Hilary's Kitchen

Fried Okra

2009-11-04T13:04:00.000-08:00

Fried Okra

10-15 okra pods, cut in 1/2 inch pieces

1-2 eggs, beaten

1 cup cornmeal

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 cup to 1 cup vegetable oil

1. Soak okra in egg for 5-10 minutes.

2. Combine cornmeal, salt and pepper.

3. Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat.

4. Dredge okra in cornmeal micture; coating evenly. Carefully place okra in oil, stir occasionally. Reduce heat to medium when okra first starts to brown and cook until golden brown.

5. Drain on paper towels.

Creamy Cucumber Salad

2009-10-30T12:55:00.000-07:00

I know this recipe is a little late, but I have a bunch of summer recipes to share with you that have been piling up. Just thinking about these yummy cucumbers makes me foreget there's 3 inches of snow on my driveway right now!

Enjoy!!

Creamy Cucumber Salad

1 cup sour cream

5 tablespoons whote vinegar

3 teaspoons granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon celery seed

2 large cucumbers, peeled and sliced

1/2 small onion, thinly sliced and separated into rings

In a covered container, stir together the sour cream, vinegar, sugar, salt and celery seed. add cucumber and onion; toss to coat. Cover and chill for 2 to 24 hours, stirring once in awhile. Stir before serving.

Peach Pie

2009-09-23T16:30:00.000-07:00

I love this pie! It's so easy and tastes so good! I use canned peaches (not the pie filling), but you can use fresh peaches, too. It's hard for me to find fresh peaches where I live for more than a couple months out of the year and for some weird reason, I crave this pie when peaches are out of season. Enjoy!

Peach Pie

Dough for a double crust 9-inch pie

3/4 cup sugar

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1 teasopoon ground cinnamon

dash salt

2 cans peaches, drained

2 tablespoons butter, cubed

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.

2. Line a 9-inch pue pan with half if the dough. Combine sugar, flour, cinnamon and salt in bowl. Stir in peaches.

3. Spoon peach mixture into pie pan.

4. Sprinkle butter cubes over the top of the peaches.

5. Place top crust on pie and cut slits for steam to escape.

6. Bake for 45 minutes or until crust and topping are golden brown.

Cheesy Chicken & Broccoli Rice

2009-09-23T16:26:00.000-07:00

This is an easy and quick meal and tastes really really good!

Cheesy Chicken & Broccoli Rice

1 1/2 pounds boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-seze pieces

2 cups chicken broth

2 cups instant white rice, uncooked

1/2 pound Velveeta cheese, cubed

1/2 package (5 oz.) frozen chopped broccoli, thawed

1. Cook chicken in a large skillet on medium-high heat until done.

2. Stir in broth and bring to boil.

3. Add rice and cover. Let cook until rice is almost done.

4. Add Velveeta and broccoli. Stir until cheese is melted and mixture is well blended. Add more broth or water if needed.

Enjoy!

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

2009-09-22T13:03:00.000-07:00

This pie recipe is coming to you a little out of season, but I had to search hard for a strawberry rhubarb pie recipe that I thought I would like for my dad's birthday at the beginning of the month because that is his favorite kind of pie. He said it was pretty good so I'll share it with you. It's a combination of about 4 different recipes so I was pretty happy when he said it was good. Just remember to chop the rhubarb into very small pieces so it will cook all the way through.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

4 cups fresh rhubarb, chopped into tiny pieces

3 1/2 cups fresh strawberries, chopped

9-inch double pie crust

2 tablespoons butter

1 egg yolk

2 tablespoons raw sugar

1. Preheat oven to 400° F.

2. In a large bowl, mic flour and sugar. Add rhubarb and strawberries. Toss with sugar and flour and let stand 30 minutes.

3. Pour pie filling into pie crust. Dot top with butter and cover with top crust. Seal edges of top and bottome crust with water.

4. apply yolk to top of pie, using a pastry brush. Sprinkle with raw sugar (regular sugar can also be used). Cut small holes in top to let steam escape (if you aren't doing the top in a lattace pattern).

Bake at 400°F for 35 to 40 minutes, or until bubbly and brown.

Silicone Bake Ware & Brown Sugar Cake

2009-09-22T12:35:00.000-07:00

Sorry I haven't been around very much lately. It's been a busy summer. I have a bunch of recipes to share with you though.

As a wedding gift, I received a bunch of these silicone bake ware. I have a bread pan, muffin pan, a fluted tube pan and a cupcake size rose shaped cake pan. I think this is the first post of where I tell you I'm not really excited about the gadget. The tube pan and rose cake pan are nice and work really well, but I have to spray the bread pan and muffin pan (which you aren't supposed to have to do) and it's kind of annoying having to put them on a cookie sheet to put them in the oven. I spray all of them a little since I have had so many issues with the bread pan and the muffin pan. I would say, if you're trying to decide between a regular piece of bake ware and a silicone piece of bake ware, go with the regular.
Below is a VERY good recipe for Brown Sugar Cake. I modified it a little from the original recipe I found like I do a lot and it is now one of our favorite cake recipes! Enjoy!

Brown Sugar Cake

1 package yellow cake mix

1 package vanilla flavor instant pudding

4 eggs

2/3 cup sour cream

2/3 cup water

1/2 cup oil

1 cup packed brown sugar

2 tablespoons granulated sugar mixed with 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon sprinkled in the pan after spraying it with cooking spray

1. Heat oven to 350° F
2. Beat first 6 ingredients with mixer until well blended. Add brown sugar and mix well.

3. Pour into 12-cup fluted tube pan or 10-inch tube pan sprayed with cooking spray and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar.

4. Bake 1 hour or until toothpick inserted near center comes out clean. Cook cake in pan 15 minutes. Loosen cake from sides of pan and invert onto wire rack. remove pan and cool cake completely.

Peanut Butter Cookies

2009-07-22T09:13:00.000-07:00

I don't like peanut butter cookies - unless they are made from this recipe. This peanut butter cookie is nice and soft and has a good peanut butter taste. They're a lot of fun to make with kids, too.

Peanut Butter Cookies

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

Extra granulated sugar or Raw Sugar

In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and peanut butter with a mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add the granulated sugar, brown sugar, baking soda and baking powder. Beat until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in the egg and vanilla until combined. Beat in as much of the flour as you can with the mixer and stir in the remaining flour. If necessary, cover and chill dough until easy to handle. (I usually chill them for about 10 minutes.)

Shape dough into 1-iknch balls. Place balls 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten by making crisscross marks with the tines of a fork dipped in flour or powdered sugar to keep the fork from sticking to the dough. Sprinkle granulated sugar or raw sugar on top of the crisscross patterns.

Bake in a 375° F oven for 7 to 9 minutes or until bottoms are lightly browned. Transfer cookies to a wire rack and let cool.

Drizzle with some melted semisweet chocolate for something different.

Grilled Chicken Salad & Fried Spinach

2009-07-09T14:23:00.000-07:00

Since I've been neglecting my blog lately, I'm going to share 2 recipes with you today! It's summer and these 2 recipes are great summer time recipes. They're both recipes that I made up totally on my own. The first is a grilled Chicken salad. Chicken salad sounded really really good one day when the temperatures out side were way above 100 degrees. I decided to grill the chicken because it sounded really good, plus using the grill outside wouldn't heat up the inside of the house! Smart huh? We tried the salad in several different ways of serving and they were all really good. We tried it on a bed of lettuce & tomato, on crackers, on a sandwich and even on it's own. Enjoy!

