The Savory Notebook

Breakfast for Dinner

2008-10-29T20:27:00.000-04:00

Here comes yet another recipe from Rachael Ray's 365: No Repeats. But first a little side note. While looking to see if this recipe was already posted online, I found this blog - One Year Project. This family took on a year-long endeavor to cook every single recipe in the 365 cookbook - and they did it. In order even. Which, as the author writes, included eating mac and cheese four nights in a row because that's the adore they came in the cookbook.

I'm not sure if I think they are admirable for taking on such a project and sticking to it or if I think they are crazy! I mean, what about leftovers? A lot of Rachael's recipes SAY they serve 4, but they end up serving 6-8 and out of this family of four, two were small children. And expense! Trying a new recipe every single day for a whole year would probably get pretty costly I imagine. Anyway, it makes for an interesting read and certainly an it's interesting concept.

The review on that site wasn't at all favorable to the recipe I'm going to share next. In fact, she called it "ridiculous" and "rubbish" but then again, she also admits to hating eggs, so take that review for what it's worth.

We on the other hand, loved this recipe. The only thing I don't like? You guessed it - the name. Eggs-traordinary Stuffed Toasty Baskets. Rachael, I love a lot of your recipes, but these names are killing me! And if she's like this without kids, imagine the cutesy talk once/if the babies come!

The baskets in this case are pieces of sandwich bread that are rolled thin and tucked into muffin pans. Each bread basket gets a brush of butter, then an egg and then a mixture of bacon, tomatoes, onion and garlic, topped off with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. The bacon-tomato mixture is quite simple but oh-so-good. It was one of the last recipes I was able to use my garden tomatoes in. Sigh. I miss them already.

The presentation is different and elegant and it really did work. I'm always skeptical that these things will be far more complicated than they let on - especially the removal from the pan part. But all save for one came out without too much effort though I do recommend buttering up your muffin pan very well even if it is nonstick - the eggs can and do leak a bit, causing a bit of sticking no matter how nonstick the pan.

Baked Egg Cups

Mmm....mmmm....I'm craving one of these just writing about it. The bread baskets come out very nicely - almost like a pastry crust - and the eggs cooked up solid without being overdone at the recommended time of 15 minutes. I might bake them for less time to see if I can get a slightly runny egg next time.

The One Year Project author also complained that the portions are puny for this meal. I disagree again. When you deconstruct it you have one egg, one piece of bread and one slice of bacon per person. Serve it with a big veggie salad and/or some fresh fruit and it's plenty of food. But then again, I often like our vegetable sides to be more of the main dish anyway with the protein portion playing a smaller role.

I see a lot of potential for this recipe - different meats, different cheeses - whatever is on hand. This recipe would also make a very nice brunch presentation and you could bake up a large amount at one time. All it needs is a different name.....hmmm......how about Baked Egg Cups. Kinda boring, but at least it's not cutesy.

Photo Test

2008-10-29T17:07:00.003-04:00

Please excuse this random post as I demonstrate how I think photos look better when linked to Flickr versus uploading to Blogger.

This one is the Blogger, size large.

This one is the Flickr, size medium.

More uses for stale bread......this time - soup!

2008-10-28T21:31:00.001-04:00

The Drunken Cheesy Bread only used up part of my stale-bread-in-the-freezer supply. The rest went to make this easy soup - Pappa al Pomodoro - from Rachael Ray. According to many sources, including this article in the NYT by Mark Bittman, the name of this soup translates loosely to "tomato mush". Hmmm, maybe sometimes it's better not to translate things into English. Most recipes I found included tomatoes, bread, olive oil and basil as the core ingredients.

Rachael says that the soup is thick enough when
your spoon will stand up in the pot.

In her cookbook, 365: No Repeats, she explains that she got this particular recipe from a gentleman in Italy who INSISTS that if you're going to make this soup, you MUST make it exactly as written - including the chopped raw onion and the drizzle of olive oil at the end to finish it off. Only the basil is optional. Not wanting to disrespect the originator of this recipe, I did follow the instructions to the "T", only leaving out the optional basil since it's no longer in season. This soup would be a great end-of-summer soup when the garden is loaded with tomatoes and basil, but my basil is long gone and I try not to shell out any money for those pitiful little fresh herb packs at the grocery store, so I skipped it.

Pappa al Pomodoro

Certainly it would have been wonderful with the basil, but it was delicious without. I was a little skeptical about the raw onion garnish but we all agreed that the onions did add something, as did the drizzle of EVOO. Easy to make, very hearty and very satisfying. Rachael claims this recipe makes 4 servings but we got at least 6 large servings, maybe more.

Now that I've tried it as instructed, I'll feel free to add a few dried herbs in the winter months to add a little herbal zing. Wegmans makes a rosemary olive oil sourdough that would be REALLY good in this soup.

Bread, Cheese and Wine

2008-10-26T08:01:00.002-04:00

Really, that's all you need for a terrific meal: bread, cheese and wine. Here's a supremely simple dish that combines all three into one deliciously satisfying meal.

I don't know about you, but I am always tossing leftover hunks of bread into the freezer thinking that I'll find a use for them later. More often than not, I end up throwing them out when they start to look too dried out and freezer burned. While cleaning out the freezer the other day, I found yet another bag of neglected bread pieces - nice chunks of crusty sourdough - and decided I was going to use them, darn it. I ended up using half for this recipe and half for an Italian bread soup from Rachael Ray that I will share with you later.

Drunken Cheesy Bread

I started with a shallow 11 x 7-inch casserole dish and laid the bread cubes in a single layer (a slightly crowded single layer, but I tried to squish them all in there). Next comes a bit of thinly sliced onion - be sure to slice as thinly as possible as the onion does not get sauteed first - and ham (I used some sliced deli ham that we happened to have on hand). Unlike egg-based stratas or bread puddings, this one does not require an overnight soak - you just pour the wine over the bread mixture and you're good to go. I used one of those little 4-pack bottles of white wine which are just shy of 1 cup - these little bottles are great to keep on hand for cooking. The dish is topped off with 6 ounces of shredded cheese - I used Fontina and Asiago. Super simple - the hardest part is shredding the cheese.

Mmmmm....was this good. We got 4 servings out of this, just barely. It looks like a large amount of food when you're dishing it out, but since it is not dense with egg, it actually ends up being fairly light and I wouldn't have minded a bit more or at least some leftovers. Next time I'll increase the quantities and make a 9 x 13-inch pan. I was happy to see that the onions - if you slice them thinly - bake up quite nicely so sauteeing them first truly is not necessary. My first thought was that a bit of proscuitto would be really nice in this dish and of course, just about any variety of cheeses would do well - the type of dish that you can mold to whatever you have on hand.

A big thanks to Elisabeth over at the CLBB for bringing this recipe to light! I see various incarnations of this dish becoming part of our regular rotation.......so many possibilities and potential combinations.........

Excellent Granola Bars

2008-10-25T21:14:00.003-04:00

In my efforts to move us away from processed foods (not completely, just where manageable and where feasible) I've been wanting to find a good homemade granola bar recipe. I've tried a few but haven't been wowed by any. And of course I wanted a chewy one - always with the chewy. So I knew I wanted chewy and I always want easy. I also thought that some peanut butter as a bit of added protein and sustenance would be a nice touch, so when I saw this recipe over at Culinary in the Country, it seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

Chewy Peanut Butter Granola Bars

These bars are originally from Eating Well, but Joe put his own spin on things by using brown rice cereal in place of Rice Krispies, using a variety of dried fruits rather than just raisins and by subbing in brown rice syrup and golden syrup in place of corn syrup. I pretty much followed Joe's recipe but also made a couple of changes - I used yet a different combo of dried fruits and I used puffed brown rice cereal (I didn't see any crisp at the store), and I used a combo of golden syrup and corn syrup. Corn syrup is what I happened to have on hand but once that's gone I will likely switch to a combo of golden syrup (it has such great flavor) and honey - I'd like to try the brown rice syrup, but I'm thinking that honey will turn out to be more economical. For a flavor boost, I toasted the oats at 350º for 5-8 minutes or just until the oats began to brown and become fragrant.

These are fantastic. Easy to make and so nicely chewy. I was pleased with how the puffed brown rice worked in these and am thinking the puffed Kashi cereal would work well here. I think I'll add the wheat germ back in next time too. I wrapped each bar individually and kept them in the freezer - that way we could just grab them and go and I didn't have to worry about how long they would keep. I've begun experimenting with other combinations and once I have some nailed down, I will be sure to post them here.

In the Garden: Looking toward next year....

2008-10-22T21:04:00.001-04:00

Hmmm...maybe it's time to try this blogging thing again.............

We've had several hard frosts and my garden is finished producing but my time in the garden isn't done yet. It's time to get ready for next year. I took advantage of a gorgeous weekend not too long ago and cleaned it out, but now it's time to build the beds up again. I've got access to plenty of grass as usual, but I've been not-so-patiently waiting for the leaves to fall as my leaf supply has run out.

All in all I consider this to have been a successful season. There were problems to be sure, but we did end up with quite a bit of produce out of our two small beds. Along the way, we learned quite a bit. Here's how I'd sum things up:

Lasagna gardening: Very successful. I love it and can't imagine that I'll ever garden any other way. When we started out last fall, we had thick beds of leaves, grass, and straw with a bit of manure and peat moss thrown in.

As I cleaned out the garden on Saturday, I noticed that most of the matter in the garden was no longer recognizable as straw, leaves or grass - it was just beautiful, dark, rich and crumbly. Just lovely. I was very skeptical that this type of gardening truly would cut down on the number of weeks, but the weeds truly did stay down to a very manageable minimum. If only that were true in the rest of my mulched areas!

Beans: Very successful. I planted Seeds of Change Haricot Vert "Maxibel" and they were quite prolific. Even after I thought they were done for, they still produced enough beans for about one meal per week. It wasn't until sometime this month when we finally got a light frost that they finally gave up. Next year, however, I need to stagger the plantings to keep a more steady supply and avoid an overabundance at one time. I was also very pleased with the flavor and texture of these beans - as long as they were not allowed to get too big, they were tender and delicious.

The cantaloupe was juicy and it looked great, but
it just didn't have any flavor.

Cantaloupe: Meh. We did actually get a few small cantaloupe and while they were nice and juicy, they were not sweet at all. The vines didn't produce much but I have heard from others that this was just not a good year for cantaloupe. We'll probably try again next year.

Cucumbers: Quite successful. I planted several from Bonnie and one from a nursery here in town. The Bonnie's did quite well while I did not like the looks of the other variety and we did not end up eating any of them - they grew very large and were yellowed - just not appealing. The only "problem" was that they while we were inundated for a short while, they did not produce for a very long period of time. I'm thinking maybe I could stagger these as well. I also think I needed to be more attentive to watering them during our dry spells.

Basil: This did okay, but I've had better years. It was certainly at least in part my fault - I let them bolt too fast too soon.

Tomatoes: Overall, pretty successful. There were problems to be sure - first a fungus, then blossom drop and then the fruit ripening very late (and many not at all) but the plants ended up being quite vigorous and healthy and produced a lot of fruit - it just didn't ripen early enough. They were still growing and producing fruit right up until the very end. Normally my vines would be withered and browned by the end of the summer! I believe the late ripening was simply due to our weather - late frost and lots of cool, foggy mornings. I learned that they can indeed survive a fungal infection very nicely so next year I will be diligent about removing any infected leaves right away. And I won't give up hope.

Zucchini: I only planted one plant, but we were still overrun a bit. Just a few days of inattention and we were saddled with squash more suitable for playing baseball than for cutting up and cooking. I'll probably plant it again next year and just be more diligent. Right.

Sage: This did quite well. I noticed that it survives a light frost very nicely and I was picking it up until this past week. I plucked some of the leaves and froze them whole (the leaves are sturdy and survive freezing quite nicely) and have been using them in pasta dishes. It really is just like using fresh sage. I'm already wishing I had saved some more. Next year.

Peppers: These did not do terribly well. We got a few, but not many. Next year I'll plant more and not place them near bigger plants like tomatoes as they got completely overshadowed by my runaway tomato plants.

I should also add that overall I was very pleased with the Bonnie starter plants I purchased from Lowe's. I love that most of them come in biodegradable pots that you can put right in the ground.

So, some plans for next year...........

Lots of staking and caging! I will probably cage just about everything since most everything ended up falling over at one point or other - beans, basil, tomatoes, and peppers all ended up on their sides. The tomatoes will get staked AND caged. They ended up falling over and growing way out of their beds (see photo below). I do have a homemade cage in mind.....hopefully it was execute as nicely as I'm picturing in my head!

The tomato plants fell over and grew a good 3 feet out from the bed.

Watering system. I need some sort of drip irrigation system. I'll do some research on that this winter and hopefully put something into place in the spring. I lucked out this year in that there were very few times I actually needed to water, but who knows what next year will bring.

Starting from seed? I plan to look over different catalogs and may try starting from seed. Starting small - maybe just tomatoes and see how things go. Good thing about that is I know I can always schlepp down to Lowe's and pick up plants if things don't work out!

Add one more bed, extend existing beds. We've already started on that - the newspaper is down and I've added a few thin layers. Now that the leaves are falling, I should be able to get the rest done over the next week or two. I will also add grass and leaves to the existing beds to build them up again. The straw that got used as mulch this summer will stay in place and become one of the layers for next year.

The third bed goes in and the other two have since
been extended.

Oh yeah, and next year I will actually try to MAKE compost instead of just throwing stuff in a pile. As you might remember, I was intrigued by the vines growing out of my compost pile so I let them grow and here is the result:

While it was fun to get a few volunteer plants, next year I want to have a real compost pile.

It's been quite odd to have to buy produce from the grocery store again. Fortunately our farmers market is still going strong and they plan to be open until the weekend before Thanksgiving. Looking at the grocery store green beans, I was REALLY missing my beans. Even the ones from the farmers market that I picked up instead just weren't the same..........

That pretty much ends it for this year though I'm sure I'll post once or twice about gardening over the winter as I look through catalogs and plan things out. Until next year.......

The Best of Both Worlds

2008-09-21T09:57:00.000-04:00

Two of my favorite sweets are chocolate chip cookies and brownies. Well, imagine the raptures of bliss that waved over me when I stumbled upon a recipe over at eggs on sunday that combines them both into one delicious-looking double decker bar. Heaven.

While it has occurred to me before to combine a chocolate chip cookie bar with a brownie, I've never gotten around to trying it out, but the food porn photos on Amy's blog were just the push I needed. Drool.

The recipe is pretty straight forward - you start off with the brownie layer and spread that out into the pan. Next you mix up the chocolate chip cookie dough and gently spread that on top. I found that a little difficult to do because the cookie dough is a bit stiffer than the brownie dough, but I managed.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Topped Brownies

I actually baked these back in July so it's hard for me to remember all the details. That will teach me to get so behind on my blogging! These were quite good but I do remember being struck by a couple of things. In my opinion, the cookie layer - being the stiffer dough - should go in the pan first - it would make for easier spreading. However, as the cookie layer is thinner, for this recipe it makes more sense to put it on top. Which leads me to my next point. As much as I love chocolate, I found myself wanting to taste more of the cookie layer. The subtle but lovely butterscotchy flavors of the cookie dough were overshadowed by the intense chocolate flavor from the brownie. Not necessarily a bad thing, but then you probably might as well just make a plain old brownie. To fix this "problem", I would make the cookie dough thicker and make it the bottom layer, topping it off with a thinner brownie layer.

So, it sounds like I have some research to do! Sometime this winter I'll try out my own twist on this recipe and get back to you. I'm sure the family will absolutely HATE having to sample my experiments, but we all do what we have to do.

Fresh Corn

2008-09-20T19:37:00.000-04:00

Enough with the tomatoes for a moment, let's talk about corn.

We have been getting some excellent local corn this summer from Tebbs Farms. The corn was so sweet, it was almost like candy! I don't remember it being this good last year. Either this year's crop actually IS better or we just did a better job of eating it the same day. I've read that if you let corn sit around, the sugars turn to starch and it's just not as good. Maybe that has made all the difference.

We've been mostly eating it straight off the cob since summer is pretty much the only time you can do that, but I could not resist taking some off the cob for this recipe that Bob on the CLBB recently, and kindly, shared with us. Corn, bacon and chipotle - what's not to like?

Spicy Fried Corn with Bacon and Chipotle

It's a very simple dish to prepare and it's as good as it sounds. Although I have now come to appreciate cilantro, I still sub in parsley for my son, but I'll bet the cilantro makes this dish even better. Although great as is, a little voice in my head kept telling me that it would be really good with some onion too, so I'll add that next time.

Thanks to Tebbs, I have put some corn - off the cob - in the freezer for winter - 2 dozen ears worth. Next year I'll probably take it a little further and purchase their cheaper 5 dozen bag.

Random Notes

2008-09-19T23:15:00.000-04:00

The boys are off at the high school football game tonight so it's just me and the dog. I had all kinds of plans to get a lot of things done today but I ended up in a bit of a mood and got very little done instead. Hmph.

What to do when you're in a bad mood? Bake cookies! I find that when I'm cranky, it's best to stick with something easy and/or tried and true so I chose the Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies that I've posted about before. Yum.

Mood Boosters!

I did manage to chop up some tomatoes so that I can crank out some more tomato soup tomorrow. I've come up with a decent system for using up the abundance of tomatoes. Anything that is cracked or too soft gets tossed in the fridge right away. Normally refrigerating tomatoes is a big no-no but if they are going to be cooked down for a soup or a marinara sauce, texture is not going to be an issue anyway and refrigerating them helps to keep them from rotting too fast and keeps the fruit flies from swarming them. I then chop them when I get time - sometimes making the soup right after chopping or else storing them for a few days longer until I have time. It's nice to be able to take a leisurely approach to using them up.

My last random note for the night is about basil. During one of my turns at manning the concession stand, I was talking with the other mom on duty and we started talking about gardening and cooking. She mentioned that she grows basil. Well, at a soccer game the other night she called me over and handed me a clump of basil she had cut out of her garden. It is called Pesto Perpetuo Basil and she said she got it from Burpee (check the Burpee link for a more detailed photo). It didn't even look like basil! With the variegated leaves, it looked like a shrub!

When I got home, I looked it up and found some interesting info. Turns out this type of basil does not flower and therefore will not bolt like the popular and widely available sweet basil that I normally grow. That could certainly be a big plus - a basil plant that you don't have to fuss over! I plan to purchase two plants next spring and give this variety a try (along with 2 of the regular sweet basil).

I turned her thoughtful offering into pesto yesterday. I did notice that the leaves were perhaps a bit tougher - not tough, just not as delicate as regular sweet basil and so I had a harder time getting them to puree in the food processor. The taste also seemed a bit sharper or more intense than regular basil but it was hard to tell because I had to augment what she gave me with a bit of basil from the garden in order to get a decent-sized batch of pesto. The leaves on the Pesto basil are much smaller and so even though the bunch she gave me looked quite sizable, it didn't amount to much once I sent it through the food processor.

In any case, I'm intrigued to try growing the Pesto basil next year. It's actually pretty enough to grow as an accent plant anywhere in your yard!

I'd better head off to bed if I plan to get up early for football practice and the farmer's market tomorrow.........

Tomatoes Continued.......

2008-09-18T15:22:00.001-04:00

We've been on a quest since just before the 1st of September to keep on top of our tomatoes from the garden so we've been eating tomatoes in some form pretty much every single day, sometimes twice a day. So, my blog may be seeing red for a while longer. Here are two soups we've made with our tomato harvest - one cold and one hot.

I've already blogged about one tomato soup - it's a standby favorite, but I'm always up for trying something new. This soup, a Tyler Florence recipe, came to me via a recommendation on the CLBB. It was just enough different from the Jack Bishop recipe that I adore that I thought it was worth a try. I also like the way Tyler encourages the use of just about any kind of tomato.

The tomatoes, onion and garlic are ready to be roasted.

One thing I'd like to point out on this recipe is that it does not call for peeling the tomatoes. I tried it without peeling them and then I simply pureed the soup in a blender to see if I could get the skins to blend in. While the skins did blend in for the most part, there were enough left that I felt the need to strain the soup - something I am pretty loathe to do. I do not aspire to perfectly smooth soups - rustic is just fine with me - but I really don't care for things like tomato skins which tend to be hard to chew and are just generally not pleasing. Next time I would remove the skins before (or even after) roasting.

Roasted Tomato Soup

While the soup was very good, I still like the Jack Bishop recipe better. I wasn't thrilled with the addition of chicken stock - if I'm going to serve tomato soup, I'd prefer it to be vegetarian and there's just something not quite right about the thought of chicken flavor permeating a nice tomato soup - it's simply unnecessary. Of course it would be simple enough to sub in some vegetable stock, but I wanted to try the recipe as written to see if anything was gained by using chicken stock. I'll stick with Jack for now.

I've talked about this next recipe before. It's basically a run of the mill gazpacho but I like the added kick of a bit of hot sauce and sometimes even a dash of Worcestershire sauce. I think I made it for the wrong crowd though - I had to keep the onions and the peppers separate! Gazpacho is always a refreshing - and healthful - no-cook summer treat.

Gazpacho

The forecast is calling for patch frost tonight so I am off to pick as many tomatoes as are ready and to cover the rest. It looks like only one night of frosty temps, so I'm going to try to help my garden limp a long a little while longer..........

Treats for the Concession Stand

2008-09-15T21:28:00.000-04:00

In addition to providing taxi service for my sons' various sports and band activities, there is also the dreaded concession stand duty - taking orders, preparing food and manning the cash register. I joked that working retail on Black Friday was less hectic than the concession stand at the high school football games! Oh, it's not really SO bad, but there are other ways I'd rather spend my time. One thing I did not mind volunteering for though is baking for the concession stand - now that's right up my alley.

While trying to make up my mind about what to make, I came upon this recipe over at Cookie Madness. The recipe is for Triple Decker Rice Krispie treats. These thick, chewy bars take the traditional marshmallow treats and bump them up a few notches with a chocolate layer, a peanut butter layer and the more traditional plain old marshmallow layer.

It does take some time to put these together but it's not at all hard and it doesn't require any baking. I used the same bowl over and over again to melt the marshmallows in the microwave - just rinsing and drying between uses. As I pressed the second layer into the pan, I was quite sure that these were not going to fit but I pressed each layer down as firmly as possible and I managed to squeeze them all in.

Triple Decker Rice Krispie Treats

While I loved the plain and peanut butter layers, I thought the chocolate layer had an off taste to it and I think it was the Coco Kripsies. If I made these again, I'd skip the Coco Krispies and use the chocolate chips with maybe a little cocoa powder or I'd just skip it altogether. Oooooh - I just had a rush of inspiration - how about some Nutella??? Now we're talking! Surely it's been done before...I'll have to search around.

Funky-tasting Coco Krispies aside, these are a fun and whimsical treat - great for wrapping up for a bake sale. Good thing I didn't keep any at home - I tend to not be able to keep my hands off of Krispie Treats..........

It's not over 'til it's over. And an excellent dip recipe.

2008-09-11T22:20:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago I was cleaning up the garden a bit. I started by pulling up my very sad looking zucchini plant (no tears were shed when this stopped producing) and a few of the cucumber plants. I started to pull out the beans, but then I noticed a bit of new growth and a few new beans and decided to let them be. Since then I've gotten about 2-3 more meals worth of beans and there are still a few more coming in. Not much, but definitely worth keeping around a while longer. What a nice surprise.

