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Showing posts from 2010

Christmas and other things

I get a little lax with my blogging during the holidays.  As soon as this week is over, I'll be back to cooking and blogging again.  I hope you will bear with me as I take a short break, but the holidays are always a little downer for me.  I believe Christmas is about family.  When you have no family to share it with, it can be the saddest time of the year.  Fortunately for me, I have good friends that try to fill that void for me as my children are traveling this year to visit other relatives.  Also, while I believe the reason for the season is to celebrate Jesus' birth, I wish we could all celebrate His birth every day of the year, not just on the 25th of December.  I hope all of you out there in blogland had a wonderful day yesterday filled with many blessings.  And I hope the New Year brings you good health, happiness, and fortune!  Thank you all for your continued support of my tiny blog.  Hugs to you!

CEiMB - Beef Taco Salad with Chunky Tomato Dressing

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Hostess for the week - Peggy of Pantryrevisited.blogspot.com!  That would be me of course. It is always a treat to get to host one of the food groups.  It is not an easy task.   Not for me at least.  I analyze it to death.  How easy will it be to make on a work night?  How accessible are the ingredients to the majority?  How good will it taste?  I figured we would all be turkeed out (is turkeed a word) after Thanksgiving and might like a welcome change of just a good, taco salad.  I got some vine ripened tomatoes at the store.  However, they were not as firm as I would have liked.  They did not dice easily. The only change I made to the recipe was I used bottled lime juice instead of fresh. The finished product: My rating.  We thought this was good, but nothing spectacular.  Easy to make, easy on the budget, and tasty.  Definitely worth trying.  Thank you all for cooking with me this week!!  Thank you Ellie for great, healthy recipes! Now all of you get out there and get tha

CEiMB - Spinach Tortellini Soup

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Hostess for this week:  Bri of Yoshimi vs. motherhood at http://yoshimivsmotherhood.blogspot.com/ Well Thanksgiving is over and what a fabulous week it was!  As most of you already know, I got to multi-task and celebrate my birthday, Thanksgiving and Christmas all in one week.  It was almost too much fun for one body to handle.  Wanted to share this photo with my beautiful flowers that a friend of mine sent me for my birthday.  My son also sent me some lovely autumn flowers.  I cooked a lot during those three days.  I had both my handsome sons home for a day and a half.  We made the most of our time together.  We had a great bowl of chili while we watched the Iron Bowl, then later we had our Thanksgiving feast of turkey, dressing, green beans, deviled eggs, mashed potatoes and corn casserole, with pecan pie and pumpkin cheesecake for dessert.  The next morning we had Ellie's Blueberry Almond French Toast and it was a big hit with everyone.  My beautiful new granddaughter was here

CEiMB - Cioppino, or Fish Stew without the Fish!

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Hostess this week is one of my favorite bloggers, Margaret of Tea and Scones !  As you all know by now, I'm not a fish/shellfish person, but I really wanted to cook along with Margaret this week so I substituted chicken for the fish.  I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but we were pleasantly surprised. It was delicious!  So good in fact, I cannot wait to have the leftovers for tomorrow night's dinner. Well next week is Thanksgiving and I wonder if you all are already getting overwhelmed about how you will manage getting it all together.  For me, I have my family coming in from out of town and we plan to have our Christmas together at the same time.  So it is a double whammy for me.  I have half a tree put up in my living room, and a couple of gifts bought, but this weekend will be interesting to say the least!  I'm a list maker, so I will probably have more lists made than I know what to do with.  A grocery list for sure. Thanks Margaret for a wonderful pick.  I

CEiMB - Whole Wheat Pasta Salad with Walnuts and Feta Cheese

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HOST:  Kayte of http://www.grandmaskitchentable.typepad.com/ Kayte is one of my favorite blogging friends and we are in several cooking groups together.  I love going to her blog because there is always something good to whet my appetite on there!  Check it out and see what her version of this week's salad is. I do not, however, love whole wheat pasta, so the only substitution I made in this recipe was that I used tri-colored regular pasta. Plus, the different colors in it excite me.  I don't know why!  I paired this with a rotiserrie chicken and Chan loved the pasta!  He wanted to eat the entire bowl of pasta but I made him pace himself.  I had to keep reminding him that we had dessert which was coming later. I know there are all different types of cooks out there and we all have our own way of doing things.  For me, I like to get all my ingredients out on the countertop before I even begin to read how to put the recipe together.  Sort of like Rachel Ray.  I also love that

TWD - Not Just for Thanksgiving Cranberry Shortbread

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Host this week:  Jessica of Singleton in the Kitchen Jessica is one of my favorite bloggers.  I was excited she chose this cranberry shortbread so I could try it out before the holiday arrives.  And it was worth the trying out!  We absolutely loved it.  And it was so easy to make.  The dough came together really well.  Next time I might add a tad bit more sugar to the cranberry mixture however.  Mine did not rise a whole lot.  I'm not sure how tall it is supposed to be.  It is about the size of a one layer cake.  I cannot wait to see how others turned out.  I plan to make this again this weekend to take to a friend's house for dinner. They are serving chicken pot pie so I think this will be perfect with it. Going into the oven: Coming out of the oven: I can't wait to eat another piece tonight!!

