Recipes

You know what sounds good right now - I mean really, really good?  A bowl of homemade guacamole and some really fresh, crunchy tortilla chips.  Ever since the Attack of the Infested Tomatoes started playing out, my obsession with salsa has understandably faded.  It’s been challenging to find ways to substitute what was always a frequently used staple in my kitchen.

I never really realized just HOW frequently I used tomatoes until now.  Sliced on sandwiches, cut up in salads (which my family eats just about daily in some fashion or another during the warm months), in tacos, cooked with pasta, and…sigh… in salsa and pico de gallo.

With salads, I’ve been replacing tomatoes with radishes and/or red pepper.  Some people like sun dried tomatoes in salads, but I’m still on the fence.  I think they’re amazingly good in pasta dishes, though.  They can fill the void nicely.  Then, too, there’s always the cannded tomatoes.  They mingle well with pasta. 

I also stir the petite diced tomatoes into taco meat for tacos.  They’ll do in a pinch for salsa, too.

But back to my overwhelming desire for guacamole.  I love this stuff and can’t get enough of it.  At the moment, I want it to show up for lunch with it’s tortilla chip friends, but it’s versatile enough to show up with a lot of other sidekicks.

For Example, you have to try the following:

1. Lightly toast some quality bread.  Spread the inside with guacamole.  Add a few sliced of smoked turkey, a slice of swiss cheese (optional), shredded lettuce, and a few slices of bacon.
2. A South of the Border Burger:  Grill, fry, or bake your burger patties.  Lightly toast your buns.  In no particular order, add your meat, sliced onion, a dollop of guacamole, jalapeno peppers if you’re brave, and a teaspoon or so of store bought picante sauce (I usually get Pace.)  Serve with fresh tortilla chips and enjoy being alive.
3. Toast a wheat english muffin.  Spread on some fresh guacamole.  To this you can add either a little picante sauce or hot sauce, if desired.  Now top it off with a poached egg.  Oh, come on now!  It’s good, I promise.
4. Cut up some cooked chicken.  I most recently used mesquite roasted chicken (YUM!), but grilled or baked chicken are delicious, too.  In a bowl, combine the chicken, some guacamole, and a little bit of salt and pepper.  Add as little or as much guacamole as you desire.  Use your chicken mixture to stuff lightly toasted pita pockets or wrap a warmed tortilla around and create a delicious wrap.
5. Serve guacamole beside your grilled steak or chicken.
6. Use guacamole as a potato topper - give sour cream the night off.
7. Slather on top of baked potato skins.
8. Serve with the Ruffles Pinch of Salt Chips and/or Frito Corn Chips I told you about in the last post!

Did you know that early Spanish settlers called guacamole the “butter of the poor?”  It got the name because it was flavorful, could be used a lot of different ways, and was inexpensive to make.  At least it’s still diverse and flavorful!

Thursday afternoon I had something that I hadn’t eaten in a long time:  A good, old-fashioned, flashback to grade school peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich.  None of that healthy ”adult” thinking of putting it on whole wheat bread - oh no, it was built on white Bunny bread.  I didn’t even mentally calculate the calories of the Peanut Butter as I spread it out, either.  So, yeah, it was a little heavy-handed.  Or knived. Peter Pan, Bunny Bread, Smuckers, and I made a masterpiece.

Since then I’ve been thinking about just how universally loved peanut butter is.  It’s one of everyone’s favorite comfort foods.  I guess it all goes back to the fact that most of us ate peanut butter sandwiches while growing up, so they’re associated with Saturday afternoons, school lunches, and laughs at the kitchen table.

Plus peanut butter’s just plain delicious!

Elvis Presley absolutely loved fried Peanut Butter and Banana sandwiches and had a particular fondness for Peanut Butter on Crackers.  It apparently was his number one comfort food.  We all know how close the “King” was to his mother, I’d be willing to bet that his love of PB went back to her fixing sandwiches for him as a child. 

We can all agree that Peanut Butter and jelly sandwiches and Peanut Butter and Banana sandwiches are pretty normal.  But if you want to take a “not so normal” look at peanut butter, I have a website for you:  http://www.peanutbetter.com.  Peanut Better offers the following “Savory” varieties for the peanut butter lover with an adventurous streak:  Onion Parsley, Rosemary Garlic, Hickory Smoked, Tai Ginger and Red Pepper, Spicy Southwestern.

