sorry for the absence

I didn't forget about you all. I had to take a temporary break from cooking. We're moving this weekend so the kitchen is packed away in boxes. It's frozen pizzas and Chinese take out for us this week.

Chili Con Carne

Well we went to Costco and bought 5 more pounds of lean ground beef, so I thought this recipe would be perfect as it calls for two pounds of ground sirloin. This was a very simple recipe. Most of the ingredients came from a can, otherwise they were spices that should be in your pantry.  The recipe has cocoa in it, which is unusual but somehow it works. The recipe makes 8 servings which means we ate it for four days. Very economical and not many dishes to clean since it all went into one pot. 

This recipe has 31g of protein which is quite impressive. 

Sous chef gave this recipe 1 thumb up!

Fresh Strawberry Pie

As noted in the previous post, I was elected to make dessert for Heath and Karen's BBQ last weekend. I thought I would make something chocolate for the chocolate lovers and something fruity for the non-chocolate lovers. Publix had their strawberries on sale last week so I made the Fresh Strawberry Pie. Publix always has the best strawberries from Florida at the beginning of the summer. I bought a ton of them. 

This pie was even easier than the last. You use an already made pie crust. The filling is a lemon gelatin mixture which holds everything together quite nicely. 

This is a picture of the gooey gelatin:

As you can tell it's really thick. 

Mix in the strawberries, pour it over the pie crust and refrigerate. Then you get this lovely looking piece of pie. It was great. Perfect for the summer. Jason loved it. He gave it two thumbs up, but everyone else was flocking towards the chocolate pie. 

Fudgy Brownie Pie

I have a little catching up to do. I made this fudgy brownie pie twice last week. Once for a BBQ at Heath and Karen's and it was so delicious I had to make it again for Mandy's 28th birthday (minus 2 ingredients: Dr. B doesn't do coffee and Mandy is allergic to nuts).

So we had it as it was meant to be at Heath and Karen's:

It's hard to tell from this picture, but there are three layers. The bottom layer is a brownie layer infused with coffee, and the middle layer is a pudding layer also infused with coffee. It's like an easy to bake tiramisu. It seriously took me about 30 minutes to make, includes cooking time. If you have the cookbook the recipe is page 65 and there is a picture...whi that ch is much better than mine. The brownie portion on the bottom is intended to be about half cooked, hard to do. 

Just FYI, it's much better with the coffee and the pecans. 

An aerial view - the red one is coming up next!

Needless to say, everyone including myself gave this two thumbs up!

P.S. I'm working on my picture taking skills

Ahi Tuna Tacos with Wasabi Cream and Mango Avacado Salsa

Hi Everyone!

We had a great summer-time dinner on this cold and rainy day in Nashville. It made me wish for sunshine even more. 

This recipe sounds really intimidating, but it actually took me about 20 minutes from start to finish. However, it certainly was not cheap, at least not this time of year. I actually cheated and used yellowfin tuna because that was all they had at Kroger...I'm not even sure what the difference is. I bought 2 tuna steaks frozen for $7. I cut them into little peices, placed them on a skillet with taco seasoning and olive oil and cooked for about 5 min. 

I was nervous because I've never cooked tuna before. It turned out pretty good, not as good as at a restaurant though. 

Next I made my Wasabi Cream Sauce. 

Who remembers our incident with the wasabi crab cakes? Well I was really careful to put just a tiny bit of wasabi paste this time, and it tasted much better. No sinus burning. 

I mixed it in the yogurt container so I didn't have to do extra dishes. 

Then the salsa. This part took the longest because of all of the chopping. Let me just say that I paid $2.25 for that avocado. I'm not sure why they're so expensive right now, but we won't be eating those for a while, so I told Bradley he better savor this one. 

This was the part that tasted like summer! Delicious!

I made a little assembly line and:

Sous chef gives them:

He was shy tonight. 

White Chocolate Blueberry Bundt Cake

This recipe is where the money's at!

I used some blueberry's that I had in the freezer that we picked at the Richmond's house last summer. Just like the title says, there's white chocolate morsels throughout the cake. As far as cakes go, this one's pretty easy. I've always wondered why you have to mix the dry ingredients before adding them to the rest of the ingredients. They're all going to be mixed together in the end, so what difference does it make?

