Green Dip-- YUM!

This is a delicious cross between a salsa verde and a pesto.
Serve it with tortilla chips, or use it as you would any salsa.
It's also a great alternative to guacamole, because you get a lot of salsa yet use very few avocados.

4 bunches cilantro (yes, I do mean bunches. Four sell units)
14 Tomatillos, husks removed (either raw or charred in oven, depending on your preference)
4 Avocados (not too hard, but not overly ripe either), use a spoon to scoop flesh from skin. Remove pit
4-8 Serrano chilies (depending on your heat preference), seeds removed
You can add jalapenos too, but I prefer just Serranos
1 full head of Garlic, skins removed and each clove crushed with your knife

Remove cilantro leaves (just use leaves, not stems), chop, and place in blender
Roughly chop rest of ingredients and add to blender
Add a bit of lemon or lime juice to keep avocados from browning
Add 1 white onion if desired
Salt and/or pepper if desired, to your taste

Blend until all ingredients are chopped and mixed well
Enjoy!

Brie en Croute

(photo stolen from The Girl Who Ate Everything)

Three words for this recipe: Oh.My.God.

Amazingly good.
I could have gobbled the entire thing, but a girl has to maintain her composure in a crowd.

This is a great recipe to bring to someone's house for an appetizer.
DEFINITELY a keeper.

Recipe courtesy of Paula Deen (The Food Network)

Show: Paula's Home Cooking Episode: Formal Entertaining
Total Time: 58 min.Prep10 min. Inactive20 min. Cook28 min.
Yield:8 servings, Level:Easy

Ingredients:
1 sheet frozen puff pastry, pre-packaged
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/2 cup walnuts
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 (8-ounce) wheel Brie
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
Crackers, for serving

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Defrost puff pastry for approximately 15 to 20 minutes and unfold.

In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.
Saute the walnuts in the butter until golden brown, approximately 5 minutes.
Add the cinnamon and stir until walnuts are coated well.
Place the walnut mixture on top of the Brie and sprinkle the brown sugar over the mixture.
Lay the puff pastry out on a flat surface.
Place the brie in the center of the pastry.
Gather up the edges of the pastry, pressing around the brie and gather at the top. Gently squeeze together the excess dough and tie together with a piece of kitchen twine.
Brush the beaten egg over top and side of Brie.
Place Brie on a cookie sheet and bake for 20 minutes until pastry is golden brown.

Serve with crackers.

To give a special look, cut extra pastry into heart or flower shapes and bake until golden.

Note Paula has another version of this recipe that uses raspberry jam

San Diego Peanut Butter Chews!

Previously I posted a recipe that I had read was the infamous (in San Diego) Peanut Chews from the San Diego School District.
Since then, however, I have received a second version.
I'm pretty sure this version is the actual, honest-to-God copy, as it's from a woman who used to work in the cafeteria.
Oh happy days!

Madison High Peanut Butter Chews

Grease (with shortening, not oil) two 8" x 13" pans.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Mix and set aside:
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

In another bowl, mix until creamy:
2/3 cup butter (original recipe calls for "oleo", but eeewww. Always use butter)
1 cup peanut butter
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup brown sugar
2 cups granulated sugar

Combine creamed mixture with dry mixture.
Add and blend well:
2 cups quick oats or 2 cups coconut
(I wonder if regular oats would work? I think they taste so much better than the quick. Or I wonder if half oats and half coconut would taste yummy?)

Pat into two greased pans and level.
Bake 20 to 25 minutes (don't let them get too brown)

While the bars are baking, mix up a very thin (but not watery) glaze of powdered sugar and vanilla icing (ingredients and quantities not listed, but I always thought the glaze from the previously posted recipe wasn't enough).
Spread glaze on baked chews while they are still hot.

Cool, then cut into squares.

