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Sherry

Dessert/ Morning Foods/ Pies/Tarts

Cherry and Peach Strudel

Sweet, sweet cherries.

Last August my sister and I were picking some cherries for photo op up in Door County, Wisconsin. That’s when we were out of our minds and decided to do a Segway tour in Peninsula State Park and we both fell twice off them and I’m still having shoulder trouble a year later.

I love cherries, and in August they were really cheap in the markets. I think I paid $1.99 lb. for these cherries and the peaches are some leftover from my Trader Joe’s box I bought. Before the peaches went bad and the cherries were all eaten (by me) I wanted to make something with them.

While at Pike’s Market in Seattle I had a chance to taste some Rainier cherries. They are the golden looking ones that I always pass up in the grocery store for the red ones which I always thought were better. I was wrong, they are both delicious.

My oldest son, Scott, loves Cherries and when we were visiting Chicago a while back I asked our 4 year old grandson if he liked cherries (knowing that his dad liked them). Oliver was so funny, he said “yes I like them but mom can’t buy them because dad eats them all up”; and he proceeded to say the same thing about potato chips.

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Side dish/ Vegetables

Brussel Sprouts with Squash, Bacon and Raisins

And butternut squash too….

The beginnings of this recipe came from an old March 2012 Bon Appetit magazine. I upped the bacon, added more shallots and the butternut squash. I like the idea of what they did with the chicken broth and raisins so I used that part of the recipe.

I made brussel sprouts twice while cooking for my daughter and her husband after the baby came. (Wow, that means Thomas is already 5 months old.) One day I made a Brussel sprout salad and the next night I just winged it and sautéed some quartered BS’s, added some dried cranberries, almonds, shallots and a splash of balsamic vinegar.

So, for the ease of pronouncing this vegetable I will probably always call it Brussel sprouts instead of Brussels sprouts. That’s kind of hard to say isn’t it, two words side by side ending in an “s”. So, whether it’s correct or not, I’m doing what a lot of others do and calling them just Brussel sprouts. I will capitalize the Brussel since it is thought that Brussel sprouts came from Brussels, Belgium. Just try saying Brussels sprouts ten times and see if you don’t get tongue tied.

Seems like I was in speech class forever when I was younger. My sister and I had a problem with “r’s” and I think one of my most embarassing “pronouncing something wrong” moment was in class when I was suppose to say BRAZIL and it came out brassier.  Maybe that’s why I never like hearing a bra called a  b-r-a-s-s-i-e-r.  It gives me the shivers just thinking about it. 

It’s kind of like when I want a glass of Pino Noir and I can’t quite get that Noir part out right, I just say give me the such and such Pino and they usually know what I’m talking about.

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Appetizers/ HotApp

Italian Stuffed Mushrooms

Award winning mushroom!

A Top Chef winner I am not, neither am I a Chopped Champion, Cutthroat Kitchen, MasterChef or even Worst Cook in American winner. BUT, I did win two recipe contest with my recipe for Italian Stuffed Mushrooms. This was way, way back in the 70’s; I can’t believe I have never posted this recipe before.

I put together this recipe back in the 70’s when we lived in Louisville. It all started with a contest (I love contest and I love competition) and me trying to come up with something original to enter; I didn’t want the usual sausage stuffed or crab stuffed mushroom so I just started putting together some ingredients and came up with this and 40 years later still use the same recipe.

After winning these contests and these was the only ones I ever won, I started sending recipes to Southern Living Magazine. For every recipe they printed (and I think they printed 5 of mine), they sent me 50 recipe cards that said “my recipe printed in Southern Living magazine” and then at the end of the year, they sent me the annual cookbook which also had my recipes printed in it. This was one recipe they printed. I started this recipe with some chopped up onion, pepperoni, mozzarella cheese and italian season and some garlic powder, I also added some Italian seasoned bread crumbs. I don’t know why anyone would bother counting carbs in this recipe; the bread crumbs are only 25 carbs for all the filling. So put them in if you want to.

I’m sitting here typing up the recipe still in disbelief that I never shared this with you. I never really made this for any of my catering jobs (maybe once or twice) because I like to serve these right out of the oven and never cared for the way mushrooms looked when they sat in the oven too long. If you make these, and I hope you will, you can make the filling the day before, fill the mushroom caps and cook right as your guest arrive.

