ingredients to make them, didn't want to go out to eat, and after discussing the matter with Jason, decided that Mexican take-out probably wouldn't travel very well. So the next time I went to the grocery store I got the ingredients to make my own. I found a recipe for fajitas on recipezaar and after trying to choose a side to accompany the fajitas, I made some mexican rice that I improvised based on a few different recipezaar recipes. I would definitely make both again. The photo was an afterthought... I had forgotten to take one and then I actually made Jason stop eating so I could have some sort of documentation of the meal. :-)

Fajitas:

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

3/4 teaspoon seasoning salt

3/4 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon chili powder

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 tablespoon lemon juice

3/4 lb beef or chicken

1-1/2 to 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1/4 cup sliced onions

1/4 cup sliced green peppers

4 flour tortillas

1. Combine the first 7 ingredientsto make marinade.

2. Slice chicken or beef into strips.

3. Add to marinade and marinate for 2 hours.

4. Quickly saute onions and peppers in oil until lightly browned.

5. Remove from pan.

6. Saute marinated meat for about 4 minutes.

7. Toss with vegetables.

8. Spoon into flour tortillas.

Optional: serve with avocado slices and sour cream.

Mexican Rice:

2 tablespoons vegetable oil1 cup rice

2 cups chicken broth

1/2 packet taco seasoning

1/3 cup salsa

1/3 cup corn

Heat oil over medium heat. Add rice and saute or 5 minutes until rice is golden brown.

Stir in remaining ingredients and bring to a boil.

Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes until rice is tender.

Sandra Lee redeems herself

2008-01-27T20:05:00.001-05:00

As you may or may not know, I love watching the Food Network. It's my go-to default channel, kind of like some guys always have ESPN on in the background. My favorite chef to watch is Giada de Laurentiis, who hosts Everyday Italian. Unfortunately I've tried a number of her recipes and they weren't well-received here. I find Rachael Ray barely tolerable, and don't like her recipes either (despite being "30-minute meals" I find them to be overly complicated with too many ingredients). I like watching Ina Garten (the "Barefoot Contessa") and I LOVE watching Paula Deen (and she has a special place in my heart because of her Savannah connection), but find that their recipes tend to be a bit too fancy/heavy/rich/unhealthy for everyday cooking. I don't particularly like watching Sanda Lee, the host of Semi-Homemade Cooking, but the concept behind her show ("combining 70% ready-made foods with 30% fresh ingredients") seems conducive to my weekly time limitations.

With that in mind, I recently checked out two Sandra Lee slow-cooker cookbooks from the local library. Jason and I received a nice Crock-Pot for our wedding (Jason would claim that "I" was the one who received it, since he has no use for it) that hasn't gotten much use, so I thought this would be a good way to try some new recipes. I chose about three supper recipes that I thought sounded good (and might be tolerated by Mr. Picky) and got the ingredients for them.

The first recipe I tried was for something called Sausage and Four Beans. It had sweet italian sausages and four kinds of beans (obviously) in a tomato-based sauce. I don't know why I thought this would be good... maybe it's because I like sweet italian sausage and I like beans. But... it wasn't good. It tasted pretty gross. The cookbook has a photo of every recipe, and Jason pointed out that the finished product looked exactly like the photo in the book, and the photo looked gross, so why would I make it? I don't know... I think I often have trouble envisioning what a finished product is going to taste like based on reading a recipe. So that was a total bust.

The second recipe I tried was for Sweet and Sassy Chili with Corn Bread Crust. After the first recipe was a failure I got nervous about the fact that I was going to try a second bean-containing recipe. But it was fine because it came out great. Jason even had two servings. No photos, but imagine your basic chili with a layer of cornbread baked on top. I don't have a 5-quart slow cooker, so I made only half the recipe (though I made the entire box of cornbread mix). I couldn't find the chipotle seasoning mix called for, so I just used a packet of McCormick's HOT chili seasoning instead. Also, I used one 10-oz can of Ro-tel and one 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes.

The recipe is one I would definitely consider making again, except that it would only be feasible on a weekend. It cooks for 3.5 to 4 hours, and then you have to add the cornbread layer and cook it for another hour. My ideal slow cooker recipe is one that I can throw in before I leave for work, have it cook on low for about 8+ hours, and then have it ready when I get home from work. With this recipe, that isn't really an option. But I would recommend it. I plan on trying another recipe or two from Sandra Lee's slow cooker cookbooks and I may check out some of her non-slow-cooker cookbooks as well.

Here is the recipe:

1 pound ground pork
1 pound ground beef
2 packets (1.25 ounces each) chipotle seasoning mix, divided
3 cans (15.25 ounces each) low-sodium kidney beans, drained
1/2 cup cooked and crumbled bacon
2 cans (28 ounces each) diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1-1/2 cups tomato sauce
1/4 cup tomato paste
1/4 cup honey
1 box (8.5-ounce) corn muffin mix
1 large egg
1/3 cup milk

1. In a large skillet, brown grown pork and ground beef together with one packet chipotle seasoning. Drain and transfer to a 5-quart slow cooker. Add beans and bacon and stir thoroughly.

2. In a large bowl, combine diced tomatoes, remaining packet chipotle seasoning, pumpkin pie spice, tomato sauce, tomato paste, and honey. Pour into slow cooker and stir thoroughly.

3. Cover and cook on HIGH setting for 3-1/2 to 4 hours.

4. In a medium bowl, combine muffin mix, egg, and milk. Stir until well combined (mixture will be slightly lumpy). Remove slow cooker lid and pour mixture over the top of the chili. Place six paper towels on top of the slow cooker and secure with the lid. (This helps to trap steam.)

5. Cover and cook on HIGH setting for an additiona 1 hour.

Toffee Pecan Cookies

2008-01-23T07:40:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, I have no photos to accompany this entry, which is really a shame because this was the one time I did something really cute and creative that I thought up on my own to serve the cookies, AND the recipe was a hit. But what can you do.

On Saturday night, Jessie (the young associate pastor at my church, the one who did Jason's and my wedding) had a gathering at her house. She promised heavy appetizers, so I emailed to ask if I could bring anything. She suggested that I could bring something sweet if I wanted to. I decided to take the opportunity to try out two cookie recipes I had been wanting to make.

Both recipes were from Tate's Bake Shop Cookbook by Kathleen King. The first recipe I tried was for a cookie called Chocolate Jumbles. It was basically a chocolate cookie with white chocolate chips, and it came out terrible. The cookies were really dry and not chocolately enough. The second recipe I tried was for a cookie called Toffee Pecan Cookies, which was an oatmeal cookie with toffee bits and pecans. I thought the Toffee Pecan Cookies were okay... they were tasty, but still a little dry. They were good but nothing spectacular.

Well I must have underestimated the Toffee Pecan Cookies because I heard from numerous people at the party that they were 'amazing.' And I overheard one guy telling someone else that they were 'like crack' and that he wanted to steal some to take home with him. Unfortunately for him, they were all gone before the night was over!

The cute and creative serving method I was referring to was that I emptied the rest of the oatmeal into a ziploc baggie, and took the cookies to the party inside two Quaker Oats containers. I lined the containers with wax paper but I think it would have been even cuter to line them with some tissue paper that color-coordinated with the package!

Here's the recipe. I think the cookies would also taste good with the addition of some mini chocolate chips!

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1-1/2 cups instant quick oats
1 cup salted butter, softened to room temperature
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups toffee bits (I used the Heath Bar bits that are sold in the baking aisle near the chocolate chips)
1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease two cookie sheets or line them with Silpat.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and oatmeal. Set it aside.

In another large bowl, cream the butter and sugars until creamy. Add the egg and mix well. Add the vanilla and mix. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix again.

Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and beat them until combined. Don't overmix. Stir in the toffee bits and pecans.

Using two tablespoons, drop the cookie dough two inches apart onto prepared cookie sheets.

Bake them for 12 to 15 minutes for chewy cookies and 18 to 20 minutes for crunchy cookies. The crunchy cookies will be browner in the middle and firmer to the touch.

Two Dips

2008-01-21T11:52:00.000-05:00

For Jason and me, Christmas 2007 didn't just happen on December 25... we actually had FIVE separate Christmases in order to see everyone on both sides of our families. Our final "Christmas" happened on December 30 when we hosted my mom and sisters here at our house. We had a great time hosting the girls, and I got to make some recipes I wouldn't normally cook for just Jason and me. When we have company I love to try new appetizer recipes, and this time I made two dips I had been wanting to try. They don't look the most appetizing in the picture (and GRETCHEN took the photo, not me... it is really difficult to photograph food and make it look tasty), but they were pretty good.

The first one is called Hot Southwest Corn Dip, and it's a recipe I had seen online somewhere and jotted down. I love corn, especially with southwest flavors (I love cumin!), so I had to try this one.

2 cups frozen corn, thawed

1 can Ro-tel tomatoes, drained

8 oz. package cream cheese, cubed

1/2 teaspoon chili powder

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

3/4 teaspoon cumin

shredded cheese (optional)

In a large bowl, combine corn, Ro-tel, and spices. Place in casserole and dot with cream cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes until cheese is melted. Stir blend.

Top with shredded cheese if desired and broil until bubbly. Serve with tortilla chips.

The second recipe was for Crabmeat-Gruyere Dip. It had been published in the food section of the newspaper. It was a pretty expensive one, between the crabmeat (I wasn't sure if it would work if I substituted imitation crabmeat) and the gruyere cheese, so I doubt I will make it again. But it was good!

