Pirate Party Food, "Shiver Me Timbers I'm Hungry!"

Mates,

Here is a quick look at some of the food I put out for this party.  With many school mates running a muck I had plenty of pizza and other mini pirate friendlies for them to feast on.  I also had a platter of fancy sandwiches for the parent folk...

 The veggie planks were a big hit...I should serve this more often at home, maybe my kids would eat more veggies without the typical family stress at dinnertime. 

 I love Dixie cups...and not for drinking out of.  They are the perfect snack holder at parties for little hands.  Parents scoop in the fish into the cups for the kids to eat on the go.  Love it!

So I will make these available to you for printing somehow...  Please stay posted on that given Scribd is no longer an option.

Happy day everyone, hope you are spending it with family.

xox
Dish

The Personal Apple Pie; Crazy Easy Way To Wow Them Yet Again!

 Can you believe how adorable these are?!  I made them in about 30 minutes and everyone loved them.  Okay so I'm not completely the super mom...I did use the Tenderflake small pie shells but really I think I'd have been crazy not too..  Well, that and the fact that I absolutely despise making pastry. 

Check it out.

Totally doable right?!

Give it a shot.

xox
Dish

Chicken Olive Anglehair Pasta; Perfect for a Summers Eve

Chicken Olive Angelhair Pasta
Light pasta with lots of flavor perfect for a summer evening.

Apologies for the vagueness of the ingredient amounts but please note the more the better so don't worry about overdoing it.

Generous handful of Italian Parsley.
2 cloves garlic
Delicate Olive Oil
2 chicken breasts diced
2 cups of green olives with pimento
1/2 small onion
1/2 package angel hair pasta
>1/2 cup grated Parmesan or Romano cheese

1. Add 1/4 cup olive oil to pan (no heat yet).
2. Chop/dice garlic, onion and Italian parsley (remove thicker stems before chopping) and add to oil. Let sit while preparing other items.
3. Chop olives and set aside.
4. Boil pasta, when done add 1tbsp oil to stop it from sticking. Set aside.
5. Turn on heat to pan, add chicken and cook. 5 minutes before chicken is done add olives.
6. Add cooked pasta to mixture and if needed add more oil to adequately cover all ingredients.
7. Add 1/2 cup grated cheese and stir.



Serve with extra grated cheese on the table. Enjoy.


I leave on a business trip tomorrow morning so sadly I will not have another post until Thursday.  My apologies but I do promise Thursday will be worth checking in!!

Sleep well all,
xox
Dish

Fruit Kabobs and Chocolate Fountain...Mmmm

So I dove into the archives today and found this photo from my sister's wedding shower of the fruit kabobs and chocolate fountain mom and I did. 

I love star fruit and if you have never used them as accents try buying one for your next party and cutting cross sectionally.  Don't worry about what to do with them...cut away and inspiration will come to you.  Also I am not sure if you can see it in the photo but I used a half head of iceberg lettuce as the anchor for the kabobs in the bucket container.  It worked like a charm, dense enough to support the weight of the kabobs and pretty enough to not look out of place if there were gaps after sticks were removed.

Seriously, who doesn't LOVE flowing chocolate and if you are looking for something to do with your leftover Easter goodies try melting it and dipping with fruit.

Night all.

xox

Dish

Making Freshly Squeezed Lemonade With Leftover Baking Lemons

I adore lemons so I use them frequently for cooking and baking but inevitably end up with 3/4's of a perfectly good lemon that desperately needs a purpose.  Intro music...freshly squeezed lemonade.

Here is what a typical "used" lemon looks like for me.  No zest (poor thing) and barely any juice to speak of; its perfect!

How To:

1. Slice a few slices of lemon for garnish.
2. Squeeze juice out of lemon being careful to remove the pits.
3. Do not discard outer casing but throw them into the pitcher.
4. Make a separate mixture of sugar water (here I used 1 teaspoon sugar for every 1 cup water).  Usually I use Splenda but its currently on my shopping list.
5. Add sugar water to pitcher and top with ice and one garnish.  This top garnish makes the pitcher a little more eye pleasing as opposed to the destroyed lemon halves.