A funny thing happened the first time I made these and I’m almost ashamed to tell you but ya know the little package of preservative stuff that comes in with the already cut pepperoni; well, when I was putting the slices into my food processor to chop up I was in a hurry and forgot to look for that little package and it was shredded with it’s contents into my pepperoni.  I had to start all over with the chopping and I have never made that mistake again.

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Appetizers/ ColdApp

Watermelon Feta Squares

Little bites of watermelon.

All summer I tried to find a good watermelon. Why is it I can eat watermelon at someone else’s home and it is red, sweet and everything I want from a watermelon. Then I buy one and it’s more pink than red, barely sweet and even the sprinkling of salt I always give it does not improve the taste.

This watermelon I bought for Labor Day but it never got cut so I needed to find a use for it other than throwing it in my food dehydrator. Don’t get me wrong dehydrated watermelon is delicious and I will probably be making some with my leftover watermelon. (This melon still didn’t meet my expectations for a summer watermelon.)

Pink Avocado Catering in Austin catered my daughter and son-in-law’s wedding three years ago. They do some really unique bites of food and this idea came from their blog my daughter sent me last week. Of course they didn’t  give a recipe so I had to just make up one. I hope you will give it a try and if you do please leave comments below and I hope you can find a good watermelon.

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Cookies/Bars/ Dessert

Almond Butter Cookies

These are low carb and delicious.

I love my little button plate.  I bought two of these at the Biltmore Estate gift shop. I can’t go anyplace without bringing back a souvenir to remember the trip by.

Over Labor Day I was looking for a delicate little cookie to serve beneath a pile of sweetened strawberries and cream when I came across this butter cookie recipe from a low carb site. Usually my first instinct is “yuck, low carb desserts and baked goods are terrible.” Of course I always have a supple of almond flour and the other ingredients are just waiting to be used so, why not give them a try.

My husband got the first one off the cooling rack and he almost choked on it. I have to say it is because he put it in his mouth all at once. I’m usually not much of a taster because I want someone else to try it first; kind of like that last bit of milk in a carton and I don’t want to be the one to find out it has soured. So, I’m forced to come in and try one myself. By this time, they have cooled to a nice crispy cookie and I’m thinking they are delicious and will work perfectly for the dessert I had planned for dinner that night; and they will be perfect with a nice cup of tea in the morning or any tea time pause during my day.

I’m already thinking of ways to change these up; maybe add some orange extract and orange zest or some lemon extract and zest or even coconut extract and finely grated coconut would be wonderful.  Thank you Linda for this recipe. According to her calculations these are 1g carbohydrate per cookie.

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Appetizers/ HotApp/ Morning Foods

Fried Avocado with Spicy Dipping Sauce

Crunchy wedges of avocado!

Labor Day has come and gone and I hope everyone had a happy one. Avocados, I’m sure made an appearance at probably 80% of the gatherings yesterday.

I never ate avocados as a kid, or even as a young adult; and it probably wasn’t until we moved to Texas that I really started buying and eating them and then it was just guacamole for a long time. Finally I started venturing out and trying different ways to use it.

While in Vancouver/Victoria/Seattle last month I didn’t really see avocado on a lot of menus. While we were doing our food tour in Seattle (Savor Seattle Walking Food Tour) and walking up and down those VERY steep streets our guide, Samatha (she was great), asked if we could swim in a sea of food what would our favorite food be; I said guacamole and everyone (including a family from Germany) said ohhhh yeahhhhh!

We have done three food tours now and this one is the first where everyone had headphones to wear. They were great because as we hiked up and down all those steep streets getting to our next destination, everyone could hear Samatha over all the street traffic; and once we got to the location we didn’t need them as either one of the chefs or restaurant managers would explain to us about their restaurant and the foods we were eating.

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Cake/ Dessert

Chocolate Cream (Dream) Cake

Dreamy beyond your imagination.

What is it about dreams that’s so fascinating. I have never figured out why I dream the things I do while I’m stacking the ZZZZZZZZ’s. I’m sure everyone has had the dream where you fear someone is chasing you and you can’t get away or you go to school with your pj’s on and how embarrassed you were.

