Something Sweet and Something Savory

Hmmm....sounds like a good name for my food business - at least the one that exists in my mind.

Tonight we are invited to one of the golf course clubhouses for a New Year's Eve party. It's not a swank private club or anything, but we know the owners and they are putting on a bit of a bash. They are supplying beer and wine and we are bringing appetizers. The hostess has lined up some movies and activities for the kids, so no need for babysitters. As much as I like to get out without the kids, it's nice not to have to pay a babysitter either. I think I'll be designated driver tonight - it's probably my turn anyway. Even if it wasn't, I'd probably volunteer anyway - it's a great way to keep yourself from overindulging!

Appetizers are one of my favorite things to make, but it's so hard to figure out something that is impressive but that also doesn't require being kept hot, etc. We might have access to the clubhouse kitchen, but I'm not sure, so I needed to find something that didn't have to be kept hot - but that's no fun - all of my favorite recipes are best just-baked (like phyllo triangles, puff pastry, etc.). I also find that with this crowd, sometimes the basics are best anyway.

Anyway, I chose a kicked up onion dip from Epicurious - Blue Cheese and Caramelized Shallot Dip. I also decided to take this opportunity to try the Decadent Peanut Butter Cups that Joe from Culinary in the Desert posted a while back. I am still feeling overloaded from all the sweets from the holidays, so I'm hoping that they all get eaten! I made them both last night, so they are done and ready to go. I'll let you know how they are received at the party.

Blue Cheese and Caramelized Shallot Dip

Photo from Epicurious

Decadent Peanut Butter Cups

What's for Dinner? (12/30/05)

When I looked over Sweetnicks' list of top 20 ARFs, cranberries caught my eye. I can't find cranberries here except around the holidays, so I wanted to be sure to try some cranberry recipes before they are gone.

Such was the inspiration for tonight's dinner. It was very tasty - bursting with flavor and color - and healthful to boot. I love meals like that! However, I ended up using leftover cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving that was in the freezer. Not that using up a leftover was a bad thing, but for my next ARF recipe, I'd like to try something else with fresh cranberries.

Pork (Chops) with Cranberry, Port and Rosemary Sauce

Garlicky Sautéed Spinach

Rosemary and Garlic Roasted Potatoes

Stay tuned for something sweet and something savory tomorrow for New Year's Eve.....

How could I forget my Bagel Biter?

Among my first posts was a list of my favorite gadgets. Yesterday I was shopping at Bed, Bath and Beyond and saw a man standing in line with a Bagel Biter. When I came home to blog, I realized I had never put that on my list! It's not really a cooking tool, per se, which is probably why I forgot it, but it is a handy kitchen gadget.

Good bagels are not plentiful in Indiana, but Panera has very respectable bagels, so I stock up every time I am in Fort Wayne. Not quite a New York bagel (I'm a native New Yorker), but they are far superior to the impostors at the grocery store (my theory is that everything at the grocery store is just squishy white bread in different shapes). There is a Big Apple Bagel not too far away, but I never have cause to go to that neck of the woods, so Panera it is. And I think that Big Apple Bagel uses cornmeal on the bottom of the bagels. Heresy. No cornmeal on bagels or pizza crust. But that's another story...

I used to have Panera slice the bagels with their large chute/slicer contraption (very convenient!), but then I got frustrated with the number of bagels that would have one very thin half and one very thick half. So, I searched high and low for the bagel guillotine, as I've seen them called. Sure, you can use a serrated knife, but after almost slicing a piece of my finger off while trying to slice a bagel a few years back, I prefer this safer contraption. The only bad part is that Panera's bagels are so large, it can be a bit difficult to even get them IN the slicer.

Anyway, that's a very long-winded way of saying that I love my Bagel Biter.

Shopping and eating....

....two of my favorite activities. And don't they go together so nicely?

Today's shopping trip was much nice than the hectic rush job shopping trip right before Christmas. Normally I'll treat myself to a nice lunch on these days to myself, but that day I was so rushed I went through the Burger King drive thru! Ack!