The recipe says you can add pecans if desired, but I didn't have any so I left them out. It's really the almond glaze that makes the cake. I wasn't sure about spending $3.00 on the tiny bottle of almond extract, but it was worth it. I want to put it in everything!

I had to cook the cake for about 60 min. It seems that my oven always takes much longer than what the recipe says.  Bundt cakes are weird. You can't make the bottom, which is really the top, flat because it cooks upside down and the bottom rises. 

Side view:

Sous chef gives this one 2 thumbs up and said it's the best recipe for blueberry cake he's ever tasted (and with his parents growing blueberries, he's tasted plenty). 

Homestyle Chicken

Our church has a committee that makes dinner for new mothers, so sweet sous chef signed me up last weekend while I was out of town. He said he knew whatever I cooked would be delicious and that he would get the extras. I picked Homestyle Chicken and made a side of Oriental Pasta (per Bradley's request. I've made it before, it's in a previous post) and Blueberry pie for Dessert. The Homestyle Chicken was fairly easy. I had 12 chicken breast in the freezer so I was eager to use them. 

This is basically a chicken breast in an onion flavored gravy. It was quite tasty. If I make it again I would put it in the slow cooker. 

I realize that it doesn't look that fantastic. This is because the chicken is coated in flour and when I mixed it in the gravy it started peeling off. It tasted great though. 

Sous chef gave this 1 thumb up. 

Seared Scallops wrapped in Prosciutto

Okay folks, I'm sorry to say that this was the first recipe that I didn't like. But in all fairness to the recipe, I don't care for scallops. This recipe has 2 ingredients: scallops and prosciutto and the total cost for me was $20. I bought the scallops at Costco, which was probably my first mistake. Are you supposed to wash the scallops first? Well I didn't and they were gritty.  The recipe was super easy to prepare and cook. It took about 10 minutes to wrap them, and about 10 minutes to cook them. My advice to anyone making this recipe would be 1. don't buy the scallops at Costco, 2. rinse the scallops. 

Here's a photo. They look lovely:

I'm not going to give this one a rating because I knew I wouldn't like them before I even cooked them. 

Sous chef isn't a fan of scallops either unless they're wrapped in bacon dripping with grease at Bosco's. 

Barbecue Shrimp

I love Sundays! This morning after church we spent about 2 hours walking around Costco and tasting all of the samples. We also picked up the ingredients for a treat of a dish tomorrow night and the next few weeks. After Costco, we picked up our friend who is an international student at Vanderbilt, Shuai. He's from China. They connect the international students with local families to try to immerse them in our culture while they're in the United States. He's from a coastal city in China so I made the Barbecue Shrimp. 

I bought the headless, shell on shrimp from the freezer section because that was what was on sale at Kroger. A 2 lb bag was $7.99. I let them thaw overnight last night in the fridge. 

This is a super easy recipe and if you did a taste test with Mr B's Barbecue shrimp you wouldn't be able to tell too much of a difference, but your waisteline could. I looked up their recipe on-line, it has 2 sticks of butter in it. No wonder it's so delicious. Holly's recipe has no butter, consider yourself safe to sop up all of the drippings with bread. 

Mix all ingreadients into one large pan, boil, then add shrimp. Easy as that. 

We all soaked up all of the sauce at the bottom of the bowl with some ciabatta bread. They went very well together. Shuai altered his dish a little with about 2 tsp of cracked red pepper. He likes his food very spicy.

After much explaining of the rules, and some serious contemplating by Shuai, he gave it two thumbs up. Sous chef gives it one. 

Quick Lemon Blueberry Bread

I've been trying to make a quick loaf of bread each week. It's easy to cut a slice for breakfast before work. 

I made the blueberry bread with some frozen blueberries that we picked fresh at the Richmond's house last summer. This recipe was delicious. Very tart with the lemon zest, lemon juice and lemon extract, but I loved it. It even has a nice glaze that you pour over the top when it comes out the oven. 

My only comment is that I tried to use Neufchatel cheese instead of cream cheese and it wouldn't completely dissolve. If I were to make it again, which I'm sure I will, I'll use cream cheese. 

Sous chef gives this loaf 1 thumb up. Apparently he's not a big lemon person. That's the first I'm hearing of this. I give it two thumbs up.