Archive for the ‘Yum’ Category
Recipes From Home
June 4th, 2009 Posted 3:43 pm
Things have been ridiculously busy, and I’m about to head to KY for a long weekend to celebrate a friend’s wedding…plus we have been reheating leftovers from the freezer and having boring meals lately, so there hasn’t been much to post. Plus, Santana has been exhausting me lately….she’s fussy about her food all of the sudden, sometimes doesn’t eat her breakfast, and last night I had to sleep on the couch with her to keep her from howling all night. Not so good. Hop on over to her blog to read about our hike last weekend.
My mom, however, has been on a roll cooking up some of my favorites (and some new things). She sent me massive info about all this stuff, and I’ve decided you’re lucky enough to get a peek at her cheesecake. It’s way down at the bottom of this post and it is my absolute most favorite cheesecake ever. Especially when she uses the mini chocolate chips. I can’t wait to go home (hopefully in September!) so I can get some of mom’s cheesecake 🙂
These are recipes that are simple, easy and satisfying. My dad usually eats them several times in a row for lunch, and lots of times they’ll have leftovers for dinner throughout the week. I love my mom’s recipes because a) she’s hilarious and b) it’s a refreshing change from the fancy blog recipes you sometimes see. Plus, the ingredients are straightforward, easy to find and not intimidating…my mom was NOT excited about trying edamame or tofu at any point. 🙂
Mom & Dad’s Chicken Dinner
POTATO SALAD
Cook cut up potatoes until done. Cool. Add the following:
- Cut up hard boiled eggs (I use lots)
- diced dill pickles
- chopped green olives (unless you are serving Matt)
- diced carrots or/and celery if you want
Season with seasoned salt and pepper. Add a few tablespoons of the pickle juice and yellow mustard. Toss with miracle whip and chill. Turns out different all the time but after a while you get a feel for the mix and consistency you like.
3 BEAN SALAD
I had a recipe to try with fresh beans but in Unadilla, there were no fresh beans at our HUGE store. So I can across this one in a cookbook I had before I got married – New and Revised Betty Crocker 1978 !!
- 1 can (16 oz) green beans, drained
- 1 can (16 oz) wax beans, drained
- 1 can (15 oz) kidney beans, drained
- ¼ cup chopped onions (calls for green)
- ¼ cup snipped parsley ( I used 1/8 cup dried)
- 1 cup Italian dressing
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed (once again from my limited pantry – I used 1 teaspoon minced from refrigerator)
Mix beans, onions and parsley in large bowl. Mix dressing, sugar and garlic. Pour over salad and toss. Cover and refrigerate, stirring occasionally, at least 3 hours. The recipe says to serve in lettuce-lined bowls…. Of course, I didn’t..
TEXAS-STYLE FRYER CHICKEN
From Taste of Home Chicken Cookbook
- 1 Tablespoon seasoned salt
- 1 teaspoon pepper
- 1 broiler/fry chicken (3-3.5 pounds)
- 2 garlic cloves, minced (or in my case 1 teaspoon minced from jar)
- ½ cup butter
- ½ cup chicken broth
- ½ cup lemon juice
Combine seasoned salt and pepper; rub inside and outside of chicken. Place chicken on rotisserie rod on grill (we subbed by putting on a rack in a disposal pan). In a small saucepan, sauté garlic in butter until tender. Stir in broth and lemon juice. Pour into drip pan and place under chicken. Baste with sauce every 15 minutes for 1 to 1-1/2 hours or until juices run clear. Dad made this so I don’t even know how much of this he followed!!
Boiled Dinner
(I will pick the ham and potatoes out of this, but always hated the way the cooking cabbage made the house smell! -Mallory)
Add to large crock pot:
- 3.5 lbs ham (I used half of a bone in one) Froze the rest for another meal.
- Potatoes
- Carrots
- Onion
- can of broth
Remember to leave enough room for cabbage later..Cook on high 3 hours. Add cabbage wedges. Cook 2 more hours..
That’s it. I didn’t add salt as ham can be salty. I drizzle vinegar over mine.
Mom’s Cheesecake
(I generally love cheesecake, but this is my FAVORITE, especially when it has the chocolate chips-Mallory)
- 1 cup graham cracker crumbs
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 3 tablespoons margarine, melted
Combine crumbs, sugar and margarine; press onto bottom of 9 inch springform pan. I bake in the oven when preheating but only for a few minutes. Make sure it is cooled off before adding cake mixture.
