I'm blogging at eGullet this week.

Christine and I are blogging over at Egullet this week. Check us out here.

Crunchy Ice cream loaf( everyday food)....

Obviously, this isnt a loaf. I just wanted to try it out the recipe so I made it in an individual heart shaped springform pan. I'm not a fan of cornflakes and thats the main ingredient( other than ice cream). I have a dilema. I'm leaving next Thursday for the eGullet Heartland Gathering and Robin's family has an annual Civic Weekend BBQ on Sunday. I'll be leaving Ann Arbor at 9am on Sunday morning so I wont have time to make anything when I get home. I need to make something before I leave that will keep for 5 days or that can be frozen. I thought about this ice cream thing. It's really a take-off on Fried Ice cream. I bought some "premium" Chapman's( Canadian company) light Vanilla. I wasnt impressed with the ice cream, but thats neither here nor there. For this recipe, you crush up cornflakes, mix them with cinnamon and layer that with the ice cream. You drizzle some honey on top of the corn flakes as well. Robin said it was good and different, but nothing spectacular.

vegan choc. chip cookies...

I made these vegan choc. chip cookies yesterday. It took me a long time to find the recipe online. I had it saved as a link, but the link dissapeared. Then I saw a post on the cooking light board's from Anna and ta da, there it was. This recipe comes from Vive la Vegan, a foodblogger in BC. Dreena has written a bunch of vegan cookbooks. Anyway, I left out the nuts and used some hazelnut oil in place of some of the canola oil. My chips werent vegan so really the cookies wasnt totally vegan, but close enough. I can see where a vegan would really enjoy them though, they taste very similar to dairy choc. chip cookies. But, I prefer chewy cookies and these were very crisp. I did like the subtle maple flavor because I used a grade C( Canadaian grade 3) syrup.

Corn Fritters( Everyday Food).....

I'm finally feeling normal again so I thought I'd cook some dinner. Huron County is a big corn producer and it seems every mile or so there is a stand selling it. I picked some up today and made some corn fritters. I love corn on the cob and I could eat it everyday. Robin, not so much. She enjoyed these a lot. I made her some salmon( none for me thanks) and some steamed broccoli on the side. You can serve these fritters with sour cream.

3 ears corn, shucked
1/3 cup milk( non-fat is fine)
1 egg
1tsp sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
salt and pepper
1/4 cup each corn meal and ap flour.

mix corn with egg and milk. Add sugar, powder and salt and pepper to taste. Add flour and cornmeal. Heat 2tbls veg oil in skillet, drop a dollop of batter and fry until golden on each side. Serve with sour cream if desired.

A meal I made Monday....

Thanks for all your get well wishes. I feel a lot better today. I basically slept yesterday away. I don't remember much of what I did. I was coming off a lot of painkillers. I just hope I dont have another " gall bladder"(or whatever it was) attack anytime soon. I'm heading off to Ann Arbor on August 3rd for the eGullet Heartland Gathering. Speaking of eGullet, Christine and I start our tag team foodblog over there on July 30th. Come check us out. I'll probably cross-post over here as well.

I made this meal on Monday night. Better late than never I guess. Anyway, I brined some bone-in chicken breasts and then grilled them. I brushed some homeade BBQ sauce over them. I served them with a cold multi-bean salad I threw together. I steamed some green and wax beans and mixed them with a can of mixed beans, cucumbers and green peppers. I made a dressing with red wine vinegar and oil.

I still feel bad that I missed the community kitchen. Robin has been eating the food she brought home so I'm glad they didnt cancel it. They made a spinach lasagna from Cooking light and some fig and nut breakfast cookies from CL too. I showed Robin the picture from Joe's blog because theirs looked very rustic compared to Joe's.

She also brought home some greek turkey burgers. I'm sure those will show up this week as well.

I can't eat....

