55 Knives E-Cookbook Released TODAY!

Hey kids, guess what? Today the e-cookbook, 55 Knives, has been released and guess what else?? I wrote a chapter in it! Weeee! Me, along with 54 other incredibly talented (wayyyyyyyyy more talented than myself) food bloggers wrote a chapter each for your reading/cooking/baking enjoyment! The range of bloggers is incredible - from those that you've most likely heard of to those that maybe you haven't heard of, but should! What's different about this cookbook is that every blogger wrote their own chapter, so each recipe has a story behind it written in that blogger's words. Yanno, instead of just one person writing about lots of recipes from different places. So you've got some funny stuff mixed with some sentimental stuff, mixed in with some nice memories, and all of it surrounded by super delicious food! And if that wasn't enough - because it's an e-cookbook, there are links in every chapter that will bring you to the author's blog, their Facebook and/or Twitter accounts, if they have them, and other associated websites. Dudes ya'll could become stalkers. How fun! There are over 1000 links inside! It's just a really well put together book and it's cheap! Only $19! Did I mention there are also some money saving coupons for some really great stuff inside as well? BUT WAIT!!! THERE'S MORE!! If you buy the book between today (May 25) and next Tuesday (June 1) you'll only pay $14.. whadda deal, whadda deal! :D So before I direct you to the link that you can click to purchase your very own copy, I'd like to thank the man who came up with this idea, who organized all of us 55 bloggers, and then put the book together (including those 1000 links.. fo' shizzle) and published it - Nick Evans from Macheesmo. Thank you for all of your hard work, patience and guidance, Nick! You put together a beautiful book and I can't wait to see it in hardcopy one day! :D Hugs! Special thanks to Scott for getting this link to work! ;) So click on this here pretty graphic - or click on the one on my sidebar - or head on over to The Daring Kitchen and click on the button there! Hell, I'll even have this up on my Facebook account later today/early tomorrow. I'm excited! :D I hope ya'll enjoy the book, truly, it's a great cookbook to own. :) xoxo

The Daring Cooks May 2010 - Stacked Enchiladas

Hi kids! First the good stuff.. this month's Daring Cooks' challenge! Our hosts this month, Barbara of Barbara Bakes and Bunnee of Anna+Food have chosen a delicious Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchilada recipe in celebration of Cinco de Mayo! The recipe, featuring a homemade enchilada sauce was found on www.finecooking.com and written by Robb Walsh. The only well lit picture taken by my friend Sue :) These were delicious.. and I had no doubt even before I made them. You could put just about any kind of Mexican/Latin food in front of me and I know it'll be delish. This recipe was straight forward and easy. My only problem was finding tomatillos. After a 1/2 a day hunt, I found 3 of them. Yes. 3. So the Green Chile Enchilada sauce happened, but I had to cut down the recipe quite a bit to accommodate my small amount of the main ingredient. That's okay though, it turned out delicious and I had enough for 2 of the 6 stacked enchiladas I made. The other 4 got a red sauce, which was the exact same recipe as the Green Chile Enchilada sauce, except I used 2 cans of fire roasted diced tomatoes in lieu of the tomatillos. It also turned out to be mighty tasty. First batch of Poblanos roasting over an open gas fire :D I made 6 enchiladas as Hubbs and I were entertaining 4 of our most gorgeous and closest friends for a birthday celebration. From the response I received everyone absolutely loved the dish, and asked for the recipe. Very poorly lit and slightly blurry photo of the Green Chile Enchilada Sauce Enchiladas Thank you so much, Barbara & Bunnee! What a great, simple, easy to put together recipe that is very worthy of serving to guests! Very poorly lit and slightly blurry photo of the Red Chile Enchilada Sauce Enchiladas - hee! Please check out the rest of the Daring Cooks' spin on this recipe, I'm sure ya'll will find TONS of ideas on how to make this recipe your own. :) Hugs! xoxoxo

Traditional English "Pudding" and an Announcement

The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet. Thank God we were allowed to wimp out and use butter if we couldn't find suet and/or couldn't stomach it. I think I would have been okay with it, had I decided on making a savory pudding, but I've had this horrible gnawing chocolate craving lately that I just couldn't deny a minute longer. So I went with the Very Chocolate Pudding that lots of other members were going crazy over, and it used butter instead of suet. I'm torn. I absolutely LOVED learning how to steam cake.. something I'd never even thought of doing before. I would love to do this again since the only dishes I dirtied were the Kitchenaid bowl, a spatula and 4 ramekins. I didn't even bother with measuring cups since the recipe was in grams, I just measured everything on a styrofoam plate on top of my scale, then and dumped it all in. Other than for my photos, I'm not even going to have to dirty a plate, as we'll just dig right into the ramekins. Nice. So why am I torn? The flavor was great.. but I over steamed. I figured for the large single pudding directions in the recipe, quartered into the ramekins, that my steam time would drop by 45 minutes. Well.. they were probably done in 30 minutes. They weren't completely dry, but they were definitely on the side of a "cakey brownie" which I don't like. I like fudgey brownies and airy cake.. so the texture didn't thrill me. But that's my fault, I should have checked them in 30 minutes. Since I don't make cake often (Lord knows I'd like to) I'm not sure the next one will be steamed or traditionally baked.. although I've seen some flavor combos and photos in the private DB forums that have absolutely made my heart flutter in envy (check out the photos in the slider!). Regardless though, I truly am thankful for a great lesson in steaming something other than broccoli. :D Thanks so much, Esther!!! xoxo I don't know why I feel the need to even announce this as most of the readers of this blog have figured it out by now, but food blogging is no longer a passion of mine. I still love LOVE LOVE to cook and occasionally bake.. but to go through the motions of taking horribly lit and out of focus photos, and then trying to come up with a witty post, when frankly, most times in ,my kitchen don't merit a giggle. A lot of my time is taken working on The Daring Kitchen website and working with all the wonderful people who have helped to make it the success that it is. And kids? It's fakkin exhausting to work that hard on one project and find the inspiration to work on another project that just doesn't trip your trigger any more, yanno? So I've decided to kinda cut some stress and concentrate on the DK and finally stop stressing over not updating this blog much anymore. You'll find an occasional post regarding a DB or DC challenge here (I've already completed my May DC challenge so it'll be up in a couple weeks), but truthfully, I'm not even really participating all that much anymore. I've decided to focus on the "behind the scenes" duties of the website, hoping to keep present and future members happy and interested in learning how to cook and bake better. One day the passion to create new recipes to share with ya'll might come back.. who knows.. but for now.. my mojo has pretty much dried up. ;) I am happy to say that I've not lost the passion to make a total ass of myself on the internet and have started a new non-foodie blog where I can just update whenever I want and talk about whatever I want.. once I'm comfortable with the direction it's going, I'll post a link and maybe ya'll can check it out for a giggle or two. Hugs! xoxoxo

Last Minute Easter Ideas!

