Category Archives: food

Sumo Mandarin

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Today, after we picked up the glambaby, we stopped by the grocery store to get a couple of things. While we were in one aisle we saw a picture of a peach and she thought it was an apple. So I thought we should go over to the fruit to see if we could find a peach to show her the difference.

There were no peaches but there were these:

sumo_mandarin1

Sumo Mandarin Oranges.

They are kind of ugly but the glambaby was attracted to it. We looked at all of the oranges and she decided she wanted to take this one home with us.

sumo_mandarin2

We opened it up at lunch and I ws a little worried about it because one section tore and it looked like it could be dry and tasteless.

But it wasn’t! I twas delicious and sweet. It was kind of pricey and it was definitely ugly but it was a nice treat.

IMG_5916Have you ever eaten a fruit that surprised you in its taste?

 

Almond Fauxsants

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Back before Christmas, I was discussing Almond Croissants with my friend Gini Dietrich. You see, I haven’t been able to find an almond croissant in this state since we moved here. Gini said we should try and make almond croissants over the holiday break and then check in and see how it went.

convo

After commenting on the release of her new book the other day (Yay! Can’t wait to read it!), I asked her if she had made the croissants.

croissant

I was laughing. We had also watched all five seasons of Breaking Bad and it’s as good a reason as any for why I hadn’t tried to make the croissants yet, either.

I finally decided that I was going to give it a whirl. I used this recipe. It looked easy enough.

But I’m here to tell you that they are NOT croissants. I’d call them Almond Fauxsants. 😉

fauxsant_closw

The dough is somewhere between a biscuit and a bread dough. I knew it as soon as I touched it this a.m.

Upon reflection, I can see clearly that this could not have ended up as a croissant because adding yeast to the dough would make it doughy, bready. Not flaky.

Back in the day, when we lived in Saudi, we had a friend named Ko. Ko made croissants one day. He told us that he folded and folded and folded butter into the flour. This, I can see, would make a flaky croissant.

Anyway, I tried to make these look like croissants but I skipped the egg wash and the almond sprinkle on top. I’ll save that for when I figure out how to make real croissants. 🙂

fauxsant_tray

PS – These “tasted” like almond croissants because of the almond filling I used for the insides. But I could have avoided the whole bready vs flaky thing by just eating it off the spoon. 😉

PSS – I guess I cant really cross 107 – Make almond croissants off of my goals list since these were not really almond croissants. 😉

Coffee Rubbed Steak

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I have found something else to do with my Eight O’Clock Coffee. Coffee Rubbed Steak!

coffee

I found this recipe in my travels through the interwebs and it looked delicious.

I made it for dinner last night. After grinding the coffee very finely, I mixed the rest of the spices with it and rubbed it into both sides of the meat.

spices

It didn’t say in the recipe to do this but I did this a couple of hours before I planned to cook the steak, then covered and put it in the refrigerator. Also, although we normally don’t add sugar to things, I did add the 1/2 TBS of brown sugar because it wasn’t very much and I wanted to taste what the original recipe ended up like before modifying it.

I then cooked the steak on the stove top for five minutes on either side. It was done with a little pink in the center.

pan

I’ve never cooked a steak in a pan before and I was worried about how juicy it would end up but it was fabulous!

The taste of the rub was good, the level of juiciness was good. I couldn’t noticeably discern a strong coffee flavor but the combination of the spices with the coffee was wonderful.

I served the steak with my famous roasted baby carrots and mashed cauliflower. Delish!

dinner

 

Cookbook Cook Through – Week 6

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Just finished the second recipe from this week’s cookbook cook through challenge of Everyday Paleo and Oh. EM. GEE!

This week, I made Apple Shallot Pork Chops and Breakfast Paleo Pizza.

PA

 The pork chops were good. There’s something about pork and apples, right?

 I will admit I’m not a big fan of cinnamon and meat. But I did follow the recipe instructions on this one mostly because of the apples. It was good but not sure I’d make it again with the cinnamon.

The Paleo Breakfast Pizza was to die for! OMG! So good.

pizza

David helped me make this one. It would have taken a lot longer if he hadn’t. Doing the prep chopping took the most time. If I had to make it alone, I’d have all that done ahead of time. But it was fun to cook with him.

As he started putting the sausage on the eggs, it seemed like a lot. I looked at the other ingredients and told him I think we need cheese.

Okay, cheese is a gray area in the paleo world but we like it. We don’t eat it often and when we do, we enjoy every single bite. This recipe wouldn’t have been as good without it, in my opinion. Did I mention it was DE-LISH? Yum! We’ll definitely have this one again.