- 3 8-oz pkgs of cream cheese (softened) - I bring to room temp and then microwave at 50% for 1.5 minutes. You can use one “Lite†cream cheese but don’t use 3 – really changes the consistency
- ¾ cup of sugar
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate pieces
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
Combine cream cheese and sugar, mixing at medium speed on electric mixer until well blended. (This is when the mix flies all over if the cream cheese isn’t softened enough). Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Blend in chocolate pieces and vanilla; pour over crust. Bake at 450 for 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 250 (leave oven door open a crack until temp. reaches 250. Continue baking 35 minutes. Loosen cake from rim of pan. Cool before removing rim of pan.
Chill.
Next week I should have more recipes to post…but for now I’m headed to KY and dreaming of cheesecake from home in NY 🙂 Miss you mom!!!
Posted in Family, Guest Posts, Life, Magical Magical Animal, Puppy, Southern Love, Yum
What to do with all this apple butter??
May 31st, 2009 Posted 9:35 am
A quick morning treat that we had along with a ham, cheese, onion and red pepper scramble to give us the energy for a little hike with friends today!
Apple Cinnamon Sweet Rolls
- 1 tube crescent roll sheet (Pillsbury makes crescent roll dough that isn’t cut into triangles because they realized that people like me like to use crescent rolls for EVERYTHING!). You could also use actual cinnamon roll dough if you were inclined to make such a thing
- 2 heaping tablespoons of apple butter
- 3 Tb AP flour
- 3 Tb brown sugar
- 2 Tb butter
- 1/2 Tb cinnamon
- 1 cup sifted powdered sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 Tb orange juice or milk
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Unroll crescent roll dough and spread with apple butter (try to leave a little space at the top of the sheet where your roll will end.
- Mix flour, brown sugar and cinnamon and cut in cold butter until crumbly. Spread this on top of the apple butter.
- Roll either lengthwise or widthwise, depending on how many/how big you want your rolls.
- Slice into even rolls and place in ungreased pan (I used a glass pie plate).
- Bake for 15-20 minutes…keep an eye on them so they don’t burn.
- While they’re baking, mix powdered sugar, vanilla and juice/milk. Add more liquid if necessary.
- Let the rolls cool just a bit before adding glaze.
Sweet and yummy! A great morning treat! The glaze sort of soaked into the rolls a bit while I made the eggs.
We’re headed out for a mini-hike with our friend Nicki and Santana’s good friend Bonnie. When I say “good friendâ€, I mean Bonnie and Santana have had 2 play dates at our apartment. Once, Bonnie threw up. Once, Santana peed on the floor. Neither time did they try to play with each other. GREAT friends. I am interested to see them on neutral territory today. Santana thinks she is too human for other dogs. If she wasn’t so adorable and sweet, this would be a problem.
Bonnie inherited Santana’s pink jacket, since it actually fits her.
Santana was skeptical…
Very very skeptical.
We’ll see how they do today and maybe get some adorable pictures of puppies possibly becoming friends???
Posted in Fun, Leftovers, Life, Magical Magical Animal, Matthew, Puppy, Seattle, super-friends, Yum
catching up with Peanuts and Pork
May 30th, 2009 Posted 6:08 pm
I am super-slacking at the blog lately. It’s been busy all around, we’re planning lots, friends are in town, and we really haven’t been going crazy with new meals that I can post. But I have a few things, and a yummy noodle dish!
First, remember the pork chops with rhubarb sauce? We opened up the leftovers to use them for a meal earlier this week, so here’s what the final product of the pork and chutney looked like (after sitting in the fridge for a couple days anyway, and also a little fuzzy…):
Find out what we did with the leftover chop down below.
Second, here are Matt and Santana, viewed from above. The weather in Seattle has been GORGEOUS, and with our windows open, I heard them walking outside and ran to the balcony to see!
I yelled down for Santana to sit and then threw her a treat from the 2nd floor…SO cute!
Another follow-up picture. Remember the amazing apple butter also from last weekend? Here it is on some toast! It is AMAZING! And because it is SO sweet, you only need a tiny bit on the toast. These slices had a little too much apple butter on them for my taste. I think you could probably cut down the amount of sugar that goes into the original recipe if you didn’t want it quite as sweet.