My basil flowered long ago (I thought it was done for and let it go) but I'm still pulling off a few tender leaves and it's still trying to put out a bit of new growth. Next year I'll try to be more vigilant about pinching back the flowers, even if it looks sad.

My pepper plants are looking quite pitiful but even they are still trying. One plant has a few blossoms on it and the other has a few small green peppers. I won't get much more out of them - I'm mostly just waiting to see if the peppers will get any bigger - but it's amazing to see them all fallen over and wasted-looking and yet still trying to produce. As you can see from the photo below, we did finally get a few red peppers. I have to admit that I had gotten tired of waiting for them to turn red and picked a few while they were still green, but even the green peppers tasted great - much tastier than the green peppers at the grocery store.

If nothing else, I've learned to be patient with gardening and just sit back and see what happens because apparently it ain't over 'til it's over!

But on to that dip.

Today I pulled up another 7 pounds of tomatoes so I'll be scrambling tonight to use up those that are overly ripe, cracked or otherwise not ready for prime time (ie. slicing and eating fresh) by making more soup. The cherry tomatoes in particular are quite prolific and here's a recipe we made with some of the first we picked back in early August.

Layered Greek Dip

This recipe was posted by The Recipe Girl over on Cooking Light. As soon as I saw it, I knew I would make it and I knew it would be good. It's a Greek twist on the ever popular Mexican layer dip. The bottom layer consists of an herbed cream cheese. On top of that, a layer of hummus. That's what really sold me - I love hummus. Those two creamy layers are topped with a mixture of chopped cucumbers, tomatoes, olives and feta cheese. The recipe calls for scallions but I was making this for a crowd that included an onion-hater so for added flavor and color interest, I added some chopped pepperoncini. Oh, and you may notice that my dip has no cucumbers. After hauling out 11 cucumbers in one day and giving away 9, I found myself with no garden cucumbers when it came time to make this dip. Feast or famine!

This dip was met with lots of oohs and aahs and was gone in minutes. A BIG hit. I can see this becoming my go-to dish for pot lucks and parties. It's easy to put together, delicious and something just a little different. A winner all around.

Before I sign off and head to bed, let me just share that tonight I used up a bunch of cherry tomatoes by making a chickpea and spinach curry that I posted here a while back. All I did was substitute cherry tomatoes for canned, let it simmer for a bit longer than the recipe calls for and it turned out great.

Now that's an ice cream sandwich!

2008-09-10T22:03:00.001-04:00

Not an ice cream sandwich as in two thin, soft, chocolate wafers with ice cream in the middle, but ice cream sandwich as in two homemade cookies with ice cream in the middle. But what to call it? It's not really an ice cream sandwich in the classic sense, but Cookie Ice Cream Sandwich is kind of clunky and Cookiewich, well, that just makes me think of the not-so-great storebought variety.

Whatever you want to call them, this is one treat that I don't make nearly often enough. We love them and they are really quite easy - no harder than baking up a basic batch of cookies, really - but I still never think to make them. Fortunately I did think to make them a few weeks ago and boy were they delicious.

I started off with a chocolate cookie dough from Martha Stewart that I made a while back. I thought the cookies would be the right consistency for a ice cream sandwiches and I was not disappointed - they are sturdy, slightly soft with just the right touch of chewy. Though this cookie recipe calls for dried cherries, once again I made them with a combination of chocolate chips and peanut butter chips. One of these days I'll actually get around to the cherries.....it sounds delicious that way too!

Once you have the cookie batter made, you scoop it out by the scant 1/4 cup. The recipe actually calls for making the cookies this large, but I usually use my standard cookie scoop as I tend to like to make smaller cookies - better for snacking. Going by the 1/4 cup, there is just enough dough to make 24 largish cookies or 12 ice cream sandwiches. I baked them for about 12 minutes at 325º.

Once the cookies were baked, I allowed them to cool completely and then I froze them overnight. Freezing the cookies first makes them sturdier for assembling the sandwiches. Once the cookies were frozen, it was just a matter of scooping out some ice cream, placing it on one cookie, placing another cookie on top and pressing gently but firmly. I've done a better job at getting the ice cream to come a bit more evenly to the sides of the cookie for a nicer presentation but one, I was in a rush as these were a surprise for DH and I didn't have much time and, two, I didn't really care all that much. So there. I chose a simple vanilla ice cream in this case, but be creative and choose whatever you like - even better, make your own!

It does pay to keep things moving - the ice cream tends to soften up pretty quickly. As each sandwich was assembled, I quickly wrapped it in plastic wrap and put it in the freezer before moving on to the next one. Allow the cookies to freeze for several hours or overnight before serving. The cookies taste better and are easier to eat if they sit out a few minutes before eating them.

Hopefully I'll remember how easy these are to make and make them more often. I think it would be fun to make them with regular-sized cookies - these larger cookies make for quite a large ice cream sandwich and I had a hard time finishing a whole one - a smaller one would still be a nice treat without feeling like you were over indulging.

Finally! Tomatoes!

2008-09-09T22:22:00.004-04:00

So instead of commenting on how long it's been since I last posted and how I hope to get back to it soon, blah, blah, blah, I'm just going to post like I've been doing it regularly, okay?

Ahem.

Good news from the garden! After all the angst and drama, we're finally getting tomatoes!

First there was the heartbreak about the tomatoes contracting some sort of fungus. But I removed the diseased leaves and hoped for the best. Then the blossoms were dropping without setting fruit. Too hot and dry too fast? I'm not sure.

After that, the plants got quite large and things started looking up again. After that they finally started to set some fruit but then all of them proceeded to fall over on top of each other and sprawl out all over the ground. Not pretty, but they were basically intact, so I just let them be.

Then the green fruit just sat and sat and sat, showing no signs whatsoever of ripening. It was a bit maddening. I then began to worry that we'd start getting chilly fall air blowing in and be stuck with tons of green tomatoes sitting on the vines. Fried green tomatoes are quite tasty, but I wasn't much interested in eating pounds and pounds of them, especially thinking about all of that unrealized potential.

If the weather was not our tomato-ripening friend during other parts of this summer, it definitely came through for us the past week or two - it's been dry and in the high 80s. While it certainly didn't feel like we were nearing the end of summer, it sure was terrific for spurring along those reluctant tomatoes. So, finally, after much eager and not-so-optimistic anticipation, against all odds, we have started getting tomatoes. Tomatoes generally start coming in in late July or early August, but this year I didn't see much red until closer to the first of September.

From the garden this past Friday (9/5):
peppers, green beans, basil and tomatoes.

After talking to other gardeners in the area, it seems that we were not the only ones to experience a late tomato harvest. This leads me to think that it was not anything we did or our location, it was just the weather, the luck of the draw. Thinking back to July, we did have a number of unusually cool, foggy, cloudy mornings where we didn't see the sun until mid to late morning. I have a feeling these cool wet mornings are at least partly to blame. That and the late frost around Memorial Day seem to have made for slow going for tomatoes this year. But that's just a beginner's theory.

Even with all the problems, I would consider it a pretty successful tomato season. The tomato plants still look like they are going quite strong - normally by now my tomato plants look quite pathetic - all yellow, brown and shriveled. While some of the plants look like they are finally starting to wither a bit, many of them are STILL putting out new growth. Quite amazing, really - I think the lasagna method of gardening really agreed with them. Had a few other things gone our way, I think we'd be drowning in a sea of red by now.

As it is, we have dispatched upwards of about 20 pounds of tomatoes with probably close to 10 still sitting on my windowsill/countertops and hopefully more waiting to be plucked from the garden. Temps are supposed to be in the 70s this week with some 40s at night, so the late season ripening will likely slow down quite a bit. Even so, I plan to leave them on the vine until the first threat of frost. Only THEN will I be ready to think about fried green tomatoes.

We were getting a bit tired of cucumbers and zucchini and green beans and were definitely ready for a different color! Now it's all about red. We've been eating tomatoes for lunch and/or dinner every day. But whereas I found it hard to find clever ways to use up our plethora of cucumbers, I have no problem finding ways to use up tomatoes. So far we've made a tart, a pasta dish, a couple of salads, salsa and two tomato soups.

Tomato-Basil Soup

This first recipe I'm going to share is an old favorite that I've not made in a while. I've posted it here before, but apparently didn't have much to say (and no photo either). It's a nice, basic tomato soup with the added flavor dimension and splash of color from fresh basil. Adding a bit of creaminess as well as a nice calcium boost is a bit of milk and reduced-fat cream cheese. I made a double batch to put away in the freezer for later this fall/winter when tomato soup and grilled cheese becomes a favorite weeknight staple around here.

I won't pretend to make promises about when I'll be back to post more, but hopefully it won't be too long...........I've got quite a backlog of recipes to share..............

Loving the new Kitchen!

2008-08-26T21:01:00.002-04:00

Well, as my lack of posting suggests, I haven't had all that much time to cook in my new kitchen, but I am enjoying it when I do get the chance. It will be a crazy fall, so I'm sure my posting will be quite random, but I hope to not be too silent.

Before I - hopefully - get back to posting recipes again, I just wanted to finish up posting about the kitchen and the improvements we made.

First, the cosmetic changes. No more hunter green!

We replaced the hunter green laminate countertops with quartz. I've noticed that the counter tops don't make a huge impact from a distance (they look plain and white), but I love them up close....little flecks of burgundy, brown, gray, etc.

Dupont Zodiaq in Cappuccino

That empty space above the microwave where the vent used to show now has a proper cabinet. Speaking of the wall cabinets, we got rid of the oak and replaced them with maple. We also warmed up the yellow wall color with a warmer yellow.

Wall cabinets: Kraftmaid - Hanley door style in Maple with Toffee finish
Paint: Benjamin Moore - Straw

And no more vinyl flooring with hunter green accents. We now have porcelain tile. This photo also shows that although we were a bit nervous, we ended up with plenty of room between the island and the sink. We were worried it might be a bit crowded, especially since the island has pull out drawers for my cookware and appliances.

Flooring: Florida Tile - Tivoli - Beige
Pulls on wall cabinets: Amerock Swirlz 3" Spiral Pull - Wrought Iron
Pulls on island: Amerock Swirlz 3" Pull - Weathered Nickel

No more fluorescent light box. Now we have recessed lights and 2 pendants over the island.

Pendant lights: Kichler - Wedgeport - Old Bronze

But we also added a lot of functionality.

One thing I'm really loving is my huge sink. The installers joked that we could take a bath in it! It's not quite THAT big, but it is large. My large pots and pans and even my cookie sheets fit completely in the sink, no problem. Before, even a small 12-inch skillet would stick out of the sink and clank the sides as we washed it. Add to it the swan neck faucet and there's pretty much nothing we can't wash in our sink now.

Sink: Elkay ELU 281610
SS, Undermount, Single Bowl
16 x 28 and 10 inches deep
Faucet: Kohler Revival, brushed Chrome

Another added functionality is pull out drawers in the island. I love that I don't have to reach deep inside my cabinets and bang and upend a bunch of stuff to get out the stuff I need. It's a bit hard to fit in all of the stuff I had before, but I'm moving things I rarely use to my pantry closet which is probably something I should have done a long time ago.

And, of course the breakfast bar. Here's our new island from the front. And yes, I am still missing some hardware. I forgot that we'd be going from single doors to double doors, so I was short a couple of pulls! The cabinet to the far left is the trash drawer. I had to give up cabinet space to fit that in, but I'm really pleased to not have an ugly trash can sitting out.

Island cabinets: Kraftmaid - Melrose door style - Peppercorn

On the other side, a breakfast bar. Again, we were quite relieved to see that even though we added seating, we still had plenty of room to walk past. I also painted the door to the garage. When we first moved in it was the dreaded hunter green but we had it painted white. When I went to paint the door leading out to the deck, I was going to paint it white too but then decided it needed something warmer so I decided to pick up the burgundy/cranberry tones of the countertops and I ended up with this color. Much better than plain old white!

Door paint: Benjamin Moore - Chestnut
Dog: Golden Retriever named Bailey :)

Anyway, that's probably more than anyone ever wanted to know about our kitchen! I hope to finish it off by adding more colored accents (playing off the plate hanging over the sink) - mainly gold, cranberry, navy, and green. Perhaps a nice fruit bowl here, a colored utensil crock there a valance for the window, etc.

I hope to get to a garden update something this week too. I'm FINALLY starting to get some tomatoes. I sure hope it doesn't cool off too much yet - it would make me sad to end the season with so many green tomatoes.....so much unrealized potential!

It's done!

2008-08-15T22:22:00.003-04:00

The kitchen is officially done! It was actually done this past Monday, but we still had people coming out to finish up a few other projects (trim around garage doors, new shower faucet, etc.), so we are officially done as of today.

It's been a busy week trying to get back into the work routine and I'm still not back into the cooking or blogging groove yet and I'm not sure when that will happen as the next couple of weeks don't show any signs of letting up! Tomorrow we are off to DE/Philly to see Spamalot and then on Tuesday we go down to Hershey to see Bruce Springsteen. I'm VERY excited for both, but especially for Bruce - we're both big fans.

Anyway, before things get too crazy again, a quick post about the remodel. I'll follow up with more details and photos later. Suffice it to say we're loving it - not only for cosmetic reasons, but it's so much more efficient now too.

I posted a lot of before shots on this thread, but I figured we needed at least one side by side shot, so here's BEFORE:

(The wallpaper has been gone for a couple of years, but I just had
to include this shot as the before because this is how it looked
when we bought the house. The guy to right is our realtor - this is the photo
I took when we looked at the house.)

And here's the AFTER:

Of course we would have loved to get rid of the soffit and the white microwave and put in a fancy backsplash, but considering we started this project only planning to do the island and floor, we're pretty ecstatic with the outcome! I never dreamed I'd have solid surface counter tops and an undermount sink.

But it's late and we have to get an early start to get to a matinee show tomorrow.....so it's off to bed.............

Getting back to it with a fruit tart!

2008-08-10T23:14:00.000-04:00

I can't believe that I let three weeks past since my last post! I thought that with me not cooking any new recipes during the remodel that I'd get a lot of posting done. Obviously THAT didn't happen. Partly I was busy painting and then just too tired and partly I was too preoccupied to sit down and write a post.

It's been a long 2 1/2 weeks and we had a fumble or two along the way, but things have gone pretty well overall.

It's almost done. I finally got all my appliances back in on Friday and at the 11th hour, the plumber came out and hooked up my dishwasher at Friday night. And good thing too - we had 8 overnight guests stay over last night. Not only did we have overnight guests, but it was also my son's birthday - he turned 11 yesterday. My youngest is 11! Eek!

I spent most of the Friday scrubbing appliances and making sure everything was clean as it came into the kitchen, cleaning out my dining room which had been serving as a prep area/mini kitchen and loading the essentials back into the cabinets. There is still a lot of stuff to move up from the basement, but I'm taking my time and taking this opportunity to arrange things more efficiently.

Yesterday was spent actually COOKING in my new kitchen. So far I love how much more efficient it really is. But more on the kitchen later. We are still waiting for the pendant lights to go in, outlets on the island, a transition strip on the floor, some ceiling paint and a few other odds and ends. Once that's all done, I'll post some pictures.

Since we had JUST gotten our kitchen back into working order, I kept it pretty simple for our guests......hamburgers, hotdogs and brats along with gazpacho and a green bean salad. (Both of those dishes were designed to use up beans and cucumbers from the garden. More on the garden later too!) We topped off dinner with my son's birthday dessert request - a dessert pizza/fruit tart.

My son had fun decorating his own tart.

This recipe starts with - gasp - a sugar cookie mix to form the crust. I keep saying that some day I'll figure out the proportions needed and make my own sugar cookie dough (I do have a good recipe, but it's much more than I need for one pizza), but with everything going on this week, it was definitely easier to just follow the recipe as it was written. And I have to admit, even with the mix it turns out quite well.

The recipe calls for adding finely chopped almonds to the cookie batter - the almonds add a really nice element of interest to the crust. The dough is spread out on a pizza pan and baked in the oven until lightly golden. You top the crust with a mixture of cream cheese and powdered sugar and then finish it off with fresh fruit and let it chill. Very easy. The hardest part is decorating it - it takes some time to arrange all those little blueberries - but it's also a lot of fun!

Fruit Tart/Dessert Pizza

Since we had 12 people I made two tarts. I invited DS to decorate one on his own and I took over the other. We now have only one piece left, so I think it was a hit. It really is a fun summer dessert - it's not hard to make and yet it makes a very pretty presentation and I don't think I've run into anyone who didn't enjoy eating it too.

Trying to keep on top of the Garden.

2008-07-21T21:52:00.002-04:00

But first..........last week I received word that instead of starting my kitchen the 28th, they now want to start the 23rd! That's this Wednesday! Definitely good news, but here I thought I had this whole week to get ready and maybe even start painting. Oh well, the sooner the better I guess! Cabinets arrive on Friday, so they'll start tearing out cabinets and laying the floor on Wednesday and hopefully start putting cabinets in on Monday. But that sounds overly ambitious to me, so we'll see. Lots of work to do tomorrow!

Still harvesting cucumbers and zucchinis on a daily basis here. I actually let almost 3 days go past without checking the garden. I knew that probably wasn't a good idea because I noticed that zucchini grow very, very fast but we were busy and it was hot.......excuses, excuses. Sure enough, here's what I found this afternoon..........

That zucchini had been closer to the size of the smallest one there just the other day. It is now over 14 inches long. Oi. Now to use it all up. We did the saute the other day, we made two loaves of zucchini bread, we made zucchini pancakes last week and last night I made a yummy pasta dish.

Zucchini and Corn Pancakes

The zucchini pancakes were based on a recipe from Mark Bittman, posted on the CLBB. I also threw in some leftover cooked corn. My son thought it sounded gross, but I told him that I was pretty confident he'd like it, just like the zucchini bread. My mixture ended up being quite watery, so I had to keep adding flour and probably ended up with a full 1/2 cup more flour than the recipe called for. I imagine this made them a bit more doughy than intended, but they were still quite good. These were perhaps a tad bland, so I served them with salsa. I would have preferred maybe a curried sour cream - the salsa was a bit overwhelming - but we somehow have 3 open jars of salsa that need to be used up, so salsa it was.

Zucchini and Sausage Pasta Bake

The pasta recipe was based on this recipe that someone shared on the CLBB, but I didn't follow it very closely. Instead, I used it as a basis for using up things we had around the house. As I was cleaning out the freezer for the remodel, I found 3 separate links of 3 different kinds of chicken sausage - one with spinach and feta, one Italian and a bit of smoked sausage. These are all pre-cooked - not the raw links that the recipes falls for - but I thought it was worth a shot. We had two open boxes of pasta, so instead of penne, we used ziti and farfalle. No Fontina on hand, so I used fresh mozzarella and a bit of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Happily I had some fresh cream from the farmer's market on hand, so I didn't mess with that part of the recipe.

Surprisingly, this dish was delicious! I wasn't sure if it would work or not, but everyone gobbled it up and DH and I happily ate the leftovers today for lunch. The only thing that didn't work so well was the fresh mozzarella. The taste was great, but it tended to clump, also causing the sausage to clump as well. Certainly not a light dish, but I was craving a cheesy pasta dish after all of the lighter summer fare of late.

The green beans are finally producing so that I can actually gather enough for a meal at one time. They are lovely too......nice and thin, just the way I like them. I planted haricot verts beans from Seeds of Change and am very happy with them. They tend to get long, but not thick or tough. I've always wanted to grow green beans because the beans at the store are usually too big and/or too tough - I don't like it when they get so big that there are seeds forming inside the pod. Even the green beans at the farmer's market gave generally been too big for my tastes. But not these - they are perfect. I blanched them for 3-5 minutes and then tossed them with some garlic, extra-virgin olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper (heated up just to take the edge off the garlic). Yummy!

It's fun to eat stuff out the garden, but I'm either going to have to give a few zucchini away or start shredding and freezing it because we're going to get overloaded pretty shortly here. But I have seen a few recipe for chocolate zucchini bread that I think I must try first...........

Taco Seasoning: Getting away from pre-made mixes.

2008-07-19T19:22:00.000-04:00

Whew. It's been a long week. My son's All-Star team played 5 games and had 2 practices in the last 8 days. They played hard and did a great job, but ended up losing the district championship game today. The boys were very disappointed and had their moment of sadness and tears - my son cried in the car and his friend (who came over for a sleepover tonight) confessed to crying in the bathtub, but guess where those two are right now as I type? Yep. Outside playing baseball. It's hard to see them lose, but they've been playing since February and football starts in 2 weeks, so it's not necessarily such a bad thing either. And now maybe my stomach won't be in knots every other day! Anyway, they may still have energy, but I'm wiped out, so I'll be keeping this one simple.

Taco Seasoning

Taco seasoning. This is one thing I've been very lazy about - simply out of habit and pure laziness, I repeatedly reach for the pre-made taco seasoning at the store. I've been trying to get away from unwanted added ingredients, so I when I reached for it the other day, I forced myself to turn the package over and look at the ingredient list. Yep, there they were - stuff like MSG and partially hydrogenated soybean oil. Blech. So I put the seasoning back on the shelf. Surely it couldn't be THAT hard to make my own!

I did a little surfing and found this recipe over at AllRecipes. With over 900 reviews and a 5-star rating, I figured it was a pretty safe bet. And it was. Flavorful and with just the right amount of heat for us. This recipe ended up making about 3 tablespoons of seasoning which, for us, seasoned 1 pound of ground beef.

Next time I'll make up extra and keep it in the freezer. Very easy to throw together, but still that familiar taco flavoring we know and love. Our tacos were definitely a bit elevated that night.....we made our own seasoning and used grass-fed ground beef from a local farmer. Now if I had made my own taco shells............

Fennel - A First

2008-07-18T09:38:00.000-04:00

The recipes and the vegetables are piling up! Baseball and various other things have been keeping me busy, so I'm still falling behind in my posting. I still have a blueberry recipe or two to post, not to mention recipes from earlier this spring! Between the garden and me being a little over zealous in my purchases at the farmer's market last weekend, I'm furiously trying to use everything up so that it won't go bad. And, again, baseball doesn't make that very easy seeing as how we're gone from 3:30-8:30 on game nights.

Last weekend I found fennel at one of the farmer's market stands. I do not like black licorice or the other things of a similar flavor profile like anise or fennel, but I've been warming up to fennel seeds in some of my cooking so I decided it might be time to try fresh fennel. I had no idea how to prepare this vegetable and I had no idea what to put with it so I started an internet search (What the heck did I ever do without the internet for recipes??) hoping to find a recipe for fennel and cucumber since we seem to be getting at least one or two cucumbers out of the garden each day.

Fennel and Cucumber Salad

First I found this recipe that sounded simple and refreshing. But then I realized that I really had no idea how to even cut up a piece of fennel or even what parts to use. Fortunately I found an informative article that told me pretty much all I needed to know. I ended up using mostly just the bulb itself with a bit of the stalks too, tossing the fronds. The fronds didn't appeal to me as a garnish and I didn't think I'd like the flavor of fennel for a soup stock, so in the compost they went. In texture, the bulb of the fennel is a bit like licorice flavored cabbage while the stalks are a bit more like licorice flavored celery.

This simple salad combines cucumber, fennel and radishes along with mint, chives, lemon and EVOO. The flavors play well off each other. The mint and fennel give the dish a sort of sweet angle while the radishes give it a bit of bite and some welcome color. The cucumbers play an understated supporting role. It was very nice and refreshing and while we all liked it and enjoyed the change of pace, I don't know that I'd seek out fennel again. I'm learning to tolerate and appreciate some different flavor profiles these days, but I don't know that fennel will ever be a favorite.