For next week, we’re going to try Rockin’ Moraccan Chicken and Sausage Stuffed Dates. 🙂

 

 

Review: Ti Amo Ristorante

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My bestie was coming to town for business and we planned to have dinner on Wednesday. I know she loves Tex-Mex but I’m not a super big fan. I asked her about Italian. She said she loved it so I made reservations at Ti Amo’s South which is right around the corner from our house.

besties

After we were settled in a comfy booth, our server came to take our drink order and brought us the most amazing bruchetta. I didn’t get a photo of it but it was delish!

I decided on a glass of Chianti. I’d been talking about Chianti with a twitter friend recently and telling her that I’d never had it. I loved it! It tasted a lot like the Malbec we’d been drinking before we left the house. For some reason I was afraid it would be too sweet, but it was nice.

chianti

Then came the lobster bisque. I could have eaten this for my main course. It was wonderful. Spicy and warm. It was a good choice.

My dinner was fettucine alfredo with chicken. I rarely indulge in pasta and the creamy pasta and juicy chicken really hit the spot.

fettuccine alfredo

I had followed Ti Amo’s on twitter and got to choose a free dessert.

We chose the Lemon Berry Marscapone Cake to split since we were mostly FULL!lemon berry marscapone cake. Yum! It was light and sweet, the perfect way to end our meal.

While we were waiting to get our bill, the owner came by our table. He asked if we liked Limoncello. Denise and I said, yes we did. He told us he makes his own Limoncello and brought us each a shot on the house. It was awesome!

Limoncello

We had a really nice visit with Denise and a lovely dinner at Ti Amo’s. I’m sure we’ll visit again!

 

 

Rolled Fondant Cake

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Yesterday was the Glambaby’s birthday and today is Boo Boo the Wonderdog’s birthday. I decided I was going to try my hand at rolled fondant frosting. It’s #60 on my goals list and I’ve always wanted to try it.

candles

I’m left handed and it’s really hard for me to decorate with buttercream because all of the tools, tips, etc. are made for right handed people and it just doesn’t work. But fondant always seemed like roll and place and I figured it would be easier to do.

I used the Marshmallow Fondant recipe at All Recipes to make my own fondant. I don’t konw what your fondant eating experience has been but mine has been Blech! Nasty. The reviews for this recipe were good for taste and ease. They were also very enlightening. I read through them all so I would have the best chance of success. There’s also a video to watch to gain more courage.

I knew I could do it, I was ready!

I chose this cake for inspiration.

I made two layers of brownie in five inch pans so it’s a pretty tiny cake but it’s all we need. I put peanut butter cups into the brownie before I baked it. For filling, I melted chocolate chips.

cake1

Then I rolled out the fondant. It was easy! I used cornstarch to keep it from sticking.

rolled

I then place it over the cake.

I took a small amount of the fondant and worked some red food color paste into it. The palms of my hands are still red. 🙂

hand

I then cut out the little hearts, painted their backs with water and stuck them to the cake.

cake

I know there are fondant cake making secrets I must still learn. How to keep my hands from being dyed when coloring the fondant, how to make it smooth.

But for the most part, I’m pretty darned excited with my first effort at rolled fondant. Doing what I did seemed pretty easy and I would definitely try it again. 🙂

Banana Bacon Cookies

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When we returned home from Florida, this was waiting for us:

dead_bananas

Dead bananas.

I thought about making banana bread but put it off. Monday night, during #foodiechats, someone started talking about bacon. I wondered what my grandma’s banana cookie recipe would taste like if I put bacon in the mix.

This morning, I dug out the well loved, well used recipe of my grandma’s.

recipe

I cooked up about 6 pieces of chopped bacon.

And baked. They look like they normally do.

cookies

Except these.

rounds

When I went to get the third pan, I found this pan I’d never used and the cookies came out in cute little rounds instead of spreading on the flat cookie sheet.

Do they taste good? Yes! These are good cookies any way you make them. With the bacon, unless you get a bite of bacon, you don’t taste it. The banana taste is predominant. But when you get a piece of bacon, yum! Delish! 🙂

Cookbook Cook Through – Week 5

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After taking a week off for vacation, we came back home and I decided to make Speedy Spicy Stuffed Peppers and Curried Veggie Hash from the Everyday Paleo cookbook.

speedy_spicy_stuffed_pepper

I lost my food processor in between moves but am happy to say that I’ve found it again and I love it. It makes recipes like these super easy.

