Sherry – Page 26 – Rosemary and the Goat

Stir Fry with Pork, Eggplant and Greens

A quick, easy dinner, get out that wok or skillet!

Are you one of those people who likes cooking more in the Fall/Winter than the summer? I love cooking anytime of the year, but there is something about cooking when the temperatures start to drop a little and the leaves are falling/or turning colors (that doesn’t happen until later in the year for us here in Texas.) that makes me want to do a big hearty meal.

This isn’t a big hearty meal but actually a very healthy quick dinner you can throw together for a one pan stir-fry that will have you wanting to try your own variations.

Do you love eggplant as much as I do? It’s hard for me to pass up eggplant parmesan and I love eggplant caponata. I’ve fried eggplant chips and served with a drizzle of honey after having this tapas in Spain; and I’ve seen eggplant hummus at Trader Joe’s but have not tried that yet.

November 4, 2016 By Sherry

Candy/ Dessert

Honeycomb Shards

Shards of sweetness.

What’s your favorite type of candy? Is it chocolate, (or not), chewy, sour, salty, or hard? If it’s called candy I like it.

My mother always made the best pecan brittle and I remember watching her make it during the holidays. She would roast the pecans that she had picked up out of our yard, cook the sugar mixture until it was just the right temperature and then throw in some baking soda. That was my favorite part; I loved seeing it foam up and almost spill over the pan right before she would pour it up onto a buttered cookie sheet to cool and then be broken into pieces for either us to eat or go to a friend in need of some sweets.

Some recipes call this candy toffee, sponge toffee or cinder toffee; whatever you call it I think you will enjoy the amazing taste from this quick to make confection. I’m not really sure how it differs from a brittle but it isn’t nearly as hard to eat. My first attempt was using light corn syrup but then I wanted to try a recipe using honey. I couldn’t really tell the difference and in my third batch I used 2 tablespoons of syrup and the rest of the 1/2 cup filled with honey.

However you decide to make this, dip a few pieces in chocolate and sprinkle with a little flaked sea salt. My first attempt which was wonderful was from Buzzfeed but I chose to try A Cozy Kitchen’s version for the blog.

October 30, 2016 By Sherry

Cookies/Bars/ Dessert

Chocolate Espresso Pizzelles

Out with the old, in with the new.

A person who likes to bake and cook can never have too many pans or utensils, can they? Maybe I don’t need three pans to make chocolate bouchons which are chocolate “cork” shaped cakes made by Thomas Keller; at the time I bought these molds I worked at Williams Sonoma and was catering and if I were to make these 12 would not have been enough, I needed at least 36 at a time. So is the story behind most of my pans like my 24 tiny 1″ x 2″ bread pans; and they are the cutest little loaves of bread you have ever eaten.

So, what is one to do when they are faced with a lifetime of cooking equipment when trying to clean out a kitchen to have it painted. Well, you go through one thing at a time and say “do I really need that” and 98% of the time my answer was yes and “this is so cute, I will use it sometime”.

I bought my first krumkake iron (or pizzelle) over 25 years ago and it was the kind that you put on top of burner, added the batter, shut the lid, cooked a few seconds, flipped and hoped that it did not burn before making a crisp delicious disk that you could form into a cone or cannoli shell.

Well, when I put my hands on my old krumkake iron I decided that it was time to replace and update the gadget/pan because perhaps I might want to make sone cones or pizzelles. I had bought my daughter-in-law, Missy, an electric pizzelle maker while we were in Chicago as few months ago and we made the Chocolate Tacos.

October 25, 2016 By Sherry

Entree/ Poultry

Honey Chicken Roman Style (Poulet Apicius)

Brings back memories of Arles.

“A surprising and unusual chicken dish that harks back to the flavors of the Romans. Honey, spices and fish sauce. This is a dish inspired by the writings of Apicius”–

That’s the way this dish was described to us by our cooking instructor in Arles, France. It’s been four years since we were in France and I recently found this recipe while doing a cleanout of our kitchen before having everything painted inside and out. While visiting France (especially Provence) we wanted to take a cooking class and we came across this class in Arles. The kitchen looked at least 200 years old and it was such a fun class and much more interesting that some of the ones I’ve taken in kitchens all decked out with Viking equipment and sterile surroundings. Our instructor couldn’t speak English and his assistant translated everything we were to do while shopping at the street market and preparing the lunch/dinner.

I was reading up on Roman food saw where the Romans loved fish sauce that they made and that they used a lot of seasoning in their foods because a lot of the time the food would have turned rancid from improper storage and to keep their guest from tasting this, covered it up with lots of different spices. They also had no forks and ate either with their fingers or using spoons and knives. So, if you feel the urge, just pick the chicken up with your fingers and enjoy.