The dreams that use to disrupted my sleep the most were my catering dreams where I forgot to buy the food and got to the party with no food cook and only an hour before the guests arrived and while I’m quickly trying to throw something together I’m telling myself “WAKE UPPPPPPP” this is only a dream. No matter what my dream is it’s gone in a wink as soon as my eyes are open. My husband, on the other hand, dreams in technicolor and the most elaborate involved dreams you have ever heard; dreams he can’t even interpret and he can go on for 15 minutes telling me every detail of the dream.

This chocolate cake just happens to be the dreamiest chocolate cake and you could not even dream up something this delicious. I saw Laura Calder of French Food at Home (Cooking Channel) make this and knew I had to give it a try. She calls it Chocolate Cream Cake; I think this is the cake you may dream about or in my case it may be the cake that keeps me from going to sleep.

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Breads/Biscuits/ Egg Dishes/ Morning Foods

Southern Comfort Breakfast Bowl

Not THAT kind of Southern Comfort!

Southern comfort? Is that rocking away on the front porch drinking a glass of sweet tea waiting for those grand kids to come so you can say “Come give me some sugar” (kisses – and that’s exactly what one of my grandmas use to say, and I would never say that) or is a good pimento cheese sandwich on white bread your southern comfort; and sitting on a stool in a drug store would make that so much better. Maybe a pan of good cornbread or grits or maybe just taking that dog for a long walk on a hot sweltering day is your idea Southern comfort and this recipe certainly isn’t made from the Southern Comfort we use to drink years ago.

Well, I’m fixin to give you a recipe that isn’t a recipe at all; so before you have a hissy fit and say what’s she talkin about, this can be any breakfast ingredient of your choice served in a bowl. It’s all in the presentation and if you are one of those people who don’t like their foods touching then you may not like this.

WARNING: This is a big hungry man breakfast. If it is too heavy for you for the summer, then save it for a cool autumn morning.

One rainy weekend morning I had my head in the refrigerator trying to come up with something yummy. I had seen a episode of Diner, Dives and Drive-Ins months earlier where Guy was in some diner eating a bowl full of gravy and other ingredients.

I decided for my bowl of Southern comfort goodness I was going to start with some browned frozen hash browns and then from there go with a homemade biscuit or two topped with peppered sausage gravy then some bacon “planking” the top with a perfectly poached egg to the side.

I just knew my husband was going to love this. I made him a large size and I ate my biscuit and gravy separate. Big pasta bowls were the perfect dish to serve this in for this rainy day breakfast.

I’m sure everyone knows how to make perfect gravy but to me the most important part of the gravy making is to stir the flour into the bacon fat (or sausage fat) to brown it a little. Doing this will guarantee that your gravy doesn’t have a raw flour taste. I’ve seen people put flour and milk in a jar and shake before adding to a pan. Believe me, this method will not give you good results and who wants to ruin a great breakfast by taking shortcuts.

I’m making just plain old buttermilk biscuits for my bowl. I also think a base of grits, then biscuit, egg, gravy would be yummy to try.

I had this post ready to go a long time ago and has been waiting in the wings for the right moment. I forgot about it and now that it’s summer already, I’m giving it to you anyway even though it may be a little more filling than you would want for this time of year. You get the idea anyway — for a lighter version, how about a little grits on the bottom topped with some sautéed spinach then a poached egg on top; or even a pile sweet potato hash browns topped with vegetable and egg would be yummy.

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Entree/ Fish/Seafood/ Side dish/ Vegetables

Green Pea Risotto (with Pan Seared Halibut)

Not only is this risotto beautiful, it’s delicious too.

Our 45th wedding anniversary was August 16th, followed the next day by my husband’s birthday. He married an older woman (by 9 months); I was 21 and he turned 21 the next day so his mom had to “sign” for him to be able to get married.

So, to celebrate our 45th we took off for Seattle/Vancouver/Victoria/Seattle. We called this our “planes, trains, and automobiles” trip (after the movie) but it turned out to be planes, trains, automobiles, water taxis, whale boat, ferry boat, tour bus (to Butchart Gardens), hop on hop off bus trip.

The trip started in Seattle, one night there and then caught Amtrak for a beautiful 5 hour ride to Vancouver which was almost totally overlooking the water. Once in Vancouver we walked the Calpilano Suspension bridge, tree top adventure and cliff walk along the edge of the park.

A whale watching boat took us on a 4 hour trip across to Victoria where we saw lots of whales. While there we saw Butchart Gardens and of course had to have tea at the Empress Hotel where we were staying.