Sorry about the lack of posts. I spent most of last night in the ER with severe abdominal pain. Because we live in a rinky dink town, there are no ultrasounds done at night. They thought it might be my gallbladder though. They gave me 3 shots of morphine and then a shot of gravol( anti-nausea). They tried 3 times to put an IV in me, but they couldnt find a vain because I was so dehydrated. Oy.

I had the U/S today and my gall bladder looks fine, but that they said that doesnt mean I didnt have a gallbladder attack.

Sooo, I'm on a bland diet for the next few days( like I could eat anyway). We were supposed to have friends over tonight for dinner and I already prepared a lot of the dishes because I was supposed to work today. Oh well. I'll do the ribs tomorrow so Robin can eat them. I'll freeze the other item.

Before I went to the ER at 7pm, I hadnt eaten anything since 1pm. I wasnt hungry even then but I forced myself to eat a lean cuisine. Its so weird not feeling hungry.

Anyway, I'll be back in a couple of days.

Sand Cake........

My neice Chelsea is here for the weekend and we have a BBQ to attend tomorrow. The BBQ is an all day pool party with lots of kids so I thought it would be a good time to make this dirt cake. The original recipe was shown on a repeat of Martha Stewart living. Of course, I'm sure you could find other versions floating around the net. Martha and her friend made this cake in a sterilized flower pot. I chose to make it in a brand new sand pail. Thus, this is a sand cake.

The layers consist of instant pudding mixed with cream cheese and cool-whip( of course Martha used real whipped cream, but if you're using instant pudding, why waste real cream on that?) and pulverized oreo's. I had some cupcakes in the freezer so I used those between the layers as well as golden uh oh oreos. We threw some gummy worms in halfway thru. Chelsea took great pleasure in decorating the top. Who cares if its totally trashy and tastes like crap. She loved making it and thats all that maters to me. Let's hope it gets eaten tomorrow!!

Chicken Tacos, black beans and rice.....

Black beans arent big sellers around here. In fact, Robin never ate them until she met me. You can surely find cans of black beans in the grocery store, but they will most probably find their way into a pot of beef filled chili rather than eating them as a side dish. Robin loves them so I try to make them a couple times a month. A friend of mine in California brought a pot of them to a bbq we attended and they were so good I asked her for the recipe. I use dried beans and I always soak them the night before. After draining, I add fresh water, a whole jalapeno, a chopped onion and red or green pepper. After an hour, I add a chicken cube. Easy as pie.

I made some brown rice too. I chopped up some green onion and sauteed that with brown rice in some Olive Oil. I added some cumin, salt free seasoning, some chopped tomato( left over from the cobb salad ingredients) and some salsa verde.

We had chicken taco's with it. Ignore my store bought taco shells. I wish I had access to fresh corn tortilla's( or even refridgerated ones) but I dont' Robin had some whole wheat tortilla's. I stove-top grilled 2 chicken breasts that I rubbed with a grilled paste from Williams Sonoma. Chopped lettuce, low-fat sour cream, and low-fat cheese rounded these out. Fast and easy.

Cobb Salad( CI).....

We had a potluck to attend on Saturday night so I whipped up a cobb salad to bring. I loosely followed the recipe in Cook's Illustrated. I made the dressing the night before and instead of broiling boneless, skinless chicken breasts, I baked some bone-in breasts. I shredded the meat and it worked out fine. I dont care for blue cheese, so I used some feta I had. This was a tasty salad and so very simple to whip up.

Making Jam.......

Yesterday Christine came over at around 3pm and we made a bunch of jams. We made a brandied apricot( no pectin), low sugar blueberry, cherry and strawberry and some onion/garlic jam( the white one). And after all that was finished, I made a pasta dish with mushrooms, artichokes, chicken, spinach and peccornio romano( no pics sorry)

I dont think the Onion garlic jam set very well. The strawberry also didnt take well. I'm not sure how to fix it since I don't have any more low sugar pectin. I'll probably keep that and turn it into strawberry syrup. We each came away with lots of jam to keep or give as gifts. Robin even said if I make some bisquits she'll have some jam on them. In all our time together, I've never seen her eat jam. ( wow, how many times can I say Jam in once sentence?).

