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Ah, vacation. It seems so long ago, and at the time I thought it would be easy. Get away for a few days, enjoy Orlando…
Eat a lot of this…
Some of this and this…
Then when we came back, I’d whip this right up!
Nectarines. How did I get this far without ever knowing you? You are now my fav fruit, and I’ve become obbssesed with you. It’s true, you could call me a nectarine stalker. In desserts I’ve snuck you in, on fish I’ve paired you with onions. Dorie’s Summer Fruit Galette was the beginning of a hot, sticky affair!
All was happening as planned, and then…
…he showed up.
Ain’t never been much for big events, a little celebration at home with the people I love has alwacy been the best sounding thing I can think of. It should come as no surprise that’s how my 34th B-Day was, and I loved it (the firt part, the second part is next weekend when mom and me celebrate the halfway point between her b-day and mine together)!
The day began with D running out to get us breakfast from Perkins. Y’all, ain’t anything but the eggs on this plate that I would usually allow in the house. What hick chick could say no to a smoked ham steak and fried potatoes and eggs over easy? The muffin that came with the breakfast was the biggest muffin I’ve ever seen, raspberry cream and topped with sugar. The pics of the muffin ain’t posted because it seems Pi managed to get a few cat hairs on it. Y’all with pets know that you end up eating fur, but there ain’t no reason to go showing it up close.
Supper was slap your g-ma good (sorry g-ma). The soup is by Peabody and the recipe is here, try it. It was some of the best soup I’ve ever had, and D and his mom loved it! Ain’t neither of them like bleu cheee at all, so I changed the cheese to Havarti and it worked perfectly.
The salad won’t nothing to brag about, some greens and red onions and walnuts. There ain’t no lying about it, I was in a hurry and the salad suffered from neglect. There were radishes, but I forgot the tomatoes.
The steak and shrimp were both marinated, the steak in olive oil and liquid smoke and garlic and brown sugar and the shrimp in lime juice and garlic and basil and water. They were both perfect, and the shrimp had a butter sauce with basil and parsley brushed on it before it was put on the plates (the basil and parsley was from my garden). Dorie’s brioche dough made little rich rolls!
Yes, the name on the cake is right. D likes to run my first and middles names together to call me Shalei (shay-LEE) because he thinks it’s cute, and I can’t help but agree. When the cake was chosen, I wanted the pig cake I found in the Baskin Robbins book. D found out that the pig was an ice cream coop on a cookie, so he had tem put the pig on top of a Neopolitan ice cream and chocolate cake ice cream cake! Before y’all ask, no I didn’t share the pig. Oink.
There were pig calls practiced.
After supper, D’s mom gave me a few presents from her and they’re so nice! A family of primitive art sheep, and a cake tand with a cover that reverses to make a dip tray and a punch bowl. Y’all will have to see pics, it’s so neat!
D and me played WoW all night, and stayed up way too late and ate ice cream like little kids. He’s the perfect man for me, and it was the best B-Day ever!
True fact : this post took a while to write because I’m watching a rodeo. Love them!
There are mornings when I don’t want to eat any of the things I should. Oatmeal sounds icky, whole grains are annoying me and I don’t want any sugar. Bleh! Usually this happens when I ain’t snoozed well and I’m grumpy. Why anybody wouldn’t snooze easily with two cop cars flashing their lights outside the bedroom window and a police helicopter flying through your neighborhood on a man hunt at 2:00 a.m. I don’t know, what a picky girl I am. Mornings like today I end up making what my mom used to call concoctions. As a little girl, they were unspeakable but as I got older I started making things like this.
It doesn’t look nice in any kind of presentation way, and it doesn’t come from any recipe. It’s always a grumpy, muttering cooking session with as little effort as possible and whatever is on hand thrown in if I get the craving for it. Today’s was very easy. grabbed a little whole grain couscous and tossed that in a sauce pan with some boiling water. From the freezer I grabbed some shredded pork tenderloin that I roasted up and put back a few days ago, breaking off some frozen pieces into the pot. There were some canned turnip greens in the pantry to throw in, a little olive oil and sea salt ended up in there too. A few shakes of curry powder and a lime pepper mix perked it up, and a pinch of cinnamon made it all a little interesting.
It wouldn’t win any beauty contests and it ain’t gourmet. There ain’t a crumb left of it.