Grilled Chicken Salad

3 Chicken breasts, grilled and cut into chunks

5 Hard boiled eggs, cut into pieces

3-4 Stalks of celery, chopped up

1/4 cup sweet pickle relish

1/4 cup mayo

1/2-1 cup miracle whip

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon onion powder

1 small box of raisins

1/2-1 cup chopped pecans

Mix all ingredients together and serve cold.

The next recipe is Fried Spinach. Our neighbor has a garden that is going crazy right now and she insisted on me taking a bunch of spinach, but there are very few ways I like spinach served. I have had fried spinach in a restaurant before and when I searched the Internet I couldn't find a recipe. Everything I could find was just frying spinach and that was it, but I wanted it battered like I had at the restaurant so I had to come up with my own batter. This batter is a thin batter, that's why it says 1/2 to 1 cup of milk. You want it to just barely cover the leaves so you can still taste the spinach under the batter. I think this would be really good on other vegetables and maybe some meats. If you try it on other vegetables, please send me a picture to add to this post to share with other people. I think the next time I go to the farmer's market, I'm going to get some onions to try it on! I know you'll enjoy this!!

Fried Spinach

2 cups flour

1 egg

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 - 1 cup milk

Oil or shortening for frying

Heat oil to 350 degrees F.

Put 1 cup of flour on a plate.

Mix flour, egg, salt, pepper and baking powder in a shallow bowl. Mix enough milk in to make a thin batter. Dip spinach leaves into flour and shake off excess. Dip leaves into batter and place into oil. Turn once the bottom is brown and dry the other side until it is also brown. Place fried spinach on paper towel and sprinkle with more salt.

Spinach, washed & dried (water & oil don't mix!!)

Lemon Pepper Chicken

2009-07-01T14:10:00.000-07:00

There isn't a photo for this recipe. When we plan to spend the day out fishing, hiking or whatever else we plan I like to put a crock pot meal together. This last weekend, was one of those days. This was the first time I made this recipe and I will NEVER EVER EVER EVER roast a chicken in the oven again and is also the reason why there isn't a picture. When we got home from the lake and pulled the chicken out, it was so tender it fell apart. I wanted a pretty picture of the chicken on the plate, but it didn't work. We had to use slotted spoons to take the chicken out of the pot because it kept falling off the forks. When I went to put away what was left, I had to problem taking the meat off the bones, plus there was wonderful broth to make chicken noodle soup for dinner the next night!
Hope you enjoy this tender chicken recipe! If you make this recipe and are able to get a good picture of it and wouldn't mind sharing it with me and everybody else, leave me a comment.

Lemon Pepper Chicken

1 whole chicken

lemon juice from 1 lemon

lemon pepper

onion powder

garlic powder

salt

1/2 cup chicken broth

Sprinkle lemon juice and spices over entire chicken. Place the chicken in the crock pot and add chicken broth. Cook on low 5-7 hours.

Enjoy!

Praline Cookies

2009-06-26T14:05:00.000-07:00

I was looking through my pile of cookie recipes I want to try and foudn this one. I only had 1 egg and 1 stick of butter in the fridge so when I came across this recipe, I was really excited. I also didn't want to have to refrigerate the dough and wait for it to chill, I needed instant satisfaction!
These cookes are sooooooooooo good! When I remembered I hadn't taken a picture of them yet, there was only one and a half cookies left (there was a little bit of an accident when the cookies came out of the oven and were being transfered to the cooling area so there were a bunch of half cookies on the first cookie sheet). I had to try the batter and was a little worried I wasn't going to get many cookies because the batter was so delicious. I definately got instant satisfaction with the batter. I couldn't wait for the cookies to cool enough to hold in my hand to eat one. The burning sensation on my fingers and on my tongue were worth it!!!
Hope you enjoy these as much as we did. I was told I can never make just 1 batch ever again though. They're extremly easy and yummy! Enjoy!!

Praline Cookies

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

2/3 cup brown sugar, firmly packed

1 egg, unbeaten

1 cup sifted all-purpose flour

1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/2 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Beat together butter, vanilla, brown sugar and egg until smooth. Sift flour with cream of tartar and beat into mixture. Add nuts.

Measure out level teaspoons of dough on greased baking sheets.

Bake 12-15 minutes.

Chicken & Ham Roll-Ups

2009-06-18T14:36:00.000-07:00

This is a really really easy and quick meal. It tastes really good, too.

Chicken and Ham Roll-ups

3 cups cooked rice

1 1/2 cups chopped, cooked chicken

1 can (10 3/4 ounces) condensed cream of chicken soup, undiluted, divided

1/4 cup finely chopped celery

1/4 teaspoon pepper, divided

6 slices fully cooked ham (or 18 thinly sliced ham lunch meat)

1/4 cup sour cream

1/4 cup milk

1/4 teaspoon ground thyme

2 teaspoons dried chives

Paprika

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Spread rice in a greased 11x7x2 inch baking dish; set aside. In a medium bowl, combine chicken, 1/3 cup soup, celery and 1/8 teaspoon pepper. Place 1/4 cup on each pice of hap (or 3 thin slices) and role up. Secure with a toothpick if necessary. Place ham rolls, seam side down on top of rice. Combine sour cream, milk, thyme and remaining soup and pepper; spoon over rolls.

Bake for 15 minutes and then sprinkle with cheese and paprika. Bake for another 5-10 minutes until bubbly.

Remove toothpicks before serving.

Enjoy!

Brown Sugar Porkshops

2009-06-12T15:02:00.001-07:00

Here is the meat to the grilled meat and potatoes meal. These porkchops are definately well worth the work it takes if it's a pain to get your grill out and going.

Brown Sugar Porkchops

1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed

1/2 cup apple juice

4 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

salt & pepper to taste

2 teaspoons cornstartch

1/2 cup water

6-8 boneless porkchops

1. Preheat grill for medium heat.

2. In a small saucepan, combine brown sugar, apple juice, soy sauce, ginger and salt & pepper. Bring to a boil. COmbine water and cornstarch in small bowl and whisk into brown sugar mixture. Stir until thick.

3. Brush grate lightly with oil before placing porkchops on the grill. Sear both sides of the porkchop and then start glazing while the porchops finish grilling.

Enjoy!

Grilled Potatoes

2009-06-09T13:58:00.000-07:00

One of the best parts about summer is being able to use the grill more. I think grilled meat tastes so much better. I found a recipe to make a side dish on the grill and then of course I modified it a little bit. I'll share with you the side dish today and since I haven't blogged in awhile, I'll share the pork chop recipe with you later this week.
Your potatoes ill look a little different because the original recipe said to add the cheese at the beginning. I usually share a recipe with you after I make the final changes to it and I know it's perfect, but this is a small change. Adding the cheese at the beginning makes the cheese melt and run to the bottom and makes a crunchy layer of cheese on the bottom of the foil.

Grilled Potatoes

3 large potatoes, sliced 1/4-inch thick

1 medium onion, chopped

1/4 cup butter, cubed

1 teaspoon seasoned salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

2 cups your favorite cheese blend

1/2 pound bacon, cooked and crumbled

Preheat grill to medium heat.

