emilyr

I make a bbq sauce with apple butter I get from an Amish market (when I don't eat a whole jar with fresh bread !) by pureeing a sweet yellow onion and then simmering it with apple butter, a bit of molasses, apple cider vinegar and ancho chile powder. Sometimes tomato paste, if I remeber. Once, I ran out of stove room and simmered it on the grill with the pork I was cooking, and it was lovely and smokey. It's great with pork, of course, but also good with grilled chicken and I have even dollopped it on a steak.

I use wasabi peas with breadcrumbs (about 2:1) for pork chops.

Sigh...Girl Scout cookies. Ate a whole box of Samoas/Caramel de Lites on Friday at work (over the whole 8 hours, but really!).

I gave up fast food for Lent this year (and let me tell you - I had no idea how often I was eating it!!! ), but the ONLY items I've been craving are FOF's and fries. The rest of my family have been looking at me like I'm crazy becuase Friday afternoons I sit looking at them longingly with my egg salad sandwich. This past week, masochist that I am, I went out and got lunch for the fam. EVERYONE of those pains in my ass wanted the FOF - even the non-practicing Catholic ones! I was proud of myself, drove the 10 minutes home and only ate the half-fry that fell out of the top of the bag. My mom grew up with a dad who was allergic to fish and shellfish, so she isn't a fish person, but she's always the first one in the family in Lent to say, "Oh, yeah, Filet-o-Fish sounds good..." She won't eat the double, though, because there's not enough of a tartar sauce-cheese-bread to fish ratio going on!

It looks like the big one is a cymbidium orchid and the small ones are dendrobium orchids. They also look to me like they're real flowers and not made of a sugar medium. I work at a florist part-time, and these look real to me, but I say go for it if you want to try and make them on your own! But if you get in over your head, neither are prohibitively expensive (you could probably get one cymbid. bloom and a long stem of the dendrobs. for less than $10 or $15, even if you live in a big city), and they are very sturdy. Also, if you get these flowers from a florist, wash the stems in a mild solution of dish soap and water then rinse very well. That way you can just stick the stems straight into the cake.

Hmmm...I've never heard of a divorce cake before, but here are a few ideas off the top of my head: 1) Do a traditional wedding cake shape, but in opposite traditional colors - black fondant, for example. 2) Do a groom shaped cake that the ex-bride could cut into. 3) Something with a broken chain or shackles (??). Sounds like fun!

I know I'm a bit late to the game, but I ate at Taqueria El Rodeo this weekend and it was quite delicious. The tortillas were just about the most perfect I've ever tasted. The mole con pollo was great. I've only had mole a few times, but this blew those past dishes out of the water. I think I found my go-to Mexican in Columbia!

We do have a turkey fryer and we're not afraid to use it! I am lacking a good batter recipe though. I've tried many, but the one I looking for is the crispy, CRUNCHY, batter dipped chicken fingers like the the Village Tavern (Chicago people! if you know it, spill it. Please) makes. I hate to be so... whatever, but it's like Long John Silvers, but crispier and CRUNCHIER. ← I think beer batters are the best when you want something crispy and crunchy. I don't know amounts at all, but i do some flour and corn starch (about 3:1, I think). with just enough beer to make it a bit thinner than paste. Dust the tenders/fingers with a bit of flour so the batter sticks well, batter, and fry away.

Here's another event coming up this summer in CoMO: Inside Columbia's Wine and Food Festival. Just thought I'd throw it out there. It's still a long way off, but I think I'm going to the Cocktail Competition the magazine is throwing this weekend.

I got the Pampered Chef Microplane Adjustable Grater, Nanny Ogg's Cookbook (I'm a HUGE Terry Pratchett fan!), and Julie and Julia.

We got some Girl Scout cookies at work today as a preview to the selling season. Those Thin Mints should have been scared of me!

Here's an interesting story on this topic. Victoria and Albert's restaurant at Disney's Grand Floridian Spa is not going to allow children under 10. >clickety< I don't really care if whether restaurants ban kids or not (in my opinion, loud and obnoxious adults are way more disruptive - and they should know better!), and, to me, it seems to be up to the owner's perogative. I'm really just intrigued that it's a Disney property that's doing it.

Our NYE midnight breakfast turned out to be the perfect thing for our group. Many people had to work earlier that day, so we didn't get started til about 9 pm. Started out with some champagne cocktails (apricot nectar, ginger syrup and cava or OJ and Asti), mixed drinks, Strongbow hard cider, beer (and beer and beer and beer) and some nibbles - dark chocolate truffles with candied ginger, M&M's, crudites and some mango. We played Guitar Hero for a couple of hours (well, mostly the boys did ) and started cooking dinner around 11:00. My best friend Brandy made some great quiches - they were not too hard, only 4 eggs each, lots of cheese and half-and-half, very custardy - and a hash brown casserole (more cheese!!!). I brought some orange, caramelly cinnamon rolls that i baked right before we ate. Our friend Kirk made some homemade doughnuts (cinnamon coated or with chocolate icing). Marlene and Matt made Bisquik pancakes with bluberries, strawberries or chocolate chunks. Somebody (I'm not sure who) brought some cheese-filled smoked sausages. I have a feeling that there was something else on the table that we ate, but with the help of a few more champagne cocktails, we decided that it would be brilliant to do countdowns for every time zone in America. Blargh. I was very happy that I was not hungover this morning as we rose at 9:00 to root on our Missouri Tigers in the Cotton Bowl! I'm working now, so black eyed peas are going to have to wait for this weekend. I hope you all have a great 2008!!!

