Category Archives: Dessert

The I’ll Do it Someday Someday is Now!

Sure, some people might have days off between jobs and go away for a weekend. A spa day perhaps? Maybe just lounge about on the porch and read some of those eleven books stacked up on one’s nightstand? Sure, one COULD do that. Or, presented with 10 days of no kids at home and a husband who can reach things in high places, one COULD also embark on the biggest organizing and cleaning spree since one moved in here eight years ago. And it was done. So say we all. #Nerdfoiles.

First up, the most significant change was Drummer Boy’s room losing its nursery motif. Because he’s 9. Yep, 9. I never said I moved with lightning speed.

And changing colors

To a sports/Minecraft/Art theme more suited to a boy of his maturity.

Next up, our closet. Before:

After

Yes, I know the tag is still on it. I’m gonna wear it this fall, I swear.

But oh, it gets worse. Don’t worry, we’re getting there. Laundry room before:

After

Oh dear, now we go down to THE BASEMENT. Actually, it’s been more cluttered. We recently unloaded the baby toys (like play kitchens, small vehicles) so there are lot less large items. I remember buying this house thinking, “Now we have a finished basement, so all the toys will be down there and I won’t have to stare at a mess all day”. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, woo, woo, oh. Whew!

Anyway, the basement before:

And after

Behind the bar, before

Behind the bar, after. Why yes, we do need more can koozies. Thank you for asking.

And finally, the utility room. Now, by way of background for those that are new here, at the old house we had a scary, spider-filled, space between the stairs where someone could easily grab you type of basement. Thus, whenever I would accidentally go to Homegoods, I would purchase a festive red platter, enjoy it, and then send that festive red platter down to said basement. Then the next time I accidentally went to Homegoods, I’d think “Hey, I don’t have a red platter” because, you know, object permanence issues. And down to the scary Hell-mouth basement that one would go too. Tablecloths would suffer the same fate. Resulting, as some might say, in an excess of housewares. Now, however, there is no excuse as our basement is lovely. No excuse for THIS!

Or this tablecloth tower of doooooom:

But, finally all is in order. With napkins in drawers labeled by season, kitchen and hand towels bagged by holiday:

Tablecloths loaded into a dresser by size of the table:

Often used items put within handy reach:

And platters and assorted dishes organized by color. As any normal person does. Right? Normal people do that, right?!!

Note the number of red dishes. It was a real problem.

Along the way a number of drawers were organized (nightstand, desk), supplies were created for the holiday gift I’m going to give the neighbors (SUSPENSE – it’s only September!) and Halloween Block Party planning/organizing has begun.

But for those who only come here for the food and not the OCD ramblings of a hoarder, what were some of the food highlights I made after seven days of seven straight hours of straight up straightening up?

Made this Shrimp with Spicy Garlic Sauce from Can You Stay for Dinner. Didn’t have green beans so I used broccoli. Also, only used half the chili garlic sauce and it was plenty spicy for me. Did I take a picture – no, because I was too tired from all the before and aftering.

Also grilled up some very simple chicken legs. This is a very simple, fast way to grill chicken legs with lots of flavor.

And, the never fail Ina Garten’s Baked Potato Wedges

The leftovers of which became Two Peas and Their Pod’s Loaded Baked Potato Frittata (fri-ta-ta – that’s a fun word to say) for dinner the following night.

And for dessert during my unemployment period?

Kentucky Butter Cake cookies from Cookies and Cups.

Oh, I may have also watched two entire seasons of Orphan Black at City Cousin’s insistence. Which means I also didn’t sleep very much on certain evenings.

So, ultimately, over the last two weeks we donated/gave away/boxed up for Mom’s garage sale:

13 Hefty bags total of clothing and shoes
4 bags of toys
3 boxes of books
3 boxes of ancient financial records shredded
3 boxes of housewares

Buuuuuuut, nonetheless, I accidentally went to Homegoods because I had something to return (it happens!), and may have bought a new fall pillow and blanket.

