Corn with bacon and scallions

The foodies aren't kidding when they say, "Everything is better with bacon."


I wanted to try this recipe of Martha Stewart's because I really do love corn, although I think it's best on the cob. I've got variations of that I want to try, too...


Anyway, I've wanted to make this for a couple of weeks and my boyfriend was coming to dinner. He'll eat whatever you make for him even if he doesn't like it, although he's very honest in telling you he doesn't like it. He about choked on balsamic vinaigrette once, but went back for another bite of that Romaine.


I had all the ingredients for this side, although my corn was frozen. I tell you, I don't think I'll ever buy canned corn again. Not that I bought it in the first place, but my mom always had it in her house. And frozen corn is just so much better.

Martha's corn

I cut the recipe in half since there would only be two of us. Well, I just most of it in half. Instead of going from four slices of bacon to two, I went to three. See first sentence.


I wasn't quite sure what Martha leant when she said 1-inch strips. It seemed like a very big piece of bacon compared to the size of the corn and scallions. So I just cut it as you see the in the picture.


Now, as much as I love bacon, I hate making bacon. I always burn myself with popping oil. Luckily, since the bacon was sliced up, I could move it around with a spoon while I tried to protect myself with the splatter guard. It worked, for the most part.

My corn.

The corn turned out very well. The corn itself still had that fresh pop, the scallion leant some brightness, and the bacon made it smoky and salty. Actually, it could have used a little more salt, but it was still really good.


Which I find curious. I like bacon, but I don't generally liked smoked things. But I enjoyed this. Oh well.


My boyfriend liked the bacon part. He find corn inconvenient to eat. 


Conclusion: Make it again, but for a crowd. Try thick-cut bacon? And buy some Kosher or sea salt, for crap's sake.

Lemon puppy chow

I knew I wanted to make a dessert for when my man came to dinner the other night, but I really, really didn't want to do anything super complicated.


Because, you know, sometimes you're just lazy.


So I decided to make lemon puppy chow because I the only ingredients I needed to buy were a lemon and the baking chips.

I don't have time to make my food shots look that pretty.

Let me tell you about those white baking chips.


Whenever I see white chips, I think white chocolate. I had never heard of them being vanilla flavored. So I'm thinking, what the heck is the difference. Well, I was looking at the bags of white chips at my preferred grocery store. They had all three different brands, Tollhouse, Ghirardelli and Hershey's. Where I got confused was that only the Hershey's bag said it was vanilla flavored. The other two just read, "Premier White." Well, what the heck flavor is "white"?! Onion?


I bought the Hershey's, since the other two were vague.

Now, I started by doing some subtraction. I really don't need nine cups of any sort of sweet snack, even if I'm sharing.

I then proceeded to fail at subtraction and put the full amount of butter in a bowl. Luckily, I realized this before I put any other ingredients in the bowl, so I just cut the butter in half and took out one of the pieces.

I bought a fresh lemon to get lemon zest. Which meant I got to use my microplane. Best. Culinary purchase. To date. Seriously. What a great (or grate?) invention, I can't believe I ever used just a box grater.


I eyeballed the lemon juice. Not a good idea, but too late to take it back now.

Mmm...tasty. And I love those little bowls, great serving size.

The mix turned out pretty good. You could tell I used too much liquid because the Chex took on sort of a stale texture. But they were really lemony and delicious.


Conclusion: Don't eyeball the lemon juice. Give a microplane to anyone who registers for one. Definitely one to make again.

Pepperoni bites

My friend had a get together the other night, so I, of course, used it to try something new.

I decided to try these pepperoni bites because they looked easy, sounded tasty, and seemed like a good party food.

How hers turned out.

Yeah.

I was wrong.

I picked up the exact type of roll the writer suggested, Grands Homestyle Buttermilk. I used mozzarella instead of whatever cheese she chose.  On top, I used an Aldi pizza and pasta grinder, garlic salt and parmesan cheese. The only different was that I used olice oil instead of an egg wash.

I verified with My Brother the Chef first that this would be okay. And he said since it was there mostly for color and to get the seasonings to stick, it would be fine. I didn't want to use the egg wash because I was making the dish, taking it to my parents' house while we had dinner, and THEN taking to my friend's to bake. I didn't want raw egg hanging out that long.