I visited Jefferson Pointe in Fort Wayne - a new, more upscale, outdoor shopping mall. I sure hope that this is a trend that continues - our area could use more places like this. It really felt like Fort Wayne was moving up in the world when Williams-Sonoma and Ann Taylor Loft came to town!

Not only do I love to shop there, but they have some great eateries too. Now, you have to keep in mind that we are living in foodie wasteland, so it doesn't take much to get me excited. The mall has mostly chain restaurants, but nice chain restaurants. Like Biaggi's, my favorite, Panera, Eddie Merlot's, Puccini's Smiling Teeth and Flat Top Grill.

Flat Top Grill is often my pick because it is yummy and full of healthful choices. That certainly fit the bill today, after indulging so much over the holidays. For those who are not familiar with this restaurant, it's a create-your-own-stir-fry joint. You pick all the ingredients and they cook it for you. It was sooo nice to walk in and have such delicious choices as brown rice, seitan, edamame, broccoli, and many other veggies. They have also added tuna and calimari to their ingredient choices. Kudos to Flat Top for being a healthful alternative in a sea of junk food!

I often follow my healthful lunch with a visit to Cold Stone Creamery, which is right next door. Tempting indeed. Today I passed on that and opted for a hot chocolate with skim milk at Panera, skipping the whipped cream. It was a nice little pick me up without the guilt. Not only a nice dose of calcium, but I've been reading wonderful things about cocoa as well. Hot chocolate is practically health food!

Part of my shopping trip involved returning the fryer that I just got for Christmas. Sadly, it was a dud. Even after an hour of heating, the oil never got over 200º. Disappointing. After looking at different fryers I decided that I would pass - they all look quite flimsy. The sturdier models have the heating element right in the oil container and I just know that I would feel hassled when it came time to clean a unit like that.


In the end, I decided to trade it in for a waffle iron. We have a Belgian waffle maker, but it doesn't do a very good job with a moist waffle like a pumpkin waffle - the outside gets overcooked before the insides are done. I'm hoping that a regular waffle maker will work better. I ended up with the Cuisinart - will be giving it a test run this weekend, no doubt.

One more thing before signing off tonight....a clarfication about TSN's Virtual Recipe Club. January's theme is not limited to quick breads and muffins - it can be granola bars, waffles, pancakes, etc. I'm most interested in things that are portable, like muffins or bars, but any whole grain breakfast food will do. After all, I do need more recipes for my new waffle maker.....

New Monthly Blogging Event - Virtual Recipe Club

Picture from www.corrystuart.com/natspeaking.html

MOMS Club - an organization for stay-at-home-moms - has a monthly recipe club where we pick a theme, make a recipe and bring the food and the recipe to share. We sit around, chat and eat good food. Yum! I have since quit MOMS Club, but I miss the recipe club. It's not quite the same, but I thought - why not an online recipe club?

I must admit I haven't quite thought this through, but I would like to have a monthly blogging event that involves trying new recipes and then sharing our favorites. The basic idea would be to pick a theme, try new recipes throughout the month that fit that theme and then share our favorites at the end of the month. It could be just one recipe or it could be several, that's up to you.

As with the Virtual Cookie Swap, I will not limit this to bloggers only. If you don't have a blog, simply email me your recipe and photo (if possible) and I will post for you.

To get us started, I'll pick the first theme. I'd like to address breakfast and healthier eating, so I'd like to make the first theme whole grain quick breads and muffins. (It does not have to be organic - I just liked the graphic above.) It would also be nice to get in some other healthful ingredients such as nuts, fruits (such as banana) and vegetables (such as zucchini and carrot). I have a hard time getting in a good breakfast in the mornings. I'm simply not hungry at 5:30 a.m. and there is little time to do any preparations. I'd like to have an arsenal of bread or muffin recipes so that I can have breakfast on-the-go, but a healthful one. I know that many of us try to eat healthier after the holidays, so I hope this theme appeals to others out there as well.

