St. Patrick's Day Made Easy :)

Hello foodie friends!!

It's been quite a while since I've last updated this cooking blog, but what better day to make a comeback than Saint Patrick's Day!!

Our family loves St. Patrick's Day for many reasons. It is a day when we remember the thousands of missionaries throughout the ages who dedicated their lives to sharing God's love with others. The shamrocks we decorate with are symbols of the Trinity (God, Jesus, Holy Spirit), and every chance we get, we dye our food green for the day :)

As much as I Loooooove traditional Irish food, my tastebuds are a little too advanced for my meat and potatoes hubby. I've created our own version of Irish staples that are ridiculously easy and mucho delicious. So here we go:

American "Bangers" and Green Mash!

One kielbasa (smoked is preferred but whatever your family likes)
Sonny's Sweet BBQ Sauce
Yukon Gold potatoes (or your family's favorite)
Cream Cheese
Butter
Splashes of milk
Green Food Coloring

Set your oven to 400 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with foil and put the kielbasa in the middle. DRENCH it with Sonny's Sweet BBQ sauce. Pop in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until sauce has caramelized and made the whole house smell ridiculous.

Meanwhile, peel (or don't) your potatoes and cut them up into smaller pieces so they'll cook quick. Put a big pot of water on to boil, add salt and throw your potatoes in. I've done this so many times that I can't even tell you how long to keep them in there. I just keep checking with a fork until they are perfect (can easily pierce a swimmin tater). I did this a few nights ago and the pieces of potato were small enough that it only took around 17 minutes. Drain off your potatoes and add them back into the pot you cooked them in. Add butter, a few spoonfuls of cream cheese, some splashes of milk, sprinkling of salt, and as much green food coloring as you like. Then mix, mix, mix! I use an electric mixer because our family loves our potatoes super creamy. Taste for flavor and add more butter, salt and milk until the flavor and consistency are just right.

Each year I always incorporate cabbage into our meal in a new and slightly different way. Some years I do it on the stove with green apples and onions (THE BEST). This year, I'm opting to roast my cabbage with a little bit of garlic for ultimate flavor. Here's what you do:

Ridiculously Awesome Green Cabbage

One whole head of green cabbage
3 cloves of garlic, minced or pressed (I prefer using my garlic press)
Olive oil
Salt & Pepper

Slice your cabbage into fourths, and then slice the fourths into eighths. On another cookie sheet, lay out each piece of cabbage and drizzle both sides with olive oil, salt, pepper and minced garlic. Add to 400 degree oven for 30-40 minutes (I'm going to roast for 40 - will add the cabbage 15 minutes before I add my BBQ bangers). You can also add onions, sliced apples, or bacon for additional flavors. YUM!!

As always I put glass pints in the freezer to get nice and frosty and fill them with dyed green milk for fun :) Sometimes we'll make green cookies or green whipped cream to go with fruit, but this year we are opting for Publix' awesome little green icing cupcakes because they are the masters when it comes to baking. Irish music is always a must~ if you don't have any on hand, simply go to playlist.com and use one of their playlists or even make your own!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)

Bahama Breeze Jerk Shrimp!

This is our favorite appetizer to order when we eat at Bahama Breeze. It's very flavorful and spicy, and the fresh bread is really yummy dipped in the leftover shrimp juices. And hey! This time I wore gloves when handling the scotch bonnet! :)

Here's the recipe courtesy of Bahama Breeze:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup Beer (I used Red Stripe)

1/4 tsp ground Allspice

1/2 tsp minced Scotch Bonnet Pepper

1 tsp chopped Garlic (I put mine through a garlic press)

1 tspThyme leaves

1 Tbsp sliced Scallions

12 oz medium size Shrimp, peeled, deveined and thawed

4 Tbsp melted Butter

1 loaf of Cuban bread

Preheat oven to 500ºF. Place beer, spice and herbs in a 1 quart baking dish; add the shrimp. Top the shrimp with melted butter. Slice the loaf of bread into 1-inch thick slices. Place shrimp and bread on the middle rack of the oven, separately. Remove from oven when bread is golden and shrimp is bubbling hot. This should take 4 -5 minutes.