Which Skunk the Cat is totally fine with.

Now go get your weekend on. I know I will as I have to go to the new job on Monday. There may be pumpkin bread involved. Just sayin’

Happy Fall y’all.

A Very Late Summary of a Very Long Week

Sorry folks, had plans for an extended Labor Day barbecue post on things to grill. But then I gave notice at work and things got a little busy. Let me explain. No, there is too much, let me sum up (name that movie).

But now, I have 10 days off between gigs. Just wait until the before and after cleaning pictures. I’m looking at you Utility Room!!

Meanwhile,

Got a nail polish organizer for my sister. Was thinking about enrolling it in a Crossfit class, but it turns out it’s a looker.

My SIL and BIL stopped by on their way back from South Bend to say happy birthday to Drummer Boy. Speaking of Drummer Boy’s birthday, uh oh, now we have actual drums.

To the Block – so sorry!

For SIL and BIL visit, we did what used to be called an “early supper” as they had a 6:00 flight. Did the Chicken Kabobs with Tzatziki from prior post. Also the Israeli Salad from Smitten Kitchen that has made many an appearance here.

This Strawberry Peach Rose Sangria, however, from What’s Gaby Cooking was a big hit. Diminished the amount of basil leaves by about half, but otherwise didn’t change a thing.

To celebrate Labor Day, I made this Apple Pie in a Glass dessert, which will also be the subject of another post on easy desserts from Trader Joe’s ingredients,

But for those who can’t wait

WHAT YOU NEED
5 Granny Smith apples, pealed and cubed into dice
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 TBSP white sugar
1/4 cup apple juice
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 jar Trader Joe’s Salted Caramel Sauce
1 container vanilla ice cream
2 cups Trader Joe’s Crunchy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, crumbled

WHAT YOU DO
Mix first 5 ingredients into a pot. Set over medium heat, covered for about 25 minutes until apples are just tender. Cool apples. Layer apples, crumbled cookies, vanilla ice cream and Salted Caramel Sauce in a glass.

Made the easy Bolognese Sauce from Bon Appetit.

This is a good recipe if you have a little left over red wine (yes, I’ve heard that happens to some people!) I don’t use veal in this recipe just beef, because in my weird list of rules is the “no eating baby animals” rule. I know, doesn’t make sense. But it keeps the “no eating animals you can have as a pet” rule company.

When you live on The Block, this goes up over-night to celebrate Fake Sister’s Aunt’s 60th Birthday 50’s style:

And this cake gets made by Jen at Pastries So Tasty to celebrate the birthday girl’s first car

And no self-respecting 50’s style party put up overnight in the driveway would find itself without properly attired wait staff!

So now I’m off to clean every inch of this house while I have time off. I’ve already donated seven bags of clothes and shoes, 2 bags of toys and 3 bags of books – and it’s only Thursday.

A Nod to Phineas and Ferb

In the last week before school started, the boys lamented that we hardly did anything this summer. I think all the blog posts that precede this one might disagree.

Nonetheless, for this last week, we jammed in some swimming, tennis, multiple birthday/pool parties, Pizza Night, trying out new instruments –

Visiting with cousins

And, on the very last day, when surely no more fun could be had in the last throes of summer – Wizard World Comic Con!!!!

Meet the Nerdfoiles:

Ok. Geekfest over. What did we make for this last hurrah?

Drizzled olive oil, salt and pepper over halved cherry and grape tomatoes (from Mbork garden) and sprinkled with rosemary (from yours truly’s garden) and slow roasted them in a 275 degree oven. Toasted slices of baguette, topped with provolone in a 350 oven and then topped with the tomatoes.

And this salad, THIS SALAD.

This salad could be anything it wants to be if it just puts its mind to it. Add Asian flank steak, chicken, shrimp or whatever protein you desire and it’s dinner. Otherwise it is quite a side to grilled chicken. It can be served room temp or cold so it would be good for a late summer block party.

Asian Noodle Salad
Adapted from The Pioneer Woman and Foodie with Family. Serves 6 with some leftovers for lunch.

