Sherry – Page 12 – Rosemary and the Goat

Chocolate Peppermint Pavlova

Chocolate and peppermint for Christmas!

If there are two things just made for each other it has to be chocolate and peppermint; just think of peppermint bark, peppermint hot chocolate, York peppermint patties, and even those thin mint Girl Scout cookies and you will be wanting to make this dessert.

A friend, Miggie, recently told me her favorite ice cream was HEB’s Creamy Creations Mexican Hot Chocolate and it got me to thinking about my Santa Kisses cookies which are meringue cookies with thin layer of chocolate on bottoms and dipped in crushed peppermint. So, I’m immediately thinking about pavlovas (dying them pink) and making them into shells dipped in chocolate and crushed peppermint candies and topping with a big scoop of the Mexican Hot Chocolate ice cream and garnishing with some more crushed peppermint. So that is exactly what I made for a recent dinner party and everyone loved them. Thanks Miggie for the recommendation.

December 17, 2019 By Sherry

Entree/ Pasta

Avocado Pasta with Asparagus and Peas

I love all pasta recipes.

Most of the time I don’t care if the pasta is real (gluten) or imitation (non-gluten); it’s all about the sauce and other ingredients.

Over the years I’ve tried a lot of gluten free pastas and really by the time you put a sauce on it you can’t tell a lot of difference. One thing I did once when I was trying not to eat too much pasta was I made Zucchini Pasta with Pine Nuts and most of the “pasta” was zucchini noodles and I used about a quarter size of whole wheat pasta. That turned out really good because the real pasta kept the zucchini pasta from going too limp and gave it a little more body for holding the sauce. I will do that one again.

I found this Avocado Pasta recipe at wellplated.com. Not sure how I happened upon this but I’m glad I did. I added some chopped fresh spinach to the skillet because I wanted to make sure there was plenty of vegetables and “green” color; it did the trick.

December 11, 2019 By Sherry

Cake/ Dessert/ Desserts

Pumpkin Swirl Cheesecake

One delicious beautiful cheesecake.

Over Thanksgiving my daughter Alexis wanted to make this cheesecake to take to a family dinner. She had a great looking recipe and we decided to make two; one for her and one for us. I’m so glad we did, it was absolutely delicious; smooth, creamy and just the right amount of sweetness.

I’ve never been a fan of pumpkin pie. I make it almost every year and maybe one or two pieces are eaten and then the garbage disposal gets the rest. That did not happen with this dessert. It’s still around a few days later and getting eaten. I think I’m going to freeze slices for hub so he can enjoy it when he’s whining for something sweet; he doesn’t really whine though.

Grandson, Thomas was on hand to help stir. He told me when he arrived at our house that he wanted to learn to cook; music to this Grans ears. Thanks Thomas for your help and you can come cook in Grans kitchen anytime you want.

December 4, 2019 By Sherry

Entree/ Pasta/ Poultry

Smoked Mushrooms and Chicken with Pappardelle Pasta

Smokin’ mushrooms! And have a smokin’ happy Thanksgiving.

On the last leg of Canadian trip this past summer we were in Burlington, VT and I had made reservations at a cool restaurant, The Hen of the Wood in Burlington. Well, I thought it was in Burlington and when we had our Uber driver drop us off there was a sign on the door saying they had had a “fire” and please visit their Waterbury location. I had made reservations at the wrong restaurant (never done that before).

After walking around downtown for a while we settled on Pascolo Ristorante and chose to eat at the bar rather than wait an hour for a table. We love eating at bars if there is something interesting going on that we want to watch. I ordered their delicious smoked mushroom pappardelle pasta with marsala cream, rosemary and truffle oil. Like many restaurant recipes it wasn’t hard to come up with a recipe.

November 25, 2019 By Sherry

Bread/ Breads/Biscuits

Parmesan Parsley Biscuits

Hot out of the oven Parmesan Parsley Biscuits!

Pass the butter please. You can’t possibly not have some butter with a hot biscuit right out of the oven.

I made these biscuits one craft circle morning for my table ladies. There are about 12-14 of us at the “projects” table. Normally, I take something to share with the whole group of 60-80 ladies but this day I made my Pumpkin Tomato Soup for my group’s lunch and these biscuits all came our way. I wished they could have been hot out of the oven (the best way to eat any biscuit) but I had to bake them right before I left that morning; still good though.

November 18, 2019 By Sherry

Appetizers/ ColdApp

Giardiniera Bruschetta

As easy as it gets.

(Note: Hope you like my new layout for the blog. There is a “search” box over on the right hand side which allows you to search for an ingredient or category or recipe. What I’m excited about the most is the index of recipes now show pictures so you do not have to click on every link to see what something looks like. Thanks to my son, Scott, for all his help.)

