But my love, hate relationship with avocado dissipated when I came across Alton Brown’s guacamole.
I had an avocado laying around, as I had planned to introduce it to my little one. But since I took my sweet time, I figured I better have the adults consume it in the form of guacamole instead. I am not going to repeat the recipe here, as I followed it exactly. The Food Network came through once again!
I call this, pelmeni face. Simply place some pelmeni on a plate, cut a tomato in half and place on each side of the pelmeni, creating ears. Place two blueberries on top of the pelmeni, to create two blue eyes. Add a piece of butter for a cute nose, and a slice of peach for a smiling mouth. The ground black pepper makes for cute freckles, don’t you think?
M, big props on this very creative idea!
Moms and Dads, do you have any other fun tricks up your sleeves for fun kids’ meals?
I can’t say that I blame those that became so addicted to the grilled cheese sandwich. The thought of the warm crispy bread with the gooey cheese on the inside, makes me feel all warm inside. All this talk about grilled cheese sandwiches inspired me to make my own. I whipped up a melt-in-your-mouth grilled cheese sandwich with pepper roasted turkey and tomatoes. Some would call it a regular sandwich, but it’s a grilled cheese to me. It’s grilled, and it has two slices of cheese, as opposed to one, that would go in my regular sandwich.
Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Roasted Turkey and Tomato
Ingredients
2 slices Oroweat Healthfull bread
2 slices Havarti cheese
2 slices Peppered Roasted Turkey
2 slices Tomato
Butter (softened)
Directions
Butter one side of a bread slice, and turn it over. Layer the non-buttered side with a slice of cheese, two slices of turkey, two slices of tomato, and the second slice of cheese. Butter the second slice of bread, and top the sandwich, buttered side up. Cook sandwich on frying pan until golden, on one side. Flip and cook until golden on the other side, and cheese melts.
To get to the topic at hand. As soon as Google’s Recipe View became available, I tried my hand at it. This might surprise you, but currently my kitchen is lacking in ingredients. You’d think this would motivate me to grocery shop…not so much. In fact it has quite the opposite effect on me. It makes me lazy and causes me to want to order take out. Plus, those two feet I posted earlier, make it kind of difficult to go grocery shopping on a whim.
I decided to type in a few ingredients, I did have on hand, into Google and see what comes up in Recipe View. So I typed in “ricotta, pasta, half-and-half, Parmesan”, clicked on the “Recipes” link on the left hand menu bar, and what came up were links to recipes from different recipe sites. A link called “Noodles with Ricotta and Walnuts” from Food.com caught my eye. Glancing through it, I realized I had some, (not all) of the other ingredients it called for. But you know me, if I don’t have the ingredient, I just skip it.
So today, for lunch, I decided to test out the recipe. Of the ingredients required by the recipe, I had the following:
Ricotta
Pasta
Parmesan
Butter
Half-and-Half
Walnuts
Salt and Pepper
Dried, finely chopped parsley (the recipe didn’t specify if the parsley had to be dry or fresh)
I didn’t measure out the ingredients as was called for in the recipe, but I did follow the instructions (exclusive of those ingredients I blatantly ignored). The one thing I did add were slices of leftover steak, which my husband recently grilled.
You might have noticed that the Food.com link does not have a photo of the finished dish. (don’t you just hate that?) Well, I’ve solved that problem, and present you with the final dish…
To sum up my experience with Google’s Recipe View…I think that if you have ingredients in mind that you want to use in a dish, Google’s Recipe View is a nifty tool to use. Oh, and the pasta was rich and delish.
Have you tried Google’s Recipe View? What was your impression?
This time around I decided to recreate the clafoutis based on the original recipe, with no alternations (as I like to do all the time). So this time I made Raspberry Clafoutis just as the Food & Wine Magazine recipe says.
One tip, butter the dish well, so it’s easy to take the clafoutis out when serving. Sounds familiar? That’s because I completely forgot to butter the baking dish originally, and even though I buttered it this time, it was still sticking just a bit. But in the end even though I had to add some extra muscle to get the slice out, it still tasted awesome!
With this in mind, I decided to take a chance and leave my guests with something sweet to remember the event by. Thank you Confessions of a Tart for the great idea.
