So I had another birthday not too long ago and there was much celebrating. I prefer a Key Lime Pie (recipe here) to cake on my birthday. But this year, I decided to go with Key Lime Bars instead. Easier to transport and package up as ‘thank-yous’ to various folks.
This time, I had just a few extra coconut shreds, so instead of storing them, I decided to toast them and add them to the top after I removed the bars from the oven. Continue reading
JeffreyW’s Awesome Nachos
It’s almost Super Bowl Sunday, when you sit down to stuff your face with favorite snack foods, drink beer and watch the Super Bowl Commercials. I think there is some football in there somewhere.
It seems to have become a tradition to repost these recipes, some of my favorites. I’ve added JeffreyW’s Hot Wings to the group. Click here for his deep fried wings (pictured above) and Bleu Cheese Dip. For all his Hot Wing variations, click here.
You can’t go wrong with nachos – easy and easy to pile high with your favorites ingredients.
Here’s a kinda healthy version: Black Bean and Corn Nachos, recipe here.
JeffreyW gets creative with his pizzas, here , here, here and if you want to see them all, here (the man does love a good pizza).
For something a little different, Buffalo Chicken Dip recipe is here.
Now it’s your turn, what are you planning on making this Sunday and more importantly what beer are you serving? Do you make chicken wings or buy them from a favorite place? Most importantly, Broncos or Panthers?
Tonight’s featured recipes – one traditional, one a bit more creative:
Quick and Easy Chili
Brown ground beef and drain. Saute jalapenos, green pepper, onion and garlic. In large pot combine all ingredients bring to boil. Lower heat and simmer, covered for at least 30 minutes.
In my house we serve chili with fritos and shredded cheddar, layered in a bowl – fritos, chili, cheese and more fritos.
Slow Cooker instructions: Following instructions above, add everything to slow cooker, cook on high for 15 minutes, reduce heat to low and let simmer for 6 to 8 hours.
Also, if you are serving at a party, you can cook in large pot above for 30 minutes and then transfer to slow cooker on low or warm to keep it hot during the festivities.
Looking for a little more kicked up chili? Check out JeffreyW’s Chorizo Chili here.
And my favorites to take to a party:
Basic Tortilla Pinwheels
You spread the ingredients on the tortillas, roll them up and slice them into 1 inch pinwheels. Couldn’t get much easier.
So how do we add some dazzle? Flavored tortillas and a variety of fillings.
Here are some ideas I had:
Jalapeño & Cilantro Tortillas and Black Bean Tortillas
Roasted Red Pepper Tortillas and Sun-dried Tomato & Basil Tortillas
=============
What will you be doing during the big game? Have any fun snack recipes to share? Don’t be shy, I’m always looking for something new and unusual.
I will have a Bixby/Scout update this weekend! And I have the makings for a post on how to overcome the winter cooking blues (when I really need to have some lighter, fresher dinner ingredients about this time of year). Until then…
Sometime contributor Michael Fallai shares a lot of terrific recipes on Facebook. The only hitch is they are often in Italian. Tonight’s featured recipe was one of those. If you ever want a laugh, let Google translate a recipe for you…and don’t let dissolve cheese in a water bath, or let your wine evaporate on flame lively intimidate you.
Perusing the weekly ads, I pulled together a few recipes based on what was on sale this week and headed out to the grill.
First up, Curried Turkey Burgers, recipe here. Great served on fresh pita and grill some fresh eggplant from the garden.
Collard greens were everywhere at the farmer’s market last weekend, so Collard Greens with Bacon seems timely, click here.
The dinner menu took advantage of the abundance of pears right now, Grilled Salmon in Dill Sauce with Pear Raspberry Salad. Click here for recipes and full menu.
JeffreyW and Mrs. J made some delicious looking Cream Horns (and to this Italian girl, seems the only difference between these and Cannoli is the filling). Purty pictures and directions can be found here.
What’s on your menu this last weekend of August? What garden fresh items are you enjoying right now? What are you grilling up?
Tonight’s featured recipe (pictured at top) became a poignant reminder of the earthquake in Italy. I had pulled it off the Italy site, translated it and put the ingredients on my shopping list just days before it hit.
Here is my version:
Pasta with Pears, Pecorino and Walnuts
skillet, large pot
Bring water to boil in large pot, add salt and pasta and cook to al dente. Drain but do not rinse and add back to pot, off heat.
While pasta is cooking, heat skillet on medium heat, add walnuts. Stir constantly until lightly toasted, remove and set aside.
