Where's the Tablespoon?

Cranberry Granita

2011-05-31T20:48:00.000-04:00

I think I saw this recipe one morning on one of Giada's Food Network shows. It seemed really simple so I gave it a shot. It turned out to be a big hit with Kim and just about anyone else who tries it. It's really light, full of flavor, and incredibly easy to make.

The recipe can be found here. Cranberry Granita.

I plan to try it with other fruit juices in the future. I think it would be pretty good with Ocean Spray's Blueberry juice cocktail and maybe with a flavored vodka.

Nick's Supermarket Kabobs

2011-05-26T19:11:00.000-04:00

I came home from work the other day and decided to see what I could grab from Nick's Supermarket. If you're in Clinton, Waldorf, or Prince Frederick you should check Nick's out if you're looking for something to throw on the grill. They've got great cuts of meat and the prices are good. The one by us has beer too so that's one less stop I have to make.

I came home with a bunch of hamburgers and some kabobs. The kabobs had beef or chicken with onions, green peppers, and tomatoes. They had some light seasoning already on them but I decided to marinate them also. For the chicken, I went with Lawry's Baja Chipotle and for the beef I used A1 Chicago Steakhouse marinade.

I cooked everything over medium heat coals until it was all done and charred on the edges. Check it out.

S'more Brownies

2011-05-23T19:01:00.000-04:00

While browsing my news feed on Facebook the other day, I saw that my friend Becky had shared a link to a recipe for S'mores Brownies by Food Network. Most of the time, the Food Network has pretty decent recipes so I thought I'd give this one a try. Besides, I'd never made brownies from scratch before and this seemed like a good opportunity.

Aside from being a COMPLETE mess, the brownies were great. They can't really be compared to s'mores though. While they have all the ingredients of s'mores, the flavor of s'mores just isn't there. I feel like the graham cracker flavor just wasn't as pronounced like it is in an actual s'more. Still, this was better than the s'mores cupcakes I'd had a couple months ago from a gourmet cupcake shop.

Red Robin. Yummmmm.

2011-05-17T16:16:00.000-04:00

Last night, after shopping for dress clothes, doing yard work and taking a short bike ride, I didn't much feel like cooking. Also, it was a Monday and I like to take Kim out on her days off. She didn't have any ideas on what to eat so I suggested Red Robin. We hadn't been there in a while and a burger sounded really good.

Started it off with a Black and Tan.

On to the appetizers. Kim and I shared the double combo Jump Starters. She picked the fried clam strips and I got the jalapeno coins.

Bring on the meat! X and I ordered our burgers with the extra patty. He also requested bacon. My burger came with bacon so I didn't have to worry about that. From left to right: Bleu Ribbon burger with bacon and an extra patty, Burnin Love burger, and A1 Peppercorn burger on the jalapeno cornmeal kaiser roll with an extra patty.

We entertained the idea of splitting dessert but when X and I saw that there wasn't anything on the dessert menu with peanut butter, we gave up.

Pancakes with a side of Spam tocino

2011-05-15T10:15:00.000-04:00

Nothing too special with regards to the pancakes. Aunt Jemima pancake mix with the cinnamon and brown sugar add-in suggestion from the side of the box.

Spam tocino, on the other hand, is quite special. I was skeptical the first time I tried it. I'm not a huge fan of spam. The smell isn't all too appetizing and it honestly doesn't look tasty. But, you don't turn away food when Kim's grandma is cooking. It's just rude.

So here's the low down on tocino. It's thinly slice meat, usually pork, that's been marinated in anise wine, annatto water, and a couple other things. I've never looked for those things at the store but I imagine they're not easy to find at Safeway. Luckily, Mama Sita's makes a tocino mix. It's sold in a package similar to taco seasoning and should be easy to find at most international supermarkets.

