Booberry! No, Lemon! No, Booberry! No, Lemon! MOMMA!!!!

Blueberry Lemon Yogurt Cake

This is what you hear when you ask your kids what kind of quick bread or pound cake you should make today. Our “boo” (Joshie to the uninitiated) wanted “booberry”). On a side note, my husband started calling Josh Boo when he was but a wee infant and the nick name just kind of stuck. Now he is Boo to practically everyone. We have half joked that when he gets to school age and the teacher asks his name, his response will be “Boo Aaron Brand!” and on his wedding day, the pastor will be asking his bride if she takes “Boo” to be her husband. Yes, we’re a strange strange family. I somehow doubt this comes as much of a surprise.

Moving on… Boo wanted “booberry cake”, Jordan (Zach was still asleep…at noon. Ahhh, the life of a teen on Summer vacation from school) wanted lemon. So what was a mother to do? I did NOT want to make one of each… too expensive and results in too much in the way of sweets in the house. Nor did I want to disappoint either boy.

So I remembered the recipe I had recently printed out for Ina Gartens Lemon Yogurt Cake. I’ve said before and I’m sure I’ll say again; you can never go wrong with Ina’s recipes. The woman is a cooking goddess. I have another one…or maybe two… might be three… of her recipes waiting to try after payday. With this recipe, I decided I could make both boys happy. I simply made the cake as written but adding about 2 cups of blueberries to the batter just before pouring it into the pan. On a side note, you ever make something while thinking to yourself what a cooking goddess/god YOU are only to find out after the fact that 350,000 have done the almost exact same thing before you did? Rather disheartening to ones cooking goddess dreams isn’t it? It’s like this big “well crap, I invented this darn it! I did, I did, I didddddd!!!” Sorry. I’m done now. 😛 Continue reading

I Like Taters Cause Taters Can Make You Mine…

I like taters, specially when eaten with lots of wine!! Ok, so my revamping of song lyrics leaves something to be desired. Like talent. But in my defense the song “I like Dreamin'” has been floating in my head all day long. I had to use it SOMEHOW!

Yes, I know taters can’t really make you mine either. But if I make them for my husband, they make HIM mine. Again. Or still. Or something.

Making these particular potatoes can quite possibly make anyone yours. Think crispy potatoes, gooey cheese, green onions, more gooey cheese. Wouldn’t YOU be someone’s sweetheart for that? I would. So maybe I would be someone’s sweetheart for a ten pack of Twinkies, a few Kindle E-Books and two liter of Coke but then, I’m cheap that way.

I found the original recipe for these potatoes HERE . I knew that, being me, I would change the recipe somewhat but honestly I didn’t do a whole lot. I added a teaspoon of jarred diced jalapenos, some extra cheese (you know me. I ALWAYS use extra cheese) and some green onion in lieu of the regular onion.

You need to try these. Trust me. Just cause I eat Twinkies and drink wine spritzers made with flat Sprite and cheap wine doesn’t mean I don’t know good potatoes when I inhale them. Admittedly, the above sentence isn’t the best way to endorse myself but oh well… Continue reading

Snickering Over Doodles

 

Snickerdoodle Muffins. Yum!!

I think I’ve mentioned before that I was a weird kid haven’t I? Not that this comes as a surprise to any of you who read my blog.  I have to say though, I came by it honestly. It was all the fault of my brother and sister. They corrupted me. Yep, yep yep. All laid at their psychological doorsteps. There was the time they filled the washing machine with tons of soap and it overflowed everywhere. When confronted by our dad, they said that I did it. Hello?! I was so young I don’t really even remember this happening, it’s just one of those passed down family stories. Point being, if I was that small, how the heck did I reach the washer? But, dad bribed me to “tell the truth” with an offer of jello. I’m a sucker when it comes to jello so I fessed up. I’m pretty sure I didn’t get the jello.

That was just one of the many ways they warped my poor tender psyche. There were also words which have stuck with me to this day and still make the five year old stuck inside my feeble minded middle aged body giggle hysterically. Like the word doodle. To you and you and you it means a sort of random drawing right? I don’t want to know what it means to YOU, you sick puppy. 😛

Not to me though. Nope. Done been warped, I tell you. It’s all his fault *points to my brother and wonder if he sees this*. Doodle to me still brings up mental images of a coloring book I had as a child that, on the cover, told me, in gaily colored words, that one of the fun things to do inside was to “doodle”. And I giggled. My brother giggled. My sister giggled. I’m pretty sure the dog giggled. Because to us,  doodles were a certain part of the upper female anatomy. We were kids… thinking of that part made us giggle. Lots. How did the word doodle come to mean boobs… breasts… cleavage, knockers, hooters…well, you get the point. I have. No. Earthly. Idea. I need to ask my brother. He’s even older and more decrepit than I, so he may know how that word came to be the word for boobage in our admittedly strange household. Continue reading

Blackberry, You Taste So Sweet

Blackberry Lemonade Muffins

It’s become a challenge to find a video that will go with each blog post. Why do I do it you ask? Because I’m extremely strange first of all and also because once I start something. I become rather obsessive. 😀 This my friends, is why you get a really lame video with almost every post now hehe. I like to think of it as my being your doorway to new musical tastes. Or insanity. Whichever. You know you liked The Carrot Song.

