Time for Dessert

The desserts are finished.  My assignment for Easter dinner tomorrow is to bring dessert.  My daughter told me that (and I quote) "since you are so picky about your desserts, Mom, I'm going to have you bring them and then I'll be sure that they will be up to your standards."  Okey, dokey!  As most of you know by now, dessert is something that I'm VERY familiar with.

I decided to make some peanut butter pies.  I am trying a new recipe (always a gamble but how can one go wrong with peanut butter pie, eh?).  First I had to beat the cream cheese, confectioner's sugar, and the peanut butter together in the mixer.  Man, that mixer was working hard.  I thought perhaps it would soften up as it mixed but the stuff was in a huge clump on the beater.    The next step called for me to whisk Cool Whip into the mixture and whisk it until it was creamy with NO lumps.  Let's just say that my arms are definitely feeling the burn right now.

I'm glad that I decided to eyeball it and divide the peanut butter stuff in the mixing bowl into two sections and then whisk one section at a time because if I hadn't, I think I'd STILL be whisking away.  It took lots of elbow grease to do half the batch and then I had to dump that in a pie crust and start the process all over again.

I decided to top the pies with some crushed-up Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.  These were hard to find at the grocery story the other day.  I was delighted when I finally found some on one of the aisles and grabbed them without realizing that they were the "Dark" version.  I'm hoping this won't make much difference in the final taste.  I put four wrappers' full into a small bowl and then got my handy Pampered Chef's "Mix n' Chop" tool and in less time than it took to say "Yummy", I had a nice little batch of crushed peanut butter cups all set to sprinkle over the top.

The final results look pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.  I think it will pass muster at dinner tomorrow.  Since Dear Daughter is serving Leg of Lamb (and I break out in hives with lamb), I intend to stoke up on appetizers, side dishes and, of course, dessert.

I couldn't stop with just one type of dessert.  I HAD to also bake my Killer Rum Cake.  I wasted ten minutes looking for the darn bundt cake pan (seems I only use that pan for rum cake and Monkey Balls) and in the process, I managed to have several mugs and assorted spice jars fall on my head as I was rummaging around in the cupboards.  When the Commander walked in from the garage after grocery shopping, he took one look at my face (this was after I'd just gotten beaned with the third travel mug) and wisely took the bags of groceries straight through the kitchen and on into the dining room.

Looking at the bright side, the Rum Cake came out looking delish AND I ended up reorganizing two cupboards so all in all, it was a very productive afternoon.  As we head into Easter Sunday, I hope you all have a blessed time with family and/or friends as we celebrate Christ's resurrection.

Lost in Translation?

I was looking over some desserts on the Pinterest site (and if you aren't familiar with Pinterest, you are in for a treat....but that's a topic for another blog posting) and found one for a "Pink Lemonade Dessert with Pretzel Crust" that sounded promising.  You see, I have been tasked with bringing the dessert down to my daughter's house for Easter dinner.    Anyway, I clicked on the link and it took me to the original recipe posting.  Oh, oh....it was in Spanish.  I thought that maybe I could translate most of it but I wasn't entirely confident in my Espanol skills and I didn't want to screw it up.  My son-in-law's parents will be there and in matters of in-laws, you don't want to bring a dud to the dinner table.  Not to worry, though.  My browser had a nice little button that asked, "Do you want me to translate this?"

"Sure, " I thought.  "Why not?"

At first glance, it looked like the translation worked great.  Then I took a closer look.  Hmmm, one of the ingredients was a "container of frozen whipped cream vegetable."  Well, I had some Cool Whip on hand and I DID have a bag of carrots.  If I anointed a few carrot sticks, would that suffice?

I read further.  The rest of the ingredients looked ok.  Now I was into the preparation instructions.  Right away, I figured I had either run into another problem OR baking in Spanish-speaking countries was NOT for wimps.  The instructions told me to chop pretzels and sugar up in my blender and then add butter, light the pipe, arm wrestling to mix well.  Uh, I couldn't find any pipes lying around but I checked out my blender for the best possible handhold for the arm wrestling part.