TWD - Peanuttiest Brownies

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Hostess this week:  Nicole of Bakeologie Well Halloween has come and gone.  That means Thanksgiving and my birthday are right around the corner!!!  And the best part of Thanksgiving this year is that I get to see my new grandbaby again.  I am counting the days.  Halloween brought lots of goodies at work including a pumpkin decorating contest (I lost), lots of candy, a free breakfast and dessert party, and the Saturday night a fun-filled night of dancing and wearing costumes at our dance club.  Chandler and I went again as pirates wearing our costumes from last year and we were fortunate to be one of the costume winners this year!  I made some brownies to take that had swirls of pumpkin in them, and I was not a fan.  I'll take my brownies plain thank you.  Chandler and I watched a scary movie (as is our custom).  I prefer some type of ghost story like a haunting, but we chose Frozen.  Kids stranded on a ski slope.  It got really gruesome though and there were parts I simply could

My Kitchen, My World - Traveling this month to Japan!

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This month with my group My Kitchen My World we traveled together to Japan.  We each get to choose what recipe we will prepare from a certain country each month.  Check out the blogsite to see what other "travelers" came up with.  mykitchenmyworld.blogspot.com   Next month we will be touring Afghanistan.  That should be a challenge! I tried to find something truly authentic.  My DH and I love all sorts of asian food (except for the shellfish which I have to avoid) so I was excited to see what I could find.   So I do what I always do and Google.  Google is just truly amazing to me.  You can find anything you want on there.   I found Glo's Sausage Fried Rice.  Glo says it is an easy to prepare recipe passed down from her Japanese mother and that you won't find anything like it in the restaurants.  It was pretty easy to prepare.  I have to say, however, I would have really liked it had the main ingredient been chicken instead of the sausage.  I was not a fan of

Pumpkin Decorating

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We had a pumpkin decorating contest at work.  A team of four.  Judged on creativity, etc.  This was our entry.  We thought we were very original, "current," and good presentation.  We LOST. I am disappointed for my team.  It did, however, look much better in a dark room.  What do you think?

TWD - Caramel Pumpkin Pie

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Hostess this week:  Janell of http://lkmortensenfamily.blogspot.com/ I really wanted to do a great job on this pie. Well all things considered, you have to give me a break this week and not expect greatness! I had a little surgery last Thursday.  It was not "supposed" to be a big thing.  This procedure was to determine 100% that I did not have cancer.  It did that. YEA!!  God is good.  Nothing in my life comes without drama.  Apparently my blood pressure did not cooperate and dropped dangerously low in the recovery room so they had to work with me for a couple of hours.  Thank God I was high on morphine and demerol, and they just kept giving me more so while I was aware that things were happening around me, I really didn't care that much!  Oh yes, I can laugh now.  Today I tried to work but I almost fainted shortly after getting there so I spent five and a half hours in the emergency room where they finally determined that my blood pressure was low again.  After runni

CEiMB - Apple Brown Betty

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Hostess of the Week:  Jessica of Learning to Love Vegetables I've never had apple brown betty.  Never.  I've heard of it, lusted after it, but never tasted it.  Until today.   While baking, it filled my home with the delicious aroma of apples and cinnamon.  I figured even if it tasted bad, the smell was worth the effort of making it, right?  I've always wondered about the name.  Don't you think Apple Brown Betty is strange?  Why not Apple Brown Lulu for example.  So I googled.  This is what I found.  A bit of history for you. Betty or Brown Betty - A Betty consist of a fruit, most commonly apples, baked between layers of buttered crumbs. Betties are an English pudding dessert closely related to the French apple charlotte. Betty was a popular baked pudding made during colonial times in America. According to The Oxford Companion To Food, by Alan Davison: The name seems to have first appeared in print in 1864, when an article in the Yale Literary Magazine listed