WHAT YOU NEED
For the Dressing
1 whole Lime, Juiced
8 TBSP olive oil
8 TBSP low sodium soy sauce
3 TBSP toasted sesame oil
1/3 cup brown sugar
3 TBSP chopped or minced fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 Jalapeño pepper, chopped
1 large handful fresh parsley, chopped

For the Salad
1/2 package linguine, cooked al dente (seriously, don’t overcook) rinsed and cooled – -if doing ahead toss with a dash of sesame oil and refrigerate. Both PW and FwF called for a full pound of pasta, but I thought it was a bit much for our crew.
2/3 bag of coleslaw mix (or you can chop up 1/2 a head each of Napa and purple cabbage)
1 clamshell or 10 oz bag baby spinach
1 red bell pepper thinly sliced
1 yellow bell pepper thinly sliced
4 green onions, white and light green parts, sliced
1 hothouse cucumber, thinly sliced
1 bunch parsley, roughly chopped
6 TBSP toasted sesame seeds

WHAT YOU DO
Combine all dressing ingredients in a jar and shake, shake, shake until it’s all combined.

Toss all salad ingredients except sesame seeds in a bowl and toss with dressing until fully dressed (you may not need all the dressing). Top with sesame seeds. You could also add some peanuts or cashews if desired.

And for dessert:

Rainbow Krispie Treats

WHAT YOU NEED
6 cups Fruity Pebbles
6 cups Rice Krispies
1/2 cup butter, plus more for pan
20 oz. mini marshmallows

WHAT YOU DO
Butter a 9×13 pan and butter a piece of parchment paper cut so there is overhang on the sides of the pan. Melt butter over medium low heat in a large saucepan. Once butter is melted, add marshmallows and stir until fully melted. Add in cereal and stir until combined. Plop it all in dish and using a butter covered spatula or the the actual wrappers from the butter, press into the pan until all flat. Once cool, lift sides of parchment to remove and cut into uniform squares. Use a protractor if you have to, they’ll be ruined if not uniform. No, not really.

All in all, a really fun week to end the summer. In between all these activities, we MAY have watched some American Ninja Warrior and played a few video games. Someone was very tired out by all that.

Happy Back-to-School week everyone. See you on the playground.

Father’s Day 2015

A relatively mellow Father’s Day.

An awesome pulled pork/BBQ buffet by Uncle M and Aunt C.

Kane wonders if he could have some.

A certain member of the family won the “Daddy Cup” made by hand by Miss Mimi.

I made Chilled Dark Chocolate Pie with Strawberry Sauce from Oh She Glows. Gluten free and vegan. And no one misses the gluten, as the picture shows.

Baby D is on the move.

A good time was had by all. Happy Father’s Day everyone.

Weather – Please Make up Your Mind I’ve Got Things to Do

And pick up your toys and dirty socks from the family room! Oh, no, wait, that’s the boys, not the weather.

Do you have tomatoes that are not up to par on the summer tomato bliss meter? No problem, just slow roast them. Yep, that’s right, I went right from pictures of dirty socks to food. No time for segues.

And add them to my new favorite Summer Pasta Salad just as Smitten Kitchen predicted it would be. She never steers me wrong. Do not fear the oregano amount. She’s right, she’s always right. I used white wine vinegar for a lighter taste and ricotta sallata as I sometimes find feta overwhelming.

Also did Garlic Roasted Potatoes from Ina Garten. With two luminaries of cookbooks like that, it can’t go wrong. And since we were straddling between spring and summer over the weekend, we grilled steaks but then sautéed some asparagus.

Asparagus with Pancetta

WHAT YOU NEED
1 tsp olive oil
1 lb asparagus, sliced on diagonal in 1 inch pieces
1/4 lb pancetta sliced thick and then diced

WHAT YOU DO
Heat olive oil in pan. Add pancetta and stir until crisp. Remove pancetta to a paper towel lined plate. Add asparagus to the oil in pan. Stir about 4 minutes. Add 1 Tablespoon of water, stir and cover loosely and steam for about 3-5 minutes or until asparagus is bright green and tender.