More baseball tonight..........I'm about ready for baseball to be over - we need a little break (and it will be a very little break) before soccer and football start! We're also counting down to the kitchen remodel which will begin in just over a week. ACK!

Using up the Zucchini

2008-07-17T09:00:00.001-04:00

After all that garden talk, it's time to share a few recipes showing how we're using our bounty. Okay, so "bounty" is probably overstating things a bit, but it sounds good......

So far it's mostly been zucchini and cucumbers coming from the garden. I'm definitely lacking in cucumber recipes (and I'd better find some soon as we're about to be overrun), but there seem to be infinite ways to use zucchini. I only planted one zucchini plant, so I don't think we'll be totally inundated. And that's probably a good thing seeing as how none of us actually love zucchini. So why the heck did I plant it? I guess because everyone always seems to be trying to get rid of their zucchini and it's always super abundant at the farmer's market, so I figured it must be easy to grow. I suppose I just wanted a sure bet.

Even though none of us are crazy about zucchini on its own, it's very easy to disguise and or fit (or is it hide?) into other tasty dishes. Like zucchini bread. My son wrinkled up his nose and said "EW!" when I mentioned zucchini bread, but then I reminded him of how tasty carrot cake is and that helped him keep an open mind.

Zucchini-Pecan Sauté

But before I go on to the zucchini bread, the first zucchini I picked I used in one of our favorite savory zucchini dishes - Zucchini-Pecan Sauté. A really simple dish that, for whatever reason, really elevates zucchini from just "meh" to "yum".

I'm sure there are lots of great zucchini bread recipes out there, but for some reason I've never strayed from this one from Jane Brody's Good Food Book (she calls it "Grate" Zucchini Bread). I like that it uses half whole wheat flour and she tries to keep the oil and sugar to a minimum. Even though it's fairly healthful, it is still quite moist and delicious.

Zucchini Bread

My two zucchini were a lot bigger than I thought, so even though I had planned on making two loaves, I still ended up with a lot of grated zucchini left. Stay tuned for some yummy vegetable pancakes I made to use up the rest of the grated zucchini.........

If you have some zucchini that you need to use up, check out these other zucchini recipes we've tried.

It's a jungle out there.........

2008-07-16T12:10:00.000-04:00

Wow. The garden sort of exploded in the last 2 weeks and things are looking up since my last post. The last photos I took were on the 28th of June.

The pepper plants are producing, at least a little.

And you can see what a difference 6 days makes. The photo above was taken on the 10th and this one was taken today.

I also have a few sweet Italian peppers.

The beans have about doubled in size and are beginning to show a few teeny tiny beans.

Since taking that picture above 6 days ago, I have harvested a small handful of pencil thin beans. Not quite enough for a meal, so I'm holding onto these for a few more days before I cook them.

The cucumbers are all over the place. We have harvested 5 with A LOT more to come.

The basil is still getting chewed on, but I've got plenty. I've churned out one or two batches of pesto already. I just need to buy some more pine nuts to make more. I harvested some sage, but I'm not sure what to do with it. I might chop it and freeze it for use later.

But the tomatoes. Holy cow! These are definitely the biggest plants I've ever had and they are twice as big as most I see in other gardens around here.

After 6 days, they have grown even more! And keep in mind that I have not used one bit of fertilizer. I just plunked them in the lasagna beds and that was it. (And yes, one of them has a toppled branch or two. I tried tying it up, but it didn't work.)

I do see a few green tomatoes showing up here and there. I'm beginning to see more blossoms on the plants, so maybe we'll do okay after all. If these plants had not been ravaged by that fungus (or whatever it was), I can't imagine how many tomatoes we'd have gotten. Apparently tomatoes like lasagna gardening!

I did have one entire plant topple over though. I don't want to straighten it for fear of damaging it so I'm just going to let it be and see what happens.

The zucchini blossoms are pretty. We've harvested 3 so far with several more pretty close to being ready. I did lose a few to some sort of deformity or rot.

Most exciting of all is the appearance of some cantaloupe! They are far from harvest, of course and anything can happen, but I am very excited about the possibility of getting to eat cantaloupe from the garden! Here's the biggest one......

And we have a few smaller ones too.........

I can see that I'll be spacing things out a bit differently next year. Some of my poor pepper plants are getting shut out by the towering cherry tomato plants that are getting much bigger than I expected.

My sage is also feeling a bit crowded by the beans.

But live and learn, that's what gardening is all about. I'll have an easier time planning it out this winter, based on what I've learned this year. One thing I know for sure - I need more beds and I need to extend the beds I have.

Stayed tuned for recipes involving cucumber and zucchini!

No Fuss Blueberry Jam

2008-07-11T09:18:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I guess I technically cheated - I made freezer jam. But, the point is, it worked.

Last Monday, we picked 23 pounds of blueberries and yesterday we were down to our last 6-8 cups and I have to say, they weren't in terrible shape considering it has been over a week. Some were getting a bit too soft, but quite a few were still firm and only one showed any sign of mold. Not bad.

However, it was quite apparent that we were reaching a crucial point and really needed to use them up, so I decided to try jam since, compared to most recipes, this would use up the largest amount of blueberries. I have never done any canning before and though I plan to learn, this wasn't the time. After doing a bit of reading, I decided I wanted to try freezer jam and went to the store to get some pectin.

Once I was there, it was a bit confusing. They had regular pectin and freezer jam pectin. The freezer jam recipe looked incredibly easy - no cooking at all. Then I took a look at the ingredients and noticed that the freezer jam pectin contained several added ingredients, including a preservative: dextrose, fruit pectin, citric acid (assists gel), sodium citrate (controls acidity), potassium sorbate (preservative). I wasn't too keen on using something with a preservative since that's part of the attractiveness of making my own jam in the first place, but then I noticed that with this recipe, you only use 1 1/2 cups of sugar per 4 cups of berries. That's a lot lot less sugar than a cooked jam recipe where the ratio is generally 1:1.

Anyway, I ended up grabbing some regular pectin and one package of the freezer jam pectin. Once home, I kept hemming and hawing and finally decided to give the freezer jam pectin a try. It's very easy. You mix 1 1/2 cups of sugar with the package of pectin, add 4 cups of crushed berries, stir for 3 minutes, let it sit for 30 minutes to let it set and you're done. Ridiculously easy!

As I mashed the blueberries, I was looking at the rather gross mush on my plate and having second thoughts. For some reason, squished blueberries make me think of squished bugs - they just look gross! (My photos of the final mashed product didn't come out.....too bad, huh?) Then I started thinking about having to bite into a jam full of blueberry skins. Even if I could get past it, I knew the family would not. And these problems are unique to blueberries - any other kind of berry - no skin, no brown squishy "guts".

I finally decided that I simply had to run them through the food processor. Not only would this eliminate the problem of biting into all of those skins, but I knew from making blueberry ice cream, that it would make the whole mixture turn a much more attractive color of purple instead of the brownish colors you get from just crushing the berries. I had read that you shouldn't use a food processor because it can break down the natural pectin in the berries and prevent your jam from setting (the Ball instructions also say not to process the berries), but I decided to try it anyway. If it didn't work, I figured I could probably find some way to save it.

Blueberry Freezer Jam

I'm happy to say that it worked just fine. In no time I had a lovely blueberry jam. I suppose I don't have chunks of fruit as you should with a proper jam, but as I said earlier, that might not be such a bad thing when it comes to blueberries. Since pureeing the berries reduced the overall volume when compared to crushing them, I decided to go with 3 1/2 cups of pureed berries versus the 4 cups of crushed berries - I was afraid the jam might not set if I had too much berry puree. This seemed to work great. It's a tad on the sweet side, but very good nonetheless and certainly A LOT less sugar than most recipes.

So, my experiment was a success. I now have 6 1-cup containers of blueberry jam in the fridge and freezer, waiting to be enjoyed the rest of the year. I'm still not keen on the preservatives used in this pectin, so next time I'm thinking about trying the freezer jam recipe I found inside the package of regular pectin (which contains dextrose, fruit pectin and citric acid). The drawback there? 5 1/4 cups of sugar for 3 cups of berries. Hmmmm..........

More Bobby Flay....

2008-07-06T16:00:00.000-04:00

It's been hard to decide what else to make from Bobby Flay's Boy Gets Grill which I have on loan from the public library, but I settled on a chicken thigh recipe with a peanut sauce.

This recipe calls for grilling chicken thighs with a honey glaze. The chicken, along with mint, cilantro and lettuce, is rolled up in a tortilla and served with a peanut dipping sauce.

Overall, I liked this recipe but there were a couple of problems or confusions.

Soy-Ginger Chicken Rolled in Crisp Lettuce
with Peanut Dipping Sauce

First, the title of this recipe is Soy-Ginger Chicken Rolled in Crisp Lettuce with Peanut Dipping Sauce. The introduction to the recipe explains that in Vietnam, "hot food such as grilled beef or fried spring rolls is often rolled up in cool, crisp lettuce leaves with large sprigs of mint and cilantro." So, naturally I thought that the lettuce acted as the wrap, but then the recipes goes on to include tortillas. Not only that, but it calls for 16 6-inch tortillas for 8 chicken thighs in which 2 pieces of chicken go in each tortilla and the recipe says it serves 4. Um, that doesn't quite compute, does it? Must be a typo. Anyway, I decided to try the recipe with tortillas and it's a good thing I did because the lettuce I bought would not have been good for rolling anyway.

As far as flavor goes, this recipe was tasty but was unfortunately overpowered by some local wildflower honey I had purchased on a whim. The wildflower flavor was so strong and perfumy, it overwhelmed the other flavors in this dish. It was still good, but a milder honey would have worked out much better here. The peanut sauce was good, but I have other recipes I like better.

Although this recipe wasn't the greatest success in the world, we did enjoy it overall and I would like to try the glaze again with a milder honey. And perhaps a different peanut sauce - many sauces I've made call for cooking the sauce first and perhaps that was all that was needed here to kick up the flavors a bit.

I've renewed the book for 3 more weeks and am looking forward to looking through it more thoroughly and picking out a few more recipes to try.

It's Blueberry Time Again!

2008-07-05T09:26:00.002-04:00

Strawberries have pretty much wound down for the season but fortunately that means it's time for blueberries. It's a little bit early in the season around here, but our local blueberry farm was teeming with ripe berries on many of their bushes. The big fat ones were less abundant, but they had plenty of the smaller variety. Last year we picked about 16 pounds in two trips. This year we took DH along and he had a 5 gallon bucket. Apparently he felt he needed to try and fill this 5 gallon bucket - by the time I convinced him that we had enough, we were up to 23 pounds of blueberries!

Needless to say, it's been blueberry week at our house. So far we have made a couple of favorites from last year - Blueberry Buckle Coffeecake and Blueberry Ice Cream. This time the blueberry ice cream was even more luscious since I was able to use local eggs and rich cream from a local dairy farm - yum.

We've also tried two new recipes...one for a blueberry banana muffin that I'll share later and one for this fabulous Blueberry Galette. While searching for a recipe, I discovered that there are many incarnations of a galette, some using a puff pastry crust, some using a yeasted dough, but to me, a galette has always been basically a free-form pie. I have always been attracted to the rustic look of a galette - it just seemed much less intimidating and fussy than a more structured pie.

The galette is ready to hit the oven.

I didn't look too long to find a recipe over at I Shot the Chef. In my internet travels I did notice that more than one recipe called for cornmeal in the crust. I wasn't sure if I'd be pleased with the texture of the cornmeal but I wanted to try it.

The crust went together very easily - just a few pulses of all your ingredients in the food processor and then the addition of the cream and ice water until the dough begins to come together and you're done. The dough gets a 2 hour chill (or can be done the day before) before getting rolled out into a 12-inch circle. The dough was quite easy to work with and was not overly sticky.

Next, a mixture of blueberries and sugar is piled in the middle of the dough, leaving a 2-3 inch border. The blueberries get topped with bits of butter and then the dough is folded up around them - very, very simple to do. A quick brushing of cream and sprinkling of sugar and it's ready to hit the oven.

Blueberry Galette

The crust ended up being delicious - flaky and slightly sweet, with just a little extra texture from the cornmeal without feeling unpleasantly grainy as I feared might be the case. The sprinkling of sugar also gives an added crunch as well as nice sparkle. The filling only oozed a tiny bit in one spot where the crust must have been rolled a bit too thin and was not at all runny when we cut the galette to serve - unlike many of the berry pies I've tried in the past. We topped the galette off with a bit of homemade whipped cream using luscious, rich cream from a local dairy as an added treat.

This is my first time making a galette, but I can assure you it won't be my last. Very simple and unfussy, yet it looks elegant and tastes delicious. What's not to like?

Garlic Scapes

2008-07-04T09:15:00.000-04:00

Happy July 4th! Looks like this week got away from me, but today is pretty quiet, so I'll sneak in a quick post.

Until this year, I had never heard of garlic scapes and then suddenly they were everywhere - a post over on the CLBB and a lot of pictures on Food Gawker. I even saw them at my local farmer's market, but skipped them over since I really didn't know what to do with them. Finally I saw a recipe for Garlic Scape Pesto and decided that I had to try them.

For those of you not familiar with scapes, according to the Really Garlicky Company:

Hardneck garlic developes an impressive flowering stalk, called a scape, which can grow from 24 to 48 inches in height. At the top is the "seed" pod, more properly called the umbel, which contains the flowers and bulbils. The umbel pod is covered in by the spathe, which often has a pronounced beak. Some garlic varieties give improved yields if the scape is cut before umbel development. The scapes on Rocamboles form beautiful circular curls. These are prized by floral arrangers in some countries, especially Japan.

After buying them, I was quite sure which part of the scape to use - all of it or just the portion below the pod. After reading on the internet, I decided to use only the portion below the pod, but I have since seen a few photos showing cooks using the entire scape. Using the whole scape might make more sense if you were leaving the scape intact for effect rather than cutting them up for something like pesto. I also thought my pods were quite a bit larger than most of those I had seen pictured and wasn't sure if this might create and undesirable texture or flavor.

Garlic Scape Pesto

I tried a bit of scape before tossing it into the food processor to make the pesto and I was surprised with how garlicky it was after most of what I ready described scapes as being much milder than a regular garlic clove. They are definitely milder - had a I used a similar amount of garlic in this pesto, it would have been overpowering - but they had more bite than I was expecting.

This recipe is a pretty basic pesto but it does not use as much basil as my go-to basil pesto and it includes a bit of chardonnay which added a nice zing to the pesto. In place of the lemon olive oil, I used extra-virgin olive oil and a bit of lemon zest. We'll be using this pesto on paninis this weekend.

I imagine that scapes are probably out of season by now, but the next time I happen to spot them at the farmer's market, I'll grab a few and try them as is - in a saute or on a pizza - rather than chopping them to bits in something like a pesto. It's always fun to try something new!

Garden Update: Sigh.........

2008-06-28T13:33:00.000-04:00

Okay, let's start with the good news, shall we? 'Cause if I start with the bad news, I might not be able to see the keyboard and/or monitor through all of the tears..........

So, looks good from a distance, right?

Let's get up close. By the way - the tops of the lasagna beds have remained virtually weed free. What I've pulled from near the plants would barely fill a 1/2 cup measuring cup. LOVING that part!

The cucumbers, zucchini and cantaloupe are just kind of one big mass of vines. I'm sure I planted them a bit too close together, but I figured it might work out okay......we'll see.

One thing I will definitely do differently with the vine-like plants is that even if I plant them close to each other again, I will NOT plant them close to other non-vine plants like my bush beans. I had to prune back some of the zucchini plant to keep it from encroaching.

Lots of tiny cucumbers like this one.......

And one larger cucumber.

And 3 zucchini. Make that two.....the one on the right (with the browned out end) appears to be a goner......

The bean plants look fine so far.

The sage looks great.

The basil is still chugging along. Not the best basil I've ever grown - the leaves still have some yellowing to them (I wonder if the soil is missing a key nutrient? Will have to read more on that.) and the flea beetles are still munching, but it's starting to get bushier and hopefully will really take off soon.

The peppers...still not sure about these. I keep seeing buds, but only a couple of flowers and no fruit set yet.

Here comes the bad part. The really depressing part. I planted 11 tomato plants and at this point, I don't know that I'll get a single tomato from any of them. How can that possibly be?? They were looking so lovely for a while there and then something happened. Whether it's fungal or bacterial, I'm not sure, but every stinkin' plant has this creeping crud.

Not only that, but every blossom so far has dropped. The black crud is covering the blossoms and then they just break right off. Here's one that's just about to drop........

Well, okay, I did manage to find maybe 4-5 teeny tiny tomatoes on one of the 3 cherry tomato plants........but even one of those fruits has some black crud on it..........

The crud is all over the place.......

$%@#%^! I keep reading about how it's SO EASY to grow tomatoes. I feel like I'm being taunted!! I've seen people get so overrun with them that they start giving them away. I've never, ever had good luck with tomatoes. I've tried probably more than 10 different kinds and I've gardened in two different states and even in pots. No luck. Although, come to think of it, I think I got a decent yield the first year I tried tomatoes - before the plants succumbed to whatever disease they had that time.

This time, however, I hope to learn about what's going on rather than just piss and moan about it. I've taken a sample of some leaves to the local extension office and am waiting for a call back to find out what's wrong. I've been looking online at lots of tomato disease pictures, but they all start to look the same after a while and I can't figure it out. So far it looks most like the Alternaria Canker which can be found on leaves, stems and fruit. But if anyone out there reading this has any diagnoses or advice, I'd be happy to listen!

I wouldn't be surprised to find out it's fungal. We've been having a lot of warm, wet, humid weather lately and I've noticed lots of fungal critters growing around other areas of the yard.

I'll be shoving my nose into a lot of books and websites this winter to read more about disease-resistant varieties (depending on what the extension office says) and anything I can learn about growing tomatoes. And at least this time I'll have room to rotate the crops so that I'm not planting in that same bed again next year. I am determined to have a bountiful harvest some day!

I'm considering starting my own from seed......but I'm afraid that that will only make me even more vested in my plants and then even more heart broken if they fail. Note the use of the word 'if" in that last sentence, not "when". I remain optimistic. Or is it just plain stubborn? Eh, either way works.

Bobby Flay: Boy Gets Grill

2008-06-26T22:37:00.000-04:00

I don't know that I've ever made a Bobby Flay recipe before. No real reason, just haven't. But being that it's summer and we like to grill as much as possible, I picked up his cookbook, Boy Gets Grill (sequel to Boy Meets Grill) at the library a week or two ago. What I have discovered is that it's a darn shame I haven't cracked open one of his cookbooks earlier - so many of the recipes I've glanced over are calling out to be made. I wonder how many times I can renew this at the library before they make me bring it back?

The first recipe we tried - Crispy Bacon and Corn Quesadillas - we liked very much, but we had a number of problems in the preparation.

#1 - The first problem wasn't at all related to the recipe - it was the weather - it was pouring. DH should win the prize for the world's most committed and dedicated griller - he's grilled in the rain twice in the last week, one of them a thunderstorm.

#2 - Grilling bacon can be kind of tricky. At least for us. I guess the grill was too hot:

#3 - Getting double-decked quesadillas onto the grill - oil side down - can be tricky too. I don't know how DH finally got them on, but I think he flipped them oil side down onto a plate first and tried to sort of slide them off onto the grill. He did manage to successfully flip them, but again, not so easy to do.

Crispy Bacon and Corn Quesadillas
with Avocado-Cherry Tomato Relish

#4 - Bobby Flay has crazy ideas about portion sizes. Our tortillas were 8-inch instead of 6-inch, but even with a 6-inch, a whole double-decker tortilla is a pretty large portion for us. Okay, so large portion sizes aren't really a problem, but still........

With the rain pouring down, I asked DH if he wanted to just do everything inside, but as I said, he was committed. And it did taste better - the tortillas had a nice charred/grill flavor to them, but the bacon - not surprisingly - was over done. I'll have to make sure that DH really keeps the grill a bit on the cooler side if we attempt bacon on the grill in the future.

The quesadillas were tasty - corn, bacon and cheese - can't really go wrong there - but the avocado relish was fantastic (though mine was probably chopped a bit too coarsely to really be considered a relish). I've made salads using similar ingredients before, but for some reason, this one tasted so much better. Maybe it was the jalapeno - that's something I don't normally use - I just don't think of it. Or it could have been the chives - again, something I don't normally use in this kind of dish as red onion or scallions tend to be the more commonly used ingredient. Bobby's actually does call for red onion, but I forgot to buy any, so I snipped some chives from the garden and they were really good with the rest of the flavors.

In the end, it all worked out and DH declared that it was worth the flaming bacon, the pouring rain and the tricky flipping. And since he's the grill master, who am I to argue?

Yummy, Comforting Pasta

2008-06-25T23:27:00.000-04:00

Just a quick post tonight before I head off to bed.........

Although it's not really what I'd consider pasta weather at the moment, I'm actually still getting caught up on recipes from early this spring. This is a pasta dish from Rachael Ray that was full of flavor and oh-so-comforting.

Pasta with Swiss Chard, Bacon, and Lemony Ricotta Cheese

There's quite a lot going on with the greens, the bacon, the ricotta and the lemon, but it all comes together nicely - I like it when you have an array of taste sensations to look forward to in each bite. If you can't find Swiss chard or happen to have other greens on hand, just about any kind of green would likely work well with this dish.

Mmmmm....just writing about this dish is making me crave pasta, but we're in grilling mode these days, so it may be a while before something like this hits the table again.....

Pea Soup and Panini

2008-06-24T22:15:00.001-04:00

This dinner was an idea swiped directly from The Vicarious Farme r. Each week she has been sharing her CSA bounty and including some of the recipes she prepared using the fresh produce she picked that week. Yum.

We've made pea soup once before and it was well-received, but that recipe used frozen peas so I was eager to make use of the fresh peas in season at our farmer's market. Actually, the majority of the ingredients used in this meal made use of fresh, local ingredients, something I am trying to focus on, at least while the farmer's market is open this summer.

This recipe is from A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen by Jack Bishop, a cookbook I've been using faithfully since I got bought it last winter. The soup calls for making a quick stock using the pea pods, scallions and parsley. I have to admit that I was rather reluctant to use my fresh-from-farmer's-market scallions for a broth where they would be boiled to death, but I took a deep breath and tossed them in.

Chilled Fresh Pea Soup

Once the broth is finished, it is strained and the peas are tossed in for a quick simmer, followed by the lettuce. I don't know if I quite understand the purpose of lettuce in pea soups, but according to The New Best Recipe (the source for the first pea soup we made), "A few ounces of Boston lettuce added along with the peas gave the soup a marvelous frothy texture when pureed." So, I guess it's for texture.

This recipe called for topping the soup with creme fraiche or sour cream, but I had some leftover cream from the farmer's market, so I added a half cup of this before pureeing the soup.

This soup was quite good, but I liked the recipe linked above better. I'd like to morph the two some day and make the Cook's Illustrated recipe with fresh peas in place of the frozen and using the pea pod broth in place of the chicken broth.

For the panini, I used Wegmans' Black Bean Salsa bread, fresh cheddar from a local farm and chopped chives. Very simple but flavorful - the bread gave just a touch of heat which was a nice contrast to the cool, creamy soup.

Local ingredients used: lettuce, scallions, peas, parsley (from my garden), cream, and cheddar cheese.

