I always loved Sunday dinners at Grandma's and now that I don't live at home (or even remotely near home) I have to make my own version of Sunday dinner (and breakfast... and lunch...). So today is a great day for a full-out Sunday dinner because it's rainy and we worked hard on the house yesterday. So last night I told hubby I'd make breakfast tomorrow morning.
So I made a frittata this morning. So delish and so easy to make. I took four sausages and par cooked them in a skillet (with sides). Meaning, cook them almost all the way, but not quite. When they're browned and almost there, remove them and set them aside to cool. Then I sauted some broccoli in a little olive oil and then added some red pepper. When that's about done, add the sausage back in & season it. While that's cooking, in a bowl whisk 8 eggs (& season). When your eggs are whisked, put some shredded cheese (I used sharp cheddar) on the broccoli/pepper/sausage mixture then pour the eggs on top of everything. Add some more cheese on top for good luck :) Then swirl the pan so there's eggs on all sides and let it be. When very little egg jiggles on top, pop it in the oven under the broiler. Leave it there for a while. It varies depending on your broiler. When it's done cooking, let it sit to cool a bit, cut up like a pie and enjoy! It's a colorful delicious meal.
Lunch for us today is snacky stuff because dinner tonight (early, of course) is Boeuf a la Bourguignonne. It's delicious and this time I'm making Julia Childs recipe. woot woot :) I'll update once it's made (and I'll include her recipe). But it takes 3 hours to cook in the oven, so you have to start early (in fact I'm a little behind already... oops...) So wait and see.... and bon appetit!
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
Weekend at the Lake
So I'm not cooking tonight because we went away this weekend, came back yesterday night and painted baseboards then cut and installed those baseboards, and then this morning, carpet was put in the guest rooms and the upstairs hallway. So I am tired, there's nothing in the house, and I had to play cat wrangler while the carpet guys installed our beautiful carpet. Check out facebook for pictures - it's beautiful.
But, I do have a wonderful Mother-in-Law dish to share. My mom-in-law makes Paula Dean look like a home cook. She's really quite brilliant. And she made this great appetizer last weekend that I decided to try and replicate this weekend for our friends. Happily, it turned out really well and our friends all loved it! It's pretty simple, but could be more complex depending on how you want to budget your time and ingredients. The appetizer is a cold dip, very festive for the Christmas season if you're interested, and quite delicious.
So it's a layered dip: white, green, white, red, white. My mother-in-law did it in a bowl with plastic wrap on the bottom so she could invert it on a plate. I wasn't feeling so ambitious. So I took two of my corning ware leftover dishes and made it in those plus a pyrex leftover dish. (I made a lot, there were about 20 people this weekend). So the white is a mixture of goat cheese and cream cheese. To make the amount that I did, I used two blocks of Philly Cream Cheese (reduced fat... save a couple calories) and two 4 oz. logs of plain goat cheese (mine had some herbs on the crust of the log to give a nice speckled look on my white). I mixed them by hand using the back of a spoon, which was fine, but I suppose you could use a mixer. Then the green is pesto. You can buy it, or you can make your own (like I did a couple days ago). I couldn't tell you how much I used, but Classico makes a pesto in a small container and I can't imagine it would be much more than 1 of those. And the red is sun-dried tomatoes. I bought an 11.7 can of sun-dried tomatoes and put them in my mini food processor to give them the same consistency of the pesto (and I put in the oil and it was just fine). I didn't use it all, but save the rest and I bet you'll use it at some point - even if only with your leftover pesto on crackers or something.
Then, obviously, you just layer them together. The goat/cream-cheese mixture is easy to layer on the bottom and wicked hard to layer on top of the pesto & sun-dried tomatoes. The pesto & tomatoes aren't solid-solid so it's hard to use a spoon to layer the cheese mixture. I wound up using my hands and molded the cheese like play dough in order to get it to cover the other layers. However you want to do it, though, works for me. It was a delicious dip and when paired with those flatbread crackers or the wheat thin crunchables? So good. Nice flavors, very rich and creamy, you'll love it! And thanks to mother-in-law for a delicious (easy!) appetizer!
Bon Appetit!
