skyla's kitchen

Sweet Treats for that Gift Giving Time of Year!

2011-12-05T18:46:00.001-08:00

Joe reminded me that I should take a holiday treat up to Shriners Children's Hospital when we went to get Hannah Jane's prosthetic fixed. It was, oh, 9pm the night before when I remembered this on the drive home from Ruhi. I looked around the store for something already made that would still be a treat, but a plastic box of store bought cookies doesn't exactly scream, "Hey! You're super special!" Right? So I threw together some chocolate popcorn and pretzel mix! It was soooooooo yumalicious!

If you want your own, you'll need wax paper, a ziplock bag, 2 bags of microwave popcorn, half a bag of pretzels, half a brick of white almond bark, and a few drops of food coloring.

Spread out a nice big area of wax paper and place objects on the corners to keep it from rolling up. As you can see, it doesn't matter what you use. Me? I used a naked baby doll, a bottle of Pamprin, and some glasses. LOL! Classy, huh? Pop your corn and spread it out in one layer on the wax paper, being careful to remove the unpopped kernels. That's my least favorite part. If you're not in a hurry, let it cool a bit before removing those piping hot little corns! Ouch! And my experience is that if you microwave both bags back to back, the second bag ALWAYS burns a little. Maybe that's just my microwave, but now I've learned to be patient and let the microwave have a few minutes between bags so that I don't end up picking out burnt kernels too! Spread your pretzels out as well. Try to get them super close together without overlapping because the more chocolate that drizzles over the paper, the less that is on your food. And when you break up the snacks in the end, the chocolate tends to pull off of the food when there's a lot on the paper around it.

Microwave your Almond Bark according to the directions. With the amount of food I coated, I used half a giant package and this resulted in 3 gift bags worth of snackage. Once it's creamy and smooth, you can add coloring if you wish. I went for a nice wintery blue. Spoon the mix into a ziplock bag and snip a VERY SMALL amount off of the corner to use as a piping bag. Give it a gentle squeeze and start slinging it all across your snacks!

Let it all cool and harden and then gently break apart the snacks into reasonable sized chunks and load them into a cute gift bag!

You could go all out and divide your chocolate into different colors and layer it. You could do school colors for teacher gifts. You can also melt the Almond Bark in a crock pot and just dump in your snacks and swirl them around before spreading it out on the wax paper. This deflates the pop corn a little and uses much more almond bark per food content, but I did it with a popcorn and craisin mix for Hannah Jane's girl scout troop and they loved it! So, you can do a lot with Almond Bark and it's a fairly inexpensive goody to keep on hand during this time of year when neighbors drop by unexpectedly with a little token of holiday cheer and you want to have something to give back. Enjoy!!!!

Poached Pear Souffle Cheater Style

2011-11-15T08:45:00.001-08:00

I saw this adorable Poached Pear souffle cake over here at Tartlett and thought it looked divine. I wanted to serve these little gems to my guests at our monthly interfaith study circle, but the recipe was really involved and when you have young 3 kids in the house, you need those last few moments before your guests' arrival to go back and clean up after your kids who went behind you while you were cleaning up to recreate their mess masterpieces. My point is just that anything that needs a lot of work at the last second isn't for me at this stage in my life.

But I love the whole semi-home made thing that Sandra Lee has mastered, so I knew I could pull off the glamor of these little babies without the last minute kitchen duty. The results were fantastic, if I do say so myself. Here are my steps to getting the mega-recipe look with minimal effort.

I bought 6 pears, a box of Betty Crocker Super Moist Butter Pecan Cake mix, and utilized the spices that I already had on hand. I also let my Granny buy me some cute little ramekins for my birthday. For 2 months now she's been asking, "what did I buy you for your birthday?" Meaning, what did you pick out and how much do I owe you for it?

First, I peeled the pears and placed them upright in a large pot, I poured in 4 cups of water and added some cinnamon, all spice, cloves, and vanilla to the water. No specific amounts. Just what I like in the amount I assumed would do the trick. The original recipe calls for whole spices, but my budget only allows for ground spices so I made it work. I brought all of this to a boil and then let it simmer for about a half hour before removing the pears. I kept the liquid on the stove to make the house smell nice when my guests arrived!

I mixed the cake batter according to the box directions. You could use any batter that suits you, or go all out and use the homemade recipe I linked to above. Once the batter was made, I filled the ramekins half full (which was too full, by the way) and plopped a pear down in the middle of each. One of my pears fell over, and one baked on the slant. I placed all of that in the oven and baked according to the cake batter instructions for cupcakes.

Once everything was out of the oven, I sprinkled the tops with confectioner's sugar and crushed almonds. So pretty!!! The moist pear keeps the cake from getting too caky and keeps that custard/souffle texture that the original recipe was aiming for. If you really want to emphasize that, you can bake it for slightly less time that you need for cupcakes.

After dinner, each guest received their own gorgeous dessert! It's so nice to have something pretty, that makes your guests feel like you put a ton of time into it, that really didn't cost you much of your day.

Pate de Fruit with Apples!

2011-09-05T17:15:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know you thought I was done blogging about apples, that I had made every possible apple thing there is to make. But you were wrong. I'm back with one more applicious delight! Apple Pate de Fruit, Apple Pastes, or, as someone at our study circle called them last night, Applettes. Anyone ever heard of applettes? She said, "What? You lived in the northwest and you don't know what applettes are?" No. I've never heard of applettes. I don't even know how to spell them, so forgive me if this is wrong.

Whatever you call them, they are simply divine. To die for (in a not so literal sense). Like sweet nectar melting in your mouth. I should stop. Fruit of the heavens. Okay, seriously.

Were they hard to make? Not exactly. Were they intimidating as all get out? Yup. And I'm sure my few French friends out there will tell me that I messed things up, but my very American version of this French candy I've never of before turned out so good that I don't even care what the legit French think! I'm calling it a success beyond words!

I used the recipe here, but let me tell you, some adjustments need to be made. Really. Take my word for it. You can pop over there and see the recipe for yourselves so I'm not going to repost the whole thing. Here are my adjustments, though, to make your life easier.

~The recipe says to peel the apples, poach them whole, and then slice. Don't do it. Slice those babies first because honestly it's unnecessarily difficult to slice soft apples. I know they look pretty in the pot, but the pretty isn't worth the extra work.

1X1's before I quartered them

~It says to pour it into a 8X8 pan. I used 9X11 and they were still thicker than I would have liked. To compensate, I cute the 1 inch squares into 4ths. Tiny little candies. The texture of these little delights is such that too big a mouthful of could easily rip out some dental work. Petite is best. 8X8 would make the candies so thick that no amount of cutting would save you. In my humble opinion, of course.

the kids enjoyed tossing the candies in the powdered sugar

~The recipe doesn't say anything about tossing your candies in confectioners sugar, but you really should unless you plan to eat them all on the spot. Well, even if that's your plan, the sugar is just plain yummier. But it also serves as a bit of a buffer to keep your candy dish from being like your great-grandma's. You know the dish where you pick up the pic of ribbon candy from the top and the whole bowl comes up with it? Yeah. Not good. A little coat of confectioners sugar will keep them from clinging to one another.

