We were out of town for Christmas, so we had it a little late. :)
A lovely brunch of mimosas, hashbrown casserole and Brunch Egg Casserole.
(I forgot to snap a picture before I started serving!)
I also got Twain’s Feast for Christmas!
I hope everyone had wonderful holidays and a fantastic New Year. In 2011, hopefully you’ll see more posts!
So, I made my baked potato soup last night (and had more for lunch today) and I’ve decided there is something just not quite right with it. It’s certainly not bad, but there is something a tiny bit off. I keep coming back to the basil & thyme. Maybe it just doesn’t need them and the salt & pepper is enough? Throw in some celery with the onions & garlic to add a bit more in the aromatics department to offset any “loss” from the basil & thyme?
I’ll have to keep that in mind the next time around. And to cut the recipe in half because it makes WAY too much for two people!
FROM SCRATCH!!!!!!!!!!! This is not something that has worked well for me in the past, which is why I’m so excited. They were AWESOME.
Took 2 russet potatoes, peeled & chopped up into SMALL pieces and put them in boiling water. (I had thrown some onions and crushed garlic in the water before bringing it to a boil.)
Brought it back to a boil and then boiled for 10 minutes.
Drained them, threw them back into the pot for a few minutes to steam off any leftover liquid, and then put them through my nifty potato ricer.
Mixed in about 3Ts of butter and a couple spoonfuls of sour cream.
Put it all in a casserole dish and put it back in the microwave for about a minute and a half (the sour cream cooled things off.)
Topped with some cheddar jack cheese and put it under the broiler for a few minutes.
Awesome. REALLY AWESOME.
Just a quick snap of the incredibly tasty turkey breast I made for Thanksgiving.
Couldn’t have been easier.
1. Brine for several hours beforehand. (8# turkey breast, had it in the cooler for ~6 hours. Don’t want more than 1 hour per pound.)
2. Melt a stick of butter and cover the turkey with it.
3. Cover w/any kind of cracked pepper goodness – whatever your favorite rub is.
4. Roast @ 325 degrees until it has an internal temp of 165 degrees.
Juicy and awesome.
It would be great if everything we thought was fantastic was organic, local, fair trade and eco-friendly. But, things just don’t always work out that way, and sometimes some great guilty pleasures do nothing more than make us smile and put money in the pocket of a large corporation. It’s not the end of the world – it’s just how things work sometimes.
Having said that – holy crap, I have a few new guilty pleasures! First being Starbucks Via. I am a woman who is not the biggest fan of instant coffee – at least when it comes to anything that is supposed to be a replacement for brewed coffee.* I had been using Folger’s singles in a pinch when I either wasn’t in the mood to make a full pot of coffee, or out of regular coffee altogether. Those worked quite well, and were better than any instant crystals I’d run into. I was quite skeptical that an “instant” coffee could be better than anything I’d run into before. When Starbucks did their initial rollout, my local store did “mocha mousses” with whipped cream & the Via crystals mixed – they tasted like coffee whipped cream with no graininess. So, I knew it would least dissolve in water. Let me say – this stuff is pretty good. It’s not the same as a pot of coffee, but it is NOTHING like instant/freeze-dried coffee. It’s more expensive than instant – I picked up an 8 pack for $8, but if you’re using it as emergency/backup coffee, it’s worth it.
My second guilty pleasure, courtesy of my new fridge/freezer. It has been empty, cause the old one had defrosted and re-froze things multiple times, so it all had to go. I happened to walk down the ice cream section of the market the other night… I spied Twix Mini Ice Cream Sandwiches. (Crappy flash link, but it’s there.) AWESOME!!!!!!! They’re very mini, which is fine – I am someone who can have 3 bites of ice cream and be happy. It’s French Vanilla ice cream, with a ribbon of caramel, Twix cookie bits on top, and the whole thing covered in chocolate. Just AWESOME! Reminds me of the ice cream bars that Baskin Robbins used to have. (And may still have, but I’ve not been in for a while.)
The third one is also ice cream… Dove Cafe Collections. Coffee flavored ice cream minis with chocolate chips & chocolate coating, or coffee ice cream with milk & dark chocolate coating. Again, just a couple bites, but so insanely satisfying!!!!
*I will admit a love for GFIC’s Cafe Vienna & Orange Cappuccino. I will readily admit that they aren’t really coffee, but a flavored delivery system for caffeine and sugar that presents itself in a hot-drink manner appealing to me. I won’t say it’s really coffee.
