Ain’t she a looker? This is Abbey, a purebred golden lab who was originally purchased by my guy’s mom. She’s such a sweetie, but like any lab she’s full of energy and at just over a year old Miss Abbey is more than a handful. She’d never hurt a fly, but in her attempt to play she knocked his mom over causing her to end up with a fractured wrist. At first D and me were taking Abbey while his mom’s wrist healed, but we fell in love (against our will) and his mom decided Abbey was a little too much and that we could give her a great home. Lucky for everybody, we live a few streets away and can bring Abbey over every Saturday for the family dinners!

I’m not a dog person, did I mention that? Cats are what I know, and ours is acting like a big bully. A cat person like me wouldn’t be affected by those big eyes and cheerfull licking and… look at that tongue…

Oh Abbey, you win. Y’all please keep me in mind with my tiny kitchen and no space plus a frisky lab!

Meet the fridge.

There’s a lot in there! That’s not all the food in the house either, don’t forget these.

and

and the infamous baking shelves.

How long do y’all think I can keep it up?

As y’all can easilly tell, I changed the ingrediants a little. There’s cucumbers and avocados, but D can’t eat any peppers at all so I left those out and threw some tomatoes in instead. There’s some feta in there too, I won’t lie and if you’re thinking there ain’t any cilantro you’re right. That herb and me get along like cilantro and cats (which makes sense only if you know you can keep most cats off the furniture by spraying a mist of cilantro and water). CB picked this week’s Craving Ellie In My Belly, and I’m kissing her butt for it.

“That don’t look like a taco Miss Lemon” y’all are saying! Your grammar was much better of course, but you’re right no matter how you swing it. D grabbed the burrito sized tortillas from the grocery store, and there was no way that was making a cute little taco so I rolled it up and sliced it.

It was love. D and me agreed that we need this a lot, and y’all really need to try it with some feta. The next day I sent him to work with some lemon pepper deli chicken in a roll up with the salsa, and eating the same thing for lunch myself we liked it almost as much. Almost because when you’re talking a garlic broiled steak or some chicken we all know the steak wins.

Steak Tacos with Cucumber-Avocado Salsa
1 Tablespoon chili powder
2 cloves garlic, minced (about 2 teaspoons)
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon salt
Pinch of cayenne pepper
1 1/4 lbs top sirloin steaks (about 1 1/4 inches thich)
Twelve 6-inch corn tortillas
3 cups shredded red cabbage
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 lime, cut into wedges
Cucumber-Avocado Salsa (recipe follows)

Spray a large non-stick skillet with cooking spray and preheat it over medium-high heat.

Combine the spices in a small bowl and then rub the mixture into both sides of the steaks.

Broil the steaks for about 5 minutes per side, turning once, for medium rare or to your desired taste. (Prepare the salsa below while the steak is broiling). Remove and allow to sit and rest for 5 minutes before slicing into thin slices.

Warm the tortillas by placing them on a hot skillet or grill for about 30 seconds, turning once, or you can place 6 tortillas at a time between two moist paper towels and microwave for about 45 seconds. Wrap them in a cloth napkin to keep warm.

Top tortillas with cabbage, steak, salsa (recipe below) and a squeeze of lime juice and sprinkle of fresh chopped cilantro and serve.

Cucumber-Avocado Salsa
1 medium English cucumber, seeded and diced (about 2 cups)
2 medium firm-ripe avocados, peeled, pitted and diced
1/2 red onion, diced
Juice of 2 limes (about 1/4 cup)
Salt to taste
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
3 jalapeno peppers, seeded and finely chopped, or to taste

Combine all the ingredients in a medium bowl and toss gently to combine. Serve within an hour of preparing.

I love Ellie. I love meatloaf. More importantly for this pick, D loves meatloaf. He likes desserts, and even really enjoys a handful that I make… but regular food makes him much happier on a usual basis. For the first pick, I politely asked (waved the book in his face until he stopped trying to watch tv) what he’d enjoy most as the first Ellie recipe. After a few false starts (you can’t eat that honey, that weird name is a hot pepper and your stomach would try to kill me) he triumphantly pointed to that most exotic of foods, the meatloaf. Because apparently the large amounts of turkey meatloaf I already make him eat on an almost weekly basis ain’t enough. You’d be startled at what I can do with leftover meatloaf at this point, including but not limited to subbing it out for toast for creamed eggs and using it crumbled up in spaghetti sauce. In truth, the spaghetti sauce is worth making a whole meatloaf for but that’s not the point.

You’d think at 34 I would’ve learned basic reading skills by now, but you would be very wrong. Somehow I missed the instructions she gave for how big to make the meatloaf until now when I was sticking the recipe up here. 2 inches tall? The meatloaf I made towered above the loaf pan like some post apocalyptic tribute to home cooking, it’s lion’s mane of ketchup a bright flag in a dark wor… ahem, got a little carried away there. It was big. It cooked for a little over two hours, suffering some rather ugly holes in the middle because my meat thermometer broke and I had to use a candy thermometer. Stop laughing!!! That’s it, I’m not talking to y’all right now.

