Be Still and Know...Then and Now

Joining in on Fall Into Flavor hosted by 2nd Cup of Coffee today. For more recipes go over and check out the other participants! It has been great fun over these last five weeks! This has been a holiday breakfast tradition at our house for a very long time. The variation on this on are only limited to your imagination. 10 to 12 slices of the bread of your choice. I usually use white bread but it works well with whole wheat. It would be very good made with raisin bread also! 8 oz cream cheese (you can use fat free or 1/3 less fat) depending on how much cream cheese you like you may need two blocks of cheese??) 12 eggs ( you can cut back on the egg yolks too) 1/3 cup maple syrup (if you cutting calories you an use reduced calorie syrup also) 2 cups milk (depending on how much fat you want you can use skim, it will not be as creamy but it will still be very good, or you can go for it and use whole milk or half and half) Spread the cream cheese on the bread and make sandwi...

When it comes to certain things I am a bit obsessive. I once spent an entire winter trying to make homemade marshmallows. I saw Ina do it one afternoon and it looked really simple and really cool. So again I asked the age old question “How hard could it be?” Well by now I am sure you know the answer to that one. It was a bit more difficult than it looked but after multiple failures I succeeded. But then it was winter time and I didn’t have anything better to do. You all have not lived until you have had a cup of hot chocolate with a homemade peppermint flavored marshmallow floating on top. It was totally worth the effort and I probably will never do it again either. I will live with the fond memories of how fabulous it was! But I digress… After the shame of the Great Sourdough Disaster of 09 I was determined to prevail and emerge from my kitchen the victor. Emeril , Better Homes & Gardens , Martha , Betty Crocker , Alton what do these people have in common? All their sourdoug...

Here is my contribution to this weeks Fall Into Flavor hosted by Linda at 2nd Cup of Coffee . However some days in the kitchen are not pretty and this is one of those days and as Alton Brown says “Great Chefs have bad days and I’m sorry to say that you will not be the next Iron Chef!” Well folks this was a bad day! The Great Sourdough Bread Disaster of 09! After savoring all the wonderful sourdough bread in San Francisco I decided to do a bit of research on sourdough starters. I found copious websites and multiple recipes for starters. I began this journey into sourdough fully confident that as an experienced bread baker I would be able to achieve some measure of success. I have actually made sourdough starter before. It was years ago and the bread it yielded was wonderfully flavorful and had that unique sour taste and chewy texture. How hard could it be to recreate? I always love this question, don’t y’all? There seemed to be some rare fungal issue or lack thereof to be...

There used to be a show on the Food Network called Chocolate with Jacques Torres . It was one of my favorites. Sadly it is no longer on the Food Network. Jacques used to make these elaborate sculptures each week out of chocolate. He made Chess Sets, ballet dancers, you name it he made it out of chocolate. He is a photograph of one of his sculptures. It has become very clear to me that I am not Jacques Torres… Since I just shared my candied orange peel recipe the other day and since I had commented on how good they would be if dipped in chocolate I decided to give it a try. Disclaimer: I have actually had candied orange peel dipped in chocolate before, they were magnificent. However actually achieving this rare accomplishment is altogether different. How hard could it be I thought. After melting the chocolate down and dipping the orange peel in I watched as the chocolate began to pool out in giant puddles on the parchment paper. This can’t be right I thought! I ha...

Joining Lid over at 2nd Cup of Coffee for this weeks Fall Into Flavor. Question: So what do ya do when you buy a bag of oranges that aren't so good????? Answer: Make candied orange peel! Y’all every time I make these I think of my grandma! Old Fashioned Candied Orange Peel (and yes you can use lemons or limes as well) Carefully peel your oranges. I use my handy dandy Tupperware citrus peeler. If you don't have one you could cut your oranges in half and then into quarters and then gently pull the peel away from the flesh of the orange. In a large pot bring to a boil about 6 cups of water. Add orange peel and let simmer for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes drain orange peel and then repeat the process again. When the second simmering is complete drain the orange peel and then run cold water over them until they are cool enough to handle. With a small spoon (cereal spoon works well) gently scrape all the white pulpy stuff away. Do this very gently or ...

  Joining Lid for this weeks installment of Fall Into Flavor . I don't know about you but when the weather turns a bit chilly my thoughts turn to a big pot of soup on the stove. I don't necessarily have a recipe for you today, I rarely make the same pot of soup twice. I am a chop and dump kind of girl but then soups are very forgiving. The basics of making a really good 15 bean soup are very simple. All you need are a few basic ingredients and a really good sharp knife. You need to start the night before you want to make the soup by soaking the beans in water overnight!   You will need 2 medium onions, some celery, a few cloves of garlic, a small bag of carrots and a nice, big, fat, meaty, delicious ham bone. Were chopping….. Like they say on all the cooking shows, use the green leafy part of the celery it really does give the pot of soup a lot of flavor. More chopping…. Peel you carrots and your garlic… More chopping…. Chicken st...