Put potatoes and onions in a piece of heavy-duty foil (about 18-inches square) that has been coated with nonstick cooking spray.

Top potatoes and onions with butter, seasoned salt and pepper. Close up foil and place on grill. Grill, covered for 30 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Add cheese and bacon and grill for 5 minutes longer. Remove from grill and serve.

Enjoy!

Carmel Pecan Coffee Cake

2009-05-20T14:52:00.000-07:00

Hope you have a fun and safe Memorial Day weekend! I don't think we'll be doing anything exciting, but I'm sure I'll be doing some baking.
This recipe I have had in my stack of recipes I've pulled from magazines and newspapers that I've been collecting for years and have been planning on trying. It is really good, but for some reason most of my carmel went to the bottom and then when it set up, it was a pain to get it out of the bottom of the dish. It's still really good though. Enjoy!

Carmel Pecan Coffee Cake

Batter

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 envelopes (5 teaspoons) yeast

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup very warm water (120-130 degrees F.)

2 tablespoons butter, melted

Cinnamon Sugar Topping

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Carmel Pecan Topping

1/3 cup light corn syrup

1/3 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons butter, melted

1/2 cup roughly chopped pecans

1. Mix batter ingredients and pour into sprayed 9 1/2-inch deep dish pie plate.

2. Combine cinnamon sugar topping ingredients in small bowl.

3. Stir together corn syrup, brown sugar and butter in small bowl.

4. Top batter evenly with cinnamon sugar topping.

5. Spoon the caramel pecan topping evenly over the batter.

6. Bake by placing in a cold oven; set temperature to 350 degrees F. Bake 25-30 minutes, until lightly browned and firm in center.

Cowboy Bread & Pastry Knife

2009-05-13T14:32:00.000-07:00

Hope you all had a great Mother's Day weekend. My mom died over a year ago and we didn't have the greatest relationship when she died, but she is the one that taught me how to bake which is one of my most favorite hobbies, so that is why I made this recipe this weekend. One of the recipes I learned to bake with was the following. You can use a fork to make the recipe, but a pastry knife is so much easier! There are a couple different designs for one, but this is the one I like the most. It's easier to get the job done. I bought one of these just for this recipe, but you can use them on any recipe that tells you to cut in butter, shortening, etc.
This is a breakfast cake that is very yummy served warm with melted butter on top. It's good served cold without butter, too. It's also good as a snack, dessert or I've even been known to eat it for lunch or dinner! Enjoy!

Cowboy Bread

2 1/2 cups sifted flour
1 1/4 cups packed brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 stick cold butter

1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

3/4 cup sour milk (or regular milk plus 1 teaspoon regular vinegar and let sit a few minutes)

2 eggs

Cut flour, sugar, salt and butter together until crumb-like in texture. Remove 1/2 cup and reserve for topping. To the remaning, add all other ingredients and mix until batter is smooth. Pour in greased 9x13-inch pan. Spinkle topping over top of batter. Bake at 375 degrees F for about 25 minutes or until done.

Au Gratin Potatoes

2009-05-06T14:05:00.000-07:00

I decided I better give you a non baking recipe. These are really yummy. My picture is crappy though! You can't see the bacon and it just doesn't look like how it did when I made it. I promise I'll start working on my photography!!
The recipe says to use Velveeta cheese. DO NOT USE THE GENERIC!!!! Trust me! I'm not going to give you the details on why I no longer buy generic processed cheese. Just trust me.
My mom used to make really great Au Gratin Potatoes and people would ask her to make them for potlucks and other functions. She never taught me how to make her potatoes and then she changed her recipe and started using boxed mixes to sped the process up and I no longer wanted her recipe. I searched and searched for a recipe like hers and combined 3 recipes to make my own version and I think my version is WAY better than I remember my mom's being. Enjoy!!

Au Gratin Potatoes

8 russet potatoes, cubed and peeled

1 can (10 3/4 oz.) condensed cream of celery soup

2 cups milk

1/8 cup all-purpose flour

2 1/2 pounds Velveeta, cubed
1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/2 teaspoon paprika

Bacon Crumbles (as much or as little as you want)

1. Place potatoes in a large sauce pan and cover with water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cook for 10-15 minutes or until tender. Drain and place in greased 13x9x2 inch baking pan.

2. Sprinkle bacon crumbles over potatoes.

3. in a medium sauce pan, combine soup, milk and flour over medium heat. bring to a boil and cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. Add cheese, pepper and paprika. reduce heat and cook until the cheese is melted.

4. Pour sauce over potatoes. Bake at 350 degrees F for 30-40 minutes until bubbly.

Cookie Press & Lemon Cookies

2009-04-24T09:27:00.000-07:00

When I was younger, my Mom had a cookie press to make sprintzer cookies. I was never allowed to touch it because it was old and she didn't want it broken. I have no idea what ever happened to that cookie press, but last year Hobby Lobby had a nice sale on Wilton supplies so I bought one. I love my cookie press! I've never tried any other brand, but I really like Wilton's. You can use pretty much any sugar cookie dough as long as it is room temperature. You can even use store bought cookie dough once you let it warm up to room temperature. There is a really yummy recipe that comes with this cookie press that I will have to share with you sometime, too.
Since it's finally starting to feel like Spring outside, I'm going to share this lemon cookie recipe with you. You don't have to use the cookie press. You can make them like regular sugar cookies if you want to. I think next time I make them, I'll try them that way. In my pictures you'll see they have a lot of the glaze on them. I HIGHLY recomend you don't put that much of the glaze on. TRUST ME!!

Lemon Cookies

Cookies
1 1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon lemon extract
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Glaze
1 1/25 cup powdered sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
milk

1. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter with an electric mixer on medium speed for 30 seconds. Add granulated sugar and baking powder. beat the cookie micture until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionlly. Beat in egg, vanilla and lemon extract until combined. Beat in as much flour as you can. Stir in any remaining flour. Do not chill the cookie dough if you are using a cooke press!

2. Pack the unchilled dough into a cookie press. Force dough through the press onto ungreased cookie sheets.

3. Back in a 375 degree F oven for 8 to 10 minutes, or until edges of cookies are firm but not brown. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool.

4. Lemon Glaze: Stir together the powdered sugar and lemon juice. Stir in milk 1 teaspoon at a time, until icing is a srizzling consistency. Drizzle or brush over cookies and sprinkle with colored sugar (optional). Dry for 30 minutes on waxed paper.

Makes about 70 coookies.

Snickerdoodle Muffins

2009-04-17T09:27:00.000-07:00

Happy Spring!!! I have a very yummy lemon cookie recipe to share with you, but it's pouring rain right now so I'm going to share a nice comforting muffin recipe with you. First I have to tell you, I use those cupcake papers a lot for muffins when we travel, but I think these muffins would have done better without the cupcake liners. I think a lot of the snicker doodle topping stayed on the paper. We were on a 2 1/2 hour car ride so the cupcake liner actually helped with the mess of eating in the car. Also, I got this recipe from another food blog, but I have no idea which one so if you're reading this and you think I got it from you, please let me know so I can give you credit for it.