Heat one tablespoon of oil over medium low heat in a medium skillet. Take your spam out of the can and cut it into 1/4" thick slices. Put the slices into a bowl and pour the tocino mix on top. Toss the spam in the bowl to combine it with the tocino mix. Fry the slices in the oil a few slices at a time. Be sure to watch the pan because the tocino mix has a lot of sugar in it. It's not hard to burn the sugar and stink up the whole kitchen. Your finished tocino should be sticky with a crunchy outside and a meaty center.

Breakfast is served!

Coconut Bread

2011-05-13T17:00:00.000-04:00

Lack of sweets in the house is definitely a bad thing. For the past week, I've been milling around the kitchen in the evening looking for a sweet snack. I had a big bag of flaked coconut in the fridge and I didn't want it to go to waste.

After searching for sweets with coconut, I settled on a recipe for coconut bread from allrecipes. I added 1/2 teaspoon of coconut extract to the recipe for a little extra flavor. Some of the reviews recommend using coconut milk instead of whole milk but I couldn't find any coconut milk when I was at the store. I assume that Mega or Jumbo would probably have it though.

So, I baked the bread, let it cool, chopped off the end and sampled my work. Pretty tasty. The bread was medium density, had a light coconut flavor, and wasn't overly sweet. I think the next time I make it, I'll throw in some chocolate chips

I don't know what speaks more for how great this bread was, that I put it on my grandma's china or that I ate three slices before I put it away. Don' blame me though. I cut two slices to take a picture and I couldn't let them sit there until Kim got home. It was either me or the cats.

Burgers, Bacon Weave, and Soy Garlic Wings

2011-05-03T19:55:00.000-04:00

Taking advantage of a nice day (and Kim's day off), I decided to fire up the grill and make some nice, flame charred goodies. At the store, I picked up some 80/20 ground beef for the burgers, some bacon for weaving, chicken breasts, italian sausages, and some wings.

Why so much? Well, I don't like firing up the grill to cook 4 burgers. If I cook all this stuff, I'll have a variety of things to eat through the week. Burgers one night, wings for lunch, a buffalo chicken sandwich another night, and slice up the sausage and make a calzone when you think you've had enough grilled sandwiches.

For the burgers, I just splash some Worcestershire sauce onto the ground beef and smoosh it up real good. Grab it by the handful and start forming patties. Once you have the patties made up, season each side of the patties with whatever seasoning you like. I opted for the McCormick's Fiery Five Pepper.

If you've got a brother like mine (he likes to tie his shoe laces up real crazy like) then you'll have no problem pawning off the responsibility of weaving the bacon. It's really not that hard, but I just didn't feel like doing it. When he's on his game, the bacon weave looks like this.

Throw it in the oven at 375 until it's nice a crispy. Finished product serves as a burger topping or an edible coaster for you and your perspiring beverage.

Mike, Carol, and Fredo have been talking about Bon Chon for about a week now. I've never had Bon Chon but they're going to enlighten me this weekend. But, in the mean time, I decided to try a copycat of their soy garlic wings. Bon Chon is known for their crispy chicken more than the soy garlic sauce but I wasn't in a frying mood. With the grill set up for indirect heat, I crunchified the skin on the chicken and then moved the pieces away from the heat to finish slow cooking.

Once the chicken wings were done cooking, I coated them in the copycat sauce and returned them to the grill for a quick roll on the hot side. I did this because there's sugar in the sauce and I was hoping it would add a little crunch when the sugar melted down. And because the sauce was room temperature and I didn't want the wings to lose any heat being tossed in the sauce. Looks pretty good to me.

Oh yeah. I almost forgot about the burger. Toast the bun for a few seconds, toss a slice of pepper jack onto the patty, throw the bacon weave on top and crack open a beer.

Beefy Mexican Lasagna

2011-05-01T17:07:00.001-04:00

The people have spoken. Well, not too many people spoke but whatever. Mexican Lasagna will make nice leftovers for Kim and I on Cinco de Mayo.

