A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

"Working Towards Whole Wheat" Bread

I call this my "Working Towards Whole Wheat" bread because it's got some whole wheat in it but it's still "white" enough to please the non-whole wheat fans like kids...or Gene.  :-)  Personally, I love whole wheat bread, pancakes,etc. Love the sweeter, toothier texture, but not everyone does. This is a nice compromise. A little whole wheat, a lotta white wheat, and a hidden fiber dose of Benefiber that no one can taste. And then it's an easy transition to a little more whole wheat every couple of weeks and a little less white flour.  Sometimes healthier eating habits are more about compromise than starting cold turkey eating the things we know we're supposed to while whining in our hearts that we want the old ways.  Tastebuds can be retrained.

Artisan Egg Bread Topped with Freshly Roasted Garlic on Steakhouse Night at Home

Juicy Filet Mignon wrapped in bacon, baked sweet potato, a nice deeply rich cabernet, and hot out of the oven home-made bread smeared with soft butter and heaped with sweet roasted garlic, all served on nice linens with pretty stemware--night out at a restaurant? Nope, night in at home. 

 For great recipes and the full explanation behind the method, I highly recommend this book and its sequel Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day (whole grained recipes). I was given these books as gifts (Thanks, Ann!) and they've quickly become two of my favorites. For years, I kept angel biscuit dough in the fridge so we could have fresh bread with dinner every night and/or kept frozen dinner roll dough in the freezer for the same reason. One of the things I like most about this book and its concepts are being able to make a week's worth of dough at one time and just pull off as much as I want to bake at one time, whether it's a small loaf or several dinner rolls. 

There is something so homey, cozy, and comforting about the smell and taste of warm fresh home-made bread that nourishes like nothing else. The ultimate topping? To me, that's a  little olive oil or butter, and either bitingly fresh minced garlic or its smooth and suave cousin, the sweet and mellow roasted garlic.  Directions for roasting garlic follow the bread recipe--such and easy thing to do while waiting for bread dough to rise! The reward is VERY worth it, and a plus side is the leftover garlic freezes beautifully to be used as needed in other recipes.

Celebrating James' Birthday with Auntie Miranda's Grapefruit Cake

(Photo below: James demonstrating his "Dexter knife skills".)

 

After tweeting one night that grapefruit-flavored cake sounded "awful", as usually happens with my crazy family of foodies, the decision was made that we had to make it, bake it, and try it.  Auntie Miranda volunteered her time and James volunteered his birthday--win/win!

After reading through several recipes, Auntie used her own baking skills to create her own version based on elements from different recipes and her own experience.

Our prounouncement:   Delicious!  Just like orange, lemon, or lime, grapefruit is just a twist, so to speak, on the citrus genre.

Thanks, Auntie, for introducing us to this new dish and for sharing your recipe!

 

 

Note: Please excuse the phone pics--forgot my camera.

Copycat Ruby Tuesday's Ham & Pea Pasta Salad

 One of my favorite dishes on Ruby Tuesday's Garden Bar is the ham and pea pasta salad.   From talking with friends, I found that I'm not a lone.  Lots of people hit the salad bar for that pasta dish.  Some even confess to skipping the greens on the bar to save room for that pasta dish.  Tickled to have found a copycat home version for it, I ended up taking it as an entree salad for lunch at work two nights in a row.

Broiling the Perfect Steak in Five Easy Steps

Going out to dinner for a nice steak can be just the thing after a long day, but doing the same thing at home, only in t-shirt, shorts, and no shoes, can be just the ticket as well.  Steaks are one of those things that seemed intimidating to me years ago, but it only took a little practice to gain confidence quickly.

Lots of folks are very accomplished on the grill. To be honest, I'm not so much simply because with only me and Gene in our small family, it feels like way too much work to drag out the grill for two steaks.  The answer? Broiling.

 With four simple ingredients and five simple steps, the process is painless.

Candy Cherry & Hershey's Kiss Mice

 

Cute little mice for any occasion. My friend, Jenn, saw these at a holiday party.  They're pretty straight forward:  a chocolate dipped maraschino cherry with a Hershey's kiss and 2 pieces of sliced almond for ears attached with the warm chocolate. Then. piped on pink icing nose and white/blue eyes.

With store-bought tubes of frosting to pipe with, lots of these could be created in about an hour as a cute dessert, gift, or decoration for a party.

They'd make cute decorations for a birthday cake too.

 

 

 

Ozarks Regional Cooking: Mashed Potato Rolls from Homegrown in the Ozarks cookbook

Homegrown in the Ozarks:  Mountain Meals and Memories, 2007, by Rolland Love and Mary-Lane Kamberg  (Click for link to Amazon listing)

Looking for a fast, easy dinner bread recipe yesterday to go with our beans, I grabbed this newly purchased cookbook and gave the Mashed Potato Rolls a whirl.  I'll definitely be adding these to my repertoire.  They went together quickly, for bread, were a fast rise, and because of the high potato and fat ratio, had a solid dense crumb, almost similar to a corn muffin.  In fact, I crumbled half a roll up into my beans and felt almost like I'd made cornbread.

