Sherry – Page 20 – Rosemary and the Goat

New Years Resolutions

Keeping those resolutions so far?

So, we are into our second month of the new year. Did you make any resolutions and have you been able to keep them?

Our new years day always starts with either pork belly (or hog jowl), black eyed peas (of course), cabbage, and cornbread. There is hardly ever any deviation from this menu. I added some pico this year to go with my black eyed peas but that was only because I hadn’t made any chow chow in a couple of years and didn’t have even a jar tucked away in my pantry.

A New Year’s resolution is suppose to be a change you want to make in an undesired trait or behavior or something you want to accomplish in the new year. Off hand I can’t think of an undesirable trait I have (I’m kidding myself, I’m sure) and I know I have no behaviors I want to change (well, maybe a couple) but I would like to accomplish a few things this year like have my broken foot finally heal, and go to the gym more often, read more books, cook more, travel more and try to get rid of more stuff I do not need. Continue Reading…

January 25, 2018 By Sherry

Candy/ Cookies/Bars/ Dessert

Coconut Date Skillet Candy

You don’t have to wait until next Christmas!

Who says you can’t make candy any time of the year? I usually think of my candy making days as something I do in the fall between Thanksgiving and Christmas; but don’t we all have a “sweet tooth” all year.

This was one of my mother’s favorite candy recipes and I remember her stirring the date mixture and after adding the Rice Krispies; my favorite part was to scrape out the leftovers from the skillet and eat it before it was even rolled in coconut.

I decided to make these for my February bunco group to see what people thought. I have a few friends who remember their moms making something very similar. What’s not to love about these little spheres of dates, sugar, butter, coconut, pecans and Rice Krispies? And since I have so many dates, coconut, and pecans left from my holiday baking, I might as well make some to take to craft circle. My grandmother would have said “they have cereal, that makes them healthy”.

January 19, 2018 By Sherry

Soup

Turkey Soup with Rice and Kale

SOUP’S ON!

It’s time to get out those soup pots out, dust them off (if you haven’t already done that) and and start thinking of some delicious, comforting, belly warming soups to eat by a roaring fire. It’s finally cold here in Texas and I’m sure a lot of you have had snow and cold weather for weeks.

Well, here in Texas even in January I might have to turn the air conditioner down to 60 and pretend it is winter outside before I get that comforting feeling from a warm bowl of anything. Not always though, sometimes we do get a few really chili days where I might put on a coat and long pants — just kidding, well, maybe not; my husband seems to wear shorts year around until it is so cold playing golf he has to put on his zip on legs to his shorts to take the chill off. And, just as soon as I wrote this, we started getting freezing temperatures and in just a few days have lost many plants in our back yard. Baby, it’s cold out side fits our neck of the woods right now.

January 13, 2018 By Sherry

Salads

Chicken Salad For The New Year

Start the year with a healthy salad.

About now everyone is probably thinking “how can I take off those extra pounds I put on over the holidays”. I put on .6 of a lb. xmas week but probably did more damage New Years than that and I will be saying “yikes” how did I gain that much just letting go for a few days. Well, whatever the numbers say, I’ll deal with it because putting those extra pounds on was quite fun and who wants to past up fun times with friends and family.

So, this recipe idea started with a segment on the Today show New Years day with how to make extra meals from a grilled chicken. I changed the recipe so much that I decided to rename it. I swapped the carrot with tomato, added avocado and changed the walnuts to pistachios. I also decided to do a quick pickle on the broccoli stems instead of cooking them and when it was all put together I decided to add a little dried cranberries for color and their recipe morphed into a new recipe.

January 7, 2018 By Sherry

Salads

Spicy Green Bean and Cucumber Salad

Hello Betty. Long time no see.

Where would I be today without you Betty? Betty who you say; Betty Crocker of course.

I grew up watching my mother cook and living next d00r to our grandparents I also saw my grandmother cook up a lot of new dishes, some good, some not so good. Especially during the holidays there were always new recipes. I remember the strawberry shortcake made with Twinkies for a summer dessert – good, but the thought of Twinkies now makes me shutter. Watching my mother cook breakfast, lunch and “supper” for us, I’m sure, gave me the desire to learn to cook and experiment with different foods. My dad was always experimenting with things like making his own bar-b-q sauce, or canning fish to make fish cakes and experimented with hushpuppies until he settled on a recipe that he used from then on.

So, back to dear old Betty and I wonder how old she is these days. Does she have wrinkles, grey hair? Has she put on a ton of weight from eating all her recipes over the years. I guess we will never know.