D loved these, and I ain’t arguing with him about it. Y’all, these are so tasty it ain’t even right! They were simple and friendly, the dough was so nice to work with and they were done before you could clean up after them. A few things I changed, walnuts instead of pecans and low fat buttermilk instead of whole milk. Wanna try these with whole wheat flour!
Now y’all, cutting in butter ain’t never been one of my favourite things to do. That’s why when I heard about this technique, I was really happy to try it! It’s worked out good, and this recipe was no exception. Using a cheese grater, very cold butter can be grated into your flour mixture instead of cutting your butter. Toss it with a fork a little, and you’re good to go! It’s a lot quicker, and you don’t have to worry about warming the butter up as you cut and rub it. Y’all won’t be disappointed with this trick. Y’all can tell I didn’t have a biscuit cutter, a star cookie cutter made these really cute!
A little apple butter is the perfect accompaniment to these tender guys. A cheerful fried egg and a biscuit was a great breakfast, and one that D says is a keeper. He’s the one who vetoes or approves the food around here. He’s a really good one to feed, he ain’t picky and he’s always encouraging me to try new things. Don’t ya love him (and these biscuits)?
Pecan Sour Cream Biscuits
(Makes about 12 biscuits)
2 cups all-purpose flour (or 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour and 1/3 cup cake flour)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup (packed) light brown sugar
5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 10 pieces
1/2 cup cold sour cream
1/4 cold whole milk
1/3 cup finely chopped pecans, preferably toasted
Getting Ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Get out a sharp 2-inch-diameter biscuit cutter and line a baking sheet with parchment or a silicone mat.
Whisk the flour(s), baking powder, salt, and baking soda together in a bow. Stir in the brown sugar, making certain there are no lumps. Drop in the butter and, using your fingers, toss to coat the pieces of butter with flour. Quickly, working with your fingertips (my favorite method) or a pastry blender, cut and rub the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture is pebbly. You’ll have pea-size pieces, pieces the size of oatmeal flakes and pieces the size of everything in between– and that’s just right.
Stir the sour cream and milk together and pour over the dry ingredients. Grab a fork and gently toss and turn the ingredients together until you’ve got a nice soft dough. Now reach into the bowl with your hands and give the dough a quick gentle kneading– 3 or 4 turns should be just enough to bring everything together. Toss in the pecans and knead 2 to 3 times to incorporate them.
Lightly dust a work surface with flour and turn out the dough. Dust the top of the dough very lightly with flour, pat the dough out with your hands or toll it with a pin until it is about 1/2 inch high. Don’t worry if the dough isn’t completely even– a quick, light touch is more important than accuracy.
Use the biscuit cutter to cut out as many biscuits as you can. Try to cut the biscuits close to one another so you get the most you can out of the first round. By hand or with a small spatula, transfer the biscuits to the baking sheet. Gather together the scraps, working with them as little as possible, pat out to a 1/2-inch thickness and cut as many additional biscuits as you can; transfer these to the sheet. (The biscuits ca be made to this point and frozen on the baking sheet, then wrapped airtight and kept for up to 2 months. Bake without defrosting– just add a couple more minutes to the oven time.)
Bake the biscuits for 14-18 minutes, or until they are tall, puffed and golden brown. Transfer them to a serving basket.
D loves pancakes, they’re his most requested weekend breakfast. One of the reasons that I got this new cook book was because the pancake recipe looked so good. We’re trying very hard to eat much healthier, and this cook book 
seemed the best way to start. Her philosophy on eating healthy, common sense, quality ingrediants, and skill instead of diets and an avoidance of the no fat full of chemicals food, resonated very well with my own feelings on the subject, so I grabbed this book up with some of my Christmas money. It’s every bit as nice as it seemed like it would be, and the pancake recipe was so good it’s now the new standard! The book was very reasonably priced.
These pancakes had the right texture, the right taste. They were delicious, and strawberry syrup was simple perfection. Don’t overcook the pancakes, they tend to fall rather quickly if over done. This was proven when I tried to cook them as long as I cook the usual ones.