But, I do have a wonderful Mother-in-Law dish to share. My mom-in-law makes Paula Dean look like a home cook. She's really quite brilliant. And she made this great appetizer last weekend that I decided to try and replicate this weekend for our friends. Happily, it turned out really well and our friends all loved it! It's pretty simple, but could be more complex depending on how you want to budget your time and ingredients. The appetizer is a cold dip, very festive for the Christmas season if you're interested, and quite delicious.
So it's a layered dip: white, green, white, red, white. My mother-in-law did it in a bowl with plastic wrap on the bottom so she could invert it on a plate. I wasn't feeling so ambitious. So I took two of my corning ware leftover dishes and made it in those plus a pyrex leftover dish. (I made a lot, there were about 20 people this weekend). So the white is a mixture of goat cheese and cream cheese. To make the amount that I did, I used two blocks of Philly Cream Cheese (reduced fat... save a couple calories) and two 4 oz. logs of plain goat cheese (mine had some herbs on the crust of the log to give a nice speckled look on my white). I mixed them by hand using the back of a spoon, which was fine, but I suppose you could use a mixer. Then the green is pesto. You can buy it, or you can make your own (like I did a couple days ago). I couldn't tell you how much I used, but Classico makes a pesto in a small container and I can't imagine it would be much more than 1 of those. And the red is sun-dried tomatoes. I bought an 11.7 can of sun-dried tomatoes and put them in my mini food processor to give them the same consistency of the pesto (and I put in the oil and it was just fine). I didn't use it all, but save the rest and I bet you'll use it at some point - even if only with your leftover pesto on crackers or something.
Then, obviously, you just layer them together. The goat/cream-cheese mixture is easy to layer on the bottom and wicked hard to layer on top of the pesto & sun-dried tomatoes. The pesto & tomatoes aren't solid-solid so it's hard to use a spoon to layer the cheese mixture. I wound up using my hands and molded the cheese like play dough in order to get it to cover the other layers. However you want to do it, though, works for me. It was a delicious dip and when paired with those flatbread crackers or the wheat thin crunchables? So good. Nice flavors, very rich and creamy, you'll love it! And thanks to mother-in-law for a delicious (easy!) appetizer!
Bon Appetit!
Friday, August 6, 2010
Betty Crocker, you've met your match.
Yesterday I was Betty Crocker and June Cleaver combined. It was amazing(ly frightening). We're going away tomorrow to visit some friends at their lake house and were asked to bring an appetizer or dessert to share. Well, since I spend my summers at home pretending to be a stay-at-home wifey, I decided I could do both an appetizer and dessert because I know other people have to work every day. Well, I might have gotten carried away... We had so much zucchini, I knew I wanted to make my Nana's Chocolate Zucchini Cake and I had a great appetizer recipe from my mother-in-law. Then, I thought about breakfast, and decided to make some muffins too. So, yesterday, I made:
Chocolate Zucchini Cake
Chocolate Zucchini Cupcakes
Banana Nut Muffins
Blueberry Muffins
Cinnamon Crumble Muffins
plus... a delicious comfort food dinner.
I used all our new toys from the wedding and watched 6 hours of HGTV. tee hee. I shredded zucchini in our Cuisinart (so awesome), mixed cake in our KitchenAid mixer, washed dishes in our rolling dishwasher, and baked everything in our 1972 oven. It was a good day. But the recipe I want to share right now is my Nana's Zucchini Cake. Nana is my great-grandmother and what I remember of her is a mixture of real memories and stories. My Nana loved my sister and I, probably because we were awesome, but more practically because we were the first great-grandchildren. But anyways, Nana was a great cook and loved my mama because she tried everything Nana put in front of her. My mom even ate raisins, which she HATES.
Anyways, Chocolate Zucchini Cake is a great way to get kids to eat zucchini AND it makes the moistest cake ever. This recipe makes one 9x13 cake or about 36-40 cupcakes. Yesterday, I made three batches. oy. I hope our friends are hungry this weekend... hubby even took a bunch to work today, haha.
Ok, I'm copying the entire recipe just as Nana wrote it, but I'll do some explaining and substitutes for people like me who had no clue what Oleo was.
325 degree oven for 45 minutes (about 30 minutes for the cupcakes)
Ingredients:
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup oleo
1/2 cup oil
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp baking soda
4 tbs cocoa
1/2 cup chocolate chips
3 zucchinis, 6 in. long, grated
Directions:
Cream sugar, oleo, eggs, oil, mix well, measure dry ingredients, add to creamed ingredients, add zucchini, mix well, grease 9x13 pan, add batter and pour chips on top & bake.
