Aloha, Komo Mai, E komo mai, Mahalo!

Hello (friends and family), Come in, Welcome, Thank you (for coming and participating in our feast).

This was a night of cocktails, food (lots of it), wine, (no hula) lots of fun with family and friends.

We have been doing our Michie Feast Day for about 9 years now.  We have done everything from frog legs, sushi, tapas, French Country, Italian, Mexican, oysters 7 ways, New Orleans and this year Hawaiian. This all started when my husband fried our turkey for the first time. After using 3 gallons of oil to fry the turkey, we decided we needed to use the oil again before throwing it away so we bought some frog legs and the rest is history. After that first year we moved on to other themes.

My daughter and her newly wed husband just returned from their honeymoon in Hawaii  in November. So, a Hawaiian theme was quite fitting for this year’s feast. We got to hear all about their 27 mile bike ride down a volcano and all about the beautiful waterfalls and the food they sampled while there. My daughter-in-law, Brooke and her friend, Heather, made all our beautiful tissue paper flowers and decorated the tables. We even had a kid’s table with decorations (see pictures below). Our table always looks great when Brooke is put in charge.

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A new brunch idea.  

Sometimes I wonder if there isn’t something better I can do with my time than sit around and try to think up a new recipe. For years, I have just opened a cookbook or magazine and just prepare the first thing that looked or sounded good.

After all the kids flew the nest, I got lazy and would just throw together something from ingredients I might have in the refrigerator, freezer or pantry. How hard could it be to throw together a stir-fry, not that difficult. Over the last several years, however, I have loved trying to replicate a recipe that I have had in a restaurant or something I have seen on TV.

Sometimes it only takes a glance of food being prepared that gets me to thinking about my take on something I saw.  So, I was watching Top Chef one night and vaguely saw an avocado that was cut in half lengthwise with the peeling left on it and they cracked an egg into the center and then I don’t know what they did with the avocado because I missed that part of the show. I would assume they baked it. All night, I tossed and turned thinking about this egg dish I wanted to make. Isn’t that a ridiculous thing to do over an egg; there must be more important things to toss and turn about.

After an endless night’s sleep, what I came up with was I would half the avocado, cut in 3/4″ slices, dip in flour, egg and then Panko bread crumbs, pan fry it, put on a cookie sheet and crack a small egg into the center and then proceed to bake just to the right doneness so the egg will ooze it’s goodness all over the avocado when pierced with a fork. I’m thinking of a garnish creme fraiche and maybe a little Pico de Gallo would be nice.

Things didn’t turn out exactly as I thought. For one thing small/medium size eggs are no longer available; and I knew the large egg was going to be too big. So I cracked the egg in a dish first and tried to take out some of the egg white. I did one avocado this way, then I poached the other egg. I think the poaching probably worked better because then there is no need to try and bake the egg to the perfect doneness, but it wasn’t as pretty as the first one.  The taste of the fried avocado with the soft cooked egg was great. I fried a flour tortilla to use as a base for the avocado/egg and it was good for sopping up the yolk. Don’t get me started on “sopping” because my husband hates sopping of any kind.  I guess he just does like experiencing those last little bites/dippings/smears of something so delectable on a plate that you just have to grab something and “sop it up). Hey, it’s better than licking your fingers.

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How about another Amuse Bouche (a two bite Amuse)

Back when my daughter and I were shopping for her wedding dress, we had dinner one night at the Parkside Restaurant on 6th street in Austin. If you have never been to sixth street in Austin it is a street full of restaurants, bars, bars and more bars. And tucked into all these college kid hangouts is this trendy restaurant, Parkside. I love their bar foods and also their mixed drinks. Their raw bar is the freshest around, their fried okra with ranch dip awesome.

We had several appetizers that night before moving on to another place for dinner. I was amused by this BLT Oyster on their menu and decided I wanted to recreate it.

