Morning Foods – Page 4 – Rosemary and the Goat

Avocado Toast

Get up, it’s time for breakfast!

Did your mother ever tell you breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Maybe she was right but seems like there are a lot of studies out trying to prove it is not so. Well you can decide for yourself if you want to eat breakfast or not. In my opinion if you don’t eat breakfast you’re going to be even hungrier at lunch time.

We don’t always eat breakfast when we travel; sometimes we just take an early lunch. The day I had Avocado Toast at Willa Jean’s in New Orleans it was for a “late” lunch after visiting the WWII museum. Believe me, by the time I walked to Willa Jeans, I had no trouble eating the whole piece of toast. There are so many creative breakfast ideas I have picked up from restaurants and they have all seem to have changed my opinion on breakfast not being my favorite meal of the day; it still isn’t my favorite but I do have an arsenal of things I like making for breakfast/brunch when we have company.

July 22, 2016 By Sherry

Egg Dishes/ Morning Foods

Bacon and Avocado Quesadilla with Egg

Who says quesadillas have to be round anyway!

Just because I don’t have a pair of cowboy boots or don’t own a horse or even a ten gallon hat doesn’t mean I have not been around the stables a few times when it comes to whipping up some good Tex-Mex/Mexican food and this recipe just happens to be for breakfast.

Living in Texas for the past 26 years has made me somewhat of an almost Texan with some pretty good Mexican recipe skills. I like my guacamole hot, my taco shells thin and crisp (only the corn ones Crisp) and I like my beans a little tipsy instead of mashed.

All three of our kids went to UT in Austin and three out of five of our grandsons were born in Texas. We have eaten at so many Mexican restaurants over the years that I can tell from their salsa and chips if we are going to enjoy their food.

I love my pasole soup made with pulled pork and hominy and my homemade tamales are almost as good as my sister’s. I’ve been experimenting with some shrimp nachos recently and a few other types of Mexican treats with a Sherry spin on them; so when I recently came across a bacon and avocado quesadilla on a menu from E & O Food and Drink restaurant in Chicago, I knew I was going to have to give It my Tex-Mex-Sherry tweak.

June 21, 2016 By Sherry

Morning Foods/ Side dish

Bacon and Tomato Cheese Grits

Kiss my grits! (As Flo would say)

In case you don’t know who Flo is she was a waitress in the sitcom “Alice” many, many years ago. Can’t say that was a favorite show of mine but I can’t forget her telling people to “kiss my grits”.

Back in April I took a trip to Savannah with my twin sister and two friends from high school, Pauletta and Judy. We had such a great time and can’t wait to get together again. Funny, one of Pauletta’s walking friends asked her what she was going to talk to friends about that she had not seen for 40 years. Well, we never quit talking. It was fun reliving the past, hearing about everyone’s grandkids, and what the future holds for all of us.

Did we ever eat some good food while there! What is it about a “Southern” menu that you will always find shrimp and grits, fried green tomatoes and some good pimento cheese in with all your menu items making it even harder to decide what to order. I can’t pass up grits, I can’t pass up pimento cheese and I certainly can’t pass up trying someone’s fried green tomatoes. I had a great stack of tomatoes on our last day there that I can’t wait to try to recreate.

When we toured the Mercer House we heard stories about when Jim Williams lived there (remember the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and he was accused of murder) and the parties he would give and one of his favorite things his caterer Lucille Wright (the most sought after caterer in Savannah) would make was shrimp and grits and pumpkin cornbread. I may be giving that pumpkin cornbread a try in the Fall so keep a lookout for it.

June 6, 2016 By Sherry

Cake/ Dessert/ Morning Foods

Raspberry Applesauce Cake

The kids are all gone!🙁

What do you do with all that special “grandkid” friendly food after they leave?