Birthday Treats

2008-06-22T22:08:00.001-04:00

My oldest son turned 14 this year. Gulp. He goes to high school next year! How can that be??

Anyway.........for his actual birthday a few weeks ago, he requested a chocolate and peanut butter cake. Today was his birthday party - a skating party - and we decided that instead of another cake, we'd try cupcakes - something a little easier to handle once we were at the rink.

I can't say that I was overly thrilled with the cake part of either of these recipes (which is why you'll find that I'm only linking to them instead of posting the full recipe here). I like a really deep, dark chocolate cake. Both cakes were fine, they just didn't wow me. I'm still going to share them because I did really like the peanut butter filling/icing for both.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Layer Cake

The cake was a double layer chocolate cake with a peanut butter filling and chocolate icing. It turns out I was out of regular peanut butter for the filling so I subbed natural pb and it worked beautifully. In fact, I think it might have given the filling stronger peanut butter flavor which, in my book, is definitely a good thing. I was very pleased with the consistency and flavor of this filling and would definitely use this again.

Even with 2 sticks of butter and a 1/2 cup of sour cream, the cake turned out a bit dry. Could have been user error though - my oven tends to run a bit hot and sometimes things get a little overdone if I'm not vigilant.

The icing for this cake was very different from any I've made before - it was made with just sour cream and melted chocolate - that's it. I wasn't at all sure what to expect as far as consistency goes - turns out it was pretty similar to a ganache-type icing, just not quite as rich. I'm not sure I was crazy about the "sour" flavor of the sour cream in the icing and since there are other icings that I have liked better, I doubt I'd use this recipe again. It's too bad too, because it sure was easy! So, I will keep the pb filling filed away and keep searching for a better cake recipe.

Chocolate Cupcakes and Peanut Butter Icing

For the cupcakes, it was somewhat the same story. I tried a recipe from Barefoot Contessa as I often hear raves about her baked goodies - probably because she's not shy with the cream or butter. The cake this time was nice and moist - much better than recipe above - but again, the chocolate flavor just wasn't there for me.

For the peanut butter icing, I used regular peanut butter as the recipe instructs because I wanted the icing to be light and fluffy and I wasn't sure that natural peanut butter would work quite as well here. The icing did in fact turn out nice and fluffy and although the peanut butter flavor wasn't quite as pronounced as with the filling above, it was still delicious and I think perhaps the more subtle peanut butter flavor was appropriate for an icing as opposed to a filling.

One note on the cupcakes. The recipe claims it makes 14-15 cupcakes. I increased the recipe by half and instead of ending up with about 22 cupcakes, I ended up with closer to 30. I may not have filled the muffin tins as full as I could have, but they were at least 2/3 full.

Even though neither of these baked treats were exactly home runs in my book, chocolate and peanut butter combinations are never complete failures - they may not have been fabulous, but it's pretty hard to go wrong with this popular combo.

So I guess I'm now on the lookout for a rich, chocolate cake that can measure up to what I taste in my head...........

Father's Day: Scallops and King Crab Legs

2008-06-21T16:39:00.001-04:00

So, back to our Father's Day menu. It appears I started with dessert first, but the savory dishes were just as delicious.

DH requested king crab legs. While buying the crab legs, I also bought a few scallops totally on impulse. I'm not terribly enamored of scallops - something about the texture - but DH loves them and I thought that Father's Day would be the perfect day to treat him. Since I've never actually cooked scallops myself, I had no plan whatsoever, but I knew we'd come up with something.

Grilled Scallops with Basil Stuffing

I went to my reliable resource, the CLBB, and came upon this recipe which is apparently from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything. We had the lemons and garlic on hand and we had just enough basil in the garden to stuff the eight scallops I bought, so this jumped out at me. I was also intrigued by the idea of grilling the scallops. As I said, I'm not crazy about scallops but everything is better on the grill, right?

These were fantastic - DH raved and I might have changed my mind about scallops. While it takes a bit of time to slit each scallop and stuff them with the basil-garlic mixture, it's by no means a difficult recipe and with our small portion, it went pretty quickly. Just make sure to use plenty of extra-virgin olive oil on your scallops and on the grill or grill pan to keep them from sticking and things will work out fine. We chickened out of doing them directly on the grill rack, so we used our nonstick grill pan which is why we ended up with grill polka dots instead of the classic grill stripes. A little goofy looking, but it worked and certainly didn't hurt the flavor one bit.

We also did the crab legs on the grill which seemed to work pretty well. No recipe there, just following the package directions to basically grill them about 3 minutes on each side.

No recipe here either, but we did manage to fit in one veggie/fruit dish by serving a spinach, strawberry and toasted pecan salad with a strawberry vinaigrette. This Father's Day largely on the fresh strawberries we picked.....maybe it will become a tradition.

More Strawberries....

2008-06-20T22:17:00.001-04:00

Well, we ended up making good use of our 16 quarts of strawberries and except for the 2 bags I froze, they are gone. But I think I know where I could score some more........

Father's Day fell shortly after our strawberry picking so I decided that strawberries were definitely going to be on the menu. I made a special desert that I've never made before - strawberry shortcake. When I think of dessert, I tend to think in terms of chocolate, but as the years pass, I've begun to think beyond chocolate and embrace other kinds of dessert.........and with delicious results.

Strawberry Shortcake

This recipe from Martha Stewart's Everyday Food sounded delicious and looked easy to make - my kind of recipe. I also loved that the recipe called for making shortcake biscuits, creating individual shortcake portions. Somehow desserts just seem more special when everyone gets their very own portion with no slicing or cutting.

Shortcake biscuits are somewhat scone-like. They are subtly sweet and a bit crumbly, so be sure to let them cool completely and cut them with a very sharp and/or serrated knife. The biscuits are topped with strawberries that have been steeped with sugar to bring out their juices, followed dollop of homemade whipped cream with just a touch of vanilla. Top it off with the other half of the biscuit and you have a beautiful little dessert portion that comes together in no time.

This dessert was extra special because not only did we make it with strawberries we picked ourselves, I also scored some cream from a local dairy at our local farmer's market and used eggs from a small organic farm in our county that sells to a natural foods store in our area.

For a different twist on strawberry shortcake, check out eggs on sunday's twist involving chocolate. Too bad I didn't see that post before I made these! But then again, I'm trying to branch out, right?

More on our Father's Day menu to come....including a delicious basil-stuffed scallop recipe....

Toffee, Caramel, Cappuccino and Peppercorn.

2008-06-16T15:11:00.002-04:00

That's not a list of what's cooking in my kitchen, that's the list of colors going in to our new kitchen. Please excuse this rather self-indulgent post, but The Savory Notebook's kitchen is getting a makeover!

And here's why.

Hunter green counter tops. Yuck. Hunter green is fine as a limited accent color, but for something as permanent as counter tops. I can't seem to get away from hunter green. Our first house in Indiana had hunter green carpets and drapes in the bedroom. Double ugh. That's where the cappuccino figures in - we're doing Zodiaq quartz counter tops in cappuccino.

But to really appreciate just how far this kitchen will have come since we moved in, you must see how it looked before we removed the ugly wallpaper.........

That picture was taken as we toured the house with the realtor. The same sort of wallpaper existed in various incarnations in the hallway upstairs and down and in all 3 bathrooms. We paid someone to come in and remove that almost immediately and it's probably the best money we ever spent. It looks much better now.......

It's not just the counter tops with the hunter green, it's in the floor too. See that? More hunter green. The ugly vinyl is coming out and is being replaced with tile.

And the sink. The faucet is so low it's maddening. Pair a low faucet with that divider in the middle and you're talking lots of potential for dish breaking and yes, we've broken a few these last 2 years. We'll put in a stainless steel undermount sink with a large single bowl and a tall faucet with lots of clearance for large pots and pans. I'm sure we'll still break a few dishes, but at least we'll have a fighting chance!

We'll be ripping out all the existing oak cabinetry. The cabinets are in good condition, we just REALLY dislike oak. We'll be doing maple cabinets with a toffee finish. We looked into refacing, and although it would cut the costs by 1/3-1/2, we felt it would be an overall better value to replace. I was also surprised that the finishes available for refacing are quite limited - I wasn't really all that happy with any of the refacing finishes.

We'll also be replacing the island. It's fine as it is for storage, but it's not terribly functional. The current u-shape is nice for looking out into the family room while I'm prepping, but it leaves a lot of unused space between the sink area and the island. We're going for a rectangular design that will include a breakfast bar. I'm so excited about the breakfast bar. We had one for 7 brief months and even bought stools for it. Those stools have just been sitting in our dining room, waiting to be put to use. Other improvements to the island will be pull-out drawers for pots, pans and appliances, a trash cabinet and electrical outlets at either end. The island will be a slightly different style of cabinet and will have a dark, peppercorn finish for a little contrast to the lighter maple cabinets.

Other smaller improvements will include a real cabinet above the microwave. The former homeowners took out the existing cabinet to put in an over-the-range microwave. While I really like the OTR micro (but why oh why did they pick white to go with black and ss???), I'm not so fond of looking at the micro vent. Sloppy work.

We'll also be taking out the brass-rimmed light box and putting in recessed can lighting on either side of the kitchen with two pendant lights over the island.

As you can see from these pictures, we've already gotten rid of the white and brass flying saucer they used to have hanging in our breakfast nook area.

I mean look at that thing.......it just wasn't "us".........

Nothing fancy, but definitely more us.........

Oh, and the caramel. That's a potential wall color. We'll be painting the kitchen and the family room ourselves after everything else is finished - that way we can save a little money and live with the kitchen a little bit before we make any paint choices.

So, that's it. As always, there are so many other things we'd love to do if money weren't an issue - like tearing out the soffit, replacing the white microwave, the ceramic stove (I prefer gas) and the dishwasher, but we're already doing a lot more than we dreamed we'd be able to, so no one's complaining. The appliances can be done a little at a time as budget allows. Of course DH likes to occasionally talk about blowing out the wall and expanding out......but that's just "if we won the lottery" talk..........

The contract is signed and hopefully work will start at the end of July. After that, there's still that darned hunter green sink in the half bath downstairs...........

Strawberries and Chocolate

2008-06-15T21:35:00.002-04:00

We are still making our way through the 16 quarts of strawberries. So far we have made Strawberry-Lime Sorbet, strawberry vinaigrette (if I figure out exactly what I did, I'll post a recipe), strawberry daiquiris (recipe turned out only so-so, so I'm not posting that one) and the recipe I'm sharing today.

In addition to wanting to find uses for our surplus of strawberries, I discovered that I had some sour cream in the refrigerator that was in danger of going bad and I thought maybe I could use it in some sort of strawberry recipe. It didn't take me long to find this post from Dagmar at a cat in the kitchen, reviewing an ice cream recipe from David Lebovitz's A Perfect Scoop. An ice cream that called for strawberries and sour cream - perfect! Until I found a recipe over at eggs on sunday for basically the same ice cream, but with bittersweet chocolate drizzled in. Even more perfect!

I tend to prefer custard-based ice creams - they are richer, denser and creamier. Cream-based ice cream tends to be, well, icy. But I was game to give this one a go, just to use up the sour cream. I was also heartened by the fact that it called for a bit of vodka, something that I swear by when making sorbets to keep them a bit soft, instead of hardening up into blocks of ice.

Strawberry-Sour Cream Stracciatella Ice Cream

The chocolate part comes at the very end, when the ice cream has pretty much finished churning - you just drizzle the melted chocolate in thin streams and let it mix in your ice cream machine. As the chocolate hits the ice cream, it hardens and breaks up into very small pieces, giving you just a little bit of bittersweet chocolate in every bite.

This recipe was a bit too much for my Cuisinart ice cream machine - the ice cream mixture began to overflow the bowl toward the end, so I'd have to either cut the recipe back or churn it in two batches next time.

This ice cream isn't as lush and rich as I usually crave, but the flavors are fantastic. The sweet tang of strawberries hits you first. As the ice cream sits in your mouth, the frozen bits of chocolate begin to warm up and leave you with a nice finish of luscious, bittersweet chocolate.

If you like chocolate covered strawberries, you'll love this ice cream. As I wrote up this post, I stumbled upon this custard-based recipe for stracciatella ice cream. Looks divine! Guess I know what we'll be trying with some of our frozen strawberries later on this summer!

Gardening Update: So far, so good.....

2008-06-13T15:05:00.000-04:00

After a rough start in which my garden got zapped twice by frost, things are looking up. We went from a frost on Memorial Day to temperatures in the 90s this past week! Most of the vegetables I planted love hot weather so things have started to take off. I wonder if they didn't get a little shocked with the sudden change though....

So, let's take a little tour around the garden.

Here's a shot showing the hopefully adequate fence we put up. A determined animal could certainly get past or under this fence, but we hope it deters most of the wild critters out there. I have seen an itty bitty baby bunny in the fenced-in area, but they grow fast and I figure he/she won't be able to fit through it too much longer. .I also had to remove the plastic plant tags that reminded me of the different varieties of tomatoes because the crows kept coming in and scattering them about the garden. Hopefully I will remember what is what!

My plan is to build lasagna gardens all along the fence to hide it and eliminate the need to mow or weed whack near it. It will take quite a while to build that many beds, but it will be fun to intermix some flowers into the garden. I might even make use of the fence and try growing climbing vegetables like peas.

I've started to mulch the plants with straw. Another thing to love about lasagna gardening is that whatever you choose to mulch with simply becomes another layer of the garden! I've chosen straw since it's easily available and provides a cleanish, dry surface for the any produce that might be growing on or near the ground.

Two of my cherry tomato plants got zapped by frost. They looked pretty bad, but I thought they might have just enough greenery intact to survive...

...Check it out! They seem to have recovered nicely:

Two of the Pink Brandywine also got zapped...

...but are looking much better these days:

I forgot to include one of the tomato plants I planted. This is a watermelon beefsteak. I really know nothing at all about the heirloom tomatoes I planted, but I'm guessing this one might produce some BIG tomatoes.

Remember the slightly sickly Yellow Taxi?

Looking better:

The cucumbers got lightly zapped too.....

...but are making a comeback. The largest one was a just-in-case plant I got to have in case the others didn't make it. If they all produce, we'll be swamped with cucumbers!

Remember that frost bitten and discarded zucchini plant I plucked off the compost pile?

It's doing quite well now:

The pepper plants look okay, but not great - a little yellowed. Not sure what to expect since I've only ever planted them once and I think they got trampled by bunnies. I read a suggestion to cover the soil with a black barrier because peppers like it really hot. That was easy enough to do, so I'm giving it a try.

The beans are up and coming along. I left 3 spots with two plants growing together and 3 spots where I thinned them back to just one plant. I figured I'd experiment and see what works best.

The basil is a bit worrisome. It's hard to see in these photos, ,but they look a little yellowed with some brown spots on the leaves. Not quite sure what's going on here, but I suspect it might be too windy for the basil. I don't know of many spaces around our house that are NOT windy, so if wind is the culprit, I'm not quite sure what I'll do. I'll have to scout out a place that's sunny enough up close to the house and maybe try growing it in pots again. We'll just have to see how they do.......

I have several volunteer plants coming out of the compost. I'm very curious as to what they might be, so I may not be turning my compost this summer! I think I'll just let them grow and see what happens. It will be really hard to mow, but oh well. Based on what we've thrown into the compost, they are mostly likely pumpkins, butternut squash or cucumbers. Anyone care to take a guess?

Speaking of the compost, this is the one really untidy-looking area of the garden. We have it so that we can't see it from the deck, but I think our neighbors probably can see the pile of garbage bags, so I'm going to try to come up with a plan to make this area a little neater looking. Not that our neighbors ever sit outside to enjoy the weather or our gorgeous views anyway...but still....it would make me feel better to have it looking nice.

Well, I think that's it for now. One thing I have definitely learned is to be patient. It's not over until it's over. I've had several plants virtually spring back from the dead, so I will no longer give up on them until they are lying shriveled in the dirt!

The next project that needs to be done sooner rather than later is to figure out how to rig up some sort of soaker hose or drip irrigation so that I can properly water the garden. I can tell you one thing - I get quite a workout dragging the blasted hose all the way down to the garden and back up again! If we had some extra cash lying around, I'd get someone to come out and install a faucet way down yonder. Maybe some day......

Chickpeas!

2008-06-12T00:49:00.001-04:00

But first, a shout out to Blogger. My blog is NOT a spam blog, so please remove the word verification for my posts immediately! It's very annoying! I've sent in my unlock request as per procedure......surely it can't take too long to determine that my blog is legit! I'm tired of typing in the word verification letters every time I want to save a post or publish and I miss the automatic save feature. Half the time I can barely read the darn letters and then they tell me I've entered it wrong! SHEESH! Okay, vent over, back to the food.......

There will be more strawberry recipes to come, but I need to get caught up on some recipes we made earlier this spring.

In case you haven't heard, I love Jack Bishop's A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen. In addition to introducing me to really simple, yet delicious cooking, it has also reacquainted me with the humble chickpea. I've always liked chickpeas in the form of hummus and I love chana masala, but I never prepared them much at home.

Spinach and Arugula Salad with
Indian-Spiced Chickpeas and Charred Red Onions

I like chickpeas best when they are prepared with Indian spices. A nice chickpea curry or masala, maybe with some spinach, paired with basmati rice and a piece of naan.....mmmmmm..........I could eat that every day. It makes me happy just thinking about it. My family thinks I'm strange.

For something a little different, however, I decided to try a chickpea salad. The chickpeas are still flavored with with a couple of Indian spices, but they are served over spinach and arugula (another favorite of mine) instead of in a sauce. Sweet, charred red onions give even more flavor interest to this simple dish. (If you'd like to avoid using the oven during the summer, red onions are fantastic charred on the grill.) A bit of lime juice, paired with the olive oil from cooking the spices and chickpeas, serves to dress the salad and brightens up the rest of the flavors.

Serve this salad with a bit of naan and it makes a light, refreshing, nutritious spring or summer meal.

Laura over at The Spiced Life also recently reviewed this recipe with some local greens she scored and it looks like she's been strawberry picking too!

In Season: Strawberries!

2008-06-11T16:53:00.000-04:00

Strawberry sorbet, strawberry ice cream, strawberry vinaigrette, strawberry jam, and strawberries in the freezer.

That's what's on tap this week at our house after my son and I were perhaps a little over zealous in picking 16 quarts of strawberries this week! And that was nothing. I saw trunks of cars loaded up with probably 30-50 quarts. I mean, I like strawberries, but that's a little nutty. I wonder if some people re-sell them? Or maybe they just make A LOT of jam?

Anyway, our 16 quarts will be keeping me busy this week. So far I've made two batches of strawberry sorbet and I've frozen two trays of strawberries for making sorbet and/or smoothies and/or jam later on.

The strawberry sorbet is one I've been making for a few years now and was shocked to find that I haven't yet shared the recipe on my blog! I found a post from last year promising to come back and post it, but I never did. Then I remembered that I was not able to get a good photo of it and that's why it never made it to the blog. But this time.......we've got photos, so it's time to share this recipe.

This recipe is based on a master sorbet recipe from Cook's Illustrated. I took their basic technique and created a delicious strawberry-lime sorbet that tastes like a yummy strawberry daiquiri. It's so refreshing.....really a perfect summer treat. And boy has it felt like summer here lately - hot and humid! (But thankfully it's cooled off today.)

Strawberry-Lime Sorbet

I replaced the water in their recipe with lime and added some lime zest. I love strawberry sorbet without lime, but the lime gives it a nice extra zing and I have decided is a must. The vodka in the recipe keeps the sorbet from turning into a block of ice - it keeps the sorbet a bit soft and helps it retain a pleasing, almost creamy texture. Sometimes I find that the vodka makes it too soft and sometimes I find that it doesn't make it quiet soft enough and I have not been able to figure out if it's the amount I'm using or the type of vodka or what! I do know, however, that adding vodka is something that I now do to ALL sorbets to achieve a nice texture. Even if it's a little too soft, I prefer that to scraping my sorbet out of the container and eating ice chips.

Lots more strawberry recipes to come. It's been a busy week - so much for that relaxing summer vacation - but the next 2 days or so will be nice and quiet, so I should have time to whip up a few recipes. I don't really have a choice with a fridge full of luscious berries!

Fun BBQ Treat: S'mores Bars

2008-06-08T09:22:00.001-04:00

Yesterday we hosted an end-of-the-school-year cookout for our boys. I just counted them up and it turns out we only had a total of 10 pre-teens and teens (ranging from 9-14) here, but it sure seemed like a lot more! We were lucky as far as rain goes, but it was so hot that they ended up being inside a lot anyway.

Shopping for this cookout was quite the experience. I tend to cook pretty healthfully and my cart is generally pretty devoid of junk, but when you're throwing a party for teens, you're not likely to be buying a lot of Brussels sprouts and tofu. As I walked through the grocery store, I tried to hold my head high as I loaded the cart with Doritos, chips, soda, white hamburger and hot dog buns, hot dogs, ice cream sandwiches, and even a box of Froot Loops. (The Froot Loops were for my son's birthday. The boys are borderline neglected and abused because they are not allowed to eat the crappy, sugary cereals, so we treat them once a year.)

So, as you can see, we kept the cookout simple and teen-friendly. I did make two things: baked beans and S'mores Bars. Of course the beans didn't get eaten - except for my boys who love them - but the S'mores Bars seemed to go over pretty well. Though I did have one of the boys ask me if we were going to heat them up. Hmmm...that's an idea, but a messy one!

S'mores Bars

There are quite a few variations on these bars out there and you can find quite a few good ones on this CLBB post. I've tried this version, but I found that they were a bit messy to cut so I decided to try one with an actual graham cracker crust. And as good as this version was, I really didn't think that something as sweet as S'mores really needed so much extra sugar.

This second version turned out a little more "orderly". The crust crumbled off the bars a bit as you cut them/ate them, but that seems to happen with lots of graham cracker crusts. I did line the pan with foil so that I could easily lift the bars out before cutting - otherwise I'm guessing it would really have been a mess to cut. I don't think I used the full amount of marshmallows - I just added enough to cover the top in a single layer. As you can see from the photo, I forgot to reserve some of the crumbs for sprinkling on top, and though it might have added some visual interest, forgetting that part really didn't alter the overall outcome of these bars one bit.

Since it was so hot and humid, these definitely benefited from a stay in the refrigerator before cutting and serving and I would recommend doing this no matter what the weather unless you have quite a bit of time to let them set up properly. Be careful not to chill them too long before cutting though (like I did), the chocolate hardens and makes it harder to cut them nicely without doing a number on the crust.

I was lucky to get a picture of these! I had to sneak around and grab a shot when none of the kids were looking. I didn't want the boys to have to explain why their mom goes around taking pictures of food!

Anyway, if you're every looking for a treat to bring to a cookout or picnic, these are just the ticket.

Shrimp Tikka

2008-06-06T08:31:00.000-04:00

Here's another recipe from Gourmet Magazine. I've been receiving a free one-year subscription since sometime after Christmas. Amazon was offering a free subscription with certain kitchen purchases - I didn't have any idea when I made the purchase, so it was a nice little surprise.

I've been unenthused about shrimp on the grill lately and this recipe sounded like just the thing to bring us out of a shrimp rut. Not only that, but the mangoes have been very good lately so it seemed like the perfect time to try a dish that calls for making a mango chutney.