I had no trouble making the bundles, and proceeded to line them up in a 9x13 baking pan (that I sprayed with cooking spray just to be on the safe side). It was a tight fit, but from the pictures, it looked just a little more crowded than the example.

Again.

I was wrong.

I preheated my friend's oven (not something I always do, I'll admit), put them in for 19 minutes (splitting the difference), and checked on them once.

Well, for some reason (and I wish I had remembered my camera), my bites seemed to expand more than hers. Like, the dough on one of the bites was an inch taller than the pan ledge.

It'll be fine, I figured, it doesn't matter what they look like as long as they taste good. And they did smell very good.

Yet again.

I was wrong.

I pulled the first one out of the pan since I was really excited to try them. I took the super-risen one in the corner.

Anywhere the bread had touched the pan was black. Burned near to charred, black.

I didn't eat that part, I had the rest, which I thought lacked flavor. It needed a different cheese (maybe I should have used the colby-jack) and some seasoning. It's fixable, I thought. The ones at the middle should only be burnt on the bottom, which can easily be sliced off.

Except the dough of the ones in the middle was raw where they touched other bites.

See?

Burned on the outside. Raw at the middle.

Not cool.

Not cool at all.

About half the bites were either eaten or pitched by the time I left. I was glad I had brought yummy things for pretzels, because otherwise, I would have been an even bigger fail at party helping.

Conclusion: This is not worth the effort to try again. And since I doubt my friend's oven is THAT super screwy, either 9x13" pans can vary wildly (in size) or there was something else the creator failed to mention.

Peanut Butter Crunch Cake

After my flop that was the toffee-apple upside down cake, I knew I needed to improve my recipe choice.

I found this recipe...well, I think I tore it out of a cookbook Mom was going to throw away. See, sometimes I don't feel the need to keep an entire cookbook/magazine/what-have-you. I'll just keep the recipes I want.

And this one was a good one to keep.

What is was supposed to look like. Because I always have a picnic basket on the table when I'm eating cake...

First, I love any cake recipe that doesn't make me combine my own dry ingredients. I love using a box mix and improving it.


Also, I love peanut butter desserts.


So I made this the night before I had my friends over for dinner. It didn't take long to prepare at all, although chopping peanuts was a bit of a pain.


I eyeballed the peanut butter and chocolate chips. I used a 1/3-cup scoop and filled it most of the way.

Not as pretty, but sure was tasty.

I always try, when there is crumbly toping, to get the topping everywhere. I might not have bothered. The middle was the best no matter what. It was moist and delicious and tasted like a peanut butter cookie. No one had anything bad to say about it. And most of it got eaten when I took the leftovers from dinner in to work.


Conclusion: More chocolate chips.

One-Pot Salsa Beef Skillet

I might be a yard sale junkie. More specifically, I might be an estate sale junkie.

I love estate sales because so much more is being sold, and if the family brings in a professional, that professional doesn't have an emotion tie to the products, so you can usually get them pretty cheap.

It's more "get rid of this stuff" than "let's make some money."

One thing I like finding at estate sales are recipe magazines. You know, magazines like Midwestern Living, Cooking Light, or even those bi-monthly booklets food companies like Kraft put out.

I love food magazines because I can get them for a song and don't feel bad ripping them up.

I found this recipe at one of those sales. And after a couple of weeks of more complicated recipes (at least for me), I wanted something I didn't have to think about.

I told my Brother the Chef what I was going to make and where I find the recipe.

"Oh no!" he said. "That'll be awful!"

It can't be that bad, I said. I mean, I'm sure they have test kitchens.

"No, it'll be bad," he insisted. "Make it your own," he advised.

"No, I'll follow the recipe this time," I said. "I'll make it my own next time."

"Make it your own," he insisted again.

Well, dangit, maybe I need to follow the recipe so my readers know what I'm doing! Of course, I wasn't going to tell him that. It's not like I have enough readers for them to be confused anyway. But my friend did back me up that I need to know how it tastes in order to know how to change it.

Like the interior sides of the skillet would have been that clean if the dish had actually cooked in that.