If you have any suggestions for future themes or other ideas on how this could be structured, let me know. In the meantime, get cooking and have fun experimenting or share a tried and true. Let's say that the cut-off for this event is January 27th. I hope you all will join me!

Please see this post for more details.

Wine Review: Toasted Head Red Wine

Cost Plus World Market lists this wine as Toasted Head Giguiere Ranch Red, but on the Toasted Head website, I see the only thing I see listed is their Red Wine.

In any case, it runs about $10 and was an impulse buy - something new to try.

So far I like it quite well. It's a bit dry, but it has complex flavors - something that I like and something that often seems to come with a bit of dryness - at least with the lower-priced wines that we tend to try.

Back Home Again

It's always wonderful and relaxing to visit my parents, but it's always nice to be back home too. Bailey did quite well on our return trip. Bailey is less than fond of the car, but we decided to brave the 12-hour car trip with him at my mother's insistence. On the first leg, he stood and panted the entire time. He wanted so badly to be up front with us, but within the first 10 minutes of our trip, he managed to completely entangle himself in the portable DVD player, so he had to be banished to the back. Still, he could reach his head far enough to the front to be petted by the boys. On the second leg, he finally relaxed enough to lie down and rest for most of the trip. He looked quite pitiful the whole trip, but I still think he must have preferred this to being kenneled. And at least he didn't barf like he used to as a pup......

Can I say how wonderful it is to be back on broadband????? Dad, it's time to update!

As promised, I've come back to post those recipes we made over the holidays. However, the Vichyssoise recipe does not seem to be online or in my New Best Recipe cookbook, so I'll have to track that down from my mom and post it later. It was delicious!

In the meantime, here are the other recipes. The Orange and Almond Oatmeal Cookies stem from another recipe, Chewy Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies, so I've included that recipe as well. Stay tuned for experiments with the new fryer, a possible new monthly blogging event here at TSN and my entry for Sweetnick's ARF/5-a-day.

Creamy Tomato Soup

Orange and Almond Oatmeal Cookies
Chewy Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies

My newest gadget...

...is a Hamilton Beach Deep Fryer. I'm still trying to decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing! Surprisingly, it was a gift from DH who, when we discussed fryers in the past, was usually the one to talk us out of getting one.

Recent research on raising oil to high heats aside, I choose to listen to Alton Brown who claims that if you fry at the proper temperature, the foods you are frying should absorb very little oil. On one show, he fried fish and potatoes and at the end, there was only a tablespoon or two less oil in the fryer.

The temptation, though, is to fry things that aren't good for you no matter how little oil they absorb. Things like doughnuts. Mmmm...I've never made my own doughnuts. Healthful or not, those might have to be my first frying experiment.....

Dang, still can't figure out why the link button is not showing up on this computer. Couldn't get it to upload a picture either, so I'll have to update when I get home.

The vichysoisse is done and is very tasty....stay tuned for the recipe. I hope the boys like it - it's so easy to make and something different than are usual soups. I've made it before, but it's been quite a while....funny how you tend to sort of forget about certain dishes.....

Tomorrow is a travel day - 12 hours in the car - so no time for blogging. Be back on Wednesday. TTFN.

Merry Christmas!

Between traveling and my parents' maddeningly slow (I hope I NEVER have to go back to dial-up) computer, there isn't much time - or patience - to blog this week.

So, until I'm back at my own computer, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday with your families.

Please tune in later this week for the Orange and Oatmeal Almond Cookies based on this Cook's Illustrated recipe. Tomorrow we are making Cook's Illustrated's Vichyssoise recipe and Food Network's Creamy Tomato Soup - I'll post and review these recipes later this week as well.

Also stay tuned for some healthy cooking to start off the New Year on the right foot. I am going to focus on eating right and getting more exercise and over at Sweetnicks, she is trying to get more ARF in her diet. Don't know what ARF's are? Go on over to Sweetnicks to find out.

For some reason, most of the editing buttons for Blogger are not appearing on my parents' computer - it's an Apple - so I'm not able to provide any links at this time either. I only see the spell check button and the add image button. Help! Get me back to my computer!