To make Mexican Lasagna, you'll need the following things:

1.5 lbs of ground beef
6 flour tortillas (I like the jalapeno cheddar ones)
1 package of taco seasoning
1 can refried beans
1 can enchilada sauce
1 can diced green chiles
2 big handfuls of Mexican cheese
Pickled jalapeno slices

Start by preheating the oven to 375*F and browning your ground beef and seasoning it with the taco seasoning per the instructions on the package.

When the ground beef is done, remove it from the heat and set it aside. Get a cookie sheet and hit it with some non-stick spray. Lay down your first tortilla and spread on a thin layer of refried beans.

Now add about 1 cup of the ground beef to the tortilla and spread it out evenly.

When my mom makes this, she usually only puts the jalapenos on the top of the lasagna. Kim and I like spicy so I put jalapenos in place of green chiles on a couple of layers. If you don't like spicy, you can omit the jalapenos all together.

Next, you want to drizzle the enchilada sauce over the layered ingredients. I just punch a hole in the lid of the can and another hole for air and pour away. Don't go too crazy with it though. You don't want soggy lasagna. With the sauce out of the way, take the shredded cheese and sprinkle it over the tortilla. Make sure you get good coverage.

Repeat this step about 4 more times or until you run out of ground beef and you should have something that looks like this. Now, for the top layer, I don't usually use ground beef or refried beans. I just put a thin layer of cheese, a little enchilada sauce, and some jalapenos. I think my mom might use diced spring onions on hers.

By now, you should have something that looks like this.

Toss it in the oven for 30-40 minutes. When it comes out, the cheese on top should be really melty and golden brown.

Crack open a Dos Equis and grab a slice!

Choose what I cook next...

2011-04-28T10:13:00.000-04:00

Cast your votes at the poll on the right side of your screen. The poll ends on the afternoon of April 30th. Let your stomach be heard. Cast your votes today!

Easter Dinner/Grandparents' 50th Anniversary party...

2011-04-25T10:08:00.000-04:00

We've got meat, beans, casseroles, bread, salads, and dessert finger foods. If you go hungry at a Titus-Miller family gathering, it's your own fault. Check out the spread here. Say hi to Gramma too.

Look at these baked beans. There's bacon on top. Is there any other way to do it? No. Say hi to Aunt Sandy while she's doin' work.

Say hi to my plate. We've got corn casserole, green bean casserole, ham, baked beans, pasta salad, macaroni salad, and potato salad.

For dessert, we had fruit salad, a chocolate peanut butter fudge cake, and a four or five tier cake with chocolate ganache, white fondant and white fondant flowers. My cousin Kris made the tier cake. It was amazing. I don't think I'd ever have the patience to work with fondant so kudos to her on that one.

The real star of our Easter gatherings has to be these little gems. If you've never had lo mein noodles as a dessert, you need to start thinking outside the box. Gramma calls these things Robin's Nests.

There's peanut butter, marshmallow, M&Ms, lo mein noodles, and powdered sugar. And guess what, I got a whole container at my house. Muahahahaha!

Chocolate Fudge Cake with Peanut Butter Butter frosting and Chocolate Peanut Butter glaze...

2011-04-25T09:37:00.000-04:00

This weekend we celebrated my grandparents' 50th anniversary. There's always a ton of good food at our family gatherings. I'll have a separate post just for the party food. For now, we'll stick with the cake. My grandma likes peanut butter a lot. Whenever I visit, I know I can find some form of Reese's candy in the fridge or in the cabinets. With that in mind, I knew I had to make a cake with peanut butter in it. I came across this recipe and it's a real winner.

To be honest, I don't always work from scratch. Betty Crocker makes an amazing triple chocolate fudge cake mix. I've used it a few times and people always say how moist the cake is. For this cake recipe, it fit the bill perfectly. And since I was making the frosting and the glaze, I didn't feel guilty about not making the cake from scratch.

I baked the cakes and after they came out, I started on the frosting. One word of advice would be to start slow with the mixer if you don't want it to snow confectioner's sugar in your kitchen. Aside from that, making frosting is pretty straight forward.