I have a thing for berries also. I wait every year for them to show up fresh at stores for a decent price and not having the taste of…well… nothing at all. Out of season berries really suck donkey toes. So when I can’t get them, I use frozen. It’s not quite the same but it’s pretty darn close and it keeps me from going into “Lack of Berry Convulsions”, otherwise knows as LOBC. Don’t ask me how you pronounce that. Just roll with it cause you love me.

I like muffins. So does
this lovely lady who happens to be one of my favoriteist (yes, that too is now a word cause I said so) people.

Muffins are yummy. They can have all sorts of bad for you things in them (not that my muffin today does; just saying) and yet you can get away with eating 12 of them because they’re muffins. Not cupcakes, not cookies, but muffins. And if you add fruit in them, you then earned the right to call yourself the healthiest cook ever. Or something. Do that rolling with me thing again. Continue reading

Sometimes Simple And Old Are The Best

Yum

I have NO idea who ate some of this before I could get a photo *blinks innocently*


I should know… I mean, look at my husband. Ok, I’m so gonna die for that but I couldn’t resist that one hehe

Seriously though… have you ever noticed that in the blogging world, it is always something new, something unique, something that is all about “OMG, I made elk tongues with a balsamic reduction and served it with bacony coleus plants sauteed in bear fat!”

Mind you, I love the new stuff; don’t get me wrong. I’m no different there than anyone else in trying to be unique and have something here on my blog that isn’t on 396 other blogs. Erhmmm, other than that elk tongue thing… you can have my share. Honest; I don’t mind.

Sometimes though, I just want something comforting, easy and old fashioned. Especially recently. I’ve been battling a fun fun fun tooth and jaw infection (thus my absence {didya miss me? 😛 } and also why no new posts recently) and have been taking massive doses of Penicillin. And while I’m not allergic to it, I’m sensitive to it big time and spent the better part of a week nauseous and unable to eat. I’m eating again but am still doing better with soft easy foods because my jaw isn’t 100%.

Point being (whining over lol) that when I’m down, physically or emotionally, I like, as I said, easy and comforting. One of my go to recipes for that (other than the ubiquitous mac and cheese that is practically everyone’s fave comfort food) is an old Amish recipe. I absolutely LOVE so many Amish foods. I have the same fascination with their culture, religion and foods that so many living in the mainstream world do.

Continue reading

Reinventing The Wheel…Or Biscuit

Can you see all the little layers?? Huh huh huh?




We’ve all done it. Or at least if you’ve cooked for any length of time and are more than a casual “I HAVE to cook so I do” sort of foodie you’ve done it. What the heck am I talking about? Food reinvention. Aka the times you want to make something you’ve made before but just want to do it differently. You want something traditional but you want something new. That train of thought has brought us so very many of the foods we all love. Though I doubt Twinkies and Cheetos were somebody’s brain child as to how to reinvent cheese and cake. Mores the pity. 😛

I have been wanting biscuits. I have also been wanting croissants. But biscuits were boring and croissants are a pain in the proverbial tushie. I can make both with no problem. You can’t live in the south and cook without learning to make good buttermilk biscuits or you may as well hide in a hole. And I taught myself to make croissants years back just cause I wanted to prove I could do it. But neither was exciting me yesterday when I was contemplating today’s post. So I figured I’d make Angel Biscuits- those biscuit/yeast roll hybrids. But I wanted to play with them and see if I could get them to be more akin to croissants with out all the trouble and time that croissants take. I have to say; I’m pretty tickled with how they turned out.

Hours before I started the dough, I cut two sticks of butter in half. Then I rolled out each half in between sheets of waxed paper and froze them. After I got the dough finished later, I did the rolling and turning technique (more or less) that you use when making croissants after inserting the sheets of butter in them. After baking, I tried one (I wanted to eat more but controlled myself lol) with some of my home made Apricot Honey Jam. All I can say is… oh my. These turned out fantastic. Are they the prettiest rolls in the world? Nope. But I couldn’t care less nor will you. I promise. These are tender and buttery and the tops and bottoms get a slight crispy almost fried taste and texture due to the butter. You can see the layers in this and they are reminiscent of the flaky biscuits you can make from a can (the ones where you can peel apart the layers) but without the canned taste, thank God and the Pillsbury Dough Boy. So give these a try. They aren’t time consuming at all and taste so darn good!

