Be Still and Know...Then and Now

Sometime I get on a culinary tangent. Some weeks I am just inspired to get in the kitchen and then others my only desire is to slap some peanut butter on a piece of toast and call it a night. With my success in the Reuben department I was on a roll. I also found myself with some ingredients that were in a time sensitive position! Banana’s are one of my favorite fruits, however I seem to be the only one who eats them. Last week I found myself with multiple banana’s that if not used that day would end up in the trash. What to do…. Banana Bread…..na to hot….. I consulted the culinary expert in all things southern, my Paula Deen cookbooks and found just what I needed! Paula has the best recipe for Banana Pudding I have found, simple, classic and exactly what banana pudding should be! The recipe called for two cups of milk, all I had was skim milk so I off set the fat by adding an additional egg yolk to the recipe and it worked just fine. Not to mention that gave me four egg w...

I have no excuse other than the thought of sauerkraut just did not sound good to me. I am not a huge fan of olives or dill pickles so I just heaped all my already established dislikes upon the Reuben. Lord forgive me for letting my preconceived notions of sauerkraut keep me away from this wonderful culinary experience. When I got back from New York I could not stop thinking about the Reuben I had while we were there. I began to think…..How Hard Could It Be…. After my customary Food Network search and reviewing several recipes I made myself a list and headed to the grocery store. You will need a good rye bread, corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut and the ingredients for the Russian dressing (recipe to follow) and butter or margarine. I followed the recipe for the Russian dressing except for a few minor alterations noted with an asterisk* Russian Dressing: 3/4 cups mayonnaise * (I used low fat mayo) 1/4 cup plus 2 to 3 tablespoons chili sauce 2 tablespoons sour cream * (redu...

Well I swept up the sugar that was all over my kitchen floor. I was thankful that my water crisis was only a crisis in my over worked hormonal imagination. I ended the day on an up note! I saw Ann Burrell on Secrets of a Restaurant Chef the other day. She was making a pot of chicken noodle soup and she made a big pan of Focaccia Bread. For the spelling challenged which is me I have missed spelled focaccia almost ever time I type it out…. Y’all know me and bread. It looked simple enough and well the next thing you know I was asking my favorite question…. How Hard Could It Be? Y’all check out the recipe here ! It was super easy and if I do say so myself it was awesome! Every time I try a new recipe I have learned to follow the recipe to the letter the first time and then once I have it figure out then I can begin any tweaking I might feel necessary The bread was awesome……but I think any recipe that calls for one full cup of olive oil stands a really good chance of being really...

Well in hindsight I think I may adopt the no new recipe’s during the holidays rule that Paula advocates. Live and learn. All I can say is that I feel a bit vindicated when I scrolled through the reviews of the recipe and found several very negative comments Needless to say I had a a good laugh at this comment about this recipe being a fire hazard……..had I read the first comment listed below I may have thought twice about putting my family and Christmas all together in jeopardy for the sake of a sticky bun. Copied straight from the Food Network Website: “Fire hazard.. do not make. I followed this recipe exactly.. 400 degrees for 30 minutes. 15 minutes into the baking the brown sugar and butter was scorched and the whole house was filled with smoke. If I were you I would not make this unless the oven temperature is reconsidered. A epic failure of a recipe.” In any event I followed the direction exactly! My first indicator that things were not going well was that the puff pastry seeme...

Back in June I posted about My Bucket List , you know all the things you want to do before you pass through the pearly gates. Well there are a lot of very wonderful places all around the worlds that are all worthy candidates. However living with limited resources one must be realistic. Dreaming about amazing places and even one day getting to check a few off my list are goals to aspire to. But it got me to thinking about the things that we can all do every day. Those things that are within or grasp. Improving our minds, growing closer to friends and family. Learning new things. I think for me one of the things that I have come to realize is that getting older is more about your state of mind. I know my body at times is very uncooperative as far as what I think I should be able to accomplish. However that does not mean that I need to yield to the process and just stop trying to learn new things. One of my all time favorite simple pleasures is Orange Marmalade. It always reminds me of ...

I was inspired by Sara over at Make Music From Your Heart To The Lord . She had a Sushi Party at her house a few weeks ago. It looked like so much fun and since I love sushi I asked the popular Be Still and Know question: How hard Could It Be? Y’all it was super fun and not very hard. The most difficult thing about the whole thing was actually making the rice and that was not hard just a bit more time consuming that making regular rice, but still very easy. It is a bit ingredient heavy but still it was well worth the effort to do all the prep work and y’all the end result was really good! On Saturday I made a trip to my ever popular H-Mart for some authentic sushi ingredients. I spent just under $30.00 and I have enough sesame seeds to last me the rest of my life, the sushi mat’s are reusable and the rice and vinegar will last me a long time as well. So all total if I had to guess I would say that maybe we had $10.00 tallied up in ingredients for enough sushi to feed 4 folks! You ca...

Hmmm why do I think a trip to the H-Mart is in my future. Hey Skoots1mom ! Wanna have a sushi lunch party next week? Blessings R

Gotta Love YouTube!

When we were on Oahu we went to the Dole Plantation . I watched a pineapple cutting demonstration and thought I would give it a try. How hard could it be? Right! Well it really was very easy! The first thing you do is firmly grip the crown and give it a good twist. It should give right away and then just come easily off.   If you want to try to grow your own pineapple all you need to do is strip away the bottom leaves from the crown and place it in a container filled with water. Sadly this is a lengthy process and the lady giving the demonstration said it would take up to 3 to 4 months for roots to form. Once the roots form you can move it to a pot and then it takes an additional 18 to 20 months for a fruit to grow….long time to wait right? Next you take a sharp knife and cut the pineapple lengthwise in half and then in quarters. Cut the hard fibrous core out of each quarter and discard. With a serrated knife you notch into both ends of the pineapple and then in a sawi...