Entries tagged with cooking

Current Mood: creative

Entry tags:

cooking,
food

cooking

Normally I'm not that jazzed about fruit-based desserts. I'm more of a chocolate fan. However, our market has had great fruit and I have run into a couple of tempting recipes that have changed my tune somewhat. I have a strawberry buttermilk cake in the oven and wow does it smell great. The lemon zest! It looks more like a pie, but whatever. I think I'll just fix jalapenos stuffed with cheese for dinner so we can fast-forward to dessert. For breakfast Sunday I made this cherry almond dutch baby (no actual babies were involved) and it was fab. I couldn't finish my slice but it kept well for dessert the next day.

My Pinterest collection of recipes is here. At the very least check out this recipe for macaroni and cheese - it's my go-to when feeding a crowd.

Current Mood: creative

Entry tags:

cooking,
food

cooking

Current Mood: amused

Entry tags:

cooking

what to do with cheese -

This is an excellent option when you have little bits of leftover cheese. When I made it today I even used some grated cheese and a couple of those Laughing Cow triangles. Yum. However I did not use the cheese that I found in my fridge with an expiration date in 2009. Even though it looked okay.

Don't you wonder about the first human who tried cheese? Did he lose a bet?

Current Mood: creative

Entry tags:

cooking

Coconut cake - in my crock pot? It's more likely than you think

I found a recipe for coconut cake for a crock pot over in

what_a_crock the other day. Here is the original recipe and here is how I altered it to cut some of the fat:

Coconut Crockpot Cake!

Combine:
-4 eggs (egg beaters)
-3/4 cup fat free sour cream
-1/2 cup veg oil
-1 cup water
-1 package Jello coconut cream pudding mix

Mix this all together until well blended and then add:

-1 box Coconut cake mix
-1 big handful sweetened shredded coconut (about a cup)

Mix to combine and then pour the mixture into a VERY well greased slow cooker

Cook on low for about two hours - there should be a bit of browning visible around the edges.

The cake will be set around the sides but still rather gooey in the middle - kind of like a lava cake.

If you like coconut, give it a try. I think next time I'm called upon to provide a dessert for a potluck, I'll bring this.

When I am not feeling lazy, I will try Alton Brown's recipe for coconut cake, which is more labor intensive, but does not use boxed stuff.

Current Mood: busy

Entry tags:

cooking

coconut bread

This morning I tried this recipe for coconut bread. Meh. It was a bit dry and not as sweet as I was wanting; I was hoping for something more like a traditional banana nut bread. Maybe I"ll soak it in rum!

ETA: I halved the recipe for the rum glaze from the famous Bacardi Rum Cake recipe; that should fix things.

Current Mood: creative

Entry tags:

cooking

Peanut Butter Muffins

I decided to take advantage of the cooler weather this AM to try out a new (to me) recipe from the Oct. 2004 issue of Real Simple:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup peanut butter (crunchy or smooth)
1 cup whole milk*
1 egg, beaten
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup unsalted peanuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 350° F. Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the peanut butter and combine with a pastry cutter or 2 forks until it has reached a coarse, crumbly texture. Stir in the milk, egg, and butter.

Coat a nonstick muffin pan with cooking spray. Fill each muffin cup about 3/4 full with batter. Evenly sprinkle some chopped peanuts over each.

Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool on a wire rack.

Notes: I didn't add the peanuts, I did add a little more peanut butter (maybe an extra couple of tablespoons). I had extra dough left so I made two large free form biscuits in a greased loaf pan. These are not overly sweet, in-your-face peanut butter; they work for breakfast (especially if you don't have to have a super-sweet breakfast pastry) and I could see them served with a soup or stew.

*ETA: I seldom have whole milk on hand, so I have a feeling this was made with skim. Seemed to turn out okay.

BTW, if you are into food blogs, may I suggest Smitten Kitchen? I think one of you posted some recipes from there a few weeks ago and I got hooked. I've made an LJ feed for your reading convenience - cleverly named smitten_kitchen.

Current Mood: good

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Random

*I received a spam email with the subject line, "Give Her an Orgasm in 33 Simple Steps". 33? That doesn't seem simple at all! What the heck are they selling?