Shrimp Tikka with Fresh Mango Chutney

The shrimp are marinated for 30 minutes in a spicy, Indian-inspired combination of ginger, garlic, garam masala, turmeric and some jalapeno for heat. The mango chutney is a sweet and savory combination of mango and cucumber spiced with cumin, lime, mint and cilanto and again, a bit of jalapeno to kick it up. The recipe calls for unripe mango, but ours was probably more on the ripe side. I don't see any reason not to use ripe mango so long as it's not so ripe as to not hold up to dicing.

I think we can safely say that this dish helped pull us out of our shrimp rut. It was very, very good. All around, this is a perfect summer meal - it's easy, refreshing and prepared on the grill. I only wish we had used bigger shrimp - our shrimp were really not big enough for grilling.

I should know by now to reach for Indian flavors when I'm in a rut. Indian flavors almost always come through for me, making my taste buds tingle with happiness.

Time for something sweet!

2008-06-05T09:07:00.000-04:00

I actually have yet another burger recipe to share, but let's take a break from burgers and talk about something sweet.

Like these yummy peanut butter cookies. These cookies came to my attention through a post over on the CLBB, but they originated from Deb over at Smitten Kitchen. If you are not already familiar with her blog, you MUST take a look. You'll want to lick your computer screen. And she even makes her own graham crackers and marshmallows. You're not likely to get any of that over here, so go take a look. You can also read about how these cookies are connected to the Magnolia Bakery in NYC.

Peanut Butter Cookies from Smitten Kitchen

I was initially intrigued - apart from my interest in anything combining chocolate and peanut butter - by her photographs of these cookies. They looked nice and thick, something you don't often (ever?) see with a peanut butter cookie. The texture looked perfect.

As you can see, my cookies do not look like hers, but they were still good. I did not bake them by the rounded teaspoonful (I'm obsessed with using a cookie scoop and I don't have one that small), so that may account for some of the differences in texture. However, it's really hard to figure out why the same recipe can turn out so differently for different bakers - maybe the water content of the butter was different, maybe it was the brand of peanut butter, maybe the butter was too soft/not soft enough, and on and on.

Mine didn't bake up as thick as Deb's, but they did have a very nice texture - as Val on the CLBB said, they are dense and tender, not quite chewy, but not cakelike either (she's much better at describing cookies than I am!). Most peanut butter cookies are a bit dry and crumbly for my tastes - not so with these cookies.

My only problem with this recipe? I'm not sure they had enough PB flavor in them. As much as I liked them, I kept waiting for more PB to shine through. I skipped the peanut butter chips, thought, so maybe that would have bumped them up a notch. I'm certainly more than willing to give them another go..........

This time, a vegetarian burger.

2008-06-04T07:17:00.000-04:00

As much as I love a good burger - gourmet or plain - I also love veggie burgers.

My favorite veggie burger ever was one I ate at a little hole-in-the-wall vegetarian restaurant in Bethlehem, PA called So Eat Already. It was an eclectic (mostly) vegetarian restaurant where everything was mismatched and mish-mosh - the chairs, tables, plates, napkins - all looked like they had been picked up at any number of garage sales or thrift stores. No ambiance whatsoever. Not much in the way of service either. But the food was fabulous! They had a grain burger that was absolutely delicious and a vegetarian Reuben (made with a chickpea mixture topped with slaw and cheese) that I loved almost as much. The Green Cafe now occupies that space - I don't know if it's the same owners, but they still have that Reuben on the menu but the grain burger appears to have fallen off the menu. It's probably been a good five years or more since I've eaten there. We just visited recently, but I didn't think to check it out. Darn.

Bulgur Veggie Burger with Lime Mayonnaise

When the June issue of Gourmet arrived, I was reminded of those grain burgers and I knew right away that I was going to make the Bulgur Veggie Burgers with Lime Mayonnaise. Not quite like the grain burgers from the restaurant, but they sounded yummy nonetheless.

The burgers are comprised primarily of bulgur, pinto beans and walnuts and come together quickly. They are very moist, so they benefit from a good chill/freeze before you put them on the grill. We were not terribly sparing on the olive oil - rubbing both the burgers and the grill sheet generously in order to avoid sticking. They stay pretty soft even after getting a nice crust from the grill, so turning them was a little tricky but I managed to get them all flipped without any tragedies.

The lime mayonnaise is definitely a nice addition to this tasty burger. Although I photographed it open-faced, we actually chose to eat them on leftover wheat hamburger buns. I think they might be even better tucked in a whole wheat pita.

Whatever kind of bread you choose, these make a flavorful and satisfying vegetarian meal.

It's too early to tell for sure...

2008-06-03T08:48:00.003-04:00

...but I think I'm already a BIG fan of lasagna gardening. Some of the things I like about it.......

Lasagna gardening initially attracted me because you do not have to remove sod and you do not have to till - two things I HATE about gardening. I also loved the fact that you make use of things around your yard to build the beds. This method is certainly quite a bit different than anything I'd read about before, but I was more than willing to give it a try.

The lasagna beds last fall

Even by early spring, the beds had cooked down quite a bit

It was hard to imagine that my ungainly piles of straw, grass, leaves and hummus/manure would amount to much, but check it out:

That's rich, dark, crumbly compost. Complete with lots of worms. Beautiful! (I recruited my son's help for this photo. He wanted to split the worm in half to make two worms, but I told him to let the poor worm be - maybe the WORM was quite happy being just one worm!)

Now I don't feel nearly as much pressure to make compost in my compost pile (more on that later) since you're really making compost right in the garden when you use this method. In fact, another name for this process is sheet composting.

Pat Lanza claims in her book that this method of gardening will result in virtually no weeds. I had my doubts, but so far we have had some weeds, especially along the edges of the beds with very few on top. What few there are have been easy to pull. If I created boxes for the beds, I'll bet I'd have very few if any. But for now, the free-style beds are working for me - less work and less expense. I also have the option of expanding the length of the beds if I so choose. Only time will tell if we will keep the weeds at bay for the long term.

Another advantage that's starting to dawn on me is that by having raised beds, you're naturally creating a well-drained gardening area. When I water the plants, the water seeps in directly, it does not pool on the ground or run off at all. At the same time, the organic materials in the beds hold onto the moisture - every time I dig around, the organic matter underneath (some of it has turned to compost, some if it is still intact) is nice and moist.

So, so far we have no tilling, no sod removal, fewer weeds, composting in place, good drainage, and good moisture retention. Sounds good to me! I can't wait to start more beds later this summer and fall!

By the way......we did get that fence put in (such as it is) before we started planting, but more on that later, along with a funny story about Bailey, some deer and our garden fence.

It's BURGER season again!

2008-06-02T09:35:00.000-04:00

Last year I decided to pull us out of our hamburger-as-plain-beef-patty rut and try some fun gourmet burgers. Plain burgers are tasty and they are certainly convenient, but it's fun to play around with different and interesting combinations. There aren't too many other people who do this better than Rachael Ray.

Salsa Verde Turkey Burgers

This time we tried her Salsa Verde Burger. Yet another winner. Some of her burgers can take quite a bit of prep work, but this one went together very easily. Take a little ground chicken or turkey and mix it up with your favorite salsa verde and the burger part is done. What really makes this burger special though is the avocado mayo - an avocado mashed with some garlic and mayo - really delicious. A straight up guacamole would work nicely here too. The burger is also topped with jack cheese and cilantro for even more flavor punch.

That's it. A simple burger with great Mexican flavors. This one will definitely be a repeater in this house.

Gardening Updates!

2008-06-01T10:39:00.001-04:00

Speaking of gardening, it's quite nice out this morning and truthfully, I'd rather be out in the garden than blogging, but it's been a while since I've posted and I'm excited to blog about what I've planted. I can see that the blog will be very handy for me in terms of serving as a journal for me to look back on to remember what I planted, what worked, etc. I'm officially off of work for the summer, so that means more time to garden and more time to blog. Whether it really means more time to cook will depend on our baseball schedule!

In the interests if getting outside, I'll try to keep this somewhat brief (though there will be a lot of photos).

Back around the 17th of May, I planted some cherry tomatoes, peppers, basil, sage, cucumbers and zucchini. Even though this was a couple of days past the frost date for our area, my plants promptly got zapped THAT VERY NIGHT. What really gets me is that I allowed my impatience to over rule the little alarm in my head that said a low of 40º was too close to potential frost temperatures, especially since we live out of town where it's cooler.

The sage and one pepper plant made it through, but I had to rip out the basil, the zucchini and the cucumbers and start over. The cherry tomato plants looked like they might limp along and produce new growth, so I've left them in to see how things go.

Fast forward to Memorial Day (the 26th), well past our frost date. It's plenty warm and I plant again: more basil, more cucumbers, more pepper plants and the heirloom tomato plants that arrived in the mail. All seems good but I keep my eye on the temps and wouldn't you know it, the temps drop again and there is danger of frost. Knowing what happened last time, I decided I would play it safe and I covered the plants. I kept them covered for 3 nights and we did get significant frost one of those nights. Hello? It's almost June!

This time I had a lot more luck, but did not escape unscathed. Most of the plants were fine, but the cucumbers and the two Pink Brandywine tomato plants got nipped. Nipped, but not completely obliterated like the first time, so I'm leaving them in the ground (but bought one more of each as insurance). I think it must have been the cover I used on those particular plants - it was just a little too flimsy.

Besides learning to be patient and follow my gut (and not just the date on the calendar), I also learned not to leave tender plants outside where they might be exposed to gusty winds. I had no idea that gusty winds could cause plants to wither and shrivel up. Lesson learned. The good news is that so far, all but one plant survived the wind.

Anyway, after a rough start, the temps are now up and hopefully my plants will be happy. Now it's time to watch for pests and disease. So, why is that I want to garden so badly anyway???????

Here's what's in my garden...............(not including the parsley and chives I have in pots up by the house)...............

4 cucumber plants (pre-frost)

I put in seeds for 6 green bean plants.

1 sage

5 basil plants

1 Mr. Stripey

1 yellow pepper

2 red pepper

1 sweet banana pepper

3 Husky Cherry Red (this one didn't get nipped by frost)

1 Yellow Taxi (not sure how this one is going to do...looks a little pale)

3 Pink Brandywine (pre-frost)

1 Green Zebra

1 Fireworks

1 Cantaloupe (I forgot to get a picture....will post later!)

1 salvaged zucchini plant....see story below....

Interesting story to the zucchini plant. It was one of the plants that I thought got decimated by the frost - I had thrown it on the compost heap. I was out putting in the last of the plants when I looked over at the compost heap and noticed my zucchini plant. It wasn't even completely ON the heap, it was sort of caught up on the sides in mid-air. But there was new growth! So, I plucked it off the heap and plunked it in the ground and I can already see even more new growth. You just never know!

Today I hope I can get in most of my flowers, finally. Flowers are a bit harder for me - they require more planning - what kind, how many, in what combinations. And no matter how many trips I make, I always think of somewhere else that I need more flowers......it just never seems to be quite done.

Believe it or not, that was actually keeping it short today! I had a lot more I wanted to share, but I'll keep that for another day. Time to get outside and get to work!

Rarebit Risotto

2008-05-11T21:42:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I'm putting up a quick post tonight so that I can keep to my promise/goal of doing at least one post per week, but I have to admit it's a struggle! It's been busy as usual and the next few weeks will be even busier. I'm so ready for school to be out and work to be over! I like my job and I only work part time, but I'm ready to have no schedule for a while. What can I say, I got spoiled being a SAHM for 10 years.......

Anyway, the recipe for tonight is one a tried a few weeks ago as I was trying to sneak in a cool weather recipe - I love risotto, but it's not something I look forward to making once the weather turns warm.

Rarebit Risotto

This vegetarian risotto (from Simple Suppers) sounded comforting with the rice and cheddar cheese and interesting because of the use of beer. Most risottos call for wine; I don't recall ever seeing one that called for beer. And with the broccoli and tomatoes, one could almost pretend it's halfway healthy.

Overall I liked the risotto, but it's probably not going to be a repeater as there are so many other risottos that I like better. Though the beer was an interesting addition, I think it gave the risotto an off flavor that I had a hard time getting past. I do like beer, so that wasn't the problem, I guess I just didn't think it fit. I used a lager, so maybe it was just too strong a beer for this particular risotto. I might, however, be inclined to try it again using white wine and see how that goes.

The four cups of cheese seemed like overkill and I was afraid the risotto would be a gloppy mess, but it actually worked pretty well - perhaps because cheddar has a healthy amount of oil compared to other cheeses. Still, I'm sure that if you used a really good quality sharp cheddar, you could still get great flavor using less cheese.

I was happy to finally fit in a little broccoli into a meal. My oldest son really HATES broccoli so I don't fix it too often but I love it, especially in the main dish, but I snuck this one in while he was gone for the night. When the youngest is gone, I like to sneak goat cheese or other things that HE really doesn't like. Whatever works.

This may be the last post for another week but who knows, maybe I'll be able to sneak one in before then............

Another yummy Rachael Ray Recipe

2008-05-04T12:36:00.000-04:00

Back to back Rachael recipes. This recipe came to my attention via the CLBB. It was posted by Sharon over at Culinary Adventures of a New Wife. Unlike the noodle bowl, this one falls in the over 30 minutes category for me. Although I have to say that even when they take over 30 minutes, Rachael's recipes are often complete, so there's no need to think up sides or additional accompaniments and when you take that into account, her recipes are still pretty quick.

Chicken Greek-a-Tikka Salad with Parsley-Feta Pesto

This is another complete meal - grilled chicken, lots of veggies, a little whole wheat pita and a yummy parsley-feta pesto on top. The only really bad thing about this recipe? The name - it's one of Rachael at her cutesy-poo best (or worst). But what can I say? I like her food and that's what counts in the end.

The Greek comes most notably from the kalamata olives and the feta, while the yogurt marinade provides the Tikka. It really does sound like a lot going on, but somehow it works. Delicious. I'd like to take elements of this recipe to try on their own - like using the yogurt marinade to grill chicken on its own (but perhaps marinating the chicken a little longer) and using the parsley-feta pesto as a dip or spread. Lots of possibilities!

On a side note, I have found a whole wheat pita pocket and a whole wheat flatbread that I love - they are not dry like many whole wheat pita breads and are pleasantly chewy. The flatbread is my favorite, but it has quite a bit more fat than the pita, so I try to use the flatbread a bit more sparingly. I am going to try something new here - when I find a specific product that I really like, I will try to link to it in my recipes, so look for the pita link in this recipe.

Still chilly where you are?

2008-05-03T22:07:00.000-04:00

Warm up with this excellent soup!

I realize that some of you in the southern climes have already transitioned into summer, but here in Central PA, May can still bring some pretty chilly weather. Even if it's a bit warmer where you are this soup is brothy and light, not heavy like stew.

This noodle bowl is from Rachael Ray's 365: No Repeats and really does cook up in 30 minutes or less, something that I usually have a hard time doing with many of her recipes. Not only is it easy, but it is packed with flavor, making you feel as if you are eating at a good Asian restaurant.

Spicy Shrimp and Bok Choy Noodle Bowl

Once you are finished chopping the bok choy, shiitake mushrooms, garlic and scallions, the rest of the recipe goes very quickly and is ready in a snap. The first time I made this it was very good, but I thought it could use a bit more broth. I have played around with the proportions a bit but haven't quite hit the perfect balance. I think that all it really needs is a bit more broth (1 or 2 cups more?) along with a proportionate amount of garlic and ginger to make sure that the flavors are not overly diluted.

I definitely recommend using shiitakes - they account for a large part of the flavor of this soup - something like a regular button mushroom wouldn't be nearly as good. I used baby bok choy the first time - 3 small heads - and it was very good (though regular bok choy works well too) and would make that substitution any time I'm able to find the baby variety.

With protein (shrimp), starch (noodles) vegetables (bok choy and scallions) and even fungi (shiitakes), this soup makes a pretty complete meal in one. Just one note on the noodles - I tried it with chinese-style wheat noodles which worked out very nicely. I wanted to try it with soba noodles but could not find any and tried whole wheat spaghetti noodles instead. The whole wheat noodles seemed to get a bit mushier than the chinese noodles did, so I don't think I'd try that again.

Fast, easy and delicious!

Peanut Butter and Chocolate....

2008-04-29T23:55:00.000-04:00

......my favorite sweet combo.

Anna over at Cookie Madness always has yummy treats coming out of her oven, but these pb chocolate brownies really called out to me, especially when Anna pointed out that the peanut butter mixture does not use cream cheese. Don't get me wrong, I do like cream cheese swirled-brownies, but when it comes to peanut butter, especially when it's paired with chocolate, I want the peanut butter to be front and center. Cream cheese tends to dominate and tends to make things a tad too sweet.

To make the ribbons, you melt together the peanut butter, peanut butter chips and butter and then spread it out on wax paper. As you can see, I was not all that neat about this part.

While the peanut butter mixture is chilling, you mix up the batter. Once the batter is ready, the pb mixture can be taken out of the fridge and cut into ribbons. Half the batter goes into the prepared pan and topped with half the pb ribbons. The remaining batter is gently spread over top and then the brownies go into the oven. After the brownies are finished baking and while they are still warm, the rest of the pb strips go on top. They are a bit more work than I am used to in a brownie, but worth every bit of it.

Peanut Butter Ribbon Fudge Brownies

These brownies are delicious. In fact, DH immediately requested that I make them again. The brownies are moist and chocolaty and the peanut butter flavor in the ribbons really comes through. I used Smucker's Natural PB and though I haven't tried it with regular PB and therefore have nothing to compare it with, I have a feeling the natural PB kicks up the nutty flavor even more and I wouldn't try it any other way. The only thing I might change is to put all of the peanut butter inside the brownie - I wasn't all that fond of fussing with the peanut butter strips and trying to get them to look nice.

This recipe is definitely a keeper. We tried them out on a fairly large crowd and everyone raved about them.

Creating Pathways in the Garden

2008-04-28T19:33:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was quite nice out and I had a trunk full of free mulch I had picked up in town, so DH and I seized the day and decided to create pathways between our lasagna beds.

First, I pulled back the black weed barrier and found a surprise guest:

Bailey was curious, but cautious:

Bailey supervised as I got ready to mow the grass around the beds as short as possible:

Next, I laid down a layer of cardboard and soaked it with a hose. Note to self: Putting down cardboard goes much faster than using newspaper! Second note to self: Since it goes so fast, it couldn't possibly hurt to put down 2 layers next time.

A thin layer of mulch goes down on both pathways. I kept the pathways fairly wide because originally I was thinking I would need to get a lawnmower in between the beds. I decided to keep them wide anyway since I'll still need to get the wheelbarrow between the rows and we certainly have plenty of space, so may as well give myself plenty of room to work.

Almost as soon as the mulch went down, I decided that it was probably a mistake. The idea behind mulching the pathways was to cut down on having to mow and try to keep the grass from encroaching on the garden beds. However, the more I thought about the mulched areas around our yard, the more I thought about all the weeding I have to do in those mulched area. Mowing grass in a narrow pathway would go WAY faster than weeding. I'm starting to think that keeping grass between the pathways would actually be the lower-maintenance option.

Instead of immediately ripping it all out, I decided to leave it for now. We'll build 2 more beds this season and leave the grass in place - this way we can have it both ways and see which way ends up being less work. Having it both ways will certainly bother the anal part of me that likes things to be just so, but it will be a useful learning exercise, so I'll try my best to overlook it.

I dug a trench around the remaining borders of the beds to discourage the grass from trying to take over the beds:

Next project - hopefully to be completed next weekend as long as the weather holds out - a fence to keep out the bunnies. But so far this week is looking rainy and cold, so who knows when we'll get out there again............

Crazy for Cauliflower

2008-04-27T14:53:00.000-04:00

I suppose to say that my family is CRAZY for cauliflower might be a bit of a stretch, but we certainly have been eating and enjoying a lot more of it over the last couple of years. For some reason, I tend to overlook this vegetable and I have no idea why. Partly it's because I get stuck in a rut when it comes to serving vegetable side dishes - I tend to grab the same things over and over, not really stopping to think about other possibilities. I think I also tend to dismiss cauliflower because it's such a bland color - I tend to reach for the more vibrant greens - but cauliflower is chock-full of important nutrients, so I need to reach for it more often.

Cauliflower, Pasta and Cheese Gratin

My MIL made this dish during one of our visits and we all loved it. Shortly after that I made it at home and it did not come out well at all - the sauce was too runny. I finally decided to give it a try again recently and had much better success this time around. The key is to be patient and make sure the sauce really thickens up before baking it.

As usual, I did not use the reduced-fat cheese (no flavor!), but I did use skim milk which works quite well in this recipe. (I'm sure it would be better using the 1% the recipe calls for, but as I've said before, I try to cook with what I have on hand as much as possible.) I followed the rest of the recipe pretty much as written but instead of using white bread, I used sourdough. I keep bits and pieces of crusty sourdough leftovers in the freezer for making breadcrumbs - I like the texture and flavor better than using white sandwich bread, something I don't buy much of anyway.

The flavors in this dish are subtle - it's not going to bowl over your taste buds - but it's yummy and satisfying - healthy comfort food. We ate it as the main dish, but it would do nicely as a side dish too. Next time we make this, I plan to use whole wheat pasta.

Well, it's been fun getting back to blogging again, but it will probably be a few days before I get the chance again. My goal is to post at least once or twice a week until I'm off work for the summer and then hopefully I can get back to almost daily posting again. But for now, something is better than nothing..........

Lasagna Gardening

2008-04-26T16:32:00.002-04:00

NOTE: This post was started last fall. Rather than rewrite it, I'll just add to it........

Sadly, it's almost time to hang up the garden tools and begin hibernating until spring. On the one hand I'm looking forward to turning my attention indoors - there are many projects that need my attention - projects that have been neglected all summer long as I played outside. On the other hand, this was the first summer in a long time where I actually enjoyed doing yard work.

The weather was largely responsible for my change of heart - it was dry and sunny and not too hot most of the summer. Perfection. Another reason I enjoyed it was that I tried to approach things from a different angle. Instead of viewing the work as a list of chores that needed to be checked off, I tried to use the work as my excuse to get outside and enjoy the beautiful weather. I also worked with fewer time constraints. So what if I only have a 1/2 hour to put down mulch? The pile will still be there tomorrow and the next day. It will get done eventually. I have a lot more fun doing just about anything if I don't feel I have to finish it right this minute.

In keeping with my more relaxed approach, I am experimenting with a new-to-me way of gardening, Lasagna Gardening. Lasagna gardening is a method of gardening introduced by Patricia Lanza in her book by the same name. The aspect of this type of gardening that appeals to me most is that you build up instead of digging down. Instead of toiling for hours and hours digging out sod, tilling the soil, and then turning it over and working it every spring and fall, you build your garden up - no digging, no turning, no back-breaking labor. Well, there IS labor, but it's the kind of labor I don't mind so much. I don't know yet if I buy her "no weeding" claim yet, but we'll find out this spring and summer!

Fast forward to this spring..........

So where were we. Ah yes, building up rather than digging down. Not unlike the edible lasagna, lasagna garden beds are a series of layers. This is another appealing aspect of lasagna gardening because these layers are made up of things you can find around the yard or in your community. I try to use as many free things as possible, but there are still a few things I have to buy. (I haven't reached the point of fanatacism where I'm willing to visit farms and ask for - much less cart in the back of my car - free manure. But check back in a few years and see if I'm still holding out........)

First, a thick layer of wet newspaper.

The layers start off with wet newspaper or cardboard as a barrier against the grass and weeds. Our basement is currently overflowing with newspaper and cardboard in anticipation of creating several new beds this year as well as pathways between them. What a great way to recycle!