Snicker Doodle Muffins

2 sticks unsalted butter

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoon vanilla

2 eggs

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

3/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1 1/4 cup sour cream

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1 cup sugar and 2 tablespoons cinnamon mixed together for rolling

1. Cream the butter and sugar until soft. Add vanilla. Add in the eggs and mix until Incorporated.

2. Mix in the flour, baking soda, baking powder and cream of tartar.

3. Add the sour cream.

4. Using an ice cream scoop, scoop out muffin batter one at a time and drop in a shallow bowl filled with the cinnamon and sugar mixture. Roll the muffin around in the mixture until it is covered completely in cinnamon sugar. Place muffin into a greased muffin tin. Depending on the size of your tins, you should get 12 to 14 muffins (I got 18!). Bake them for approximately 20-22 minutes in a 350 degree F oven or until they are golden brown.

My rain storm just turned into a snow blizzard! I think I'll go try out a coffee cake recipe I've been wanting to try now!

Chocolate Oreo Truffles

2009-03-30T09:25:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been so long since I posted! It's been kind of stressful with work stuff. First my hours were cut and then I was let go. Good news is, I have a lot more time to experiement in the kitchen now! Good news for both you and me! I'm not going to review a gadget in this post. Chocolate is very good for stress (physically not goot, but mentally very good) so the first experiment I preformed was Chocolate Oreo Truffles.

Chocolate Oreo Truffles

1 Pound Double Stuffed Oreo Cookies

8 Ounce Package Cream Cheese, Softened

1 Package White Chocolate or Milk Chocolate Chips

1. Crush the Oreo Cookies in a food processor or blender. Don't do all the cookies in 1 batch, split them into about 3 batches (TRUST ME!!!!!)

2. Blend the cookie crumbs and the cream cheese witha hand held mixer.

3. Roll into small balls (you can see in the picture above we did large balls, you should definatly do small balls, trust me on this, too!). Chill for an hour.

4. Melt the chocolate chops and dip the balls into them. Allow to harden on wax paper for about 15 minutes (depending on the thickness of your chocolate coating).

Enjoy!!!

New Range & Easy Manicotti

2009-01-27T13:33:00.001-08:00

First, I have to apologize for the pictures. I was a little overly excited about the new range and didn't make sure I had good pictures. I forgot to take a picture of the Manicotti until it was already put in the container to go in the fridge. Sorry!
Okay, I'd like you to meet the newest member of our family! I LOVE it!!!! It's a Frigidaire and I'd tell you the model, but I couldn't find it on the Lowe's website even though I know it's there because I've looked at it almost daily up until Sunday. It is a convection oven and flat top cooking surface. There is a feature called "Speed Bake" that circulates the heat inside the oven and everything is supposed to bake 30% faster. TOTALLY AWESOME!!!!! I can also use all 3 racks (yes, I said 3 racks!!!) and you don't have to push the buttons very hard to get them to work! It can also change between Fahrenheit and Celsius AND it has a setting for the Sabboth! I thought that was weird, but after reading about the setting I learned something new. I had no clue there were certain temperatures to use during the Jewish holiday! How many people can say that their range is kosher?
I like to just stand in my kitchen and look at my new range. Whenever my husband gets near it I get nervous because I think he's going to get it dirty or set something on it. I've been told it's the same feeling when you have a baby. So here's a picture of my new baby:

No, my dachsund isn't in the oven, she's standing in front of me so her refelction is in the window of the door. I think the poor dogs were worried we were moving again when we were taking the old one out and bringing the new one in. Once all of the moving was finished, they were much calmer.
The first meal I made in my new oven of course was a messy recipe. You should have seen me freak out because there were red sauce dors on the control panel. I love manicotti, but hated making it because it's such a pain to stuff them. Not anymore!!! This recipe is so easy! The picture is a little saucier than it should be because we had another jar of sauce in the fridge from something else and it needed to get used. I can't remember where I found this recipe, but it became a quick favorite in my house.
Sorry again for the bad picture, it looks a lot better than this - trust me!

Easy Manicotti

1 (8 ounce) package manicotti shells
1 pound ground beef
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 (26 ounce) jar spaghetti sauce
14 pieces string cheese
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1. Cook manicotti according to package directions.
2. Meanwhilem in a large skillet, cook beef and onion over medium hear until meat is no longer pink; drain.
3. Stir in spaghetti sauce. Spread about 1/4 of the meat sauce into a greased 13 x9 x 2 baking dish.
4. Drain manicotti; stuf each sehll with a pice of string cheese. Place over meat sauce; top with remaining sauce. Cover and bake at 350° F for 24-30 minutes or until heated through.
5. Sprinkle with mozzarella cheese and back, uncovered for 5-10 minutes longer or until cheese is melted.

Enjoy!!!!!

Chex Mix & Small Measuring Cup

2009-01-24T11:26:00.000-08:00

Here's the second recipe and gadget for today!

This is one of my most favorite gadgets. I gave my sister one for Christmas and it's now her favorite, too. The one I have her was a lot bigger though. If you get annoyed when you have to measure both wet and dry ingredients with your measuring spoons, you'll love this! It measures, teaspoons, tablespoons and ounces. Using this measuring cup for your wet ingredients means you don't have to clean your measuring spoons before you stick them in your dry ingredients.
I know there's a bunch of Chex mix recipes out there and you never have to look for one because there's usually one printed on the box of Chex cereal, but this is the best recipe for Chex Mix I've found and it's all because of those little bagel chips. In previous years, I've bought the bigger bagel chips and broke them up, but this year I found the little ones at a tiny grocery store that I hardly ever shop at. I hop it wasn't a special one time thing, because we loved the non broken bagel chips.

Chex Mix

6 tablespoons butter (melted)

2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

1 1/2 teaspoons seasoned salt

3/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon onion powder

3 cups Corn Chex Cereal

3 cups Rice Chex Cereal

3 cups Wheat Chex Cereal

1 cup mixed nuts

1 cup pretzels

1 cup garlic flavored bite-size bagel chips (or the bigger ones broken up into bite-size pieces)

1. Heat oven to 250 degrees F. In an small mixing bowl, mix together butter, Worcestershire sauce, seasoned salt, garlic powder and onion powder.

2. In an ungreased roasting pan, mix together the rest of the ingredients.

3. Stir the mixture as you sprinkle the wet mixture on. (This is easier with 2 people.)

4. Bake 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Spread on paper towels until cooled. Store in airtight container.

FYI: With full boxes of Chex Cereal, you can get 4 batches. I usually do 2 batches at once.

Enjoy!

Chicken Enchiladas & Can Strainer

2009-01-24T10:38:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow we are hopefully finally going to go buy the new range. Just the thought of being able to bake again has motivated me to post and to go through my recipes to figure out what I want to cook or bake for you next. I'll post 2 recipes today just to prove how excited I am. This recipe is one of the last meals I made in the oven before it decided to no longer cooperate.