Made pancakes the other night, and for what I swear is the first time, they were terrific. I’ve had problems in the past with pancakes for two reasons: First, I didn’t have a decent griddle pan for them. The pan I used is roughly omelet sized and was really not conducive to pancake making. That has been fixed by acquiring a lovely 12″ non-stick griddle pan, from my local hardware store. (They have an amazing kitchen gadget selection.) I also have a weird problem with an inability to properly pour pancake batter. I’m serious – it should be so easy, and yet, I always make a mess of it. I’d seen a pancake dispenser in a diner once and thought “damn, I need one of those!” but I never really saw one anywhere. And then I got my Avon catalogue… HOLY CRAP, BATMAN, A PANCAKE DISPENSER!!
I was able to make perfectly sized pancakes that turned out wonderfully! An excellent breakfast for dinner. It comes apart easily for cleanup and does a great job controlling the amount of pancake batter hitting the griddle. I love it.
If you want a pancake dispenser like this, Avon has it. I am also an Avon rep, so if you want to order it from my site, that would be kinda awesome, too. Just search on “pancake dispense” – and while you’re at it, browse the “Gifts for Home” section – they’re really rocking the cute kitchen stuff these days.
Hasbrown Casserole: Easier if you mix the CoC soup, sour cream, onions and S&P first. Then the cheese, and then the hashbrowns.
Even though it calls for 45 minutes at 350 degrees, you can make it up, put it in at 325 degrees then put together the Egg Casserole, pop that in the oven and let it all go for an hour with no problems.
Bacon: I need to just give up mucking around with cooking it on the stovetop. Microwave works just fine, is faster, and doesn’t burn.
And finally, champagne that has been in the fridge for 1+ year (unopened) will not turn to vinegar, but will lose some of it’s oomph.
Made myself a steak-umm*/swiss cheese/english muffin sandwich this afternoon. It was tasty enough, but missing something. Mayo is definitely out – for me, mayo and hot sandwiches just don’t go together. Spicy mustard? Red pepper relish?
Regardless of what’s missing, it was another “I love my Foreman Grill” sandwich. Steak-umms take about a minute and a half, and there is no grease splatter like when you try to do it in a pan. Once you get the steak & cheese in the muffin, throw it back on the grill and go all panini on it. Fast, and such easy cleanup.
I’ll report back when I figure out the missing piece.
*I love them. So sue me.
There has been snow here. A lot of snow. It’s finally starting to melt, but thanks to the snow, I have been eating a lot of cheese grits this past month. They soothe the cabin-fevered beast and are a great warmup after shoveling snow. But today, I had an idea – and it was a spectacular idea. Instead of making the grits with water, why not chicken stock? Well, the result was AWESOME.
I wish I had a photo – I took some quick shots, but when I pulled them off the memory card, they were blurry – and I’d already finished the grits by then. (I’m quite certain I’ll be making this again, so there is hope that I can get a shot.)
Best Cheese Grits Ever:
1/4 c. old fashioned grits (NOT instant)
1 1/8 c. chicken stock or broth
2 ounces shredded chipotle cheddar cheese
salt & pepper
Bring the stock to a boil, add grits, stir well. Set heat to LOW and cover. After about 6 minutes I hit it with the salt & pepper. Then at the 12 minute mark, I stir in the cheese. I did notice that with the chicken stock, it was still a touch soupy at the 12 minute mark, so I let it go another minute or so. (In the future I may just cut it back to 1 cup of stock.)
Once the cheese is stirred in, sit back and enjoy!
According to the grits package, 1/4 c of grits is 2 servings. Maybe if you’re eating it with something else. Otherwise, it’s one perfect serving on it’s own.
OK, a few days late, but better than never! Spent Christmas week visiting a relative in Phoenix, got back on the 30th and have been trying to get back to something resembling “normal”. Unfortunately, the year started off with a big old cooking FAIL. Yesterday we had our Christmas here at home, and I wanted to make sausage cheese balls. Just been on my mind for a while and Christmas seemed a good as excuse as any!
Now, I haven’t made these in about 10 years. I pulled the recipe from the Betty Crocker/Bisquick website. I thought the proportions seemed quite a bit off – 3 cups of bisquick, 4 cups of cheese? To just one pound of sausage? But then I thought, hey, it’s Bisquick’s own recipe! They of all people should have it right.
I should have trusted my instincts and found another recipe. They were awful. Ended up as sort of a cheesy dough with bits of sausage and just terrible.
Next time I’ll be using this recipe from Consumer Web Help – the proportions seem much more reasonable and the sausage isn’t so far outnumbered by the cheese & Bisquick.
Ah well, lesson learned. Onward and upward!