Category Archives: food

Tuesday’s With Dorie

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I got my book!

This is the book, Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan, that the Tuesdays With Dorie baking group will begin February 7.

Tuesday’s with Dorie started four years ago when the founder, Laurie Woodward, decided she wanted to become an internet sensation by cooking through the book Baking from My Home to Yours. It took the first group four years to complete the book this past December.

I stumbled upon the Tuesday’s with Dorie website purely by accident one day. I’m not even sure how I got there. All I know is I was so excited that the new baking challenge (to bake through the entire book) hadn’t begun yet and I could join. Fun!

So I got my book yesterday. The first recipe to be baked is White Loaves. I’m good at baking bread and David is good at eating it so I know we’ll enjoy this first recipe.

I was excited to learn that my twitter friend, @ashleyscakes and maybe @islandgirlok and @DishinandDishes, would be participating, too. 🙂

It’s not too late to join! If you visit the Tuesday’s With Dorie website you can sign up. The first recipe is due February 7. If you have a blog, you can blog about it and then link it up. But, if you just want to bake, you can do that too.

I think it’s going to be a lot of fun and I can’t wait to get started! 🙂

Baby shower!

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I had so much fun preparing for Aniston’s baby shower! Nikki asked me if I could design the invitation first and then the thank you cards. Her sister and mom had decided on a pale pink and leopard theme so I went with it.

I love the way both items turned out!

I asked if there was anything I could bring and Nikki said I could bring anything. Her family knows me well enough to know that I major in sweet treats.  It was really fun to scour Pinterest and the Internet to come up with ideas for what to make.

In the end, I decided on chocolate and pink popcorn

Pink chocolate covered Oreos

Pretzel snacks

(Super easy and delicious! Place pretzels on waxed paper line baking pan, top with Hershey kisses, place in 170 degree oven for 6 minutes, push M&Ms into the tops.)

Candy skewers

Cookies that I painted and bagged with matching thank you notes attached for people to take home

and strawberry cream cheese jelly bellies.

I also labeled water bottles to go along with the theme.

Of course it was overkill but I haven’t figured out how to make “just enough”. I didn’t want anyone who was there not to get something because there wasn’t enough.

They brought a cute cake!

There were lots of presents.

Lyndzee came.

bringing the chair she re-covered for Nikki.

It was great and I really loved watching Nikki’s face when she opened the gifts I had made for Aniston.

The Chucks

and the little Rott-I-Tude outfit.

I made a wall hanging for her bedroom, too, but I need to get a photo of it when it’s hanging on the wall in her nursery for full effect. 🙂

Lyndzee brought me my Christmas present she made for me which I adore!

I’m so excited to be Glammie. 🙂

Roasted Baby Carrots

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I have been fiending roasted carrots. Don’t ask me why. I can’t remember ever having them before but I have really, really wanted them.

On my first shopping trip in Little Rock, I found 1 lb baby carrot bags on sale four for $5.00. I bought them and tried to figure out how to roast them.

I found a recipe which I modified for size and the fact that I forgot to buy garlic powder (we use tons of garlic powder, not sure how I did that, just know that shopping here is traumatic).

So, anyway, we finally had roasted baby carrots for dinner tonight and they were delicious! Raul joined us for dinner and said that he’s not usually big on carrots but that he loved these. 🙂

Roasted Baby Carrots

1 lb bag baby carrots

1 tbs olive oil

1 tsp thyme

1/4 tsp onion powder

1/4 tsp ground pepper

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Spray glass casserole with cooking spray.

Mix olive oil and spices together in a bowl until combined. Then toss the baby carrots in the mixture until they are coated. Place is prepared casserole. Bake for 35-40 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the carrots are tender.

Chow down. These are awesome! In my photo, the carrots are a little over done, crispy, because I forgot the stirring part but it didn’t affect the tasty outcome.  I hope you’ll love these like we did. 🙂

Everything’s better in chocolate

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I’ve been making chocolate popcorn for a lot of years. I usually make it at Christmastime and give it as gifts but it gets made here and there through the year for special occasions, too.

It’s delicious and it’s easy to make!

We’re getting ready for the baby shower for our first granddaughter, Aniston. The theme is light pink and leopard so I’ve been making pink and brown goodies to serve.

Today, I made pink popcorn that Nikki found on Pinterest.

It’s not light pink by any stretch of the imagination.  I used fruit punch flavored Kool-Aid because I thought that Pink Lemonade (my only other pink choice) might be an odd flavor for popcorn.

I just finished up the chocolate popcorn that I will serve with the pink popcorn. I’m planning to serve them together in a big glass canister unless I come up with a better serving idea.