October 20, 2016 By Sherry

Salads

Grilled Chicken Caesar Salad with Avocado

Another twist on a favorite.

In high school we had a favorite place to go for lunch, or I should say two places, one was Knox’s (great burgers, no longer there) and the other was the Round House. Yeah, the restaurant was/is round. My sister and I loved their “combination salad” which consisted of head lettuce, tomato, boiled egg with cottage cheese and covered with a French dressing that was so good I still make that salad for my husband and myself.

I haven’t met anyone that has ever eaten cottage cheese and boiled egg on a salad and it has to be head lettuce and I do buy a bottled French dressing and doctor it up a little with some paprika, lemon juice and a dash of Worcestershire sauce.

I don’t know about you but I could eat salad every night as the main course and I have posted quit a few here that can stand on their own as a main dish; others could have some protein added to them and you have a filling dinner salad.

October 15, 2016 By Sherry

Side dish

Cauliflower Couscous

Couscous anyone?

We just finished having our kitchen painted, inside and out. Just cleaning out the cabinets and two pantries for the painters had my head spinning. The amount of STUFF that we had to find a resting place for a week was crazy. With a lifetime of cooking gadgets, pans, dishes, would I be able to get rid of anything? I thought I could go through everything as we unloaded everything but that was not possible. I found myself saying “oh, isn’t this cute, I could use this for a blog post”. When all was painted and we waited patiently the 4 days before putting things back in their space, I had only gotten rid of one table worth of things. In fact. I threw away my stovetop pizelle maker and ordered an electric one from Amazon.

I don’t know why I thought I needed to clean out my refrigerator during this project, maybe because we ate out for a week, but I found this cauliflower hiding in my refrigerator and came across this coop site and this recipe for cauliflower couscous.

Couscous is a North African dish made with steamed balls of semolina. Pititim is Israeli couscous. The only difference I see in the two varieties I find in the store is that the Israeli couscous is a lot larger grain (I prefer the Israeli over the smaller version.)

October 10, 2016 By Sherry

Salads

Crunchy Asian Salad with Peanut Dressing

Good with chicken too!

Have you had a big reunion yet for either high school or college? My 50th high school union was last year and this year was my husband’s (yes, I have to admit I was a cougar even before that was even a word referring to marrying a younger man; he’s only 9 months younger though.) and I have to say it was so much fun seeing everyone. Our high school, (in Caruthersville ) back then may have had 500 students total, so it was easy to know just about everyone in the whole school.

I knew almost everyone that walked through the door at the brunch that one of his classmates had at her house (thanks Geneva). How time flies; everyone looked the same, just a little older, grayer and a few more wrinkles than we had in high school. One friend, asked my sister and I if we remember one night after a football game that we were racing one of my husband’s friends when we were going home (my sister was driving I’m sure) and we went air bound off the road and landed in a field. How could we ever forget that; we probably (maybe) never raced anyone again. No one was hurt, just a little shook up. We did a lot of crazy things back then that I’m sure even our kids never heard about.

Before attending the reunion, we drove to Chicago to see our son and his family. We are always cooking up some new recipe and my daughter-in-law, Missy found this recipe on Pinterest. Grandsons Oliver and Charlie helped me make Oreo ice cream twice and their mom made three salads she had found on Pinterest; this was one of them. I liked it so much I decided to post it to the blog incase you didn’t see it on Pinterest.

October 5, 2016 By Sherry

Dessert/ Ice Cream

Peachy Pistachio Ice Cream

Summer may be over but never wrong season for some homemade ice cream.

They said that the first day of Fall was September 22. Not here in Texas. It’s still pretty hot outside and when it’s hot, I want to make some ice cream.

I ran across some good peaches at Trader Joe’s a few weeks ago and just had to make a couple of jars of peach preserves and with the peaches that didn’t get go into the preserves I made this peachy pistachio ice cream and it did its job and cooled us down on a hot summer night when we had some friends over for some rotisserie chicken. With this chicken I made my Salad Luke and some sautéed green beans.

Don’t you just love fresh peaches when they are in season and meet your expectations when you bite into one. Nothing is worst than to pick a peach and have it feel good, smell good only to be kind of tasteless when you eat the thing. My grandmother use to make fried peach pies but used dried peaches that she would cook and put into a homemade crust then lightly fry them in a skillet. Boy, were they ever good.

September 30, 2016 By Sherry

Entree/ Fish/Seafood

Shrimp Taco Wraps

You don’t need any tortillas for this taco.