Add butter to skillet and melt before adding pears. Stir gently until well coated with butter. Cook until softened, gently stirring occasionally (you don’t want to break up the pears).
Add both cheeses and stir in completely. Let simmer on medium heat until lightly boiling. Add wine and let simmer away (about 5 minutes). Salt and pepper to taste.
Combine pasta, pear mixture and walnuts in large pot and mix well. Serve with extra Pecorino for garnish.
That’s it for this week. Have a great weekend, enjoy fading days of August – TaMara
The French Toast Alert System has been raised from Elevated to High, as we are expected to get anywhere from 6 to 15 inches of snow tomorrow. If you were lucky enough to get to the store and buy your milk, eggs and bread before the shelves were cleared out, here’s your french toast recipe. Bonus cute sous chef.
Originally posted January 2014
This is a very simple recipe, but I needed a helper, for sure. All you need for this recipe is a good quality bread – I used 12 slices – 2 eggs, 1/4 cup milk, dash of cinnamon, dash of salt, 8 oz of cream cheese, strawberry jam and powdered sugar. You can spread anything you want on the bread, go for your favorites. I think peanut butter and jam would be really good.
Step One: In a bowl, add eggs, milk, cinnamon and salt and beat well.
Step Two: Roll the bread flat, just not too flat, so it’s easier to roll up.
Step Three: Spread cream cheese and jam in the center of the bread. Don’t get too close to the edges, because you don’t want it to squish out when you roll up.
Step Four: Roll bread up. You’ll want to do all of them before you start dipping and cooking.
Step Five: Melt butter in a skillet (adding more as needed as you cook)
Step Six: Dip bread rolls one at a time quickly into the egg mixture, don’t let them soak. Then add them to the pan.
Step Seven: Cook over medium heat, turning as each side browns, until the whole rolls is golden brown. Remove and immediately dust with powdered sugar. Repeat until all rolls are cooked. We served 4 with twelve rolls and it was more than enough.
==========================
Mrs J was wanting to use up the puff pastry dough so she baked up a few cream horns. Not wanting to reprise the pastry cream fillings from the last time we fooled around with more cream filling recipes. I made up a batch of the stuff made with shortening but she didn’t like the thought of it. I dumped the lot and went with a cream cheese – marshmallow fluff recipe that was pretty easy: beat 1 cup of cream cheese with 1/2 cup marshmallow cream and 1/4 cup of powdered sugar. Great Success!
-making a cake from scratch, that is.
I was wanting cake but there wasn’t a cake mix anywhere and I was a disappoint. Then I remembered that we had a box of cake flour tucked away in an undercounter overflow pantry! Alas, my enthusiasm at finding it didn’t translate into Mrs J wanting to bake me that cake. We did have everything else the recipe on back of the box called for so I muddled ahead. That link is to a nearly identical recipe I found online. I used two 9 inch cake pans rather than three 8 inchers. Take note of the use of parchment paper in the pan bottom. I sure plan to, next time. LOL
A generous coating of frosting helped hide my mistakes. I used a brown butter cream cheese frosting this time rather than the one in the recipe. I can’t find the exact recipe for the frosting but as I recall it had 2 sticks of butter, one of them browned and then cooled, 16 ounces of cream cheese, a teaspoon of vanilla and a pinch of salt. Cream together the cheese and the butter, add the vanilla and salt, then mix in 3 or 4 cups of powdered sugar. (I used 2 cups of Splenda and 1 of powdered sugar.)
The cake turned out great!
Coconut cake with lemon curd filling and brown butter cream cheese frosting. Mrs J went with box mix white cake and subbed coconut milk for the water and used coconut oil for the vegetable oil. We made 2 boxes worth of cake batter and divided that equally among three 9″ cake rounds. The lemon filling was from this recipe, and we doubled this recipe for the frosting – using browned butter rather than just plain “softened”. We used Splenda throughout. Splenda substitutes in recipes by volume and not by weight so I weighed out one pound of powdered sugar. That came to about 4 cups.
The “Better Luck” in the title is a play on the phrase “Better luck next time”, the first time we did this cake we really liked the taste but the presentation was a little lame. We are getting better but we are still on the learning curve.
This recipe seems a little more involved than many we looked at but they did turn out rather well. We made the brown butter frosting with Splenda and subbed a Splenda brown sugar blend for regular brown sugar. The recipe called for cooking the bananas down in the oven first although it seems to me just as easy to do it in a pan atop the stove. We are really liking the brown butter recipes we see for frostings. Browning the butter adds a lot of flavor.
What's 4 Dinner Solutions 