So... as you can tell, Nana liked to leave some stuff out. First, I'll tackle the ingredients. Oleo, come to find out, is a shortening like lard. I just used butter and it worked out just fine. 1/2 cup of butter is a full stick, let it warm up on the counter for a bit before using it to let it cream easier. Buttermilk - I don't know about you, but I don't have buttermilk in my fridge and, as luck would have it, my Food Network Magazine came in the mail and Paula Dean gave us a substitute for buttermilk! For 1 cup of buttermilk (I did this and just poured half of it in for each batch), pour in a tbsp of white vinegar (or lemon juice) then fill up to the 1 cup line with milk. It's awesome - works perfectly. Oh, and the cocoa. I didn't have any cocoa in my pantry but I did have baking squares. One baking square equals 3 tbsp of cocoa. So make do. Be sure to melt it a bit though, before adding it to the batter. And be careful when you melt it so as not to burn the chocolate...
But, this is so delicious. It's one of my faves and, thanks to my Grandma, I now have all of my Nana's recipes in one fantastic book. So look for more of Nana's recipes later, but enjoy this one for now! I'll let you know how our friends enjoy my baking efforts hahaha
Bon Appetit!!
Chocolate Zucchini Cake
Chocolate Zucchini Cupcakes
Banana Nut Muffins
Blueberry Muffins
Cinnamon Crumble Muffins
plus... a delicious comfort food dinner.
I used all our new toys from the wedding and watched 6 hours of HGTV. tee hee. I shredded zucchini in our Cuisinart (so awesome), mixed cake in our KitchenAid mixer, washed dishes in our rolling dishwasher, and baked everything in our 1972 oven. It was a good day. But the recipe I want to share right now is my Nana's Zucchini Cake. Nana is my great-grandmother and what I remember of her is a mixture of real memories and stories. My Nana loved my sister and I, probably because we were awesome, but more practically because we were the first great-grandchildren. But anyways, Nana was a great cook and loved my mama because she tried everything Nana put in front of her. My mom even ate raisins, which she HATES.
Anyways, Chocolate Zucchini Cake is a great way to get kids to eat zucchini AND it makes the moistest cake ever. This recipe makes one 9x13 cake or about 36-40 cupcakes. Yesterday, I made three batches. oy. I hope our friends are hungry this weekend... hubby even took a bunch to work today, haha.
Ok, I'm copying the entire recipe just as Nana wrote it, but I'll do some explaining and substitutes for people like me who had no clue what Oleo was.
325 degree oven for 45 minutes (about 30 minutes for the cupcakes)
Ingredients:
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup oleo
1/2 cup oil
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp baking soda
4 tbs cocoa
1/2 cup chocolate chips
3 zucchinis, 6 in. long, grated
Directions:
Cream sugar, oleo, eggs, oil, mix well, measure dry ingredients, add to creamed ingredients, add zucchini, mix well, grease 9x13 pan, add batter and pour chips on top & bake.
So... as you can tell, Nana liked to leave some stuff out. First, I'll tackle the ingredients. Oleo, come to find out, is a shortening like lard. I just used butter and it worked out just fine. 1/2 cup of butter is a full stick, let it warm up on the counter for a bit before using it to let it cream easier. Buttermilk - I don't know about you, but I don't have buttermilk in my fridge and, as luck would have it, my Food Network Magazine came in the mail and Paula Dean gave us a substitute for buttermilk! For 1 cup of buttermilk (I did this and just poured half of it in for each batch), pour in a tbsp of white vinegar (or lemon juice) then fill up to the 1 cup line with milk. It's awesome - works perfectly. Oh, and the cocoa. I didn't have any cocoa in my pantry but I did have baking squares. One baking square equals 3 tbsp of cocoa. So make do. Be sure to melt it a bit though, before adding it to the batter. And be careful when you melt it so as not to burn the chocolate...
But, this is so delicious. It's one of my faves and, thanks to my Grandma, I now have all of my Nana's recipes in one fantastic book. So look for more of Nana's recipes later, but enjoy this one for now! I'll let you know how our friends enjoy my baking efforts hahaha
Bon Appetit!!