2005 Virtual Cookie Swap (Updated 12/19)

Just a reminder that you are welcome to join the swap whether or not you have your own blog. Simply email me your recipe and I'll make sure it gets posted here, along with a photo if you have one. Also, feel free to particpate up until this Thursday, the 22nd. After that, I may not be near a computer to post your recipes or links.

Amaretti Cookies

from Julie D at Meanwhile, Back in the Kitchen
Zebra Cookies from Hélène at Peloquin-Charest

Pistachio Lemon Drops

from Alysha at The Savory Notebook

Coconut Macadamia Shortbread

from Alysha at The Savory Notebook

Peanut Butter Whoopie Pies

Alysha at The Savory Notebook

Butter Pecan Meltaways

from Val - a wonderful baker who needs to start a blog ;)

Chocolate Peppermint Sandwich Cookies

from jjsooner at Speculative Musings

Orange-Pecan Brown Sugar Cookies

from Val - a wonderful baker who needs to start blogging

Peppermint Meltaways

submitted by Val

Monica's Mocha Bars

Submitted by Val

Caramel-Glazed Cardamom Palmiers

submitted by Gertdog, a fellow Cooking Light Bulletin Board member

Brownie Bowties

submitted by Gertdog

Is there such thing as too many cookies?

Nah. Nope. No way. But try telling that to my expanding wasteline.....

My son has a class party tomorrow and all the boys have been asked to bring a treat. As in the past, he asked me to make peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. Since the Cook's Illustrated recipe worked very nicely for my Peanut Butter Cup Cookies, I decided to use the dough again. This time, however, I did add the chopped peanuts and I cut the vanilla in half. The peanuts are a nice addition and I am no longer distracted by the strong taste of vanilla.

Although the batter is quite soft, the cookies hold their shape very nicely. I found that 10 minutes was just right for my oven. The cookies are nice and chewy and not as crumbly as many other peanut butter cookies I have tried. Very nice!

The recipe I linked to on Cook's Illustrated is actually a bit different from the recipe printed in The New Best Recipe, so I'm going to create a separate post for this cookie. It's confusing - their site has recipes that are very close to what is in the cookbook, but they often are just a little different.

Peanut Butter (Chocolate Chip) Cookies

Half of these cookies will be going to school and the other half will be saved to bring to my parents' house over the holidays. However, my mom is not as keen on peanut butter and chocolate as the rest of us, but no fear - on the pages following this recipe, I happened to notice a variation on their Chewy Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies that involves orange zest and almonds. I'm thinking dried cranberries too. Stay tuned......

Fondue!

The in-laws are here to visit on their way to the East Coast, so it's time for a special dinner, especially since we didn't have ANY dinner waiting for them last night when they arrived. Whoops - bad hostess. Again.

We'll be treating them right tonight, though. First we will start off with a warm goat cheese and marinara sauce appetizer. All you do is place some marinara in a shallow baking dish and add several thick slices of goat cheese. You heat it up in the oven until the sauce is warm and the goat cheese is soft. Serve it with a nice, crusty bread and you're done. Couldn't be easier when you keep homemade marinara sauce on hand in the freezer.

For dinner, we are planning to do fondue, wild mushroom risotto and a salad. We're doing a chicken and shrimp fondue with various sauces. The sauces are always the hardest part for me - I can never decide what to make! I usually make 4 different sauces - probably because our fondue plates have 4 different spaces for sauces. As I was trying to decide what sauces to make, I stumbled on a recipe for Quick Peanut Vinaigrette from an issue of Martha Stewart's Every Day Food and decided to give this recipe a shot. It's very tangy and I see many different uses for it. The Curry Mayo is from a recipe that my MIL shared with me, but I, excuse the expression, kicked it up a few notches. The third sauce, a Dijon-based sauce, like the vinaigrette, is really a salad dressing recipe, but it makes an excellent sauce for fondue. We do not use oil when we fondue - we use white wine, a few slices of lemon, a few slices of onion and some tarragon - easy and healthy. Tonight I think I will use part chicken broth and part wine - it kills me to dump so much wine, even if it is cheap wine, into the fondue pot. For the salad, we are using spinach instead of mixed greens for a bigger nutritional punch. Hopefully I'll have time to post some pictures later, but until then......here's the menu......