Croissant Style Buttermilk Biscuits

  • 2 sticks butter (1/2 pound), room temp, cut in half (preferably salted for this recipe contrary to what I usually advise)
  • 1 package (2 1/4 teaspoons) regular yeast
  • 2 tablespoons warm water (105 to 115 degrees)
  • 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
  • 3 tablespoons sugar
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup shortening
  • 1 cup buttermilk (you may need a touch more if the dough is dry)
  1. Put one of your pieces of butter onto a large piece of waxed paper. Fold the paper over it and smoosh the butter down. Then roll the butter out flat into a thin sheet. Do this with each of the four pieces. Put into the freezer for at least an hour.

    See? The butter doesn’t have to look pretty. Just nice and thin and flat. 🙂

  2. When the butter has been in for about 50 minutes, preheat your oven to 400 and start your dough.
  3. Mix the yeast with the warm water in a small container. Set aside.
  4. Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. Cut in the shortening with a pastry blender until mixture is the consistency of fine crumbs. Stir in the buttermilk, then the yeast. Mixture should leave sides of bowl and be a cohesive mass. If not, add a little more buttermilk at a time until it does.
  5. Place the dough on a generously floured board. Knead until it comes together smoothly. Gently roll out the dough into a rectangle. It doesn’t need to be perfect.
  6. Place one of the frozen butter sheets on it and fold the dough in half, enclosing the butter. Seal the edges well.  Gently roll back out into a rectangle large enough to insert another sheet of butter.
  7. Do this three more times with each of the other pieces of butter. Make sure your board stays decently floured. Seal the dough well after inserting each sheet of butter using fingers moistened with a bit of buttermilk if necessary. Cover any cracks with a light sprinkling of flour and just continue on as you have been doing. Work quickly so that the butter doesn’t have time to soften up too much. The steam is what helps create the layers and warm butter won’t steam as well. When you have all the butter rolled in, you will end up with a thick fairly heavy piece of dough that looks more or less like this:
  8. Roll out a LITTLE bit. You’re not trying to flatten it out again just make it a touch bigger. Once you have this done, cut the dough into 16 pieces. Bake in a preheated 400 degree oven until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Serve with jam or preserves or chocolate sauce if that makes you happy. But you won’t need butter on these I promise you. 😛

 

I STILL Don’t Like Peanut Butter But…

 

My family does. I have kids still at home including a two year old who eats his weight in peanut butter on a weekly basis. To me, peanut butter is that stuff they put in Reeses Cups, Butterfingers and Nutter Butter Cookies. Oh, and a PB&J maybe two times a year. But I’ve never had the obsession with it that many people do. I have other obsessions thank you very much 😀 (cough cough Twinkies and Cheetos)

I have said that I will never make peanut butter cookies and I have stuck to that. They smell ick to me. But I still sometimes make treats with peanut butter for my husband and kids. And with Russ’s kids being here too, it seemed like a good time because I knew there would be no leftovers 😀

I am currently reading the King Arthur Whole Grain Cookbook (yes reading; not scanning; doesn’t everyone do that? 😛 ) and they have a recipe in there for peanut butter chocolate chip waffles. I saw that and knew it would perfect for both my family and the peanut butter loving blog community. This also takes it into the Elvis realm with a banana topping. Now THAT I liked. With a spoon. In my mouth. by itself. YUM! The recipe didn’t call for the following but to up the “OMG” level for everyone I made a chocolate/peanut butter sauce to put on top also.

If you like waffles, or like peanut butter or like chocolate or like bananas, you will like this 😀 As they cooked the whole kitchen smelled like a peanut butter factory lol. The original recipe calls for spelt flour so feel free to sub that if you want. This is a long list of ingredients but very quickly put together.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Waffles

With Banana Cream And

Peanut Butter/Fudge Topping

  • For the waffles-
  • 1 cup all purpose flour
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup chocolate chips
  • For the banana cream-
  • 2 large bananas
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • For the Peanut Butter/Fudge Topping
  • 1/4 cup peanut butter
  • 1/2 cup hot fudge sauce
  1. Banana Cream- Mash the bananas in a small bowl with the sugar, cinnamon and lemon juice. In separate bowl, beat cream until stiff peaks form. Fold the banana mixture into into the heavy cream and refrigerate until the waffles are done.
  2. Waffles- Combine the flour, salt and baking powder in a small bowl. Set aside.
  3. Cream the peanut butter and sugar together until the peanut softens up. Pour in the melted butter.
  4. Add the eggs, one at a time and beat until well blended and mixture is smooth. Add the milk gradually. The mixture will be very soupy.
  5. Add the flour all at once and stir just until combined. Fold in the chocolate chips.  Set aside to rest for at least ten minutes while you preheat your waffle iron and make the fudge sauce.
  6. Peanut Butter/Fudge Sauce-
  7. Mix the peanut butter and hot fudge sauce in a small bowl. Microwave for 30 seconds. Stir well. Microwave again until mixture is smooth.
  8. Pour about 1/3 to 1/2 cup waffle batter (depends on the size of your iron; mine took close to half a cup) in the waffle iron and cook waffles until are golden brown. Top with some of the banana cream and peanut butter fudge sauce. This will make about 5 waffles.