Other than that, I call this recipe perfection. It has my kids thinking I'm brilliant and made my dinner guests smile. Can't beat that! Give it a try and let me know if you come up with any amazing flavor combos!

Apple Days are here Again!

2011-09-02T12:02:00.000-07:00

It's been another good apple years in the Hollow! The same family that 2 years ago blessed us with box after box of apples from their larger than life orchard offered again this year to let us come pick from their trees. We took them up on their generous offer and loaded up on apples. For every one we picked, four fell from the tree.

Hannah Jane commented that none of these apples had stickers on them. Crack me up! When I laughed she got all indignant and said, "Well I know that people put the stickers on them. I get that they don't grow with stickers. I've just never seen so many without them!" What a funny observation!

Now that the cart was full, it was time to head home and begin the considerable ordeal of turning our apple bounty into something tasty for winter.

Here in our little Mayberry, it is the time of year when men can be seen out and about on their own with bushel of children, simply keeping all the little hands out of the kitchen where mom stands chained to the stove upon which both pressure and water bath canner run at full tilt as her fingers prune from having peeled 200 apples in the last few hours. It's a beautiful time of year!

We bought a peeler this year! Hooray! can you believe that last time I hand peeled those apples with a little knife the way my Nana used to do? This gadget changed the quality of my life during apple season. Seriously, it's value cannot be overstated.


Scandalously naked apples in seconds!

The long ribbons of peels from the peeler were instantly called eels and the kids ate them with giggles and dramatics!

I keep this blog as my own little cookbook so that I can have an easily accessible record of my favorite recipes (did you think I was keeping it for you? Oh. Sorry.) and because I can't lose a recipe under a stack of school books if it's online. There's almost nothing I can't lose at home. Seriously. Nothing. So I googled myself and my apple pie recipe. Nothing? Apple sauce? Yes. Apple butter? Yes. But my apple pie recipe was nowhere to be found. Total bummer.

So I went to my favorite canning site, Pick Your Own, and looked at her recipe. She has never done me wrong, so I assume this is going to be some good pie. However, in her comments she said that you shouldn't mess with the recipe to lower the sugar because it simply isn't as good. Well, for me the whole point of canning is a combination of saving money and increasing the nutritional value of what I feed my family. When I can it, I know they are getting zero preservatives and less sugar. So yes, I used water instead of apple juice.

I wanted to be able to run both of my canners at the same time to cut down on how long I had to be heating up the house so I googled a the time and pounds of pressure for apple pie and found that the intense and unnecessary heat of the pressure canner can turn your pie filling into apple sauce. So, I pressure canned my apple sauce and water bathed my apple butter and pie filling.

I canned all day and all night. By my calculation, I worked with those apples for 12 hours total over the course of 2 days. My fingers were wrinkly. I pulled a muscle (don't laugh) from bending over hundreds of times in a day to get a new apple from the basket. But the fruits of my labors were sweet!

Check that out! The quarts are mostly pie filling, the pints are mostly apple sauce, and the tiny jars are my apple butters with a few exceptions. It's apple mania, I'm telling you! The pies won't become too desirable until mid October when we've forgotten how sick of apples we became this week. The apple sauce is under high demand on cold mornings if I'm willing to warm it up and stir in a bit of cinnamon. But that apple butter...oh, the apple butter on toast with a cup of tea is just perfect any old crisp time of day in fall or winter (or summer, or spring). You simply can never have too much apple butter. It's a taste of bygone times, when great grandmothers bestowed gifts more precious that jewels upon their extended families in the form of jarred goodness. Jarred food that had been prepared without thought of sugar content, reckless with calories, and with heaping cupfuls of love. That's the taste of apple butter.

Okay...if your mouth is watering now, scroll back up to the link and make your own apple butter. You will not regret it. And if you are blessed with a neighbor like ours, or an apple orchard of your own, what are you waiting for? Get to canning!

Breakfast cookies? Yup!

2011-07-04T15:21:00.000-07:00

Sounds too good to be true. Right? Whe I saw this over on the Once a Month Mom, I had two thoughts. One, it's just another trick to get us to feed our kids complete junk first thing in the morning. Might as well buy Fruit Loops or something. Or two, it taste so bad my kids will never eat it. I don't know about you, but all of these "kid friendly" healthy recipes find no favor with my kids. The whole sneaky chef thing has backfired in this houe on more than one occasion. So we have junk food once in a while and we eat health food most of the time and we call it all exactly what it is. So the thought of a healthy breakfast cookie automatically sounded like a bad idea.

Hannah Jane went to Lowes with Joe and the boys and I stayed home yesterday, so I mentioned the breakfast cookie to see what they thought and they totally wanted to make it. Why not? If it stinks, we'll toss them and will have enjoyed the time cooking together.

I did change the recipe a bit. I took out the wheat germ because, well, that's just a no go in this house. I took out about half of the sugar as well. You can click that link I tossed out earlier to see the original recipe. I'll give you mine. My version makes enough to feed our family of 5 twice. I threw half in the freezer and I'll just set them on the counter to thaw overnight before we want to eat them next.

Ingredients:

* 4 cups rasisin bran
* 1.5 cups flour
* .5 cup brown sugar
* 1.5cup yogurt
* .5cup oil
* 2 egg
* 1 tsp. salt
* 1 tsp. baking soda
* 4 tsp. vanilla
* 2 cup dried cranberries

Just smoosh the flakes in a ziplock. The boys particularly liked this job. Little Brutes!

Then you mix all of the ingredients in a bowl and spoon the mix into blobs onto a cookie sheet. Bake them at 375 for 10 minutes and you've got breakfast wonders. The kids absolutely loved them, and were totally full after just 2 cookies. If you've ever eaten with my kids, you know what a big deal that is. Hunter regularly eat 4 eggs all by himself in the morning and then still whines about being hungry. These are some hearty cookies!

Try 'em out, change them up, and let me know what you find makes a perfect breakfast cookie!

Independence never tasted so sweet!

2011-07-02T11:04:00.000-07:00

I realized that I've been posting some foodie things over at my other home on the web and neglecting to send them over here as well. Were you feeling neglected? Here's my fave new treat for the 4th that I'm copying from over on At Home with Momma Skyla's! Enjoy!

Apparently this town of ours has issues with doing fireworks on the holiday itself. This marks maybe 3 years here and we've never ever gone to see them on the actual 4th. I think. Last year I had my wisdom teeth removed the day before and with the painkillers, I can't exactly say anything for certain about that holiday.

Anyway, it crept up on me this year. We were leaving a friend's house after dinner a couple of nights ago and she asked if we wanted to join them for the fireworks show on Friday. What?!?!? Friday? I have absolutely nothing cool planned for the kids! Ack!

But then I was wasting time on facebook and saw a little gem in the sidebar. A small ad which asked, "Do you support American products?" and had a picture of a red white and blue strawberry under it. Now, I never click on fb ads. Never ever. So I can't give credit to the site that posted it because I have no idea what the company or group was. But I did decide to rip off the idea and post it here to share. Sorry advertiser! We're doing this my way and you're not even going to get to spam me over it!