My refrigerator and pantry are always packed with things like applesauce, some good yogurt, some organic meat of some sort, lots of fruit, string cheese of course and lots of other things that I may not be eating if it is left over. As always, I buy way too much. But who wants to run out of food or goodies when the kids are visiting. I usually love the non-so-good-for-you-foods like Goldfish, popsicles, ice cream cups with about 6 kinds of sprinkles, and drink boxes (organic juice of course).

So recently my daughter was home for the weekend; and they had friends and kids at our house, so that meant stock up on some “stuff” for them to eat since they may not want to be eating the paella that we made one night.

On Monday, when the house was all empty except for the two of us, I decided to take on the bulging refrigerator. First, I threw all the fruit into my dehydrator, peeled and individually wrapped my bananas (they are like eating banana popsicles), threw some sweet stuff away. But, then there are the cartons of applesauce staring at me and I don’t even like applesauce.

June 1, 2016 By Sherry

Egg Dishes/ Morning Foods

Asparagus with Poached Egg, Toast and Bacon Vinaigrette

What better reason to have a brunch than a rooster table-cloth!

I didn’t need a reason to have a brunch but my rooster table-cloth has had me wanting to do brunch and have a bunch of friends over. The friends never got asked over for this recipe; someday they will.

While working at Williams Sonoma for 6 years I collected so many of their tablecloths and paid next-to-nothing for them once they went on sale. The rooster table-cloth is navy blue and have these cool roosters (and I’m not even a rooster fan.) along the border of the cloths which is just screaming or “crowing” make brunch and serve it on me.

So what should I do? Of course, make brunch but as it turned out the bunch with friends was just my husband and myself. I couldn’t wait to try to make this so rather than fuss with a bunch of other dishes and arrange time for friends to actually make it over for brunch I made it just for the two of us.

I was tracking down this chef (John Fleer) who now works at Rhubarb restaurant in Asheville and read where he had worked at the Blackberry Farm Restaurant located at the foothills of The Smoky Mountains in Walland, Tennessee, so I had to mosey on over to the Blackberry Farm website to see what was going on. Of course, the first place I look is the restaurant and the menu where I happened upon a menu item Asparagus with Poached Egg, Toast and Bacon Vinaigrette and thought I could do this without a recipe. We have eaten at Rhubarb in Asheville but this wasn’t on his menu at that time.

March 25, 2016 By Sherry

Dessert/ Morning Foods/ Pies/Tarts

Rustic Citrus Almond Tart

Rustic and beautiful citrus tart.

All I can say is “wow”, this was one beautiful tart. Not too tart and not too sweet, as Goldilocks said “it was just right” and I think all the ladies that tried it at my craft circle enjoyed it.

I’m sure you have all heard that snapping turtles bite and don’t let go. In Alabama they use to (may still do) call a snapping turtle “thunder turtles” because they believed that once bitten by the ST that it would not let go until it thundered. So, what does a snapping turtle have to do with this recipe.

Well, I have a problem letting go of an idea for a recipe I’ve seen or a product I have not used before. See the chunky sugar on the above tart. Well there’s even a story there. While in France back in 2012 (see, I told you I hold on to an idea for a long time) we spent a week in Provence after doing Paris (liked Provence much better) and we stayed in Eygalières in Provence area. This little commune, town, or whatever they call a town less than 1,700 actually had two bakeries a couple of grocery stores (very small, one English-speaking the other not) and one very good restaurant, sous les micocouliers which we ate at our first night there. I still get emails from them with their menus and I can’t read a word of it. (I just looked at their website and I never noticed they have “English” version.)

So, back to the story about the sugar. Every morning we would walk down to one of the local bakeries and buy some beautiful and delicious pastries (see below) for breakfast before heading out for the day. Usually at least a couple of the things we purchased had this sugar that stayed chunky. I couldn’t find it in the small local market but when I came home I looked until I finally located it I think on Amazon (of course). The sugar has been sitting in my pantry since then just waiting to be used for something special. This sugar will not melt and disappear as normal granulated sugar does at baking temperatures. I want to try it on some cinnamon elephant ear pastries sometime soon.