It's been a while since anyone's mentioned McKenzie's. My Christmas bonus from work this year is a gift certificate from there, so I'd be interested in what people think. I like steak fine, but I'm not a huge steak person; is it good for other items?

Several of my friends are working on the day of NYE, so we're not starting the party til 9 or 10. SInce most will have eaten some dinner before then, I'm thinking of having a midnight breakfast. My plans are for a couple of strate or potato tortillas with rosemary/pancetta/asiago and one with chorizo and chiles or something (So I can make them in advance then stick them in the oven around 11:00). Bagels maybe (if the bakery's open) or some quick breads. Fruit. Cheese. Mimosas. And something else. I haven't decided yet. We'll see how drunk my friends plan on being!

what about cracking them into a big plastic colander? something with biggish holes over a mixing bowl. it should work like your hands or a slotted spoon.

Ooh! I am! I make the ginger snap recipe (except I think they call it a ginger thin - i'm not sure) from the '73 era Joy of Cooking and load it up with chili/pepper powders and some fresh grated ginger too - call them atomic ginger snaps. Last year I used ancho cili powder for smokiness and straight cayenne for spice. (PS - I can't tell you exactly how much I add because I just do it to taste, but I can tell you don't do it based on the taste of the dough - the flavors get much stronger when baked!! just trust me on this one!) I roll them in demarara sugar for a crackled, crunchy outside. They're also great because you can get different textures depending on how you bake them. For chewy cookies I go with a heaping teaspoon ball and bake til they're not quite set in the middle. For crispy cookies (which I like the best), smaller balls - roughly half a teaspoon - baked until they're cooked all the way through. On cooling, they have a great snap. Back OT, when I was out east this fall, I had the Ithaca Brewing/Soda Company's ginger beer. It's good, but a bit sweet. Also, a chain restaurant around here HuHot has ginger beer that I go back for. The foods ok (build your own stir fry), but the ginger beer is not only spicy and tasty, not too sweet, but has extra chunks of grated ginger added to it for service.

A bit of serendipty - I thought this recipe sounded great and was all ready to look for recipes, but this Finnish spoon cookie recipe showed up in my email as one of the Food Network's 12 Days of Cookies. I may have to try these this weekend.

I'm working on figuring out which cookies I'm going to make this year, and tried this Emeril brown sugar shortbread with the addition of a bit of vanilla, some ground ginger and pinch of cloves (maybe a 1/4 tsp of each - I don't actually think they made a big difference). Instead of a springform pan, I used a stoneware shortbread plate, and next time I will porbably leave out the cinnamon and sugar that I put on the bottom instead of the top (since the bottom became the top when it was flipped out). They stuck just a bit in the middle. Then again, maybe they just need more butter! I think I'm going to add these to my Christmas goodie bags. They make pretty, tile-like wedges, and I'm always looking for a good non-peanut, non-chocolate cookie.

If you're doing a refrigerator type sugar cookie, it's fairly easy to add several different kinds of additions. Alton Brown adds peppermint and chocolate to make pinwheel cookies here, and I always use the Joy of Cooking basic cookie recipes. I think the new 75th anniversary edition has something like 13 different versions. As to adding cocoa, I've always done it with the eggs after creaming the sugar and butter. I don't know if there's any benefit to this, but it's the method I've always used.

wax paper

Empires have been on sale around here for the ast few weeks, so i've made a couple of apple crisps and cakes with them. They work great and are a bit too tart to eat straight out, but perfect for baked goods. The price for them has been between $.99 and $1.19 per pound, so they're a great deal too!

Yeah, that what I thought of this weekend too. I think that's probably what we'll do. Thanks!

My mom and I wrap together and often my sister, brothers, dad, cousins, friends, whoever's in the house jump in and help out too. It becomes a bit of a gabfest. If no one else is around, we put on an awful Lifetime movie or a plastic surgery show and ewwwww our way through it or just bring the pan and a good knife to Grandmama's and let people cut off what they want and forget the wrapping! ETA: Here's a question, do you wrap with a package-type fold or twist the ends. We're twisters for the most part unless the caramels are getting packed into smallish gift boxes.

One of my best friends from college and her parents are going to be driving home from their Thanksgiving celebrations through Columbia on Saturday, and we're going to go out to lunch. Where should I take them. It needs to be fairly casual and easy to get to from I-70 (though not necessarily right off I-70) because she gets lost easily . Downtown is kind of my target area so that we can walk around and "sightsee" or window shop a bit after. I was thinking maybe Booches. We've all eaten together before when I stayed at her parents cabin up in Northern Wisconsin and we tended to go to pub/roadhouse type places, but it doesn't have to be quite that casual.