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 tablespoon minced shallot

1 cup sliced white mushrooms

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

2 large egg yolks

1 cup heavy cream

2-1/2 cups grated Gruyere cheese

1 pound jumbo lump crabmeat

Brandy, to taste (I omitted this because I didn't have any brandy!)

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

Dash of hot sauce

1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1 cup cracker crumbs, such as saltines

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Generously grease a 10-inch gratin dish.

In a large skillet over medium heat, melt butter. Add shallots and mushrooms. Saute for 1 minute. Stir in the flour, then turn off the heat.

Whisk together egg yolks and cream in a bowl. Add mixture to the skillet. Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat, whisking constantly.

Add cheese. Simmer 30 seconds, or until it reaches a creamy consistency.

Transfer mixture to a large bowl. Stir in the crabmeat, brandy, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, parsley, cayenne, salt and peper. Pour mixture into the prepared gratin dish. Top with cracker crumbs. Bake for 30 minutes, or until browned on top.

Garlic Cheddar Chicken

2008-01-20T18:01:00.000-05:00

Another chicken recipe. This one comes from allrecipes.com. I served this with mashed potatoes and it was really delicious.

1/2 cup butter
4 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 cup dry bread crumbs
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
1-1/2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
1/4 teaspoon dried parsley
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon salt
8 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, pounded thin

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat, and cook the garlic until tender, about 5 minutes.

3. In a shallow bowl, mix the bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, Cheddar cheese, parsley, oregano, pepper, and salt.

4. Dip each chicken breast in the garlic butter to coat, then press into the bread crumb mixture.
5. Arrange the coated chicken breasts in a 9 x 13 inch baking dish. Drizzle with any remaining butter and top with any remaining bread crumb mixture.

6. Bake 30 minutes in the preheated oven, or until chicken is no longer pink and juices run clear.

Carrabba's Chicken Marsala

2008-01-16T11:20:00.000-05:00

For dinner on Saturday night, I made a recipe from one of my Christmas-gift cookbooks: Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2. The recipe I chose to make was Carrabba's Chicken Marsala. I have always loved chicken marsala, probably mostly because I love mushrooms.

I don't recall ever actually having this dish at Carrabba's, so unfortunately I can't comment on how closely it resembled the restaurant version. It was an easy recipe, and delicious, but something I would probaby only make on a special occasion (it's not the healthiest).

Marsala sauce:

1/3 cup butter

1 slice prosciutto, diced

2 teaspoons minced shallots

2 teaspoons minced garlic

2 4-ounce cans sliced mushrooms, drained

1/4 cup Marsala wine

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 cup chicken broth

2 teaspoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon minced fresh parsley

2 tablespoons heavy cream

Chicken seasoning:

1-1/4 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 teaspoon dried parsley

1/4 teaspoon marjoram

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon onion powder

4 skinless chicken breasts fillets

olive oil

1. Melt butter over low heat in a medium saucepan.

2. Turn heat up to medium-high to saute the prosciutto in the melted butter for about 2 to 3 minutes. Add shallots and garlic and saute for about 30 seconds. Add Marsala wine, simmer for another 30 seconds or so, and then add drained mushrooms and black pepper. Simmer over medium-high heat for 5 minutes.

3. Dissolve cornstarch in chicken broth. Add broth to the saucepan and simmer for an additional 5 minutes.

4. Add parsley and cream to the sauce and simmer for 3 to 4 minutes until thick. Remove pan from heat, then cover until needed.

5. Preheat grill on high heat. Combine ingredients for chicken seasoning in a small bowl. Use your thumb and fingers to crush the herbs and spices in the bowl to make a finer blend.

6. Wrap each chicken breast in plastic wrap and pound with a kitchen mallet until uniform in thickness. Brush each chicken breast generously with olive oil. Sprinkle seasoning blend over both sides of each chicken breast and grill for 6 to 8 minutes per side or until done. Give chicken a one-quarter turn on each side while cooking to make criss-cross grill marks.

7. Serve entree by arranging each chicken breast on a plate. Spoon one quarter of the Marsala sauce over each serving of chicken and dig in.

Since it is winter and was dark out by the time I started cooking, I grilled the chicken on a grill pan on the stovetop. It actually only took about 3 or 4 minutes per side, probaby because the breasts were actually pretty thin, thanks to Jason, my chicken pounder. I served it with mashed potatoes and this wine:

It's called Root 1 and it's a Cabernet Sauvignon from Chile. I've always had an affinity for Chilean wines since enjoying Santa Ema a few years ago at Bravo with Jason's parents!

Chicken with Potato Pierogies

2008-01-14T21:51:00.000-05:00

This recipe comes from the book Betty Crocker's Best Chicken Cookbook. It's easy and tasty. Mrs. T's frozen pierogies are one of the foods I remember my dad eating a lot. Jason said he had never had them before until I prepared them, and he loved them. What's not to like? Mashed potatoes stuffed inside pasta? Mmm...

1 package (16 ounces) frozen potato-filled pierogies

2 tablespoons margarine or butter

6 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (about 1-3/4 pounds)

1/2 cup chicken broth

1/4 cup half-and-half

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 can (4 ounces) sliced mushrooms, drained

Cook and drain pierogies as directed on package. Melt margarine in 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Cook chicken in margarine about 5 minutes, turning once, until light brown. Add broth. Cover and cook 15 to 20 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink when centers of thickest pieces are cut.

Add potato pierogies and remaining ingredients to chicken. Cook uncovered about 5 minutes or until hot.

Holiday Baking

2008-01-13T14:42:00.000-05:00

Back in December, I signed up to bake cookies for two events: Christmas Eve service at my church, and the Charity Newsies cookie sale at my work. I decided to bake two recipes from a book I had gotten from the library: More from Magnolia by Allysa Torey. The cover of this book is so mouth-watering I have to share it (courtesy of amazon.com):

I have to say that I think I am in love with this cookbook. Generally when I look at a cookbook to see if it's something I would be interested in, I give it a flip test. I flip to about five random pages and see what recipes I land on. If a majority of those are foods I would NOT be interested in eating or making, then I know it's not a book for me. Well when I did a flip test with this book, every single page I landed on made me drool. And then when I flipped through every page from the beginning, I got really exciting about the baking possibilities. I think I will have to buy this one.

Anyway, for the two occasions for which I had signed up to bake, I decided to try two recipes: Snickerdoodles and White Chocolate Pecan Drop Cookies. I was disappointed in the Snickerdoodles (pictured second above). They were kind of a pain in the butt to make because the dough had to be refrigerated, and I wasn't too thrilled with the results. I actually don't know that I have ever had a Snickerdoodle before, so I'm not even sure if they tasted like what they were supposed to. So I'm not going to post that recipe. But the White Chocolate Pecan Drop cookies were delicious. They were a really nice variation on a basic chocolate chip cookie.

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup (1-1/3 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

1 large egg, at room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup coarsely chopped toasted pecans

2/3 cup coarsely chopped white chocolate

Note: to toast the pecans, place on a baking sheet in a 350-degree oven for 15 minutes, or until lightly browned and fragrant.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In a large bowl, cream the butter with the sugars until smooth, about two minutes. Add the egg and vanilla extract, and beat well. Add the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Stir in the pecans and white chocolate. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets, leaving several inches in between for expansion. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until lightly golden.

Cool the cookies on the sheets for 5 minutes, and then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Spice Check!

2008-01-12T14:32:00.000-05:00

I don't have a very organized system for storing my spices. Basically I line them up on two small shelves in the cabinet between the fridge and the stove. The frequently used ones are kept towards the front, and when I need something less accessible I have to stand on a kitchen chair to reach. Sometimes when planning to make a recipe I have to dig through all of the containers to see if I have the particular spice I need, and occasionally I have purchased a duplicate for whatever reason (I think I actually have three opened containers of garlic powder!).

Recently I decided that I needed to be a little more organized about things, so I took out all of the spice containers and made an alphabetical list of what I have, and taped it to the inside of the cabinet door. That way when I am not sure if I have what I need for a recipe, I can just check the list.

As I was digging things out of the cabinet to make my list, I am embarassed to admit I found this little gem:

If you can't read the text on the bottom, it says "Sell By July 29 1985". The spice is more than 22 years old!!! But why I had that old spice (ha ha) is a mystery. I would have been six years old at the time of its sell-by date. And the first time I lived in a place where I would have had my own spices was in my junior year of college, in 1999! So it doesn't make sense that I would have had that spice before it was already 14 years expired!

Where did the mystery spice come from?? My theory is that maybe it happened to be left inside a cupboard of a house or apartment I moved into, and without noticing it I included it with the rest of my spices. Or perhaps one of my former roommates had it and left it for me when she moved out. Either way, it quickly found its way into the trash. And to anyone who has eaten cookies or cakes I have baked... don't worry, I have another NEWER container of allspice.

Maybe y'all should check your own spices! McCormick even made a website dedicated to it: http://www.spicecheckchallenge.com/

Happy New Year!

2008-01-05T14:09:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year! Christmas 2007 included some great visits with family, lots of time to relax, and some new cookbooks!

[cover images borrowed from amazon.com]

1. The Everything Meals for a Month Cookbook by Linda Larsen

This was a Christmas gift from Jason! As a working woman, the concept of 'freezer cooking' appeals to me. Basically this means you prepare meals in advance and freeze them, whether putting together a complete meal that can go straight into the oven (like a casserole) or just doing some of the steps in advance, like preparing a sauce, to save time later. For awhile I had been doing that through Dream Dinners, but Jason and I found that the portions were too large and some of the meals unappealing to us, which meant that it wasn't cost-effective. I was interested in this cookbook in hopes that I could create the "dream dinners" solution at home. So far I have tried two recipes, but cooked both right away (I figured I'd better see if I like it "fresh" before I try it out of the freezer later!). The beef and bean enchiladas were a bust, but the garlic roast beef sandwiches were fantastic, though I don't think that's a recipe I would choose to freeze. I plan on trying a third recipe for dinner tonight. So far, my complaint with the book is that it seems that most recipes involve cooking the meal completely, and THEN freezing portions. To me, that is more like saving leftovers than using the freezer to help you save time later. With Dream Dinners, you didn't cook anything... you just prepared it and then froze it. So I think this may end up being used as more of a 'regular' cookbook than a freezer cookbook.