Hey ya'll.. Hope everyone is well :) And a very Happy Easter to all of you who celebrate! I did a round-up on Foodieview.com, highlighting some amazing food ideas for a delicious Easter table. Check if out if you've got a minute - if not for this year, then maybe an idea will stick with you next year? :) Hugs! xoxoxox Easter Round-up on Foodieview.com

Cound I Be Any Later?

Hi! Sorry! Late! Late! No good excuse. Been a cooking/baking LAZIAC lately. My kitchen literally GASPS when I walk in it and stay for more than 5 minutes. Just haven't had any motivation to do much lately.. I think the worst part of winter for me is the end - that stage where we're at the end of winter/beginning of spring. It's always rainy and freezing and were most foodies would relish this time to get in as much rib-stickin', comfort-y, cozy cooking as they can before it gets too hot to even look at the kitchen, I get all blanket-y, book-y, give me a bag of chips & dip and maybe a package of Nutter Butters and I'm good for a month. :P I didn't want to miss the Daring Cooks risotto challenge even though it was one of the weirdest feelings I've had regarding a DK challenge. Basically, I've made risotto 4,825 times in my life. I've made homemade stock 1,397 times. So our challenge wasn't much of a challenge for me this month, yet I really, really wanted that creamy arborio rice in front of me. So I had to think outside the box.. I had to figure out a way to do something I haven't done or haven't done much of. So I chose to go sweet. I've made rice pudding a couple times in the past. I've made really good rice pudding in the past. But I never attempted to make it as with arborio rice and I've never experimented in making it as if I would as savory risotto dish. Meaning, instead of dumping rice in boiling water until it was cooked, and then dumping in sweetened & spiced milk until it was thick.. I decided to toast up my arborio rice in some butter first.. and then I started to ladle in the sweetened milk mixture a ladle at a time, constantly stirring until I had a rich and creamy, sweet and spicy, concoction that was just heavenly. Other than the way I prepared the rice, the recipe came from my little Gracie.. that baking maniac that puts pounds on my hips and ass by just reading a post on her blog. Yes, I'm talking about Peabody and her delicious culinary concoctions. God love her. A couple years ago she made an arborio rice pudding with stone fruit butterscotch topping. As per usual, I laughed at her post, and copy/pasted the recipe into my "Gracie" folder since it tipped my "drool meter" over to tilt. But, I never made it.. so this was the perfect opportunity to try it! Okay so I did make some changes, but only out of necessity. Stone fruits aren't in season where I live unless you consider the imports from Chile "in season" and you could only consider that if you like rock hard like stone fruit with no taste. Gah. So I went with a Bosc pear and raisin butterscotch topping instead. Dear sweet Jebus that is a combination to go into the books. SO DAMN GOOD! But SO DAMN SWEET! So I decided to throw some salt into the butterscotch and that rounded out the sweetness perfectly. The rice was so thick and creamy with just a hint to cinnamon and the pear/raisin/butterscotch sauce was downright sinful. You'll forgive my more than usual bad photos - and you'll ignore how they don't make this dessert look very appetizing - just try this.. either now with fruits that are in season, or tuck the recipe away for later in the year when the peaches and plums are at their juicy best and try it. If you like rice pudding, you'll LOVE this dessert! Thanks so much to Eleanor and Jess for hosting a great challenge that was really enjoyed by so many Daring Cooks! And thanks to Gracie for pulling me outta my comfort zone and allowing me to experiment with one of her recipes. :) xoxo

Tiramisu!

Hey kids.. sorry, but you probably won't be seeing a post on my Daring Baker challenge this weekend. Unfortunately what I thought was a simple cold has gotten worse and it's about kicked my arse. Combine that with work and my procrastination issues and well.. no Tiramisu in my kitchen this month. :( I did buy all the ingredients, so I'm ready to go in that respect.. just need my nose to dry the freeg up and then figure out a way to assassinate the lil fuckers in my head who are pounding the backs of my eyeballs with sledgehammers. Gah. So we'll see.. In the meantime, check out the Daring Bakers blogroll for 1000's of creative and beautiful Tiramisu participants.. everyone did (as usual!!) an amazing job with the challenge! Huge hugs to both Deeba and Aparna for being wonderful hostesses this month.. they picked an awesome challenge of making homemade mascarpone and lady finger cookies! From what I've read in our private forums, both of the recipes are delicious! I REALLY want to find out for myself! xoxo