This stuff came out extremely thick. You'll want to mix it up really good each time you put some on the cake. The recipe from A Food Coma yields about 5 cups and that's more than enough to frost two 9 inch cakes. Make sure you let the cake cool completely before frosting it. You don't want to melt the frosting or tear up your cake.

I didn't get a picture of me pouring the chocolate glaze on the cake because I had a hard time getting the morsels to melt. That's right, I messed up. Hard to believe? It happens all the time, I just don't take pics of it. Anyway, on the third try, I was successful at melting the morsels using a double boiler and a very small amount of oil.

The finished product was super rich. I don't think I've ever had a piece of cake that I couldn't finish. This cake challenged my appetite and won.

I still have a third of this thing left. Anybody want some cake?

Fiber One Caramel Delight

2011-04-23T08:48:00.000-04:00

I love anything caramel. Caramel coffee creamer, caramel sundaes, Milky Ways, you name it. I blame my babysitter for this addiction. When I was little, Agnes had these little individually wrapped caramel squares. I used to devour those things all the time.

Anyway, Fiber One has this Caramel Delight cereal. I didn't even look at it in the store. I saw "caramel" and I threw it in the cart. Fast forward to this morning, I'm opening the box and I realize that this stuff is exactly like Cinnamon Toast Crunch but with a caramel flavor instead of cinnamon. Totally awesome. This stuff was definitely like the Fiber One commercials. It tastes great and it doesn't seem like you're eating health food.

Homemade Veggie Delight

2011-04-22T20:58:00.000-04:00

As much as I dislike most vegetables, I'm really in love with this sandwich. This week, I had at least three veggie delight subs from Subway. Today, I didn't work where Subway was an option so I had to make my own veggie delight.

Today's break/lunch consists of a pita pocket, baby spinach, thin sliced cucumber, red onion, green pepper, jalapenos and Ken's Steakhouse Sweet Vidalia Onion dressing. I thought this dressing would be like Subway's. To be truthful, it's not even close. It has a heavy onion flavor and isn't as sweet as Subway's sauce. Eventually, I'd like to try this recipe.

I got halfway through eating this thing before I realized where I messed up. I forgot my pepper jack cheese. What a letdown that was.

Ten Minute Tortellini

2011-04-22T20:38:00.000-04:00

If you want a good meal and you don't have a lot of time to prep, Barilla's tortellini is for you. The small bag serves two people and is ready in 10 minutes. Does it get any better than that?

The tortellini comes in a couple of varieties like three cheese and ricotta and spinach I've had the ricotta and spinach a few times and last night I had the three cheese for the first time. Usually, we just toss the pasta in a little extra virgin olive oil but last night I decided to toss in a little garlic basil pasta sauce. Mix the sauce with the pasta really good and add some fresh ground black pepper. I really like pepper so I added a lot.

Wednesday's Dinner - Spinach and Feta Stuffed Chicken Breasts

2011-04-22T20:21:00.000-04:00

The other night I decided to fool around with my J.A. Henckels boning knife. High quality German steel butterflies a chicken breast like nothing else. When I was looking for a recipe, I knew I wanted spinach in the filling. I've been on a spinach kick lately. It's good for you, it's green and it doesn't taste too bad.

After a few minutes of looking, I decided on this recipe. It has spinach, feta (Kim's a fan), and bacon. How could you go wrong. Oh, and there's a little garlic in it too. The best part is that it cooks for an hour in the oven so I don't have to babysit it like a lot of the other meals I like to cook. I plated mine up with a small salad topped with Ken's Steakhouse Peppercorn Ranch.

Going Green....

2011-04-19T16:10:00.000-04:00

This one's for all you folks who think I can't eat anything that doesn't contain meat or bacon.

Baby spinach, onions, cucumber, green pepper, jalapenos, and pepper jack cheese on toasted Italian herbs and cheese bread with sweet onion sauce.