Onto the recipe:
Peanuty Pork Noodles
- canola oil
- 1/2 white onion, sliced
- 2 cloves garlic, grated
- 1/4 cup red bell pepper, chopped
- 1/2 cup frozen edamame
- 1 leftover pork chop, chopped
- 1/4 cup unsalted peanuts
- 1 bunch green onions, chopped
- peanut sauce (I’ve made my own in the past, but this time we just used one we had in the fridge)
- a tiny bit of stir fry sauce (I like this to add a little bit to the peanut sauce)
- Cooked pasta (we used thin spaghetti, but if we had vermicelli or some other kind of noodles, I would have used those instead)
- Heat oil over medium-high heat until almost smoking.
- Add onion and garlic and stir fry until just starting to brown on the edges.
- Add pepper and edamame. Since the edamame is frozen (and so was our pepper), there will be some liquid released, which will actually help cook the frozen veggies through. Sauté until liquid has evaporated and veggies start to brown.
- Remove to a platter
- Add chopped pork, peanuts and green onion to sizzling hot pan and stir fry for just a couple minutes to heat through. The pork will get nicely browned edges.
- Add veggies back in along with peanut and stir fry sauces to your desired sauciness.
- Toss with cooked pasta and adjust seasoning.
This was a SUPER easy way to use up the pork leftovers as well as some of our frozen vegetables. And it was really yummy. It hit the Thai/Chinese noodle craving that I get pretty frequently.
We had some tender red greens still left in the fridge that would only last a day or so more, so I wanted to make a side salad to go with the noodles.
To cut through the creaminess of the peanut sauce, I went with a vinaigrette that I completely eye-balled. There was no measuring at all. Unfortunately, it was a little too vinegar-y for Matt, but I LOVED it. I basically topped the salad with my noodles and ate the two together.
In a small plastic container I put the following ingredients, closed the lid, and shook until completely mixed. Then just tossed with the greens. SIMPLE.
- sesame oil
- olive oil (about half as much as the sesame oil)
- rice vinegar
- red wine vinegar (about half as much as the rice vinegar)
- soy sauce (just a dash or two)
- honey (a tiny drizzle)
- white pepper
- ground dry ginger
Memorial Day Feasting!
May 25th, 2009 Posted 10:09 pm
Santana gets grumpy if we sit down to dinner and she hasn’t eaten yet. She also gets grumpy if we do anything throughout the day that doesn’t involve feeding her or laying on the couch with her, but especially grumpy if she thinks we’re forgetting her dinner! In fact, if we say the word “Dinner†her ears perk up and she runs towards her food/water mat. It’s adorable. Matt got some cute shots of her wolfing down her dinner in celebration of Memorial Day.
To celebrate the holiday and the extra day together at home, we got lots of chores done, had a bagel topped with scrambled eggs for breakfast (along with Daniel’s Banana Latte…SO good and super easy. You have to try it!), grabbed soup from the market across the street for lunch, and tested our new grill pan on some burgers for dinner!
The burgers were made from:
- Ground Beef
- Finely chopped red onion and red bell pepper
- Cayenne
- Ground sage
- Ground thyme
- Salt & Pepper
- Paprika
- Cumin
We topped our burgers with bacon, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, cheese and condiments. Yum! We had some onion rolls from the store that were perfect and complimented the spicy, flavorful kick of the burgers! As you can see, I’m a fan of pickles 🙂
On the side we had Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans (who else has had these?? I can only get them when my mom sends them from home!), corn on the cob (from the freezer, sub par, but fitting for the occasion), and sweet potato shoestrings. Our CSA box called these “yamsâ€, but "yam shoestrings†sounds funny, so we’re going with sweet potato! Julienne, toss with a tiny bit of olive oil, bake and then salt! SO tasty!
Matt had a Red Hook Slim Chance and I went with a Berry Nectar + Vodka to wrap up the day. I love long weekends…and this one was much much needed!
In other news, our car is ready to pick up this week AND take a look at my new hair cut! Matt likes the flash on the camera that makes me look like my chest is exploding with an energy ball and says he needs to look at me some more to get used to the hair. Hopefully he will recognize me tomorrow 🙂
Ooh ooh! I meant to direct you over to Erin at I Walk In This World. She won some nut butter cups a while ago and I was SUPER delinquent in getting them to her because of some crazy life things. However, they arrived across the country in pretty good shape (better than the ones I sent to Angelea for sure) and she seems to love my experimental flavors:
- Puppy Love Cups (I have actually made a version of these before): Carob heart-shaped cups with peanut butter filling. Carob is the puppy’s friend…if you’re doing special baking for your pup, carob is a safe alternative to chocolate! And what pup doesn’t love peanut butter??