The Croque-Madame

I had heard of the croque-monsieur sandwich often in the past year or so.. apparently it's making the rounds in the foodie-blog world, since that's where I discover many foods I'd never heard of before. It sounded intriguing, something I might want to try one day, but nothing to add to the MUST MAKE list. I mean seriously, it's a grilled ham & cheese sammie. No big whoop. And then I was going through some magazine last week - for the life of me I can't remember what it was called - and saw this photo of the most awesome looking sandwich I'd ever seen. It had a fried egg on top! I don't think I've ever spoke of my obsession? fascination? complete and utter GLEE when it comes to the fried egg, specifically the yolk. But there's a twist. Yes, I love fried eggs for breakfast (or dinner) with the usual accoutrements - buttered toast, sausage or bacon, hashbrowns, you know.. heart attack on a plate? :) But this obsession - fascination - complete and utter glee that I feel when I see something topped with a friend egg, that normally wouldn't be topped with an egg.. I just.. can't find the words without sounding gross. Salivate upon seeing oozing yolk is what it is, but frankly, I just grossed myself out by saying that. Salivate and oozing really shouldn't be in the same sentence. Hopefully you yolk lovers out there will get where I'm coming from.. if not.. maybe try to block out what you've just read by closing your eyes tightly and singing LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU MISS GROSS-Y MCGROSSTER extremely loudly until the images go away. :P It was the mental vision of a crispy baked sammie loaded with cheese and that broken yolk oozing (I can't stop with the fakkin oozing! Someone give me a better word for crissakes - and don't say "runny" cuz that squicks me out too!) down the side of it that had me in such a tizz.. hell it could have been a rabbit turd & peat moss sandwich and I would have been drooling all because of that egg. I once saw a salad made of greens, roasted sweet potato chunks and a big old fried egg on top and although I haven't made it YET, I still drool over the thought of it. A salad with roasted chunks of sweet potato for crissakes? All because of that ooz glorious fried egg. Anyhoo... As I read the intro to the recipe and realized it was a croque-monsieur with a fried egg thrown on top, the sandwich jettisoned to the MUST MAKE list tout de suite. So I ripped the pages out, brought it home to show hubbs and he agreed, we needed to have this for dinner ASAP. Basically, if ya'll haven't heard of the croque-monsieur, it's ham & cheese (usually gruyère or emmental) between two slices of bread that have been slathered with a bechamel sauce, and then more cheese on top. It's baked until the edges are lightly browned and the cheese is melty and bubbly. Once it comes out of the oven, you slap a fried egg on top to create the croque-madame, throw a nice salad next to it and call it heaven on a plate. I made a few changes to the recipe. I couldn't find the jambon de Paris ham it called for, so I used prosciutto. I'm not a big bechamel sauce by itself kinda gal, so I decided to doctor it up by tossing in a couple generous handfuls of gruyère (I still had quite a bit left over from the bread) and just the barest peench of ground mustard. I used a loaf of French miche, which I bought at Panera - miche, I assume, means fakking huge. It's a very large square loaf of French bread just perfect for grilling, baking, toasting and of course, making a croque-madame. :) Hubbs made a cucumber, tomato, olive & red onion salad in balsamic vinaigrette to go with and I think that's really a must. At least for us.. this sammie is rich, kids. It definitely needs a salad or other light side with it. I had considered frying potatoes & onions, making our dinner more breakfast-like, but am glad that I didn't. So who doesn't like a ham & cheese sammie, eh? I like them, they are O.K., not my favorite but I've eaten many in my day. Who hasn't? Feel about the same way? Kinda meh? Yeah well.. make this kicked up hot ham & cheese sandwich and I doubt you'll ever go back to the usual. We were both amazed at how good this was. Admittedly, the prosciutto wasn't the right ham. It was too salty, but that still didn't take away much from the sandwich in whole. And it was fun to eat a "gourmet" hot ham & cheese with a fork & knife! I suppose you could pick it up and eat it as you would any other sammie, but it'd be kinda messy.. but hey, if that's your thing, go for it. ;) I urge you all to go out and buy a good ham that's not too salty, a big chunk of gruyère or emmental (I'm sure Swiss would be just fine) and a dozen eggs and get to making this for your dinner this week - and then throw it into your rotation every once in a while. It's a bit of a splurge both in price and calories, but you won't be sorry after you take that first bite. Trust me. SO. FAKKIN. GOOD. Croque Monsieur or Madame Serves 4 For Bechamel sauce: 3 TBS. butter 1/4 c. all-purpose flour 3 c. whole milk (I used fat-free and it came out just fine) Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg Salt & white ground pepper to taste For the sandwiches: 8 slices high-quality bread. (the recipe called for "Pullman" loaf, I used French) sliced 1/3 to 1/2 inch thick. 12 oz. thinly sliced jambon de Paris (high quality wet-cured ham, not too salty) 10 oz. Gruyère cheese, coarsely grated 4 whole eggs (for the madame) Over low heat, in a small saucepan, melt butter then whisk in flour until blended. Continue to whisk while pouring in milk to avoid lumps. Continue to cook, stirring constantly until thickened. This should take about 10 minutes. (If you are only making enough for 2 the sauce thickened within 2 minutes) Once thickened, season with nutmeg, salt & pepper. (This is where I added a couple handfuls of grated gruyère and the smallest pinch of ground mustard) Take off heat, set aside. The recipe says you can make the bechamel sauce up to 24 hours early. Place plastic wrap directly on the sauce so it won't form a skin, then refrigerate. Gently reheat a few minutes before you are going to use it. Preheat the oven to 400º F. Place the 8 slices of bread in a single layer on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Spread the bechamel sauce evenly to the edges of all the slices (you may not need all of the bechamel). Divide ham between only 4 slices covered with bechamel, keeping the ham within 1/4 inch of the edges. Top all 8 slices with equal amounts of grated gruyère cheese, again spreading it evenly within 1/4 inch of the edges. Place the 4 slices with bechamel and cheese (cheese side up!) on top of the slices layered with ham. Bake until cheese topping is melted and golden brown about 10 to 15 minutes (it took about 20 minutes in my oven) To make the croque-madame, fry 4 eggs sunny-side up (I went with over easy, because egg slime is A VERY BAD THING) and place one on top of each sandwich. Sprinkle with salt & pepper and serve immediately. xoxo

OHMYGOD - Where's The Flaccid Sea Creature??