What is better than a chocolaty, moist cupcake topped with cream cheese frosting? It may be gone fast, but it’ll remain in your memory forever.
These delicious, perfectly sized little black magic cupcakes are extremely easy to make. I was surprised myself how easy it was. I got the recipe for the cupcakes from Milk & Honey Cafe, and the cream cheese frosting from All Recipes.
The individually packaged portions are even figure friendly 
The cupcake boxes
I would like to send a special thanks to Shrimpaholic for her support and help with this venture.
Realizing that it would be virtually impossible for me to eat all these plums before they spoil, I decided to put them to good use. While unsuccessfully searching for a recipe of an upside down plum cake, which I distinctly remember seeing in my overstuffed drawer of recipes, (I of course found it after the fact), I came across a very appetizing raspberry clafoutis recipes in one of my Food and Wine magazines. Being that the purposes of baking that day was to use up the plums that were haunting me, I made the executive decision to substitute the raspberries with plums.
I followed the recipe (mentioned above) completely, other than substituting raspberries with plums, and confession, forgetting to butter the baking dish. In my opinion the clafoutis turned out very tasty, and I believe others that tasted it agreed with my opinion (hope they weren’t just being nice ).
Bottom line…here is the final result
If you make this clafoutis, please do leave a comment here to let me know how it turned out. And of course, remember to butter the baking dish!
Since I always leave everything to the last minute, I had to work with the ingredients that were available at home. As a result the recipe I found on epicurious.com was not followed to the T. I used whole wheat bread instead of challah bread, and non-fat milk instead of whole milk. Otherwise I followed the recipe and ended up with some pretty tasty breakfast.
Try it out, your family will thank you!
Today we’ll start with Anna’s quiche, and the second part will be crab cakes by the lead of the Hot Chicks with Skillets, Lyuba.
For the Quiche recipe you will need the following ingredients (the proportions will depend on the size of the quiche you will be preparing):
Red onion
Eggs
Mushrooms
Red Bell Peppers
Oil and butter (for cooking)
Shredded cheese (Anna used a blend of four cheeses)
Pillsbury crescent roll
First thing is to cut up the onion, add butter and oil to a heated skillet, and add the cut up onion to the skillet
Saute the onions on the skillet, while the onions are sauteing, chop up the mushrooms and add the mushrooms to the skillet with the cut up onion. Continue sauteing the onion and mushrooms until both are softened.
While the mushrooms and onions are sauteing, add eggs and cream cheese to a mixing bowl and mix until well blended, add shredded cheese and mix until well combined.
Chop up the red bell pepper and add the pepper as well as the cooked mushrooms and onion mixture to the egg and cheese mixture. Mix all the ingredients until well combined
Unroll the Pillsbury crescent roll dough and line a baking dish (in our case it was a glass, oven-safe bowl
). Fill the baking dish with the quiche mixture and place in the oven. Bake the quiche at 375 degrees Fahrenheit, for approximately 45 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean from the quiche.
Finally, here is the hard working chef with her final creation!
The quiche was delish!
There is a little bit of a story with baking these brownies. They are called Black and Tan Brownies. Based on the way the recipe looked (and on how inattentively I read recipes) I initially thought that it’s two recipes in one (Tan Brownies and Black Brownies). It was only after I put the tan brownies in the oven and washed all the dishes, did I look at the recipe again and realize that in fact I only made one part of the brownies. Well, lucky for me I had most of the other required ingredients, and I was able to complete the “Black Brownies” portion of the recipe as well.
There was one hick up, I used all of the butter I had for the tan brownies. I decided to take a chance and use non-fat milk instead of butter to melt the chocolate. It was a risk, and this substitution possibly altered the outcome. But I am happy to report that even though my brownies didn’t look like those in the photo of the recipe (or like typical brownies for that matter), they are fabulous! And this isn’t just me tooting my own horn. My hubby loved them, and I brought some samples to work, and got great responses there as well.
So without further ado…here they are…
Of course, what’s the point of all this blogging without the recipe to try for yourselves.
Even though there isn’t that much chocolate to call this post chocolicious, my “blond brownies” are still delicious. Enjoy!