Turkey Meatloaf

Ingredients

3/4 cup quick cooking oats
1/2 cup nonfat milk
1 medium onion, peeled
2 lbs ground turkey breast (used a little over 2 lbs.)
1/2 medium red bell pepper, seeded and chopped (didn’t use this, D doesn’t deal with them well)
2 large eggs, beaten
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup ketchup
1/2 tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper
1-8 oz can no-salt-added tomato sauce
(Used some liquid smoke like I always do in meatloaf)

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

In a small bowl, stir together the oats and milk and allow to soak while you get the rest of the ingredients together, at least 3 minutes.

Thinly slice one-quarter of the onion into rings and set aside. Finely chop the rest of the onion. (didn’t do this, put the whole onion in my meatloaf)

In a large bowl, combine the turkey, oatmeal mixture, chopped onion, bell pepper, eggs, Worcestershire, ketchup, salt, and a few grinds of pepper. Mix just until well combined.

Transfer the mixture to a 9×13-inch baking dish and shape into a loaf about 5 inches wide and 2 inches high. Pour the tomato sauce over the meatloaf and sprinkle with the sliced onions. Bake until an instant-read meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part registers 160 F, about 1 hour. (2 hours if your meatloaf was like mine)

Remove from the oven and let rest for 10 to 15 minutes before slicing.

The Movie : National Treasure

The Explanation : Cherry pie in honour of George Washington and the movie’s focus on American history, with dark chocolate chip swirled into the filling as the secret treasure.

It’s a very simple pie, the week of sneezing and coughing with the annual fall cold ain’t been encouraging for complicated food. Go ahead and chuckle, but I used Comstock Country Cherry Pie filling! There’s no shame in licking the can is there? The crust is home made, a new (to me that is) pie crust recipe from Betty Crocker’s original picture cook cook. To go with the pie, I took a few pics of my own favourite treasures that I own.

Every girl needs it…

A little extra treasure…

Lip gloss counts as a treasure! 

This is one of my favourite pics, I love these close ups of the cherry filling bubbling through the crust.

The Crust :

2 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
2/3 c. shortening

Sift the flour and salt together, cut half of the shortening in to make a fine meal consistency and then the other half to make a lumpy consistency like large peas. Sprinkle with a few teaspoons of water at a time until the dough comes together in a ball when squeezed.

The Filling :

2 cans Comstock Country Cherry Pie Filling
3 handfulls Ghiradelli Bittersweet chocolate chips

Bake pie at 425 for 15 minutes. turn heat to 325 and bake for 30 minutes.Brush top with cream and sugar during the second baking time and sprinkle with sugar.

It ain’t caramel, I realize this. Caramel makes me make annoyed faces, and the recipe sounded a little intimidating! When Dorie tells me to back up so I don’t et splatter burnt, I have to admit this doesn’t make m want it more. To be honest, I ain’t ever made ay kind of caramel sauce or anything before! These brownies are in slices with my first butterscotch sauce recipe from the Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book. It’s really frigging good! It never came to the soft boil stage, which was really annoying but it worked.

Any of y’all wanna cook with me? The book is so frigging good, and I’ve been loving it so far. CB decided she wanted to cook from it too, so here were are! Craving Ellie In My Belly. It’s your standard weekly event, choosing recipes from the book Foods You Crave. If y’all feel like giving it a try, send me an email at lemontartlet(at)yahoo.com and let me know. There’s plenty of room, and we’re friendly enough as long as you keep us fed!

Betty Crocker, you never let me down. These little muffins were so easy and charming that I didn’t even mind making them with a head cold. In fact, they were one of the only things that’s sounded good enough to go to the trouble of making. Sniffling and sneezing, I grabbed the adorable pink glass mixing bowls D’s mom gave me for Christmas and mixed them up in just a few minutes. before you say it, I’m aware they’re all spikey and look like little hedgehogs. Yes, Holly’s are all smooth and mine look like scene kids, but I swear it’s because I use an extra light hand mixing muffins in my search for the tenderest texture.

What there ain’t any excuse for (blaming the sneezing anyway) is my inability to read and ending up with this topping. This is what happens when you skim the bottom of the recipe, and instead of rolling them in butter and then sprinkling them with sugar and cinnamon you mix all three together and blink at the sugary buttery gloop.

It tastes good, but it sure ain’t what Betty or nature intended! Another peek at Holly’s left me slapping my forehead and using common sense, the next ones are a lot prettier.

The crumb is so tender it melts on the tongue. You need to try these, they’re worth the little effort they take.

French Breakfast Puffs
Mix together thoroughly…
1/3 cup shortening
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
Sift together…
1 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
and stir in alternately with…
1/2 cup milk

Fill greased muffin cups 2/3 full. Bake until golden brown. Immediately roll in…
6 Tbsp melted butter
then in mixture of…
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon

Serve hot.
Temp.: 350 degree F oven
Time: Bake 20 to 25 minutes
Amount: 12 muffins