Banana Bread

One of the best banana bread recipes I've come across is from the show Down home with the Neely's, on the Food Network.
This recipe is moist and flavorful

Momma Callie's Banana Nut Bread with Honey Butter
Prep Time:10 minInactive Prep Time:10 minCook Time:1 hr 10 min
Level: Easy
Serves: 8 servings
Ingredients
1 stick butter, at room temperature, plus more for loaf pan
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pan
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 large very ripe bananas*
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup chopped pecans
Honey Butter, for serving, recipe follows
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and put a rack on the middle shelf. Butter and flour a 9 by 5 by 3-inch loaf pan.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

In a separate small bowl, mash the bananas with a wooden spoon, leaving a bit of texture.

In another large bowl, use a hand electric mixer or stand mixer to cream the 1/2 cup of butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, 1 at a time. Stir in the mashed bananas, sour cream and vanilla and beat until just combined. Add the dry ingredients and gently stir in pecans. Pour the batter into the pan and put on a sheet tray.

Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes in the pan then turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling. Slice and serve with Honey Butter.

*Cook's Note: To ripen bananas quickly, put them into a paper bag and fold down the top. The bananas should ripen in 2 days.

Honey Butter:
1 stick salted butter, softened
2 tablespoons honey
Mix the butter and the honey together in a small bowl with a wooden spoon. Serve with the banana bread.

Yield: 1/2 cup

Chai Tea

I stopped at the Cuban bakery after work today for a coconut cupcake.
I also bought a mojito cookie, and a guava pastry for my friend Deb.
And a couple homemade dog biscuits for her dogs.

I stopped at her house to see her new Lab puppy
(about the cutest little girl on the planet), and we ate our goodies with Deb's homemade Chai tea.
This tea is so fragrant, so yummy...even fancy coffees can't compare.

Here's the recipe:

Note, Deb makes hers in a little tea pot with a strainer at the top to hold the spices.
She uses only organic.
If you don't have a similar tea pot, just tie up the spices in a bouquet (or sachet...whatever the word is. Meaning put them in cheesecloth and tie them with a string. After steeping, you can remove the spice bundle, but you can actually get a couple more batches out of it if you'd like)

2 Black Tea bags
1 whole cinnamon stick
6 cardamom pods
several slices (use a vegetable peeler) fresh ginger
6 to 8 whole cloves
In three cups of water, boil spices for several minutes.
Remove bouquet, and pour tea into mugs
Serve hot with added milk or cream,
and sweeten with agave syrup or honey

This tastes even better the next day, when the flavors meld.

Out of curiosity, I looked up other recipes.
Some recipes add pepper, fennel, and/or anise.
Several here
and here
This one uses Darjeeling
Several more variations are available online--try different spices to see what you like best

It's interesting that "cardamon" and "cardamom" are both considered correct spellings.

OMG corn pudding

My local paper just published this recipe for corn pudding from the chef of a popular downtown restaurant in the Little Italy district of San Diego


This corn pudding is just about the most amazing thing on the planet.
My friend Jen calls it orgasmic.

Don't turn your nose up at the fat content or whatever.
This taste is not to be missed. Seriously.
Add it to your Thanksgiving menu, and your guests will be appreciative.

Cake!

One of my very favorite blogs is a foodie blog called Orangette.
I had read on Goodreads that the blog's author, Molly Wizenberg, has a book out called A Homemade Life, and the reviews were all in the five-star range.
So I put in a request for a copy at my local library.
The queue was long with interested readers, so after about 50 people ahead of me got the chance first, a couple of months later I finally was able to get my hands on the book.

By page two, I already knew I had to return the book.
Not because I didn't like it...but because I knew I had to have my own copy.
I wanted to read it with a pen in hand, underlining passages that moved me.
I wanted to make notes in the margins.

Orangette transformed Wizenberg's life.
She quit academia and finally found a niche that felt right: writing about food.
She also met her husband through the blog, when he commented. Go figure.