I really love to can, it appeals to my thrifty stock up the pantry nature( christine can attest to that, we ran out of her sugar and I had a backup one in the pantry).

I love giving food baskets as gifts ( which is where most of these are headed). I'm also going to sell some next weekend at our neighborhood yard sale. I had so much fun that now I want to make chili sauce, homeade ketchup and some chutney. Are you up for that Chris?

Smoked cheddar stuffed chicken/w green apple slaw..(BA)

Happy Blogiversary to me!! July 2nd was my 1 year food blogging anniversary. I made this dish at my MIL's house on Saturday night. I doubled the recipe as I was cooking for 8ppl. This recipe is from the August 05 issue of Bon Appetit and believe it or not, it comes from a Canadian. Ted Reader aka King of the Q. ( Ted's own link isnt working, so I linked to an article on him.).

Anyway, this was a simple recipe to made. The recipe calls for boneless, skin on breasts which can be hard to find. My MIL bought bone-in breasts and I deboned them myself. A slit is cut into each one, and a stuffing of smoked cheddar( or gouda), cream cheese, maple syrup, and fresh sage is stuffed into each one. The tenderloin is placed over the stuffing to hold it into place( in theory, but in reality, it didnt work that well). I made a glaze with Grade C Maple syrup, scotch wiskey and brown sugar. This is brushed over the chicken while grilling and the rest is served as a sauce. The slaw is simple too. Julliened green apples, fresh sage, green onion, red onion, lemon juice, maple syrup( just a touch) and evoo. My MIL raved over this as this is simply not something you'd see in these parts. We also had grilled potatoes and steamed carrots with this. This is definatly something I'd make again.

Cherry Crumb Pie( Bon Appetite)

Well, what do you know, I finally found a fruit dessert that Robin said " that was really good". I wonder if the fact that she pitted the 3lbs of cherries had something to do with it?

Cherries are on sale for 2 weeks for the incredibly low price of 1.99lb. I saw this recipe in an August 05 issue of BA( but its not on the website). I made the crust and topping the day before and then threw it together on Saturday morning. It was really really good. Now does anyone know if I can freeze pitted cherries? I'd love to make on of these in December.

Tender Pie Crust
makes 2 dough disks, enough for 2 pie crusts

3 cups ap flour
2tbls sugar
1 3/4 tsp salt
1 cup plus 2tbls butter chilled unsalted cut into 1/2 inch cubes( I used 1 3/4 cup of butter and the rest crisco)
8tbls water
1 1/2 tsp cider vinegar

blend flour, sugar, and salt in processor. Add butter using on/off turns, process until course meal forms. Add 8tbls ice water and vinegar and blend until moist clumps form. Gather dough together. Turn dough out onto work surface, divide dough in half. form each half into a ball and flatten into a disk. Wrap in saran wrap. Chill at least 1 hour( I made these the day before and took one out before I made the pie)

Sour Cherry Streusel Pie

You can use Bing cherries, add 1tbl of lemon juice to the filling.

1 crust

Streusel
1 and 1/4 cup flour
6tbls light brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
3/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick unsalted butter, melted.
1/4tsp vanilla extract

Mix first 5 ingredients in a bowl. Add melted butter and vanilla. Rub with fingertips until small clumps form.

Filling
Oven at 375. Place foil lined baking sheet in bottom of oven to catch spills( I baked mine on a foil lined cookie sheet)

1 cup( scant sugar). ( I thought that 1 cup was too much. Next time I'd use less)
3 1/2 tbls ap flour( I used instant tapioca)
1 tsp cinnamon
2 1/2 lbs sour cherries( I used bing)

Mix first 4 ingredients in blow. Add cherries, toss to coat. Let stand about 10 min until cherries release their juice. Transfer to crust, mounding in center. Top with streusel. Bake 20 min, tent loosely with foil and bake until top is golden about 1 hr 10 min.