YUM!!! I didn't use as much scotch bonnet as the recipe calls for because my son won't touch it if it's too spicy. Otherwise, the taste was spot on, and I even threw the thyme stalks in whole just like the restaurant does. This is a great appetizer, or you can double the recipe and serve it alongside rice for dinner (I spooned the juices over my rice and it was lovely). Enjoy!!

UFC Steak Salad!

Thanks to Miranda, I now have a great way to get greens into my hubby's diet!!! My man is very picky when it comes to eating veggies. The bottom line is that he just won't...UNLESS it comes with a side of steak! Miranda, who happens to be a genius, simply combined the two for a delicious and healthy meal.

Last weekend was the UFC 100 pay-per-view, and I wanted to make us something healthy-yet-"manly." I chose this dish, and also decided to recreate my favorite dressing in the whole world: Chili's Honey Lime dressing (used to be served with their now defunct Grilled Caribbean Salad *sniff sniff*). Here's what to do:

Ingredients:

For Steak:
2 lb. flank steak
2-3 Tbsp Soy Sauce
2-3 Tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar
2-3 Tbsp A-1 Steak Sauce
1/2 cup Barbecue Sauce (I used Stubb's)

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and add sauce and steak to a big ziplock bag to marinate. I only let mine sit for a half hour or so, then asked my hubby to throw it on the grill. Despite the short marinate time, the taste was delicious! After grilling, I let the meat sit for ten minutes or so and sliced it into bite size pieces, against the grain.

For Salad:
Romaine Lettuce
Escarole
Carrots
Grape Tomatoes
Cucumber
Cheddar Cheese (I used about two cups)

Wash, dice and throw all of this goodness into a huge salad bowl. I added the escarole because I'd read about its nutritional benefits and wanted to sneak it into my hubby's diet. He never even noticed ;) Top with the steak pieces and continue to toss, or just leave on top for a pretty presentation!

For Dressing:
1/2 cup Grey Poupon Dijon Mustard
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup mayo
1/4 to 1/2 cup fresh squeezed lime juice
3 Tbsp sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Throw all ingredients into a bowl and whisk what your mama gave ya. Seriously. Whisk, whisk, whisk. The end result should be smooth and pale yellow in color. Store in an airtight container in the fridge.

Ta-da!!! This was fantastic, and was surprisingly very filling!! (I blame the steak). Miranda's recipe calls for adding french fries or onion rings also into the salad, but hubby thought that sounded weird, so I left it out. Turns out, he didn't even need it. Thanks, Miranda!!!!!!!!!

Wanna go halves on a pie?

One word: YUM.

If ever you needed an excuse to make the whole house smell insanely good, then by all means, cook one of these bad boys up. I started making this recipe several years ago after watching PartyLine with the Hearty Boys on Food Network. Instead of following their recipe completely, I tweaked it up and have made it my own way ever since. Now I don't even use a recipe card, just throw everything together and wait for the smell to permeate the house. Here's the way I make it:

Ingredients
2 Tbs. butter
1 Tbs. olive oil
Onion, chopped fine
Several cloves of garlic, chopped or minced (I usually use 5 or 6 cloves...I love garlic)
Can of mushrooms, drained
Can of olives, drained and chopped
3 plum tomatoes, chopped
1 cup of heavy cream
2 eggs
8 oz. mozzerella, shredded
8 oz. fontina, shredded
Several good shakes of parmesan
Several good shakes of dried basil
Little bit of salt for taste
3/4 pound of spaghetti (I love Barilla)

Set your oven to 350 degrees, and cook your spaghetti in salty water until al dente. While the pasta's a cookin and the oven's a heatin, get to work on the rest of your ingredients. In a medium sized saucepan, melt your butter and saute your onion and garlic with the dried basil until all is nice and translucent (or until your nose just can't take it anymore and you have to take a bite).

In a large bowl (we're talking big here, people), crack the eggs and add the heavy cream. Whisk what your mama gave ya. Once combined, add the drained mushrooms, drained olives, tomatoes, cooked garlic and onion, a little bit of salt for taste, cheeses AND spaghetti and toss, toss, toss. You really want to make sure everything is good and incorporated. In the same pan you cooked the garlic and onion in, add the tablespoon of olive oil and put it over medium high heat on the stove. Add the entire bowl of spaghetti and everything in it, and push down so that the top is level. Keep it on the stove for several minutes (I usually do 3 - 4), as this is going to make a the spaghetti on top a little crispy. Then, throw the whole thing in the oven and set the timer for 30 minutes.