Kids! I don't know what the hell has possessed me, but I've baked. And not for a Daring Baker's challenge, either. I baked on my own. WTF? Here's what I'm thinking.. ya'll should run out and buy lots of bottled water, saltine crackers, canned goods and toilet paper (never be without toilet paper!!). Dig yourself an underground shelter in the back yard and prepare yourself for some kind of natural disaster. I don’t bake unless it’s a DB challenge! Something bad is surely going to happen! And bread! Lord almighty I NEVER bake bread on a whim or on my own - NEVER. This disaster is going to be a doozy – I’m tellin’ yas! Wait.. don’t go getting all panic stricken just yet. I still have my usually long ass story to tell. Come back. Sit down. Join me in a glass (or twelve) of your favorite alcoholic beverage.. believe me, it’ll calm those shaking hands. Or is it just my hands that are shaking? Whatev. Anyhoo, something made me finally bake THIS RECIPE again. Go look. Because if you don't go look you won't understand what a wonderment this baking adventure was. Seriously. GO. LOOK. Did I lie? Is that not the most frightening things you've ever seen? It's like science fiction and pornography combined. And I ate those bad boys. All 4 of them. In like a week. If even. It was the best damn cheesy bread I've ever had and at that juncture in my life I didn't think anything could be as good as Panera's Asiago bread. But those 4 cheesy baked monstrosities were phenomenal. I kept saying that I would make them again.. but baking is sooooooooo fakking stressful for me. The Baking Gods hate my ever-livin guts. They laugh at me at every occasion. They mock me at the drop of a hat. They sneer and point at me while whispering behind my back. I don't know what the fakk I ever did to piss them off, but I obviously did. And now, what? 2 years later? Something possesses me to make them again. I made the starter last Thursday night. I was unsure how far ahead you can make a starter, so I enlisted the advice of my bread baking guru, Mary. She told me I can make it a few days ahead, which eased some pressure as I knew I wanted to make it this weekend, but was unsure of the exact day. HAR! Yeah.. in other words - how long could I procrastinate before my started died and I chickened out? Gah. Well.. come to find out the Baking Gods were watching - AS PER FUCKING USUAL. You see, the recipe calls for instant yeast. I didn't even comprehend that.. I used active yeast. So after 15+ hours (I had to work on Friday), it hadn't gotten very bubbly and pretty much looked just like a wad of dough. Not good. So I got on the King Arthur website and with an expert. It was immediately pointed out that I used the wrong yeast. Duh. I thanked her and then realized… Baking Gods – 1 / Lisa – BIGFATFUCKINGZERO. I didn't have instant yeast, so I sweet talked my beloved Hubbs into running out to get me some. Bless his cotton socks. Soon I had the correct yeast and more bread flour. I started again - this time around 6 a.m. Saturday morning. I figured it’d be good to go around 2ish that afternoon, then I’d make the dough and allow it to rise until Sunday morning. Way longer than what’s called for, but I’ve read that if you let your dough rise for a long time, the better the flavor of the bread.. and hell, any excuse to actually put off baking it. Yeah, the memory of the smoke detector going off and black billowy smoke spewing from my oven the last time I made this bread was pretty damn strong. Well my powers of procrastination are pretty damn.. uhmm.. powerful. I managed to conveniently “forget” the starter on Saturday afternoon. And Saturday night. On Sunday morning I remembered it and said to myself, “Hey dipshit, you need to make the bread today.” And then I blocked it out again. I had plans with my girlie friends to go shopping at Trader Joe’s.. and I’ve been out of Tejava tea for a month. Nectar of the (non-baking) Gods, I tell ya! So my mind was conveniently “elsewhere”. :P When I got home Sunday afternoon, I put away the groceries, poured myself a big glass of tea and got the flour out. I was going to make the dough! Go me! Making the dough took roughly 5 minutes. Mmmm hmm… 5 whole fakking minutes of my time. A spare 5 minutes that I just couldn’t seem to find all day Saturday and most of Sunday. You see this is how my mind works. And believe me, I know I ain’t right. Knowing full well how delicious the bread would end up, I still did everything I could to drag my big fat feet in making it. It’s like I’m a glutton for my own punishment. What. The. Freeg? Before I went to bed Sunday night, I punched the dough down because obviously I wasn’t going to make the bread. Today was a rare morning.. I actually woke up after my husband. That happens maybe twice a year? And I’m usually sick.. but whatev, I woke up later and the first thing out of his mouth wasn’t the usual grumble-speak “mrn’ng” or even “is the princess FINALLY up?” it was, “My goodness, doesn’t that freshly baked bread smell delicious?” What an ass. This was his way of telling me that the dough had been sitting out far too long and if I was going to bake bread then I better shit or get off the pot. Visual there.. sorry. Moving along.. A lovely collage of basically the same photo of the mini loaves/buns.. *slurp* I finally made my bread today. FOUR days after making the first batch of starter. FOUR. I had made two batches of dough so that I could make the mini “loaves” and a couple regular sized loaves. This time I cut the mini loaves much thinner.. and they came out more like bun size, which was perfect. Smaller means that the insides can’t rise out from the base reminiscent of the alien bursting out of that guy’s chest. I didn’t make flaccid geoduck/penis this time. They turned out bakery beautiful! I was AMAZED. I know today is a holiday for us in the US, but uhmm.. is this also a holiday for the Baking Gods? Or did I just take so damn long that I fooled them into believing that I’d never actually bake the dough?? Either way.. it all turned out great! Even the regular sized loaves, which I was unsure of because I hadn’t attempted that last time. Today is a day to mark on the books. Today I BEAT THE SHITE out of the Baking Gods. Today I made myself proud. Today something horrible is going to happen.. so really now.. get off your asses and start digging up your back yard. You can thank me for the head’s up after it’s all over. ;) xoxo

Mezze - It's What's for Dinner

The 2010 February Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Michele of Veggie Num Nums. Michele chose to challenge everyone to make mezze based on various recipes from Claudia Roden, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Dugid. This month's Daring Cook's challenge brought a whole new culture into my life. I've never eaten ANYTHING Middle Eastern before, although my sister loves it and has been telling me for months that I need to try it. I have to admit, Middle Eastern fare, never really thrilled me because when I think of that kind of food, I think of beans. *shudder* Chickpeas, lentils, black beans.. all of those lil pasty tastin' legumes. If you're new to this here lil blog, then you might not know of my strong dislike of beans. Frankly, I'd rather eat live bees. ;) But I am happy to say that I was completely wrong, which is nothing new. :P Yes, Middle Eastern food does contain beans, but there is so much of a variety of other foods - I had no idea! I wanted my Mezze to be special, so I called upon my home girls. My G's, if you will. June, Blimey & Amy - 3 of my favorite people in alla world. As per usual, they were up for it and all agreed to find a Middle Eastern recipe to bring to the party. Yay! I decided to make a cold Lebanese carrot salad, green beans (one of the few that I'll eat) Lebanese style, Kalamata olive tapenade as well as the mandatory hummus and pita bread. June brought a delicious Tabouli and Amy brought a refreshing and really delicious cucumber Raita. Unfortunately, Blimey got sick so she couldn't join us, and we missed her tremendously. We piled everything onto the kitchen table and started eating immediately. SO GOOD! My absolute favorite was the green beans Lebanese style. Holy cow, I could eat that daily. I wouldn't even share much of the left overs with the gals because I HAD. TO. HAVE. IT. the next night with a roasted chicken. Delish! I really enjoyed the small bites of everything.. and liked to combine different dishes to see what went best with what. My favorite combo was a lil Kalamata tapenade on some pita followed with a lil dab of cucumber Raita. Salty with a nice tang. *slurp* As for cooking this feast - no problems really at all. I got a lil nervous when my pita didn't balloon up like Audax's and it didn't really brown up on top. The bottoms browned up nicely though. And although parts were flat and parts were bubbly it was really good pita. June was the resident Middle Eastern connoisseur and she said the pita was excellent and she loved the other dishes as well. Score! I know it was good food because I realized afterward that we had no meat and didn't even miss it! It wasn't consciously planned that way, but since it happened, I'm going to say we dedicated our vegetarian dinner to Michele. :D Eating this way is definitely fun - true party food. Next I want to do a Tapas night and then a dim sum night.. I'm looking forward! Michele, thanks so much for turning me on to this delicious food and showing me how easy it is to make pita bread! I'll definitely be making it again! You did an excellent job hosting! Love you! Check out all the rest of the amazing Mezze feasts from our Daring Cook troops! Just seeing what they've uploaded to the forums makes me all kinds of hungry for Mezze all over again! ;) xoxo

Donuts. Is There Anything They Can't Do?