I have never been an oyster fan, in fact, I have eaten raw oysters only once and cooked oysters several ways a few other times. But like I have said before; what isn’t good fried. Put the oyster on top of a slice of really good French baguette along with a couple of sauces, some arugula leaves, bacon and tomato and you have yourself one enticing little bite. So, I’m calling this an Amuse Bouche. I would probably make just one per person, serve it in the middle of a small plate with some sauce smeared on the plate and garnish with a few arugula leaves.

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I love these little birds, they are so cute sitting on a plate.

Lovely! Is that a word that can be related to food?  I don’t know but these were beautiful.

Cool weather has come to Texas and it is making me want to cook, and what could be better than the aroma some type of poultry roasting in the oven filling the house.

What is it about those cute little cornish game hens that appeal to me? I have no idea but they look so darn cute on your plate and, hey, you get the whole thing all to yourself. Considering these little birds are normally $2.50-$3.00 each, I think this makes an economical meal and a ★★★★ recipe. Although, after eating one I feel like I have plowed the back 40. They are a lot of work to eat for so little meat. The little bitty legs and wings with an ounce of meat! This sauce and rub would be just as good on chicken breast. I wouldn’t use boneless breast and I would try to find breast with the wing attached. They make for a much prettier presentation than a boneless skinless breast. And besides, boneless chicken breast have no taste what so ever.

A cornish game hen is not a game bird but actually a type of domestic chicken. It can be either male or female and even though they command a higher price, they have a short growing span of 28-30 days unlike a chicken which takes about 45 days from hatch to your plate. I have never seen them fresh so look for them in your freezer section.

I’ve had this recipe laying around in my files for awhile and decided to start digging out some of those recipes and doing more cooking indoors since my husband cooked so much through the summer with his new Kamodo Joe smoker. I guess it is my turn to cook. There’s not a thing I would change in this recipe; it was very good and there was enough sauce for 4 cornish hens.

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A gazillion varieties of apples!

This recipe started out to be titled “Teacup Apple Cake” recipe but after baking some of the leftover batter in a hollowed out apple, I decided to rename the recipe and make the apple stuffed cake the star.

Espresso cups with apple cake warm out of the oven and topped with a tiny scoop of ice cream.

I would love to say that this is an old tattered, smudged, stained family recipe that made it’s way to my recipe box (computer cookbook) via a covered wagon coming over the Oregon Trail to find it’s way to some family member’s home. But, truth be told, it’s a recipe that I either clipped, copied, or ripped quietly from a magazine while impatiently waiting in some small office for some procedure I probably was not looking forward to.

I remember my mother making baked apples with red hot candies melting into a gooey sugary syrup as they baked in the oven and three kids anxiously awaiting the ding of the timer. Back then the only variety of apples I knew about were Red Delicious and Granny Smith apples. I didn’t care about the difference, I just knew I loved baked apples no matter the variety.

This time of the year, anything cooking in the oven with the aroma of apples is waving a big flag saying “Fall is HERE”. Pork with apples – delectable; a spinach salad with sauteed apples and pears –  alluring. Apple tarts, cakes, Mississippi Spice Muffins, a 4″ high double crusted apple pie served a la mode and even an apple martini served with an apple ring teetering on the edge of the glass makes you want to run to the market and check out the gazillion varieties of apples. I found this site listing varieties of apples — Orangeppin.com and did not realize that there are still so many kinds of apples I still have not tried.

I love making this recipe in a coffee cup too, but you could just as easily make it in any size or shape pan. With or without ice cream it is delicious with the warm rum sauce. I have to say that my favorite way was baked inside the apple.  I let my husband have a little of it but it was so good, I ended up finishing the dessert and then just gave him a plain one in the coffee cup with the rum sauce. He was satisfied but next time I will make them all baked in the apples. For Thanksgiving (or the day after), I bought enormous apples and plan on cutting them in half crosswise, hollowing them out and filling with cake batter or you could simply use small apples but they may be harder to keep intact when carving out the inside.

Ok, get in the car and go buy some apples.

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