So I followed the recipe pretty closely. I didn't buy that specific brand of salsa, because that's just silly. I did buy the Kraft brand mac and cheese because I didn't know if there would be a significant difference in the cheese taste. And instead of sprinkling the green onion on as a garnish, I just mixed it in because the green onion I had was the frozen leftovers from a previous recipe and wouldn't have looked pretty.

Wow, mine is so much oranger. Or more orange. Take your pick.

We all liked the dish. Everyone was surprised that there was no taco seasoning in the recipe, just salsa. They said they might have liked some taco seasoning, but the taco seasoning right in the cheese (What's up, Aldi?!) helped. The corn was very sweet and still had the pop of not-over-cooked corn. I might see if next time I can use a generic mac and cheese, just to save a buck or two. And maybe dice up some green peppers to add, but that's really, really orange.

Conclusion: Very successful. We'll find out later how the leftovers heat up.

Grapefruit cocktail

It occurred to me earlier this week that I was only planning on two new recipes. But I want to stick to three posts.


So I scrambled.


And decided to try a drink that I was fairly certainly would go with my meal, but I already had two of the three ingredients, and the third was easy for a friend to pick up.


It was a grapefruit cocktail.


Now, I love pink grapefruit juice cocktail. And it must be the pink. I can't pull a My Brother the Chef and drink that bitter yellow stuff. No. Pink for me.


And I discovered years ago that Fresca, a grapefruit soda that only comes diet, is a fantastic mixer.


Also, one of my friends has a small love affair with tequila.


So this drink needed to happen.

Look, the recipe is on the photo!

No amounts are listed, so I filled glasses with ice, poured in some tequila, poured in grapefruit juice, then finished with the Fresca. I had forgotten about the basil leaves, so I skipped that part.


I'm still contemplating an herb garden on my porch.

It looks much cuter in a mason jar. I'm just not hipster enough for that.

We all really liked the drink. It might not have been the best combo with food, as grapefruit is a very strong taste, but we all liked it and will remember it for when we decide to sunbathe on a lazy Saturday. Or Sunday. Or Tuesday.

PAMA Lemonade

To use up the PAMA liquor left from the Champagne Dreams, I decided to make PAMA Lemonade. To go with my pizza and cake. Yeah, it wasn't a dinner I put much effort into this week.

I'd link you, dear reader, to the recipe on the PAMA website, but the site's version of PAMA Lemonade is much fancier than the version I found in the booklet that came with the bottle. So here it is:

1.5 oz. citrus vodka
1 oz. PAMA liquor
3 oz. lemonade

I mixed the PAMA I had left with the last of a bottle of vodka (about half a liter each) with a 2 liter of Countrytime lemonade.

It's supposed to be kind of a pale purple color, but I suppose near-gray is what you get
when you mix lemonade with a purple-ish liquor.

The drink, although not spiffy, was tasty.

Conclusion: While good, not good enough to make me go out and buy another bottle of PAMA liquor.

Toffee Apple Upside Down Cake

Truth: I have an oral allergy syndrome. I don't even know if that's grammatically correct. Anyway, it has freaked my best friend out. While I have minor reactions to some nuts and fresh stone fruit, I react most severely to apples.

I've had my entire lower jaw swell up after eating raw apples.

Not cool, especially since Mom just introduced me to a new variety that I could eat for days. Honey Crisp, I think.

Anyway, what this means is that I don't usually buy apples. And when I do, it's because I'm going to cook them. So when I bought a whole bag of apples, I lined up a few different recipes to help me use them. Here's looking at you, frittata and risotto.

I don't remember where I found this recipe, I think perhaps it was when I was working at a newspaper. I certainly didn't originally find it at the blog I've linked to, but it's the same recipe, and I really didn't want to type that whole thing out. All I know is that it was in my behemoth, therefore I should try to make it.

I don't like cake, with the exception of pineapple upside down cake, so I'm willing to try nearly any variation on it.

I followed this recipe nearly exactly. I changed just two things. I used three apples in the cake instead of two because the ones I had were small and mealy. And I used almonds instead of walnuts, and not the full amount. I wanted the crunch of a nut, but walnuts (along with pecan and cashews that aren't cooked into Chinese food) are a nut a have one of those oral sensitivities to.