"I've never liked the word blog. It's kind of weird and lumpy. When you say it, it tumbles out of your mouth with an unbecoming thud. Plus, the whole concept is a little weird: a Web site where a person can write about whatever they want to, inviting comments and feedback from the whole world. At their best, blogs are smart, funny, and informative. At their worst, they're blush-worthy rants written at 2:00 a.m. after a bad breakup.
I tried to steer mine somewhere in between. I write about food and cooking, and in that sense, I aim to be informative, but I write about my life some, too, since it intersects with food roughly three times a day. I don't think many of us are terribly interested in recipes that have no stories or real-life context. For me, the two are inseparable. One is pale and boring without the other."

But I'll give you four reasons you need to have this book:
Blueberry Raspberry Pound Cake.

Oh. My. God.

I tried the recipe last night, and it's a total keeper.
It's light (not heavy like most poundcakes).
It pops with flavor (not flavorless like many poundcakes).
Does it have a lot of butter? Well, yeah.
Should you care? Hell no!

Live a little--experience joy.
All things in moderation, so splurge on dessert sometimes.
In fact, the book is filled with recipes.
It's basically a memoir/cookbook.

Because this recipe has already appeared online (on her blog), I'm going to reprint the recipe here.
The book says her mom got the recipe from some book about food processors.
The blog says her mom got the recipe from Bon Appetit Magazine.
Perhaps both are true.
All I know is this cake is really really good.


Blueberry Raspberry Pound Cake

5 large eggs
1 2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 ¼ cup (2 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoon-size pieces, at room temperature, plus a bit more for the pan
2 Tablespoons kirsch (cherry Brandy)
2 cups plus 8 Tablespoons cake flour, plus a bit more for the pan
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup fresh raspberries
1 cup fresh blueberries

Generously butter a 9-cup Bundt pan, and dust it with flour, shaking out the excess.

In the bowl of a food processor, blend together the eggs and the sugar until smooth and thick, about 1 minute, stopping once to scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Add the butter and kirsch, and blend until the mixture is fluffy, about 1 minute, stopping once to scrape down the bowl.
Add 2 cups plus 6 Tablespoons flour, baking powder, and salt, and pulse twice or so to just combine. Do not overmix.
The batter should be very thick and very smooth.
(note: I just used a hand mixer, as I don't have a food processor)

In a large bowl, toss the raspberries and blueberries with the remaining 2 Tablespoons flour.
Using a rubber spatula, fold the batter into the berries.
Transfer this finished batter to the prepared Bundt pan, spreading it evenly across the top.
Place the Bundt pan on the center rack in a cold oven, and turn the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
(note: the book doesn't say this. I put the pan in a pre-heated oven)

Bake until a toothpick or knife inserted in the cake’s center comes out clean, about 1 hour and 25 minutes.
(note: check after an hour. The recipe in the book says bake one hour to one hour and 15 minutes)

Cool the cake in the pan for 5 minutes; then invert it onto a rack to cool completely.
Serve at room temperature, with tea, ice cream, or whipped cream, as the weather dictates.
(note: if you can't wait, like me, it's good warm too)

I need a recipe

Several years ago, I bought a big copper cookie cutter from Martha Stewart, and it came with a little booklet, and a recipe for sugar cookies with royal icing.
If I remember correctly, both the cookies and the icing had lemon.

Of course all my stuff is packed away, and I don't see the same cookie recipe on her site.
In fact, I had linked the recipe in a previous post, and the page is no longer there.
All I see now is a recipe for "ideal" sugar cookies, and that's not what I want.
I want the lemon one.

Does anyone have the recipe I'm looking for?
Thank you!

Butternut Squash Biscuits

I love to bake.
For me, baking is a stress release.

I tore this recipe out of a catalog of books by Countryside Magazine.
This is a Shaker recipe, and I love the idea of keeping tradition and history alive in the kitchen.
Too, I pretty much never met a biscuit I didn't love.
In fact, I'll go so far as to say I am biscuit obsessed.

This recipe is from " Seasoned with Grace", a cookbook by Eldress Bertha Lindsay.
The recipe is from Beth Lindsay's scrapbook, c. 1938

I personally think it needs more salt, but it's definitely worthy of making again and again.
See my notes in parentheses.