This gadget is something that at first I didn't think I'd need. I went to a Pampered Chef party not long ago and they were explaining what this was. First they were describing how to use it on cans of veggies and fruits. That sounded nice, but once they showed how it works on a tuna can, I immediately added it to my order form! For regular cans of veggies and fruits you place it over the top of the can so when you tip it over everything stays in the can. For tuna, which I hate draining, you set it inside so you can squeeze the liquid out of the tuna while draining it. I don't like tuna, except for tuna salad on sandwich or crackers, but I hated trying to squeeze the liquid out using the can top and then smelling like tuna all day long. This thing is wonderful!!! In the following recipe, I used it to drain the olives. I hate when you dump the can of olives out after draining and you still have a bunch of liquid that makes a huge mess. With this nifty gadget, I can set the can inside it and then set it in the sink drain and while I'm working on the chicken and the rest of the recipe, it can sit there and drain. I come over and shake the can once in awhile to get the olives to rotate to get the liquid out of their centers. I use this thing all the time. I love it.
This has to be one of my most favorite meals to make. I like enchiladas, but I don't like enchilada sauce so and this recipe doesn't have one drop in it (you could add some if you wanted to). It is actually 3 different recipes that I experimented with but thought each one was missing something. Combined together they aren't missing a thing. I didn't take a picture of an individual serving because once these come out of the pan, they don't last long and because it's really messy once it comes out of the pan and I was afraid of getting the cheese sauce on my camera. The leftovers are really good, too if they last long enough to have leftovers. Enjoy!!

Chicken Enchiladas

1 chicken bouillon cube or 1 teaspoon granules

3 pounds chicken breasts

4 ounce can green chilies with juice

1/2 cup yellow onion (about 1/4 of an onion) finely chopped

2 tablespoons garlic powder

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon chili powder

2 (10.75 ounce) cans fiesta nacho cheese soup

1 cup milk

6 ounce can black olives, sliced (optional, but recomended)

sour cream, salsa, etc.

1. Dissolve bouillon cube in 1/2 cup hot water to make broth.

2. Place chicken in skillet in single layer. Sprinkle chilies, onion, garlic, salt, chili powder over chicken. Add broth. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cover, reduce heat to medium. Simmer 30 minutes or until chicken is tender.

3. Remove chicken from skillet with tongues, shaking off vegetable pieces. Let stand until cool enough to handle. Using fingers, pull chicken into coarse shreds.

4. Mix nacho cheese soup and milk together.

5. Strain veggies from broth and add to chicken, add 1/4 cup of soup mixture (or more if needed) to chicken, also.

6. heat oven to 375 degrees F and great a 4 quart baking dish.

7. To make enchiladas, along 1 side of each tortilla jelly-roll fashion; place seam side down in baking dish. Spread remaining soup mixture over each enchilada. Cover with foil.

8. Bake 35 minutes or until hot and bubbling.

Crock Pot & Pot Roast

2009-01-13T08:20:00.000-08:00

Since we still haven't decided on a new range yet (we're REALLY REALLY close though) I've been depending on the crock pot for a lot of things. I love my crock pot. It is well loved and in good shape still. If you are looking into buying a crock pot for a gift or replacing yours I HIGHLY recommend and oval shaped one like the one I was given as a gift about 8 years ago. My mom had a round one that I grew up using and it was so frustrating trying to get things like a roast to fit in it. I also have smaller one that is round that works okay, but it is also 1 piece. Make sure you get one where the crock part comes out. It makes clean up and storage a lot easier. When I pulled the Pot Roast out of the crock pot last night, the crock went in the dishwasher. If you use a 1 piece, you have to hand wash it and make sure you don't submerge it which means you have to wrestle it a little bit.

Now about the roast recipe. My husband hates pot roast and of course I love it. He mostly hates it because of the mushy veggies and I will agree I really don't like the carrots, but I still like pot roast. I found this recipe and he loves it. This was last night's dinner and I realized it had been awhile since we had the pot roast. I just wish the roast itself had been better. I hate shopping for meats, especially roasts because you never know what's hidden. The top and sides of the roast looked great, but the inside was full of grissel and fat. It was still good, but we waisted a lot of meat and fed a lot to the dogs (they were very happy with it).

The best part of this roast is the gravy it makes. We have put it on baked potatoes, mashed potatoes and rice and it is great on all of them. I must warm you, at a few points in the cooking it doesn't look very appetizing, but trust me, it's good! It was hard to get the picture of the roast because of the fat and grissel, but I did find a few pieces that looked pretty good.

Pot Roast

1 (10.75 oz) can condensed cream of mushroom soup

1 (1 oz) package dry onion soup mix

2/3 cup water

Pepper (to taste)

2-3 pound pot roast

1. In a slow cooker, mix soup, onion soup mix, water and pepper. Place pot roast in slow cooker and coat with soup mixture.

2. Cook on high setting for 3 to 4 hours, or on low setting for 8 to 9 hours.

3. Pour sauce into a pot and boil gravy until thick. You may have to add a thickener.

Serve with your choice of side dish, we really like rice with pot roast. For some reason the gravy just seems to go so much better with the rice. It's good with potatoes, too.

Enjoy!

Not Motivated

2009-01-09T14:30:00.001-08:00

I just wanted to let everyone that I'm still around and I'm still cooking, but it's hard to get motivated when I'm so mad and frustrated with my range. I'm going through baking withdrawl and it's hard to plan meals around no oven. It kind of works so as long as the main course isn't going in the oven, it's okay, but the burners are all weird now, too. I do have a few recipes to share with you that I took pictures of before the stupid oven died, but it's hard to get motivated to post them ebcause then I want to cook them again and I can't because they go in the oven.
We're getting close to making a decision on a range, but it's so hard to make up our minds. Since a range is such a big investment, we want to be sure that we get what we want and what we'll like. We've kind of narrowed it down to the brand and model so we're looking at prices now. I've printed off a lot of recipes I want to try so once we finally do get the new range and it's all hooked aup and ready to use, I PROMISE I'll have lots ot share with you. Keep fingers (and paws) crossed we make a decision soon!!!

Merry Christmas

2008-12-24T07:14:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas everybody!! I wanted to share a special sweet treat recipe with you today but with my oven being down it's hard to get motivated to do anything. I'm learning that when a baker's oven isn't cooperating the baker feels a little depressed, bored and just not right. The news keeps saying stores are going to do some big sales after Christmas so everybody keep your fingers crossed that those sales include appliances!!
Merry Christmas!

Cool Measuring Cup & Pecan Pie

2008-12-17T02:00:00.000-08:00

First, I have some bad news, but good news, too. This weekend our oven died. It's very sad because my Christmas cookies didn't turn out and that was really frustrating. This means I won't be sharing with you my favorite Christmas cookie recipes because I'm too embarrassed to show you the pictures. We knew it was going to happen, but we were hoping it would make it through Christmas. It didn't. I think it might make it through a pie and rolls for Christmas dinner, but it looks like Christmas dinner will be done on the BBQ this year. We're waiting for the after Christmas sales to go shopping for a new range. The one I REALLY want is already been reduced $500!! Hopefully I'll be reviewing a new range soon!

Okay, now for the fun part.
This is one of my Christmas gifts from last year (sorry for the blurry picture, it didn't look like that on my camera). After watching Alton Brown use one on Food Network I decided I needed one. I hate measuring out syrups, peanut butter, shortening and other gooey stuff that never comes out of the measuring cup the way it's supposed to. I used to make a huge mess trying to get it all out of the measuring cup. Not anymore! This awesome gadget pushes the ingredients out for you. You can use it for both dry and wet ingredients. There are some that are made out of all plastic, but this stainless one is pretty nice, too. The only thing I don't like about my stainless one is there is a lip on the edge of the flat part and it's usually a pain to get stuff out of it, especially since it isn't dishwasher safe. I've figured out a way to get food out of it though. I just soak it for awhile (not very long, usually I put it in the sink and clean up the rest of the mess and then come back to it) and then take a toothpick and scrape the lip out and it's fine. I love this gadget!
Here is my famous (well, famous among my family anyway) pecan pie recipe. I love pecan pie but sometimes it's way too sweet and sometimes it's way too rich so I combined a bunch of recipes I had together and made my own version. Not too sweet, not too rich. You're going to think the syrup thing is weird, but trust me. Enjoy!

