We made calzones again the other day – this time stuffed with ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, and some fresh (pan fried) italian sausage coins – yum! If you want to play with a little yeast and dough, here’s the recipe to make your own calzones.
And this isn’t the best photo, in fact, it’s a little TOO golden, but you get the general idea:
This is a really easy recipe for a very tasty sandwich! Marinate boneless chicken breasts in Italian Dressing overnight. Shake off excess dressing and grill the chicken. Open ciabatta rolls and dress with mayo, lettuce, and thinly sliced tomatoes, then chicken, then top with a slice of jalapeno jack cheese and wah-lah!
Serve with a side of potato chips or potato salad if you like.
[Tags: chicken, sandwich, cooking, grilling, food]
Many of you might know what happens when you drop a mentos candy into a bottle of soda. Now, can you imagine what happens when 1,500 students all do it at the same time? Click here for photos of the resulting simultaneous explosions – science at its funnest!
[Tags: mentos, science, soda, belgium, food]
This is another one of those food photos that I took a while ago and haven’t blogged until now, as you might be able to tell, since these are CHRISTMAS cookies – hah!
Anyway… my mom never made normal sugar cookies, we always made Jello Cookie cutouts instead, which always had great flavor AND color. (You can make these cookies with a cookie press instead of cutouts if you want too.)
And these are the (raspberry flavored) Jello cookies we had over the holidays:
Below is the Jello Cookies recipe so you can play along at home! Oh, and I used a little extra jello powder instead of colored sugar on top of the cookies to give them a bit of darker accent color.
Jello Cookies
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 cups oleo or butter
1 cup sugar
1 pkg. (3 oz.) jello (any flavor)
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
Mix flour with baking powder and set aside. Cream oleo, gradually add sugar and jello, beating well. Beat in egg and vanilla. Gradually add flour mixture, mixing well. Force dough through cookie press (or make cut outs) onto ungreased baking sheets. Sprinkle with additional jello or colored sugars, decorate if desired. Makes about 10 doz (from press only). Bake at 400 degrees about 8 minutes or until sides are golden brown.
Note: This makes an excellent alternative for regular sugar cookies, both in color and flavor. Use orange jello mix for Halloween cookies, etc.
Just for variety, I made macaroni and cheese in a different way than usual, by making a creamy cheese sauce first.
Used half pound of elbow macaroni and doubled the cheese sauce recipe below, pouring it over the cooked macaroni, in a large casserole dish. Mix in about 1/2 to 1 cup of grated parmesan cheese for extra kick, then bake for a half hour on 350.
Next time I’ll use ALL extra sharp cheese, no Monterey Jack, as the extra amount of milk really made it a bit milder than it needed to be.
Still, it’s always fun to try something new! And it’s macaroni and cheese, can’t go wrong with mac and cheese!
Cheese Sauce
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon ground white pepper
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup grated extra sharp cheddar
Melt butter in saucepan and remove from heat. Stir in flour and seasonings. Gradually add milk, stirring until well mixed. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until thickened and smooth. Cook for 5 minutes longer, and then add cheese. Stir until smooth and well blended. Serve with pasta or vegetables.
Note: To make twice as much, double everything in recipe except only use 2 cups of milk instead of doubling the regular amount. Also, if you use a mild cheese like Monterey Jack instead of sharp cheddar this recipe makes a good base for cream casseroles.
Because it’s one of his favorites, I made another orange cake for John. This time though I changed the recipe a WEE bit – used orange extract instead of lemon extract and vanilla pudding instead of lemon pudding, and the orange flavor popped out MUCH more. (The updated recipe is here, FYI.)
And here’s a photo – it’s a bit rough, but very tasty – LOL:
We had breakfast for dinner today – first time making Eggs Benedict for ourselves. First I have to fess up that we did NOT make our own Hollandaise sauce, which, I know, is the key to good Eggs Benedict. But we were more interested, at the moment, in HAVING Eggs Benedict, than spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to make it from scratch for the first time. Maybe at some future time, but this time we used Trader Joe’s Hollandaise warmed and scooped over poached eggs on ham on english muffins, with a side of baked potato cubes….
It was all excellent, with the one surprise being that the cayenne pepper in the sauce was very… present. I’ve had Eggs Benedict in a number of restaurants and it never had such an affect on my sinuses as this did – LOL – but it was still very tasty!
[Tags: food, eggs, eggs benedict, trader joes, breakfast]
I told you (or at least I think I told you) that we had a backlog of images/experiences to share – this is one of those posts – heh.
So, over the holidays I’m in the habit of making a nice big batch of this REALLY smooth fudge. You have to keep it refrigerated, but it’s SO worth it!
It’s really easy to make too – I highly recommend it. And actually, it’s a good thing you have to keep it in the fridge because the extra step makes it last a LITTLE longer… possibly. (The recipe is from my friend’s Mother!)
Sal’s Fabulously Smooth Fudge
1/2 pound butter
3 6 oz. bags Nestle Chocolate Chips
3 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups chopped walnuts
4 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 can Carnation EVAPORATED milk
In large bowl, put butter, chocolate chips, vanilla, and walnuts. Set aside.
In large sauce pan, combine evaporated milk with granulated sugar. Bring to a rolling boil, and stirring continuously, boil for 6 minutes. Then, pour hot mixture into chocolate chip mixture, mixing until chocolate chips and butter are completely melted.
Put mix into buttered pans (at least one 9X13 and a 9X9 may be enough), so that fudge is one inch thick, and let sit in refrigerator to set. When totally set, cut into bite sized pieces and store in a tin or plastic container lined with wax paper, in the refrigerator.
Makes about 5 pounds. *** KEEP REFRIGERATED***
We bought the bottle of Old Moon Zinfandel from Trader Joe’s – it was branded “Trader Moon”, so it was definitely one of their own. We poured two glasses of wine and let them sit for a number of minutes to let the flavors ready themselves to be tasted. It was a pretty tasty zinfandel, great for the price, and went really well with the smoked gouda cheese we had with it! We also got to break in (figuratively speaking) our new wine glasses as now we have a set of four red and a set of four white wine glasses. Doing the whole ‘wine thing’ up properly now. |
We have a backlog of food events/photos to post about, so you’ll be seeing some that happened a while ago – I’m sure you’ll adjust.
For example, sometime during the holiday season I made Bon Bon Cookies – a Hershey kiss inside a ball, dipped in chocolate glaze. The dough makes EXACTLY two dozen if you use only enough dough to make sure the kiss is completely surrounded – no extra. It’s great exercise for your hands, needless to say.
And here’s a delicious photo:
I had some extra glaze so that’s why you see some textury-type swirls on top of the first layer of chocolate there. You could probably make these for Valentine’s day – who wouldn’t love these – wrapped up with a red bow and all.
Bon Bon Cookies (kiss inside ball)
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup margarine or butter softened
1 tblsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/8 tsp. salt
1 pkg. kisses
Heat oven to 350 degrees, mix powdered sugar, oleo, and vanilla. Work in flour and salt until dough holds together. For each cookie, shape dough by tablespoonful around kiss to form ball. Place one inch apart on UNGREASED cookie sheet. Bake until set, but not brown (12-15 min). Cool. Dip tops into glaze. Decorate with coconut, nuts, colored sugar… (2 dozen)
CHOCOLATE GLAZE: beat one cup powdered sugar, 2 tblspoons milk, 1 oz. melted unsweetened chocolate (cool) and 1 tsp. vanilla until smooth and of desired consistency.