Shaker Raised Squash Biscuits
1 cup milk
4 Tablespoons butter
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt (next time I'll try 1 teaspoon)
1 yeast cake, or one envelope dry yeast
4 to 5 cups flour
1-1/2 cups butternut squash, strained, or one 16-ounce can (my can from Trader Joes was 15 ounces)
2 eggs, room temperature

In a small saucepan, heat milk and butter to very hot.
Mix sugar and salt in large bowl and pour in milk.
Let sugar/milk mixture cool until lukewarm.
Add yeast and 2 cups flour.
Beat at medium speed in a mixer for 2 minutes.
Add squash and eggs.
Mix well.
Continue to add flour (with wooden spoon) until you have a stiff dough; the dough should begin to leave the sides of the bowl.

Turn out onto floured board and knead 7 to 8 minutes, using additional flour on the board to prevent sticking.
(my dough never got stiff, but stayed sticky. It still turned out fine)
Put dough back in cleaned, greased bowl.
Turn dough greased side up and cover with a towel.
Let rise in a warm place until double.

Punch dough down and turn out.
Shape into biscuits.
Place in square 8" x 8" pan for soft sides' in muffin pans, or shape into cloverleaf rolls.
(I didn't understand the small pan. I had enough dough to cover a sheet pan. I used a biscuit cutter)
Let rise until double again.

Bake in preheated 400 degree oven until brown, about 25 minutes (at 20 minutes, mine were too brown, so next time I'll check at 15)
Butter tops while hot.
Makes 2-1/2 to 3 dozen. (I got large rolls, about 18 or so)

Fresh Strawberry Pie

I have been making fresh strawberry pie for years.
I'm not even sure where I got the recipe, but my mom has it written in the journal she started about 70 years ago, so perhaps it has been around for awhile.
My recipe calls for fresh berries in a pre-baked pie shell, then a gel poured over the top.

My local newspaper prints a Food section every Wednesday.
Last week's section included a recipe for strawberry pie.
Their recipe also makes a gel to pour over fresh berries, but cuts the steps by using a premade pie crust, Jello, and lemon-lime soda.
I had just purchased a case of nostalgic soda pop at Cost Plus World Market, and it contained Bubble-Up, so I thought I'd try this.
Honestly, this couldn't be easier--it came together in a snap.
I used the premade pie crusts from Trader Joes (very good when you're pressed for time and can't make your own).
This recipe is pretty good, but my original is even better.
I'll post both.

Strawberry Pie (from the newspaper)

1 refrigerated pie crust, such as Pillsbury

1/2 cup sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch (be sure to check expiration date. Old cornstarch will not thicken properly)

1 cup lemon-lime soda, such as 7 Up

1/2 package (3 ounces) strawberry Jell-O (1/4 cup)

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

4 cups fresh strawberries, cut into bite-size pieces

Real whipped cream for topping, to taste

Prepare the crust according to package directions for a baked pie shell. Set aside to cool.

Meanwhile, in a 2-quart or larger saucepan, whisk together sugar, cornstarch and lemon-lime soda. Place over high heat, and bring to a rolling boil, stirring frequently. Boil for 1 minute, or until slightly thick.

Remove from heat, and add Jell-O and lemon juice, stirring well. Set aside to cool. (Consistency will be like warm pudding upon some cooling and will thicken further in refrigerator.)

Rinse and cap strawberries, cutting any large berries into bite-size pieces. Place the berries in the cooled crust, and spoon the filling (it's OK if it is slightly warm) over the berries. Refrigerate until set, at least 1 hour, or up to 8 hours.

To serve, slice the pie and top each serving with whipped cream.