On the way home from the library we stopped at our friendly neighborhood hole-in-the-wall grocery store and paid far too much for these 3 simple items:

Strawberries

blue sprinkles

And White chocolate chips. That's it!

I assume you are supposed to use a double boiler for chocolate, but until yesterday I hadn't even taken the time to google what a double boiler is. Now I know. But I still won't use one for chocolate because I have this fabulous mini crock pot that came as a little surprise gift inside of my larger, dinner size crock pot. It's adorable! And perfect for fondue and chocolate melting.

So I just melted the chocolates, dipped the berries, rolled the tip in sprinkles, and voila! So stinkin' adorable! I laid them out on a piece of wax paper to cool and firm up a bit only to realize (after I had made enough that it was too late to do anything about it) that I had laid the paper upside down and the food was in fact no cooling on the wax side. I panicked! How supremely devastating would it be for something so cute to get uglified as I tried to peel it off of the wrong side of the wax paper. I held my breath and gently tested a cooled berry and much to my relief it peeled up like a dream. Pfew! Now I'm wondering what the point of the waxy side is when things like this peel right off the rough side. Who knows? I'm just glad it all worked out.

I did make a few sans sprinkles because honestly, once you hit a certain age of maturity you can suddenly;y taste all the chemicals that make something a brilliant color and things like sprinkles become intolerable. Something decadent like a chocolate dipped strawberry loses a bit of its elegance. But for the kids, and for the sake of completing the patriotic color pallet, I went for half and half. Sprinkle half for those 4 foot and under, no sprinkle for those with a more sophisticated (meaning old) taste.

I can't wait to take these little cuties to eat out under the fireworks on our picnic blanket with our friends. I don't think they've ever eaten something so festive for Independence Day! Hooray!

Fantastical Salmon Pie

2011-05-14T11:06:00.000-07:00

So, I made this way back at Naw-Ruz, but forgot to post the recipe. Ooops! I was sending off months worth of photos to the printer tonight and saw that I'm fabulous at remembering to photograph my favorite recipes, but not so good about blogging them.

Lately, with 2 kids in soccer, home schooling, and directing the band and choir, I barely find time to breathe - let alone cook. So I've been happily doing the freeze ahead, once a month cooking thing. Which is way convenient, but I must admit to missing the taste of freshly prepared food. But how lucky I am to live in the age of giant freezers in the garage, because during soccer season my family would starve if I hadn't cooked my heart out in the pre-season.

But since I'm going all the way back to Naw-Ruz here, I have something great for you! Fanastical, even. Okay, so Joe didn't like it. But we decided he doesn't like it because the word pie makes him think warm fruit and ice cream, which doesn't really go with fish. Resulting in a mental block when it come to something called salmon pie. I tried calling it quiche, but turns out he hates that too, so we're a no go. So I saved it up for company at theNaw Ruz party and they all loved it! So I'm sharing despite Joe's resistance.

I got the recipe from a cookbook at the library called Grandma's Casseroles. Of course, there was no publishing house or author listed (I'm guessing this was a locally compiled book) so I have no idea who Grandma is or how to give her credit. So, I didn't invent this, but I did change it up a bit. I'll give you the original as well as my adaptations.

Ingredients:

1	can (7-1/2 ounces) salmon packed in water, drained and deboned (I used fresh salmon the our neighbor gave us after his Alaskan fishing trip! Lucky me!)
1/2	cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4	cup sliced green onions (I left these out so the kids might consider trying it)
1	jar (2 ounces) chopped pimientos, drained (Left these out too!)
1/2	cup low-fat (1%) cottage cheese
1	tablespoon lemon juice
1‑1/2	cups low-fat (1%) milk
3/4	cup reduced-fat baking and pancake mix
2	whole eggs
2	egg whites or 1/4 cup cholesterol-free egg substitute (I just used the whole eggs again. Didn't seem to hurt things at all and much less fussy)
1/4	teaspoon salt
1/4	teaspoon dried dill weed (skipped this b/c I was all out)
1/4	teaspoon paprika

So here's the deal...

Preheat oven to 375°F. Spray pie pan withcooking spray. Combine salmon, Parmesan cheese, onions and pimientos in prepared pie plate; set aside.
Combine cottage cheese and lemon juice in blender or food processor; blend until smooth. Add milk, baking mix, whole eggs, egg whites, salt and dill. Blend 15 seconds. Pour over salmon mixture in pie plate. Sprinkle with paprika.
Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until lightly golden and knife inserted halfway between center and edge comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes.

Those are the book's instructions. I found that it took a full hour and a half for this sucker to bake through. But boy, oh boy was it worth the wait! I loved it! The boys ate it for dinner, then breakfast, and again for lunch and were bummed when it was all gone.

Like I said, I made it for our Naw-Ruz party because one of the Baha'is is a fish eating vegetarian (pescatarian???) and he always gets left out at potlucks. He loved it! Hooray! I'm thinking next time there's a party I'll try making mini pies as finger foods by pouring into the mini muffin cups the Taylors gave us. Doesn't that sound fun?

Pumpkin Pie Pancakes

2011-03-09T15:05:00.000-08:00

Oh my word! How long has it been? Wait. Don't answer that. Looking through my photos I can see that I'm far better at photographing food than actually getting around to posting recipes. But I'm here now and you're going to love, love, love this breakfast recipe.

I grabbed some random magazine to flip through while I waited in the car for the boys to get out of speech last week and found a recipe for pumpkin pancakes. Sounded good, but some of the ingredients were odd or weren't already sitting in my cupboard so I ditched the whole recipe and went with adding pumpkin puree and pie spice to my favorite pancake recipe and changing white sugar to brown sugar. The results were prized by the kiddos!

Ingredients
2 c. flour
2 tbsp. brown sugar
1 tbsp. baking powder
3 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
1/2 tsp. salt
1 egg
1-1/2 c. milk
1 c. canned pumpkin

So, with a full cup of pumpkin puree, these are super thick and won't fim up all the way through. I love this! Like a flash of pie in the middle of breakfast. If you don't like the squish, you have 2 options. You can cut the pumpkin by half to thin them down to typical pancake consistency or you can nuke them in the microwave for a minute. That will zap all the pie-like goodness into cakey pancake texture. I liked the squish. The boys liked the squish. Hannah Jane did not.

I tripled this recipe and spent the morning at the stove flipping up enough flapjacks to freeze ahead for those mornings that no one fees like getting up and cooking fancy. Joe usually makes the kids pancakes every weekend, but with all the job craziness he hasn't been sleeping well and therefore not getting up early enough to please their royal highnesses with pancakes. When I offer to make pancakes, they scoff. Dad make's them gigantic, whereas I like to make silver dollar size suckers that are easier to flip. Mine are less impressive, I suppose. Anyway, now that they've had these babies, no one complains about mom being the pancake maker!