For those with a sweet tooth (you rang?) they have:  Cinnamon Currant, Deep Chocolate, Vanilla Cranberry, Sweet Molasses, and the one of all of them I know I’d like:  Peanut Praline.  I say “I Know I’d like” rather than the one “I’d touch with a ten foot knife” because, hey, you never know.  Generally, I don’t like for my food to have identity crises of any kind.  If it’s corn, I want it to taste like corn - if it’s peanut butter, I want it to only have peanut butter on its mind.  But, I love food, so even if its getting all experiment-y and wacky, I’ll go along for the ride.

At least once.

From a link on Peanut Better.com, I found a site that sells peanuts, apparently it’s where Peanut Better gets their peanuts.  I’ll bet when these peanuts were growing up they never imagined they’d possibly land in a jar of Tai Ginger and Red Pepper Peanut Butter! Spicy? Yes.  Nice-y?  I dunno.

Anyway, the website has some AMAZING Peanut Recipes I know you’ll want to check out.  Recipes like:  Mexican Peanuts, Sugar Coated Peanuts, Peanut Butter Cookies, Peanut Butter Balls, Peanut Banana Shake, Fried Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich, Peanut Butter Popcorn, Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie, Choco Butter Combos, and more!

My printer is doing it’s deep breathing exercises, it knows it’s about to get a workout.

Speaking of workouts, I see a lot of peanut yumminess in my near future, so I’d better go walk off some calories to make room for more.  I’ve got it down to an art.

Food Tv.com (a.k.a. Food Network.com) has a delicious section filled with the most amazing Memorial Day recipes you could hope for.  But don’t take my foodaholic word for it, see for yourself.   Be warned, though, if you’re on a tight grocery budget (Aren’t we all these days?), you’ll be extremely tempted to throw the budget out the door.  I honestly want to make about 20 different recipes right now!

My printer’s trying to catch its breath and my own budget’s scratching its head, wondering if it ever really had a chance.  To answer its question, “No.  Not really.”

Some of the recipes you’ll want to seek out first:

Corn, Avocado, and Tomato Salad

Coconut Lime Pudding Cake

Grilled Bread

Summer Pudding

Blackberry Lemonade

Blueberry Lemonade

Grilled Chicken Sandwich with Grilled Mushroom Vinaigrette

Zesty Grilled Tilapia

Crab Cake Burgers

Mini Chipotle Burgers with Fire-Roasted Garlic Ketchup (!!!!!)

Mini Chipotle Burgers with Fire-Roasted Garlic Ketchup.  I just had to fixate on it a little longer.

COPPERED CARROTS  (Make the day before serving!)

1 pkg. raw carrots
1 cup tomato soup
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1 T. vegetable oil
1 T. sugar
1 small onion, minced
1 small green pepper, chopped
dash of salt
dash of pepper
dash of garlic powder

Scrape, clean, and slice the carrots into circular slices (”coins”).  Cook in boiling water or steam until tender when approached with a fork.  Don’t overcook them, however, you don’t want mushy coins!

Drain.  Mix the soup, apple cider vinegar, oil, sugar, minced onion, freen pepper, and seasonings in a pan.  Bring to a boil.  Pour this sauce over the carrots and refrigerate overnight.  These flavorful carrots can be served cold or heated.  This recipe makes a great appetizer OR sidedish.

Makes 6 - 8 servings.

Food Network.com has put up a delicious section on Barbecuing and Smoking.  There are videos, tips, and recipes that’ll flip your grill’s lid.  My husband actually needs to buy a new grill.  Last summer, the weather here in Kentucky was fierce - tornadoes, thunderstorms with bite, hail, etc.  Even though we had a nice cover over our large grill, Mother Nature just knocked it off when she knocked the grill off the patio.  Oh the brutality!

Below are just a few of the ridiculously yummy recipes in the section:

Slow Cooked Apple Smoked Barbecue Pork

Barbecued Texas-Style Beef Brisket

Sixteen Spice Smoked Chicken

Hold it just a southern minute.  Sixteen Spice Smoked Chicken?!?!    It appears that the husband needs to get four more things in addition to the grill:

1. A smoker
2. A chicken
3. 16 Spices
4. Busy!

Click HERE to see the entire BBQ Section - you don’t want to miss this.

Okay, so Paula’s Home Cooking is a Can’t Miss everyday - I know, I know. But today, it’s especially so. The recipes she’ll be making are “Country Food Side Dishes” and the lineup sounds way beyond delicious. One of the things she’ll make is a sweetening syrup she uses for Iced Tea. If you aren’t from the South, you may not be that familiar with sweet tea. Being a Kentuckian, I was never familiar with any other. When I got married, my husband was in the Air Force, so we moved around quite a bit. We lived in the beautiful city of Wichita, Kansas for a while and I was convinced they made the worst tea on earth until I realized they just didn’t sweeten it.