Whole Wheat Pancakes With Strawberry Sauce
3/4 c. AP flour
3/4 c. whole grain pastry flour or whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
2 large eggs
1 c. lowfat buttermilk
3/4 c. nonfat milk
1 tbls. honey
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
In a large bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a medium bowl, beat together the eggs, buttermilk, nonfat milk, honey, and vanilla. Coat a large nonstick griddle or skillet with cooking spray and preheat over medium-low heat. Stir the wet ingrediants into the dry ingrediants, mixing only enough to combine them. The batter will be somewhat lumpy. Use a 1/4 cup measure to ladle the batter onto the griddle or skillet. Flip the pancakes the whey are golden brown on the bottom and bubbles are forming on top, about 1 1/2 minutes. Cook the other side until golden brown, about another 1 1/2 minutes. Keep the pancakes warm in a 200 F oven as you finish cooking the remaining ones.
Strawberry Sauce
2 pints fresh strawberries, hulled, or 4 cups frozen unsweetened strawberries, thawed
1 tsp. fresh lemon juice
2 tbls. pure maple syrup
Place the strawberries in a food processor and process them into a chunky puree. Transfer the puree to a small saucepan over low heat and heat just until warm. Stir in the lemon juice and maple syrup.
What was I thinking? Usually the strawberry display doesn’t tempt me, they’re measly pale little things that look like they’ve seen better days, the sort you expect to whip out a harmonica and tell you how they used to be the big man on Wall Street with a trophy wife and 2.5 kids. These were big, bright, look at that colour! They smelled perfect, and before I knew it a two pound box was in my basket. They’re locally grown a few towns over, which is why they were so cheerfull! The only problem was I’ve never really made much with them before, unless you count frozen ones in smoothies. Told y’all some of this cooking stuff is new to me.
Speaking of smoothies, the next morning was their first sampling. 
In they went, with about a half cup of low acid orange juice, three Dannon strawberry banana yogurt (it’s all I had on hand), and about one third of the blender full of ice.
The results 
went very nicely with one of our usual Saturday breakfasts, pancakes and scrambled eggs. The pancakes are really easy, and the one on top is always a heart shaped one for D (you can’t see it well in the pic). The eggs are seasoned however I feel like doing them at the time, these were a few dashes of a spice called It’s A Dilly (a combination of dill, jalepeno, garlic, and a few others I can’t remember right now). No salt in the eggs, I never use the stuff unless I have to when cooking. It always tastes saltier if you salt things at the table, and you end up using less. The butter is Move Over Butter, the only butter spread I’ve ever found that’s good for you and tastes like something with butter. Did I mention how picky I am about “diet” foods? Sugar substitutes, fat free version, fake butter, most of it makes me go running in the other direction. It’s very rare that I use any, and when I do it better taste exactlly right. Would much rather go with a different dish than use a substitute most of the time.
The pancake recipe is included, they’re the tastiest every day pancakes I’ve had. There are fancier ones, but these are the ones I always mix up when it’s a usual day.
That’s maple syrup, the real stuff is the only kind I like these days. yes, I’ve become a syrup snob.
INGREDIENTS
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
a few dashes of cinnamon
a dash of nutmeg
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, spices, and salt together in a bowl. Make a small indention in the center, and pour in the egg, milk, and oil. Mox until ingrediants are wet, but be carefull not to over mix. It shouldn’t be very smooth. Let the batter sit for a good ten minutes, go throw in a load of laundry or bother the cat to give the baking soda and salt a chance to do it’s thing. Pour the pancake batter in whatever shapes you want into a pan with butter or Pam and cook at a medium low heat until the batter loses it’s wet shininess and starts to form bubbles. Flip, cook a few minutes more, and serve with maple syrup.
INGREDIENTS
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- a few dashes of cinnamon
- a dash of nutmeg
- 1 egg
- 3/4 cup milk
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, spices, and salt together in a bowl. Make a small indention in the center, and pour in the egg, milk, and oil. Mox until ingrediants are wet, but be carefull not to over mix. It shouldn’t be very smooth. Let the batter sit for a good ten minutes, go throw in a load of laundry or bother the cat to give the baking soda and salt a chance to do it’s thing. Pour the pancake batter in whatever shapes you want into a pan with butter or Pam and cook at a medium low heat until the batter loses it’s wet shininess and starts to form bubbles. Flip, cook a few minutes more, and serve with maple syrup.
This morning’s breakfast wasn’t fancy. Cranberry Almond Select cereal and milk, unexpectedly good since I’m not a big fan of flakes and such! It’s an attempt to be healthier that I was planning to slog through, but it surprised me by being not too sweet and pleasantly tart. This stuff is tasty! Yes, that really is a bowl stolen from a microwave side dish. The shame…
