Pantry Revisited

It is such an honor to be the "host" of a food group.  You bake together with your friends and then one day you get to choose the recipe that your group bakes together.  This month I got to choose and I chose Charlie's Chocolate Pudding Cake from Francois Payard's Chocolate Epiphany cookbook.  In our Chocolate with Francois group, we choose a recipe per month to prepare together and we post on the last day of the month. In Francois' recipe, he uses certain percentages of chocolate with each recipe. Here is a guide for this: 30-40% = milk 50% = semisweet 60% = bittersweet 72% = extra bittersweet 99-100% = unsweetened I had to figure this out because this recipe called for 50% chocolate and I had no idea what Francois was talking about! I learn something every time I cook with one of my groups. This cake is full of delicious, rich, yummy chocolate. And who doesn't like chocolate, right? We have a small group but the recipes are really interesting and c...

This week Liz of The Not So Skinny Kitchen chose Creamed Spinach.  I love raw spinach.  Cooked spinach is not so great for me.  So I was not really excited about this recipe, but I tried it anyway. The Gods however, were not with me on this one.  First of all, I did not have any chicken broth so I used buillon cube (fake broth).  It made the spinach pretty salty. Second, I wasn't sure reading the recipe how thick the cream sauce was supposed to be. And third, and the worst of all, AFTER I mixed in the evaporated milk, I noticed it was a little off color.  So I looked at the can and it expired in 2009!  It was too late.  It was already mixed in the spinach.  My husband assured me it would be fine.  I quickly googled (my favorite past-time) and there were many comments on there that said expired milk would be fine to use as long as the can was not puffed up.  However, there was this ONE comment that said there was a reason ...

Suzy of Suzy's Homemaker chose this week's Honey Nut Brownies.  If you know me, you know I never turn down a brownie!  Unless they have mint in the middle of them - ok I'm not a big fan of those.  But I love peanut butter brownies, butterscotch brownies, blondies, deep chocolate brownies, any of them!  So I was excited to make these. After I got everything mixing up, I realized my honey jar was not going to give me a full cup of honey as the recipe required.  Rather than take off to the store, I decided to substitute Karo syrup to finish out my cupful.  I also used semi-sweet chocolate instead of the bittersweet.  I added pecans. I usually have trouble with my brownies rising as tall as I would like.  But these babies exceeded any expectations on rising!  Chandler says they taste more like chocolate cake than a dense brownie.  We really liked them!  They were very moist.  My only negative is that I would have liked for t...

Danica's Daily  is the hostess this week for our CEiMB group.  You can go to her blog and check out her version of this Chinese Chicken Salad.  Get the recipe here:     Ellie's Savory Chinese Chicken Sa lad. Happy St. Patty's Day to you!  I was very excited about Danica's choice because I had contemplated making this salad several times but just never did.  Unfortunately, my salad is lacking a key ingredient.  Green cabbage.  It called for both red and green. I remember choosing a head of green cabbage at the store, but somehow it got lost on the way home.  I checked my trunk, everywhere and could not find my green head of cabbage.  I keep thinking one day I will look in my pantry and there will be a head of green cabbage in who knows what condition.  If I made this again, I think I would just use romaine lettuce.  I'm not a huge fan of the raw cabbage.  We really enjoyed it for our lunch on Saturda...

It's sunny here.   After a long cold rainy week last week, that is very exciting to me.  And today, I made Citrus Currant Sunshine Muffins thanks to our host Lauren of Bella Baker who chose these.  Check out her blog to get the recipe. They were very easy to mix up.  Took no time at all. I followed Dorie's advice and mixed the zest and sugar with my fingers.  It smelled so good!  And I took my orange and I squeezed it to death trying to get a cup full of fresh juice from it.  I'm telling you I squeezed that poor orange so dry if it had lips it would have needed some chapstick.  It came to just about the required one cup when I finished.  I used craisens in these because I just really like craisens. I was trying to do more than one thing at once (i.e. laundry, clean kitchen, cook chicken salad) and I overcooked them just a bit. Or. . . maybe 20 minutes was just too long in my oven. At any rate, they were still good muffins but...

It is raining here.  And I do mean Raining with a capital R.  Felt like I needed a boat or paddles at least to get to work today.  I love it when it rains overnight and then sunny during the day.  Wouldn't that just be perfect?  We have had a lot of snow, then last week it was sunny, and now cold and rain. So. . it's raining and it is a great night for stew.  My sweet friend Kayte over at Grandma's Kitchen chose this week's recipe for our Craving Ellie group.  Go over to her blog to see how she cooked it up and to get the recipe.  If you are interested in joining our group, click on Craving Ellie and check out the other bloggers and all the good food coming up. As for the stew, somehow I was not excited about adding butternut squash to stew.  I do trust Ellie Krieger though to produce healthy, delicious recipes.  I was "tweeting" with Marthe and Kayte earlier today and they were cooking it up and it sounded so good. ...

Hostess this week in our Tuesdays with Dorie group is Jill of My Next Life.  You can go to her blog here and get the recipe for today's delicious muffins.  http://jillbuker.blogspot.com/   I do not know Jill personally, but I think I might work with her niece who is a lovely young lady. Being a southern gal, I make cornbread a lot.  It has been a staple food in my life as long as I can remember.  My mom made cornbread every night for our dinner or "suppah as she would say."  She mixed it up with cornmeal and buttermilk and baked it in an iron skillet that had hot Crisco shortening sizzling in it. So I was very excited about these muffins.  They are comfort food to me.  While traditional cornbread or corn muffins do not contain corn kernals, I usually put cream style corn in my cornbread.  Dorie's recipe calls for the whole kernals though and let me tell you - these are some good muffins!  We loved them!!  Thank you Jill for a ...