I intended to save the extra servings for weekends when they are accustomed to getting pancakes, but they asked for these every morning until they were gone, and I indulged. So they're gone now, but you can bet your bottom dollar that we'll be making more up soon! Hope ya like 'em!

Freezer Cream Cheese Chicken

2011-01-25T07:32:00.000-08:00

Okay...when you dream about blogging recipes you know it's been too long. I'm still feeding a Once A Month Cooking (OAMC) need. It's been the best darn thing ever! Never having to freak out over what's for dinner? What a blessing!

My latest find for a easy freezer recipe is Cream Cheese Chicken. I adapted the recipe that I got here just a touch to make it more to my liking. If you want official, check out the source. If you want Skyla's New and Improved (well maybe not improved but easier), keep reading. Before, there was a lot of moving things to and from the crock pot and hassle like that. I don't know about you, but I don't want to fiddle with dumping out a hot crock twice for one meal. So I took a chance and eliminated that step and put it all in at once. It turned out just fine. And I'm much more likely to make it when it's less hassle.

You'll need:
1 .7-ounce envelope Italian dressing mix
1/2 cup butter
2 pounds boneless skinless chicken breast
1 10.75-ounce can cream of chicken soup
1 8-ounce package cream cheese

I doubled all of this and it fit just fine into the cooker.

*Cut chicken into thin strips.
*Melt butter in microwave.
*Toss chicken, dressing mix and butter into the cooker and stir to make sure chicken is coated.
*Let that cook for an hour or so and then add everything else to the cooker.
*Stir every half hour or so as the cream cheese is melting and turn off after 2 hours.

I split this doubled recipe into 3 bags for our family of 5.

On cooking day, defrost on counter for the day, microwave until hot and melty. Instead of serving over pasta or rice like the original recipe suggested, we'll have it over a bed of steamed broccoli. That results in less meat and more veggie per person, but with all the heavy cream, I doubt anyone is going to walk away hungry.

Hope you like it! I sure do!

My Thanksgiving gift to you: King Family Sweet Potato Souffle!!!

2010-11-20T18:47:00.000-08:00

Okay, friends. It's time to get serious. I'm mean seriously unforgettable. My entire life, twice each year, we had this one divine dish that people would ask about for years to come. It was my mom's sweet potato souffle. There's a slight chance I'm in big trouble for sharing, but my gut tells me that my mom has never kept this a secret and she's so happy with my blog, that maybe I'll be off the hook. Or maybe she'll make me take it down tomorrow, so you better write it down while it's here! LOL!

What I'm about to share with you is the absolute way to a man's heart. It's the end of all searching for the perfect holiday side dish! It's unbeatable and no one has ever turned away from this souffle with anything but an intense desire for more. You think I'm exaggerating, but it would be exceptionally difficult to exaggerate the thrill of this dish.

It's simple, but I still only make it twice a year to capitalize on the longing. Plus, it simply would never qualify as remotely healthy and if I made it more than for Thanksgiving and Christmas there's a good chance I'd need elastic pants! And it ain't your Grandma's sticky marshmallow contraption that you choke down annually and give the courtesy of calling a souffle despite the fact that it's covered in Jet-Puffed Mallows! Ick!

I figured that as my gift to your family's holiday gatherings, I'd share it in time for you to gather the necessary ingredients and make it by Thursday. You'll be glad you did. You'll love it so much, you'll decide that you have a talent in the kitchen that has never been fulfilled. You'll quit your day job and open a souffle shop! Okay, maybe I found a way to exaggerate a little, but do yourself a favor and make the darn thing for you family. It'll be your new tradition!

Ingredients:
Base:
3 Cups mashed sweet potatoes
1/2 Cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup milk

Topping:
1 Cup brown sugar
1/2 Cup flour
1/2 stick butter
1 Cup chopped pecans

Combine all the ingredients for the base and mix well. Pour it into a buttered baking pan. Mix all ingredients for the topping in a bowl and spread over the base. Bake at 400 for 30-40 minutes.

Doesn't that look simple? I'll bet your thinking it's too simple to bother with. But something seriously dreamy happens when the shipped goodness of the creamy base gets topped with a crispy, nutty top. And look at all that butter. Seriously, the butter makes that topping brown just so. It's a textural wonderland!

So, there you have it, dear kitchen friends! My gift to you!

Poser Pie

2010-10-24T14:52:00.000-07:00

My friend Steffanie was planning to come over so we could catch up on some long over due Sky and Steff time. She's the kind of friend that you have to have a good dose of on a regular basis to feel like you've had a solidly fulfilling week. You know the kind? Well, she asked if she could bring apple pie over and who ever says no to apple pie? Well, besides my dear Hannah Jane?

Anyway, some month back I had warned Steff to never be tempted into using that Sneak Chef cookbook, which instructs you how to sneak veggies into seemingly frivolous treats. Like spinach into pudding and peas into brownies. I told her that I tried the pudding, got caught because you can't hide spinach in pudding and not taste it no matter what anyone says, and lost the trust of my kids. Forever more Hannah Jane looks at my home made treats and asks what's really in them. So sad!

Well, Steff showed up, pie in hand, and I dove right in and felt sure I had never tasted an apple pie so divine. The crumb topping was perfect, the filling hadexceptional flavor, and all in all it was nothing short of heavenly. She thanked me for the accolades and said nothing more. Then, as she was leaving I offered her a stack of zucchini to take home because she's the only person I know who actually makes anything with zucchini. She looked at the floor and said something along the lines of, "I know how you feel about tricking people into eating something they don't want to eat, and I know you don't like zucchini, but that apple pie was actually zucchini pie. I'm sorry. I hope you're not mad. I just knew you'd love that pie and I knew you wouldn't eat it if I told you."

She was absolutely right. I would never have eaten a zucchini pie. I'll admit that once I knew, I had trouble talking myself into eating the leftovers because now I knew it was zucchini. But once I rationalized with myself that only hours earlier I had declared it the best pie on earth, I dug back in and appreciated it all over again.

Having raved about the pie to everyone I know, naturally they all want the recipe. So with Steffanie's permission, here it is!

ZUCCHINI MOCK APPLE PIE

1 pie crust, unbaked
5 c. sliced zucchini, peeled and remove seeds
3/4 c. sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 c. real lemon juice

CRUMB TOPPING:

1 c. flour
1/2 c. brown sugar
6 tbsp. butter, butter
1/4 tsp. salt

Bring to boil zucchini, sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice, and water; simmer until soft. Pour into an unbaked pie shell; pat crumb topping over mock apples and bake at 325 degrees for 25 minutes.

Joe tasted it and said it had to be loaded with sugar to masquerade as an apple pie, and I agreed because it was so gosh-darn divine, but looking at the recipe, I'm seeing that it is certainly no more than I normally put in a pie.