A few weeks ago, my friend Michele and I were talking about recipes and doughnuts came up, like they eventually always do if you're having a conversation with me. :P Ahh yes, I love me my doughnuts. But I won't let myself eat them very often. *sigh* I know how bad they are because of their deliciousness. Anything that tastes that good is definitely a heart attack or stroke disguised in fluffy goodness covered in powdery sugar or chocolate. Or maple. Or bacon. Or cinnamon sugar. Or whipped cream. Or just plain for those days when you're trying to eat healthy. ;) So we decided that we must make homemade donuts. This past Sunday was D-day. I went with Alton Brown's recipe. I was a little nervous because, yanno, Alton can bring in a lil too much science. But the recipe was straightforward, thank the baby Jebus. The only problems I ran into were bad timing and way too hot oil. The timing thing - you need to heat milk to melt the shortening. Then you have to wait until it cools to lukewarm because you'll be mixing it with the water/yeast mixture. Well the *first* time I did it, I started to heat my milk and immediately poured my yeast into the lukewarm water, not taking into account that after the milk melts the shortening it'll take some time for it to cool off enough to add it to the yeast. Doh! You wouldn't believe how fakkin long it takes for hot milk to cool the fug down. Jebus. My yeast/water mixture had already bubbled and was sitting on the bottom of my very cold metal Kitchenaid bowl. If you listened closely enough you could hear their itty bitty teeth chattering and their itsy bitsy knees knockin'. :( I was blowin' on the milk.. fanning it with a kitchen towel.. put it in the fridge for 10 minutes.. the bottom of the bowl wouldn't cool off. I mean this stuff was HOT. So finally, we (Hubbs was present) decided to put the damn bowl out in a snow drift. I mean, seriously. It's not like we were trying to cool off GALLONS of milk.. it was just a cup or so for crissakes, but it wouldn't cool down. And no, this had nothing to do with my desire to be eating warm, fluffy, mouth-wateringly, rings of yumminess. Much. 'kay well maybe it had a lot to do with my impatience over having to wait for the prize, but I tell you - that milk was volcano hot. Outside it went. :P Okay well what are two people to do while waiting on milk to cool? They get all caught up in Animal Planet's Puppy Bowl VI is what they do. We couldn't peel our eyes away from the cuteness if we tried. OHMYGOD. Chubby puppy bellies! Wagging puppy tails! Floppy puppy ears!!! Much more delicious than any doughnut! And when we finally did remember there was molten hot milk sitting in a snow drift on our back deck, this gal jumped up immediately, tripped over her dog, caught herself before completing a full face plant into the arm of the loveseat and then promptly tripped over the blanket she had been cuddled under while watching oodles of puppies attacking each other and stuffed footballs. That was more exercise than I've had in weeks. GAH. As you might have guessed, the shortening was no longer liquefied. It sat in greasy lumps in the ICE COLD milk. Mmm hmmm... Meanwhile.. my yeast had passed on to the great bread bakery in the sky. It was a pitiful scene. No bubbles. Just murky muck sitting on the bottom of the bowl. *sigh* So I cleaned up my lil yeasty dead soldiers, put the milk back on the burner until the shortening JUST started to melt. Waited 10 minutes and THEN brought yeast and lukewarm water back together again. After all of that, putting the dough together was a snap. The waiting was the hard part.. at one point I felt like standing in front of the bowl containing the dough ball and screaming "HURRY THE FAKK UP FOR CRISSAKES!! DOUGHNUTS! HUNGRY! NOM NOM NOM!!!" Once I had them shaped and rising the last time, I heated my oil in a wok. I knew it was kinda hot, but I didn't want a greasy doughnut, so I figured a little hotter than it called for would be a good thing. And it was. Although they came out a little darker than you'd see in a doughnut shop, they weren't burnt or greasy. They were light and fluffy and uber delish. I did a good job of refraining from putting a platter on the table, throwing my hair up into a ponytail, putting my hands behind my back and doing my best impression of a pig feeding in the trough. It was hard though. Delicious homemade doughnuts, still warm and covered in cinnamon sugar.. OH. MY. GOD. SOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOD. It's super easy to make doughnuts and home and really the waiting isn't all that bad - 1.5 hours total rise time is all it calls for. You can make several varieties with one batch of dough and depending on size, you can get quite a few doughnuts. The only way I can describe the size of mine is they were the size of doughnuts you buy prepackaged in a grocery store.. like from Pepperidge Farms if anyone is familiar. I didn't have a doughnut cutter, nor even a round cutter. So I used a wine glass and to cut the middles out, I used the cap of a 2 liter bottle of soda. HAR! Worked like a charm! :) I used the scraps to make twists. We were going to fill some of them, but that didn't happen for whatever reason. I know these doughnuts freeze well too. Course I wouldn't know that from this experience. I packaged them in freezer bags and left on the counter overnight because it was too dark for photos after they came out of the oil. And after I took photos the next day, I put them back into the bags and then something else caught my attention.. Oh look! A chicken! That night they were pretty much stale. So eat 'em quick or freeze 'em soon! Go check out Michele's doughnuts! She filled hers with yummy stuff! :) xoxoxo

I Baked For Shaun White!