(This is an old photo before I got better at taking pictures of food. I didn't get a picture taken of them this year because they both went so fast.)

Hilary's Pecan Pie

3 eggs
1/2 cup pancake syrup
1/4 cup light Karo syrup

1/4 cup dark Karo syrup
(If you want it richer, use 1/2 cup dark)

2 Tablespoons butter, melted

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup pecans

1 unbaked pie shell (I recomend a 10-inch regular or 9-inch deep)

Beat eggs slightly in a small bowl with mixer at medium speed. Beat in syrups, sugar, butter, vanilla and salt. Stir in pecans. Pur into pie shell. Bake at 350° for 55 to 65 minutes or until knife inserted comes out clean.

Cheese Ball

2008-12-07T13:38:00.000-08:00

First I want to apologize for not posting in such a long time! We had company for 2 weeks over Thanksgiving. The good news is, I have a bunch of recipes and pictures to share with you. To tide you over until then, here is a very yummy cheese ball recipe. There isn't a picture because out of the 4 I made for Thanksgiving, none of them lasted long enough to take a picture of. I really didn't use any special gadget either so this post is just a recipe. I have made this Cheeseball many times. Sometimes I make 2 medium sized balls and sometimes I make 1 big one. If you make the 2 medium sized, you'll need more than 1 cup of pecans to cover them. If you are going to make a double batch, I highly recommend doing each batch separate. It is a little hard on your mixer to mix them both at the same time - trust me!! This is also a fun recipe to do with kids. My niece had a great time being in charge of making sure the entire outside of every cheese ball was covered in pecans.
Enjoy!

Cheese Ball

2 8 oz. packages cream cheese, softened

1 8 oz. package shredded sharp cheddar cheese

2 teaspoons Worcestshire sauce

1 teaspoon lime juice

Dash Cayenne Pepper

1 cup (or more) chopped pecans

1. Beat cream cheese and cheddar cheese in small bowl with electric mixer on medium speen until well blended.

2. Mix in all remaining ingredients except pecans; cover. refrigerate several hours or overnight.

3. Shape into ball, roll in pecans. Serve with assorted crackers.

Mini Food Processor & Pinwheel Cookies

2008-11-14T09:14:00.000-08:00

First I want to apologize for not posting weekly like I want to. It's been crazy at work lately and by the time I come home I don't want to even look at a computer so my blog has been neglected. Hopefully things will start calming down a little soon.

The cooking gadget I want to tell you about today is a mini food processor. I like to take pictures of my personal gadgets instead of pulling one from a website so you can see that I actually own and use the gadget, but in this case I'm a little embarrassed to show you my mini food processor. Let's just say if it falls out of a cupboard onto a hard floor, the mini food processor bounces a few times AND keeps working! I love my mini food processor! The main thing I use it for is chopping nuts. For these cookies you want the nuts chopped up pretty small and it would take forever to do that with a knife or one of those hand cranked nut choppers (which I also own but use as decoration). The mini food processor is great for chopping other stuff like herbs, onions, garlic and other small stuff. I've also seen it used to make ham salad for one sandwich.. It chops the ham and mixes it all together at the same time. Since I use my mini food processor for mostly chopping nuts, here is a nutty cookie recipe. If you like pecan pie, you'll love these cookies! When I asked my sister what she wanted for her 21st birthday she said she wanted Pinwheel Cookies. If you don't have much patience for baking, these cookies will frustrate you. They aren't a hurry up and whip up kind of cookie and if you try to make it into one, you'll have a huge mess and will be extremely frustrated. Trust me, I know. They are well worth the wait and the time. Sorry for the not so great picture. For some reason these cookies are hard to get pictures of.

Pinwheel Cookies

Makes 3 Rolls (about 132 cookies)

Cookie Dough:

2 cups brown sugar

1 cup butter

3 eggs, beaten

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 cups flour

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Filling:
3 1/2 cups chopped pecans

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

Combine brown sugar and butter; add eggs and other dough ingredients. Chill dough for several hours or overnight.

Cook the filling ingredients on the stove until think (about 5 minutes) and cool.

Roll or pat out cookie dough on wax paper (thinly), then spread on filling. Roll up and put in refrigerator for 24 hours. This is VERY important! Trust me!!!!!!!!

Unroll wax paper and slice cookies thin. Bake 10 minutes at 375°.

Very good served warm or cooled!

Enjoy!

Taste of Home Cooking School & Stir Fry

2008-11-04T13:26:00.000-08:00

I don't have a gadget to review for you today because I want to tell you about something really fun!! Most of you probably know about Taste of Home and the magazines they print and the Cooking Schools they do all over the country. Well, last Thursday night I was able to go to one of their Cookin School presentations here where I live. It's the second year our local newpaper has sponsored it. I didn't get tickets in time last year so I made sure I got them this year and am SOOOOOO happy I did! If you have the opportunity to go to one, you HAVE to do it! The lady doing the class had a ton of door prizes to give away from Taste of Home, Ziploc, McCormick and a bunch of other othe the national sponsors and then our newspaper had a bunc of prizes from our local sponsors PLUS we had a goodie bag full of all storts of coupons and samples. It was a great time!

One of the recipes the lady showed us how to make is called Seame Pork. It smelled WONDERFUL! I made some changes to the recipe (because that's what I do) and we had it for dinner last night. There were a few other recipes I'm going to try (and of course make some changes to) and then if they turn out, I'll share them with you. If you have never checked out Taste of Home, go to their website. They have lots of great recipes and they have lots of cool gadgets for sale on their site. I love their magazines and the comapny as a whole because the recipes come from people like you and I! You and I can submit recipes to the site and win prizes or see your recipe in print! Here's my version of the cooking school recipe:

Taste of Home Cooking School Inspired Stir Fry

3 Tablespoons Hoisin Sauce

3 Tablespoons Teriyaki Sauce

3 Teaspoons Cornstarch

2 Garlic Cloves

1 1/2 Pounds Chicken, Beef or Pork, Thinly Sliced

2 Tablespoons Canola Oil, Divided

2 Teaspoons Sesame Oil

1 Bag Frozen Stir Fry Veggies

2 Tablespoons Sesame Seeds

1. In a small bowl, combine the hoisin sauce, teriyaki sauce, cornstarch, and garlic and set aside.

2. Cook the meat in 1 tablespoon hot canola oil and 2 teaspoons sesame oil until no longer pink. Add meat to the sauce mixer.

3. In the same pan, add the remaining canola oil and cook frozen veggies until warmed through but still crisp-tinder.

4. Add the suce and meat to the skillet and cook for 1-2 minutes unti heated through.

The lady at the cooking class served her's with some rice, but we had a bunch of leftover spaghetti noodles from a few nights earlier so we served our's low mein style and that was really good, too! Enjoy!!