Remove from pan with slotted spoon and sprinkle crispy pancetta over the asparagus.

What’s up for dessert. How about giant Pretzel M&M Cookies from Two Peas and Their Pod via What’s Gaby Cooking? I really flattened them and thought that was better than when they puffed up. But to each their own.

Now it is June so hopefully we’ll see some solid summer grilling weather. I made some teacher gifts of candle holders with 150 sharpened pencils and tucked in Gerber daisies in their own test tube vials.

Fake Sister had her very last day at grade school.

So after today, she and Drummer Boy will no longer be in school together. Hang on, this computer keeps getting dust in my eyes. *misty*

Happy Last Day of School everyone!

Spring, a Surprise Guest and Mother’s Day

I have a perpetual problem when ordering spices of thinking, “Oh, 4 ounces doesn’t sound like much”. This mindset results in my owning an extraordinary number of light spices that don’t weigh very much. Like this, just one of my many, many jars of bay leaves (did I say many?):

And sadly, I’m not in need of a laurel. Anyone need a cinnamon stick? Just ask, call any time. And well, vanilla beans fall into that category too. However, I industriously turned 2 of them into vanilla sugar (scraping the seeds into a clean jar and adding fine sugar).

So now what to do with vanilla sugar? Since Spring began, I’ve seen a number of recipes for fools. LIke take 8 beers, combine with 2 frat boys, add a Family Guy episode, stir…. No, I mean like British fools…take 8 Pimm’s cups, combine with 2 muggles.. No, wait, I digress again. A fool is a English dessert that combines stewed fruit and cream. I have a lot of strawberries, so I thought I’d use my vanilla sugar and strawberries and make a fool.

Strawberry Fool

WHAT YOU NEED
4 cups strawberries, hulled and chopped
1/2 cup of vanilla sugar
2 TBSP water
1 TBSP vanilla extract
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup powdered sugar

WHAT YOU DO
Put strawberries, vanilla sugar, vanilla extract and water in a bowl and stir. Let sit anywhere from 15 minutes to 5 hours. Mash half the strawberries with potato masher or two forks until there are mushy bits and still whole pieces of strawberries.

Whip the cream with the powdered sugar until peaks form. Fold in half the strawberry mixture and stir just a little bit with a spatula. Then fold in the rest of the strawberries and only stir once. Garnish with a sliced strawberry and mint if you have it (I didn’t). Serve with Nilla Wafers or Lorna Doones.

Had a nice surprise visit from my nephew Joe before he departs to study and work in China this summer. So we made some steaks, following the directions from Serious Eats. I’ve mentioned in other posts, or maybe I just wrote it in my recipe binder, but yep, salting beef ahead of time works wonders. So we grilled NY strips, made Oh She Glows’ Smashed Potatoes with Avocado Aioli (yes, again) and a big ol’ salad with homemade ranch dressing from Foodie With Family.

This time I boiled and smashed the potatoes ahead of time, covered the baking sheet and kept it in the refrigerator. At dinner time I then cooked them in the oven a little longer, about 35 minutes, flipping them half way through so both sides got crispy. Worked great.

While I made dinner the boys and Fake Sister played soccer with Joe (sorry Joe, hope you didn’t think this would be a restful visit).

And games about football:

And music:

I didn’t host Mother’s Day, so there are not many recipes to report on. But who am I to let a holiday go by without an appropriate beverage? This year, it was Blueberry Bellinis from She Wears Many Hats.

Here they are in all their blueberry and bubbles glory!

Really couldn’t be easier. Just boil the ingredients, puree with a stick blender in the pot, bring to your sister’s house. Add to Prosecco and eat donuts. Done and Done.

Mmmmmmmh, donuts.

A leeeetle mishap involving Alvin’s face and Aunt Colleen’s windowsill of death. What would Mother’s Day be without a trip to the emergency room for 8 stitches on one’s lip? Al was a trooper, didn’t even cry.