2. The Big Book of Easy Suppers by Maryana Vollstedt

This book was a gift from Jason's Grandma and Grandpa Harley! This was another book I requested for Christmas. :-) I had gotten this cookbook from our local library a few times, and after about the third time I checked it out I figured I might as well own a copy. My pet peeve with this book is that there are NO PHOTOS of any of the food. I do like to see what a meal is 'supposed to' look like. But the absence of photos means more pages for recipes, and there are a LOT of recipes in this book. They seem easy and delicious. I hope to post some more entries in the future about individual recipes from this book.

3. Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 by Todd Wilbur

This book was a gift from my mom! I had never seen this book before but I love it! The recipes let you recreate popular dishes from restaurants at home. For instance, there is a recipe for the Pecan Crusted Chicken Salad from TGI Friday's. I've eaten the dish at Friday's and loved it, so I'm excited to try to make it soon!

4. Glorious One-Pot Meals by Elizabeth Yarnell

This cookbook was a gift to myself, to accompany the Le Creuset Dutch Oven I got as a gift from my dad. To explain what a 'glorious one-pot meal' is, I'll use this description from the technique's website:

The Glorious One-Pot Meal method cooks an entire meal of meat, grains, and vegetables from start to finish, all in the same pot. An enamel-coated Dutch oven provides optimum infusion cooking for all kinds of ingredients. This technique enables a busy cook to throw together a healthy meal in fewer than twenty minutes with only one pot to clean. Unlike other "one-dish meal" methods -- such as crockpot stewing or casserole baking -- which merge elements and meld flavors, ingredients prepared using the Glorious One-Pot Meal method retain their shape and integrity. In a Glorious One-Pot Meal, fish flakes like fish, pasta remains pasta-shaped, and even delicate tomato slices emerge intact for serving. Foods become infused with flavors and emerge moist, tender, and perfectly cooked.

I am really excited to try this method of cooking. I'll keep you posted on how it works! Jason's excited about it just so he can keep talking about cooking in the "dutch oven." If you don't get why that's funny, all I'll tell you is it's a fart joke. But it actually is a legitimate cooking vessel, and this is what it looks like:

I also recently received a few vintage cookbooks from my Grandma Cotterman. She knows I love to collect cookbooks and is always picking them up for me at rummage sales.

Thanks to everyone for the fantastic cookbooks!!

My(dining) Space

2007-12-26T14:57:00.002-05:00

The Columbus Dispatch had an article in today's issue about food bloggers. Check it out here:

http://www.dispatchkitchen.com/?story=dispatch/2007/12/26/20071226-E1-00.html

It's been a busy last few weeks, but I have about five recipes worth of posts waiting for me to write! Stay tuned.

Chicken Pot Pie

2007-12-04T17:55:00.000-05:00

After a busy week and weekend, I felt like cooking something homemade on Sunday. I decided to make this chicken pot pie recipe that I'd found online awhile ago and had been wanting to try. It was really tasty and pretty easy. If I make it again I will use a little less onion. I should know by now to err on the side of too little onion. It just tends to overpower the other flavors for me.

Here's the recipe:

1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cubed
1 cup sliced carrots
1 cup frozen green peas
1 cup diced potatoes
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup chopped onion
1/3 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon poultry seasoning
1-3/4 cups chicken broth
2/3 cup milk
2 (9 inch) refrigerated pie crusts

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. In a saucepan, combine broth, chicken, carrots, peas, and potatoes. Boil for 15 minutes. Remove cooked chicken and vegetables with a slotted spoon and set aside.
3. In another saucepan over medium heat, cook onions in butter until soft and translucent. Stir in flour, salt, pepper, garlic salt, and poultry seasoning. Slowly stir in chicken broth and milk. Simmer over medium-low heat until thick. Remove from heat and set aside.
4. Place the chicken mixture in bottom pie crust. Pour hot liquid mixture over. Cover with top crust, seal edges, and cut away excess dough. Make several small slits in the top to allow steam to escape. (I tried to be fancy and use my mini cutters, but should have made a few more cutouts closer to the edges because the crust ended up splitting there anyway.)
5. Bake in preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown and filling is bubbly. Cool for 10 minutes before serving.

Okay I have to admit something embarrassing now. I actually planned to make this recipe a month or two ago, and purchased all of the ingredients. But the thing is, the recipe didn't specify 'refrigerated' pie crusts (I added that detail). It just said "2 (9 inch) pie crusts" and I actually didn't know there was such a thing as refrigerated pie crusts. I had only ever heard of the frozen kind (the ones that come in the foil pan). So I bought those and put them in the fridge to defrost. I have to admit I was really confused about how I was going to use the second pie crust (that was already shaped in the bottom of the foil pan) as the top. When it was time to make the recipe I realized there was no way it was going to work and that there had to be some other kind of pie crusts I didn't know about. So I googled it and realized my mistake. The refrigerated kind are made by Pillsbury and are found with the refrigerated crescent rolls, cinnamon rolls, etc. I don't know how I hadn't noticed them before. But those bad boys are expensive. At my grocery store they were actually on sale for 2 packages (of 2 crusts each) for $10. So right there the pot pie costs at least $5. We were able to be somewhat frugal though, because Jason and I also ate the leftovers for lunch the next day.

Edited to add: the other day at Giant Eagle I noticed the pie crusts were on sale for 2 packages for $4. So... I must have been confused about the price when I posted previously!

for Aunt Nancy

2007-12-03T17:29:00.002-05:00

Aunt Nancy, I stumbled across this blog today and thought you would love it:

http://sopressata.blogspot.com/

She's also a 28-year-old woman named Heather living in Columbus (interesting...), but she's much more adventurous and has beautiful photographs!

Ohio Proud

2007-11-27T17:58:00.001-05:00

I wanted to share an interesting recipe web site I just found. I haven't made any of the recipes yet but it looks like a good source, and the recipes are supposed to "highlight Ohio's diverse agricultural and food products." Here is the link: http://www.ohioproud.org/_Apps/Search/Recipes.aspx

On a somewhat related note, I was thinking the other day about how I own so many cookbooks, yet most of the recipes I cook are ones I have found online or from some other source like the newspaper. I think I will make it a point to try to start using my cookbooks, and then I can review the book as well as the recipe itself. Stay tuned!

Brownies

2007-11-18T22:51:00.001-05:00

Man, I am on a posting spree right now! Five in one day; that's some kind of record. I just said to Jason, "wow, I have been blogging for an hour and a half!" His response: "Um, I KNOW." Poor guy kept trying to talk to me about Simpsons, King of the Hill, Family Guy, and now the Blue Jackets Game, and I'm just not paying attention to any of them. I had this cache of photos and recipes built up that I had been wanting to post about but just hadn't felt like I had a chance to do so. Unfortunately that means the posts have been few and far between lately... almost three weeks since the last one. I hope there are still some readers around.

I wanted to post my all time favorite recipe for brownies. For so long I had been making brownies from a mix. I can't remember when or why I decided to make a batch from scratch, but I found this recipe at allrecipes.com. It's pretty obvious that a lot of my recipes come from allrecipes.com or recipezaar.com. One of the reasons I love those websites for finding recipes, rather than going to a cookbook, is that they have great search features. You can enter the ingredients you want to use and search for a recipe that uses them. You can even specify which ingredients you don't want. You could search by course, and then sort by rating so that the highest-reviewed recipes are listed first. This is a great way to browse. I have found allrecipes.com to be rather aggravating though, because you will see that a recipe has really high ratings, but then when you read the reviews people will say things like "this recipe was great! here's how I altered it" and then they will list about five things they did differently from what the recipe says. That problem seems to be more rampant on allrecipes.com than it is on recipezaar.com. But sometimes that can come in really handy, if a majority of reviewers are in agreement about how a recipe should be altered.

Anyway, here is the recipe. It's easy and so delicious. And these brownies have a unique texture that I haven't gotten from a boxed mix. They are slightly gritty at first bite and then they just melt in your mouth.

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 cup white sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9 x 9 baking pan.

2. In a medium bowl, mix together the oil, sugar, and vanilla. Beat in eggs. Combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt; gradually stir into egg mixture until well blended. Spread the batter evenly into the prepared pan.

3. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the brownie begins to pull away from the edges of the pan. Let cool on a wire rack before cutting into squares.

Spinach Dip

2007-11-18T22:13:00.001-05:00

On Saturday evening, I went to my friend Kate's house for a Broad Street Presbyterian Church "young adults" get-together. I have only known Kate for a short time (since we both were ordained as new deacons last spring) but have quickly come to consider her a friend, and I hope to continue to become better friends with her in the future. Kate and I have a lot in common, including 1) being really active at church yet having a husband who stays as far away from church as possible, and 2) having big hips. We understand each other. =)

Anyway, there was a group of about ten of us who gathered at Kate's house to drink wine, eat some food, and enjoy each other's company. It was a really diverse group that showed up: single people, married couples, married people who were alone (Jason stayed home... was too afraid we would end up talking about Jesus? We didn't.); different races, coming from different parts of town; some knew each other well and some were brand new. We had some great conversation and now will have a few more friendly faces to look for on Sunday mornings. I think it was everything you could want from that type of gathering.