Fresh Strawberry Glazed Pie

1 9-inch baked pie shell (I use this recipe, and have also heard this recipe is excellent. Sometimes I go old school and use lard in my pie crust)

6 cups fresh strawberries (1-1/2 quarts)

1 cup sugar

3 Tablespoons corn starch

1/2 cup water

1 small package (3 ounces) cream cheese, softened
(No, please do not use low fat. eeeww)

Mash enough berries to measure 1 cup.
Stir together sugar and cornstarch.
Gradually stir in water and crushed berries
Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and boils.
Boil and stir one minute.
Cool.
Beat cream cheese until smooth.
Spread on bottom of baked and cooled pie shell.
Fill shell with remaining berries, arranging in pretty patterns.
Berries can be whole, halved, or both.
Pour cooked berry mixture over top of fresh berries.
Chill at least three hours or until set.
Serve topped with whipped cream.

Goodbye Summer

It's Labor Day.
Most people around here are at the beach or in backyards, bent over a grill.
There will be hamburgers and hot dogs, potato salad, deviled eggs, little triangles of watermelon.
There are cold cans of beer, the aluminum or the glass wet with droplets from the cooler of ice that held them.

Feet are propped up, aaah...this is the life.
Children are laughing, splashing one another in the pool or in the waves.

Too quickly the heat will diminish; the memories will fade like an old Polaroid.
Thanks, Summer. It has been fun. Can't wait to do it again next year.

I'm not close with my family, my friends are occupied with their own thing, and I'm not currently dating anyone, so no BBQ for me today (sniff).
Several people I work with attended the horse races today, but to be perfectly honest, most of those people aren't ones I choose to associate with unless forced.
Ahem.
Anyway, back to food.
Grilling, I think, isn't a solitary activity, so that wasn't an option today.
Instead, I baked.

I have one Italian squash plant in my mom's backyard, and she has two.
One, incorrectly labeled a summer variety, is actually a winter plant that produces huge pumpkin-shaped and pumpkin-sized globes.
The leaves of this thing are massive, with tendrils reaching out like an alien to take over any surface on land or fence.
It's even crawling up a tree.
It's insane.

That being said, even without the winter variety ripe, we are up to our ears in zucchini.

So I made bread.
This recipe is from The Victory Garden Cookbook, a book that belongs in every kitchen--it's that good.

Lynn's Spicy Zucchini Bread

3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
3 eggs
1+3/4 cups granulated sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1+1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups lightly packed coarsely grated zucchini
1 cup raisins (optional)
3/4 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Sift the dry ingredients together and set aside.
In a large bowel, beat the eggs with the sugar, oil, and vanilla.
Gradually add and beat in the dry ingredients.
Stir in the zucchini, adding raisins and nuts if desired (I used walnuts).
Divide between two greased 9" x 3" loaf pans, and bake in a preheated 350-degree oven for 50 to 60 minutes.

The South has pig candy, so why not?

Fun article as seen in the San Diego Union Tribune, August 11.

Bacon makes everything better – even chocolate?

By Michelle Locke
ASSOCIATED PRESS
4:02 p.m. August 8, 2008

SANTA CRUZ – Here are three little words that might give the staunchest snacker pause: Chocolate-covered bacon.
It sounds so wrong. But it tastes just right, says Joseph Marini III, a fourth-generation candy maker who is selling the bacon bonbons at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk seaside amusement park.

“It's not just for breakfast any more,” he says with a grin.

And this isn't just a wacky West Coast thing.

This year, Famous Dave's at the Minnesota State Fair is rolling out Pig Lickers – dark chocolate-covered bacon pieces sprinkled with sea salt.

“It's just like the most bizarre combination,” says fair spokeswoman Brienna Schuette. “I actually really liked it. It was a good combination of sweet and salty.”

The urge to create new flavor profiles is a natural for a field driven by creativity, says Karen Page, co-author with Andrew Dornenburg of the forthcoming “The Flavor Bible,” a sort of field guide to flavor pairings.

Chefs have two basic agents of change: using a different cooking method or mixing up flavors. So a classic such as tomatoes and basil might get turned into tomato sorbet with a basil sauce. Or you might find unorthodox couplings, such as salads of watermelon and feta or cotton candy with foie gras.

“There's a whole trend toward chefs pushing the boundaries,” says Page. “Chefs are trying to be more playful and incorporate new kinds of whimsy.”