One night we had dinner at the Blue Crab Restaurant and took a water taxi over to the restaurant since the walk was a little long with the sore foot I developed while hiking through the Cilpilano Park (:() ) It seems like ever dinner we had (they were all great) we called our anniversary dinner.

That night at the Blue Crab, GA (hub) had a pan seared halibut with summer green pea risotto and tarragon butter sauce. It was so beautiful I almost wanted to trade but I had Sea Scallops and Tiger Prawn with pancetta and garden pea couscous and chili citrus butter sauce which I did not want to share. (We did share a bite.)

This was definitely one of our favorite trips and ranks right up there with trips to France, Spain and Italy.

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Salads

Tropical Rice & Chicken Salad

Recipe gone wrong!!!!!

I was at World Market one day looking for a few things and happened up on this Imperial Jasmine Rice Blend. It’s beautiful colors of purple, red and white made me want to grab it off the shelf and come up with a recipe using it. The jasmine rice is grown exclusively in the East of Thailand.

According to the package Imperial Jasmine Rice is a unique purple grain that is mixed with naturally perfumed white jasmine rice to give it an ideal texture while retaining its vibrant purple color and sweet flavor. (This is according to the package). Ya know purple is one of my favorite colors so I couldn’t wait to see what this rice was going to look like. I think it would also be beautiful under apiece of grilled salmon and I have just the new recipe to try using this beautiful rice

Years ago I made this tropical chicken salad for a church function of over a hundred ladies and all I remember about the luncheon was how much everyone enjoyed the salad so I decided to take that recipe and make some changes and like magic — a new recipe.

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Side dish

Savory Cabbage with Caraway

Beautiful cabbage to go with your dogs!

So, what do you do on a day you don’t want to cook?  I had a busy morning shopping at a second hand kid’s store (twice). Then after getting home I couldn’t wait to mail the things off, so my third trip out for the day was to the post office so get the new purchases in the mail.

I emptied my refrigerator of all the 4th of July leftovers; I can only take looking at old food for so many days and then I feel like the refrigerator needs to be purged of it’s contents.

I just happened to have some Italian “hot” sausages in the freezer so I threw them on my magic defrosting tray which is a Wilton Armetale grill tray. When I was working at Williams Sonoma we sold these trays and one day I decided to look up what else to use the tray on other than grilling.  One suggestion was to thaw your frozen foods on it. Don’t ask me how this works but it does. Put a piece of frozen food on it and in less than two hours it will be thawed.  If you have ANY Armetale, try it, it make work with all their pieces and it may be because it is made up of many kinds of metals and it absorbs the cold. Believe me, it works.

After getting the sausages thawed on my tray I knew I had some red and green cabbage left from the 4th so I found some recipes from Rachael Ray, Ina Garten, and Martha Stewart and I came up with this variation.

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Egg Dishes/ Morning Foods

Scrambled Eggs Benedict

This is a bit of a “Benedict” stretch”

Are you sitting with your morning pot of tea or cup of coffee pondering what you were going to throw together for breakfast. There are no rules to cooking (maybe just in baking recipes I guess) and I think every rule has an exception, especially this one. Is there a Benedict police out there that says you have to use an English Muffin, Canadian bacon (which isn’t even bacon), poached egg, and hollandaise? And, I’m sure there are a handful of you out there saying “don’t mess with my Eggs Benedict, your are a Eggs Benedict ARNOLD”.

It’s a stretch calling this eggs benedict; and I am using a microwave made hollandaise and putting it together like eggs Benedict.  All the other ingredients are new to the scene.

I had this pork belly in the refrigerator and didn’t think I was every going to get it all used up with.  I have made Steamed Buns with Pork Belly, Pork Belly Tacos, I tried a BLT appetizer made with the pork and still had some saying, pleaseeee, it’s my time to go.

Hollandaise has never  been my friend. It seems like it either curdles or I have it too cold to serve.  This time I decided this was going to be a quick breakfast. Other than making the biscuits (which I could do in my sleep), everything was almost ready to go. The poached eggs were replaced with a quick egg scramble; even a fried egg would have been good on this and I guess that would have more resembled the traditional poached egg. And the pork belly, as I said was on it’s last leg in my refrigerator.

If you didn’t do the pork belly try making this with some thick sliced bacon or a grilled boneless pork chop.

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