Okay not really.. but he's the only winter Olympian that I know of. And frankly, I'm not even sure he's in the Olympics this year.. is he? What I do know is I like his long wavy red hair. But I probably shouldn't say that out loud as I'm most likely old enough to be his Aunt. *cough* Anyhoo.. as per usual, I'm a day late and a dollar short. And once again I feel foolish because of it. This month's Daring Baker challenge was a breeze and the results were muy deliciouso! Wait, that's Spanish.. what would the Canadians say? Uhmm.. 'kay.. well.. the results were KICK ASS! (that's more of what I'd say because I don't know what a Canuck would say. Canuck.. is that PC?) The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca. Lauren is from Canada and these Nanaimo bars are her tribute to the 2010 Winter Olympics held in Vancouver, Canada. Here's a funny.. and he's probably going to kill me.. but I received an email this morning from my friend John who had to tell me that while he was making his dough for the graham crackers he noticed that it smelled like graham crackers. And then he said, "Really?? You think??." Yes Gorgeous, the dough DOES smell like graham crackers and after baked, they taste better than any graham cracker I've ever had. Addicting is the word. More like Graham Crack. I kept hearing, er, reading in the forums that other members couldn't stop eating the graham crackers and my friend Michele said the same thing - but I had NO. IDEA. HOW. GOOD. they really are. I was almost sad to have to crumble a bunch of them for the Nanaimo bars. Seriously. But I did.. and then I kinda veered off the traditional route and went down my own road. I've made Nanaimo bars before and they were delish, you'll get no argument from me there. But they were a leeetle sweet so this time I wanted to make all of the components but in different flavors - specifically flavors that aren't as sweet. I started with the graham cracker crust, and omitted the nuts as we can't eat them. I also ground the coconut to almost a powder because I had to hide it as Hubbs hates coconut with a passion. He'll eat stuff flavored with coconut but hates real coconut. Go figger. And I added a generous peench of cinnamon. What I didn't do was add the cocoa. This was entirely an accident. I was so intent on grinding down that coconut and getting it into the crust before he came back into the kitchen that I completely forgot the damn cocoa. I really did want a chocolate crust. Then I moved on to the filling, which is what I found too sweet in the traditional bars. I decided I wanted a blast of coffee with the tang of cheese. Ideally I was going to do mascarpone/butter cream frosting flavored with espresso powder. But I never got the chance to get the mascarpone, so I had to do with cream cheese. Basically I made cream cheese frosting sans most of the sugar - I probably used 1/3 of what a basic cream cheese frosting would call for, then thinned it a bit with a boat load of espresso powder stirred into a small amount of hot heavy whipping cream. I can't find the words to express how fakking good it turned out and I really can't wait to use it on a cake! For the topping, ya'll know me, right? I don't say no to any kind of chocolate unless it's white - which is not chocolate anyways. BUT just a few weeks ago, I made a pan of what is essentially buckeyes (the lil round gobs of delicious sweetened peanut butter dipped in chocolate), but instead of rolling out the peanut butter into balls, because I'm a lazy mofo, I just spread it into an 8 x 8 pan and poured the chocolate over it. After refrigerating the chocolate became hard (duh) and well.. after forcing myself to eat 3/4 of the pan myself, I was kinda over hard chocolate with something mooshey underneath. :P So I went with a basic ganache over the top of my coffee/cream cheese filling. As you can see in this picture, there is a bite taken. That is the one and only taste of these that I've had (so far) and it took every fiber of restraint in this chubby body of mine to stop there to rush into my office to write this post a day late. And keep in mind, I don't own very many restraint fibers. :P Holy mother of a chinless baboon, these bars are FANFARKINGTASTIC. They aren't nearly as sweet as the traditional Nanaimo bars, but they are definitely rich, and I'm confident that I can get over that. :P The cinnamon & coconut in the crust paired with the coffee and chocolate and the tang of the cream cheese is nothing if not heavenly. Lauren, thank you so much for choosing these recipes and for allowing us the creativity to choose different flavors. I just hope I can restrain myself until Saturday evening as I've promised these bars as dessert for friends who are coming over.. but then again if I just whip up another batch, who will be the wiser? ;) Pop on over HERE for the recipes for the grahams (gluten free and made with wheat flour versions) and the traditional Nanaimo bar recipes! xoxo

January 15th? Nooo it was JUST the 13th!

Okay so I can't win. I either am stressing to get a Daring Kitchen challenge done at the last minute, or I get it done way early and then something happens where I can't get to my lil blog to post on the damn reveal date. WTF? The January 2010 Daring Cooks' challenge was hosted by Cuppy of Cuppylicious and she chose a delicious Thai-inspired recipe for Pork Satay from the book 1000 Recipes by Martha Day. Huge apologies to Cuppy - I feel as if I have failed our host(s) miserably when I'm late to get a post up.. this wasn't intentional! And now I am seriously pressed for time - but the good news is, there was no disaster this month, so I really don't have a long post full of expletives and "whoa is me" whining. ;) I made Chicken Satay using Cuppy's longer version marinade and it didn't even look remotely appetizing as I was transferring my chicken strips (breasts sliced into strips) from the bag of marinade to the broiling pan (grill was under 2 feet of snow..) all yellow and stuff. But I kept an open mind, Lord knows I've been happily surprised often in the past with these Daring Cooks challenges! I had made my peanut sauce earlier due to time constraints and was warming it up again, while the chicken was under the broiler, when it separated. I had a small pan of peanut solid and peanut oil. Ewww. I was very dismayed over it, but thanks to my experience of making buttercream 59 gajillion times, I decided not to panic and to just get out my trusty balloon whisk and start whisking. Luckily it all came together again - only now it was almost like peanut fudge, which isn't a bad thing - just something I wouldn't normally pair with chicken. ;) Thanks to the amazing support we receive on the private forums of the Daring Kitchen, my question of why it separated was answered by Robert of An Alaskan Cook's Exploration of Food and Technique - and he thought that I had too much heat going on. And he was most likely right, I did have the heat up pretty high now that I think of it. Stupid on my part. Again, I persevered and continued on with dinner, making a batch of Basmati rice to go with. Once it was all done, yeah it still didn't look that great. My chicken was even more yellow and my sauce was no longer sauce-y. At this point, I could have binned it all and declared it a disaster, but I was HUNGRY dammit. So I plated, called Hubbs to the kitchen and got a giggle from the expression on his face. He was not amused. He must have been hungry too. hehehe I decided to take my dinner into my office so I could watch a movie (and mainly because I wasn't in the mood to hear him bitch about how awful the food was). Surprisingly.. this dinner was OUT OF THIS WORLD. I cannot express how much I LURVED it! Suffice to say that it's been well over a week since I've made Chicken Satay with Peanut Sauce and a day hasn't gone by that I haven't craved it. Unfortunately, Hubbs wasn't as impressed (most likely because he turns his nose up at any form of chicken. He'll eat it but not happily.) and that's the only reason I haven't cooked this dinner several times since my first taste. But my cravings will win soon - they ALWAYS do - and he'll just have to get over it. ;) I always thank our hosts at the end of my posts, but this time I really need to lay on the lurve. Cuppy jumped in when, at the last minute, our slated January host couldn't do it. Cuppy had NO TIME and yet she came up with a well written recipe and plan for all diets. This was a quick challenge, that was most gratefully received after the busy and hectic holidays and I now have a new favorite quick meal to throw together after a stressful day at work. And yes, this recipe has been "westernized" and is not an authentic Thai recipe, but it's delicious regardless. I seriously cannot wait to make it again! Thanks so much, Cuppy!! :) xoxo