I showed up with Carolyn and brought a bottle of my current favorite wine (Alamos Malbec, pictured above) and an appetizer: a new spinch dip recipe I had gotten from recipezaar.com (where else?) and some tortilla chips. The wine was a hit and the spinach dip was too.

I am usually reluctant to take photos of my food, because I know they end up coming out so bad, but this was one time I was really disappointed to not have my camera with me. I would have liked to visually document this delicious appetizer, as well as a fantastic time spent with new friends.

Here is the recipe. As I told my mom and sisters today, I think this has knocked our old standard Spinach-and-Artichoke Dip out of the top spot.

1 package ranch dressing mix

1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, at room temperature

1 (8 ounce) container sour cream

1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese, split into 2-1/2 cup portions

1 (8 ounce) package frozen chopped spinach

1. Defrost the spinach.

2. Place it in a colander and press until as much moisture as possible is removed.

3. Mix all ingredients (using only 1/2 of the cheddar) and blend well.

4. Put it in a shallow baking dish in the oven for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

5. Remove from oven.

6. While still hot top it with remaining cheese, heat in oven again for 5 minutes.

7. Remove and cool slightly before serving with tortilla chips.

When assembling this I started trying to mix it by hand with a wooden spoon, but then decided to mix it in the KitchenAid mixer instead. That ended up working really well. You could probably also mix it in a food processor but that would end up really chopping up the spinach.

Chili

2007-11-18T21:45:00.001-05:00

Mmm, chili. As some of my coworkers know because they see me bringing it to my desk often, I love chili! When my sisters and I were kids, our mom would make a chili recipe that didn't have tomatoes in it because we were picky and didn't like to have chunks of tomato in our food. I think the base of hers was tomato juice and tomato paste. So for a long time I have used the chili recipe off of the can of tomato juice, but decided recently that I'd like to try to find a different recipe that is more like what they serve at the cafeteria at work. It's thicker and chunkier... less soupy. This was a recipe I found on recipezaar.com (my new favorite recipe site) and it was really tasty. The flavor was actually really similar to my mom's chili.

(By the way, if the measurements seem a little strange (such as "1/2 can") it's because I scaled it down to have fewer servings than what was originally called for.)

1 pound ground beef

1/2 large onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 can tomato sauce

1/2 can tomato paste

1/2 (15 ounce) can tomatoes

1/2 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon chili powder

1/2 teaspoon oregano

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1/2 can chili beans

1. Saute meat, onions and garlic until done.

2. Add remaining ingredients and simmer for 2 hours.

I also made a quick bread that you can see in the picture but it was nothing spectacular.

When I was searching for the chili recipe, I found another one that I'd also really like to try someday. It had some unconventional ingredients (coffee? brown sugar?) but got a lot of rave reviews. I decided to go with that first recipe instead because it seemed like a safer bet. I also someday would like to try Bruin's chili recipe, which Sue gave me after I tasted it at their Halloween party, but since that one makes enough to feed an army I'm saving it for a special occasion, I guess.

Here is that second recipe:

1 teaspoon oil

1 onion, chopped

1-1/2 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 pound lean ground beef

3/8 pound beef sirloin, cubed

1/2 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes

1/2 can dark beer

1/2 cup strong coffee

1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste

1/2 can beef broth

1/4 cup brown sugar

1-3/4 tablespoons chili sauce

1/2 tablespoon cumin

1/2 tablespoon cocoa

1/2 teaspoon oregano

1/2 teaspoon cayenne

1/2 teaspoon coriander

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 (15 ounce) cans kidney beans

2 chili peppers, chopped

1. Heat oil.

2. Cook onions, garlic and meat until brown.

3. Add tomatoes, beer, coffee, tomato paste and beef broth.

4. Add spices. Stir in 1 can of kidney beans and peppers.

5. Reduce heat and simmer for 1-1/2 hours.

6. Add remaining can of kidney beans and simmer for another 3o minutes.

Tortilla Soup

2007-11-18T21:38:00.000-05:00

I don't have a photo to go with this recipe, or any story to tell about it. I'm mostly posting it here to save it for my reference.

Another recipe that's easy and delicious but not the healthiest.

1 (15 ounce) can whole kernel corn, drained
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can condensed chicken with rice soup plus 1 can water
1 (10 ounce) can chunk chicken
1 (15 ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes with green chile peppers
1/2 packet taco seasoning

Pour everything into a large saucepan and simmer over medium heat until chicken is heated through (about 20 minutes).

I like to serve this with sour cream, tortilla chips and shredded cheese.

Blackened Chicken and Beans

2007-11-18T21:15:00.000-05:00

This was a recipe I just happened to stumble upon while I was looking for a recipe for something else at recipezaar.com. It was easy and delicious!

2 teaspoons chili powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves

1 tablespoon canola oil

1 (15 ounce) can black beans, rinse and drained

1 cup frozen corn, thawed

1 cup chunky salsa

1. Combine the chili powder, salt and pepper; rub on both sides of chicken.

2. In a large skillet, cook chicken in oil 4-5 minutes each side, until juices run clear. Remove and keep warm.

3. Add beans, corn and salsa to skillet; bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer 2-3 minutes, until heated through.

4. Put bean mixture on a serving dish; top with chicken.

Jason didn't like the beans but that didn't surprise me. Also I thought the dish was a bit spicy overall... I used medium salsa which I normally like because it has a little kick to it, but when it was combined with the chili powder it ended up being really spicy. Next time I would use mild salsa instead. The rice is a saffron rice made from a prepackaged mix... I forget the brand name but it comes in a yellow package.

Oatmeal Carmelitas

2007-11-01T14:25:00.001-04:00

That is not my photograph (no surprise there). I forgot to take any photos of my cookie bars, so I borrowed this photo from www.solomonscookies.com, where you can buy Oatmeal Carmelitas at $19.95 for a box of 12. Holy mackeral. They do look spectacular. Mine were not that pretty, but they were really tasty!

I made these cookie bars to take to work on Wednesday, because we were having a dessert potluck in honor of Vicky's last day. You might remember that I made the pralines a few weeks ago in honor of Vicky returning to work from maternity leave... I knew at that time that we would not have her with us much longer. Someday within a few years I hope to follow in her footsteps.

This was a recipe I had clipped from a Smuckers coupon awhile ago. I would highly recommend it! The bars were easy, different, and delicious. Here's a tip: when I was adding the filling, I spread out the caramel topping evenly to all the edges of the pan. The next time I make this recipe, I won't do that and instead will just drizzle the caramel over the base without spreading it. The reason is that as the bars cooked, the caramel spread out and started to climb up the edges of the pan. Then when they cooled, the caramel got really hard at those edges and made it difficult to cut. I figure that if I don't spread the caramel it will still spread out on its own but without making a mess.

Ingredients:
CRUST
•
2 cups Pillsbury BEST® All Purpose Flour
•
2 cups quick-cooking rolled oats
•
1 1/2 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
•
1 teaspoon baking soda
•
1/2 teaspoon salt
•
1 1/4 cups butter or margarine, softened
•
FILLING
•
1 jar Smucker's® Caramel Spoonable Ice Cream Topping
•
3 tablespoons Pillsbury BEST® All Purpose Flour
•
1 package (6-oz.) (1 cup) semi-sweet chocolate chips
•
1/2 cup chopped nuts
Directions:
1.
Heat oven to 350° F. Grease 13x9-inch pan. Lightly spoon flour into measuring cup; level off. In large bowl, combine all crust ingredients; mix at low speed until crumbly. Reserve half of crumb mixture (about 3 cups) for topping. Press remaining crumb mixture in bottom of greased pan. Bake at 350° F. for 10 minutes.
2.
Meanwhile, in small bowl, combine caramel topping and 3 tablespoons flour; blend well.
3.
Remove partially baked crust from oven. Sprinkle with chocolate chips and nuts. Drizzle evenly with caramel mixture. Sprinkle with reserved crumb mixture.
4.
Return to oven; bake an additional 18 to 22 minutes or until golden brown. Cool 1 hour or until completely cooled. Refrigerate 1 to 2 hours or until filling is set. Cut into bars.

Chicken Noodle Casserole

2007-10-29T21:48:00.000-04:00

I already knew it had been quite awhile since I had posted, but then today Jason even commented on how long it had been! (Jason usually doesn't "surf" the net, at least not like I do, but sometimes takes drastic measures when he is bored in class, and I must be in the rotation.) Well lucky for you, dear readers, I made a recipe tonight that got a thumbs up from both Jason and me.

It was a Chicken Noodle Casserole recipe from allrecipes.com. This was another instance where I already had an ingredient (in this case, egg noodles) and set out to find something to make with it. With this morning being pretty chilly (I actually had to let my car warm up and defrost for the first time this month), a casserole seemed like a warm, comforting choice for dinner.

I also appreciate meals that are baked because it's nice to be able to assemble something, put it in the oven, and walk away from it and have time to do something else for a bit. I try to multitask whenever possible. I generally have only about 4 or 5 hours of "awake time" at home each work day, and I usually struggle to find enough time for all of my interests. This is also why my house is usually a mess, the desk has piles of unfiled receipts and other papers on it, I have unfinished (or even never-begun) sewing projects, the dogs need to be brushed or bathed, etc. All of these things should be manageable enough to maintain, except that by the time I run necessary errands, do crucial chores (like laundry so I have something to wear to work), make dinner and catch up with my husband in the evening it seems like the day is gone. Then on the weekends when I actually have time to devote to these things, I feel like I am so tired from my busy week that I just want to relax and do nothing! I shouldn't complain because I know working parents have it even worse, but... sometimes it's hard.