Giardiniera is an Italian relish of vegetables that is pickled in vinegar or oil that you can either make or it is sold in jars. For this recipe I used the latter.

This simple appetizer I tasted about ten years ago and thought how simple it would be to make for a last minute bite when company comes over.

Some other uses for this pickled vegetable mix would be on hot dogs, brats, other sandwiches just about anything that would taste good with a good pickle.

November 11, 2019 By Sherry

Bread/ Egg Dishes/ Morning Foods

Quiche with Bacon and Peas

Moo moo here, moo moo there, moo moo everywhere.

We were in Warrenton (Texas) in October visiting our son and his family who just moved there from Austin to open a Nano Brewery in Roundtop sometime in the spring 2020.

They moved an old farmhouse on their property and have been renovating it for months now. We (mostly my hub) has been going over to help some. This week’s project was to put a gate up at the front of their property. My job was to make some drapes for the dining area along with cooking some homemade goodies to have in their freezer.

One day I decided to walk up and check the progress on the gate. The house is half a mile back from the road so I’m walking, walking, looking around, walking, eyeing the cows and bulls to see if they were going to “charge” me. I imagine me laid out on the road crushed by a big cow when the guys come back from working on the gate. I think I need to get use to those cows and country life.

November 4, 2019 By Sherry

Appetizers/ Entree/ HotApp/ Poultry

Asian Chicken Skewers

Great for a bunco snack or even dinner.

I love food on a stick. Who doesn’t love a good corndog, ice cream on a stick or even a salad on a stick.

Looking around online I actually found some other “stick” foods I would like to try. Cheesecake pops, caramel apple slices, tater tot skewers and even a pesto shrimp skewer with cauliflower mash (now that sounds good and I better save that before I lose it.) I got distracted on that last recipe and decided to take a look at it; low carb if you use the cauliflower mash but I was thinking how delicious it would be with some good stone ground grits. I will try both ways soon for sure.

October 28, 2019 By Sherry

Entree/ Poultry

Crawfish Stuffed Chicken Thighs with Wild Rice

Crawfish and wild rice stuffed chicken thigh.

When visiting Missouri last winter my nephew, Todd, made these stuffed chicken thighs full of wild and long grain rice and crawfish. And after smoking on his Big Green Egg (and he has a really big one) smothered them with a creamy crawfish sauce.

Chicken thighs are my favorite cut of chicken. I prefer to buy it on the bone because there’s so much more flavor when they are cooked. This particular time though, I bought boneless and pounded out a little to make them large enough to hold all the filling I wanted to fill them with.

October 21, 2019 By Sherry

Drinks

Aviation Cocktail

My favorite cocktail.

Either you love this or not. I happen to love it. I love the floral notes of the creme de violet and of course the purple color. I’ve started using some of the Empress 1908 gin which is really purple as either all of the gin in this cocktail or part of it. It will make the drink a lot more purple. This gin uses butterfly pea blossoms and that’s where the color comes from.

The Aviation is a classic cocktail made with gin, maraschino liqueur (not the red kind), creme de violet and lemon juice. This cocktail was created by Hugo Ensslin who was head bartender at the Hotel Wallick in Newark back in the early twentieth century and the recipe first showed up in print in 1916. This cocktail is often referred to as a “forgotten classic” but back in the 1990’s young bartenders found the recipe while looking through old cocktail manuals.

October 18, 2019 By Sherry

Dessert

Peach and Strawberry Crunch

Summer is over but still love those peaches.

Summer might be over but we can still get some good peaches in the market.

Back in the summer I bought some delicious peaches and then when we went out of town I didn’t want to waste them and didn’t have time to peel and bag so I simply put them peeling/pit and all in the freezer. So when it was time to make this dessert all I had to do was thaw peach and sugar them.

My mother always made shortcake with pie crust not those little cakes you see hollowed out in the center always sitting next to the strawberries. For this fruit dessert I mixed strawberries and the peaches and added a little cinnamon and a little almond extract while the peaches were juicing out in the refrigerator.

October 14, 2019 By Sherry

Dessert

Salted Caramel Beer Sauce Waffle Dessert

Bacon, Waffles, Ice Cream and Caramel Sauce!

If you haven’t tried my Bacon Waffles or read the “Ice Cream/Waffle Bacon/Waffle” story read how this all started with my Bacon Belgian Waffle post.

Our son Paul and his wife, Brooke are opening a brewery in Roundtop, Texas sometime in the Spring 2020 and I’ve been experimenting with different things he might want to try for the Brewery and came up with this idea for a dessert. This would definitely be a shared dessert although when I made it for the blog I gave it to my husband and told him that he didn’t have to eat it all, just give it a taste. Well, he cleaned his plate.

October 7, 2019 By Sherry

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