The Sauces:

Dijon Salad Dressing

Curry Mayo

Quick Peanut Vinaigrette

Wild Mushroom Risotto

Mixed Greens with Goat Cheese and Candied Almonds

WDB #14

This weekend's dog blogging over at Sweetnicks has a twist - the picture must include food. Sweetnicks is also offering a cookbook prize for the best picture.

This is a repeat photo, but I love it and it does involve food - at least one little piece of food. A green bean. I'm going to use this one because it was not something we tried to pose, it's just what happened when we gave Bailey a green bean. I don't think I'd get anything better or more unique with a posed photo (not that there's usually any posing of Bailey anyway - at least not without great effort)!


So, don't forget to stop by Sweetnicks tomorrow night to see what the creative folks come up with for their precious pooches.

Snow, Fog, Freezing Rain.....

...we've got it all. Including another day off of school. I don't know whether to consider this a snow day or a fog day. It was the fog that was bad this morning - lots of snow on the ground, a little rain and freezing rain and warmer temps caused dense fog. However, we also have snow coming down pretty good right now and there is another Heavy Snow Warning in effect with a possible 4-8 inches coming. So, I prefer to think of it as a snow day, not a fog day because a fog day would be silly. We actually did have a day off of school last year due soley to fog. Insert smiley face with rolling eyes here.

Here it is not even officially winter and folks in the area are already sick of snow. The weather station said we've already had 15 inches of snow this year - maybe adding another 4-8 today - and we're usually still waiting for our first meager snow. The average yearly snowfall for this area is 30 inches - by the end of the day today, we should be over halfway there. And they had predicted a warmer, milder winter.......hmmm.....

In any case, I will once again be making very good use of my day off. If you have to have a day off (that you will be required to make up in the summer), this is definitely the time of year where it comes in most handy. Today I'll be baking, wrapping, visiting the post office, cleaning and various other tasks. Perhaps a visit to the YMCA as well - especially if the boys continue what they started this moring by being grumpy and fighting.

Last night was a rather frustrating night of baking. I won't go into the boring details, but things ended up turning out okay in the end. We made little pretzel candies (so easy and usually quite the hit) and Peanut Butter Cup Cookies. These were all made for a school Christmas party today that ended up being postponed until next week because of our FOG closing. I'll likely just throw everything in the freezer until next week - at least I'm ready now. The candies are a terrific project to do with kids - they can do the entire thing (except for removing from the oven) by themselves.

I may have more cookies to post later if I do indeed have time for more baking (but other holiday preparations need to take precedent at this point), so stay tuned......

Sweet and Salty Pretzel Candies

Here's a picture from Party Works that gives you an idea of what these candies look like with pecans. They also give a step-by-step photo tutorial. Whatever you do, don't increase the oven temperature - I found that out the hard way - the candies actually get hard and crumbly at higher temps. Sometimes less really is more.

Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

A Sledding Party

Last Thursday night, we got 8-9 inches of snow (on top of about three, so we're up to about a foot here) and had a snow day on Friday. I spend most of Friday trying to get a few decorations up - it's been hard to get that done between moving, getting ready for holidays and working full time. The snow day was a gift indeed - perfect timing.

Friday night we decided to try to throw together a last-minute sledding party on Saturday afternoon. We called a few friends and ended up with two couples (only 4 adults, but they have 8 kids between them - 4 in each family!) coming over Saturday afternoon/evening. Being this was a last minute thing and the kids both had sports going on Saturday from 10-12 AND I had a bit of cleaning to do beforehand, I didn't have much time to prepare anything. I ran through the store Saturday morning and grabbed a bunch of munchies, a horseradish cheeseball (that turned out to be surprisingly good) and the fixings for some chili.