So anyway, the point is that casseroles are easy and time-savers. Tonight, I ran to the grocery store after work (had to pick up some candy for the trick-or-treaters, among other things), got home around 6:30, put away the groceries, fed the dogs, started making the casserole, put it in the oven around 7:45, went into the basement, threw a load of laundry into the washer, and worked out (The Biggest Loser workout dvd... I recommend it!). When the workout was over, the casserole was done.

Here is the recipe. THIS IS NOT HEALTH FOOD, BUT IT'S GOOD!!

Ingredients:

4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
6 ounces egg noodles
1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of mushroom soup
1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of chicken soup
1 cup sour cream
salt to taste
ground black pepper to taste
1 cup crumbled buttery round crackers
1/2 cup butter

Directions:
1. Poach chicken in a large pot of simmering water. Cook until no longer pink in center, about 12 minutes. Remove from pot and set aside. Bring chicken cooking water to a boil and cook pasta in it. Drain. Cut chicken into small pieces, and mix with noodles.
2. In a separate bowl, mix together mushroom soup, chicken soup, and sour cream. Season with salt and pepper. Gently stir together cream soup mixture with the chicken mixture. Place in a 2 quart baking dish.
3. Melt butter in a small saucepan, and remove from heat. Stir in crumbled crackers. Top casserole with the buttery crackers.
4. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for about 30 minutes, until heated through and browned on top.

Pralines

2007-10-16T22:18:00.000-04:00

It's been quiet on the blogging front lately. For the most part, that's been because I haven't made any blog-worthy recipes. But tonight I made pralines and thought I'd blog about that.

The photo doesn't do them justice... although I don't know that they look much better in 'real life.' Jason said 'they look like poo!' but then quickly clarified that he meant all pralines in general, not mine in particular. Thanks, sweetie.

Anyway, my friend Vicky is coming back to work tomorrow after her maternity leave. Some of us at the office thought it might be nice to have a few snacks to welcome her back to her cubicle.

I decided to make pralines mainly because I happened to have the right ingredients, but I also have kind of a soft spot for them in my heart. I was first introduced to them back in high school when I worked at Mabel's Old-Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor. I have never really been much of an ice cream eater, but when working at an ice cream parlor you can't help but eventually taste all the flavors, and I discovered that my favorite was Pralines-n-Cream. Then when I went to Savannah for the first time I indulged in some of the free praline samples at the candy shops on River Street.

I had two different recipes for pralines: one called for buttermilk and the other for whipping cream. I had tried the recipe using whipping cream awhile back, and didn't really like how they turned out. The sugar had overly crystallized and made them taste almost sandy, but that could have been a result of me overmixing and not a fault of the recipe itself. I still had half of the bag of pecan halves left over, and I happened to have some buttermilk that I just bought to use in a chicken recipe, so I thought I would try the other version of pralines.

Here is the recipe:

2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups pecan halves

1 cup buttermilk

2 tablespoons melted butter

Use large pot--mix sugar and soda. Slowly add milk. Turn heat on low and let mixture come to slow boil. Cook until soft ball forms in cold water. Remove from heat. Add nuts and butter. Beat by hand until mixture turns light brown. Pour out.

I have two complaints about this recipe (I found it on the internet in case you were wondering). First, the mixture turned brown way before stirring in the nuts and butter. (I used my candy thermometer so I could be absolutely sure about when I reached the soft ball stage, so I know I was timing it out okay.) Second, that last line... "Pour out." Pour out into what? Then what? I ended up using my cookie scoop to drop small clumps onto a cookie sheet lined with wax paper.

This recipe seemed to turn out much better than the other one. The pralines are tasty! But it is a candy that requires a lot of babysitting. The mixture takes a long time to get to 240 degrees, and has to be stirred constantly so the sugar doesn't burn. I ended up standing over the stove for about an hour. So be forewarned!

Chinese food, Trader Joe's style

2007-10-08T19:14:00.000-04:00

(more out of focus pictures... sorry! Gretchen tried to fix the settings for me to no avail.)

I could have titled this post "Almost as Good as Takeout, Part II" but instead chose to pay homage to the amazing store that is Trader Joe's. I honestly could not name a single thing I dislike about Trader Joe's. It's a cute store with a small selection of items, many of which are their own brand. Because they have such a small selection, everything they carry is fantastic. The prices are low too. If you haven't heard of Trader Joe's, I would suggest checking out their web site to learn more about them. There are only a few in Ohio, but Columbus is lucky enough to have two!

(Oh, one more thing I love about Trader Joe's: their circular is called the "Fearless Flyer" and it reads like a magazine! It doesn't just list items and prices... each item has a paragraph about it that is so romantically written you'd think it was the J Peterman catalog!)

On my recent visit to TJ's, I spotted this General Tsao Stir Fry Sauce and decided to try it. (You might be able to see on the label in the second picture that it says "Trader Ming's." That's another cute thing they do. The Italian stuff says "Trader Giotto's.") I had cut a recipe for General Tso's chicken out of the newspaper awhile back, but hadn't made it yet because it seemed complicated and had a lot of ingredients since the sauce was made from scratch. I figured I could use this premade sauce and really simplify the recipe.

Here's what I did:

I cut about 1/2 to 1 pound of chicken breasts into 1 inch cubes. I mixed 1 large egg (beaten) with a little salt and pepper and 2 tablespoons of corn starch. I poured that over the chicken and let it marinade for about 15 minutes.

Next I was supposed to heat 2 cups of oil in the wok to 350 degrees and then fry the chicken in it. You have to dip the chicken pieces in corn starch and shake off the excess right before you fry them. Unfortunately when I was getting ready to start this step I noticed that I only had about 3/4 cup of vegetable oil left. I just made do with this and it still worked. The only accomodation I had to make was to turn the chicken pieces after about a minute since they weren't completely submerged in the oil. The chicken only took about 2 minutes total to cook. I was surprised by how successful I was at frying the chicken pieces. They had a nice crunchy coating.

I removed the pieces from the oil with a slotted spoon and blotted them on paper towels. I drained all of the excess oil out of the wok and into a bowl. Then I added about 1/2 cup of the TJ's sauce to the wok, and added the chicken pieces. I stir fried it until everything was heated through. The sauce got a sticky consistency and really coated the chicken pieces, just like it usually has when I order this dish from a restaurant.

Unfortunately I forgot to get any broccoli, but I did pick up some of Trader Joe's frozen fried rice to accompany the chicken. The fried rice was really easy to make in the microwave, but only tasted so-so. I think it may have tasted better if I had made it in a skillet with a little oil, but next time I would probably prefer to have plain rice.

All in all it was a good dish. I would have liked the sauce to have a little more kick to it, but I always like my Chinese food spicy. My very first job in high school was at a Chinese restaurant, and I always felt like the 'spicy' dishes weren't really very spicy. When I would order a meal to take home with me, the chef would always ask if I wanted it "American spicy, or actually spicy?"

Someday I'd like to make the recipe from scratch, but this bottled sauce is great if you want to do it in a hurry. And it's probably healthier (if only slightly) to cook this dish at home than to order take-out.

White Russian Cupcakes

2007-10-02T21:59:00.000-04:00

Friday was my mom's birthday. My sisters and I went to her house to celebrate, and I decided to bake some cupcakes for the occasion. I had gotten the book Cupcakes: From the Cake Mix Doctor (by Anne Byrn, the same author of the doomed asparagus blue cheese pesto pasta recipe from a few posts ago) from the library and copied a bunch of recipes I wanted to try, so I emailed my mom the following list of flavors and asked her which she might like:

Pistachio
Pineapple Upside Down Cake
White Russian
Key Lime Pie
Lemon Chiffon
Chocolate
Orange Almond
Chocolate Peanut Butter

She responded favorably to the idea of White Russian or Chocolate Peanut Butter. The Chocolate Peanut Butter cupcake recipe I had was actually from a Barefoot Contessa cookbook, and was a 'from scratch' recipe, whereas all of the Anne Byrn recipes start with a cake mix, so I decided to go with the White Russian recipe.

Here it is:

Cupcakes:

1 package (18.25 ounces) plain yellow cake mix

1 package (3.4 ounces) vanilla instant pudding

1 cup vegetable oil

3/4 cup whole milk

4 large eggs

1/4 cup vodka

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons Kahlua

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Kahlua Whipped Cream:

1 cup heavy (whipping) cream

2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar

1 tablespoon Kahlua

2 tablespoons semisweet chocolate shavings

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line 24 cupcake cups with paper lines. Set the pans aside.

2. Prepare the cupake batter: Place the cake mix, pudding mix, oil, milk, eggs, vodka, 1/4 cup Kahlua, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat 2 minutes more, scraping down the sides again if needed. Spoon or scoop 1/3 cup batter into each lined cupcake cup, filling it three quarters of the way full. Place the pans in the oven.

3. Bake the cupcakes until they are golden and spring back when lightly pressed with your finger, 17 to 20 minutes. Remove the pans from the oven and place them on wire racks to cool for 5 minutes. Brush the tops of the cupcakes with the remaining 2 tablespoons Kahlua. Run a dinner knife around the edges of the cupcake liners, lift the cupcakes up from the bottoms of the cups using the end of the knife, and pick them out of the cups carefully with your fingertips. Place them on a wire rack to cool for 15 minutes before frosting.