I like to put a lemon flower into the bottom of the glasses before serving.  To do this you make one slit in the slice and pull the ends together one on top of the other as if you were making a swirl.  Wedge it into the bottom of the glass.

Play with the concentration of the sugar until you find your desired sweetness...the above is my personal preference (not too sweet but not terribly tangy).

I hope you enjoy and never discard a 3/4 lemon again!

xox

Dish

Finally A Great Pound Cake Recipe; Thanks Martha

Now I'm a huge Martha fan but I will admit that she doesn't always nail it...but with this recipe she has knocked it out of the park!  I love love freshly baked warm pound cake with a scoop of ice cream and perhaps a side of berries.  In fact if I am really on the ball when we have dinner guests I pop this into the oven just as we sit to eat and then serve after its rested.  You know you have done well when there is silence as people enjoy their food.  

I found this treasure in the Everyday Food (Martha Stewart Magazine) issue May 2011. 

As we've discussed in the past the creaming of the sugar and butter is critical here so let that mixer run at full speed for as long as it takes you to get everything else prepared.  The mixture should be light and fluffy before you move on in the recipe. 

Now I always play around with flavouring this recipe but more often than not I am adding lemon and I promise you it does not disappoint!  I add 2 teaspoons of lemon zest and 1.5 tablespoons of lemon juice when I add the vanilla. 

Martha also suggests a brown sugar and pecan cake, berry-cornmeal cake and double chocolate cake to jazz up this old faithful but if you prefer plain Jane you'll still love it.

Give it a roll, go ahead and wow them!

See you Monday.
xox
Dish

Quick Pasta...What's In Your Fridge?

I thought it was time that I posted another meal and why not whatever I was making for dinner tonight.  I am the Queen of opening my fridge and finding inspiration...well actually its more of a desperate grab to see what I can throw together to make semi appetising.  Usually things turn out okay but I have realised that I fall back on a few simple fundamental tactics to make that happen that I thought worth sharing.

Fundamentals:

1.  I always have in the house fresh garlic, Italian parsley, light (very light) olive oil, jarred sweet red peppers, honey Dijon mustard, grated Parmesan and Romano (in bags in the freezer) and dried pasta.  The others store longer than the parsley but as I hate throwing food away having it in the fridge forces me to use it which is actually a good tactic to get me moving.  In the summer months I do grow the parsley in the backyard...its actually more of a weed at this stage and after the initial planting I have done absolutely nothing to maintain it but alas it's already being clipped for dinners now.

Above in tonight's pasta was olive oil, chopped garlic and parsley, sliced prosciutto and grape tomatoes.  Cook pasta beforehand, drain in cullender, lightly coat with oil and let sit until you are 10 minutes before plating.  Fifteen minutes before you plan to eat lightly saute the above and add the noodles.  Serve with grated cheese (Romano or Parmesan).



2.  I am not afraid.  It surprises me how many people are afraid to cook without a recipe.  Don't be afraid..if it flops so it flops and you'll know for next time but its the fear of making a mistake or "not knowing where to begin" that is stopping you from enjoying cooking.  Literally open the fridge grab what you have and give it a roll (tonight was the tomatoes and prosciutto).  You'll learn quickly what flavors you enjoy together and those which you do not.  I love to cook but I from time to time have some serious mess ups but I only do them once.

3.  The most important fundamental.  Surround yourself with people that appreciate you making the effort and praise you for doing so.  God bless my husband; even if the meal is completely intolerable he still eats it all and says that he enjoys it.  If its really really bad he may make a comment that although the dinner is good, he mentions another dish I make as his favourite but it never stops him from finishing his plate. 

I am very lucky....but he thinks he is too so I guess we're all good....  Getting the kids to eat the disasters is another topic all together...