This last minute things goes completely against my nature - I like to plan so that I can have plenty of homemade goodies to serve. However, sometimes it's just fun to do things on the spur of the moment - if we wait until it's the perfect time or until we have things just so, we'd never end up having anyone over - especially when it comes to sledding - that's something you can't plan for ahead of time. I'm glad we did it, but it stilled pained me to have so many carb-type, storebought things.

So, I guess that means I have another recipe to share. It's a chili recipe adapted from Jane Brody's Good Food Book. I added meat to it this time, but it's also great without. I first started making it back when I wasn't eating meat. I was fixated on cleaning and getting ready for the guests, so I didn't get a photo.

Vegetarian Chili

WDB #13

Got this one today of Bailey with his crazy upside-down grin. I was in the kitchen and heard him sneeze and just knew he was rolling around on his back. For some reason, being on his back makes him sneeze!

Don't forget to head on over to Sweetnicks for the rest of the pooches joining WDB #13.

What's for Dinner? (12/7/05)

With temperatures in the teens as a high - single digits and below as a low - it's the perfect weather for a stick-to-your-ribs meal. Like pot roast and mashed potatoes. Perfect cold weather comfort food. I don't make pot roast very often because of the high fat content, but we sure do enjoy it when we do have it. I came home from work today at lunch to get it started - my crockpot seems to cook too quickly to allow me to start it in the morning before work.

I braved the elements to take Bailey for a walk today and the thought of this meal and a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon (okay, so my pot roast was really a Cabernet Sauvignon Pot Roast) kept me going. Red wine is perfect for helping to keep the arteries clear with a meal like this.

For the cooking wine, I used one of those little bottles of Lindemans. I love those little bottles and have seen them before, but our store just started carrying a larger variety - I was happy to see Lindemans and Stone Cellar among them - much better than the Vendange which was just about all they carried previously. The little mini bottles are prefect for cooking - sometimes I need to open something that I don't necessarily want to drink - with the little bottles, I don't have to worry about wasting anything - they measure in at just under one cup. And since Lindemans is pretty decent, I wouldn't mind drinking what little is leftover. Hick.

For the meal, we served Sterling's Vintner's Collection Cabernet Sauvignon (runs in the $10 range). This is a tasty, inexpensive wine.

Merlot Pot Roast with Horseradish Smashed Potatoes

What's for Dinner? (12/5/05)

Dang, I have a day of cooking and baking and I can't get onto any of the blogs! But at least I can still post.............I think...............

Tonight I made one of my favorite, quick, easy, healthful, weeknight soups. Like a dump cake, you could really call this a dump soup - you mostly just open a bunch of cans and dump them in the pot. Okay, so that doesn't sound particularly appetizing, but this soup truly is quite tasty.

I served it with crunchy bread (a staple in this house) and sliced apple. This soup also freezes very well.

Tomato-and-White Bean Soup

Photo from Cooking Light

Still here....

...still cooking...just not posting.

It's hard to find the time these days. I think part of it is having our computer in the basement - doesn't feel as comfortable or as accesible. Maybe that's because the office/guest room is still pretty messy. I'll try to work on it this weekend to make it feel more relaxing.

Not being on the computer so much is a GOOD thing really - I spent far too much time on it before moving. However, I'd like to find a little more time than I'm spending now - there's got to be a happy middle somewhere.

Anyway, I've been cooking, but it's been off-the-cuff kind of stuff without real recipes. Tuesday night I made a beef stew, very loosely based on this recipe from Cooking Light. The stew came out quite nicely, but it was missing something and I can't figure out what was missing. Last night I made a shrimp dish to use up some tomato paste. The sauce consisted of olive oil, butter, tomato paste, white wine, garlic, fat-free 1/2 & 1/2 and a little chicken broth, along with some red pepper flakes. A little unusual (at least for us), but it came out quite well. I served it over pasta.

I will try to post the first two cookie recipes that have been sent to me tomorrow. Now that my cold is pretty well cleared up, we'll definitely be doing some baking this weekend - I can't wait! Yummy!