So I suppose this isn't a sneaky chef sort of recipe where you're sneaking veggies into food for the nutrition because I'm not sure how much nutrient you're getting from a sugar coated zucchini. I'm thinking this poser pie is ideal for garden failures like myself who can only grow a few things well but don't necessarily like what they can grow all that much! Everyone can grow a zucchini, so every gardener does. But come harvest time, you just plain don't want them all, your neighbors grew their own that they don't really want so you can't give them away, and you feel bad letting them go to waste. This is the perfect solution! Now you can actually enjoy those zukes! Now I'm wondering if I can can this filling! I'll do a little research and let ya know what I come up with! That would simply make this the BEST PIE EVER!!!!!!

OAMC: Teriyaki Chicken

2010-09-04T21:19:00.000-07:00

So you may have heard that my new obsession is Once a Month Cooking (OAMC) and I'm ready to share my first recipe! I love this one during this time of year because I can dash out to the garden and harvest some broccoli to throw in at the last minute!

If I may wander slightly off topic for a moment, you just have to hear about Hunter's obsession with growing broccoli ourselves! He is just enamored with how small broccoli seeds are and how big the broccoli crowns have been that we're bringing in from the garden. He talks about it all the time and every time he catches me standing in front of the fridge, he quickly asks, "Do you need broccoli? Cause, you know, I can just go harvest some for ya!" And yesterday at the grocery store, he saw some people bagging broccoli and said, "Look at them buying broccoli at the store. We are never buying broccoli again because we grow our own! It like free that way! No more store broccoli!" I reminded him that winter is fast approaching and then it's store broccoli again, so to not sound so superior because he'll be one of those sad, store broccoli people in a matter of a month. He quickly looked humbled, but a half hour later he was at it again!

Okay, back to the meal! This was once of the easiest to make ahead because you don't actually have to cook anything ahead of time.

Ingredients

Chicken -any cut or part as long as you don't have any bones in it. Theoretically you could use other meats or even tofu for this part if that's what does it for ya.
1/4 cup water
1 small piece of fresh ginger, crushed
1 tsp. garlic salt
1 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 apple juice - the original recipe call for white wine here, but being all Baha'i in the kitchen, I researched wine replacements in cooking and found a lot of evidence to suggest that it is largely unnecessary and can be replaced with equal parts of any liquid like apple juice or even plain old water. Wine lover, hold the hate mail and just use your wine, already! LOL! Oh, how I love to cause myself grief with the blogs these days!
Optional veggies - these are to be fresh on cooking day and not added to the frozen ahead part!

So you're going to cube your chicken (or chicken replacement) and set it aside. Mince up your ginger and add everything but the chicken to a large bowl and give it a good stir. Now divide your meat into family size portions in freezer bags and pour the mixture over each bag. The above ingredient list is for one family dinner, so you'll want to quantify according to how many meals you are making ahead.

I like to just toss the bag on the counter during breakfast so that it can thaw by dinner. At dinner time, I make some rice, pour the bag into a skillet and cook it up. Just toss it around in a skillet until the meat is cooked and it's a go! If you add in fresh veggies, don't add them until about 3 minutes before you serve or they get all salty and floppy and gross.

So the first day I brought in fresh broccoli from the garden, here's what happened. I was prancing down the garden path, all excited to be bringing in some home grown goods to add to my once a month meal. I was feeling very on top of things and organized and proud of myself, yada yada yada. When I tossed the broccoli in the counter to sit while I got the rice and chicken going on the stove, a bazillion earwigs crawled out (okay, maybe more like 6, but still, with the pinchers and all it was as scary as a bazillion).

So I flipped out momentarily, chopped of their ugly little heads and tossed them into the garbage before the kids could see. The last thing I need is a crew of kids afraid to eat the one veggie they all love for fear of having an earwig pinch them from the inside as it slides to a slow and painful death in their cute little tummies. I cleared the crime scene, making sure no one knew what had crawled out of our dinner, and got back to cooking. By now it was time to add the broccoli and I was carefully inspecting each bit as I tossed it into the stir fry.

I served up a scoop of rice in each bowl and topped it with a scoop of the chicken mix and called it good! As we sat down to dinner, I confidently dug into my dinner and about 3 bites in, an earwig fell off of my fork and landed on the lip of my bowl. I covertly flipped it's stir fried little body under my bowl ( a technique that I learned from the boys when they want to cover up a spill and not have to clean it up) and went about my meal. Only a little more slowly and carefully from that point on.

What's the lesson here? Well, Joe says if you soak your broccoli in water, the earwigs will all float to the top. Whatever you do, don't be too hasty to serve your garden fresh veggies! You wouldn't want to make the kids more afraid of healthy food than they already are!!!

Hope you enjoy this once a month recipe! There are more to come!

Once a Month Cooking

2010-08-29T13:18:00.000-07:00

We're at the tail end of our first month eating from my Once A Month Cooking try! Joe was skeptical (to say the least) but in the end even the skeptic had to admit that the food was great! Less money, less time, less waste, and better food! All of that means a great way to cook!

The deal is that one Friday a month I hit the grocery store early in the morning with a well organized list, having multiplied all of the ingredients appropriately. Then I head home and start cooking. This is a great way to spend a day with a friend! This month I made meatballs, meatloaf (both from ground turkey instead of beef), chicken and spinach enchiladas, teryaki chicken, and turkey tarragon. I alternated these freezer meals with crock pot meals because our freezer is small. It takes so much less time than you'd think to multiply all of your meals by 4! The oven is already hot, the water is already boiling! You just keep on adding the next meal when the first one is done and you'll be amazed at how fast it goes. Some of the meals don't even require any cooking. The teryaki chicken just required me to mix the seasoning liquid and add raw meat chunks before tossing it in the freezer.

If you're into canning, you can do even more quick and easy meals! This year we had an overabundance of zucchini so we canned a super spicy zucchini salsa. With a whopping 36 quarts of this chunky salsa, we are going to eat it as a meal poured over rice once a week through the winter. What a great way to warm up! And there's almost no cooking required. If you plug a rice cooker in to a timer, you can have your rice ready and waiting when you get home and just pour the salsa over top and serve! Easy and delicious!

Over the next few weeks I'm going to try and post the freeze ahead recipes that we have enjoyed the most, with all the little tweaks and changes that I made to make them a little more family friendly. I can't imagine a family out there who wouldn't love the simplicity and flavor of this method of cooking. Needless to say, we're super excited about it!

Mustard and Rosemary crusted Pork Chops

2010-08-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

I kinda sorta invented this out of necessity the other night and it turned out to be divine! I wanted to make mustard crusted pork chops, but I didn't have all of the ingredients for any of the different recipes I found online. So, I opened the pantry and decide to get creative. My rosemary plant died a slow and tragic death in my kitchen window, letting the herbs dry right on the plant. so I had to use rosemary, of course! Here's my new recipe!

Ingredients:
Plain Yellow Mustard
Honey
Parmesan Cheese
Rosemary
Olive oil

Mix 2 parts mustard to 1 part honey in a bowl. Add a big ole plop of parm cheese and a few teaspoons of rosemary. Nothing scientific about a recipe when you're just making it up on the fly. If you like sweet, add more honey. Whatever sounds good. I'm just saying that this particular group of flavors work really well together.