TWD - Double Apple Bundt Cake

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Hostess this week: Lynne of  HoneyMuffin With my trip to Myrtle Beach coming up, I thought this would be the perfect cake to make to take with.  I love anything with apples and double apple sounds doubly good to me!  And it is fall now and to me, apples just go with fall weather!  The double in this recipe is shredded apples, along with apple butter!  The hardest part of making this cake was shredding the apples.  I do not like to shred for some reason! However, because I do not wish to mess up the cake by cutting into it before I get to share it with my friends on the trip, I will not get to taste it until Saturday!  So I am freezing it until then.  And you get the photo of the entire cake, instead of a beautifully cut slice. I left the raisens out only because it seems I have made several apple things lately with raisens and I wanted to try something a little different.  So I used butterscotch chips and walnuts. I cannot wait to enjoy a piece of it! Thank you Lynne for a gre

CEiMB - Almond French Toast Bake

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Hostess this week was Heide of http://chezzero.blogspot.com/ I have to let you all in on a secret this week.  I had to cheat a bit on this one.  Just a bit.  I did not let it sit overnight in the refrigerator as Ellie says to.  Wasn't sure if it would work to just beat it up and toss it in the oven, but that's what I did.  Drat those time constraints!  But please keep this to yourself.   Don't you just love a good secret? My grocery store did not have fresh blueberries this week.  Not sure what was up with that because we eat them every morning with our cereal.  So I grabbed a bag of frozen blueberries.  Believe me when I say they may be fine for cooking with them, but even thawed they did nothing for our cereal.  Too mushy for me!  But the size of the blueberries was amazing.  Made me wonder where are these giant blueberries when you buy fresh ones?  The ones I buy are tiny like little peas.  These were mammoth. I sort of halved this recipe so I was not sure how long t

MKMW - Morocco Bound! Moroccan Kefta Meatballs in Butter Sauce

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This month in My Kitchen My World, we traveled to Morocco!!  Chandler and I love middle eastern food so this was a hit with us.  I went through many moroccan recipes before finally deciding on one.  I chose Moroccan Kefta Meatballs in Butter Sauce and I was so glad I did. For those of you, like me, that do not know the true meaning of "kefta," it generally refers to ground meat.  You could make these from ground beef, ground turkey, ground lamb, or do a combination of meats.  For convenience, I had ground beef already so that is what I used.   The meat is well seasoned with plenty of fresh herbs and spices, and then shaped into balls and sauteed in butter.  I was a bit surprised the recipe did not call for an egg to hold the shape, but these did fine without. The recipe said to take Moroccan bread and dip into the sauce, but unfortunately, I had no sauce.  Not sure what went wrong there, but the meatballs were delicious.  It was suggested on the recipe that you serve with

TWD - Tarte Fine

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Hostess this week:  Leslie of Lethally Delicious One of my favorite blogging friends, Leslie of Lethally Delicious, chose this Tarte Fine for this week's Tuesday with Dorie challenge. I decided to make mine round by cutting my pastry around a bowl as a pattern because I saw Gordon Ramsey do it on a video.  Of course he also torched his end result and it all looked so easy.  All I can say is something happened to mine.  It was abducted by aliens and this is how it came out.  My puff pastry did not rise up around it.  It is lacking an apple because I messed up the first apple I sliced into.  And it needed that apple.  It pains me to look at it.  And the saddest part of this was that this is not a difficult recipe.  It was easy or. . .. . was it? This was not my favorite recipe.  But go over to Leslie's blog and see how hers turned out and you can get the recipe there! 

CEiMB - Whole Wheat Pancakes with Strawberry Syrup

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Hostess this Week:  Melissa of http://itsmelissaskitchen.blogspot.com/ I have been under the weather this week with a touch of strep throat.  I'll be fine soon.. . I hope?  Got a cortisone shot yesterday which kept me wide awake all night last night, but it did give me a tiny bit of relief.  So this will be a quick post!  For those of you who are movie buffs like me, I saw a cute movie last weekend that I got from Netflix.  Killers starring Kutcher and Heigl.   If you liked Brad and Angie in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, you will like this one as well. I am not a huge fan of whole wheat pancakes, so I mixed half and half flour, regular and whole wheat.  The strawberry syrup was very easy to mix up.  I wish the strawberries had a richer color in these photos. Click here to go see what the other members of CEiMB came up with.  http://cravingellieinmybelly.blogspot.com/ I love this syrup.  Target brand. While these were good pancakes, and the strawberry syrup was delicious, I think I like j

TWD - Cranberry Upside Downer, but there is nothing down about it!