After the arm wrestling with the blender, the instructions told me to "Press the bark into a glass mold."  Unfortunately, Fresca the Wonder Dog has passed on so I have no bark to press into anything these days.

Now came the part where I was to mix up the filling.  I got the general gist of it (although there WAS that vegetable cream again) until I got to the final part.  I was to pour the remaining cream over a mixture of vegetable lemonade.  Darn!  I didn't have any of that on hand.  All I had was some Arnold Palmer lemonade ice tea.  Maybe I could chuck in some chopped onions or diced carrots to come up with this mysterious lemonade?

All of this interpreting was making my head hurt so I finally decided to regroup and stick with an old, trusty recipe for my killer rum cake.  That always results in sweet goodness that needs no translation, gracias a Dios!

Martha Stewart, I'm Not!

I love a good casserole.  In fact, if I can "dump, stir, and shove," I consider it a culinary triumph.  That's why I was delighted when I found this "chicken smash" recipe.  Throw some shredded chicken and shredded cheese in flour tortillas, roll them up, and then smother the whole shebang with a mix of cream of chicken soup, green chilis, chopped onions, and sour cream.

For its crowning glory?  Lots of shredded cheese, of course!  How can you go wrong with cheese?  Of course the recipe did say to boil up some boneless chicken breasts to use for the chicken but hey, why go to all that bother when there is perfectly good rotisserie chicken available in the supermarket?  I'm not about to touch raw meat it I don't have to.

I have a favorite character in a series of books by J. Michael Orenduff.  He writes the Pot Thief mysteries and if you haven't read his books, you should definitely give them a try, especially if you enjoy witty mysteries that make you chuckle.  The "pot thief" in his books is Hubie Schuze and Hubie is a bit of a food connoisseur.  He has a neighbor named Gladys Claiborne who delights in bringing him casseroles that are the stuff of nightmares for dear old Hubie.  Yet he finds himself occasionally admitting that they don't taste half-bad.  They always sound pretty darn good to me.  In fact, I recognize an awful lot of them.....have probably made quite a few of them myself.

If I can throw something together in 5 ingredients or less, hallelujah!  If one of those ingredients is a can of cream of something soup, even better.  If another ingredient is cheese, I'm in nirvana.

In contrast, I also made a Lemon Merinque Cake today for a social gathering that I'm attending tomorrow.  It was a fussy recipe involving lots of steps.

I think it will taste pretty good.  It has a nice lemon ganache in the middle of the torte and a fluffy cream cheese, lemon juiced and zested and whipped cream topping on top of that.  But I slaved all afternoon over it.  And when I went to put the cover over the holder, it smushed the topping down along the sides.  Drat!

I just hope the ladies at the luncheon tomorrow don't blanch when I unveil it and let them know that it is a new recipe.  The last "new recipe" I tried on them was the one for the maple syrup sausages that turned out hard as rocks when the maple syrup solidified because I let it boil over the sausages too long and it turned into rock candy.


My chicken enchildada smash casserole is out of the oven now and cooling the requisite fifteen minutes before serving.  It certainly smells good.  As I head off to enjoy it, I'll leave you with this pic of little Mika.  She's turning into quite the water baby down in Houston, as the family awaits the arrival of her little brother.

Of Course There's a Taste Test!

I just pulled my fifth batch of cookies out of the oven.  They are Nestle's Toll House Ultimate Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chunk cookies and they are super delicious.  Ask me how I know!  Incidentally, I'm using my new Pampered Chef cooling rack for the first time and I love it.  By setting the cookies on this elevated rack, they are cooled and ready to be put into a container by the time the next batch is out of the oven.