Happy Mother’s Day everyone. May Father’s Day be stitch-free.

Spring Salad

You know my motto, if it’s April, and you aren’t having asparagus then you better have spinach. Fine, that’s not my motto at all, but this spinach salad, well…just, well.

Spinach Salad from Two Red Bowls.

This was bacon, hard boiled eggs, almonds, goat cheese and caramelized red onion magic. I had made it as side to my standard pork tenderloin, but seriously, the salad should be the meal. Sorry pork tenderloin, but you were ditched. Much of it can be made ahead on the weekend making for an easier weeknight meal (bacon, eggs, caramelized onion – just make sure you save the bacon fat in the refrigerator to use as the fat for the dressing).

But I’ll give you the ingredients for the pork tenderloin, maybe for next time:

Marinated Pork Tenderloin (adapted from one of my favorite people, Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa herself, where there is no bad recipe)

WHAT YOU NEED
1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
1 TBSP fresh chopped parsley
1 TBSP fresh chopped rosemary
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
4 cloves minced or crushed garlic (I love Trader Joe’s frozen cloves)
2 TBSP Dijon mustard
Pinch of red pepper flakes
2 pork tenderloins

WHAT YOU DO
Combine all the ingredients in a large ziploc bag and marinate the pork tenderloins in the refrigerator. It’s better overnight, but also good if done about 5 hours ahead. Again, it’s something you can do on Sunday for Monday’s dinner. Heat oven to 400.

Remove tenderloins from marinade and either sear in a pan on the stovetop and transfer to a baking sheet and roast in oven for about 25 minutes or until temperature reaches 1405F (or more, if you are like me and still barely want to see pink). If you don’t feel like dirtying two pans, you can just roast in oven and then flip half way through so both sides get a little brown.

I also served it with this minute rice blend:

It’s a mix of brown rice, red rice, wild rice and quinoa. I don’t know why I originally bought it, but it’s very good for instant, weeknight rice/quinoa. Now, you may ask yourself, if you have a rice and grain drawer

yes, I said a rice and grain drawer, then you may ask yourself, why in the world are you buying a Minute Rice blend? Because when you find out for the umpteenth time that regulators have changed their minds again about how a 5 year old rule should be interpreted, well, ain’t no one got time for measuring cups.

And please enjoy what Guitar Boy concocted for dessert to melt out of leftover Easter candy.

Stop looking at me with those sad Peep eyes.

Saturday Night’s All Right for Baking

Fake Sister is having the third birthday celebration of turning 12 tonight (MTV Birthday Weekend!!!!) so the block has been overcome with tweens playing outside. They’re playing Infection, which we used to call Ghost in the Graveyard. Stupid zombies changing everything.

We’re hiding inside. So what did we do with this free time?

Continue reading →

Happy First Day Without Negative Windchill

I hope everyone remembered to set their clocks forward an hour (after the kids woke up, of course).

We took the opportunity of a moderately mild night yesterday to grill some steaks.

Simply salt and pepper the steaks, throw them on the grill. While they grill, melt half a stick of butter. Stir 1/8 tsp garlic powder, 1 TBSP chopped fresh parsley and a dash or two of dried oregano into the butter. Right when the steaks come off the grill, baste with the butter mixture and then let the steaks rest while you grill asparagus, because SPRING BABY!!! Continue reading →

What Worked Well – Valentine Edition

So what did everyone make for Valentine’s Day? Did you go with fancy (something with scallops perhaps) or a nice steak? I went with comfort food and a joint Valentine’s Day with my sister’s family. The more the merrier!

The Slow Braised Beef from Smitten Kitchen was easy-peasy lemon squeezy. 3 ingredients. That’s it. 4 hours. It’s done. Did I take a picture? No, I didn’t.

For dessert, I made How Sweet Eats Chocolate Cream Pie. Continue reading →

Lucky Rhino

For the recipes and pictures I promised to send, but never do.