The batter was dry until I folded in the apple, which had gotten brown really quickly, and then it just seemed really thick.

I put it in my brand new square cake pan and spread it out as directed. I baked it for 38 minutes and let it cool for 15. I was worried, again, that the cake would flip out of the pan right. But I need not have worried too much. The cake flipped out just fine, with the exception of two corners. And I just took what stuck in the pan and put it back on the cake. Not the most aesthetically pleasing, but it was going to go in my mouth otherwise, and I really didn't need all that sugar right before bed.

How mine looked. Maybe eventually I'll get a serving platter that isn't black.

I served the cake the next day to my friends when they came over for the weekly dinner I've been making.

The cake was wildly mediocre.

There wasn't enough topping, in my opinion, and the cake itself was very dry. And it certainly wasn't at all reminiscent of pineapple upside down cake. More like spice cake with extra stuff on top.

Conclusion: Not something I need to make again.

Breakfast risotto

"Can you reheat risotta?"

I have a job where I can eat breakfast at my desk in the morning and I have gotten into the habit of bringing something with me. As I'm currently out of yogurt and cottage cheese, I'm interested in breakfast risotto. Maybe I can make a batch on the weekend and bring it in for a couple of days?

"Yes, but it will not be as good," texts back My Brother the Chef. "I would use a skillet. Add liquid, add heat."

"Unless of course all I have is the microwave at work..." I respond.

"Microwaves are bad tools," he writes. "Only good for defrosting meats. You could reheat your risotto in a microwave. Add liquid, add heat. I don't recommend it."

Well, thanks for nothin', brother dearest.

As an aside, he is also opposed to freezing it. "The liquid and the starch may seperate or do something else unwanted."

All right, I can avoid freezing it, but how can I possibly make a crockpot full of risotto and not take some to work? I don't get up early enough to make breakfast on my stove at home!

Bah, on My Brother the Chef, I say.

I made breakfast risotto yesterday. I made it in the afternoon because the timing really, really doesn't work out to eat it for breakfast unless you get up and turn on the crock pot then go back to bed.

And who wants to do that?

I followed the directions on that blog just like it said. I made the whole batch instead of halving it becuase 1.5 cups of Arborio rice really didn't look like much.

I was wrong, but oh well.

I used a small container of Simply Apple and a small container of milk (because I don't like milk and therefore really don't keep it in the apartment). It was 2 cups of each.

I kept going over and stiring to help the rice from sticking to the bottom. I have no idea how long it cooked, but I did cook it on high until it was done.

The problem was the taste.

I had this breakfast over our first Thanksgiving holiday at my cousins' cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. I knew what it was supposed to taste like, at this wasn't it.

Perhaps I found the wrong recipe? Did I follow the directions correctly? It really seemed like it needed sugar.

I went back over the recipe, looking at the directions. There was no mention of sugar. In the directions. But when I looked up at the ingredients...

Brown sugar.

I had totally forgotten it.

Because it wasn't mentioned in the directions. Of course, neither was the salt, but I remembered to add that before letting it go because I had gotten the container out of the cupboard. This is why I get all my ingredients out first, I'm less likely to forget things!

So, the rice was completely cooked when I added the brown sugar. I turned off the heat and stirred it in. It melted and melded just fine.

And it finally tasted right.

Conclusion: Always double check your ingredients. And I didn't take pictures because, although tasty, it wasn't attractive. Oh, and I had it for breakfast this morning. It reheated in the microwave just fine.

Apple Cheedar Frittata

Before this recipe, I had no real idea what a frittata was.

I figured it was similar to a quiche. A friend said it was kind of like an open-face omlette. Perhaps an egg pie? No, that would insinuate a crust, which this has not.

Why did I decide to make something I had no idea about?


Because it sounded good, obviously.


So I looked into frittatas.


Turns out they are more like an omlette. A quiche does have a crust (ahem, egg pie, ahem), which I didn't remember/realize. You can tell how many quiches I've eaten. These should not me confused with a strata, which has bread. So it appears frittatas are low-carb, if nothing else.