Happy easy healthy cooking all.

xox

Dish

Quick Asparagus, Panchetta And Spinach Pasta. Doesn't Get Better/Easier Than This

Last week at book club one of the girls mentioned that the group should swap recipes as she was looking for quick homemade meals.  I thought to myself that is TOTALLY what my cooking is all about and if she was looking perhaps some of you may also be interested.

So here's one.

I have returned to pasta after many single years of shunning it.  With many people moving towards eating less and less meat (although this dish does have a bit of pork) I have reintroduced it into our lives....reintroduced also because my kids will eat it too.

This meal takes, no lie, roughly 15-20 minutes total to make. 

In a frying pan I add generously a very delicate olive oil, chopped onions, asparagus and chopped ham pieces.  I cook just until the asparagus is that brilliant green colour and still crunchy.  I then add my cooked pasta (I love angel hair), more oil if I need it and then fresh spinach.  I continue in the pan until the spinach is wilted, plate and then top with lots of fresh parmesan.

Fresh, very simple and healthy.  Try varying up the ingredients...for me it's whatever is in the fridge that night.

xox

Dish

Whole Chicken In The Crock-Pot Who Knew?!

If you are like me you struggle with juggling all the demands of work and family.  Of the latter the biggest thing I struggle with is ensuring that we eat healthy and home made meals as I am very leery of salt and sometimes sugar content of prepared foods.

My sister-in-law is the zen master of family cooking...well cooking in general and taught me this ridiculously simple way to cook a whole chicken.  With a culinary background she is always amazing us and is actually working on a gluten free cook book which is turning out to be a serious page turner!  (More on that later.)  So it was she that convinced me to try the whole chicken in the Crock-Pot, trust me both the butcher and I had bets on it not turning out but we were wrong.

This was ridiculously easy; see for yourself.
1.  She told me to marinate the chicken and keep it in the fridge overnight.  Right, totally didn't happen, threw on some spices and margarine 5 minutes before I put it in the pot.
2.  Lay down in the bottom of the pot some onions, carrots and potatoes (chicken on top)....I didn't have much room so I put some carrots and onions down only.
3.  Absolutely no liquid goes into the Crock-Pot.  Trust me when I tell you this was the most difficult step to follow as I really really thought some liquid should have gone in.  Wrong again.
4.  I kept it in the pot for 7 hours on high (this may vary slightly with your pot so always check it) and the chicken was not only wonderfully moist, it literally fell off the bone.  The first picture above shows the final product with all the natural juices (remember I didn't add any liquid).

I don't think dinner can get any easier than this!

Give it a try and thanks FD, you rock, can't wait for the book!

xox
Dish

Valentine Cranberry & Lemon Scones

I love baking and there is nothing more perfect than waking the family to the smell of freshly baked goodies.  This recipe I got from Martha Stewart but as usual I made changes based on what flavours we preferred over the original. 

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cup flour                                                         
1/4 cup granulated sugar             
1 tbsp baking powder                                            
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup heavy milk (I used homo milk)                      
1 tbsp lemon zest
1/4 cup lemon juice (from 2 lemons)                          
1 lg egg yolk                            
3/4 cup dried cranberries                                        
Coarse sanding sugar for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and move the racks so they are as far as possible away from the bottom element.  Mix dry ingredients together then cut in butter with a knife and fork stopping when there are a few pea sized pieces of butter.  Photo 1. Add milk, lemon zest, lemon juice, yolk and stir until just combined (photo 2).  Photo 3. Put dough onto parchment paper and flatten with your hands until it is ~1 inch thick.  Use a cookie cutter to shape the scones but don't cut through the cranberries, simple remove or push them farther into the scone.  4.  Sprinkle with coarse sugar and bake for 13-15 minutes  Rotate pans half-way. 

Valentine gift idea....wrap these up (above box from Creative Bag) with a tea bag and give to those you care about. 

Hope you enjoy,
Dish