Here’s the recipe for you:

Chocolate Popcorn

12 cups popped popcorn

1/4 cup butter or margarine

2 cups (11-1/2 oz bag) semi-sweet chocolate

1 cup corn syrup

Place popcorn in a large roasting pan. In a separate large heavy saucepan, combine chocolate chips, corn syrup and butter. Cook over medium heat until mixture boils, stirring constantly. Pour over popcorn, toss well to coat.

Bake in a preheated 300 degree oven for 45 minutes stirring frequently.

Cool completely. Store in an airtight container for up to two weeks.

That’s it! I hope you enjoy it. 🙂

I don’t eat stems

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I love nothing better than fresh spinach. When we were growing up, my mom served us spinach out of a can and I thought that was what spinach was. Eeuuww. Slimy.

When I was 14, I got my first job at the Magic Pan, a restaurant in Woodfield Mall. I was hired as a bus girl but eventually learned every position in the restaurant except server and bartender because I wasn’t old enough. I was even added to the opening team to help open new restaurants. It was so much fun. But I digress.

Back to spinach.

They served a spinach salad at the Magic Pan. One of the jobs of the salad department was to pick the spinach. i.e. pick the stems off each leaf. There were days when I went to work and that’s all that I did for hours.

So imagine my complete horrification to go into a restaurant, any restaurant these days, and be served a bowl of stems.

See them?

Ick.

I rarely order a spinach salad in a restaurant but if I do, I leave a pile of stems on the table when I leave. LOL!

And so I confine my spinach eating mostly to home where I am in control of those dastardly stems. They never make it into my bowl and go in the garbage where they belong.

If I found a restaurant where they picked their spinach, I’d shout their name from the rooftops. If you know of one, let me know! I’d love to order a spinach salad in a restaurant and find it stemless. 🙂

Oh my my

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As much as I try and stay away from it, I love bread. When we lived in the Middle East, finding new and better bread vendors was a family sport.

The other day, I stumbled upon the blog of Nancy Shehata and her recipe for pita bread. It looked easy and delicious. She said she finds that the kind of pita bread you find in the store is too tough. I find that, too. It’s dry and bears no resemblance to the bread you find in the Middle East.

I thought I’d give the bread a try today only I turned it into Zatar as she instructs at the bottom of the blog. Oh my my. It was amazing! Delicious, soft. I could have eaten all of it all by myself.

I’m good at baking bread but this is not a difficult recipe and I believe anyone can make this amazing stuff!

Pita Bread

Ingredients

2+ cups of flour

1 tbs sugar

1 tsp salt

2 tbs yeast

2 tbs olive oil

1 cup very warm water

Add 1 cup of flour, sugar, salt, yeast and olive oil into the bowl of your mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Slowly add 1 cup of very warm water. Mix on medium for three minutes.

Add another cup (and possibly more to make a sticky but not stiff dough) of flour mix using dough hook for 10 minutes.

Take the dough out and knead for another minute or two by hand to make a smooth ball. Cut the ball into 8 pieces and form into balls. Cover with a towel and let rise for 10-20 minutes while the oven is heating to 550 degrees. If your oven doesn’t go up to 550, I’m sure that 500 is fine. Just be sure to check that it doesn’t burn! 🙂

Take each ball and roll into a 6 inch round, place two to three on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 3 minutes.

Make sure they don’t burn! Take them out of the oven and remove from sheet with a spatula. Be careful. If it poofed (to make the pocket) like you want, that steam inside will be HOT!

If you want to make zatar, prick all over with a fork to keep the pocket from forming, brush with olive oil and sprinkle with zatar spice mix before baking for 3 minutes.

Delicious! I’ll bet you’ll want to eat them all too. 🙂

Chicken Tikka Masala

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We adore Indian food. The couple of times I’ve tried to make it haven’t been very successful. It’s usually good but way, way, way too hot.

That’s why, when I stumbled upon this recipe, I wanted to try it. It didn’t look terribly difficult and I thought it sounded wonderful.

After querying my twitter friends on the use of fresh ginger, I forgot the ginger at the store but I did add my favorite cilantro which wasn’t called for in the original recipe.

I am a bad, bad blogger because I cannot find this recipe on the web again to attribute it. I will keep looking, though, since it makes me feel like a thief not to say where I found the recipe.