I’m always looking for something new to try on friends. Wednesday night is my “girl’s night out” night. Sometimes we do “movie night” (my favorite), sometimes we go out to eat at a local restaurant or occasionally we do dinner and one of our houses.

I love fish tacos and I know I’ve been doing a lot of shrimp recipes lately but I couldn’t resist trying out a recipe for shrimp tacos using lettuce leaves in place of the tortillas; so is it a taco or lettuce wrap or a little bit of both? Doesn’t that mean you can eat twice as much since that lettuce has almost zero calories. I like doing anything with shrimp because as long as there is a bag in your freezer you can come up with something yummy on a moments notice. I have 15 shrimp recipes in my “entree” section here and 14 recipes for appetizers (hot and cold). So, that goes to show you, there’s a lot you can do with that curved little crustacean.

September 25, 2016 By Sherry

Egg Dishes/ Morning Foods

Breakfast Stuffed Potato

Breakfast, lunch, dinner, this will fill you up.

I know I’m always saying that breakfast is my least favorite meal of the day and it still is and that’s why I’m always looking for something special to make on the weekends. If you eat this potato for breakfast you probably won’t be that hungry at lunch but that’s ok; that’s reason enough for me to eat my favorite lunch of cottage cheese and boiled egg and tomato.

This past week we were in Austin babysitting our 2 year old grandson, Thomas. Talk about a cutie pie, just to hear him say the work “snack” and they way he draws that word out brings a smile to my face; and like his Gran, he loves cottage cheese. He uses it as a dip on his favorite water cracker.

I remember when he was younger (that’s not too long ago) he would eat salmon roe with his little fingers and eat all kinds of things I probably wouldn’t eat. This week I had a list of things to prepare while his mom and dad were vacationing; things like lamb meat balls, cheese, eggs, all kinds of fruits, empanadas that mom made and put in the freezer and he loves his bread. On Fridays at school he makes challah and when he came home with his little bag the first thing he says is “my challah”. Everything that week was “my…” , “my helicopter in the sky”, “my truck”, “my bus” (the real ones) and when he saw a picture of his mom and dad it was “my momma” and “my dadda”.

September 20, 2016 By Sherry

Salads

Baby Romaine with Peaches and Bacon

Baby, Baby, Baby Romaine.

On a trip to Savannah back in the spring we tasted some wonderful southern food. I made a list of several I wanted to try and recreate and I’ve already attempted a few of them successfully.

My twin, Terry, and Pauletta and Judy (high school friends) had a great time sampling some of the local cuisine. We had so many different things to choose from that it was a challenge every meal for me to make up my mine on what to order.

Belford’s Grill was our last place to eat before catching a ride to the airport and it was so hard making a decision on what to try; my choice ended up being their Fried Green Tomato Stack. But, before handing over the menu I copied down some things that really looked interesting.

Have you ever seen baby iceberg lettuce? Belford’s had a baby iceberg wedge salad on their menu and it looked so cute. So, one day I had it in my head I was going to make this salad of iceberg lettuce, fresh “southern” peaches, bacon, blue cheese and buttermilk dressing.

The first challenge was finding baby iceberg lettuce. No one had it, not even Whole Foods. Not only did they not have it, they had never heard of it. What I did find at my HEB was baby romaine lettuce. So cute, two little heads about 5″ long in each carton. I cut the heads in half and each half was enough for one salad. My second challenge was finding good peaches; couldn’t so I used nectarines.

September 15, 2016 By Sherry

Entree/ Pasta/ Poultry

Creamy Artichoke Pasta with Chicken

It’s a…….

Dear Diary,

It’s 1963 and “today I met the boy I’m going to marry” (as the song goes). Lots of sporting events, I attended, just to see the boy I was going to marry play football, baseball, basketball and track. High school went by so fast, where did that time go.

1969 — married and on our way to Panama City Beach for our honeymoon. Why are we the only car going South — oh, hurricane Camille coming and we had no idea what was going on with the evacuation. The hurricane missed our beach. My first glass of burgundy had me thinking I was not going to be a wine drinker (that changed). First helicopter ride (my last), back to college for hub and we spent a year and a half in Rolla.

1971-1976 — Our first move to Louisville, KY. First son born 1973, then second son 1976. Fond memories of Louisville and derby’s, friends and baby boys.

1980 — our daughter was born in Ft. Madison, IA

FAST FORWARD to 2016 — After a move from Iowa, to Chicago to Kansas City then our final move to Texas we are five grandsons richer with our daughter expecting again this February. Continue Reading…

September 10, 2016 By Sherry

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