I flopped the thawed pork chops in the mixture to get a good coat on each side and then put them in a skillet with about 2 tbsp of olive oil. Cook on Medium heat for about 5 minutes on each side and then move the skillet to the over (preheated to 350) for another15 minutes.

Served with a sprig of rosemary, maybe on a bed of rice, this is a real crowd pleaser. Note, I did not serve it with rice or the sprig, but I should have. Maybe next time!

Garden Season

2010-08-04T08:03:00.000-07:00

I just couldn't resist sharing some pictures from our garden! It's the time of year for harvesting and canning and boy have we been doing a ton of that! It's the first year we've ever gardened and gotten a reasonable amount of food, so we're really excited.

Zucchini have been the real winner this year. I'm told that's the case around here. Back in Tennessee it was tomatoes that you would push on everyone you knew because your garden was teeming with them and you couldn't bear to let them go to waste. Here it's zucchini. I don't particularly love zucchini either, but our friend showed up with a ton of zucchini starts and so we put them in anyway. But the Zucchini salsa recupe has been awesome and I'm grateful for all the zukes!

Joe's peppers have done well too!

We planted our onions and garlic last fall and let them over winter. It was such a boost to our enthusiasm to have something already growing tall in the garden during the time that we weren't sure if anything was ever going to sprout! Now we're using all of it in our zucchini salsa! I only wish the tomatoes had ripened at the same rate so we weren't having to buy tomatoes for our canning when we'll be inundated with them in a few weeks.

This has been a great year for figuring out a long term gardening plan. Figuring out what grows well not only in our climate, but in our particularly bad soil, that our family will actually eat has been tricky, but I think we're ready to plan a garden for next year that will support our suppers year round!

Spicy Zucchinin Salsa for canning!

2010-07-30T11:10:00.000-07:00

We have, like a lot of you, zucchini coming out of our ears! I'm not a huge zucchini fan, but we were gifted with a gazillion starts from our friends, Steve, so I went on a search for zucchini recipes that I liked. I also wanted our garden to be a source of winter food and canning items, so I wanted something I could can.

A lot of places I have looked say not to can zucchini. Some say it's because it get mushy in the jar and is not worth it. Some say it's because there is not agreed upon processing time. Well, I don't know what to make of all that, but I thought you should know before you proceed that this is controversial salsa I'm embarking on here!

Here's what you'll need:

10 cups zucchini, peeled and shredded
4 onions, chopped
2 green bell peppers, chopped
2 red bell peppers, chopped
1/4 cup pickling salt
3tablespoon dry mustard
2 tablespoon garlic powder
2 tablespoon cumin
2 cups white vinegar
1 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoon cayenne pepper powder
2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon black pepper
5 cups chopped ripe tomatoes
2 cans tomato paste

This is spiced up a notch from the original recipe that I found. If you like it hot, go with this. If you want something milder, half the spices. We found this to be spicy enough to be difficult to eat on chips alone, but perfect for pouring over rice for a warming winter meal. That is, after all, why we're canning, right?

Red bell peppers were oddly expensive this week, so I used all green for some of my batches and it made for a prettier salsa. There's enough red with all of the tomatoes and the green peppers made a nice contrast.

So, you're going to chop all your veggies and stir in the pickling salt. cover it and let sit over night. The next day, rinse your veggies and add in everything that's left on the list. Bring all of that to a rolling boil, lower the heat and let simmer for 15 minutes.

Pour the mix into your jars. We got about 3-4 quart jars from this recip. If you have the zucchini for it, I recommend doing 2 batches at a time if you plan on using the big jars so that you can water bath process an entire canner full at a time and not have to re-heat all of that water for a ton of little half filled canning baths.

Process your quart jars for 15 minutes and then remove from water bath and let stand cool overnight before moving to your storage area.

Everyone Loves Fondue!

2010-07-26T09:24:00.000-07:00

I had forgotten that a tiny, fondue sized crock pot came inside of my big crock pot, and when I found it I just couldn't resist having a fondue night! It was a huge hit. Now, everyone knows I'm a sugar addict, but I have to admit that the cheese dip I made compelled me to tell the kids to have at the chocolate dessert fondue and leave more of the cheese for yours truly. We're talking divine! And this recipe differs from the traditional fondue recipes because it doesn't call for any of the bazillion dollar cheeses. That's right! It's divine and doesn't even call for some hard to pronounce, foreign cheese. Well, enough talk. Let's get the the recipe from Cheese Paradise (I know there must be such a place)!

I'm thinking the best was to make this is in a Little Dipper Crock Pot or Fondue pot, but in a pinch it might be okay to microwave on low. You'll just toss all over the following ingredients in at once and wait an hour until creamy.

Ingredients for cheese fondue:
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp minced garlic
24 oz plain cream cheese
1 1/4 cups of whipping cream
about 1/3 small block of sharp cheddar cheese cubed
garlic salt, salt, and pepper to taste!

I had cubed chicken breasts that I just cooked in the microwave, cubes of french read from the Wal-Mart bakery, Lil Smokies, and steamed cauliflower and broccoli pieces for dipping.

I was so worried that this would end up being the sort of thing where the kids would start swinging their skewers around wildly and I'd have to take them away or lecture on the danger of putting out an eye and then there would be tears and gnashing of teeth and my much anticipated fondue dinner would be a disaster. But would you believe it? Everyone acted like little angels and just seemed exceedingly grateful for such a fun dinner! Hooray! Now on to dessert!

For the chocolate fondue, I just tossed all of this in the microwave on low for a minute, stirred, and repeated until I could see that it was done. I only had one Little Dipper crock pot, which was being used for the cheese dip, but microwaving in tupperware worked just fine for the chocolate.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups of chocolate chips (any flavor)
1/2 cup whipping cream
2 tsp vanilla

That's it! For dipping items I had sliced bananas, strawberries, and marshmallows. Clearly Hunter was a fan! Like that chocolate goatee?

So go have your own fondue night! It's a blast and a sneaky way to get your kids to eat their veggies! Have fun!

Melon Syrup Recipe

2010-06-30T13:56:00.000-07:00

So, I'm stuck at home with the Chicken Pox Crew and while you're worrying about your two-day-away wisdom teeth extraction, you'd really rather be out busy keeping you mind off things than couped up playing nurse. But what can ya do, right? When it rains, a hurricane's a brewin'! Is that not what they say?

Anyway, in an attempt to keep my mind off of things while being stuck in the house I've gotten...how shall we say...culinarily creative! I set out with the mission of making cantaloupe butter because I love apple butter and pumpkin butter and cantaloupe and I found this recipe for cantaloupe butter and asked myself why in the world not? Was that sentence too long? Yup!

But as I got going in the kitchen, I found that melon does not thicken the way they claim it will in that recipe. Nope. It pretty much becomes the consistency of a textured maple syrup. But, hey! That's soundin' good to me! It is such a rich smell, this cantaloupe syrup that I've made! I can't wait to pour it over some walnut pancakes or an apple crumble cake as soon as my mouth recovers from my visit with Dr. Death! Ooh! Or maybe over some vanilla ice cream! Oh, the possibilities are endless, I tell you! Endless!