Betty Crocker was one of the first cookbooks I bought as a newlywed and I still have it although it is stuck away upstairs along with most of my other cookbooks since now with a flick of a few keys a person can have hundreds of recipes to choose from; sorry Betty you were replaced.

December 29, 2017 By Sherry

Appetizers/ HotApp

Cheesy Bacon Caraway Toast

An old favorite!

Talk about quick, that’s this recipe. Talk about old, this was one of the first appetizers I made as a newlywed. Growing up I don’t ever remember having “appetizers” before a meal. I remember dips we had but they weren’t really appetizers before a meal.

For our December bunco get-together, our hostess, Gail, decided it would be a fun theme to bring some appetizers we remember making or having in our early years of being married. (I’ve been married going into 49 years now and still searching for new and interesting appetizers to make.)

So, we had a spinach madeline with crawfish and FRITOS (I still buy those things), a Yule Tide Log, rum balls, and a cheese ball I remember making with pineapple, green peppers etc. Didn’t we all love cheese balls back then. What happened to that trend I wonder. Someone brought deviled eggs too. I remember early on in catering a lady wanted me to make deviled eggs for a cocktail party and I thought that was not very trendy at the time. Guess what, they were the first things to be eaten. We also had a peach half salad and Cheesy olive balls (cheese pastry with an olive hiding inside) then baked. Yum. Mincemeat pie was brought by one friend. I remember my grandmother making mincemeat pie and I would not ever try it.

December 18, 2017 By Sherry

Dessert/ Ice Cream

Popcorn Ice Cream

How do I describe how good popcorn ice cream is?

Well, it taste like popcorn (my favorite food group), it’s smooth and full of vanilla flavor. Pair it with a sprinkling of salt, maybe some salted popcorn or caramel corn or my favorite with movie popcorn add-ins — Milk Duds (don’t do that any longer) and you will have a surprisingly good dessert. Crunchy, sweet, salty, what more could you want?

One beautiful night in Santa Fe back in September, with the sun going down and the temperature starting to drop my twin sister, two friends from high school (Pauletta and Judy) and me went to dinner at Eloisa restaurant. We had been to this restaurant as one of the stops on our walking food tour and during that tour they took us to the rooftop bar (Bar Alto) to show us the 360° view. A magnificent view to have cocktails before going to dinner downstairs and we knew we just had to go back there for drinks and dinner.

The Eloisa is in the Drury Hotel which is a historic renovation filled with artwork throughout the hotel (we didn’t stay there). My dinner for the night was a Beef Tenderloin with wood-grilled shrimp and a potato-corn gratin, asparagus and a spicy chipotle béarnaise. (Menu) None of us finished our steaks and we took leftovers back to the house for steak and eggs the next morning; we HAD to save room for dessert.

The Caramelized Brioche French Toast with popcorn ice cream and apricot sorbet sounded so interesting we couldn’t resist. I think I could do a better job on the Brioche French Toast (too thick and didn’t soak up enough of the cream mixture it sat in overnight), but the popcorn ice cream was so delicious and they told me (kind of) how to make it.

December 12, 2017 By Sherry

Appetizers/ ColdApp

Pumpkin Bacon Spread

Ok, I know what you are thinking — PUMPKIN AGAIN.

I promise, I promise, this is the last pumpkin recipe this year. I told you I couldn’t get all the pumpkin recipes posted before December.

So, if you have a jar of pumpkin butter left over from Thanksgiving, you just have to give this a try. Years ago when I worked at Williams Sonoma I often was in charge of doing the “tastings” during my shift, which meant I was trying to talk people into buying the things I was cooking even if they didn’t know they really needed to buy those products.

I remember the first time I was told to make this pumpkin dip. I thought it sounded terrible. And, I have liked salty and sweet taste together since I was a kid and dipped potato chips into soft serve ice cream. After making this several times and people immediately snatching up a jar of the pumpkin butter I decided to give it a try and I absolutely loved the taste of the salty bacon with the sweet pumpkin butter and throw in some cream cheese and green onions and spread on a crunchy cracker and it was on my list of things to “sell” when I worked. I knew if I could get people to taste it, they would be buying the pumpkin butter.

December 6, 2017 By Sherry

Salads

Pumpkin Salad with Goat Cheese with Maple Vinaigrette

So Thanksgiving is over, that doesn’t mean you still can’t make this salad.