4. Meanwhile, prepare the frosting: Place a large, clean mixing bowl and electric mixing beaters in the freezer to chill for 1 minute. Remove the bowl and beaters from the freezer. Pour the cream into the bowl and beat with an electric mixer on high speed until the cream has thickened, 1 1/2 minutes. Stop the machine and add the sugar and Kahlua. Beat the cream on high speed until stiff peaks form, 1 to 2 minutes more.

5. Place a heaping tablespoon of the whipped cream on each cupcake and swirl to spread it out with a short spatula or a spoon, taking care to cover the tops completely. Garnish with chocolate shavings. The cupcakes are ready to serve. Store these cupcakes, in a cake saver, in the refrigerator, for up to 4 days.

The cupcakes were pretty good! I was a little surprised at how heavy the alcohol favor was in the baked cupcakes, and it really did taste like a White Russian. I did not like the whipped cream icing... it just seemed a little too light. if I made these again I would try to use some sort of butter cream icing with Kahlua in it. I would recommend this recipe and I can't wait to try others from this book.

Some general comments about redoing the bathroom

2007-09-29T10:26:00.000-04:00

Thanks, previous owners, for painting over wallpaper. Those seams look really great.
Thanks as well for applying a new layer of flooring directly over the previous layer. Twice. Once we removed those layers and installed our new one, we had about 1/8 inch gap between the floor and the trim in some places.
I am still puzzled by the look of the door not matching the color of the door frame. This is something that has bugged me throughout this house since before we moved in. Maybe some day I will paint the doors to match the trim, but for now we decided to only paint over the previously painted surfaces.
The paint color was supposed to be a light brown taupe. Instead it looks like a light purple. It still looks nice but I would not have chosen to have another purple bathroom (our basement bathroom is purple too).
Sometimes directions from a trusted source (i.e. Reader's Digest Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual) don't work, and you have to make it up your own way. This is what happened when we were figuring out how to cut the floor tiles. That floor is the thing I am most proud of because it was the biggest pain in the ass and I didn't think we could make it work.
I was worried that doing this home improvement project would cause tension between Jason and me. As my boss said, 'This will be a test of your marriage!' Instead, we were united in our hatred for doing home improvement projects. There was still tension but it was because we were so pissed at things like the above-mentioned many layers of floor, or surprise holes in the wall that we had to figure out how to cover (i.e. behind the medicine cabinet).
When I look at the Before and After photos posted below, I realize that the previous bathroom wasn't really that bad. I didn't mind the green walls or the wood fixtures. It was just that damn towel bar falling off that started this whole thing!!
I'm satisfied with the work we did but starting to think about things we didn't do but maybe should have. The new shower curtain bar, towel bars, light fixture, and medicine cabinet are all oil-rubbed bronze. Now I feel like the color of the cabinet should be stained darker to match, maybe a cherry or something. I'll save that for a future project. Also, the switchplates are white and the light switches are a yellowish color. This is another weird thing that is like that THROUGHOUT THE HOUSE. I totally forgot about that and will have to switch those out at some point.

Before and During

2007-09-29T10:20:00.000-04:00

After

2007-09-29T10:18:00.000-04:00

update

2007-09-24T09:33:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to post a quick update about the reason it's been so quiet here lately! Jason and I tackled a home improvement project that kept us busy the entire weekend. We redid our main bathroom. This project was all because one of the towel bars pulled out of the wall a few months ago (to be honest, it was probably about a year ago). The towel bar was wood that was mounted all across the length of the wall... it wasn't just mounted at either end. When it fell off we saw that the existing paint had been applied around the towel bar, so we now had a towel-bar sized stripe on the wall. Our options were to either reinstall the same towel bar in the exact same spot (since we didn't have the paint to patch the bare spot) or to install new towel bars and repaint the walls in a new color. I wanted to repaint and get new towel bars. I also wanted to redo the floor, because the existing tiles (the peel-and-stick kind) had probably been there for quite awhile and had some bad spots where tiles had shifted and had gaps between them, or they were starting to come unstuck at the seams. So anyway, we had a big project to do all because of one towel bar. I hope to post an update soon about the remodel as well as some more cooking posts!! Thanks for being patient, and keep checking back.

Carrot Cake

2007-09-16T21:51:00.000-04:00

I remembered while eating one of the last slices of this cake that I hadn't taken any photos of it. Hence the dirty fork and crumbs everywhere in this one. This photo does not do the cake justice. It was delicious.

I had decided to bake a carrot cake for a few reasons. I had been thinking about making one since my friend Jen's wedding a few weeks ago. Each layer of her wedding cake was a different flavor, one of which was carrot cake. It was amazing! I also wanted to take a dessert to Sue and Bruin's house on Friday, and Bruin can't eat anything with chocolate in it because he is allergic to caffeine (gasp!), so I had to think of something without chocolate. Since I had plenty of baby carrots in the fridge, I thought the carrot cake was a perfect choice.

The recipe I used is from a cookbook called Best of the Best from Ohio: Selected Recipes from Ohio's Favorite Cookbooks. The book was edited by Gwen McKee and Barbara Moseley, who have made compilation cookbooks like this for almost every state in the US. (I found out about them after buying Best of the Best from Georgia while on vacation this summer with my mom and sisters on Tybee Island. I borrowed the Ohio edition from my library.) The carrot cake recipe originally came from A Taste of Columbus Vol IV, which seems to be out of print but I would assume is a compilation of recipes from Columbus-area chefs, because the recipe notes that it was contributed by Chef Jim Girvis of the French Loaf.

Here is the recipe:

4 large eggs

1-1/2 cups oil

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons baking powder

1-1/2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons cinnamon

2 cups sugar

1 (8-1/3 ounce) can crushed pineapple in juice, drained

2 cups (packed) peeled and shredded carrots

1/2 cup chopped nuts (I used almonds because that's what I had, but if I made it again I would use pecans or walnuts)

Place eggs and oil in mixing bowl and blend well. Sift together flour, soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and sugar. Add to egg mixture and blend thoroughly. Add pineapple, carrots, and nuts. Mix well. Pour into greased 13 x 9 inch pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes. Allow to cool.

Frosting:

1/2 cup butter

1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 (1-pound) box confectioner's sugar

Cream together butter, cream cheese, and vanilla. Add sugar and beat well. Frost cake and refrigerate for 2 days before serving.

I ended up baking it a little longer than called for because after 35 minutes it was still jiggly in the middle. I probably baked it for 45-50 minutes. It was really golden brown but I thought it would be better to have it be a little overdone on the edges rather than undercooked in the middle. When the cake cooled, I tasted a sliver to make sure it came out okay before making the icing. It was consistently very moist throughout. Maybe a little too moist for my liking.

I took half the cake to dinner on Friday and the other half to Bluffton on Saturday. Everyone seemed to like it, so that's good! I thought it was pretty delicious but I might want to try a different carrot cake recipe sometime to see if I can get one that's not so moist. But I would definitely recommend this recipe.

My Corn-Hole is Full

2007-09-16T20:17:00.000-04:00

This is Jason, doing a guest post in honor of my "preparing" a dish Friday. Heather and I were scheduled to go to some friends' house for a barbecue and Heather agreed to make the side dish, a corn casserole. Of course, Heather has a job (unlike me) so when she was running late getting home Friday after work, it fell on my shoulders to "prepare" the casserole. I am no expert in the kitchen but I did my best following Heather's over the phone instructions and there was general agreement that the casserole turned out edible. The following is my interpretation of the ingredients, hopefully for your sake Heather will add in her version before posting.

1 can of something Heather left on the counter (Note: try not to look at this stuff or get it on you because it's kind of gross) (This would be one can of cream-style corn --Heather)

1 can of something else Heather left on the counter (Note: see previous note) (This would be a can of whole-kernel sweet corn. Do not drain. --H)

1 box of stuff Heather left on the counter (This is a box of Jiffy cornbread mix. Thank God I had left this stuff sitting on the counter when I brought it home from the store and didn't have to worry about whether he was grabbing the correct cans/boxes. --H)

2 eggs - be careful not to leave shells in the eggs but don't worry unless it's really big pieces (I emphasized to Jason that he should crack the eggs into another dish instead of directly into the mixing bowl so he could make sure there were no shells at all, not just big ones! :-) He assures me that he actually did this.--H)

some certain amount of melted butter - I can't remember how much butter and I didn't know how to melt butter but Heather was able to talk me through it (1/4 cup of butter or margaine --H)

mix all of this in one big bowl

pour into another big bowl (casserole dish, greased. --H)

put second big bowl in oven - set timer for one hour (note: preheat oven to 325 setting because then oven will heat to 375, or so Heather tells me) (I have an oven thermometer, and we generally have to set the dial at about 50 degreees lower than the temperature we actually want. So, the casserole should be cooked at 375 degrees. --H)

I did actually try the casserole and it wasn't too bad, even though it had vegetables in it.

(Jason did a good job, and this dish was delicious! I would definitely make it again. I have previously tried a recipe for something similar that included sour cream, and this was much better. The sour cream made the other dish too moist, and this was more like cornbread. Jason, I appreciate you making the dish and blogging about it. :-) --H)

Comfort food

2007-09-16T00:15:00.000-04:00

This past week has been quite a busy one. I had events at church on both Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, yoga on Thursday, dinner with friends at their home on Friday, and a trip out of town on Saturday. Therefore there hasn't been much time for homecooked meals lately, hence the lack of posts (although I did find some time to bake for a few special occasions... posts to come on those... hopefully soon!).