Cast Iron & Breakfast Pizza

2008-10-30T12:53:00.000-07:00

I will admit I don't know a lot about cast iron. My mom had a bunch of cast iron pans when I was growing up, but I hated using them because I thought the food tasted like metal and I hated it. My mom made us scrub those pans until they were almost silver. Yes, I know that's the number 1 thing NOT to do to cast iron. I've learned the proper way to cook with cast iron now and the taste is comppletely different!! It's amazing! Breakfast is the best thing cooked in cast iron and for this recipe I do all the cooking parts in my 2 cast iron skillets. This is the recipe of how I make breakfast pizza. Feel free to add other ingredients you like. (Sorry for the small picture!)

Breakfast Pizza

1 pound bag of hash browns (I like the shredded better for this)
1 pound bacon
6 eggs, scrambled
2 Hollandaise sauce mix packets
1 Pillsbury Pizza Crust
Cheese - any blend you like
Ham and any other ingredients you want

Cook baconm hashbrowns and scrambled eggs.
Prepare Hollandaise sauce acording to package instructions.
Unroll pizza dough and press out to desired thickness.
Prehat oven to 425° F.
Spread a thin layer of hollandaise sauce onto the pizza crust. Layer hasbrowns, more hollandaise sauce, eggs, bacon, ham and any other toppings you want. Add cheese to the top and backe for 10 m inutes and rotate pan. Bake an additional 3-5 m inutes until cheese is melted and crust is golden brown.
The leftovers are really good, too!

Cooling Wrack & Chocolate Crinkles

2008-10-29T07:57:00.000-07:00

This is the coolest gadget I own. This was a wedding gift and I love it. It's 3 cooling wracks that stack on top of each other. My husband and I lived in a small house with a tiny kitchen at the time. I LOVE to bake and that kitchen wasn't very good for cookie baking, especially at Christmas time. This nifty gadget helped out a bunch! In our new house we have plenty of counter space, but I still love the stacking wracks. There's a small counter area to the side of the oven the wrack fit perfectly on so I don't have to go far with a hot cookie sheet and I can spread out my mixing and cookie forming out in the other area. They fold up really nice for storage and they're pretty stout. Eve when I'm baking bread or something like that, I'll use 1 wrack to cool on because it lifts it off the counter for good air circulation around the bread so it cools faster and more evenly. I think my set came from Kohl's but I'm not positive. They are a great thing to have in your kitchen, especially if you have a tiny one with not much counter space.The recipe I'm going to share with my favorite gadget is my favorite cookie recipe. I love these cookies! They're fun to make and they are extremly yummy! When I make them they don't last long and I've even been blamed for extreme weight gain from making these cookies. You can't eat just one! You'll see that the recipe calls for 4 ounces of melted chocolate but I hardly ever have baker's chocolate on hand, but I do have cocoa powder and I found how to convert cocoa powder and cooking oil into baker's chocolate. It's measured in 12 tablespoons and I've never converted that to cups because I think it's easier to scoop the cocoa out of the container by tablespoons.
Enjoy!

Chocolate Crinkles

Makes about 48 cookies

3 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted or 12 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder & 4 tablespoons cooking oil
1/2 cup cooking oil
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
sifted powder sugar
In a mixing bowl beat eggs, granulated sugar, chocolate, oil, baking powder and vanill with an electric mixer until combined. Beat in as much of the flour as you can with the mixer. Stir in remaning flour. Cover and chill 1 to 2 hours or until easy to handle.
Shape dought into 1-inch balls. Roll balls in powdered sugar to coat generously. Place balls 1-inch apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake in 375° oven for 8 to 10 minutes or until edges are set and tops are crackled. Transfer cookies to a wire rack and let cool.

Egg Timer & Bacon and Macaroni Salad

2008-10-28T09:36:00.000-07:00

I don't know why, but for some reason I have trouble hard boiling eggs. I make a mean soft boiled egg, but I hate soft boiled eggs! I found this nifty gadget at K-Mart and last night I tried it out for the first time and I love it! I tried to take a picture of it when the color was changing, but you couldn't see it because of the boiling water. What you do is put the timer in your water with your eggs and start boiling. The timer doesn't go by time, it goes by heat so if you have a stove like my old one that took forever to boil water, it will still work fine. The red starts to turn a purpleish color starting from the outside and as it comes into the centerand gets to the lines, that's the kind of egg you have. This is a great gadget for people that for some weird reason have trouble boiling eggs. I blame it on not having anyone to teach me to cook when I was younger. I don't know if that's the real reason, but it works.
This salad was AWESOME! Every month my office has a birthday potluck and today was this months potluck day. I like to take my experiments to potluck, that way incase they didn't really turn out, we're not stuck eating them all at home. I actually went and pulled this off the table early so that we can have some with dinner tonight. I mixed everything together last night, but I next time I'll mix the dressing in the morning of. Last night when we tried it, I liked it better than I did this morning. I think the noodles absorbed too much of the liquid. It was still very good though. I also didn't put enough bacon in. I had only planned on making a half batch so I saved a half pound of bacon when we made breakfast the other day and then all of a sudden the full bag of macaroni was in the pot. I'm glad I made the full batch, but I wish I had planned the full pound of bacon to make it even yummier! Here's the recipe!

Bacon & Macaroni Salad

1 Pound Sliced Bacon

1 (16 oz.) Package Elbow Macaroni

1 cup Mayonnaise

1/2 cup Sour Cream

1/4 cup White Sugar

1/4 cup Cider Vinegar

1/2 teaspoon Salt

1/2 teaspoon Ground Black Pepper

3 Tomatoes, Chopped

1 Large Cucumber, Peeled & Chopped

4 Hard-Cooked Eggs, Chopped

1/2 cup Chopped Celery

Cook bacon, drain, crumble and set aside. Cook pasta, drain and rinse with cold water.
Whisk the mayonnaise, sour cream, sugar, vinegar, salt and pepper in a large bowl until the sugar is dissolved. Add the bacon, pasta, tomato, cucumber, egg and celery. Gently fold until the salad is evenly covered with the dressing.

Enjoy!

Bake Ease & Zucchini Bread

2008-10-27T09:29:00.000-07:00

A couple years ago I discovered this wonderful product. If you are a baker, you're going to love this stuff! Bake Ease is the Kroger name for it. I know you can get it at Wal-Mart cheaper but I can't remember what it's called there. What it is, is a spray like Pam with flour in it to spray in your baking pans. Do you know what that means? No more smearing shortening or oil in the pan and then putting flour in it and doing what I call the Flour Dance to get the flour all over the pan so your bread, cake, muffins or whatever else doesn't stick to the pan. I use this stuff on cookie sheets, bread pans, can pans and anything else I use to bake with. When I was younger and in 4-H, I did cake decorating and I hated making sure those Wilton pans got every single spot covered so my character cake wouldn't lookse an eye, ear or anything else. I wish this stuff had been around then. I love it!
Those bread pans behind the can are some old pans that my mother had for years. I used to use those pans a lot or watch her use them and could never figure out wht was up with the weird indention on the bottom of the pan because it never came out on the bread. I made zucchini bread not long ago using those pans and for the forst time I saw the indention in the bread. I still have no idea why it is there, but it looked cool on the bottom of the bread. I don't know if the indentions were there for some sort of support system or just to make you wonder why it's there, but it was there.
This recipe for zucchini bread is an old recipe from my husbands family. I'm going to copy the instructions EXACTLY how I received them. Hopefully you'll know to mix the ingredients before you bake them. I usually mix a few ingredients together before I add a few more. I sometiems add them in different orders also. It always tastes good so I guess there's really no wrong way to do it.
Zucchini Bread

2 eggs beaten

1/2 cup nuts (optional)

1 cup oil

Dash of cinnamon

2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon bakig powder

2 cups grated zucchini

3 cups flour
Bake at 350° for one hour.
Makes 2 loaves.