My response, of course, was “Why on earth not?!?!” (They also didn’t fry green tomatoes, make red eye gravy, or have a clear understanding of okra. But I loved them anyway.)

Here’s Paula Deen’s Recipe for Simple Syrup for Sweetening Tea:

1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup water

Heat the sugar and water in a small saucepan, bringing to a boil. When the sugar is completely dissolved, remove the pan from the heat and cool to room temperature. Add to your pitcher of tea and soon you’ll be wondering “Why on earth..” everyone doesn’t drink sweet tea too.

Here are the other recipes Paula Deen will be cooking up today:

Corn Casserole

Turnip Mashed Potatoes

Indian Succotash

Hoppin’ John

If you’re a big fan of casseroles, don’t miss Emeril tonight. The show’s centered around casseroles and they sound amazing. Afterwards, we’ll be ready for dessert and those of us who are Alton Brown fanatics will be in Food Network Heaven, there’ll be back to back Good Eats. The first one focuses on cakes and the second one will “top things off” with icings. (Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)

For the recipes that will be featured on Emeril, Alton, and the rest of the shows on today’s Food Network, see the scrolling lineup to the left. I like what’s up Giada’s Italian sleeves today, too.

2 pkg (8 oz each) PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

1 TBS milk

2 TBS MAXWELL HOUSE Instant Coffee

1 ready-to-use chocolate crumb crust

Mix the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla with an electric mixer on medium speed until creamy and well blended.  Add the 2 eggs and mix well.

Microwave milk on high for 15 seconds.  If you don’t have a microwave, of course, you can simply heat it on the stovetop in the tiniest pan imaginable!  Stir instant coffee into milk until dissolved.  Stir into batter and pour into crust.

Bake at 350 degrees fro 35 to 40 minutes or until center is almost set.  Cool.  Refrigerate for 3 hours or overnight.  (You’ll barely make the 3 hours before diving in, so you’d better go with that one.)

This delicious, yet simple, recipe is from a little recipe booklet that I got YEARS ago in a Dollar General Store for, like, $3.  It’s a “PHILADELPHIA” Cream Cheese Cookbook called, “A Little Taste of Heaven:  Appetizers, Cheesecakes, and More.”  It was put out in 2003, so it might be a little tricky to find (think e-bay!), but if you can get your hands on it, it’s pure gold.  Cream cheese is one of my favorite things to bake with; like buttermilk, it just makes everything better.

You’ll love this recipe!  Coffee combined with chocolate AND cream cheese?!?!  I could eat this every day for the rest of my life.

First off, be sure to check out the recipe for Crunchy Noodle Salad on today’s Barefoot Contessa. It’s pictured above and my mouth is already watering. You can find the recipe by clicking the link I just dropped. I’m actually going to the store shortly to grab the ingredients I don’t have on hand. Other recipes from this episode are: Blueberry Sauce, Asian Salmon, and Lemon Yogurt Cake (Are you kidding me? YUM!)

This sounds absolutely awesome.

Barefoot Contessa is one of those shows that seems to sometimes fall through the crack in Food Network’s lineup. Other celeb chefs seem to be so “out there” and sometimes delightfully over-the-top that Ina Garten (a.k.a. the Barefoot Contessa) seems really tame by comparison.

As a matter of fact, I only recently started following her shows! But after just one episode I was totally hooked. Not only is it like visiting with a favorite relative, her recipes are amazing. They have a very unique quality to them and reflect Ina’s classiness and grace. I can’t quite explain it, it’s something you’d have to see for yourself.

Something else that strikes me is how relaxing it is to watch Barefoot Contessa. Her episodes have the same effect that Nigella Lawson’s do - you find yourself so kicked back and relaxed you’re extra sorry to see them end!

If you haven’t familiarized yourself with the Barefoot Contessa yet, today would be a great time to do so - this sounds like it’ll be a great episode.