The out-of-town day trip was to my grandparents' house in Bluffton. My sisters and I all rode together. The purpose of this trip was to look at some keepsake items from generations past and decide what we might be interested in someday owning. These items included books and clothing that were over 100 years old and had been handed down to my dad's mother, as well as photos and memorabilia of my dad's father, who died when my dad was a boy. I'm sure it will be a relief to my grandparents to be able to clear some of these things out of their house and to know they are going to someone who understands their value and will cherish them. It was a really great afternoon, and we got to enjoy the company of all but one cousin on my dad's side, and hear some interesting stories!

We had left my house around 9 this morning to head there, and got back home around 5:30. Jason had been golfing at an MS fundraiser today, so we were both rather wiped out after our long days. We went out and grabbed some sandwiches and watched the last quarter of the Buckeyes game at a nearby sports bar, and then headed home to relax. Jason lay down on the couch to watch the Columbus Crew game, but promptly fell asleep.

I walked the dogs, did some laundry, watched some Food Network, and meanwhile thought a lot about all the tidbits of personal history I learned today. I had a strange sensation of missing people I had never even met.

With the trifecta of my nostalgia, the slight loneliness I had because Jason was napping, and the fact that I was watching the Parmigiano-Reggiano battle on Iron Chef America, one thing became perfectly clear: I had to make Cheesy Noodles.

Cheesy Noodles is one of the few dishes I ever remember my dad cooking. I don't know if my sisters ever cook this but it is definitely a go-to comfort-food snack for me. It's easy to make and I usually have all the ingredients on hand. It only requires three: pasta, butter, and parmesan cheese.

Basically you cook the pasta, drain it, return it to the hot pan with about a tablespoon of butter, stir until the butter melts and coats the pasta, and then stir in as much parmesan cheese as you like. Tonight I used ziti because that's what we had but my favorite pasta to use is spirals because then the cheese gets stuck into all the crevices of the spiral.

Cheesy Noodles is a weird dish. It's not really even a dish, in that I would never consider serving it as part of a meal, but it makes a great snack. It's the kind of thing that tastes even better when you stand in the kichen and eat it directly out of the pan it was prepared in. I only needed a few bites tonight.

Nutella goodness

2007-09-12T12:32:00.000-04:00

I'd like to start this post with a shout out to my blogging companion:

Foxy likes to sit on that side of me while I use the computer, because my laptop churns out heat on that side. Sometimes it gets so hot that it just shuts off mid-use. I usually work on it with a wrought iron plant stand underneath to try to allow some air circulation underneath.

Okay, so... Nutella! I love Nutella. Mostly because it makes me nostalgic for my trip to the Netherlands. I ate it on toast almost every day there. (For anyone who doesn't know, Nutella is a chocolate-hazelnut spread. In Europe it seems to be as common for spreading on breads as peanut butter is in the US.)

I had seen a recipe for Nutella sandwich cookies online and had been wanting to make it. Tonight was the first session of a new 'season' of bible study at church, so I decided to use that as an excuse to bake.

Here is the recipe:

Gianduia Sandwich Cookies
source: recipezaar.com

1 cup Nutella
1 egg
1 cup self-rising cake flour, plus additional for dusting

1. Preheat oven to 375°F.

2. Mix 1/2 cup Nutella and the egg with an electric mixer until well combined. Slowly add 1 cup of flour until a wet dough is formed. Transfer the dough to a flour-dusted board.

3. Knead gently, adding a bit more flour if necessary; dough will be sticky. Roll dough into 18 balls, flouring your hands as needed to make rolling easier. Place on parchment-lined baking sheet, several inches apart.

4. Bake 12 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes. Split cookies in half horizontally using a sharp, serrated knife (see note below). Spread bottom with 1 teaspoon Nutella, replace top and press firmly. Let cool completely. Store in a tightly covered tin.

5. Note on flour: I didn't have self-rising cake flour, so I mixed 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt with regular cake flour before adding it.

6. Note on splitting the cookies: I had a problem with a couple of the cookie tops breaking a bit when I first started cutting them. I then tried it this way and had no more problems: turn the cookie on its side and carefully score the entire outside edge while turning it like a wheel, then gently cut the rest of the way through the middle.

This recipe was easy enough with only three ingredients, except that I didn't have self-rising cake flour... in fact, the store didn't sell any variety of cake flour, so I got self-rising all-purpose flour. (By the way, those 'notes' in the recipe above are not from me.) Not sure if that was a legitimate substitution... the cookies didn't spread at all while they baked. They just stayed as little balls just as I had rolled them and cracked slightly. And the actual 'sandwich' assembly was kind of a pain in the butt. But I deemed them tasty enough to share, so I took them to bible study with me tonight.

When I mentioned what they were, Kate (one of the group participants) said that she has a theory that "most women love Nutella, and most men don't get it." As soon as most of the women heard what the cookies were, they said "Ooh, Nutella!" and lunged for them, thus proving part of Kate's theory. (There were no men there to confirm the other part... when I see Jason at home later I'll try to remember to ask him what he thinks of Nutella.)

I mentioned to the group that I probably wouldn't choose to make that recipe again. When asked why, I explained that the cookie part was dry and bland and that its only appeal was as a vehicle for getting the Nutella into my mouth (a complaint I had seen from others in reviews of that recipe online). Someone (I think it might have been Kate again--I like her) said, "Yeah, next time just bring the jar of Nutella and some spoons."

I had also seen another dessert recipe using Nutella, and I wish I had made that one instead, although I don't know that it would have transported well. It was a dessert ravioli from Giada De Laurentiis of the Food Network, and it was basically wonton wrappers folded around Nutella, fried, and then sprinkled with powdered sugar. Yum! Maybe I will try that one someday when I feel like doing something extra special.

Almost as good as takeout

2007-09-10T19:27:00.000-04:00

I want to start this post by apologizing for the poor quality of my photos in my entries. I use a very inexpensive digital camera, and I take the photos without a flash, which makes it difficult to focus (but I feel using the flash makes things look too washed out). I actually have a newer, better camera, but it's a digital video camera that also takes stills... and I haven't quite mastered its operation yet. Maybe some day! Anyway, the photos are just to give you a general idea of the preparation involved and the finished results, and aren't meant to be looked at for detail. Not that anybody has complained or anything, but I just wanted to acknowledge that I know they aren't the greatest.

Okay, onto the recipe. This is the first time I have made "Broccoli with Garlic Sauce," and it's a keeper. I'm not joking when I say it's almost as good as takeout. It was delicious. The recipe was from a Weight Watchers cookbook called Take-Out Tonight! so I guess the book delivers on its title. Here is the recipe

1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth
3 tablespoons sake or rice wine
2 tablespoons reduced-sodium soy sauce
2 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon canola oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 pound broccoli crowns, cut into florets (about 4 cups

1. Combine the broth, sake or rice wine, soy sauce, oyster sauce, cornstarch, and sugar in a small bowl; set aside.
2. Heat a nonstick wok or a large, deep skillet over medium-high heat until a drop of water sizzles. Swirl in the oil, then add the garlic. Stir-fry until fragrant, about 10 seconds.
3. Add the broccoli and stir-fry until crisp-tender, about 3 minutes.
4. Add the broth mixture and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture boils and thickens, about 1 minute.

I used regular versions of chicken broth and soy sauce, because that's what I had on hand. I also used rice wine instead of sake. And I halved the recipe, which was the perfect amount for one person. The recipe says it serves 4, so I guess that's one reason this is a WW recipe.

If you wanted to I think it would be easy to incorporate chicken or beef and even some other vegetables to make a complete entree.

One reason I think this recipe really works and tastes authentic is that it uses authentic ingredients. Too often, recipes for Chinese food I've seen in cookbooks seem to be American adaptations of Chinese food using more common ingredients (mostly just soy sauce). If you aren't using things like rice wine and oyster sauce, you just aren't going to get the same taste.

Here's a bonus recipe, using another authentic Chinese food ingredient: garlic chili sauce. (By the way, I was able to find all of these ingredients in the Asian food section of my local Giant Eagle.) I have no photos of this recipe, but I have made it quite a few times and it's also delicious!

Sweet and Spicy Green Beans
source: allrecipes.com

3/4 pound fresh green beans, trimmed
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 clove garlic, minced (I often eliminate this, because there is plenty of garlic in the next ingredient)
1 teaspoon garlic chili sauce
1 teaspoon honey
2 teaspoons canola oil

1. Arrange a steamer basket in a pot over boiling water, and steam the green beans 3 to 4 minutes. (I usually just steam them in the microwave.)
2. In a bowl, mix the soy sauce, garlic, garlic chili sauce, and honey.
3. Heat the canola oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the green beans and fry for 3 to 5 minutes. Pour in the soy sauce mixture. Continue cooking and stirring 2 minutes, or until the liquid is nearly evaporated.

Pesto-a-No-No

2007-09-07T07:07:00.000-04:00

For dinner on Thursday, I tried a recipe from a cookbook called The Dinner Doctor, which I got from the library. The author of the cookbook is Anne Byrn, who is best known for her book The Cake Mix Doctor, in which she takes a packaged cake mix and adds other ingredients to spruce it up. The Dinner Doctor follows the same principle, by making dinner starting with store-bought packaged ingredients. Sounds great and easy.

The recipe I decided to try first had a pretty straightforward title: "Penne with Blue Cheese Pesto, Walnuts, and Asparagus." Anne Byrn writes,

As the Cake Mix Doctor I have been asked many times, "What is the one cake from your books you would bake for yourself?" If you asked me this question as the Dinner Doctor, I would answer this penne. It requires little effort but delivers a big impact.

The recipe gets a ringing endorsement from the author, and it seemed like a winning combination. I like blue cheese. I like pesto. I like walnuts. I like asparagus. Who doesn't like pasta? I liked every single ingredient (and the only ingredients were those named in the title!), so I thought this would be a homerun. But I wasn't sure Jason would like it, so I planned on cooking a package of brats to have as backup.