- Peanut Butter Scotchies: Butterscotch Cups filled with Peanut Butter
- Nutty Nut Butters: Peanut Butter Candy Coating filled with Almond Butter
- Dark Chocolate Cashew Bites: Pretty self-explanatory. Some yummy Whole Foods Dark chocolate filled with cashew butter.
These turn my entire kitchen into a sticky mess for at least a couple days anytime I make them, so it is usually not a super-common occurrence. However, I have some white chocolate chips looming in the cupboard and am tempted to take them for a test drive with some nut butters. I love sending yummy treats to excited bake sale winners, but these babies are easy to make for yourself too!
Ok, Santana just started making adorable half-wimpering/half-growling dreaming noises on the couch behind me (I’m hoping she never grows out of this), so I have to go squeeze her and head to bed! Hope everyone had a wonderful long weekend and is excited that tomorrow is Tuesday already!
Posted in Fun, Holidays, Life, Magical Magical Animal, Matthew, Non-Baking, Puppy, Yum
A few kitchen things!
May 25th, 2009 Posted 3:06 pm
Happy Memorial Day! We’ve spent the extra day getting some chores done and getting ready to make burgers and yam fries for dinner! Plus, I’m getting my hair chopped off in a couple hours! I don’t have a plan and am trying a new stylist, so hopefully all goes well! Cross your fingers for me 🙂
Check out our new grill for the stovetop! I am really excited about this thing! The other side has a flat griddle, which will be wonderful for PANCAKES!
In the pan next to the grill, there are some onions cooking down for a really fun and delicious new sauce. We had rhubarb in our CSA box this past week and I have never cooked with it, so I wanted to do something other than just Strawberry Rhubarb pie. I found this recipe from Gourmet magazine that used golden raisins, onions and rhubarb to make a chutney to go along with some pork. This turned out really great! I got distracted and forgot to get a picture of the final product, but here’s the chutney as it cooks down:
It worked really well with the pork, and we served it with some parmesan toast and some grilled asparagus (way to go grill pan!!) Also check out my meat thermometer at work…
the pork was cooked perfectly!! I cooked it to 160 degrees, the setting for Pork-Medium. Then let it rest, wrapped in some foil and it came up to a perfectly moist, thick-cut pork chop. Yum!
Earlier in the week, we used up some ciabatta rolls and made italian garlic croutons to go on a salad with: lettuce mix from Full Circle Farm, frozen popcorn shrimp, random veggies and a parmesan dressing. A very satisfying and light-ish dinner (the popcorn shrimp was not the healthiest thing we could have chosen, but it hit the spot and is exactly what we were craving!). The croutons are super easy…tossed in a little olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder and italian seasoning. Baked in a low oven. The ciabbata bread got nice and crispy on the outside, but kept a tiny bit of chewiness inside. I almost lost track of them, but managed to pull them out just in time to avoid burning the edges!
As promised, I tried out my mom’s Crockpot apple butter. Well, it comes from a local newspaper at home, but it was easy and I am excited to try it on some toast!
Slow-Cooker Apple Butter
- 5-6 pounds apples – peeled, cored and chopped
- 4 cups sugar
- 4tsp cinnamon
- 1/4tsp each ground cloves, salt and ground nutmet
- Mix everything together in a large bowl and add to the crockpot. You should use enough apples to have your Crockpot heaping full.
- Cover and cook on high for 1 hour.
- Reduce to low heat and slow-cook for at least 9 hours. (I planned this poorly and woke up at 4am to turn it onto “warm†so it wouldn’t burn while I finished sleeping).
- Remove lid and continue to slow cook until thick and brown with no liquid left.
- Even though the recipe doesn’t call for this, I wanted smooooth apple butter, so a little before there was no liquid left I pureed it with my amazing stick blender and then let it bubble away for a little longer.
- Fill containers. The recipe says you should use sterile jars and boil them in a hot water bath to seal. Neither my mom or I did this. A) I don’t have the equipment. B) I don’t have the patience.
- The butter will thicken a bit when it cools. I put one container in the fridge and the rest in the freezer. It made about 7 small containers of apple butter. And it is GORGEOUS.
This is what the apples looked like after I woke up in the morning:
Use this apple butter in things like my mom’s pork dinner.
Posted in Family, Fun, Leftovers, Magical Magical Animal, Yum