Didn’t Thanksgiving come and go in a wink of the eye? And all those little grandsons have gone home.

I had so many pumpkin things I wanted to share this year that I couldn’t fit them in before Thanksgiving. So if you can still get those little pie pumpkins, grab one and make this salad. If you can’t or don’t want to do a pumpkin recipe in December or for Christmas, substitute butternut squash for the pumpkin pieces.

Hopefully you aren’t like me and only think certain things should be cooked in certain months. I really need to get that out of my head – that stuffing/dressing can only be made in November. That is the only time I make dressing. Even though I might freeze leftover dressing, it really never gets eaten because it seems to just not fit in March when I’m cleaning out my freezer and find a dish of my Thanksgiving stuffing that was so delicious back on the day smothered with giblet gravy with some mashed potatoes and saurekraut sitting beside it. Now that has my mouth watering and me wanting some dressing. Maybe I could stuff pork chops with stuffing, that doesn’t sound very Thanksgivingly but would use up that dressing you may have popped in the freezer.

November 30, 2017 By Sherry

Sauces

Chipotle Butter

Compound butters…

While in Santa Fe back in September we had these wonderful Blue Corn Muffins served with chipotle butter. The butter was so good and had a little heat and a little sweetness to it and got me thinking about the compound butter post I had started years ago and never finished.

Compound butter is simply butter with elegance added and we all are aware that anything with butter is all that much better and when we are starting to see our herbs come to the end of their summer lives what better way to resurect them than to make a compound butter to put in your freezer for those cold (or chilly) months and remember what your herbs gave up for you. Typically compound butters are rolled into a cylinder shape and chilled or frozen and then pats of the butter are served on the steak, fish or even vegetables or even better a sweet butter with a warm scone.

I love making compound butters because it makes whatever you put it on so delicious. A compound butter simply means that there is some sort of flavoring or seasoning added to the butter. It can be a savory butter or a sweet butter to go along with your morning scones.

I think the first time I ever made a compound butter was when I made Chicken Kiev as a newlywed and wow, how wonderful it made something that wasn’t much more than a fancy fried chicken breast, rolled around a piece of butter and deep fried. But, when you cut in the Chicken Kiev and that herbed butter streamed all over the rice you had set it on, I knew then that I was going to like this new adventure of cooking for my family.

November 24, 2017 By Sherry

Bars/ Cake/ Dessert

Pumpkin Walnut Squares

Pumpkin Cake, Bar, or Square — Good thing!

Who doesn’t need one more pumpkin recipe for the holidays? When I found this recipe I wasn’t really looking for another cake recipe but decided to give it a try and I took it to craft circle to my expert tasters. I have to omit that I did not try it because I’m still on this diet. But, I got thumbs up from everyone that tried the cake and it was gone long before we broke for lunch.

Now, I wish I had tried the cake. I’ve done this before, on a diet, make something delicious and won’t try it. That’s crazy and I need to change and at least take a bite of the desserts I make.

November 19, 2017 By Sherry

Bread/ Muffins

Blue Corn Muffins

Blue Corn Muffins – Santa Fe Style

I’ve had blue corn tortilla chips before and didn’t think much of them one way or the other; after all, they were tortilla chips that were blue in color and I’ve never noticed much of a difference between the regular and the blue corn.

While in Santa Fe back in September, we visit Eloisa restaurant twice and both times were served their blue corn muffins with a chipotle butter that was as orange as the evening sunset. The muffins had a little sweetness to it and the butter had a little heat to it — a match made in Santa Fe. And, they were just so pretty and hard to resist even though I wasn’t “eating” bread then. I have to say I did not pass up the blue corn muffins or the chipotle rolls we had at Geronimo’s on our last night in Santa Fe.

On our last day in New Mexico, we visited Chimayo. We wanted to check out the weavers and especially eat at Rancho de Chimayo since they had just won a James Beard award last year. While in one of the little shops, I was stocking up on green Hatch chile powder, the dried green chiles, and the red ones both crushed and ground I was talking to a couple of ladies in the shop (I guess they were stocking up on their spices too) and told them about the blue corn muffin I had eaten a couple of days before; and the owner heard me talking and pulled out a bag of blue corn flour. I know I could probably buy it here (Bob’s Red Mill) but there was just something about sharing recipes with these ladies that made my day. They told me how they use the Hatch green chile powder on popcorn and even though I had not had popcorn for about 10 weeks, it made me want to rush home and make some.

November 13, 2017 By Sherry

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