In a nutshell, this is what preparing the recipe entails:

- toast nut pieces in the oven.

- boil water and cook pasta.

- throw asparagus pieces in with the pasta for the last few minutes of cooking.

- mix pesto and blue cheese in a large bowl.

- drain pasta/asparagus and toss with blue cheese pesto.

- sprinkle with toasted nuts before serving.

Easy. It came together in minutes. And I love this method of cooking vegetables in the pasta water. Funny how I'd never done that before, and then this week I've made two recipes in a row that used that method.

As I'm mixing together the blue cheese and pesto, I start to have my doubts. It's just not smelling very good. Then when I toss the blue cheese pesto with the pasta and asparagus, I'm really having doubts. I'm starting to wonder if these three strong flavors will meld together very well. It's looking beautiful, but it just smells questionable. To reiterate, I really like all of these bits and pieces, it's just that something seems wrong about combining them.

And when I tasted it, I decided rather quickly that it just wasn't working. Jason was at class so he didn't even have a chance to try it. It was a total write-off.

When a recipe fails like that, it's really disappointing. Not only does it mean having a bad meal, but it's a waste of ingredients (not to mention time and money). But I think trying new recipes and risking these failures is worth it, because there's nothing like finding a recipe that works, one you'll make again and again. Sometimes it's just hard to predict what type of recipe it will be.

I'm not going to bother typing the recipe here, since I don't care to save it and don't think anyone else should bother trying it either. :-) But if you are interested, check out that book at the library. There are a few other recipes from the book I still plan on trying, and they definitely are timesavers.

Also, this was the first time I ever tried sprinkling toasted nuts on top of pasta, and I actually really liked it! That was the best part. So maybe I'll try that again sometime.

When all was said and done, this was the dinner Jason and I ended up enjoying (but hold the mustard for Jason):

Spicy Garlic Lime Chicken Pasta

2007-09-06T07:11:00.000-04:00

First of all, I have to "give props" to my Grandma Cotterman for giving me this awesome cookbook holder. I usually use it when I cook. Isn't it cute? It says "Read 'N Do." I do!

Last night I made "Spicy Garlic Lime Chicken Pasta" for dinner. This recipe was the rave over at the "What's for Dinner?" message board at http://www.thenest.com/ (a site for newlyweds---gag me. I shouldn't criticize it, because I do visit there, but mostly it's because I discovered that message board and it is right up my alley: girls sharing great recipes!). I have to credit the source, which is another "nestie's" food blog: http://amberskitchen.blogspot.com/

Here is the recipe:

Spicy Garlic Lime Pasta
(Source: Amber's Delectable Delights)

Ingredients:
1 cup chicken broth
1.5 tbls lime juice (adjusting amount to your liking)
1 tbls corn starch
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp dried parsley
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts (cut into bite size pieces)
1 tbls butter
Few drizzles of olive oil
8 oz pasta
1-2 cups broccoli florets

Optional - Parmesan cheese for topping

Directions:
1) Bring pot of salted water to a boil. Cook pasta according to package directions. During the last 5 minutes of pasta cook time add the broccoli into the boiling water. Drain.
2) Mix together all the sauce ingredients (chicken broth through parsley) and set aside.
3) Meanwhile, heat butter and olive oil in saucepan over medium heat. Add bite size chicken pieces into heated pan. Cook chicken until no longer pink. Pour the sauce ingredients into the pan with the chicken and bring to a simmer. Let simmer until chicken is cooked through and sauce has thickened.
4) Toss cooked broccoli and pasta with the chicken and sauce. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese if desired and serve.

I liked this recipe because it was really EASY to make. Just one pot and one saucepan. I did make one modification: I only used half the lime juice called for in the recipe, because I was afraid Jason wouldn't like it if it was too lime-y.

Here are pictures of how pretty the broccoli looked cooking with the pasta, and the chicken simmering in the sauce:

And, the finished product:

Overall, I liked the flavor and would probaby make it again. But I think it could be improved on. It was spicy, and I like spicy food, but I think in this combination I would have appreciated a little sweetness or tangy-ness. And maybe some corn. I'm envisioning the type of pasta dish Chipotle would create. :-)

By the way, I asked Jason last night if he was going to read my blog. He decided that he probably wouldn't, because he's "living the blog." So I can talk about him, and I will say that with Jason, a neutral review is often the best you can hope for. With food, he's more of the "eat to live" type rather than "live to eat." He will sometimes rave about a dish, but generally I just hope he doesn't hate it.

I asked him what he thought of this one, and he said something along the lines of, "It was all right." I asked if I could make it again sometime, and he said "Sure." So there you go. A success.

Welcome to my new blog

2007-09-05T13:28:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my new blog: Heather in the Kitchen. I am a regular reader of other blogs, and always thought it would be fun to have my own. After seeing a number of cooking blogs recently, I was inspired to use that theme.

I thought I would use this space to keep track of recipes I have made and liked as well as share those recipes with others. You will see recipes with reviews and photos, and potentially other entries about drinks, cookbooks, or products, for example. I hope to update this blog a few times a week, as time--and cooking opportunities!--permit.

Enjoy!

"Faux Latte" = my reason for getting out of bed

2007-09-05T07:38:00.001-04:00

I am not a morning person. In fact, most mornings when my alarm goes off, I feel a slight sense of panic: "I'm exhausted! I can't possibly get up yet. I won't be able to function!" Consequently I end up hitting the snooze button many times, until I absolutely have to get out of bed or risk being late for work, and then run around like a mad woman getting myself ready to leave (and end up being late anyway). This routine usually gets me off to a frazzled start, and makes for a rough day at the office.

I've tried in vain to force myself to simply get up earlier; to obey my alarm clock the first time it goes off. But my sleepy logic usually demands more pillow time. So lately, I've attempted a new strategy, and it seems to be working quite well. I now get up much earlier than I have to, but reward myself with some time to relax and do whatever I want while enjoying a special treat: a latte.

I've changed my options from "shower/go to work" versus "sleepy time" (sleepy time wins hands down) to "sleepy time" versus "coffee/goof-off time" (coffee will likely win). It makes perfect sense (and is probably blatantly obvious to those who are already "morning people"): I have made waking something to look forward to, and by the time I do have to get ready for work I am more alert and in better spirits!

In order to continually lure me out of bed, the promise of coffee must be pretty darn enticing. And I think it is. My "faux latte" is the closest thing I can create at home to a coffee-house latte. The trick is having the right tools. This job requires three: a coffee grinder with some espresso beans, a Bialetti stovetop espresso maker, and a milk frothing wand. (All three are inexpensive investments when compared with the price of a daily latte: the coffee grinder was a gift (but probably cost around $20 or less), the Bialetti was around $20 at Target, and the milk frother was also around $20 at William-Sonoma. A bag of espresso beans costs around $8 and lasts me about a month.)

Making the latte is easy. First I coarsely grind the espresso beans. My coffee grinder actually has an 'espresso' setting, but I found that created too fine of a powder and resulted in grounds ending up in my coffee. (That setting must make powder appropriate for a "real" espresso machine.) Freshly ground beans are best, but I have taken to grinding the night before as to save time in the morning.

Next I have to prepare the Bialetti. I fill the base of the Bialetti with cold water. I am not sure how much water goes in there but it might be around a cup. There is a little line on the inside that tells me where to stop. Then I place the silver basket into the base. The basket has tiny holes in the bottom of it and a stem that reaches down into the water. As the water is heated it travels up through the stem and through the espresso grounds. I fill the basket almost full with about four tablespoons of espresso. At this point, it looks like the first photo above.

Then I screw on the top part of the Bialetti and place it on the stovetop, with the burner set to medium heat. See the second photo above. Then comes the hardest part: waiting for the espresso to brew. As the espresso brews, it travels up through a spout and fills the top teapot-looking part. It usually takes about ten minutes to finish. I could use a higher heat setting and get it to brew faster, but that heats the water too quickly and the espresso sputters and splatters all over the place and results in really hot coffee.

While the espresso is brewing, I prepare the milk. I pour into a glass (your average tumbler) about 1/3 cup of milk (I prefer 2%). Then I use my milk frothing wand to froth it up. The wand is battery-operated, and has a metal stem with a coiled metal disc at the bottom of it. When you hold the button, the disc spins. Do this while you move the wand up and down in the milk and it adds so much air to it that you can make 1/3 cup of milk fill the whole glass. I should have taken a picture of this because it is pretty cool. The frothing takes about 30 seconds. Then I heat the milk in the microwave for about 35 seconds so it doesn't cool off the espresso when it is added.

When the espresso is ready, I put about 1/2 tablespoon of sugar into a mug, and pour espresso into it until the mug is about 4/5 full. Then I pour the warmed frothy milk into the remaining 1/5 of the mug (using a spoon to hold back the foam while I pour, just like they do at the coffee shop!). Finally, I spoon some of the foam onto the top, and you have the final photo.

I call this a "faux latte" for a few reasons. Since I don't have the same tools, it's not going to taste exactly the same as a latte purchased at a coffee shop. But also, the proportions aren't correct. A latte has a lot of milk and small amount of espresso. My concoction has more espresso than milk (but my espresso also isn't as strong as that brewed in a machine). So I'm not sure what it is. But it's delicious.

As you can probably tell, there is quite a ritual involved in its preparation. It is both the delicious taste of my drink and the ritual involved that make it so much better than brewing a pot of coffee in a drip machine. I recommend it to any coffee lover.