Quick breakfast before football practice...

2011-04-17T08:10:00.000-04:00

Nothing fancy going on here. Just a banana and a cinnamon bagel mini with chunky peanut butter.

Tortuga Rum Cake

2011-04-17T07:56:00.000-04:00

Back in January of this year, my friends Mike and Carol went on a cruise and brought back some amazing rum cake. This lead me to search for a copycat recipe. This cake was super moist and loaded with rum. I'd never had rum cake before and as far as I'm concerned, I don't need to try another kind ever again.

The recipe I used for the copycat is borrowed from another blog called Meemo's Kitchen. Here's the link to the recipe if you want to try it yourself.

Get yourself all of the cake making essentials. You know, butter, salt, eggs, sugar, cake flour, vanilla extract, instant vanilla pudding mix, vegetable oil, walnuts, and baking powder. On top of that, you're going to need about 1 cup of Tortuga Gold Rum. I bought a handle of it since I'll probably make this more than once. Who am I kidding, I'll probably drink it too.

Preheat your oven and finely chop your walnuts. I love my kitchenaid for little things like this.

Thoroughly coat your bundt pan (or angel food pan in my case) with cooking spray. I used Pam for Baking because I hate the smell of canola oil and PfB smells amazing. Take the chopped nuts and coat the bottom of the pan and set it aside.

On to the cake. Cream the butter and sugar. Add in all of the other cake ingredients. Mix slow to get everything wet (that's what she said), scrape the sides of the bowl a couple of times and then mix at medium speed until you have a really smooth batter. Pour it into the prepared pan and smooth out the top so the batter is even.

I really ought to check the temperature output of my oven. The cake was supposed to cook for 55 minutes but I think it took close to an hour and 20 minutes before the toothpick came out clean. Here's a little sneak peak.

When the cake is done, you'll want to set it on a wire rack for cooling and immediately start the rum soaking glaze. For that, you need some water, sugar, butter and Tortuga Gold Rum. Bring the water, butter and sugar to a very light boil. Reduce the heat and simmer until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture becomes slightly thicker. Don't forget to stir occasionally. Burnt sugar doesn't taste good.

Remove from heat and add the rum and stir until it's all blended up good. Pour the hot glaze all over the cake. It may not soak in all at once so you may have to wait a couple of minutes for it to absorb before you pour the rest of the glaze on.

Cool the cake completely before turning out onto a plate. The cake is pretty delicate and once you turn it out, you want be able to move it around too much. You might want to turn it out directly onto your cake carrier or whatever you plan to serve it on.

Here's what mine looked like after cooling on the rack for a couple hours.

Looks like an awesome snack for after football practice this morning. Bring your forks.

Waffle Cookies

2011-04-16T11:19:00.000-04:00

Tired of boring, flat cookies? Stop cooking them in the oven. Dust off your waffle iron and start thinking outside the box.

Mix up your cookie dough. I like the Tollhouse recipe that's on the back of the bag chocolate chips. Why? It's simple, it tastes good, and I don't have to look hard to find it. Take some Pam for Baking cooking spray and hit the plates of the waffle iron really good. Spoon in some dough and smoosh the iron closed. It you get dough seeping out the sides, you got a little too ambitious with the dough. Next time, cut back.

Cook for about 3-4 minutes on each side. The recipe for the cookies would tell you 8-10 minutes in the oven. If you let them go that long, you'll need new teeth when you finish eating. At 6-7 minutes, the cookies will still appear soft to the touch. Leave the iron open and away from the heat (Turn the iron off if you're using an electric one and not a stove top one) for about one minute. Using a fork, start peeling up the corners of the waffle cookie until you pull up enough to grab it with your hand. Set it on the baking rack to cool and repeat until you run out of dough.

Your finished product should look something like this. Admire my vicious china. It's almost better than the cookies.