As you can see from the pictures, we have opted to try open beds. Many folks build planting boxes to help contain the beds, but again, I'm going for minimum effort and expense, so we're trying open beds first. We can always build boxes later if open beds don't work out.

Once the newspaper or cardboard is down, you begin to build layers of organic material, mixing carbon-rich materials (brown) like leaves, with nitrogen-rich materials (green) like grass. (Check out this list for other sources of brown and green materials.) Part of the fun of this stage is trying to find as many free organic resources as possible.

After the newspaper layer, we wanted to use something with a bit of weight to it (as opposed to leaves or straw) to help hold down the newspaper, so we went with peat moss. Peat moss is recommended in Pat Lanza's original book, but apparently she has backed off from using it because of questions of sustainability and because it really doesn't add much in the way of nutrients to the soil. It's also expensive and doesn't fit into my free and easy scheme, so I'm more than happy not to use it. (This year I plan to use free mulch instead.) Our next layer was a layer of straw (which I have to buy, but it's fairly cheap) followed by grass and then leaves. The grass and leaves are free and abundant although I have to scavenge the leaves.

Here we've added straw, hummus/manure and we're
starting on the leaves. (The leaves really should be
chopped smaller than that for best results.)

With our 1+ acre of lawn, we have plenty of free grass. What we don't have is leaves - we live on converted farm land and the residents here haven not been good about planting trees, which is a shame. But I still get them for free! First I offered to rake my neighbors yard - a win-win - he gets out of some raking and I get free leaves. This worked okay, but was a lot of work - raking and then mowing the leaves and my mower really didn't break the leaves down enough and I could tell it wasn't going to give me enough leaves anyway.

Then I read a tip about using the mulched leaves that many towns pick up curbside. Many towns, mine included, have sites where they dump the leaves and other lawn waste and leave for residents to haul away for free. I have to admit that I get some rather strange looks when people see that I'm taking leaves OUT instead of bringing them IN since most people have more leaves than they know what to do with! But at least I didn't have to resort to having my son jump out of the car and pick up bags of leaves off the curb in front of other people's homes! He (13 years old) wasn't too keen on that idea. This has worked out great - not only to I have access to a LARGE supply of leaves, but in many cases they are already mulched. I just bring my gloves and some big black lawn bags and start stuffing.

We built the beds about 18 inches high and then let them
sit all winter.

So anyway, we continued to alternate mostly leaves and grass but we also added composted manure/hummus (bought from Lowe's or Walmart) and a bit of straw. Straw doesn't break down all that easily, so I put it down toward the bottom thinking that maybe it would break down faster if it were underneath a lot of other material. We'll see. One drawback I've found with straw is that it tends to sprout, but the sprouts were easily weeded out. I've read that you can get sterile straw but apparently mine was not.

Earlier this spring I added another layer of leaves and some
hummus/manure and then covered the beds with black
weed barrier to let them "cook".

Apparently some of the weed barrier I bought didn't work so well
because the grass underneath kept right on growing!

I've done a bit of reading and am trying to approach this in the most relaxed manner possible. At first I agonized over how much newspaper to use, how tall the beds should be, which organic materials to use and how much of each material and on and on. Now I've decided to just throw it on, see what happens and learn along the way. Again, my plan is to find out how little I can do and still have great results, so it makes sense to not agonize over exact proportions and to start out with a slightly shorter bed and see if that works before I decide that I must have a strict ratio (which makes it harder to build beds in certain seasons if you don't have access to certain things) or that the bed MUST be 24 inches high, etc.

The beds we have built are about 3 x 8. The idea is to make the beds easily accessible from all sides so that you never have to actually step IN the bed. This will help keep the soil from compacting, keeping the soil loose to promote root growth and making it easier to pull weeds.

Now supposedly you can build the beds and plant in them right away, but I liked the idea of having the beds ready to go once spring time came. I also figured that letting them sit over winter would help break down the layers a bit, hopefully creating a bit of worm-infested, rich soil in which to plant. I have stuck my hands in the layers and sure enough, I did find more dirt than was there before and worms too! Exciting!

Whew. That should do it for a first post about lasagna gardening. Our upcoming projects are to build a fence, create pathways between the gardens using cardboard and mulch (again, free from the city), create a proper compost area, and create at least 2 more beds. I will post as things progress and hopefully in a few months I will be taking pictures of our bounty! I'm definitely trying to enjoy the building process because I have control over this part. Once the plants go in, it's time to do battle with critters, pests, the elements - all the things that conspire to bring your garden down. But I'm determined to prevail this year.....the trick will be to do it without chemicals........

Here are a few articles on Lasagna Gardening:

Gardening in layers

Lasagna Gardening

Lasagna Gardening 101

Building Soil Nature's Way

Hello? Is anybody out there?

2008-04-25T17:43:00.000-04:00

Oy. I only meant to take a few weeks off, but it turned into a couple of months! Life's been very busy and still is, but I'm going to try posting even just once a week to see if I can get back into the groove of things.

I've missed blogging, but on the upside, I have gotten a lot of things accomplished. I won't go into all the boring details, but one exciting thing I accomplished was painting all four bedrooms upstairs! Now that the weather is really nice, know I'll be very glad that I got it done over the winter so that I can focus my attention on the outdoors and the garden. Speaking of the garden, more on that in a later post.............

It's hard to figure out what my first post should be after being absent for so long! Since I left off last with a savory recipe, let's go sweet. I don't bake much these days. As much as I love to bake, it's just not good for the waistline, so I've cut back rather dramatically. It's not as much fun, but we're healthier for it.

If you like to bake and you like cookies, chances are you might be interested in this recipe. If not, you'll be bored by yet ANOTHER chocolate chip cookie recipe. Obviously I'm never bored or tired of them.....

This one was posted by a fellow blogger and member of the CLBB, Laura from The Spiced Life. Her raves about the flavor and texture of this cookie made me decide that it was definitely worth a try.

As I've probably mentioned here before, I'm a chocolate chip cookie snob - meaning I have a very definite idea of what I want out of a chocolate chip cookie and most cookies fall short of what I want. While these cookies are not quite as buttery as I like, I think the trade off for the texture is probably worth it - they are fabulously chewy -and chewiness ranks second right behind buttery flavor in what I look for in a chocolate chip cookie.

Unlike Laura, I usually like the taste of chocolate chip cookies BETTER the next day - the buttery flavor deepens as they sit - so that is not an issue for me. The use of peanut butter in the batter was intriguing. I also found it interesting that the batter only called for one stick of (per 2 cups of flour) - most of my favorite recipes call for two sticks.

Bob Yosses' Best Chocolate Chip Cookie

I think I would dub these "Bill Yosses' Best of Both Worlds Chocolate Chip Cookies". They look and feel like a shortening cookie - if I saw this cookie on a plate somewhere, I probably would turn up my nose and pass it by because it really looks like a shortening-based cookie - it's thicker and it holds its shape well. But since they are made with butter, they don't have the boring flavor of a shortening cookie - you can taste the butter. They are not as deliciously buttery as a Toll House (one of the 2 sticks of better recipes), but like I said, the texture is so wonderful and they don't spread like so many do, I might be willing to give up the extra butter. The taste of a butter cookie with the texture of a shortening cookie - the best of both worlds. It is my theory that the peanut butter acts sort of like shortening but without actually giving it a peanut buttery flavor and certainly not the crumbliness I associate with an out-and-out peanut butter cookie.

With both batches, I used 1 teaspoon of vanilla, no vanilla beans and Smuckers Natural PB. The first batch I made I decided to use up some open bags of chips, so I used a half bag of peanut butter chips and a half bag of semisweet chips. I also chilled the batter for several hours because I was unable to bake them right away. I baked them for about 10 minutes. The cookies came out fine, but I didn't like all the chips. I'm one of those weird people who don't like many chips in my chocolate chip cookies - I want to taste the cookie part.

The second time I made them, I used one cup of Ghirardelli's bittersweet chocolate chips - my preferred chip for baking cookies. I baked them at 350 (my oven runs hot) for about 12 minutes WITHOUT chilling them. They came out even better. I think that chilling is definitely not necessary for these cookies and I actually think they had a better texture this time around (although the chips in the first batch may have contributed to that).

I forget exactly how many cookies I got - about 3 dozen (more the first time since there were 2 cups of chips).

Ahh, it feels good to post again. I hope someone is still out there checking on my neglected blog and that everyone hasn't given up on me entirely. Although I know I'd keep posting even if no one was reading, just because it's fun.

Easy and delicious chicken thigh recipe.....

2008-02-06T22:12:00.000-05:00

Quick post tonight. Things are busy around here this week!

Chicken Thighs Braised in White Wine

We tried a new chicken thigh recipe last week that we all really enjoyed. It was easy to throw together and the tastes surpassed expectations. Wine, lemon, garlic and parsley are fairly common combinations, but sometimes a recipe with these ingredients can fall flat. This one did not fall flat - it was very flavorful and lively. The only change I made to this recipe was to use boneless chicken thighs and cook them for less time.

That's it - short, sweet and simple - the recipe and the post!

Weekly Recap 2/3/08

2008-02-05T23:59:00.000-05:00

Sunday
*From the freezer: White Turkey Chili
*grapes

Monday
*tuna melts
*soup

Tuesday
Chicken Thighs Braised in White Wine (new)
*white rice
*green beans

Wednesday
*Coconut curry with tilapia, peas, red bell pepper and spinach
*roasted cauliflower
*brown basmati rice

Thursday
*hot pastrami sandwiches with coleslaw, cheese and Thousand Island dressing
*grapes

Friday
*hamburgers
*corn
*fruit

Saturday
*Skillet Lasagna (new)
*salad

Excellent Lentil Recipe

2008-02-03T20:31:00.000-05:00

This is one of the better recipes we've tried in quite a while. And no one even claimed that it would be better with sausage!

There are three main components that all come together to make a really fantastic dish. No one component is particularly difficult, it just takes a little planning and a little coordinating on the stove top. One thing that made things more simple, and freed up some space on the stove, was to use the rice cooker for the pilaf. In addition to the pilaf, there is a curried dal-like lentil mixture and caramelized onions. I wasn't sure that caramelized onions belonged in a dish with Indian-inspired flavors, but I was absolutely won over in the end.

Curried Lentils with Caramelized Onions

The pilaf is infused with cardamom pods. I had black cardamom pods on hand and really have no idea how they compare with the more commonly used green, but I can say that they lent a slightly smoky, subtle something extra to the rice that complemented the curried lentils without competing or overwhelming. The only thing that seemed particularly lacking in the curried lentils was perhaps a little heat. The recipe itself actually mentions "spicy red lentils", so I have to wonder if Jack Bishop uses a hot curry powder - mine is of the sweet variety. Nothing that a little chili garlic paste can't fix though.

We oohed and aahed our way through this dish. Something about it just worked really well. I'm also happy to report that it tasted fantastic and actually better the next day, and even the day after that, as I happily brought the leftovers to work for lunch. This dish will most definitely be repeated in our house, especially since we tend to keep all of the ingredients on hand on a regular basis.

Two from Simple Suppers

2008-02-01T23:14:00.000-05:00

So it's been a while since I had a real post. I got off track last week because of a house project - I've been painting our bedroom. More on that later.....

On to the recipes. Both of these recipes earned my "it has potential" rating; meaning that while they were not out-of-this-world-fantastic, they were good solid recipes that I think could elevated to a higher status with a little tweaking.

Mexican Polenta-Stuffed Peppers

The first was a polenta-stuffed pepper dish in which bell peppers are lightly roasted and then stuffed with polenta, topped with cheese and placed under the broiler. The peppers are served over a super easy but very tasty warm black bean and salsa mixture. I really liked all the different elements of this dish, but the polenta was underwhelming. I think that part of the problem is that the polenta did not cook fully enough and still had an off/raw taste. The 3 males in the family commented that sausage would make this dish really good. Although I'm trying to eat more vegetarian meals lately, I have to admit that a little sausage would really be good here. :) To elevate the taste without resorting to meat however, I would look to maybe a bit of chipotle and perhaps some black olives. Polenta is certainly versatile enough to tweak as you wish - this dish could be turned into something with a more Italian flare with a bit of Parmesan and served over a white bean mixture. Or with a little feta and black olives, it could turn Greek. The possibilities really are endless.

Southwestern Cheese Soup
(I'm afraid that no amount of photo editing could save this photo!)

I've had a couple of inquiries about the Southwestern Cheese Soup that we had earlier this week. It's a very easy soup to throw together and everyone enjoyed it, but again I think it could use a bit of tweaking. Of course I tweaked it just a tad the first time, but just a little - I made a substitution for the canned green chiles. First of all I didn't have any on hand and second of all, I really don't care for them - they seem to have this off/tinny taste that I can't get past. Looking for something to add a bit of heat and flavor, I stumbled on a jar of pickled jalapenos in my refrigerator - these were perfect - they added heat, color and no tinny taste. The soup got very positive reviews from the males at the table. I thought it was very good considering how quick and easy it is to make, but I thought it could be kicked up a notch - maybe some black beans, replacing some of the cheddar with a bit of light cream cheese. And yes devoted carnivores - a little sausage would ramp things up a bit too.

So, two solid recipes that could be really good with a little tweaking. Again, I tend to value recipes as much for the overall ideas they give me for future meals as I do for the overall end result.

Weekly Recap 1/27/08

2008-01-30T22:51:00.000-05:00

Better late than never???

Sunday

*Risotto with Porcini Mushrooms and Mascarpone (new)
*roasted asparagus with olive, salt and pepper

Monday
*Curried Red Lentils with Caramelized Onions (new)
*Basmati Rice Pilaf (new)
*spinach and arugula salad

Tuesday
leftovers!

Wednesday
*Southwestern Cheese Soup (new)
*Salad

Thursday
leftovers again!

Friday
*Paninis on ciabatta with fresh mozzarella, roasted red peppers,
pesto, spinach and arugula
*sliced pear

Saturday
pizza takeout

Hearty Sausage and Lentil Soup

2008-01-23T20:05:00.000-05:00

Hearty indeed. This soup in flavorful, chock-full of all sorts of goodies and it's delicious. Any soup that gets my family to eat spinach without complaint gets a big old gold star in my book.

Hearty Sausage and Lentil Soup

This recipe was recommended by a member of the CLBB on the October Soup thread. It sounded like the perfect way to sneak some lentils and spinach past the wary and the skeptical - namely anybody in this family who is not me. At first glance the list of ingredients looks a bit long, but it really does go together pretty quickly, especially considering that everything you need for a complete meal is included in this soup: carrots, onion, celery, mushrooms, lentils, tomatoes, sausage. Truly a meal in one; just add some fresh fruit, some fresh bread and you're set.

This soup went over very well. Chopping the spinach was definitely key - the smaller the pieces, the smaller the objections. With so many different ingredients, this soup was a feast for the mouth (so many tastes and textures) and the eyes (lots of color). A great, hearty soup for a wintry day.

Stuffed Chicken and Roasted Cauliflower

2008-01-22T23:20:00.000-05:00

Still getting caught up on recipes around here. I'm going to sneak this one in really quickly before I head off to bed.

We had these two dishes for dinner the other night. Both were delicious, but I served them with a whole grain rice mixture and it made for a rather bland-looking, but very tasty meal.

Mushroom Stuffed Chicken Breasts with Madeira Sauce

This is another stuffed chicken breast recipe from Cooking Light. This recipes calls for creminie or button mushrooms, but I chose to use shiitake - hands down they are my favorite mushroom. I accidentally purchased far more than I needed for stuffing the chicken breasts, so I used put them in the sauce which I doubled since we are usually of the opinion that you can never have too much sauce.

This dish was very good, but I'm a little frustrated with the process. Technically, stuffed chicken breasts are really pretty easy, but I'm struggling a bit with the stuffing process; I often end up slicing through in the wrong spot, and even without the holes, the stuffing tends to ooze and leak out the sides during the cooking process. I noticed the other day that the stuffed chicken breasts that Wegmans sells are slit at the top, stuffed, and then baked - this would help eliminate a lot of the oozing problems and is something I will consider doing the next time.

Roasted Cauliflower

We've tried roasted cauliflower before with Indian spices, but I wanted to try a pure and simple version. There's not a whole lot to say about the cauliflower recipe - cauliflower, olive oil, salt and pepper - except that my son turned up his nose, took a bite, and then proceeded to beg some off of my plate. Now honestly I really didn't want to share because I was really enjoying it myself, but when your child asks for more vegetables, you DO NOT refuse him/her! Next time, I'll roast 2 heads - one just wasn't enough. I love simplicity!

Time for bed................

Mmmm....Mascarpone.

2008-01-21T11:07:00.000-05:00

Mascrapone. That's how I keep typing this! Doesn't sound so appetizing, does it? MasCARpone, MasCARpone, MasCARpone.........I think I've got it now.

Anyway, this was a new food item for us this past week. I've heard of mascarpone (masCARpone, masCARpone) and have heard some say you can sub cream cheese in its place, but I am very glad that we were able to try the real thing. While its texture is similar to cream cheese, macarpone has a very rich, buttery flavor and feel - much more decadent than cream cheese.

Fettucine with Macarpone and Sage-Walnut Brown Butter

The first dish we tried was a recipe from A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen. It is a simple pasta dish with mascarpone, walnuts, sage and browned butter. Oh my goodness is this good. The recipe calls for tossing the pasta with the browned butter, sage and walnuts and then topping it off with a dollop of the macarpone/Parmesan mixture. Biting into larger amounts of marcarpone didn't appeal to me; I wanted it to be distributed evenly throughout, so I just mixed it in with everything else. This worked quite well and I was satisfied with my alteration. One note: As terrific as this was the first day, it did not reheat well the next day; it just didn't have much flavor. That's a shame - I love leftover pasta!

Risotto with Porcini Mushrooms and Macarpone

I was all set to make this pasta dish again to use up the leftover mascarpone - until I came across a this recipe from Cooking Light: Risotto with Porcini Mushrooms and Mascarpone. This sounded like a marriage made in heaven and it was. Delicious! And simple too. The beef broth and reserved liquid from the dried porcini mushrooms make a lovely, flavorful broth for stirring into the risotto. I had one moment of panic after starting the prep for this recipe - I only had a 1/2 cup of arborio rice left! Rather than abandoning efforts to make this recipe, I simply made up the difference with barley and it worked beautifully. Whew! If you would like to make this more nutritious by using all barley, I think it would turn out very well.

My only other change - in my efforts to use up the rest of the mascarpone, I went over the 1/4 cup called for in this recipe - it ended up somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 a cup. The only bad thing about this recipe? No leftovers (we served it as the main dish). One last note - this risotto dish stayed nice and fluid as we were eating it - it didn't get gummy as risottos often do as they cool down.

So, we tried a new food this week and ended up with 2 excellent recipes. The Jack Bishop dish is quite rich and will have to be a once in a while recipe, but I noticed that Cooking Light had another risotto recipe with macarpone and leeks.........going to have to give that one a try too!

Weekly Recap 1/20/08

2008-01-21T08:34:00.000-05:00

Sunday
Mushroom-Stuffed Chicken Breasts with Madeira Sauce (new)
Roasted Cauliflower (new)
whole grain rice
Marcy's Legendary Chocolate Chip Cookies (new)

Monday
Fettucine with Mascarpone and Sage-Walnut Brown Butter (new)
mixed veggie salad

Tuesday
from the freezer: Creamy Tomato Soup
(this soup reheated very nicely)
grilled cheese on whole wheat
sliced pear

Wednesday
Mexican Polenta Stuffed Peppers with Black Bean Salsa (new)

Thursday
Sandwiches from Wegmans

Friday
Taco Salad
(Romaine lettuce, shredded cheddar cheese, tomatoes, black beans, avocado
crushed tortilla chips, 95% lean hamburger with taco seasoning and Cool Chipotle-Lime Dressing)

Saturday
Quesdillas made from taco salad leftovers
sliced apple

Featured Recipe:

Creamy Tomato Soup

Salmon recipe from Rachael Ray

2008-01-18T22:35:00.000-05:00

One of these days I need to have a marathon blogging session to try to catch up on all the recipes we're making, but one quick post will have to do for tonight....

We tried this recipe a couple of weeks ago - it's from the 365: No Repeats cookbook. It's a very colorful dish and pretty easy to throw together. Although Rachael's recipes usually take me longer than the supposed 30 minutes, they do tend to be complete meals, evening things out in the end.

Lime and Honey Glazed Salmon with Warm Black Bean and Corn Salad

This salmon recipe was good, but not spectacular. The flavors on the salmon itself - lime, honey and chili powder - didn't do much for me, but then I tend to like very strong flavors on salmon. It wasn't bad by any means, it just didn't stand out. I did, however, very much enjoy the black bean salad. I'm not sure the spinach really belongs, but it melded nicely, added color and nutrition - all pluses in my book. And it certainly was healthful and summery - as much as I love wintry comfort food, it's nice to have a bit of summer in January.

Like I said, short and sweet. That's the only way I'm going to get it all done!

Yet another Chocolate Chip Cookie.....

2008-01-15T16:23:00.000-05:00

I've said it before, but really, you can't ever try too many chocolate chip cookie recipes. This one caught my attention because the person who posted it on the CLBB said the cookies didn't spread as much as Toll House cookies do. I love Toll House, but they do indeed have a tendency to spread a bit too much at times.

Marcy's Legendary Chocolate Chip Cookies

As promised, and as you can see, they did not spread out thin as many buttery cookies can do but I could tell when I pulled them out of the oven and transferred them to the cooling rack that they were going to be a bit cakey. They are a bit chewy around the edges, but the middles are soft and cake-like; I tend to prefer a very chewy cookie, more like Toll House.

Other reviewers claimed this recipe did not turn out cakey for them, however, and at least one poster speculated that perhaps my leaving out the chopped chocolate was to blame. The recipe called for 2 cups of chocolate chips and 1 1/2 cups of chopped chocolate - I tend to like more cookie than chocolate, so I stuck with just the two cups of chocolate chips. So, it's possible that the adding more chocolate, especially smaller pieces that would have melted into the dough - might have lead to a chewier end product. I also used an off-brand of salted butter (all that could be found in a rush trip to the local convenience store), so that may also have been to blame.

In any case, these were very good cookies -buttery and delicious-tasting - and I certainly didn't have any problem eating 4 of them yesterday, cake-like or not.

Weekly Recap 1/13/08

2008-01-14T19:51:00.000-05:00

This week in our kitchen:

Sunday
Work gave us a free turkey for Christmas, so we had a little mini-Thanksgiving...
*Turkey
*mashed potatoes
*stuffing
*green beans with roasted shallots and balsamic

Monday
*Hamburgers, bun, cheese
*sweet potatoes with olive oil, garlic and chipotle
*sliced pear

Tuesday
Leftovers!

Wednesday
*Very Creamy Vegetable Chowder
*whole grain sourdough bread

Thursday
*Baked Ravioli
(Wegmans ravioli baked in homemade marinara with fresh spinach, topped with
romano cheese)
*cucumber and tomato salad

Friday
*Turkey Jambalaya (see below)
*sliced apple

Saturday
*Hearty Sausage and Lentil Soup (new)
*roasted garlic bread from Wegmans

Featured Recipe: Turkey Jambalaya

This one is a family favorite. It's easy to throw together and is a great way to use up leftover turkey (which we had from our meal on Sunday). It may not be a totally authentic or traditional jambalaya - for one, it's missing the celery that's part of the holy trinity of Cajun cooking - but it's darned tasty for relatively little effort.