Of course, there are always a few that crumble as I'm taking them off the cookie sheet because I'm usually too impatient to let them stand for a few minutes.  That's ok, though, because the "mistakes" are the ones that I just HAVE to taste test, just to make sure that they are going to be fit for human consumption.  Uh-huh!

Luckily, most of the cookies are making it into the container that I'll be taking to a scrapbooking retreat this weekend.  I say "luckily" because I just happened to glance at the clock and noticed that I should start cooking supper in about 30 minutes and here I've already eaten five cookies and have 3 more batches to bake.  Oy!  Time to button the lips, I'd say.

In the meantime, I'm happy to report that I've finished another square for my Great American Aran Afghan.  This one is the square designed by Ann Strong.  It was fun to knit up and pretty easy to do.  You just had to pay attention to what line you were on in the different charts.

OK, I think I'd better sign off and go create a few more "mistakes" for the Commander to enjoy when he gets home from work.

A Closely Guarded Family Recipe

Just returned from a weekend scrapbooking retreat.  My daughter was able to join me for some mother-daughter bonding time over the albums and photos which was awesome.  And I got entirely too little sleep which probably explains why I came down with a migraine on my way home.  Ugh!  Haven't had one of those horrible things in several years.  In fact, I got so rattled that when I got home, I dashed to the medicine cabinet for my migraine medication and grabbed the wrong medicine by mistake.  I didn't realize my error until I had already taken the pill.  What I took was a Boniva, which is for osteoporosis.  It wouldn't have been a biggie since I was overdue on taking my monthly Boniva except for the fact that the Commander was on his way home with lunch for the two of us.  With Boniva, once you take the pill, you aren't to eat anything for one hour.  Drat!  I grabbed the correct medicine and downed that but then noticed that it was past its "Use By" date.  I told you that I hadn't had any migraines in several years and apparently I had failed to get refills when I should.  Luckily the meds worked anyway and I feel better.

Back to the subject of this post.  I had a good chuckle during the retreat.  Our scrapbooking consultant had specifically asked me to bring the same type of cookies that I had baked for a previous scrapbook get-together.  No problem.  I picked up the necessary items and spent most of Thursday and Friday morning baking batches of cookies.

On Saturday, one of the scrapbookers asked me how I was able to bake such delicious cookies.  She said they tasted just like the "cookies you buy in a bakery."  I told her it was no big feat since all I had to do was go to a grocery store and pick up the cookie dough in the dairy case and then break off the little chunks, put them on a cookie sheet, and bake them according to instructions.  She was flabbergasted.  Here folks had been thinking that I was using some secret family recipe when all along I was pumping out these fabulous cookies courtesy of "Uncle Nestle."  That became one of our inside jokes the rest of the weekend as ladies would come up to me to ask for my secret recipe.  Ha!

If you haven't tried the Nestle Toll House Ultimate Chocolate Chip Lovers and Peanut Butter Cups, Chips and Chocolate Chunks refrigerated cookie dough that come in the yellow packages in the dairy case, you might want to try them out.  The dough is already scored into squares to break off and put on your cookie sheets.  Couldn't be simpler but oh, are they tasty.  The Pillsbury Big Deluxe Classics cookie dough in the blue bags are also quite good.  Give them a try.  You might end up with a new "family heirloom" recipe.

Doesn't Get Much Simpler

I love a simple recipe and if it is a crockpot recipe, all the better.  Here is what I'm making for supper tonight.  It doesn't get much simpler than this.  Tonight's meal is BBQ Chicken Sandwiches.  Here is how you fix it.

1.  Place boneless, skinless chicken breasts in the bottom of your crockpot.

2.  Slice up one medium onion and place the slices on top of the chicken breasts.

3.  Pour one bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce over the chicken.  Cook on Low for 8 hours.

4.  Take out the chicken breasts and shred the meat with a fork.  (I like to put the breasts in a mixing bowl and use two forks to shred it up.  It's usually pretty tender by then so it goes very quickly.)

