Falling for apples

Well the 14th came and went, which means I didn't get to post my Daring Cooks challenge...but have no fear, I'm posting today. Yesterday was just one of those days, when everytime I wanted to sit down and do my post, something else came up - like my dog getting sprayed by a skunk...seriously - I'm not kidding and it was TERRIBLE!!! It took me all day today to "de-skunk" my house!

Okay, well onto the challenge. The September 2010 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by John of Eat4Fun. John chose to challenge The Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John’s source for food preservation information was from The National Center for Home Food Preservation. If you're interested in the recipe used for the challenge you can check it out HERE.

I chose to go with the freezing method, mainly because it saved me from going out and looking for the items needed for the canning method. Although, now that things are finally starting to settle down from the move, I think I am going to try some canning in the near future.

The first step was obtaining the apples. For this job I employed two wonderful little workers to help me out! They did a fabulous job, and I not only had enough for a full batch of apple butter, but I still have enough left for at LEAST one apple pie! YUM.

The whole process (minus the picking time) took less than two hours. To get the right consistency I did it in two parts. After the apples were cooked down and in a "mushy" state, I buzzed them in the food processor, returned them to the pot, and let them cook on low for awhile to thicken them up. It was at this point (the applesauce stage) I removed some of the mixture and put it aside for my boys to eat this week. With the rest I took out small batches and buzzed it in my blender to get it nice and smooth. Once all was buzzed, I cooked another 20 min or so just to get as much liquid as I could out and called it good.

I have to say it turned out really nice. I've been enjoying it on toast for snacks and such, and think I will use one of my freezer packets for a pork tenderloin later this week.

So there you have it, my DC challenge for September. I'm glad I was able to get this one done. With the move I had to miss out on all the fun, but now I'm back...well until we move again that is :P.

Hope all of you wonderful people are having a great week so far!

The Peanut Gallery

Hello Folks...

Well as I write this post I am laid up on the couch with ice on my ankle. Why you might ask...well it seems that I am not strong enough to move large heavy objects (like TV's) and happened to drop the TV I was moving on my ankle. Thankfully it sort of just went down the side and not directly on top of my foot, but I do have a nasty gash and a little swelling. However...today is the 14th which means its posting day for Daring Cooks, and because I really enjoyed this challenge, I wanted to be sure to get it posted on time!

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

I had NO idea how fun, and super easy, it is to make your own nut butter. I chose to do peanut butter, but I have lots of recipes bookmarked for all sorts of butters. But because we are moving next month, I didn't want to go TOO crazy making stuff that we would then have to try and hurry to use up. Here are a few pictures of my peanuts and butter...forgive the poor quality, I used my phone to take these pictures because I didn't want to go up and get my camera...I know lazy, but sometimes that's just how I roll.

The recipe I made was delicious. I sort of used a combination of two different curry recipes that I had on hand. I only had about 1/2 the ingredients for each, so I did a combination and it turned out wonderful. AND the whole family loved it, which is always a plus. It's a chicken and vegetable curry and at the end I tossed it with some noodles (we didn't have any rice)...YUMMY!



I still have some of my peanut butter left and I've been using it in my oatmeal, on crackers, celery, really anything you can put peanut butter on, I've been using it. I think after the move, homemade nut butters will become more of a standard in this house! :)

Okay folks, if you are interested in the directions for making your very own nutty butter wonderfulness, you can check out the info HERE. I highly recommend giving it a try!!

This post is going to be short and sweet. I should probably take the ice off my foot and check on the swelling, so with that I'm off. I'll be back soon though - later gators.

Pesto and Pate...

Yes, you heard that right, pate (I don't feel like figuring out how to add all the little symbols above the actual spelling of the word, but I'm sure you all will forgive me), but not the liver kind, this was a veggie based one, and over all I'd say it's pretty tasty.

Maybe I should back up a bit - It's the 14th, which means Daring Cooks posting day. Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.

I'm going to report in steps. First, as I mentioned above, I chose the veggie recipe that they provided. It wasn't as challenging as some of the others, but it's the only one that I was sure my hubs and kiddos would eat. I did most of it with the food processor, layered it in the little dishes, and then stuck it in the fridge for about 24 hours. Here area few shots I took along the way - as well as the finished product.


As always (if your interested) you can find the pate recipe here.

The next part of the challenge was the homemade bread. First off let me say that while I have made cinnamon rolls, and pita bread one time, this was my first time making loaf bread. It took me awhile to decide what KIND of bread I wanted to make - but I referred once again to my handy "Passion for Baking" cookbook, and found a recipe for a Pain Pesto. YUM! I figured this would go nice with the pesto in the pate as well. I was a little nervous when after mixing in all my flour I realized that I measured my water 1/4 c. short, but it still managed to turn out wonderful!


Sorry there aren't many pictures of the early bread stages. My camera battery was dead and it took the first part of the bread making process to charge up.

And here is the bread and pate together. It makes for a good hefty snack that's for sure. I think the pate would also go very nice with pita chips - the bread was great, but maybe too much for the pate.

Okay well that's it for me and this month's DC challenge. I'll be back soon with some other goodies that I'll be cooking up this week.