Both recipes were amazing and we will for sure eat them again. The best thing is they were tasty but the second best thing is that David ate three things he tells me he hates. Now, I’m really into honestly and transparency but I also know that basing your adult taste buds on foods you tasted as a kid can let you out of a WHOLE bunch of good food.

curried_veggie_hash

My mom used to always cook spinach, from a can, in the iron skillet some way. Gah. I didn’t like it. It was slimy and disgusting. But fresh spinach as an adult? I eat it out of the bag like candy.

Anyway…

The first recipe for stuffed peppers, contains yellow squash and the hash recipe contains sweet potato and zucchini.

Four thumbs up on these two recipes. We’ll be eating them again! 🙂

Next week we’re going to try Apple Shallot Pork Chops and Breakfast Paleo Pizza.

 

Jose’ Clairvaux You Are a Friend of Mine

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I saw my friend, Kat, Thursday for the first time in over 16 years. We met in an email group in the late 1990s and have managed to keep in touch over the years. When we saw each other today, it was like we had just seen each other yesterday.

mejose

Back in the day, her email address was clairvaux1@someplace and so I called her Jose’ Clairvaux and it stuck. She’s been Jose’ to me ever since.

The other day before we left for Florida, I mentioned something to David that Jose’ had said on Facebook.

Me: Kat said…

Him: Wait a second, who’s Kat?

Me: Oh, you know, Jose’.

Him: What? I thought her name WAS Jose’. I never knew she had another name.

And that’s because I have ALWAYS called her Jose’ since around 1998. 🙂

We met for lunch at Mary Mac’s Tea Room in Atlanta. Mary Mac’s is an Atlanta institution having been in business for 65 years. They serve “made-from-scratch true southern fare served with genuine southern hospitality”.

Mary Mac's Tea Room

I had grilled chicken and veggies which were delicious but everyone else ate more of the southern fare. On our table were chicken fried chicken with gravy, fried green tomatoes and cheese grits.

The food was delicious but the company was awesome. We got to meet Jose’s new husband, Jim, and we all talked like we had just seen each other not too long ago.

friends

I’m so glad we were able to connect on this trip as it had been so long since our last meeting. Jose’ Clairvaux, you are a friend of mine and I love you dearly! 🙂

Review: Loveless Cafe’

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Back last summer, David brought me some moonshine from Arkansas. It came out of an actual still and not the shelf at the liquor store. He brought me some corn and some rice moonshine. I have no idea which is which but they do smell different.

They scare me.

So I started an internet search to see what I could do with moonshine. I was clearly not going to drink it in its native state. This is when I stumbled upon the Loveless Cafe’s website. And began my obsession to go there and eat.

Loveless Cafe

We drove down to Florida last Friday. The most direct path to get there is through Birmingham, AL. But…if we took a slightly longer way, via Nashville, we could put the Loveless Cafe’ in our plans and that’s what we did.

Yesterday, we got up early enough to get there when the Cafe’ opened at 7 a.m. I had read reports of having to wait three hours for a table and I knew that David wouldn’t be okay with that. Plus, we are early risers so 7:00 is a little late for us to eat breakfast anyway.

coffee at Loveless

We were the first people there. No waiting! 🙂

We knew we were going to have biscuits because that’s what they are known for. But everything else involved heavy deliberation. After looking forward to this meal for so long, I didn’t want to make a mistake.

We placed our orders and the server brought us biscuits and jam. I ate my first biscuit with the strawberry jam which was amazing. And I ate my second biscuit with the peach. I was so afraid it would be orange even though we were so near peach country but it was yummy peach.

biscuits

Then our food arrived. I had decided on a BBQ Pulled Pork Omelet. This was the BIGGEST omelet I have ever been served and it was delicious! It had SO much meat in it and it was so good. I ate every last bite of it because I could.

bbq pulled pork omelet

Along with my omelet, I had two more biscuits. I put the rest of the peach jam on one half and then took the third jam and put it on the other half. I wasn’t quite sure what kind it was. When I tasted it, I could not believe it but it was the very best of the three! The server told me it was blackberry jam. Let me tell you, if I had eaten that one first? I would have changed my order, ordered the 12 biscuits from the ala carte menu and that alone would have been my breakfast. And I would have eaten all of them with that out-of-this-world blackberry jam. Yum!

I took a photo of David’s breakfast because it was really more photogenic than mine. He got the Southern Sampler Breakfast. It was supposed to come with Redeye gravy but they didn’t have any ready so he got standard gravy for his biscuits which he was quite happy with.

southern sampler

I’m so glad we made the detour to eat breakfast at the Loveless Cafe’. I can’t wait to go back for cocktails! 🙂