5.  Dump the shredded chicken back into the BBQ sauce in your crockpot and you are ready to serve this on buns.

Usually I use Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce but the other day I saw this new BBQ sauce in our local grocery store.  The name intrigued me so I decided to give it a try.  They had a sweet version and this Memphis original version.  Normally I'd go with the "sweet" every time but this time I decided to try this because I know the Commander would probably prefer this version.  I'll have to let you know tomorrow how it was.

Project 365 - June 10, 2010 (Day 14)

Still working on the prayer shawl quilt but at least now it is pinned and I'm quilting it.

Who Turned Off the Heat?

What a difference a day makes.  The other day it was 92 degrees here in south-central PA.  I was loving our unusual, record-setting heatwave.  That was the other day.  Today it didn't get above the mid-50's and it is supposed to get down into the 30's tonight.  Ugh!  What happened to my glorious summery weather?

Since I knew it was supposed to be getting colder, I decided to make up a crockpot recipe for Chicken Tortilla Soup.  This is MY type of recipe.  It's strictly a "dump and pour" recipe.  That's all there is to it other than enjoying a tasty bowl of it in the evening.

That's just what we did, too.  Boy, did it taste good.  Hard to believe that a recipe so simple could be so tasty.   To serve it, I like to crush some tortilla chips into my bowl, ladle some of the soup over the chips, sprinkle some chopped onions and shredded cheese on top of the soup and dig in.  Here's the recipe, in case you'd like to give it a go yourself:

Chicken Tortilla Soup
4 chicken breast halves (you can vary the amount to whatever quantity you prefer for your size family)
2 15-oz. cans black beans, undrained
2 15-oz. cans Mexican stewed tomatoes, or Rotel tomatoes
1 c. Salsa (mild, medium, or hot, whichever you prefer)
4-oz. can chopped green chilies
14 1/2-oz. can tomato sauce
Tortilla chips
2 c. grated cheese

1.  Combine all the ingredients except the chips and cheese in a large slow cooker.
2.  Cover.  Cook on Low for 8 hours.
3.  Just before serving, remove the chicken breasts and shred them with a fork.  Stir back into the soup.
4.  To serve, put a handful of chips in each individual soup bowl.  Ladle the soup over the chips.  Top with cheese.

And now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to make a mug of the new K-cup spring blend of Island Coconut coffee I just got today and go warm up.

Little White Powerpuff

Well, I dropped off Fresca today at the groomers to get her summer clip touched up. I know some purists will think this heresy but she loves being a "naked" pup, we love the fact that she doesn't shed and doesn't get all matted with that dense undercoat that never seems to fully come out, no matter how much I comb her out, and she prances around like circus poodle when she's clipped. It just seems to be a win-win situation. Even the kids, who were dead set against me having her shaved down, have now both admitted that they like it this way. The only thing I had them change this time was to give her less of a "bubble-head" look. I thought that looked rather silly last month.

Then I headed over to the office to work on some statistics for a funding pitch and to go over the interlibrary loan notes for the new faculty briefing I'll be giving next week. Can't believe that I'll be heading back to work in less than two weeks. Where did my summer go? Ha! I do believe that I can hear all the students plaintively asking the same thing. Little do they realize that their teachers and educational workers feel the same way.

I have a big scrapbooking crop coming up this weekend so must get busy on some more journaling for my heritage album. I'm up to 201 pages completed on the summer scrapbooking challenge. The trouble is that I'm getting distracted with prayer cloths to knit and crochet and now hats to make on my new knitting looms.

Jason called from California to ask about substituting milk for cream in a Chicken Tika Marsala recipe and I gave him some cooking tips on that. Gee, it's nice to be needed, even for cooking advice. Take that, all of you who complained about my creamed corn chocolate cake recipe! So you got the corn skins caught in your teeth when you ate it. Hey, the frosting was delish! You can't have everything.