Feels like home

Well...tastes is more like it really, and "home" is sort of questionable seeing as how I have moved every two years or so since I turned 15, so there is more than one place that I call "home". But in this case we are going with "home" as in Georgia - where most of my family and my husbands family is, and where we just came from. (Okay - "just" is also stretching it - but go with me here.)

The 2010 April Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Wolf of Wolf’s Den. She chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make Brunswick Stew. Wolf chose recipes for her challenge from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook by Matt Lee and Ted Lee, and from the Callaway, Virginia Ruritan Club.

Brunswick stew became a favorite of mine when we lived in south GA. There were some great BBQ places there that served up some amazing Brunswick stew. So, I was really excited when I read about this challenge a few weeks ago.

Ready to get things started

We were given two recipes to choose from, a long one and a short one. I picked the long one, and actually made it even longer by letting it cook in the crock-pot all day. There was a mishap along the way, but nothing too terrible. I was taking this photo of my progress and realized something...

I had added in the onion and carrot before I was supposed to. The stew turned out fine, the veggies were just a little softer than they would have been had I put them in at the end. When it came time to serve it up I had to get a picture of the "spoon sticking up" in the pot - SUCCESS I must have done it right!

I made a few changes - in addition to the crushed tomatoes, I added in some tomato paste because I like my stew with more tomato flavor. I also added in some smokey BBQ sauce because the stew I am used to is made with smoked BBQ and seeing as how I don't have a smoker, I figured this would be the next best option. It worked and tasted wonderful! I also only made 1/2 the recipe, and it was MORE than enough for my little family, in-fact we froze about 1/2 of it and are having it for dinner again tonight!

served up and ready to dig in

So if you're looking for a great stew recipe, I highly recommend this one! Thanks Wolf for a great challenge! You can find the recipe for both the long and short version HERE.

Daring Cooks - Cozy Comforts

I'm getting this posted just in the nick of time.

The 2010 March Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Eleanor of MelbournefoodGeek and Jess of Jessthebaker. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make risotto. The various components of their challenge recipe are based on input from the Australian Masterchef cookbook and the cookbook Moorish by Greg Malouf.

This was another great challenge. I've made risotto before, but never on my own. Mine usually came out of a box where most of the details were already handled for me. For this challenge we made risotto with homemade stock (mine was chicken stock) and a standard "base" recipe. Once we were to a certain point we were free to doctor it up as we desired. I chose to make a sweet potato risotto and served it with some spicy pork chops and greens - YUM!

Here are a few pictures of my process.

The key ingredient
one of the important elements in getting started - onions
homemade chicken stock - this alone was worth making again - so much better than what you buy in the store!!
And - the finished product.

My hubs and I really enjoyed this dish, and it made a TON so we got to enjoy it for many many days. Thanks for a wonderful challege. I'll be trying a new flavor again soon!

If you're curious about recipes used, please check the link here: Risotto

Enjoy :)

A whole lotta Mezze

Before I get too ahead of myself - I have joined up with the Daring Kitchen (both cooks and bakers) and the following is my first ever cooks challenge. I'll explain more later but for now...

The 2010 February Daring COOKs challenge was hosted by Michele of Veggie Num Nums. Michele chose to challenge everyone to make mezze based on various recipes from Claudia Roden, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Dugid.

This challenge was a blast. I had so much fun. Great choice Michele!! Not only are the hubs and I huge fans of Middle Eastern food, but I was excited to try my hand at making two of my favorite things. Pitas and Hummus - from scratch! For the challenge the only two requirements were that we make pita bread and hummus and the rest we were able to play around with. For those of you that are like me and have no idea what a "mezze" is - think heavy appetizer kind of meal - similar to Spanish tapas. The first thing I did was tackle the pita bread a day ahead just in-case things didn't work out and I had to start over. Thankfully everything went off without a hitch.

Dough rising - I used a combination of wheat and white flour.
Ready to be rolled out
Fresh out of the oven

I have never made fresh bread before - other than my cinnamon rolls - and all I can say is WOW. Coming out of the oven this stuff was amazing!! My big kid could not get enough samples as I was pulling them out and was super cute announcing that "Mommy...it's just like we have a bakery in our kitchen". He was so excited, but then again I think bread is his favorite food ever!

Next up was the hummus. I followed our recipe, but instead of tahini (which I couldn't find and didn't want to really go on a hunt for) I used almond butter, and I also added some sun dried tomatoes to mine because I had them and needed to use them for something. It was fabulous as well. The hubby and I really enjoyed this and I'll be making it again. Who knew it was so easy to make your own hummus??

For the rest of our meal I made lamb, baked falafel, cucumber raita, greek salad and baklava for dessert! We also had lots of veggies, olives and goat cheese to serve up with the pitas and raita.

The whole deal:

1. Lamb and Tomatoes
2. Baked Falafels
3. Cucumber Raita
4. Veggies, Pita, Hummus and Olives
5. Greek salad
6. Goat Cheese
7. More Pitas

And for dessert I made Baklava for the first time ever with was another big hit with the hubs!

Needless to say it was a lot of food for the four of us, but we really enjoyed it, and I had a LOT of fun with my first challenge. I can't wait to find out what our March challenge is! If you're interested in any of the recipes, you can check most of them out here.

I hope you all have enjoyed your weekend so far :). I'm on my last book so I should be back to regular blogging any day now!