Ina Garten’s Cookbooks are also very special. I’ve been a fan of them for a long time - even if I was a little late to her television shows. Pictured above is one of the best: Barefoot Contessa at Home Everyday Recipes Youll Make over and over Again
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From the Publisher:

For Ina, its friends and family-gathered around the dinner table or cooking with her in the kitchen-that really make her house feel like home. Here Ina offers the tried-and-true recipes that she makes over and over again because theyre easy, they work, and theyre universally loved. For a leisurely Sunday breakfast, she has Easy Cheese Danishes or Breakfast Fruit Crunch to serve with the perfect Spicy Bloody Mary. For lunch, she has classics with a twist, such as Tomato, Mozzarella, and Pesto Paninis and Old-Fashioned Potato Salad, which are simply delicious. Then there are Inas homey dinners-from her own version of loin of pork stuffed with sauted fennel to the exotic flavors of Elis Asian Salmon. And since Ina knows no one ever forgets what you serve for dessert, she includes recipes for outrageously luscious sweets like Peach and Blueberry Crumble, Pumpkin Mousse Parfait, and Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Icing. Ina also lets readers in on her time-tested secrets for cooking and entertaining.

Get the inside scoop on everything from what Ina considers when shes designing a kitchen to menu-planning basics and how to make a dinner party fun (heres a hint it doesnt involve making complicated food). Along with beautiful photographs of Inas dishes, her home, and the East Hampton she loves, this book is filled with signature recipes that strike the perfect balance between elegance and casual comfort. With her most indispensable collection yet, Ina Garten proves beyond a shadow of doubt that there truly is no place like home.

Other Barefoot Contessa Cookbooks:

Barefoot Contessa Family Style Easy Ideas and Recipes That Make Everyone Feel Like Family

The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook Secrets from the East Hampton Specialty Food Store for Simple Food and Party Platters You Can Make at Home

Barefoot Contessa Parties!: Ideas and Recipes for Easy Parties That Are Really Fun

Ina Garten has also taken her “Barefoot Contessa” brand of delicousness to other products, such as the ones below. Like Rachael Ray, Emeril, and Paula Deen, everything with the Barefoot Contessa logo on it is as good as it possibly gets.

Barefoot Contessa 3-pc. Chocolate Chunk Blondie Pan Gift

Description: Blondies are better with big bits of chocolate mixed in! This gift includes the best Chocolate Chunk Blondie Mix, a pan that is perfect for baking bars and a silicone spatula. Tied with Ina’s signature ribbon, it is a gift every “sweet tooth” will love.

Barefoot Contessa Set of 2 Sinful Hot Chocolate Mix

Product Description: Rich and smooth, chocolaty and so sinfully delicious. Nothing is better on a blustery cold day than a steaming cup of hot chocolate with homemade marshmallows. This mix is incredible, made from only the finest chocolate. Along with top-selling cookbook author and Food Network star Ina Garten, The Barefoot Contessa, Stonewall Kitchen has developed this line of specialty foods. With this collection of Ina’s favorites, you can make her delicious recipes in minutes. How easy is that?

Barefoot Contessa Set of 2 Contessa Blend Regular Ground Coffee

Product Description: From Ina Garten: “I created this blend of the best Columbian coffee with a hint of cinnamon. It was by far our biggest seller at my store. I hope you love it!” Along with top-selling cookbook author and Food Network star Ina Garten, The Barefoot Contessa, Stonewall Kitchen has developed this line of specialty foods. With this collection of Ina’s favorites, you can make her delicious recipes in minutes. How easy is that?

1 Tbsp. butter
1/2 cup sesame seeds
1/4 1/4 cup grated Parmesan Cheese
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 cup sour cream
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. vinegar
1/4 chopped green peppers
2 Tbsp. chopped onions
3/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. garlic salt
1 head of lettuce
1 bag of baby spinach

Melt butter - add seeds and brown slowly. (Don’t leave them unattended even for a second!) Cool.

Add cheese and mix well. Set aside.

Combine remaining ingredients, except for the lettuce and baby spinach. Just prior to serving, toss the lettuce and spinach with dressing and 3/4 of the seed mixture. Sprinkle more seeds on top right before digging in.

I’ve been experimenting a lot with different salads lately. There’s just no excuse to go the tomato/lettuce only route! The options and variations are absolutely endless and I’ve found that working your way through them is deliciously entertaining!

What would you get if you crossed a chocolate chip cookie with a pie, then spread homemade whipped cream on top and sprinkled miniature chocolate chips over the entire production?

Besides ME at your side, you’d get Paula Deen’s Chocolate Chip Pie. Click the link for the recipe.

I make her Whipped Cream all the time. I serve it in my coffee, on top of hot chocolate (topped off with a drizzle of chocolate syrup), and on top of pie. It’s also a perfect combination with pudding. Spread some of the whipped cream in a small bowl or dessert dish…making sort of a nest, then add your favorite pudding (you can never go wrong with chocolate, but vanilla’s amazingly good, too). Finish it off with another dollop of the cream on top.

It’s as angelic and heavenly as Dolly Parton’s voice…and that’s saying something.