After you take it out of the oven, you'll need to let it cool a bit (this is going to be really hard to do, as the smell is going to completely overpower you and set your spit glands into overdrive). I suggest picking an olive or two off of the sides to tide you over. Once it's cooled a little, you'll want to run a spatula around the outside and underneath of the spaghetti to loosen it all up. When it's good and loose, invert the pan onto a pretty plate and voila! Spaghetti pie in all of its glory.

My picture was taken before I inverted it out of the pan~ I couldn't be bothered to take any more pictures once it was ready to be eaten. The best part of this recipe is that you can add all kinds of fun things to it to make it your own. I've substituted with sundried tomatoes, added feta and pine nuts, switched up cheeses and even thrown in pieces of pepperoni. You just cannot lose with this recipe!!!! Enjoy!!!!

Robert Rodriguez' Puerco Pibil!

When I first saw this recipe on Girlichef's Blog, I just about did a backflip because it called for cooking pork in banana leaves. I had been searching for the perfect recipe to make for my parents as a going away meal, and there was no doubt in my mind that this was it!

Lucky for me, the Girlichef blog is backed by a wonderful woman who is very patient and kind, and who does not mind being bombarded with questions about how she executes her recipes. Which is what I did. Despite all of her wonderful feedback, I still managed to have a royal time getting this dish on the table. The best way for me to share the experience with you, is to recap the email I sent to her and Miranda after my attempt. Read on....

"Okay....so a week ago Friday (June 19th to be exact), I attempted to recreate your Puerco Pibil recipe in my very own kitchen. Looking back now, I can laugh heartily at everything that took place that day...although I do wish I'd had a camera crew on hand to catch all of it on film :)

I started off by pulling that big beautiful piece of pork out of my fridge (the one from the local Latin market), and unwrapped it in all of its glory....do you remember when I asked you about trimming the fat off of it? In its frozen state, it appeared to have a very distinctive layer of fat, and I wanted to make sure it was okay to leave some of that on?....Well guess what. It was a two inch thick layer of skin. Yes. PIG skin. I was MORTIFIED. Never in my life have I had to trim anything so scary. I just kept praying "Dear Jesus don't let me puke" and took to it much like a woman who has never been faced with real, raw pig skin might.

What I also had not realized, was that the cut of meat was NOT in fact boneless (as I had expected), but had a large bone of some sort smack in the middle of it. Luckily, I had purchased a 9 pound piece of meat, and prayed once again that I would be able to trim five pounds off since that's what the recipe called for. And here's where it gets funnier (believe me, the look on my face when I saw the pig skin was fantastic...but the look on my face when I realized I needed to weigh the meat out was priceless). I started putting the meat in a plastic bag, and wondered how on earth I was going to know when I got to five pounds of meat. So I went and weighed myself. And then weighed myself again with the bag. A slight difference, not much, so I figured I needed to get more meat. The problem was, by the time I'd tripled the amount of meat in size, my scale hadn't budged since my first weigh-in. Crap. Strike two.

Then I realize I have a two pound bag of limes, which I attempt to use to see how heavy the bag of meat might be in comparison to the lime bag. It felt significantly heavier, so I figured I was good to go :) Hurray! On to making the sauce!

I'd specifically gone out and purchased a spice grinder as suggested, and got to work grinding all of my spices...that's about the time I realized I'd forgotten to get the 1/2 teaspoon of whole cloves. CRAP CRAP CRAP! So I added a little more allspice and prayed once again, for victory. I ground, and ground, and ground some more (well actually I pushed a button, but you know what I mean). I took four lemons and juiced them heartily, then added two limes and juiced them heartily (I love lime and wanted that in the mix). Then I got the orange juice, white vinegar, some great tequila that a co-worker gave me especially for the occasion, and 8 cloves of garlic and threw them all in. Then I added another clove of garlic or two because I love garlic :)

Then came to the habanero....you know, it's funny. I've never worked with a habanero before, and one would think that I might do some research on them before actually attempting to cut one, right? HA! Nope. So with bare hands I set to work, trimming the rib and seeds out and cutting the leftover slivers into teeny weeny pieces. I put all of these glorious things into my mini-food processor (which was a huge mistake, but I digress), and start pulsing everything together. Then I noticed that I had a huge leak from filling the processor too high. So back into the bowl everything went so that the liquid could be processed in smaller batches (why I didn't just go the blender route, I HAVE NO IDEA). I get all of this together and finally pour it over the meat in my freezer bag. Glory hallelujah!