Mixer & French Bread

2008-10-23T08:03:00.000-07:00

I love to bake and have always been pretty good at it, except for when it came to bread. My mother was great at baking bread and I could follow her recipes and intructions exactly and my bread still wouldn't rise right or just didn't taste right. I was told it was because I have shor stubby fingers so I couldn't knead the dough the way it needed to be kneaded. I used a bread machine for awhile, but it just didn't seem the same plus the machine I had was an older one where the paddles didn't come out so the bread always got suck o them. The crust on the bread always seemed too think and you only got one shape of bread. I am extremly hard on hand mixers. I'm afraid to buy a stand mixer because that's a lto of money to spend on something that I'd either be too afraid to use because I'd break it or I would break it not too long after I bought it. I'm okay with buying the handmixers and then they die because they're a lot less money. So my mixer died and it was time to start looking at new ones and I found one that had a dough hook attachement. It only had one hook, but it worked great and I was in love. It soon died though because the one hook couldn't keep up with my new bread making talent. The bread rose correctly and tasted WONDERFUL! When that one went to mixer heaven, I foudn one made by Hamilton Beach (at Wal-Mart) that had 2 hooks plus a wisk! It's lasted a lot longer than any of my other mixers ever did! It came with a case to keep the mixer and the attachements all together. I hate looking for the beaters or the other attachements in which ever drawer I put them in. It didn't matter which drawer I had them in, I was always seraching for one of them. With the case with this mixer, I always know where the attachements are, plus the mixer doesn't get shoved around or beat up in the cupboard. It is GREAT!! I HIGHLY recommend this hand mixer to all bakers!!! In the German Chocolate Pie recipe (the previous post) I used the whisk to whisk the ingredients that needed whisked. The whisk also saves lots of time when it comes to making meringue.
Now for the recipe. I got this recipe from a cook book I have, but can't remember which one. I love this recipe. It's easy and tates great. I like making it when we do lasagna or spaghetti. Toasting it with some garlic butter is very yummy, too! It's really easy to cut the recipe in half to make one loaf, too.

French Bread

Makes: 2 Loaves

5 1/2 to 6 cups all-purpose flour

2 packages yeast (or 5 teaspoons)

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups warm water (120° to 130°)

cornmeal

1 slightly beaten egg white1 tablespoon water

1. In a large mixing bow stir together 2 cups of the flour, the yeat and salt. Add the watm water to the dry mixture. Eat with an electric mixer on lot to medium speed for 30 seconds, scraping the sides of the bowl constantly. (I go ahead and use the�dough hooks for this part, too.) Beat on high speed for 3 minutes. Using a wooden spoon (or your hand mixer with dough hooks) stir in as much of the remaning flour as you can.

2. If kneading by hand: Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead in enough remaining flour to make a stuff dough that is smooth and elstic (8 to 10 minutes total).If kneading with the dough hooks: Do the same thing but leave the dough in the bowl and kick the mixer on high and move the mixer up and down and side to side in the dough.Shape the dough into a ball. PLace dough in a lightly greased bowl, turning once to greace the surface of the dough. Cover and let rise in a warm place till double in size (about 1 hour).

3. Punch dough down. Turn dough out onto a counter and divide into 2 balls. Let them rest while you warm the oven and get the pan ready. Heat the oven to 375°F and lightly grease a baking sheet and sprinkle with cornmeal.

4. Roll each portion of the dough into a 15 x 10-inche rectangle. Roll up, jelly-roll style, starting from a long side; seal well. Pinch ends and pull slightly to taper. place seam side down on prepared baking sheet. In a small mixing bowl stir together egg white and water. Brush some of the egg white mixture over loaves. Cover and let rise till nearly double in size (dor 35 to 45 minutes). Using a sharp knife, make 3 or 4 diagonal cuts about 1/4 inch deep across teh top of each loaf.

5. Bake at 375°F for 20 minutes. Brush with egg mixture. Bake 15-20 minutes till loaves sound hollow.

Enjoy!!

Paula Deen's Chocolate Celebration & German Chocolate Pie

2008-10-22T14:25:00.000-07:00

The first "gadget" I would like to review is Paula Deen's Chocolate Celebration Magazine. Cookbook, cooking magazines and other recipe sources are an important gadget in my kitchen. I may not always follow the recipes exactly, but they give me ideas and some instructions. My mother didn't teach me to cook. It wasn't until I was married that I learned that I could cook and that I loved it. I learned how long to cook a lasagna. meatloaf and lots of other main dishes that most of you know how long to cook, what ingredients to add as a binder and other stuff like that.
I bought this magazine at Walmart, but you can also get it on Amazon here. I love watching Paula Deen on Food Network. I love baking and making desserts and Paula has been an inspiration to my baking. This magazine is totally worth the $8.99! I bought the magazine before we moved out of our old house and into our new house so I didn't get to try any receipes until this week. During the move, I read the articles and picked out the recipes I wanted to try first. One of my favorite parts of the magazine (after the recipes of course) is the section towards teh back called "Exploring Chocolate Hideaways." There are several chocolate "destinations" in this section. My favortie has to be Cocoa Cottage B&B in Whitehall, Michigan. Hopefully some day I will be able to visit that B&B and write a review on it. After reading about it in Paula's magazine, I can already tell it's going to be a VERY positive review!
Some of the recipes include: Chocolate Spiced Pork Chops, Chocolate Chip Cheese Ball, Chocolate Bread,Turtle Popcorn, Chocolate Mashmallows and tons more. The first recipe I tried was German Chocolate Pie on page 36. I am so glad I tried this one first! I LOVE German Chocolate! I made it for the monthly birthday potluck at my office (that's where I try out most of my experiemtns) and luckily not a lot of people showed up and I was able to sneak out almost half of the pie before it was gone. In the recipe it tells you 2 different times to whisk in the eggs. I did it the second time because I think it was a typo being in there twice. I think whisking them in the first time would work fine, too. I'll type the recipe in exactly how it is in the magazine and you choose how you want to do it and let me know what you think. If you like German Chocolate, I promise you won't be dissapointed!!!

German Chocolate Pie

Makes 1 (9-inch) pie

1/2 (15-ounce) package refrigerated pie crust
1 (4-ounce) bar German's sweet chocolate
3 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup dark corn syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
1 cup sweetened flaked coconut

1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. On a lightly floured surface, unroll pie crust. Roll pastry into a 12-inch circle. Press pie crust into a 9-inch pie plate, crimping edges, if desired.
3. In a large bowl, combine chocolate and butter. Microwave on High in 30-second intervals, stirring between each, or until choclate is melted and smooth. Let cool for 10 minutes. Whisk in eggs. Add sugar, corn syrup, an vanilla, whisking to combine. Whisk in eggs. Stir in pecans and coconut. Bake for 55 to 60 minutes, or until center is set, covering pie with heavy-duty aluminum foil to prevent excess browingin if necessary. Cool completely. Cut into wedges to serve.

This is really good with icecream - Butter Pecan icecream to be exact. I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I have!!