It also appears that I don't own a cast iron skillet.


I could have sworn I bought one at a rummage or estate sale last year, but it is no where to be found.


So I borrowed my mom's.

What it should look like.

I followed this recipe exactly as it read, until it came to the cheese. I had some pre-grated cheese in the fridge, a combination of white cheddar and sharp cheddar. I dumped the last of the white cheddar into a measuring cup that had both cups and ounces listed. And then I looked at how much 4 ounces was.


That was a surprisingly small amount of cheese.


Seriously.


And the recipe called for half in and half on top?


Nah, I put about 5 ounces in the egg mixture and them sprinkled some on top after I had put in the apples.


I had read the recipe reviews on Martha Stewart's website before making this. They seemed to agree that the dish was bland. I didn't want to wildly change the recipe, but I thought I would probably need something salty. So I made sausage links to go along with it.


The thing I was most worried about was getting the eggs out of the skillet. I used probably more butter than was called for, and made sure to get butter as far up the sides of the pan as possible.


Then I hoped.


My dinner companions were there by the time the frittata was finished cooking. I used a plastic spatula to bring the side of the frittata away from the side of the skillet. Then I shook the skillet back and forth.


The whole frittata moved.


Would I really be able to pull this off?


I gently kept moving the skillet while turning it to the side so the frittat could hopefully slide on to the waiting serving dish.

It came out. In one piece. Bending instead of breaking.

How mine looked.

I was so super excited, I might have been a little ridiculous. And then I was handed my mimosa-plus, and we toasted! Because that's how we roll.

The frittata was a little bland, but my friends really liked it. I'm just really glad to have learned a new method of convey breakfast ingredients to a plate. Didn't think ahead to do a breakfast casserole? Don't want the effort of an omlette? No problem -- make a frittata.

Conclusion: Use more salt. Try other fillings. Always add more cheese.

Champagne Dreams

Sometimes, I browse the liquor aisle at my grocery store to see what has a rebate attached.

You see, I like to try new or better things, but I don't like paying full price for them.

The other day, while looking for rebates (and not finding any), I picked up a recipe pull off for Pama Pomegranate Liqueur. I don't like buying really specific liquors because it always seems like there are so few drinks to make with them. So I just took the recipes home and filed them for another date.

The next time I was browsing the liquor aisle, I noticed that the Pama had more recipes attached to the neck of the bottle. I read the recipes. And I broke down and bought the Pama. I do like pomegranates, even if I do find the word difficult to spell and the fruit difficult to eat.

I decided to make Champagne Dreams to go with the breakfast I was going to make for dinner. You know, sort of like a dressed up mimosa.

I asked my friend who really likes champagne to bring a bottle to dinner. I really have no idea what is good or bad. She has more experience with it.

I used Triple Sec instead of Gran Marnier because that's what I had in the apartment and I really don't have any more room for more booze bottles.

And the friend who brought the "champagne" actually mixed everything while I was worrying over my frittata. (Next post...)

I even used my pretty champagne flutes, perhaps to make up for the lack of garnish.

The drink was really, really good. We didn't measure, because, really, who does when making an alcoholic beverage, but it didn't matter. It was tasty. Exactly like a mimosa, but better.

Now what to do with the rest of the Pama...

Crispy Ginger-Lime Chicken Thighs

Confession: My favorite part of the chicken is the thighs. And I've never cooked chicken thighs.


So when I saw a recipe for crispy ginger-lime chicken thighs, I knew I needed to try them. Especially since I found chicken thighs on sale.


The first I actively did to make this dish was talk to My Brother the Chef about meat thermometers. You see, I'm terrified of salmonella (thanks, Mom) and therefore always over cook chicken. And pork for that matter, but that's another dish.


So when I saw the Martha Stewart gave me the exact temperature the thighs needed to come to in order to be cooked, I knew I needed a meat thermometer.


I texted My Brother the Chef.


"I need to buy a meat thermometer," I wrote. "Talk to me."


"Get a digital one," he replied. "Don't spend too much on it for it will break eventually. But don't get the cheapest one either. Go middle of the road."


"Why digital?" I wanted to know.