It's hard to tell exactly where the dream of candy-coated breakfast meats started, but for Marini, the inspiration was a trip with some ski buddies a while back.

“One guy came up with, 'Who doesn't love bacon? Who doesn't love chocolate? Let's marry them together.'”

So Marini gave it a shot and after some trial and error – crispness is key, he says, noting that chewy bacon plus chocolate is undelicious – he came up with a product.

“It was kind of a joke to begin with,” he says. “We brought it down to the boardwalk and put it in a case just to see if people would react, and they reacted.”

Take boardwalk visitor Nathan Lopez, who on a recent foggy morning had a quizzical look on his face as he began eating a sample at Marini's at the Beach. But he finished with a smile.

“Interesting combination,” was the verdict. “I didn't think it would be very good but once I tried it; it was good.”

Of course, chocolate-coated bacon is just the latest incarnation of the wackier-the-better fair food philosophy.

Fair food has been shaking up the snack scene for some time, says Ron Whiting, of Whiting's Foods, whose family has been selling food at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk for decades.

“Years ago, I think food tended to be more traditional and less fun,” he says. Then came the corn dog and the era of quick and on-a-stick. “We all talk about the next corn dog,” he says.

Fry, fry again is a persistent theme. Current popular snacks include deep-fried Twinkies and Oreos.

Page, who admits to eating “more than my fair share of fried dough,” notes that gourmet chefs have taken to putting food – just about any food – on a stick, coming up with some posh Popsicles. Meanwhile, there's the foie gras-cotton candy matchup, not a stretch flavor-wise since foie gras usually is paired with something sweet, but certainly visually arresting.

“It's the melding of both these worlds, the high end and the low end,” said Page.

Never underestimate the appeal of battered-is-better.

By the way, I learned about pig candy from Cat Cora on Iron Chef.
Here's one recipe.

Hors d' oeuvre yumminess

I'm dog-sitting and am therefore away from my scanner, so I'm limited as to what I can post.
Ditto being away from my sewing machine.
So another recipe will have to do.
This is for a super yummy Cheese Dip for crackers.
I was at a party recently, and everyone loved this, so I asked for the recipe.

Mix together:
one 8-ounce package cream cheese (lite is okay, but in my opinion, uh, why bother?)

1/4 cup chopped peanuts

3/4 teaspoon curry powder

1/4 cup chopped green onion (combination of the white bulb with the green tops)

1/4 cup chopped raisins

Form the mixture into a ball and refrigerate.
At serving time pour your favorite purchased (bottled) mango chutney over the top.

Serve with crackers.
This stuff is addicting!

It's the perfect season for Sangria

I went to a barbecue recently (for blog friend Sue!), and loved the Sangria so much that I asked for the recipe.
The host copied a page from some sort of entertaining book (it wasn't a cookbook).
I apologize for not being able to post the source, but this is a fun recipe to share.

A couple of decades ago (gulp), I went to summer school in Spain, in Salamanca.
Sangria, therefore, has a sort of warm and fuzzy place in my heart.

Ultimate Sangria

3 litres red wine (cabernet sauvignon)
2 cups sugar
6 to 8 ounces plain brandy
2 large lemons, thinly sliced
2 large oranges, thinly sliced
2 large apples, sliced
1 to 2 litres citrus-flavor bubbly water (orange or lemon preferred)

Mix the wine, sugar, brandy, lemons, oranges and apples in a large container.
Chill, covered, for 18 to 24 hours, stirring occasionally.
Just before serving, stir again and taste, adding additional sugar or brandy if desired.
It should have a fairly strong flavor and be fairly sweet, almost syrupy.
Add 1 litre of the bubbly water, stirring until the sangria has a thinner, more wine-like consistency and adding additional bubbly water as needed.
Pour into glasses.

Makes about 4-1/2 quarts.

Tip: Eliminate the sugar by choosing a sweet red wine, and add real eye appeal by floating more exotic fruits in the pitcher, like raspberries, nectarine, peach, and pear slices, plum halves, and blackberries. Be creative!