'Tis The Season

The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes. I don't even know how to start. First I should make it clear that the following post is not meant to offend Anna or Y, our lovely hostesses this month. They had a great idea and lots of members really enjoyed themselves.. and that's terrific!! But let's face some facts here, shall we? The baking Gods already hate me with a white hot passion. I can barely dress myself, open an envelope without getting cut, or walk & chew gum at the same time. And I'm asked to erect a building made of cookie dough? The baking Gods already hate me with a white hot passion. I went into this challenge with a positive attitude despite the obvious roadblocks in my way. I was kind of excited to decorate it.. went shopping and bought all kinds of neat candies and edible items to use. I even thought I would erect a split wood fence with pretzel sticks. Cute, huh? Mmm hmm.. The first bad omen was my thumb is still pretty useless. So kneading the dough would be out of the question (and no, I can't knead with one hand - TRUST ME I need both hands to do just about anything :P ). When this happens, I call in my favorite Sous Chef, Hubbs. That morning before work, I left out all the ingredients for Y's dough recipe - with instructions for him to make the dough. When I got home that evening I opened the fridge to check the dough out and it was uhmm.. very very brown. Almost black. (bad omen No. 2) So I asked my Sous if he had run into any problems during the dough making. "Nope." was his reply. Okay, well I have only ever made ginger cookies in the past, never ginger "bread" so I thought maybe this is what it was suppose to look like.. maybe it'd lighten up after resting over night. I didn't have time to worry about it because we had grocery shopping to do. Next morning... Nope that dough stayed black and turned rock hard. I took it out to come to room temp about 10 hours before I was going to roll it out - yeah yeah, I know. I wasn't thinking clearly. I had just woken up BEFORE the crack of dawn and the habit is for me to take what I'm going to need for dinner out of the freezer each morning before work. I was awake enough to realize it was Saturday and didn't need to take anything out, but not awake enough to realize that 10 hours was probably a lil too much for dough to come to room temp. But 3 hours and two cups of coffee later when I remembered I had taken it out way too early, it was still ROCK HARD. I used a chef's knife to stab it and then pull a chunk off - and I swear to the baby Jebus, the fakkin dough had age rings inside. You know, like a tree?? Like a petrified tree of gingerbread dough?? OHMYGOD. So I brought my slab of petrified gingerbread over to my husband and presented it to him. "Are you sure nothing went wrong yesterday?" "Nope." Now something obviously went wrong - but we'll never know what. "Well f*ck" I said to myself. "I've got 3 women and 1 tween coming over in a few short hours to make gingerbread houses (plural), what the f*ck am I suppose to do now?" (bad omen no. 3) Luckily, Recipezaar came to my rescue. I needed a dough that I could make tout de suite that didn't need refrigerating. I actually found one! And it didn't sound half bad. So I immediately ran into the kitchen to get started on making the new dough felt relieved and decided it was time for a nap. DO NOT JUDGE. I'm very sleepy on Saturday mornings.. it's unfair that I get up while it's still dark outside on the weekends too. So I relish being able to go back to bed right around the time I'd normally be jumpin in the shower to go to the dungeon. It gives me pleasure. DO NOT DENY ME THAT! *crickets* Anyhoo.. yes, I went back to bed. (omen no. 4? or is this 5?) Normally my lil weekend naps last all of 2 hours.. rarely longer. Unless, of course, I'm expecting 3 women and 1 tween over to make 4 gingerbread houses + make them dinner. No, on those occasions I end up sleeping FIVE hours - after I woke up and looked at my clock, I shot outta the bed so fakkin fast that I forgot to throw the covers off first, which got tangled with my legs.. forcing me head first into the wall beside my bed. GAH. (bad omen no. fakk it, I'M DOOMED) So, 'kay.. do the math here kids. I took the original dough out 10 hours before I needed it. I checked it after 3 hours and realized it was petrified shite. I then slept for 5 hours. That equals 8 hours. Ten minus 8 equals HOLY FAH-REEG!! I'VE GOT 2 HOURS TO MAKE AND BAKE ENOUGH GINGERBREAD HOUSE PANELS FOR 4 HOUSES PLUS DINNER FOR 5 PEOPLE. BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! Okay I'll spare you the cursing and then slamming things when I found out that my Sous Chef used ALL OF THE GINGER in his petrified dough and didn't feel the need to tell me WHILE WE WERE GROCERY SHOPPING. Fast forward to 5 pm'ish when the gals arrived. I had JUST finished prepping dinner and I had managed to only make enough dough for ONE house. I figured I'd make more dough while we were eating dinner, but the gals all decided that one house would be plenty. Bless their cotton socks. After dinner we immediately started to erect our house. Keep in mind, there were 4 adult women working on this - and at one point, Hubbs joined in. We started with a side panel and the front panel and lots of royal icing. My panels had turned out wonkey after they baked, but that's what the icing was for, right? The first two panels seemed to stay together pretty well.. and then we moved on to the 3rd panel.. so this one wasn't as cooperative as the first two. No big deal. We'll just use some of the frosted mini-wheats that were for our roof shingles to prop up the inside of the walls. We got it under control. We're women. Hear us roar. Jebus. While we did get all for sides of the house to stand straight up, when we put the roof on (already covered in shingles and 20 pounds of royal icing) it: 1- Made the walls start to cave in a wee bit. 2- Kept sliding off because they were too heavy. So what do 4 intelligent women do in this kind of a situation? Why, they go get the blow dryer, of course! "We need to dry this icing out so the pieces parts will stay!" someone said. Yes, we made the Beavette stand there with the blow drier until the icing set up and stuck. Unfortunately, that never happened. Someone else said, "Dudes, the 14 layers of icing below the layer we're trying to dry has to dry first." And that was it for us. We'd been working on it for about 4 hours - not one decoration on it - and we gave up. We put a box over it and then stood their and discussed who was going to decorate it. They tried to put it all on me but I wouldn't have any of that shite. They started this with me, it was their rightful duty to accompany me on this gingerbread from hell journey. June and The Beavette said they'd be back the next day to decorate.. but something came up so it was cancelled. Next day, same thing - cancelled. Finally we managed to keep Thursday open and spent 2 fun hours (no really, I had fun!) decorating the house. I got one side, June got another, and The Beavette decorated the rest. I think it turned out really cute. But I still couldn't wait for it to be out of my house. So when we were done, I packed up the remaining 90 pounds of candy for The Beavette, found a box for the house and didn't give them a choice but to take it all with them. *grin* Many many thanks to my girls: Blimey, June, The Beavette, and Amy (we need a name for Amy!) for another fun filled night together.. can't wait for the next one - but NEVER AGAIN with the gingerbread. heheee! xoxo