Chicken Tikka Masala

• 4 breast organic chicken in cubes

• 2 large red onion thinly sliced

• 2 tablespoons crushed garlic

• 2 tablespoons crushed ginger

• 1 can 28 oz. crushed tomatoes

• 1 cup of yogurt

• 1 cup heavy cream (optional)

• 2 tablespoons cumin

• 2 tablespoons garam masala

• 2 tablespoons turmeric

• 1 tablespoons chili powder

• 4 tablespoons cilantro

• Salt

Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Add in the onions and start caramelizing them until brown. Add the crushed ginger stir for 5 minutes,saute the garlic for 1 minute. Add cumin, garam masala, turmeric, chili powder, and mix well, until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Stir in tomatoes and yogurt. Add chicken and simmer, covered, on low heat until sauce thickens, about 25 minutes.  Season it with salt and transfer to a serving platter, garnished with cilantro. Serve with Bamati Rice or Naan.

How I love basmati rice and naan! But I served this with riced cauliflower which is healthier for us and also quite good.

This is a winning recipe, easy to prepare, and I’ll make it again. It was DELICIOUS! 🙂

Ahhh it’s a Banana Breeze

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Pie that is. I loved this recipe when I saw it mostly because it calls for a graham cracker crust and you can buy those nicely pre-made at the grocery store. But look at what else is in it: sweetened condensed milk. Now be honest. Have you ever had anything that contained sweetened condensed milk that was bad. Just in case you don’t know the answer, I’ll help. It’s no.

Additionally, the instructions say to chill for several hours and it doesn’t need to be baked. Given these days with temperatures of over 100 degrees, I was totally sucked in to making this pie.

Bananas are hard to keep in this house.  We are a family of banana fans. But I grabbed 3 bananas, put them aside with strict orders that they not be touched. I’m so glad I did that. This awesome, creamy, SIMPLE  pie is Mmmmm FABU! I’m sure you will agree. :-)

Banana Breeze Pie

1 – graham cracker crust

3-4 medium firm, ripe bananas

1-8 oz package cream cheese

1-can sweetened condensed milk

1/4-cup real lemon juice

2 tbs banana liqueur

1-tsp vanilla extract

1 tablespoon lemon juice (to sprinkle over banana slices)

Soften cream cheese to room temperature.  Cream the cheese until fluffy.  Add sweetened condensed milk and gradually increase mixer speed to whip.  Whip for two minutes.  Stop mixer and add lemon juice.  Again, gradually increase speed of mixer to whip and whip another 2-3 minutes.  Add vanilla extract and mix well.

Cut bananas in a bowl and sprinkle with lemon juice to prevent from darkening.  Place bananas in pie crust reserving enough to place on top of the pie if you wish.  I just place them all in the pie crust.  Then dump the pie filling on top of the bananas.  Chill several hours.

Wine Cheese Bread

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How about a little cheese with your wine? Bread that is.  I wanted something special to go with dinner so that’s what I baked today – Wine Cheese Bread and it was FABU!

While it is a yeast bread, the end result is almost closer to a quick bread in texture. I think that’s because of the addition of the eggs. This was an easy bread to make with few ingredients, like most bread.

You’ll want to combine the first four ingredients in a saucepan.  Cook over low heat until very warm. I usually gauge this by when the butter is just about all melted but you can measure that around 120 degrees.  Set this mixture aside.  Stir 2 cups of flour and 2 teaspoons of yeast together in your mixer bowl. Add the wine mixture and eggs. Beat at medium speed for 2 minutes.  Gradually add the remaining flour and the cheese to make a soft dough.  Mix for 8 minutes. Dough should have formed a ball in the mixer bowl.  Place the dough in a greased bowl, turning to grease the top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, around 1 hour.  Punch the dough down and let rest for 10 minutes.  Place the dough in a greased pie plate. Cover and let rise again until double, around 40 minutes.  Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes. Cover with foil and bake an additional 20 minutes.

This bread has an amazing texture. Crunchy and cheesy on the outside and cakey with a tang of the wine on the inside. I’m sure you will agree that this bread is FABU!

Wine Cheese Bread

1/2 c. dry white wine
1/2 c. butter
2 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
4 c. all-purpose flour
2 tsp dry yeast
3 eggs
1 c. shredded Monterey Jack Cheese

Combine first 4 ingredients in a small saucepan. Cook over low heat until very warm (120 to 130 degrees). Set aside. Combine 1 1/2 cups flour and yeast in a large mixing bowl. Add wine mixture and eggs, beat at medium speed of an electric mixer 2 minutes. Gradually stir in cheese and enough remaining flour to make a soft dough. Turn dough out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic (8 to 10 minutes). Place dough in a greased bowl turning to grease top. Cover and let rise in a warm place (85 degrees) free from drafts, 1 1/2 hours or until doubled in bulk. Punch down dough, let rest 10 minutes. Place dough in greased 1-quart souffle dish or 9 inch pie plate. Cover and let rise in warm place (85 degrees) free from drafts, 40 minutes or until doubled in bulk. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes. Cover with foil and bake an additional 20 minutes. Yield: 1 loaf.