Monday, August 2, 2010
Farmer's Market Dinner
I love farmer's markets. I think they're the greatest thing ever. I'm a big believer in eating local and buying local, and what's more local than farmer's markets! Or even your own backyard! My own garden is currently in containers because I was completely overwhelmed with my gardens when we moved in. So next year I'm definitely planting a veggie garden. Right now, my side porch holds a container with green bell peppers, a container with basil & borage, an earth box with summer squash & cucumbers, two pots with a tomato plant in each, a pot with chives, and a pot with hot chiles & thai chiles. The porch also holds our grill and sometimes we can even stand on it :)
Anyways, my basil is going crazy. I planted two plants from a 4-pack from your favorite greenhouse and mine, Lucas Greenhouse :). They are huge - I picked a giant bowl of basil today and I've been picking a handful every day for about two months. It's crazy. But I decided its time for some pesto. Pesto is typically basil, garlic, pine nuts, and parmesan cheese all blended then EVOO is added gradually to make it delicious and saucy. I have no pine nuts though, so I used a mixture of walnuts and almonds (cause I had both of those in my pantry). I use garlic like its water, so I buy a huge container of pre-minced garlic. I put in three heaping teaspoons of garlic and I sprinkled grated parmesan cheese to cover the top. Then I added probably 3/4 cup to 1 cup of mixed walnuts and almonds. On top, I filled my 14-cup food processor with basil. My guess is 6-7 cups of basil? Something like that. Anyways, I pulsed it till it was all chopped and then turned my food processor to 'on' and added oil till it looked like pesto. I split the pesto in half and put it in a container to freeze, so I have it for later. I bet I'll have to make a batch of pesto like this at least one more time before my basil is spent.
Hubby and I are eating healthy (he's working out right now) so we can try to lose some weight, so I am trying to plan more vegetarian dishes. Tonight we're having a pesto pasta. I'm making bowtie pasta (cause they're fun) and I chopped some grape tomatoes that I got at our farmers market (a pint for 1.50 - amazing). We are also so lucky to have a cheese farm (I don't know what to call it) nearby that sells goat cheese and feta. So I picked up some feta the other day and will top off our pasta with some feta. I make a full pound of pasta so we have leftovers for lunches, and will only eat a small portion tonight. I'll split it into four so we each get a portion tonight and a portion for lunch.
We'll see how my pesto turns out.. but this is truly a local dinner. I bet you can find great food at your local farmers market and I encourage you to try growing your own veggies! It's not hard (you just have to remember to water them) and you'll save so much money in the long run.
Bon Appetit!
Anyways, my basil is going crazy. I planted two plants from a 4-pack from your favorite greenhouse and mine, Lucas Greenhouse :). They are huge - I picked a giant bowl of basil today and I've been picking a handful every day for about two months. It's crazy. But I decided its time for some pesto. Pesto is typically basil, garlic, pine nuts, and parmesan cheese all blended then EVOO is added gradually to make it delicious and saucy. I have no pine nuts though, so I used a mixture of walnuts and almonds (cause I had both of those in my pantry). I use garlic like its water, so I buy a huge container of pre-minced garlic. I put in three heaping teaspoons of garlic and I sprinkled grated parmesan cheese to cover the top. Then I added probably 3/4 cup to 1 cup of mixed walnuts and almonds. On top, I filled my 14-cup food processor with basil. My guess is 6-7 cups of basil? Something like that. Anyways, I pulsed it till it was all chopped and then turned my food processor to 'on' and added oil till it looked like pesto. I split the pesto in half and put it in a container to freeze, so I have it for later. I bet I'll have to make a batch of pesto like this at least one more time before my basil is spent.
Hubby and I are eating healthy (he's working out right now) so we can try to lose some weight, so I am trying to plan more vegetarian dishes. Tonight we're having a pesto pasta. I'm making bowtie pasta (cause they're fun) and I chopped some grape tomatoes that I got at our farmers market (a pint for 1.50 - amazing). We are also so lucky to have a cheese farm (I don't know what to call it) nearby that sells goat cheese and feta. So I picked up some feta the other day and will top off our pasta with some feta. I make a full pound of pasta so we have leftovers for lunches, and will only eat a small portion tonight. I'll split it into four so we each get a portion tonight and a portion for lunch.
We'll see how my pesto turns out.. but this is truly a local dinner. I bet you can find great food at your local farmers market and I encourage you to try growing your own veggies! It's not hard (you just have to remember to water them) and you'll save so much money in the long run.
Bon Appetit!
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