"10 times faster," he wrote. "Don't have to worry about recalibrating it all the time. Go digital."


So I went shopping. And while I did get a digital thermometer, I went with the cheapest one, not because it was the cheapest, but because it was the only one (out of a whole three options) that you just stuck in the meet to check as opposed to leaving it in while the meat cooks to a specified temperature. (You know the kind with the cord that Alton Brown  likes so well.)


I followed the recipe directions pretty much to the letter, although I didn't measure the fresh ginger, I just kept grating until it looked like the right amount. (Maybe I need to buy the ginger paste in a tube, too?)

What they should look like

I was surprised how easily the skin pulled away from the meet for me to rub the mixture underneath. I used an iced tea spoon to poke it under the skin and rubbed it is from the top. I find iced tea spoons to be a wonderful kitchen tool. It smelled really, really good. The ginger/lime/scallion mixture. Not the spoon.


Now, after my experience with the broiler burning my friend pickles, I did not broil the chicken. I put the oven at 450 degrees and cooked it longer. But I should have used the broiler. I cooked the chicken to temp (thank you, meat thermometer) but the skin did not get crispy. I'll know better for next time.


I served it with herbed rice that didn't turn out so hot.

Yeah, definitely need to work on the camera skills.

I thought this chicken was very tasty and I'm looking forward to cooking it again.


Conclusion: Yes, you should use the broiler.

Garden Lavender Pound Cake

I'll start off by being fair.

I've made this recipe before.

But it was so good the first time, and my friends have been wanting me to make it again, so I caved and made it as dessert for dinner Tuesday night.

Let me begin with a story about my fascination with lavender sugar.

I was at Findley Market a couple of years ago with my mom and My Brother the Chef. I think Mom was buying cheese or pork, so My Brother the Chef and I wandered down the aisle. He stopped in front of Colonel De Gourmet Herbs and Spices, with all their glass jars filled with intriguing lookingt flavors. I was drawn to the lavender sugar. I don't particularly know why; I knew I liked the smell of lavender, but didn't have a habit of eating flowers. I was going to buy some when my brother the chef said, "Oh, no, don't waste your money on that. You can make lavender sugar really easily." How?, I asked. "Stick some of Mom's dried lavender plant in a container of sugar." That's it? That was it.

What it should look like

A few months later I found this recipe in Mom's stack of recipes to be sorted and I knew I needed to make it. Luckily, the recipe also gave me directions on how to make lavender sugar. It called for stripping the blossoms and pulsing them with sugar in a food processor.

So what did I do?

I followed both instructions by pulsing sugar with just blossoms in the food processor, and then took a couple of whole stems and put them in a plastic, air-tight container with the sugar I had pulsed.

Layers of flavor, as some professionals like to say.

Anyway. When I made the recipe this time, instead of two loaf pans, I made one loaf pan and one muffin tin. Mostly because I only own one loaf pan, but also because the muffin size would be easy to bring to work. Because I really don't need to eat all this pound caek by myself.

I also didn't measure either the lemon zet for the cake or the lemon juice for the glaze. I just zested and juiced one lemon. That's what I had on hand.

My loaf. I seriously don't know how they make their glaze so opaque.

The first time I made this, I followed the directions and put the cakes on a wire rack to cool, then glazed them there. And this made a huge mess all over the counter. I don't have a lot of counter space in my apartment's tiny kitchen, so I just left everything in the pan and glazed it once they were cool. Turns out, then the glaze acts as glue to keep your cakes stuck in the pan.

At least it was a weak glue. And a tasty one, too.

Overall, the pound cake didn't turn out bad. The muffins were a little dry. I did put them in for 30 minutes as opposed to 45 for the loaf, but it probably should have been shorter. The loaf was more moist, but probably also could have used less time. I put that in for 45 minutes and the toothpick didn't pull out clean so I put it back in, turned off the oven and let it go for a bit. I don't know how long, but evidently too long.

And the muffins. I had trouble removing them.

I wish the lavender flavor had been more intense. You really couldn't taste it unless you bit a blossom. So next time, instead of half lavender sugar and half regular, I'll make it all lavender sugar.

Conclusion: More lavender, less time.