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Hostess for this week:  Sabrina of http://www.superfluouslysabro.blogspot.com/ I was so excited when Sabrina (one of my favorite bloggers) chose this Cranberry Upside-Downer.  I have been eyeing this recipe for two years now and I do not know why I have not made it before now.  I now have it in my head for a Thanksgiving treat when my children are here from out of town.  It was very easy to mix up.  I had all the ingredients on hand which is always a plus!  Actually had cranberries and pecans in the freezer.  Going to the grocery store is not my favorite thing.  You can go to Sabrina's blog by clicking on the link above and get the recipe for this if you do not have a copy of Dorie's book. While this was baking, I accomplished another chore that I have been putting off.  Cleaning out my linen closet!  All the sheets, towels, etc. were crumpled up and thrown in there one on top of the other.  Now they are all nice and neatly stacked.  I am a positively crazy when it comes t

TWD - Peanut Butter Criss Crosses to the Rescue!

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Host for the week:  Jasmine of Jasmine Cuisine It was just one of those weekends.  The kind where nothing really goes the way you expect.  We left Friday night to go to the lake for the long holiday weekend hoping for some much needed rest after our return from Dallas.  We arrived, turned on the air conditioning and in about 30 minutes realized, there was no air conditioning.  It was about 95 degrees that day, but weatherman assured on the television it was going to get cooler through the night, so we decided to tough it out and call a repairman the next morning. With a fan in the window, a ceiling fan, and a small bedside fan all running at full speed, we went to bed.  Gosh the noise those fans made. Midnight - still hot.  Two in the morning - still hot.  Stay on your side of the bed I whispered!  Don't touch me he said!  Finally about five in the morning we both found sleep.  Got up early and called an air conditioner repair guy and he came about noon and fixed it.  Nice an

My Kitchen My World - Visiting Canada!

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I love being in this group!  We get to visit a different country each month.  For August, we traveled to Canada.  I researched Canadian traditional foods and the one that I kept finding over and over was poutine - basically french fries topped cheese curds and then smothered with gravy.  It may be the most delicious side dish there is, but for some reason it did not appeal to me on this day.  Maybe tomorrow... I chose Pork Chops with Apples.  Having only had a half bag of popcorn for lunch today, I was ready for something really substantial.  These were very easy to cook and I have to say, they were delicious!  I served a creamy corn soup, Potage de ble, as an appetizer.  I left off the celery and the leek, however, and added a touch of cilantro for flavor.  I also cheated a bit and used frozen corn.  It was pretty good, but I'm not a huge corn fan, that is unless it is fresh corn on the cob grilled to perfection in which case I will be the first in line!  Chandler said the pork

ON VACATION THIS WEEK - NEW BABY ARRIVING!!

As most of you know, my first grandbaby, a baby girl, is arriving shortly so I will not be cooking this week for the blog.  If the baby has not arrived by Sunday, my daughter-in-law will be induced on Monday morning -- so at least we have an end date to look forward to!!  YEA.   I will be back to cooking and blogging after next week!   Look forward to reading yours and seeing what good things to eat you all are preparing. I'm sure there will be photos next blog!!

CEiMB - Sloppy Joe's!

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Hostess this week is . . . Chaya of Comfycook.wordpress.com My blogging friend and a wonderful cook, Chaya, chose this week's Ellie Krieger recipe for our CEiMB group.  Sloppy Joes.  Now we are big "Manwich" people.  Especially in the winter months.  I love to make them for dinner and have a couple left over for work lunches the next day.   I have never heard of sloppy joes, however, with beans in them.  Until today. These were very simple to make.  You just cook some ground beef with onions, garlic, add some tomato sauce and a little paste, a can of beans, a few other items, dash of this and a dash of that, and in just a jiffy you have some fabulous sloppy joes!  I did make a few substitutions.  First, I left off the bell pepper because we aren't fans of the big ole red or the big ole green, or the big ole yellow for that matter. Although I do love a good stuffed pepper occasionally. I used red pepper flakes instead of the jalapeno because I didn't have a jala

CEiMB - Shrimp Fra Diavolo with Spinach or. . . if you are allergic to shrimp, try salmon!!

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Host for the week:  Jennifer of The Rookie Baker As most of you know, I don't walk away, I run from shellfish since I am uber allergic.  I wanted to make this dish and cook along with Jennifer, so I adapted and used grilled salmon.  Jennifer, this was an excellent choice - we give it ten stars! First, I had to find some wine that I liked while Chandler grilled our salmon.  I usually do not drink dry wines, so this was all I had.  It was pretty tasty. This recipe was so easy.  You saute some onions and garlic.  Then add the rest of the ingredients and simmer.  I did substitute cayenne pepper for the red pepper flakes, and sort of put in a pinch too much so ours had a kick to it.  "Fra Diavolo" means "Brother Devil", which means it is spicey, so it is not for the hot spice sissies. But man, is it good. I used whole wheat angel hair pasta and by the time it was ready, the sauce was too!  After the sauce cooks a bit, you add some fresh spinach to it and the shri