March 10, 2016 By Sherry

Breads/Biscuits/ Morning Foods

Sweet Potato Waffles

What a beautiful way to start a weekend.

Back in 2012 I posted my Bacon Belgium Waffles and told you about how my mother always use to put one slice of raw bacon across the batter after she had pour it into the waffle iron; and oh what a waffle that made. Once you have tried the bacon in the waffle, you will never want a waffle without bacon.

So, I have this new Paderno Spiralizer machine and was thinking about trying a different version on that waffle. Here’s how the morning progressed. My husband was up early and had already had a bowl of oatmeal so I had to convinced to try my waffle. After spiraling the sweet potato, which took all of about 2 minutes, I proceeded to try and cook them in the waffle iron (see pic below) but when I piled them onto the cooked waffle, they were pretty sad and pathetic looking.

My next step was to try deep frying them which only took about 5 minutes and I had a crunchy pile of coiled sweet potato fries which went on top of the bacon waffle, lathered in butter and surround with some pure maple syrup. Now, this was ready for him to eat and it got a thumbs up.

Then I started thinking of other breakfast ideas where I might use this new gadget of mine. How about some eggs benedict and you make a big pile of white potato curls and pile them high over the bendict or some scrambled eggs on top of a big plate of crunchy curly potatoes. I guess you are getting the idea that I love this new gadget that I got from Amazon.

February 19, 2016 By Sherry

Appetizers/ Bread/ Morning Foods/ Pastries

Granny Hester’s Sweet Potato Biscuits

Wish I knew this Granny.

I don’t often get foods from companies to try out for the blog so I was excited to get a note from Darlene, PPR Communications, Granny Hester’s Sweet Potato Biscuit asking me if I would like to try their sweet potato biscuits. The company is doing some testing in our area in Sam’s Club and she came across my blog. Their sweet potato biscuits are already being sold there and at our Trader Joes.

I love their story of how the biscuit recipe came about. Granny Hester came up with this recipe while experimenting for the perfect biscuit for her husband before he left for the Navy in WWII. The recipe was eventually handed down (like all good grandmothers do) to a granddaughter who started making these biscuits for family and friends and now works out of a 50,000 sq. ft. building (former sock mill) in Ft. Payne, Alabama.

I’ve done sweet potato biscuits before for an appetizer so I couldn’t wait to try out their biscuits with a couple of other recipes. For my first try I used the frozen biscuit, split it and then grilled it on a panini grill and topped with some pulled pork, slaw and pepper rings for a fancy slider for New Year’s Eve. It was really good that way because the biscuit got kind of crisp, almost like a chip.

My second try was using the biscuits with ham and orange marmalade; I made these many times when I catered. Cooked biscuits, split, top with ham and orange marmalade then back in the oven to warm up.

On Granny Hester’s site they have a Sweet Potato Cinnamon Roll made from their biscuits so that was definitely going to be breakfast one Saturday morning and those are in the opening picture.

January 5, 2016 By Sherry

Dessert/ Desserts/ Pastries

Christmas Bread Pudding with Bourbon Sauce

And I thought I didn’t like bread pudding!

Are you a connoisseur of bread pudding? Do you have your favorite kind of bread, or ingredients? What kind of sauce do you like, Cognac sauce, whiskey, or bourbon or rum sauce?

Honestly, I have always said I don’t like bread pudding; guess I thought it was like just eating more bread with your meal, and who needs that. Then one year I made a Pumpkin Bread Pudding for a catering job and was told by someone who it was one of the best she had eaten. I still didn’t try that recipe until recently and I have to say I enjoyed it very much.

This Christmas Bread Pudding is a recipe from Boudro’s Restaurant in San Antonio and I’ve been told by a friend’s husband (who is a connoisseur of bread puddings) that it is one of the best he has tasted. I decided to change the raisins in Boudro’s recipe to golden raisins and to keep with the season I will add dried cranberries in place of the raisins when I make this Christmas Day.