Skillet Pasta

2008-01-13T00:43:00.000-05:00

This recipe is another skillet dish from The Best 30-Minute Recipe from Cook's Illustrated. I really love that they concentrate no only on dishes that are easy to prepare, but also on meals that are easy to clean up. Who cares if it only takes you 30 minutes to prepare if it takes you another 30 minutes to clean up? Main dishes that are prepared entirely in one dish certainly help to keep the overall time spent in the kitchen way down.

This dish is creamy and cheesy and delicious, but obviously rather high in fat and calories compared to what we normally cook here. Still, you can enjoy a dish like this as part of a healthful lifestyle if you keep the portion sizes down and pair it with a low-fat side dish like a nice tossed salad. This recipe claims 4 servings, but it made closer to 6 smallish servings for us - and a small serving is all you need as it is quite rich.

Skillet Pasta Quattro Formaggi

The major change I made to this recipe was to cut back the water by 3/4 cup. It was actually an accident - I discovered the mistake in time to correct it, but I decided that it looked like there was plenty of liquid already. Sure enough, there ended up being plenty of sauce - any more liquid and I think it would have been too runny. The blend of cheeses is quite nice - the Gorgonzola adds a nice sharpness and tang without overpowering the other cheeses.

This isn't something I would make all the time, but a rich, cheesy dish like this sure hits the spot once in a while.

Weekly Recap 1/6/08

2008-01-08T20:44:00.000-05:00

This is what went on in my kitchen last week:

Sunday
*Polenta with Sausage Ragu
(made up on the fly - based on this recipe)
*tomato-cucumber salad

Monday
Our traditional New Year's Eve Appetizer Night!
*Sausage Stuffed French Bread (new)
*Pancette Crisps with Goat Cheese and Pear (new)
*Sea Scallops with Minted Pea Puree on Potato Chips (new)
*Crispy Cheese Rounds (t&t)
*Mushroom Crescents (t&t)

Tuesday
*Red Lentil and Basmati Rice Croquettes with Romaine-Mango Salad and Cucumber Raita (new)
*salad

Wednesday
Leftovers - time to clean out that fridge!

Thursday
*Wegmans cheese pierogies
*Wegmans tomato soup
*sliced pear

Friday
*Skillet Pasta Quattro Formaggi (new)
*salad

Saturday
*Lime-and-Honey-Glazed Salmon with Warm Black Bean and Corn Salad (new)
*jasmine rice

Simplicity Deconstructed

2008-01-07T22:30:00.000-05:00

Okay, Erika, here they are! ;-) Finally......

This recipe is actually from the Spring part of A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen, but what the heck - why not bring a little spring in? This recipe consists of 3 parts, the croquettes, the raita and the salad. As a whole, the recipe looks a little complicated, but each part is actually very simple and comes together quite quickly. It just takes a little planning since the lentil-rice mixture needs to be chill for 2 hours before hitting the pan.

The lentil-rice croquettes are seasoned with ginger and curry, but any combination of Indian-inspired spices would work well here. The croquettes were very good, but I thought they could use just a little more flavor and a little bit of heat (especially as a contrast to the cool raita). The raita is a simple combination of cucumber, garlic and yogurt.

Red Lentil and Basmati Rice Croquettes with Romaine-Mango Salad and Cucumber Raita

What really surprised me though, was the romaine-mango salad. It's simple combination of lettuce, mango, lime juice, EVOO and salt. I could have eaten an entire bowl of this salad alone - there was just something about the fresh, simple flavors that really won me over and reminded me that sometimes less is more.

The only thing that I did not like about this dish is how it's constructed. You pile the salad, croquettes and raita on a pita - it looks pretty, but then what? It's difficult to eat - trying to cut through the toasted pita with a fork and knife while also trying not to turn everything into a big pile of mush. I would serve the toasted pita on the side next time - brush it with a little olive oil and season it a bit - it just didn't work as a base for me. Or - stuff it all inside the pita as one would do with falafel - that might work as well.

I feel indebted to this recipe for showing me you don't have to be afraid to simply let the flavor of fresh ingredients stand on their own and hopefully I will be able to incorporate this principle into my cooking more and more.

Good old Meat and Potatoes!

2008-01-05T15:38:00.000-05:00

Since my family has been so tolerant of my recent run on vegetarian recipes, I decided to "reward" them with a good old comfort food meal of meat and potatoes.

I read good reviews of a pot roast recipe on the CLBB, so I gave it a try. I used my Le Creuset Dutch oven - it's not oval, but the chuck roast (2.5-3 pounds) fit in it just fine. I followed the recipe pretty much exactly, but I used little white creamer potatoes instead of Yukon gold.

Classic Beef Pot Roast

Once everything was finished cooking I had DH shred the meat while I dealt with the potatoes. Instead of eating the potatoes as is, I decided to mash them - along with a bit of light sour cream, a bit of cream cheese and a bit of butter. This was a great way to make mashed potatoes - cooking the potatoes right along with the roast allowed them to soak up a little more flavor and saved an extra cooking pot to wash later. They were delicious.

Overall, the recipe was very good, but I think we might prefer the Merlot Pot Roast. However, I'm glad we tried this recipe - I definitely will cook the potatoes like this again.

A few good recipes that got lost along the way....

2008-01-03T22:30:00.000-05:00

There were a few recipes we tried and really liked that I never got around to getting a photo of, but I want to share them just the same. All of these recipes made our top 20 favorite new recipes of 2007.

The first recipe, Smokey Mushroom Ragout from Cooking Light, is a vegetarian dish with a layer of polenta that is topped with a tomato, mushroom and chipotle mixture and finished with a sprinkling of queso fresco. The polenta is baked in a 9x13-inch dish in the oven which takes more time than the more traditional stovetop method, but it does free you up to tackle the mushroom layer. I really enjoyed the flavor combinations in this dish. I used a combination of cremini and shiitake mushrooms which worked just fine in place of the harder-to-find oyster mushrooms. If at all possible, do not skip the queso fresco on top; this cheese was the perfect flavor complement to the spicy mushroom mixture - not too strong, not too salty, not too mild - just right.

A while back, I tried a stuffed chicken breast recipe from Cooking Light and was very pleased to discover just how easy they are to prepare - they always look and sound fancy or complicated. Encouraged, I have been meaning to try more recipes and finally tried Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Garlic and Goat Cheese. We had plain goat cheese on hand (I buy large logs and vacuum pack them), so instead of spending money on herbed goat cheese, I simply mashed our plain goat cheese with some dried Italian Herb seasoning. The only hard part about this recipe is remembering to start far enough in advance since the garlic needs to roast for an hour. I also love the flexibility of stuffed chicken breasts - it's very easy to accommodate my son who dislikes goat cheese - he can have provolone or mozzarella instead.

Over the holidays, we tried two new salads. For Thanksgiving, I was in charge of bringing the salad. I wanted to try something new and stumbled on one over at Epicurious - Mixed Green Salad with Oranges, Dried Cranberries and Pecans - that sounded perfect for a Thanksgiving meal. Not only did oranges, cranberries and pecans pair well with the rest of the meal, it was a nice, light complement to all of the other carb-heavy foods. The salad really couldn't be simpler - just a few ingredients and very little prep work, but lots of fresh flavors. This one will definitely stay on our repeater list. Note: I did not boil the dried cranberries - I agreed with the other reviewers who said they thought the dried cranberries would add more texture as is, rather than softened.

Right after Thanksgiving, we prepared dinner for family visiting from out of town and tried another Epicurious salad - Almond-Crusted Goat Cheese Salad with Raspberry Dressing. Another Epicurious salad, another winner. The goat cheese was luscious - warm and creamy with a pleasing crunch from the almonds. The raspberry dressing was a huge hit, especially with my youngest - he was dragging out the bag of mixed greens for several days afterward, just so he could have more dressing. The goat cheese rounds are a bit time-consuming and messy to assemble, but they can be done ahead of time and kept in the fridge until you are ready to bake them. Note: I added much less olive oil then the recipe indicates - I just added oil until I thought the dressing was thin enough.

I hate posts with no pictures, but these recipes were just too good not to share.

2 More Vegetarian Recipes....

2008-01-02T19:51:00.000-05:00

Here are two more from A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen.....

My DH and kids have been liking these new recipes pretty well, but as they finish, they often say, "This would be really good with sausage." Ah well, at least they are adventurous and pretty willing to try it all. And they do like it, they just like a nice meat and potato dish better - but then again, sometimes, so do I!

Seared Tempeh Wraps with Thai-Style Peanut Sauce

These two dishes revolve around tempeh. The first is a wrap - the tempeh is marinated in a peanut sauce and then seared (though I cook it longer to get the bitter taste out) and is then paired with a simple salad tossed in the leftover peanut sauce. We liked it, but the peanut sauce is a bit gummy - I think it could use a tablespoon or two of oil to help make it more fluid. Jack Bishop doesn't tend to shy away from using oil in this cookbook, so I'm not sure why he didn't put a little in this sauce, I really think it would help. Of course I could always just use Cooking Light's Finger Lickin' Peanut Sauce instead - it's delicious. These wraps also made nice leftovers for bringing to work.

Curried Tempeh with Brown Rice and Peas

Next, it was a tempeh curry dish. I really liked the method of cooking the tempeh in this recipe. You boil the tempeh in a mixture of water, tamari and Indian spices. You could use any spices you like best here - again, a very adaptable recipe. The tempeh is then fried in a little canola oil for added flavor and even better texture. The tempeh is added to a mixture of rice, onions and peas. Nothing earth-shattering as far as flavors go in this recipe, just a nice mix of Indian spices and a method of cooking tempeh that really appeals to me - boiling it in the flavorful mixture really imparted great taste to the tempeh with little effort. And you could easily skip the frying and just add the tempeh as is if you are looking to reduce our fat intake - it would still be plenty flavorful enough.

Later this week, I will share a recipe we tried last night from this cookbook that was out of this world - Red Lentil and Basmati Rice Croquettes with Romaine-Mango Salad and Cucumber Raita........yum!

Vegetarian Recipes to Share....

2008-01-01T10:53:00.000-05:00

DH decided that it was high time that our local library got their copy of A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen back, so he bought me my very own copy. As we joked, this purchase is something that he'll enjoy as much as I do because he gets to eat the results.

The biggest wow to come out of this cookbook so far for me, was the Creamy Tomato Soup (which really has no cream at all). All of the other recipes have been very good, but that one was truly stellar. Although I will say that the photography will not reflect the yummy tastes in some of these photos. I miss the summer when there is plenty of natural light - that and some foods, like tempeh, just don't tend to photograph all that well. But anyway......

It's been fun having lots of time to blog - even if I didn't get much of anything else done - but tomorrow it's back to work, so I'm going to knock off a couple recipes at a time here. The first two I'll share are Mexican-flavor inspired dishes.

The first recipe - Black Bean Chilaquiles - is one of those dishes where the photo doesn't translate so well. Chilaquiles are a Mexican dish where corn tortilla chips are simmered in a spicy sauce (chile, bean, etc.) and then topped with cheese. The resulting dish is flavorful and yummy, but it's sort of a mish-mosh and therefore not very easy to photograph.

Black Bean Chilaquiles
(It's hard to see through all of the cheese, sour cream and avocado,
but the black beans and tortillas are under there somewhere!)

In this version, you make your own corn tortilla chips by cutting corn tortillas into triangles, coating them with oil and baking them in the oven. As the tortillas bake, you start on the black bean sauce, adding the crisp tortillas in at the end to form a thick mixture. The black bean and tortilla mixure is topped with queso fresco, a sour cream-lime sauce and diced avocado.

We liked this dish quite well and it certainly has a lot of room for tinkering - you could use different sauces, veggies or meats and have a slightly different version every time. I kept everything in the skillet instead of transferring it to a platter (no need to dirty another dish when it's just us) and one other thing I'd do differently is to stick the skillet under the broiler briefly to melt the cheese before adding the sour cream and avocados.

Garlicky Mushroom Quesadillas with Tomatillo-Chile Salsa

Continuing on the Mexican theme, we also tried a recipe for mushroom quesadillas. These quesadillas pair garlicky cremini mushrooms with Monterey Jack cheese inside flour tortillas that are topped off with a tomatillo-chile salsa. A very simple dish that goes together quite quickly and reminds you that you don't need to get very fussy to produce yummy food.

Tune in tomorrow for tempeh...........

Skillet Strata

2007-12-31T11:13:00.000-05:00

Before I share this delicious recipe, I wanted to point out that I've added a couple of things to my sidebar. I've added a search feature, so that you can search this blog and I've added a cookbook library. I know I've said that I'm not really big on cookbooks and don't have very many, but I've found that I'm using them more and more lately. I'm also adding labels to my sidebar for any cookbooks I post recipes for.

On to the recipe.....

I got 2 cookbooks for Christmas and one was Cook's Illustrated's The Best 30-Minute Recipe. I had not had a chance to hit the store since we returned from our Christmas trip, so when I flipped through it on Thursday, I was pleased to find a recipe that not only sounded yummy, but we had everything we needed on hand.

I love stratas, but you usually need to plan ahead since most require a soaking period. This recipe intrigued me because it's a strata that does not require an overnight stay in the fridge and because you start it and finish it in the skillet. So not only is it quick, it's a one dish meal - bonus!

The Cook's Illustrated recipe lists several variations to their skillet strata - it was the spinach variation that caught my eye. The recipe calls for 5 slices of quality sandwich bread - we used leftover sourdough scraps.

Digression alert! (Side story: On our way home from Virginia on Wednesday, we stopped at Panera for lunch. Panera serves a piece of sourdough baguette as a side to most of their sandwiches, salads and soups. We often don't have room to eat this yummy bread, so I told everyone to save their bits of leftovers, knowing I'd be able to use them for something - even if it was just to make breadcrumbs. Then this recipe popped up the next day. So, save those scraps of bread - you never know what you might be able to do with them.) End of digression.

Skillet Strata with Spinach and Smoked Mozzarella

The other changes I made were to substitute skim milk for whole, sub scallions for onion, cut down on the butter, and to use smoked mozzarella instead of smoked Gouda. No problem. That's the beauty of recipes like these - you can use whatever breads, cheeses, vegetables or meats you have on hand. The cookbook also recommends several variations, leaving out the spinach and using 1 small onion, chopped: sub 1 cup of cheddar for the mozzarella; 4 slices of bacon, omit thyme, use pepperjack cheese and 2 scallions; 8 ounces of sausage and 1 cup Gruyere.

The results were quick and tasty. It's so nice to know that we can have strata on a last minute impulse.

Weekly Recap 12/30/07

2007-12-30T12:19:00.000-05:00

I tried to do this a few times in the past, but never kept up with it. I'd like to try again because I think it's interesting to see what families have each night for dinner - or how people cook "in the real world". How many times to they eat out each week? Do they make fancy meals every night? What kinds of side dishes do they make? And not just dinner - how much do they bake each week? Do they make desserts often? Inquiring minds want to know!

And even though I keep a blog of a lot of my cooking, it doesn't necessarily reflect what I cook on a daily basis since I usually only post new recipes. Sometimes I cook a lot of new recipes, sometimes I just throw things together, and sometimes I might cook an old favorite.

Now that we live far enough from town that ordering out, take out and even going out to eat aren't all that convenient, I tend to cook almost every night. Though I would certainly use the term "cook" loosely many nights - on busy nights, it might be something as simple as canned tomato soup and Wegmans pierogies sauteed in onion and butter. Nothing fancy, but in most cases, still better than what we'd eat if we were ordering or eating out.

No time like the present to get started, so here goes (we were out of town Sun-Weds):

Wednesday
pizza take out

Thursday
Skillet Strata with Spinach and Smoked Mozzarella (new)
orange slices

Friday
Curried Tempeh with Brown Rice and Peas (new)
baby carrots

Saturday
Breakfast:
Alysha's Pumpkin Waffles (t&t)
Dinner:
Classic Beef Pot Roast (new)
mashed potatoes
green beans

I will have the recipes for the strata, the tempeh and the pot roast up shortly.

Coming up soon, the recap for 2007!

Christmas Cookies 2007: Pecan Logs

2007-12-30T10:08:00.000-05:00

Okay, this is the last one I promise. Here I am still posting about cookies when everyone else is probably focused on how to work off all the cookies they ate over the holidays. I'm even getting tired of cookies. But I'm sure that will only last a day or two....

Pecan Logs

This cookie (and yes, it's another one from Martha Stewart) was probably my favorite of this season; or maybe it was the Iced Hermits. If I can't have a chewy cookie, then my second favorite is a buttery shortbread-type cookie. These pecan logs aren't as melt-in-your-mouth-tender as the Russian Tea Cakes, but they are very good. Like other shortbread-type cookies, they taste better as they age.

Next up, lots of savory recipe, I promise!!

Christmas Cookies 2007: Chocolate Sandwiches

2007-12-29T09:48:00.000-05:00

As I said before, I'm still trying to catch up with my recipes - I haven't even finished posting the holiday cookie recipes yet!

This cookie is from, shockingly enough, Martha Stewart. It's a time-consuming cookie that involves lots of rolling, cutting, chilling, icing and assembling. In other words, not something I would normally pick to make so you can be sure that this was chosen by one of my sons.

Although they turned out to be one of the prettier cookies we made this year, it was my least favorite. I thought the chocolate cookie part was uninteresting and I didn't really care for the white chocolate filling either (but I don't care for white chocolate in general, except on the Oreo Truffles). DH, however, thought the cookies had great chocolate flavor while one son agreed with me, so I guess it's a draw.

Chocolate Sandwiches

The recipe calls for cutting the dough into little squares, but I found it much easier to use a cookie cutter, so we ended up with round cookies and scalloped edges - cut them however you please, it's all good.

Many more recipes to come - more cookies and several vegetarian recipes from the Jack Bishop cookbook - but it will be hard to catch up because I'm also cooking new recipes almost every day!

Cranberry Walnut Pancakes: Why didn't I think of that?

2007-12-27T22:16:00.000-05:00

I hope everyone had a happy and healthy holiday! I had hoped to get a little blogging done over the holidays, but we were away from home and it just didn't happen.

I am always running across recipes that make me want to smack myself and say, "Why didn't I think of that?" They are humbling moments that make me realize that while I might be a decent cook, I'm really not a chef.

I've made blueberry-pecan pancakes many times, so it's a bit befuddling that cranberry-walnut pancakes would never even cross my mind. Fortunately, I stumbled on Joe's blog where he recently posted a recipe for cranberry-walnut pancakes (though he skipped the walnuts). We used to get cranberry-walnut bagels from Panera, but we no longer live near one, so I miss this seasonal treat. We did manage to snag 4 - yes, only 4 - from Panera this weekend on our way back from Virginia. Fortunately for me, Wegmans made an organic, whole grain cranberry-walnut bread this year and it's quite good. But back to the pancakes.....

Cranberry-Orange Pancakes with Toasted Walnuts

Instead of trying the recipe Joe posted, I decided to go back to our favorite homemade whole grain pancake mix from King Arthur. I did boil the cranberries for a bit and then chopped them, as instructed in Joe's recipe. At the last minute, I decided to add the zest of one orange - orange is a classic pairing with cranberry and walnuts and it worked really well for this recipe. I did not measure the cranberries or walnuts - I just sprinkled them on the pancakes as I cooked them, rather than mixing them into the batter. They turned out fantastically! This recipe will allow me to satisfy that cranberry-walnut craving pretty easily here at home.

I hope to have quite a bit of time to get more posts up this coming weekend. I really need to get posting - the pictures are piling up!

Oreo Truffles

2007-12-22T21:26:00.000-05:00

Or otherwise known as Alysha vs. Candy, round 1.

As I know I have stated several, if not many, times before, candy and I don't get along. My attempt at almond brittle once came out like a sugar brick with expensive almonds trapped inside, the caramel slid off of my caramel apples (and I was only using packaged caramels) and the caramel on my apple tart got a little too close to hard crack stage. And those are only some of my candy stories! After each failure, it takes me a good long while to get back in the saddle to give it another shot.

This recipe - which I found on Joe's blog - only has 3 ingredients and does not involve a candy thermometer, so I decided to give it a try. Only I decided to try it for a pot luck at work which meant that I was #1, very anxious for it to come out nicely and, #2, making them on a weeknight. Recipe for failure again???

Well, almost. First, I had a hard time getting the balls to roll nicely. The recipe only calls for breaking the Oreos into fourths and then beating them in the mixer. This yields some fairly large chunks of cookie which created crumbly pockets and caused some of the balls to want to separate. I would process the Oreos into a finer crumb next time to avoid these dry pockets. I made the balls using a tablespoon - I was not in the mood to make 50-60 of these little suckers. The recipe made about 33 or so by the tablespoonful.

Once I had the balls formed, I put them in the fridge to chill. My mistake was in not making sure the pan was secure - the balls slid right off the pan and fell into the fridge. Frustrating to be sure, but they were firm enough to just pick right up and put them back on the pan.

Next, it was time to melt the chocolate. No problems there. Dipping the Oreo truffles was a whole other story. First, I just couldn't figure out how the heck to get the stupid balls off of my dipping tool and onto the pan without wrecking the nice white chocolate coating. I tried the dipping fork, the other two dipping doohickies and a toothpick. Nothing seemed to work well. I did like that with the dipping tools at least, you could tap off the excess chocolate, but I just could not get the truffles off the dipping tools easily. Next, I noticed that the balls just weren't chilled enough - little flecks of chocolate were breaking off into the dipping chocolate and they were sort of sticking - to the dipping tool and to the parchment paper.

Oreo Truffles

So, I chilled the balls in the freezer and decided to use a silpat. Of course as they were in the freezer, I stumbled upon a tip that suggested that you NOT freezer your truffles first - as they rewarm, they will expand and cause the chocolate coating to crack. I decided to risk the cracking over the too-warm Oreo/cream cheese balls. (And by the way, they never did crack - I think white chocolate is a bit softer/more pliable than dark, so maybe that helped.)

Once the Oreo balls were nice and cold, I tried to perfect my dipping technique. I finally decided that my cheap dipping tools were just not working and tried my fingers (another suggestion I read online). Nope - all that did was leave marks on either side of the truffle where my fingers had been. GRRRR! Finally, my DS suggested using a regular old work. And what do you know? It worked! It was still a little tricky to get the balls off the fork, but they slid off much easier than with the dipping tools.

I still ended up with little bits of Oreo in the white chocolate, but I suppose that sort of adds to the Oreo or cookies and cream sort of look? Once you get the little drizzle of regular chocolate on top, it draws your eye upward and and away from the flaws - most of the flaws were toward the bottom of the truffles where I tried to get them to slide off the fork/tool. I found that 12 ounces of white chocolate wasn't quite enough to coat all the balls nicely, so I would melt 16 ounces next time to ensure there is plenty to go around.

Throughout the process I did let go a few choice words and started to get grumpy, but I walked away and came back with a positive attitude and it all turned out in the end. They didn't come out perfectly, but I was pleased. I took them to the all-college potluck and they were a hit. I did, however, discover one reason that one might want to make these by the rounded teaspoonful rather than larger like I did. As my coworkers were raving about the truffles and asking for the recipe, I noticed little bits of black stuck to the front of their teeth...........yeah, bite-size might be best................

Christmas Cookies 2007: Magic/Seven Layer Bars

2007-12-17T23:02:00.000-05:00

Amid all the holiday baking just for fun, I also had a few functions to bake for - a holiday party at work and a band concert for my boys (the oldest play saxophone and the youngest, percussion). Bar cookies are always an easy choice when you need to bake a large quantity quickly, but choosing which bar is always hard! I decided to go back to an old favorite from childhood that I hadn't made in quite a while - Magic Bars. Or Seven-Layer Bars, whichever you prefer. One pan for each function and I was done.