Here's the run down on getting your own to-die-for melon syrup! You're going to love me for this one!

Okay, you're going to need nothing more than a cantaloupe (I actually ended up using 1 and 1/2 melons for this, but 1 should suffice), 1 cup of sugar, 1 tsp of cinnamon, and 1 tsp of lime juice (lemon should work, but lime is what I had on hand).

Step 1 in the picture is to remove the seeds and then scoop out the melon into small chunks and place them in a saucepan on the stove. The recipe I was following said to add a 1/4 cup of water to the pan to keep from burning, but I think that's why I had to go ahead and puree an extra half of a melon to thicken things up a bit. There's so much juice (if you're using a super ripe melon) that you won't need the water. Hmm...Maybe if I had used a firmer melon I could have ended up with melon butter instead of syrup. Oh well. Who cares? Tis syrup rocks!!!

Step 2. Bring it to a boil and test to see that that you ,melon gets nice and mushy. The riper the melon, the less time you'll need here. It took about a minute for me.

Step 3. Pour that into your blender and give it a few good pulses so that it looks like a smoothie! Yum!

Step 4. Pour it back into your sauce pan and add the sugar, cinnamon and lemon juice. WARNING for all you spice lovers out there. It is my habit to double things like cinnamon and vanilla in recipes because, well, I like the good stuff. So, this cinnamon has already been doubled. So double at your own risk, spice fans! Now bring that to a boil and then turn your heat to low and let it simmer for an hour, stirring every so often.

Pour it into your jars and let cool. You've got yourself a divine summer treat, my friend! The recipe stated that it would make 1 pint of butter (that's 2 cute quilted jelly jars) but because I had to add a half melon to my watery mess, I got 3 jars. So, be flexible in your calculations or just go for the extra melon half right from the get go!

Once you're done you can either process these in a water bath canner (the site with the original recipe says you need a pressure canner, but I read otherwise in about 8 places, so use your own judgment) or place one in the fridge to eat within two weeks and fancy up the other one with some raffia and go meet one of your neighbors with a special treat that is sure to land you on their good side before 4th of July BBQ time!

Time to Can Some Strawberry Jam!

2010-06-25T10:51:00.000-07:00

Our garden is so pitiful this year that I have pretty much given up on canning anything great. I overheard Joe telling his mom that if we flopped at gardening during the time of year when veggies are so cheap, he'd dig up our garden and put in a swimming pool. The only perk of putting in all this work was going to be that we'd have veggies stored up for winter when veggies are expensive and out of season in the store. After seeing how our home grown lettuce was practically wilted before it ever got to our table, I'm a little suspicious of these out of season veggies that get shipped from other countries but are still crisp when I buy them.

Anyway, just when I gave up hope, it occurred to me that veggies are cheap in the stores right now. Way cheap. But veggies need a pressure canner and I'm not willing to fork over the big bucks until I can grow masses of cannable foods. Like if my corn patch does okay this year. But when we were at the store yesterday, strawberries were under a buck per box. So, I loaded up and then hit the canninf isle for some jelly jars (aren't they so cute?) and went home to make some magic!

I used the recipe in Better Homes and Garden's magazine, which calls for a little butter to keep the froth at bay, but later I read that adding the butter can cause it to mold or just plain have a shorter shelf life. So, my second batch was made per instructions in the sur-jel box. Here's the drill...

Gather your supplies. For one batch (10 jelly jars) you'll simply need7 cups of sugar, 3 lbs of strawberries, a pack of sure-jell, 10 jars with lids, and a water bath canner.

Cut the tops off your berries!

Isn't a bowl of berries beautiful in the morning light? Just beautiful!

Now mash up your berries, stir in the sure-jel, and bring it to a boil. Once you have a hard boil, add in your perfectly measure 7 cups of sugar. Bring it back to a hard boil for a full minute, stirring all the while. Remove from heat after the 1 minute hard boil.

It's time to fill your jars! You'll want to leave a 1/4 inch head space in each jar for this recipe. Leaving too much can result in molding and early spoilage, so get it right! I also recommend using a jar funnel. It makes a big difference in the level of mess you have to clean up.

Put your lidded jars in your water bath canner and make sure the water covers the top. Bring to a rolling boil and then leave boiling for 10 minutes (see the altitude guide in the sure-jel insert. Remove and let sit forever (just kidding, over night will do) before moving. It can take up to 2 weeks for the gel to set. Before then, you have a nice ice cream topping!

Be ready for a mess. See this? It took a while to clean up. And if you drip on the counter, clean it before it sets. I let some stand and it's still there. Not good!

Why not pretty it up a bit and give it away for a nice summer gift? Ignore the sidewaysness of this pic. A little rafia and a cute lid label will work wonders. If you want my customizable labels, go here and download yourself a set. If you have Powerpoint, you can type in your name. You can also just delete everything in the circle and make labels for other things too. Getting the circle the right size is the hardest part and I've taken care of that for you! Enjoy!

Sausage Balls

2010-06-18T14:59:00.000-07:00

Alright, folks! Lots of you were excited about the spinach balls, so I'm going to go ahead and share the recipe for the spinach balls much loved cousin, the sausage ball! Yummy! These warm and fabulous treats are in no way a diet food, but really...sometimes it's worth a splurge and this is one of those times. So when you feel like going for good over healthy, this is what to make!

Ingredients:
10 oz pack of shredded cheese
1 lb of hot ground sausage
2 1/2 cups of bisquick

That's all!
Put the cheese in a big bowl and melt it slightly in the microwave. Pour in the bisquick and sausage and just get to squshing it between your fingers. Mush it, squish it, and get it all worked together. Now spoon up a tablespoon's worth and roll it into a ball. Repeat until you've used it all up. Place all of the balls on a lined cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. They'll be a sizzly and crisp when you pull them out.

Enjoy them while they're warm. Make a double batch and freeze half for some time when you just need comfort food. I've frozen both the "dough" if you can call it that, and the baked balls and both work quite well.

Enjoy!!!

Spinach balls: a party favorite!

2010-06-16T10:36:00.000-07:00

Growing up, we had a few foods that we only ever had around the holidays and just the smell of them Let you know that this was going to be a special day. Now that I'm all grown up, I have made them for Thanksgiving at friends' homes, for Christmas at my mom's house, and for parties in my own home.

These little balls of yummy goodness are the perfect bite size snack for any special occasion and everyone who has them asks for the recipe. While I have enjoyed being the only one to make them, I suppose it's time to share the recipe. You'll love it!

Ingredients:
2 packs of frozen spinach (the blocks)
2 cups bread crumbs (I like the italian seasoned kind)
1 minced onion
2 eggs
3/4 cups of melted butter
1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese
1 tbsp garlic salt
1 tbsp thyme

Get out your biggest bowl and mash all of this together with your hands. Don't be scared! Channel your inner child and enjoy the squishiness! Once it is all thoroughly mixed, start grabbing about a table spoon's worth at a time and rolling it into little balls. Place your balls on a lined cookie sheet and then bake at 300 degrees for 20 minutes.