The name was changed to “Christmas Bread Pudding” because this seems like the perfect dessert for your Christmas dinner and you have to make it before everyone starts counting those nasty calories in January.

December 21, 2015 By Sherry

Morning Foods/ Pastries

Baked Oatmeal with Some Twist

Oatmeal or Boatmeal? Depends on who’s eating it.

Maybe you don’t remember the scene out of Oliver Twist where the little boy is eating gruel (see pics below) but I do and for some reason I think that’s why I never cared for the bowl of mushy stuff. I just never saw the appeal to a bowl of lumpy cereal. Seems like steel cut oats are all the rage these days but when I did the comparison, there doesn’t seem to be that much difference so don’t feel guilty not making that bowl of oatmeal that takes about 45 minutes to cook.

While visiting in Chicago back in September on a cold wintery day (ok, it wasn’t that cold but 40’s is cold coming from Texas) my daughter-in-law, Missy, made some oatmeal for the boys one morning. This wasn’t just plain old oatmeal but it was BOATMEAL with little sails in each boat. She make one chocolate/chocolate and one with cooked cinnamon apples that we had left over from dinner the night before. She uses a basic recipe she found on Pinterest then adds in what she thinks the boys would like. The chocolate/chocolate one she sweetens with banana, syrup and chocolate chips. I’m using a chocolate ganache to sweeten mine because I had some left over ganache from making chocolate martinis one night (I rimmed the glass with it).

November 10, 2015 By Sherry

Bars/ Cake/ Dessert/ Morning Foods

Lemon “Goat” Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

Nothing better with a cup of tea than this lemon coffee cake.

Something about the word “lemon” always makes me pucker. Several years ago after returning from Italy I decided I was going to make some
limoncello; we enjoyed it while there and I though how easy could that be to make. So, I go about gathering my ingredients which were a lot of lemons, sugar and vodka. I still think I had either cheap vodka or to0 high of a proof of vodka. Here’s what happened in my little experiment. I did the first stage which might have taken 20 days (not the link I gave you), then I strained it off and did something else to the mixture and I think I had to wait another 20 days. So the morning of the 40th day I couldn’t wait to try it and 8:30 in the morning I poured myself a shot. Wow, it was terrible. I ended up throwing it all away and just bought some at the liquor store.

You won’t throw away this this lemon cake. When I found this recipe at My Lovely Little Kitchen I notice the different cream cheese she used. So when I went to the store to get my ingredients I bought goat milk cream cheese not remembering that she used Greek yogurt cream cheese. I had never heard of either one. When I traced her recipe back to see where she got the idea I ended up at Two In The Kitchen and she had used regular cream cheese and looking further, I saw her recipe came from a fruit filled coffee cake recipe from a Better Homes and Garden book. Interesting how recipes evolve with each time they are baked.

September 11, 2015 By Sherry

Bread/ Morning Foods/ Pastries

My High School Cinnamon Roll

Do you have fond memories of high school?

One of my high school memories that I can close my eyes and am transported back to the 60’s is from my home economics class. I loved home ec class, is that hard to believe? Not really. I liked the sewing somewhat but the cooking was more fun. I don’t remember what we cooked any of the four years that I took Home Ec except for our cinnamon rolls. The class would make these cinnamon rolls and sell them to students during lunch. Could you EVER smell the yeasty, cinnamony aroma up and down the halls of our two-story building. And, the kids couldn’t wait to get a break to go buy one. If I remember correctly, we charged 10 cents each, what a bargain!

Years ago in culinary school one of my instructors told us he had a friend who was a franchise owner of a TJ Cinnamons and that one of their secret ingredients for their cinnamon rolls were crushed “red hot” candies. So, over the years I have made these rolls with and without the cinnamon candies; you can decide whether to add them or not.

Our class also made pecan rolls, which I will also make one day for you to try. They were the gooiest, pecan rolls ever and sticky but in a very good way.

August 27, 2015 By Sherry

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