CanYouFind.Us

Actually dinner, was quite good as well, but I didn’t try anything new until dessert! Our dinner was, the meatloaf with buttermilk mashed potatoes and cauliflower, that we had a few weeks back. My mushroom-intolerant sister came over for dinner, and had requested the meatloaf with the note “and I could pass on the fungus gravy”. Well, Karen and I had the gravy (I was out of tomato paste, but this worked just great without it), and my sister just had to go without. In honor of her upcoming award for “Kansas Teachers of Promise” I gave her the chance to approve my choice of desserts. Luckily, she agreed that Puckery Lemon Bars sounded great!

More importantly, her statement of the night was “that was well worth the carbs, and you can quote me on that!” Coming from a diabetic, that meant a lot to me! To make today easier, I had made these last night. You bake the crust for 25 minutes, add the top layer, and bake again. The only problem I had…was that I forgot to set a timer for the top layer. Since I had never made lemon bars before-I didn’t know for sure what it would look like when done, so we just crossed our fingers and waited. Turns out-they were great. This is a definite repeater that we are planning to keep around.

Or at least something that would work equally well for either. This one had the entire household waiting in line! Karen adores pineapple (and even suggested I use it as a garnish!), and Willy came running the minute the ham came out of the fridge. The end result-was a Pineapple and Ham-Bread Souffle that made the entire rig smell great!
Karen brought up a very good point when she commented that this was a lot lighter than she had expected. By using an entire loaf of bread, we were expecting something heavy and dense. The end result was actually very light. We were at a loss for what to serve with this souffle, so we let it start as the entire meal-and it actually did a fairly good job at it. Next time I’ll slice up a bit of fresh fruit to go on the side, and then it would have been all we needed for the evening. The prep took a bit of time-with cutting off all the crusts, separating all the eggs, etc, but it was all very simple to assemble, and will likely be on our menu again.

Yes, actually. I’m quite lucky that Karen is almost always willing to try whatever I want to cook. Sometimes I find an off the wall dish like the Cauliflower and Feta Omelet, and just can’t wait to try it out. I’ve been trying to experiment more with feta lately, and both K and I enjoy roasted cauliflower…
So here we are, with this non-traditional breakfast. The one part of this that had me scared-was the flip. With a proper omelet, you cook the eggs, and add the filling right before you slide it onto the plate. This called for cooking the cauliflower, adding the eggs, and then flipping it to cook the other side. Actually, if you ask me, this was more of a frittata-but I’m not going to argue with Gourmet Magazine! As the pictures show, I did manage to successfully flip this onto the plate. The flavors turned out to work great with each other, and we will probably have this again soon-next time I’ll just cut the cauliflower into smaller pieces so they don’t end up taking over each bite.

Since Karen and I are literally never away from each other, it’s almost impossible to plan a surprise for a holiday. Because of that, one of the few things that I can do, is plan an elaborate meal for her. For Valentines day, I planned one of the most extensive menu’s that I’ve ever tried to tackle (sans Thanksgiving). Unfortunately, we’ve been been fairly sick since Thursday morning. I made it through the cocktail and the appetizer…and was starting on the side dishes, and I decided to call it quits. We ended up making a meal out of the Mini Cornbread Crab Cakes with Lemon Caper Sauce. As long as the ingredient list looks, these actually go together very quickly. I did have to first make a batch of cornbread, but I quickly whipped up our favorite recipe.

After we finished a few rounds of crab cakes, we were ready for dessert! What better way to end the holiday, than with a Double Chocolate Pudding Parfait? We couldn’t think of any food better! This was the first pudding I had made, that didn’t come out of a box labeled Jello. It turns out, this is a fairly easy treat to make! Making the cocoa flavored whipped cream was probably the most complicated part of this…aside from getting Karen to save some of the leftovers!

I should probably end this update, with a mention of the cocktail that we had. Normally we don’t go for anything really fancy for our drinks, but this one sounded too good to ignore! Following the current fruit trend, we made Pomegranate-Key Lime Vodka Cocktails. I was starting to think that I would never be able to get enough juice out of those tiny key limes, but eventually I did get enough to make up a batch. This recipe made 4 delicious cocktails.

It’s been way too long since I had something new up here. Trust me, I’ve had a few complaints about the lack of updates, so here are a few. We did try a few things this week, but finding the proper ingredients was rather difficult. The end results were less than stellar, and I’d hate to post a review before I can properly test a recipe. While I do sometimes look at a recipe and use it only for inspiration, I still hate to see a review that goes “I was out of 3 ingredients, and didn’t like 4 of them, so I changed it totally…and didn’t like this at all!” That just isn’t fair to the recipe. Now-onto our weekend successes.

First of all, this weekend my sister turned 22! Karen and I managed to drive home from Boston, just in time for her birthday. Saturday she came over to our place, and I had said I would make the Nutella Cheesecake Brownies. This time, they were different than the past 2 times. I wish I knew what I did differently, but the cheesecake layer on this round was amazing. The color contrast was very visually appealing, and the taste and textures made for a great dessert.

Today, we were able to go to Karen’s family dinner. The menu was Italian, and we were asked to bring a Caesar salad, and wine. All of that sounded great, but I wanted to spend some time actually IN the kitchen. I started looking for ideas, and my good friend Herb suggested I look into biscotti. After a bit of thought, I decided it was actually the perfect idea. I’ve never been a huge fan of the treat, so the Nutella Biscotti recipe that he sent me, would be a good challenge. The batter mixture was a lot thicker than I was expecting, so stirring it all together burnt enough calories to eat a few! The original recipe called for what didn’t seem to be enough glaze. So in my link above, I’ve doubled the amounts. By time I mixed it all together, I found you really need a good amount-to be able to get the biscotti down in there. The dessert went over very well. The only way it would have been better-would have been with a nice cup of strong coffee. Maybe I’ll save a piece for breakfast tomorrow…

As for the rest of the meal, I figured today would be a good day to try my hand at Caesar salad dressing. Typically I turn to Cooking Light when I’m in need for a recipe, but for a classic and well known item like this-I went to the faithful Cooks Illustrated. The amount of testing that they put into EVERYTHING is just amazing. I feel that I can grab one of their recipes, and be confident that the results will be quality. When I did a search for Caesar, I found their Best Caesar Salad recipe that they first published in September of 1997. I also found one for Lighter Chicken Caesar Salad. After a bit of debate, Karen and I agreed that since Cooks Illustrated had been good to us in the past-we would try the lighter version. It was, a major hit. Since I didn’t need this to be a chicken salad, I’ve posted just the recipe for the dressing. I ended up making a double batch for dinner, and every bit of salad was eaten up (and I used 6 full hearts of romain!) The impact that a home-made Caesar dressing has, is just astonishing. The flavor is very strong and makes the bottled varieties seem almost…diluted. Now that I have anchovy paste-the ingredients will always be on hand, and I can quickly make up this simple dressing any time!