Baking cookies this way is pretty time consuming as you can only make about four cookies every ten minutes. I suggest cutting the recipe down or making regular cookies with some of the dough while you're making waffle cookies with the rest.

Spicy Sloppy Joes

2011-04-16T10:56:00.000-04:00

I remember having sloppy joes a few times as a kid. I'm pretty sure my mom just bought the manwich stuff. I don't think she liked it too much so that's probably why it wasn't a staple in my diet when I was young. Anyway, I decided to make homemade sloppy joes for dinner last night. Get some ground meat (I say meat because you can use pork, beef, turkey or chicken), onion, celery, green pepper, garlic, tomato sauce, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and some red pepper flakes if you want to try this out.

Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Take about 3/4 cup of chopped onion, 1/2 cup of green pepper, one stalk of celery (chopped), and 3 cloves of garlic (finely chopped) and add them to the oil. Cook them for about 7 minutes or until soft.

Now add the ground meat. One pound should do but the grocery store rarely has just a pound so I just throw in the whole thing. Mix everything up really good and continue cooking the mixture until the ground beef is no longer pink. Drain the mixture and put it back on the heat. Add 1 can of tomato sauce, about 1/4 cup of ketchup, a tablespoon or two of Worcestershire sauce, and some crushed red pepper flakes. I added about one tablespoon and that heated things up a bit.

By now, your concoction should look like this. I know, it's not pretty but it's called sloppy joe. Did you really expect any different?

I had about 15 minutes before Kim got home for dinner so I dropped the heat to low and just let it simmer until she arrived. Sloppy joe can really turn a bun soggy in a heartbeat so I decided to toast our potato rolls in the toaster oven for a few minutes. Spoon your sloppy joe onto the toasted buns, sprinkle with cheese if you like, and serve. We were actually out of shredded cheese. I was a little bummed out by that but I do the shopping so I can really only blame myself.

This stuff makes great leftovers and you can do a lot with it. I'm sure at some point, I'll heat some up with a little cheese on top and use it as a dip for tortilla chips or fritos.

Hot Sauce Popcorn

2011-04-14T22:37:00.000-04:00

I took a break from cooking tonight and Kim had the idea to pop popcorn since she wasn't too hungry. It's not your normal buttery popcorn though. When she melts the butter, she throws in some Crystal hot sauce and some Tabasco pepper sauce.

Serve it up with some Wells Banana Bread Beer and we're ready to watch The Office.

Fueled By Mischief - The Giant Bacon Hamburger

2011-04-14T18:07:00.000-04:00

Back in February, Kim took a trip to Seattle to see our friends Arron and Becca. When I found out that I was going to be alone for a few days, I knew it was time to cook something big. I called up my brother and Kim's brother and it was on.

Armed with dark beer, lots of ground beef, 6 pounds of bacon and a lot of beer batter, we were determined to build a massive burger topped with onion rings, jalapeno coins and bacon weave.

Something's still missing! Oh, I know. The bun! And that's where I thought this little project would come to a halt. After storming five different stores, we were still lacking the buttery, carb-filled monster of a bun. Out of ideas and ready to give up, I decided to just grab four cans of biscuits. Smashing the biscuit dough into a 10" pie pan yielded this little sucker.

Do it twice and you've got a giant hamburger bun. Well, not really. It's more of a biscuit but I love biscuits so this was heaven for me.

Now the real work begins. Putting X and Skip in charge of the meat, I went on to batter and fry the jalapeno coins and the onion rings. The result was a seven pound burger (precook weight), lots of crunchy fried vegetables, and bacon weaves.

With all of the toppings prepped, it was time to fire up the grill and throw on the burger. I had been searching for a spatula big enough to turn this burger and the best solution I came up with was an airbake cookie sheet. It fit the bill and worked perfectly.

Isn't it beautiful? Once it finished grilling, we slid it onto the biscuit bun, added the bacon weaves, the fried things, and some pepper jack cheese. Pour the Terrible and LET'S EAT!