I start to pull my banana leaves out of the package and notice a strange sensation on my right hand. Before I could even examine it, the whole thing felt like it had caught fire. I panicked a little, wondering what the heck was wrong with it, then remembered (like a last minute genius), that I'd been plucking at a habanero without any protection, and that perhaps that wasn't the brightest idea. So while the pork is marinating in its goodness, I set to work googling ways to reduce habanero burn from skin. I read about mixing bleach with water and soaking your hand in it~ didn't work. Then I had an ice pack on it, which helped for a bit, but again, didn't take the sting away completely. Then I tried soaking it in milk and that finally seemed to calm everything down. It wasn't until the next day that I was finally entirely free from the burn. :)

Anyway, after all of that I set to work on my banana leaves, bracing myself because everything I'd read online said that they were extremely hard to work with. Boy were they wrong! The banana leaves were the easiest part of the entire production! I'd purchased some frozen ones and thawed them for a few hours in the fridge, and after a little rinse, they were perfect! I lined the pan, threw the pork in, and put it in the oven for a good four and a half hours. It was around two hours that I noticed I couldn't "smell the smell" anymore, and that's when I found that my oven had randomly turned itself off, just to tick me off. HAHAHAHA!!!

Moral of this story: I love to cook, but holy cow am I just not fit for recipes like this. My parents were absolutely amazed and said over and over how amazing the dish was. But Me? Eh. I wasn't as impressed. The taste of vinegar was VERY strong, and I'm wondering if that had something to do with half of the juices leaking out when I was processing everything. The presentation of the dish was beautiful (everyone crowded around when I removed the banana leaves), but for me, all of the hard work just didn't pay off.

I might try it again one day~ this time with cloves, and maybe more orange juice and less vinegar~ but you can bet your bottom dollar that the meat I use will be purchased at my local Publix. Already butchered. :) :) :)"

Here's a picture of my Puerco Pibil over rice with a side of tostones and a side salad with avocado vinaigrette dressing. Good luck!

Oven-Baked Pancake!

There are a few things that I should probably explain about this blog so as not to get anyone's hopes up.

#1: I am not a chef. Nor do I claim to be anything even remotely close.

#2: I am very crappy at taking pictures. I leave the picture-taking up to my friend Katie.

#3: I have the absolute pickiest eater for a husband. Do not be annoyed if I have to completely tweak an entire recipe or omit awesome, amazing, fantastic ingredients to suit his tastebuds. Believe me, I've lost many a dyed hair wondering why on earth he insists that he hates mushrooms when he can't for the life of himself figure out that they're in my ultimate pork chop gravy recipe. But shhh. He doesn't need to know.

The first recipe I tried after delving into the foodie blog world was my friend Miranda's Oven-Baked Pancake recipe. (You can click on her name for the link)

I was home one day by myself~ something that happens maybe once or twice a year~ and decided that it was high time I treated myself to something really yummy and just for me. I followed her directions to a tee, and boy oh boy did this make one ginormous pancake!! The pan I used to cook it in was one of the biggest I own, and the pancake not only filled the entire bottom, but crept up the sides of the pan and did a fun swan dive thing back down into the center. It was glorious. To fill it, I took a bag from the freezer of mixed fruit (strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries), and heated them on the stove until the fruit was nice and bubbly. I scooped the hot fruit into the center of the pancake, rolled it up like a burrito and dusted powdered sugar all over the top. Holy cow so good.

Here's a picture:

Now as you can tell, I'm not very photograph savvy (see #2 warning above). Nor was I really thinking artistically when I took this picture (see paper plate, splashes of batter and powdered sugar sieve). In actuality, I'd eaten half the pancake before I even remembered that I wanted to take a picture to prove to Miranda that I'd actually made it. So there you go :)

Hi!

Food pics coming soon! Stay tuned :)