I am curious how it would taste using 7up or Sierra Mist instead of mineral water. Hmmmm....

Sweet Salty Snack Mix, and more

When it comes to taste, sour is my favorite.
My second favorite, is the combination of salty with sweet (kettle corn, for example).
I haven't tried this snack mix recipe yet, but just looking at it I KNOW it's fantastic.
David Lebovitz is the author of The Perfect Scoop, all about ice cream (the book is on my 'gimme' list).

I have heard his blog gets 5000 hits per day. Holy cow, I can only dream about such popularity.

Here, his recipe for Spiced Glazed Nuts and Pretzel Mix
Glazing the nuts with spices and adding a touch of sweetness, makes this the perfect nibble before dinner with an aperitif. I melt the butter in a large bowl, so I can do all the mixing in that bowl, making one less thing for me to wash as well.

Note that the salt is added after the nuts are stirred, so it doesn't dissolve. And be sure to use coarse salt, which has an appealing, crunchy texture and more delicate flavor than ordinary table salt.

2 cups (200 gr) mixed raw nuts (untoasted); any combination of cashews, whole almonds, peanuts, pecan halves, and hazelnuts

1 tablespoon (15 gr) unsalted butter, melted

3 tablespoons (45 gr) dark brown sugar (or cassonade sugar)

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (or piment d'Espelette)

1 1/2 tablespoons maple syrup

1 1/2 teaspoons coarse or kosher salt

2 cups (90 gr) small pretzel twists


1. Spread the nuts on a baking sheet and roast in a 350F (180C) oven for 10 minutes, stirring once for even toasting.

2. In a medium bowl, mix together the melted butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, cayenne, and maple syrup.

Add the salt, warm nuts, pretzels, and stir until the nuts and pretzels are completely coated.

3. Spread the mixture back on the baking sheet and return to the oven for 12 minutes, stirring twice during cooking. Remove from oven and cool completely, separating the nuts and pretzels as they cool.

Once cool, this mixture can be stored in an airtight container for up to a week

His recipe for Salt Roasted Peanuts looks amazing too (especially since I'm growing peanuts in my garden!)

Epicurious is a great source for recipes also.
This recipe for Candied Walnuts is excellent on salads.
Substitute those walnuts for the ones in Warm Goat Cheese Salad with Pears--this salad is one of those 'go-to' recipes you should always keep on hand in case company comes over. Soooo good.

Misc

I've been cruising through Flickr, looking for inspiration for The Purse Project, and have been discovering some incredible collages (check out the blog--I found some great stuff to link).
In my search, I came across some other projects that just make my mind start running with possibilities.

Like this stitched paper vest (click on images to go to the Flickr pages, and to view more of the details)

Stitched paper hanging
Originally uploaded by lizziegolden

Or this "drawing with thread"

woof
Originally uploaded by noii's

Tutorial to turn an apron into a tote bag, by Ambrosian Beads.

Ha! Meatloaf cupcakes with mashed potato frosting!
(thanks, Pipstitch)

This video, Lion Hug, makes me cry and smile at the same time

Yummy!

I like to cook from scratch--especially when I bake.
I don't use boxed mixes, and I only use the best ingredients.
I take pride in keeping tradition alive, and I find baking to be soothing.

Once in awhile, however, I'll break my own rules.
I really like these simple danish made with Bisquick and jam.

Recipe here.

Fruit dressed up for dessert

I went to a home barbecue on July 4 where there was a huge spread of homemade goodies.
I was really intrigued by a dish that was sitting on the counter--we couldn't figure out if it was cheese or cheesecake.
It turned out to be watermelon!
This is such a fun dessert.

watermelon almond tart


The recipe tries to be low calorie by using non or low-fat yogurt, but please, skip that zero flavor nonsense and use French Vanilla whole milk with cream top by Stonyfield farm.
Honestly, low and non-fat yogurt make no sense to me whatsoever.
Flavor and quality, now that makes sense.