This time I tried a recipe from The New Best Recipe from Cook's Illustrated. They make several suggestions on how to make these just right. For one, they have you line the pan with parchment or aluminum foil. While this did make the bars pretty easy to lift out and then cut (I don't like cutting bars in the pan), a small amount of the butter tended to seep underneath the aluminum foil and could not be mixed into the graham crumbs. Since it did make cutting the bars easier, I would definitely recommend using the parchment or foil, but next time I would mix the butter and crumbs in separate dish and then press into the pan.

Magic/Seven Layer Bars

These were quite good, but something was missing. For one, the walnuts did not come through and nuts are an important part of this recipe in my opinion, so definitely more walnuts next time. One thing I really appreciated was that the crust held together nicely and did not crumble apart as I was cutting which can be a real problem with some graham cracker crusts. Again, these were good, but they didn't make me swoon as much as they have in the past. I'll have to dig up my old recipe and compare the two.

The baking is not finished yet. I have a few things to bake this week and one more cookie to finish this weekend. Stay tuned........

From Sweet to Savory

2007-12-16T19:27:00.000-05:00

As much fun as I am having posting all these cookies - and sweet treats always get the most comments and attention - it's time for something savory.

Canned tomato soup is a staple at our house for nights when we want something really fast but somewhat nutritious. We pair it with grilled cheese or maybe some frozen pierogies and onions sauteed in a bit of butter. However, I've been wanting to find a basic tomato soup recipe that I could make on my own, avoiding the high fructose corn syrup found in the canned varieties.

Creamy Tomato Soup

The Jack Bishop cookbook that I took out from the library - A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen - has a recipe for Creamy Tomato Soup. Only there's no cream. So I'm not really sure why he calls it Creamy Tomato Soup at all. In any case, I tried it and loved, loved it.

This recipe calls for roasting canned tomatoes to intensify their flavor. This step is not hard, but it takes a bit of time - especially since I once did a double batch - which probably keeps it from being a true quick and easy recipe. The tomatoes are paired with leeks, tomato paste, a bit of freshly grated nutmeg and butter. While I did cut the butter down by one tablespoon, I would not recommend skipping it entirely - I think it is responsible for some of the lovely flavors that shine through in this soup.

And lovely it is. It's a simple soup with only a few ingredients, but it ends up tasting more complex than you might expect. Each time you take a bite, it seems like a new flavor surprises you. I overdid the cayenne a little bit the first time - tomato soup is not generally something I expect or want to be spicy - but did keep it in the second time in lesser amounts just to give the soup a little punch - not heat really, just an added dimension.

I was able to JUST barely fit a double recipe in my Dutch oven - it very nearly overflowed the top. I have one batch tucked away in the freezer but I'm not sure how long I'll be able to resist bringing it out for dinner.

Christmas Cookies 2007: Chai Shortbread

2007-12-15T12:50:00.000-05:00

With these cookies, I've done something I don't normally do - I've chosen to make a cookie from Cooking Light. I don't normally do low-fat cookies. However, with 51% of the calories coming from fat, this one isn't so low-fat.

Chai Shortbread

I love chai and I love shortbread and the combination of the two sounded like heaven. While these cookies are quite good, they didn't quite measure up to what I think these could be. First of all, I think it's unrealistic to expect a lower fat shortbread cookie to measure up - after all, shortbread is ALL about the butter. Secondly, the chai flavoring just didn't shine through enough for my tastes - the flavoring was nice, it just didn't seem "chai" enough. My favorite chai tea is Celestial Seasonings India Spice Chai - one of the most flavorful chais I've tasted.

I'm not giving up on this idea though - I still believe it's a match made in heaven, we just need to do a little experimenting. The shortbread part would be easy - I can just go back to a full-fat version - I've tried a very good one from Martha Stewart in the past. As for the chai spices - that will take some experimenting to find just the right blend. I'm also interested in finding a nice chai blend to augment some teas I've bought that haven't been up to snuff - if I can add my own chai spice mix to them, maybe they won't go to waste. I will post if I come up with a good one.....

I've been cooking, baking and taking pictures and it's starting to really pile up. Hopefully I'll have time over the holidays to get things caught up here on the blog. Maybe I'll even have time this week - the Christmas shopping is done with just a little wrapping to do..........

Christmas Cookies 2007: Cream Cheese Swirl Blondies

2007-12-10T21:32:00.000-05:00

This was my oldest DS's pick this year - yet another recipe from the 2005 Martha Stewart Holiday Cookies issue. He did all of the work himself with me serving as advisor and sous chef - meaning mostly what I did was clean up behind him. Man, I wish I could have sous chef in the kitchen with me when I cook!

Cream Cheese Swirl Blondies

I have to admit that I tend to avoid any kind of blondie or brownie with anything swirled in it. Not because I don't like them - they are usually delicious - but because they are fussy. I'm not fond of fussy. But this was DS's pick and after all, it is the holidays. It was also a chance for DS to find out why I'm not so fond of making these kinds of treats. Getting the batter to swirl proved to be quite challenging - the cream cheese batter was quite light and the blondie batter was quite dense so that we never really did succeed in getting a proper swirl - more of a layered effect. This did not prove to be a problem - they were delicious anyway. I would note though that these turn out more like a dense cake than a blondie. Again, not a problem.

Still to come: Chai Shortbread and Magic/Seven Layer Bars........

Christmas Cookies 2007: Iced Hermits

2007-12-09T21:20:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year again! DH and the boys have picked out their cookies for this year and baking has commenced.

First up, DH's choice - Iced Hermits. I've heard of hermit bars, but I've never seen one or tasted one, much less made one. One thing I love about DH and the boys picking cookies for me to make is that they tend to pick things I never would and this cookie is no exception. For one thing, it calls for icing - I tend to avoid cookies with icing.

Our source is, once again, Martha Stewart's 2005 special holiday cookie supplement. I can't get them to look at anything else! But I can't blame them, this magazine is so well done with enticing pictures for each and every cookie - truly an excellent layout for a magazine.

This bar cookie is baked in a 10 x 15-inch pan. I only have 11 x 17-inch pans, so I did a little improvising. I didn't want the cookies to turn out too thin, so I turned my 11 x 17-inch pan into a 11 x 14-inch pan. I cut an 11 x 14-inch piece of parchment paper and placed it in the pan. I then cut a piece of tin foil to sort of serve as the "wall" to get a nice edge on the cookies and to keep the exposed end from over-browning.

Iced Hermits

The ingredient lists appears fairly long for these cookies but most of it is spices and not as involved as it first appears. The cookies come out thin and chewy - a spiced cookie with a strong punch of ginger and a bit of sweetness from the raisins. They are topped off with an easy icing. I'm not a big fan icing, but this icing is delicious and should not be skipped - the butterscotch/caramel flavor from the brown sugar and butter nicely complements the spiciness of the cookie. The diced ginger adds even more bite and a festive holiday sparkle to top things off.

This still may not be a cookie that I make just any old day, but I'm glad that DH inspired me give it a try. This would definitely be a pretty and tasty cookie to make for a cookie exchange or holiday party.

Stay tuned for more Christmas cookies to come.........

Delicious Soup That Couldn't be Simpler!

2007-12-05T19:44:00.000-05:00

I had no pre-made plans for dinner tonight, so I started looking for soups recipes in the Jack Bishop cookbook I mentioned last night and the Simple Suppers from Moosewood. In the Moosewood cookbook, I found a super simple recipe for a soup that consisted basically of broth, bread and cheese. Hey, I can handle that.

Italian Bread and Cheese Soup

This is the kind of soup that lends itself well to tinkering - add any kind of broth, bread or cheese you happen to have on hand. The Moosewood version starts out with garlic and a homemade vegetable broth. I only had canned vegetable broth on hand and was a bit hesitant to use that as a base - I think the canned vegetable broths are a fine base for a more substantial soup, but probably not good enough to pull off a soup with so few ingredients. I opted for canned chicken broth (I couldn't call it a vegetarian meal any longer, but it was a meal without meat in any case). Since two cans only equal 28 ounces, I made up the last 4 ounces with white wine - another ingredient that I thought would help make up for the lack of homemade broth.

My fresh parsley was slimy and I didn't have any fresh basil, so I threw in a bit of Italian herb seasoning when I sauteed the garlic.

To assemble the soup, you place the stale or toasted bread in a bowl, along with the shredded cheese and then ladle the hot broth over top. Sprinkle in a little parsley or fresh basil and add some freshly ground black pepper and that's it! I used the leftover croutons from the butternut squash soup and again, the whole grain sourdough worked really well.

To construct this soup you take the stale or toasted bread, place it in a bowl along with the shredded cheese (I used Fontina) and then ladle the hot broth over top. It was surprisingly good. In fact, we liked it quite a lot and I can see this - and many variations - becoming a regular at our house.

I really am enjoying the simplicity and fabulous flavors that are coming from these two cookbooks - they are proving to me that you don't have to slave in the kitchen all day long to turn out some really fabulous dishes - fabulous, fast food that fits into a busy weeknight schedule.

Brrrrrrr........Jack Bishop and some Butternut Squash warm us up!

2007-12-04T21:13:00.000-05:00

Brrrrr.....it's cold outside. The wind is howling, with gusts expected to be around 50MPH or so. Cold is bad enough, but cold and a wind like that and I'm more than happy to stay inside and not step foot outside. Brrrr.....

This kind of weather definitely makes for good soup weather, though and soup was on the menu for tonight.

I recently checked Jack Bishop's A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen out of the library. I am absolutely loving this book. So far I have tried 3 recipes and we have loved all of them - Creamy Tomato Soup, Black Bean Chilaquiles and tonight's dinner, Butternut Squash Soup with Chipotle Chiles and Garlic. I promise to come back and review the other two recipes later....

So, here I am the next day continuing with my post. The boys and I sat down to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas last night and I fell asleep! Anyway, back to the butternut squash soup....

I am continuing to use up the butternut squash in our freezer that I mentioned on a previous post. Before I go on to the soup, let me briefly mention that I used butternut squash puree in place of pumpkin in my favorite pumpkin bread and it worked beautifully (I left out the chocolate chips, though).

Butternut Squash Soup with Chipotle Chiles and Garlic
(please excuse the cruddy picture!)

The soup was a very simple recipe - pretty much just butternut puree, water, garlic and chipotle chiles. My soup ended up not being very vegetarian though, I'm afraid. I had some leftover chicken broth and butternut puree from a soup I made recently, so I dumped that in, along with 2 additional cups of puree. I can't really say that I followed any of the proportions exactly, but we got the main gist of it.

Mmmm...it was very good. With the exception of baked goods, I generally don't like my squash to be sweet, so the spice and heat from the chipotles was the perfect way to play up the savory aspects of the butternut. The croutons - I used a loaf of whole grain sourdough from Wegmans - add a nice crunch and a bit of relief from the heat. The nuttiness of the whole grains pair nicely with the squash. The soup was also extremely easy to make, considering that I already had the puree sitting in the freezer.

We are having so much fun with butternut squash puree that I have decided that I will plant at least one butternut plant in the garden next year. Our freezer supply is now down to only about 4 cups, so I'll have to be careful about what I choose next - and I've already promised my oldest that I'd make the Butternut Squash Risotto, so that really only leaves 2 cups.....maybe some more "pumpkin" bread, that was sooo good......mmm.........

On this day in...
2006: Sweet Rolls on Sunday

Looking Back: Burgers

2007-11-26T21:08:00.000-05:00

My blog may be horribly neglected, but fortunately I've still be cooking and taking pictures when I remember or have time. For this post, I'm going to go way back to the August issue of Cooking Light which featured several different tempting-sounding gourmet burgers. I've already reviewed the Italian Meatball Burgers, but we've also tried the Saté Burgers and the Southwestern Turkey Cheddar Burgers with Grilled Onions.

I don't have pictures of Saté Burgers, but they were quite good. This is a turkey and pork burger that combines the elements of a typical sate with ingredients such as peanuts, lime, cilantro and fish sauce. The result is an exotic, moist, flavorful burger. The recipe suggests skipping the bun and serving them with rice. We decided to be burger traditionalists and decided to serve them on hamburger buns but were put off by the fact that there was no sauce - it seemed like they would be a bit boring and bland just slapped on a dry bun. We decided to try them with bottled Teriyaki sauce and that worked pretty well, but I think perhaps CL knew what they were talking about when they suggested the rice.

Southwestern Turkey-Cheddar Burgers with Grilled Onion

The next burger we tried was the Southwestern turkey burger. This burger is a bit more straightforward, combining turkey with a few Tex-Mex spices and a bit of wheat germ. The burgers are topped off with grilled onions, cheddar cheese and a spicy Chipotle-Poblano ketchup that really takes this burger up a notch. Our only complaint with this burger is that it perhaps had a bit too much onion in the burger itself - this seemed unnecessary with the grilled onion topping.

As a side note, each of these recipes makes 6 burgers. We didn't want to end up with 2 leftover burgers, so instead of reducing the recipe to make 4, we upped the recipes to make 8 and froze the leftovers for a later meal. In fact, I think we still have some of the Southwestern burgers left, waiting for a cold day this winter when we want to bring a little summer indoors.

Only one burger left to try from that issue - the Korean Barbecue Burgers. Yum - I love Korean barbecue - called bulgogi and/or galbi - so we will definitely give these burgers a try and I'm pretty sure we won't be able to wait until summer......

On this day in..........
2006: Sweet Rolls on Sunday
2005: Would you cook if you couldn't taste anything?

Happy Thanksgiving!

2007-11-22T07:36:00.000-05:00

No food pictures to post today, so I'll just post a photo I took earlier this fall - I loved the way the fog was settled in amongst the fall foliage. And if you look closely, you can see Bailey out enjoying the beautiful day. We still have quite a few leaves on the trees around here! It looks more like the end of October than the end of November!

I continue to neglect my blog, but I appreciate all who stop by to take a look. Though I haven't been writing, I have been taking pictures of quite a few of our cooking ventures, so I hope to get caught up on my posts in the near future.

Have a wonderful holiday.

On this day in.....
2005: Moving Madness

Peanut Butter Brownie Update

2007-11-12T20:52:00.000-05:00

A photo update, that is.

As I make recipes I've previously reviewed on this blog, I try to take new pictures if my previous attempts were lacking. This was one of those recipes......or photos.

Peanut Butter Brownies

I sure miss baking, but I just don't have as much time as I did last year. The weather has been pretty mild, so the focus has still been on outdoor work, but I think we've finished most of that for the fall. Hopefully that means I'll get more time to warm the kitchen with the smells of some fresh baked goodies.

Until then, I'll just keep checking Joe's blog to get my baking fix. No matter what's going on or how crazy things get, he's always got something delicious coming out of the oven. Speaking of which, now is the time to start betting on how many different cookies/confections come out of his kitchen this holiday season. Or how many pounds of butter he goes through!

On this day in....
2005: Weekend Dog Blogging

Delicious "Pumpkin" Pasta Recipe

2007-11-05T20:28:00.000-05:00

Last week I was planning my menu and decided to crack open my 365: No Repeats from Rachael Ray. I didn't get very far down the list when I came upon a recipe for Pumpkin Pasta with Sausage and Wild Mushrooms. I didn't look any further - this sounded perfect.

I've put the pumpkin in quotes because I actually used butternut squash. My husband's great aunt was here for a visit earlier this year and brought us 4 or 5 huge butternut squash. The funny thing is, she said she didn't even plant any butternut squash - they were all volunteers! Anyway,I recently roasted all of the squash, pureed it (because of texture aversions, I can only eat it pureed), divided it into 2-cup quantities and put it in the freezer.

Pumpkin Pasta with Sausage and Wild Mushrooms

I did change up the recipe a bit from what was in the cookbook - I left out the olive oil which seemed wholly unnecessary, I drained the sausage and a few other changes. The recipe I've included in my link is slightly modified from the one in the cookbook, but I've tried to note the major changes. The recipe goes together quite easily, but it tastes like you went to a lot of work - that's my kind of recipe!

DH and the boys weren't quite sure when I rattled off the ingredients in the recipe, but I was pretty confident that we would all like it and I was right. It was a big hit - the 3 boys went back for seconds, always a good sign.

2 cups down, 12 more to go...........

On this day in....
2006: This and That

Tuna is a treat!

2007-10-29T19:57:00.000-04:00

Wow, it's a new record - posts two days in a row!

We love fish and would eat it more often, but around here it's very, very expensive - usually $12 per pound or more. When it was just the two of us eating it, no big deal, but with 2 growing boys eating adult or near adult-sized portions, it's really hard to spend that kind of money. Most of the time we're stuck with salmon and tilapia, but I can also find pretty decent tuna for about $9-$10 per pound. Still pretty pricey, but I get so tired of not eating fish, so I splurge once in a while. It's a shame, really - we like fish and it's so healthful...........sigh.

Tuna with Wasabi Cream

When I started looking for a recipe for the tuna, I knew I wanted Asian flavors. I came upon this recipe from Cooking Light and it jumped out at me. This recipe is very easy to put together and very flavorful. The seasonings on the tuna give it a nice kick and while the sauce has its own kick, it also has a nice contrasting coolness from the sour cream and mayonnaise.

I served it with mushrooms and onions that I roasted in a mixture of sherry, soy sauce, salt and pepper - these turned out very nicely and I liked that it freed up my stove for making the spinach. I used the basics of this spinach recipe, substituting sesame oil for the olive oil. Add a side of plain white rice and you have a simple but elegant and delicious meal with relatively little fuss.

The only thing I didn't like about this recipe? The name. The official name is Tuna "London Broil" with Wasabi Cream. I don't get it......................

On this day in....
2005: Weekend Dog Blogging

A New Cookie Recipe!

2007-10-28T21:26:00.000-04:00

Slowly but surely, I feel like we're getting a routine down. It helps that my youngest is now done with football - our Sundays are blessedly free once again. Not only did we not have to go anywhere today, but it was windy and chilly - perfect for baking. Okay, so it was nice enough that I probably should have been outside doing more gardening before it gets too cold, but I just plain didn't feel like it.

I pretty much took the summer off from baking and am looking forward to getting back to it - especially since apparently NOT baking made absolutely no difference in my weight. I seriously thought that once I stopped, I'd drop a few pounds. No such luck. Lesson learned? Might as well bake!

Maple Walnut Oatmeal Cookies

Today's cookie recipe comes to us from my favorite source for cookies - Martha Stewart. I love thumbing through the two special issue cookie supplements she published - they are full of tempting recipes. I tried a recipe from her 2000 cookie magazine - a recipe that I have been wanting to try for quite some time.

This recipe is unusual in that it does not contain eggs. It's a delicious combination of oats, maple, walnuts, butter, syrup and brown sugar. The cookies bake up a bit flat, but they are soft and chewy. I did not make giant cookies as the recipe calls for, but I decided to keep the baking temperature the same - 300º. Oddly enough, the cookies still seemed to brown too fast along the edges while not quite setting in the middle. I might have to lower my baking temperature next time a bit more next time. Still, after cooling completely, they had a pleasing texture - just a tad softer than I'd like. The maple flavor shines through and is nicely complemented by the savory crunch from the walnuts.

Hopefully I'll be around later this week to start catching up on sharing what's been going on in our kitchen.............

On this day in....
2006: Comparison Shopping

An Old Favorite: Chewy Ginger Snaps

2007-10-16T22:47:00.000-04:00

I may not be getting much blogging done lately, but we have been getting a lot of work done in the yard. Although soups and baking are definitely on my mind, I have been trying to take advantage of every moment of warmth and sunshine before it's gone until spring. It did cool down a bit this past week, so after I snuck in a little more yard work, I baked up a batch of cookies.

Chewy Ginger Snaps

This is not a new recipe, but I'm reviving it because it's one of our favorites and because I have a new photo to go along with it. This time I rolled the cookies in sugar for some added sparkle and crunch. I had never been much of a ginger cookie fan until I tried these - they are pleasingly chewy with a nice bite from the crystallized ginger.

Hopefully more treats will be coming out of the kitchen as the weather cools down........

On this day in....
2006: Time for Tempeh Too
2005: What's That I Smell?

What's this?? A new post??

2007-10-09T00:02:00.000-04:00

I'm afraid to go so far as to say that I'm back, because it's hard to say, so let's just take it one post at a time, shall we?

I can't believe it's been almost 2 months since I've posted regularly! There are many times when I miss blogging, but also times when I'm just very content to go about my business in the kitchen with no regard to trying to get the perfect shot or for that matter, any shot at all.

We are beginning to settle pretty well into a routine. However, most of my free time lately has been spent outdoors on quite a few lawn and garden projects. We've been creating vegetable garden beds for next year, doing a bit of landscaping and just general lawn maintenance. I'll try to post a few pictures soon. The weather here has been quite nice, though a bit on the hot side recently, and it's been wonderful to be able to get some work done.

Anyway, on to the first recipe I've shared in quite a long time.............

Now that the lazy days of summer are past (Or are they? It was 89º here today!), I have been keeping my eye out for quick and easy recipes to help us build a nice long list to choose from for those busy weeknights. This spinach quiche recipe from Epicurious caught my eye - not only for the apparent ease of preparation, but also for the puff pastry - puff pastry makes everything taste better.

It's certainly not a light recipe, but maybe the healthy amount of spinach in it helps make up for the added fat? The crust is actually just a sheet of puff pastry that is rolled out, placed in a pie plate and trimmed. The filling is a combination of spinach, cheese and half and half. Very simple, but very delicious. I thought it was a bit like having spinach dip in quiche form. Yum! I was a bit afraid that the puff pastry might make for a soggy-bottomed crust, but I'm happy to report that this was not the case.

Spinach Puff Pastry Quiche

The amount of spinach was overwhelming for 2 out of 4 of us DH and my youngest thought it was too much, my other son and I had no problem devouring our pieces and wanted more. In order to avoid complaints the next time around, I would consider making two quiches at once, dividing one package of frozen spinach between two quiches and perhaps adding sauteed mushrooms to each quiche to compensate for having less spinach. Puff pastry comes in packages of two sheets anyway, so this would work quite well and I even think the extra quiche would freeze - unbaked - quite nicely for a later meal.

On this day in....
2006: Pumpkin Cheesecake
2005: Apples, Brownies and a Salad

Checking In!

2007-09-12T08:06:00.000-04:00

Poor, poor neglected blog. I wanted to stop by and check in quickly to state the obvious - I haven't been blogging lately. Nothing big going on, just a newly busy schedule and less time.

I recently started a new job at a local college where I am working in the library as a technician. The hours work really well for the boys' schedules - I'm done by 3:00 3 days a week and then the other two days I get out at 2:00 and 1:00, for a total of 32 hours a week. And most importantly, summers off. Just right!

Speaking of which, school has started which means a lot of running around for band, football and other activities. I miss summer and its lack of routine and lack of schedules already!

On top of all of that, I'm trying very hard to get back into my workout routine. I suddenly realized that it has been TWO YEARS since I've worked out on a regular basis!

Bottom line - I need to concentrate on getting myself into a regular routine and blogging just doesn't fit in right now. Once I can trust myself that I'm sticking to the workout routine and have a handle on the rest, I hope to come back. As much as I enjoy blogging, I have to admit it's nice - especially on really busy nights - to simply sit down and eat instead of messing with photos!

Hope to be back soon...............................

On this day in....
2006: Mmm...Minestrone