You're going to love 'em! And it just might even get your little ones to eat their spinach!

Pork BBQ recipe and entertaining tips

2010-05-31T17:20:00.001-07:00

Our dear friend and basement tenant, Steve, recommended that we host a BBQ for the Baha'i community and friends for Memorial Day. I love any excuse to host a party, so I was totally on board! We had a potluck gathering and I provided the BBQ.

I had a recipe for fork-shredded Sweet Pork BBQ that I had been wanting to try and this seemed the perfect time. The results were good, but I thought with a tweak, I could do better. You are getting pictures of the original and the recipe for the improved variety (which is way improved).

You'll need:
1 can of lemon lime soda
1/2 BBQ sauce
1/4 brown sugar
1/2 small can of tomato paste
1 big ole pork butt!

Add everything but the pork to the crock pot and stir it up a bit. Flop in the pork butt roast. Cook on low for 6-8 hours.

When it's done it should shred easily with 2 forks. Once you've shredded it, pour about 1 cup of the remaining juices over the meat and serve warm.

In addition to the pork, I served a fruit platter and some cold veggies with dip. Can I just take this moment to say that there is really no excuse every to serve pineapple without using the top for a decoration? I see it all the time and I just wonder who it was that thought serving one of the coolest looking fruits without displaying the coolest looking part was acceptable behavior. Anyway, use the top as the center of the platter, people! Come on!

Other random tips for entertaining...even if what you serve tastes average, people will feel so special eating it if it looks pretty. And it takes so little to make it look like an event and not like you threw something together at the last minute. So what if the lemonade is from a mix? Toss in a few slices of lime and a sprig of mint to make it look like something you'd drink on a stay at the spa (not that I know what that would be like, but I have a good imagination). I keep lemons and limes on hand at all times to spruce up dishes that really were last minute, but that I don't want to appear that way.

At our humble gathering, Everyone had a great time! We ate on the steps because even though we are land rich, we are chair poor. We played a killer round of softball with boys against girls. That's my man up there winding up for a serious pitch! Isn't he adorable? The boys kicked our rear ends, but we had a total blast yelling and jumping up and down while we played. Our community sometimes struggles with the social aspect of gatherings, but on this day it seemed like we were a group who had heckled each other in sports for years. It felt so great! Good food and good friends make for a great holiday weekend!

Southwest corn bread bake

2010-05-11T19:48:00.001-07:00

I was listening to this Zorba Paster on Your Health on NPR the other day while we were waiting for Hunter to get out of speech and they featured this recipe. It sounded so good that I had to try it, with my own little modifications, of course. They talked about how many American meals center around the animal protein and when you have a guest who is a vegetarian, many people lose their balance in the kitchen. That has been true of us, in the past, but I think we're getting better. Plus, we have made a great effort to reduce the amount of red meat in out meals, so I was ready for this recipe.

If your kids are grown, or unpicky, you may want to go with the link version for the base and then add my toppings. But my kids won't touch peppers, so I altered it to make it a bit ore kid friendly. Here's what you'll need:

1 package of corn bread mix
1 egg (for the mix)
water (as according to the cornbread mix directions)
1 can of black beans (or pre soaked and prepared black beans)
1 can of golden corn
minced garlic
chopped olives
sour cream
1 8oz bag of shredded cheese
salsa
cilantro
chopped cucumbers
spray oil

Spray your oven safe dish with non stick spray and set aside
Prepare your corn bread batter in a second bowl.
Add 2-3 tbsp of minced garlic to the batter and blend well.
Now you will layer your dish like a lasagna with batter, black beans, corn, batter black beans, corn.
cover with about half of the bag of shredded cheese and top with about half of your olives.
Bake uncovered according to corn bread instructions.

Remove and serve, topping each individual serving with fresh shredded cheese, salsa, sour cream,cucumber and fresh cilantro.

Your family is going to love this!

Black Bean "Meatloaf"

2010-05-09T10:34:00.000-07:00

I have laryngitis today and can't make a sound, so of course it seems like a fine time to sit down and catch up on my blogging. Lucky you! This week I tried something new. Something fabulous- if I may say so myself. I came up with a new meatless meatloaf.

It's simple, really. I just replaced the ground beef in my regular meatloaf recipe with 3 cans of drained black beans. You could also use the dry beans that have soaked over night and cooked to tenderness.

Ingredients
3 cans of black beans (or 1 bag of dry black beans prepared)
1 pouch of onion soup mix
1 1/2 cups of panko or seasoned bread crumbs
1 egg
1/2 cup of ketchup
3/4 cup of water

Directions

Drain beans and pour into a blender or food processor. You want them to be mushed, but not liquefied.

Now transfer the mushed beans to a bowl and add all of the remaining ingredients.

Use your hands to mix it well and form into a loaf.

Place loaf in an oven safe dish and bake at 350 for an hour.

Now, I found this to have all of the same great flavor as regular meatloaf because of all of the seasonings, but thought it was a little on the dry side when I first made it. I have found that a ketchup topping, or a tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese mix on top for the last 20 minutes of baking moistens it up a bit and adds a nice flavor addition.

Slice it up and serve with your favorite veggies to please everyone with a fraction of the fat and all of the protein you'll need. Enjoy!

Cream Sickle Cake

2010-04-22T13:53:00.000-07:00

I found this recipe on a blog that I love called Make It and Love It, and I do happen to love everything about everything I've made from that blog. Such a creative woman! Anyway, she said, "I believe in Heaven and I believe in Heaven they serve this!" (or something like that). That was enough for me!

Last night was our Ridvan celebration and LSA election, which happened to involve a dessert potluck. So this seemed like the perfect time to serve something described as a little bit of heavenly food. Right?

It was so easy, and I'm pretty sure that everyone who tasted it was in a heavenly state of mind! It's true! It's divine. The only down side is that I was so busy chatting and enjoying that I forgot to take a picture before it was too late. Several people commented on the looks of it, so take my word for it, it's a pretty cool dessert!

You'll need:
a few cups of orange sherbet
an 18oz can of sweet condensed milk
1/2 cup of orange juice
a pack of cream cheese
a tub of cool whip

Get a loaf pan and line it with aluminum foil. Now press about 3 cups of sherbet into the bottom and smooth the top. Freeze that for about 10 minutes to let it harden up. While it's freezing, get out your mixer and whip the cream cheese. Once it's all soft and fluffy, slowly pour in the condensed milk. Next add the OJ. And finally the Cool Whip. Let it all blend together until it's smooth and creamy. Now get the loaf pan out of the fridge and pour your new mixture on top. Put it back in the freezer and wait for 3 hours before serving. When it's ready, it easily comes out of the foil and can be slices like bread and served. I served about 10 with it last night, but I'll admit that I wish I had more!

I had a little of the creamy deliciousness left over, so I made some minis from those unusably small tupperwares that they sneak into every set. The kids loved it!

Give it a try. And go over and check out Make It and Love It! I'm pretty sure you'll find something that you just can't live without making!