The cookbook itself is a soft back treasure for those of us who grew up in these "mountains", filled with uncomplicated (my hand is heavier when it comes to spices)  recipes from my youth that I haven't thought about much since my youth, to be honest.  There are old-fashioned favorites (not always my personal favorites but I remember these being around when I was a kid) like gooseberry pie, persimmon bread, cornbread, catfish, bass, venison, rabbit, and even squirrel. Along with the "wilder" stuff, there are also great recipes for pork chops with mustard sauce, several breads and cornbreads, many vegetable dishes that showcase the fields and woods of this area, and desserts of all kinds, including a black walnut pie.

Reading a lot of the recipes reminds me so much of being a kid growing up in small rural town where we  often scavenged the woods around us for trashbags or pillow cases full of black walnuts, persimmons, morel mushrooms, gooseberries, etc. for Mom, who repaid us by working up our treasures into delicious eats.  The one thing I miss the most are persimmons, a wild version much smaller and sweeter than the $3/each persimmons I occasionally see at the grocery.  I ate buckets full of those as a kid and then whatever was leftover got made into bread.

Back to the bread recipe...

Purist Macaroni & Cheese: THREE ingredients

"Mom's Extra Sharp Mac and Cheese" (Click to be linked)

Ran across this recipe when I was searching for a new baked Mac & Cheese recipe to play with. I was intrigued by the lack of a huge list of ingredients or odd spices.  It's simple: macaroni, milk, and cheese. That is LITERALLY macaroni and cheese. I happened to have all three ingredients so I had it in the oven in the time it took to pre-heat the oven.

I admit I was tempted to add salt, pepper, butter, garlic, any number of little extras but I really wanted to see how it would come out just as written. GREAT!, would be the answer to that.  There is no need for salt because of the salt in the cheese, extra would have, in fact, made the dish too salty.  And as for other seasonings, they have their place but not in this particular version of purist Mac & Cheese. I was quite content with the recipe as is, savoring the dimensions of the lovely sharp cheddar on my pasta.

One note about the photos:  I impatiently took the pics (so I could chow down!) pretty quick out of the oven, but within 15 minutes the rest of the milk soaked into the pasta so that it was creamy without being runny.   

The funniest part, to me, is that when I gushed about this recipe to Auntie Miranda, she said "Um. Yeah. That's exactly how your Grandmother taught me to make Mac & Cheese, long before the boxes."   Proof that what once was old is new again! 

Click on the link above for the rest of the details of the recipe.

 

 

Good & Good For You: Roasted Sweet Potatoes

 

Did anyone else see Shaun T on Dr. Oz yesterday talking about how great sweet potatoes are for us nutritionally?  I've always loved them and love that they're potatoes but they're kind of not really. They're more of a regular vegetable in the sense of do you count it as a bread or as a veggie? Packed with vitamins and fiber, they're only "bad" for me if I load it up with butter and brown sugar. Luckily, there are other ways to prepare them.

There's not even a recipe per se, just roast them.  I peeled and diced them into a bowl, poured over a few tablespoons of olive oil, and a teaspoon or two of Cavender's greek seasoning (salt-free) and a dash of salt and pepper. Any seasoning/seasoning salt will do.  A tsp of dried rosemary, thyme, or basil, or all of the above,  Italian seasoning, or go the simple route and stick with just salt and pepper. Toss the potatoes around with a spatula until they're all evening covered with the oil and spices.  Spread out into one layer on a foil-lined baking sheet and pop into a 425 degree pre-heated oven and bake for 30-45 minutes or until browned, crispy, and tender in the middle.

That night, Gene and I also ate tortilla-crusted Tilapia froms Schwan's which is a new add to our list. Delicious, and only 250 calories per huge filet.

East, fast, and delicious--I like it!

 

 

Taste of the Ozarks: Beans & Greens

Even I will admit that maybe that doesn't look all that delcious, but I swear on a stack of Bibles, it's delicious.  Beans & Greens has long been a down-home dish throughout most of the southern U.S. and we're no exception.  We love our "brown" (pinto for the uninitiated) beans and cornbread, which btw, form a complete protein. Couple that with kale, collards, or spinach, and you're really looking at a protein/vitamin powerhouse. To be completely honest, you see the green but you don't really taste it.  Until I told him, Gene thought I'd just gone really nuts with the parsley.

This is my version using country sausage with lots of sage, collard greens, and pinto beans.  It's an easy-peasy workday recipe where you throw everything from the pantry/freezer into the crock-pot and either go to work, or like me, go to sleep. Dinner is ready when you are.  Add crackers or cornbread or dinner rolls and you've got a happy Gene, I mean, whatever your spouse's name is.