*We were invited to an Easter day brunch and I made Alton Brown's Indian Rice Pudding for the occasion. Yum! I used light coconut milk and half and half because I'm trying to count calories. And I added a tiny amount - like 1/8 teaspoon - of rose water. That stuff is potent, you don't want your food to taste like Grandma's perfume. Also- NO RAISINS. Raisins have no place in my dessert world. They trick you into thinking that they are chocolate chips, but then you dig in and discover your mistake TOO LATE!

*Today we had rain, then sun, then rain, then sun again, only cooler, then tiny bits o' hail for about five minutes. Whee.

Current Mood: baking

Entry tags:

cooking

Posty McPostalot - recipe time!

Reduced Guilt Chocolate Chip Mint Cookies

(If you are mint intolerant you could probably ditch the mint extract, just add a little extra of the vanilla)

6 Tbsp butter or margarine

½ cup brown sugar, packed

1 egg

½ tsp vanilla extract

½ tsp mint extract

¾ cup unbleached four

¾ cup toasted wheat germ

½ tsp baking powder

pinch salt

½ to 1 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream butter and sugar. Beat in the egg, vanilla, and mint extracts.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, wheat germ, baking powder, and salt. Stir into the butter mixture. Add the chocolate chips.

Drop rounded tablespoons of batter onto a lightly buttered / Pam’ed cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 – 12 minutes.

Yield: 2 dozen

90 calories each

Protein – 2 g

Carb – 11 g

Fat – 5 g

Fiber – the damn recipe doesn’t say, but considering 2 tablespoons of wheat germ contains 2 grams of fiber, it should be pretty good

Current Mood: domestic

Entry tags:

domestic goddess

It's been snowing all day! The perfect day to make a pot of chili. I make mine with curry. Yum. I'll start the cornbread shortly. Come over for dinner!

I may have lost my mojo for selecting colors for quilts. That, or the fabric isn't suitable for the pattern I'm wanting to use, something called a double rail fence for all you quilters out there. I spent an hour at the JoAnns trying to find the perfect fabric. Think I'll just pick out another pattern.

ETA: Seems that the light in the oven only comes on when you open the oven door. That's poor design, that is.

Current Mood: pleased

Entry tags:

cooking,
gardening

baked red tomatoes

I went a little nuts with the tomato plants this year. Well, I only planted three, but considering my spouse doesn't often eat tomatoes and tomatoes grow with amazing ease in my front yard, three was perhaps a bit excessive. And really, there's only so many BLT sandwiches I can eat. So with the first batch from the plants I made a simple salsa when we had a few friends over for Labor Day - just tomato bits, onion, cilantro, salt and pepper. I was happy with the results. But then tomato production went off the scale. What to do? I don't think you can freeze them. The solution that ultimately came to me? Tomato sauce, specifically Alton Brown's recipe. Wow, so good I ate a small bowl with no pasta! Baking the tomatoes really brought out the sweetness. And Jeff even had high praise for the results, which made me feel extra good because, as I said, he's not really a fan of the fruit - tomatoes are fruits, right? I never took botany.

(Hey, can you pretend that the pot is all clean up in that second picture? Those fancy cooking magazines make everything look perfect, as if cooking wasn't a somewhat messy process.)

Home grown and cooked. I'm ready for survival in the event of complete socio-economic collapse! :)

Current Mood: busy

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How do you do Thanksgiving?

Traditional Turkey? Ham? Or is tofurkey on your table?

My mom taught me to roast turkey via the aluminum foil method, basically you tent the bird in foil until the last portion of the cooking. This keeps it from drying out. I was scandalized to find that not everyone does this when another family member hosted the meal one year - ack, pass the gravy! However, Mum isn't too much into fancy herbs and such, and I love shopping at Penzey's Spices, so when I found this recipe for turkey with Herbes de Provence and Citrus, I tried it and haven't looked back. This year though, I confess that I balked at paying $2.99 for a package of herbs. That would be $9.00! Sheesh! So we are going to try it sans the fresh herbs this time around. I really have to start an indoor herb garden. Maybe even an outdoor one, as my tomato plant was fine up until about ten days ago.