Daring Cooks December Challenge: Beef Wellington

Beef wrapped in mushrooms, wrapped in prosciutto, wrapped in a buttery, flaky crust. What could be better? The 2009 Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Simone of Junglefrog Cooking. Simone chose Salmon en Croute (or alternative recipes for Beef Wellington or Vegetable en Croute) from Good Food Online Well apparently.. I'm not the beef wrapped in mushrooms, wrapped in prosciutto, wrapped in a buttery, flaky crust kinda gal. This just didn't thrill me. Not only did I have HUGE problems with the pastry dough, but the final product just wasn't very "BOOYA" if yanno what I mean? Which kinda floors me, because okay - so the crust sucked, pick it off and eat the rest for crissakes, yes? But the Parma ham just got all greasy tucked in there.. the mushrooms were okay, but they were minced so kinda hard to enjoy them.. and the steak, although done perfectly and seasoned well.. just wasn't all that tasty. Did it all steam too much in it's pastry shell? Are my tasters off? I just don't know.. This is not to say that I am saddened by this month's challenge. I am always grateful to learn a new technique and recipe.. and a shortcrust pastry dough was something I'd never heard of before. And yes, I am grateful that I learned a new dough recipe, but this is one I won't be trying again. Gah. After we had dinner that night, I thought to myself that I MUST have screwed up - because, hey, that's what I do. Especially when it comes to baking and doughs, right? So I just sat on it for a day but it bugged the bejebus outta me, so I went back over the recipe and I know I didn't screw up.. but, I still ended up with uhmm.. cracker crumbs? Have a look! Sorry for the poorly lit photos - but it gets dark here at like 9 in the morning! (okay well not that early, but way too fakkin early these days [5ish in the evening]) See? Crumbly dry bad juju stuff. And this photo was taken after it had been wrapped in cling wrap and refrigerated for a few hours. I weighed my ingredients AND I even put in more water than called for! So yous guys tell me.. what. the. hell.? Anyhoo.. I ended up having to smoosh more water in there to get it to come together and roll out.. and that did work.. but I assume having done that plus the extra kneading, didn't make for a flaky crusty outcome. I also vented my dough to let the steam out.. but everything inside was still.. uhhh.. steamy. Maybe I'm just a grill or pan fry steak kinda gal? Maybe I like my beef crusty - as in crust from seasoning and a cast iron skillet or over a hot grill. I dunno. I do know that lots of members had great luck with this and I have to say that the challenge was to make whatever filling we decided on, be it beef, salmon or another fish, vegetable, pork, chicken, you name it, wrapped in dough. We did not have to make the shortcrust pastry dough recipe that was given to us by Simone. We could have used store bought or another recipe for the crust.. so I do not count this as a failure. I did learn how to make wellington and maybe on some special (it'd have to be pretty damned spectacular) occasion I'll make it again with another dough recipe and maybe I'll really crust up that meat with lots more seasoning and leave the prosciutto out.. and maybe I'll like it a lot better. And before I end this.. I have to say one more thing. HERE'S A BIG F.U. TO TRADER JOE'S FOR DISCONTINUING THEIR PUFF PASTRY. BITE ME! YOU SUCK TRADER JOES' PERSON WHO DECIDES WHAT IS KEPT ON THE SHELVES AND WHAT ISN'T BUTTWAD. Course I'll still shop there.. cuz I love it.. but damn, it was the ONLY place where I live that I can get puff pastry made with REAL BUTTER and not disgusting shortening. *sigh* And please.. don't even tell me to make it myself. Have you ever read my Daring Baker posts?? I'd have better luck milking my own breasts, churning my mammary gland juices into butter using a bucket and a broom handle and then paying someone else to fold it into a dough 5000 times. GAH. xoxo

Put to the "Challenge" with Butter!

A while back the nice people at Challenge Dairy asked me if I'd be interested in tasting their butter and using it in a side dish recipe. Butter! As if I'd say no. Did I mention... butter? *slurp* Okay so right off the bat, I'm going to say that Challenge Dairy needs to start shipping their products across the country so us dwellers of the "Armpit of the Midwest" (Ohioans) can purchase at our local stores. This is NOT FAIR that we cannot at this time. That's right, Challenge Dairy.. you've been called out. Now ship me a truckload of this stuff because we fakkin' loved it. :) The salted butter that is. I have to be honest, I haven't even opened the "spreadable butter" yet. It's not you, Challenge Dairy, it's me. You see, I've got this thing about butter being called butter when it's made with oil. And frankly, if ya'll (and by ya'll, I mean those of you who buy "spreadable butter" to use right from the fridge) can't think ahead a few minutes and take your REAL CREAM butter outta the fridge to allow it to soften before you need it.. well, dammit you aren't true butter lovers. By God, I think Paula Deen just fainted at the thought of spreadable butter. Anyhoo.. I will try to get over my mental thing (1 of many) and give it a shot, and I'm sure it'll taste just fine.. but well.. oil. squick! Along with a pound of their salted butter and a container of the spreadable butter, Challenge Dairy also sent me some nice surprises! I received a bottle of dill weed and smoked paprika from Spice Islands along with a very cool OXO Spice Keeper. And to make my cooking efforts a little easier, they were also kind enough to send me a whisk - how did they know?? I've got a big balloon whisk that I love, but it's big - I've been looking for a smaller version and this one is perfect - thank you Challenge Dairy, Spice Islands and OXO! :) So what did I do with all of these items? Actually asking me what I didn't do with them would be an easier question. But I goofed big time in not photographing most of it, mainly because I used them for my Thanksgiving dinner. Between 14 recipes, and cleaning the house for guests.. well, my camera was put away after the first dish and I only photographed it because it was new. But that's okay because I've blogged about some of the recipes before. I used the butter in my stuffing, the gooey pumpkin butter cake (just in the crust where you could taste it), my sweet potatoes, a new cauliflower dish. But the true test was the table butter that we used for our bread. Let me tell you, that was my favorite usage of this butter. Spread thickly (of course!) on a slice of fresh baked Italian bread and the rest of the meal wasn't as appetizing. I could have ate that whole damn loaf smothered in butter and been quite thankful for a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. Seriously. This butter is very creamy, has just the right amount of salt and is basically The Bomb. Have I mentioned how cheated I feel that I can't buy this butter in my local grocery store? *sigh* The new cauliflower dish I tried was based on a recipe found on Recipezaar, called Roasted Parmesan Garlic Cauliflower by Marie. Of course I tweaked it towards my own tastes and the final dish was quite delicious. We'll be having this again. Roasted Romano Garlic Cauliflower 1.5 TBS mashed roasted garlic 1.5 TBS olive oil 1/2 head cauliflower, separated in florets 1/3 c. grated Locatelli Romano cheese, divided salt and black pepper 1/3 c. Panko 1/4 c. butter, softened 1 tsp. smoked paprika Preheat oven to 450º F. Fill a 3 quart pot with water, bring to a boil and then salt the water. Add the florets and cook for 5 minutes until they are JUST fork tender (try not to overcook) Grease small 8" x 8" Pyrex baking dish. Mix Panko crumbs and remaining Romano cheese together in small bowl, set aside. Place olive oil, roasted garlic paste and 1/3 of the Romano cheese in large resealable bag. Add cauliflower and shake to mix. Pour into prepared baking dish. Season with salt and pepper, top with Panko & Romano mixture. Place dabs of butter all over top. Sprinkle with smoked paprika. Bake for 20 minutes. xoxo