The other traditional dish for my family is this casserole made of chopped broccoli, cream of mushroom soup, and, of course, cheese. (This is as close to the recipe we use that I could find, just omit the pimento if you want it Flummoxicated-style. Or this one, though we don't use W sauce.) It's kind of white trash, I suppose, since cream of mushroom soup is involved, but it's really tasty.

Ever since our honeymoon in Colonial Williamsburg, we have been hooked on peanut soup. It is amazingly delicious! I have taken to making it for dinner the day before so I'm not cooking so many different dishes. Any leftovers get served for Thanksgiving, of course.

For dessert - pumpkin pie. I'm going to be tinkering with a recipe or two and will report the results.

I was hoping my friends and I would be able to do an orphans' Thanksgiving, but everyone here seems to be taking off for parts unknown - so we'll have lots of leftovers. Which is fine by me because I won't have much time for cooking in the next week or so.

ETA: Spouse insists on Pillsbury brand crescent rolls; he's also a stuffing junkie so that's a Thanksgiving requirement as well. And I like cranberry sauce in the shape of a can. Just because!

Enjoy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Current Mood: amused

Entry tags:

my funny guy

Me, taking a box of Triscuits out of a grocery bag: "Geez, how long is Rachael Ray's picture going to be all over every cracker box out there?"

Him: "Until she steals the requisite number of souls."

Current Mood: indescribable

Entry tags:

cooking

LJ Recipe Exchange!

This is inspired by an email recipe exchange I was invited to join last week. I'm not sure I'll get that many recipes from that - but I figured if I posted what I sent, and suggested that you all post recipes you like, that would potentially result in more recipes..

This recipe is a bit "white trash" in that it calls for pre-prepared, packaged stuff. Still, it's tasty and great for when you are pressed for time. I served it at a brunch one and blindleadsblind especially liked it. This makes a great breakfast, it reheats well and tastes good cold too. Points aren't too bad if you are into WW.

Quick and Easy Blue Cheese and Bacon quiche

ingredients:

1 Pillsbury or similar refrigerated pie crust
1 16 oz carton of Egg Beaters or similar product
1 package of pre-cooked bacon (I usually grab what's on sale)
8 oz blue cheese salad dressing (I like a reduced fat version)

directions:

Follow the directions on the pie crust package for bringing the crust to room temperature. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Press the pie crust into a 9" pie tin or quiche dish. Chop up the bacon and spread it over the pie crust. Whisk together the Egg Beaters and the blue cheese dressing; season to taste - the bacon will make it salty enough but I like to add pepper or a few dashes of hot sauce. Pour over the chopped bacon.

Bake for 25 - 30 minutes or until puffy and a knife inserted into the center of the pie comes out clean.

Current Mood: better
Current Location: purple office

Entry tags:

cooking

just a note to prove I can do more than kvetch - I can cook

The kitchen is finally unpacked, I am back in the cooking business!

Why so long, you ask? This place had a bug problem when we moved in, and it took a while to get that squared away. Not going to unpack my dishes with bugs around! Also the stove is gross, old, the previous tenants left it icky (also the fridge had mold in it when we got here - ewww!); the knobs on the stove are also unreliable -

oops, I'm kvetching.

Anyway, most of our cooking stuff is unpacked, for Thanksgiving I cooked a ham, we had stuffing and potatoes (too much starch, but yum), and asparagus. And crescent rolls, which

shipbrook adores. A friend had a bunch of us over for a pre-Thanksgiving potuck celebration the week before the holiday, I made Sid's pumpkin pudding with praline topping and it got a ton of compliments. This week I'm making peanut soup.

I've decided that I need a new set of pots and pans. Mum gave me some pots from the 70s - ugly harvest gold but will last forever so I don't care - a few years ago a coworker gave me some teflon pots, one of them got chucked in the move since the finish was wearing. I've never had a new matching set of pots and pans! Not a huge tragedy, to be sure. So if any of you have any advice as to a brand or finish I should consider, I'd be much obliged.

Current Mood: contemplative

Entry tags:

cooking

woe

I burned my bacon this morning.