Simply...Cobbler!

OMG I am so bad.  I got up before everyone this morning, made my coffee and tuned into Food Network.

Little secret about me: one of my weekend rituals is to watch cooking shows every Saturday and/or Sunday morning for my dinnertime inspirations for the upcoming week.  First, I tune to my local news station to catch the seven day forecast.  That's important this time of year, as summer afternoons can be filled with quick rain showers and thunderstorms.  My husband doesn't mind standing next to the grill in the rain, but I do. So once I get an idea of the weather for the week, I'm ready to sit like a lump on the couch and plan my meals.

So why am I so bad?  Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond wasn't on for 5 minutes and I was up making one of her recipes.  It happened so fast I didn't take pictures!  My husband came down as I was putting the cobbler in the oven, I told him how simple this recipe was, and it hit me.  This was the perfect recipe for the blog!!

I've got a finished shot for you, but since Ree does such a good job with her photographs and documenting her recipes, I figured I didn't really need to recreate that here.  A link to her loveliness will do just fine, with a finished shot of my cobbler.

Cobblers can be scary, especially if you use a more difficult base.  Ree points out in the episode that she makes the cobbler that it can be a lot of work should you choose to lay a pie crust over fruit, or if you use biscuit dough (we don't buy the less work, boxed mix of course!) so her recipe is super simple.  The hardest part?  Waiting an hour for it to bake,

So here it is:

1 cup flour
1 cup sugar (I use turbinado for the extra flavor)
1 cup milk (she used whole, I used 3/4 skim 1/4 half and half)
1/2 stick melted butter

Mix, pour in greased baking dish.  Scatter over top your fruit (she used blackberries but I had blueberries in the house so I went with that, as it was an emergency and I had to get this in the oven immediately.)

She sprinkles 1/4 additional sugar on top (I found that to be too much, so I used less) and into a 350 degree oven it goes for about an hour.  Done!

Not only is is a simple dessert recipe for a busy evening (pop it in the oven while you are eating) but it's a quick dish to make when you have unexpected company coming; 5 minutes of prep and it bakes while you are getting ready.

Love it!  My township is having Fourth of July fireworks tonight, so a blueberry dessert is just the thing to get the holiday week going.  If I had strawberries to add too....yummm.  May need to hit the farm market later today and make another one.  I am so bad.

Here is the link to view the recipe from it's original source, the lovely Ree Drummond:
Ree Drummond's Blackberry Cobbler Recipe

My lovely cobbler, fresh from the oven:

Happy eating!
Kathy

Fun new cooking show

I've gotten myself addicted to a new cooking show on the Food Network, called Daphne Dishes.  Daphne is quite funny, being a stand-up comedian and all; is married to a professional chef, and is a personal friend of a friend of mine.  Because of that last statement, I tuned into her first episode.  And well, I liked her.  She seems real, and I like that.

So today as I watched one of her new episodes (noon EST on Sundays) I fell madly in love with her pound cake with strawberries.  My boys won't eat the balsamic strawberries that she made, so mine were plain, and instead of vanilla ice cream I made home made whipped cream, but her pound cake I made as advertised. OMG so good!  With five eggs and 1 and 3/4 sticks butter, it's got to be good, right?  Yeah...it was.  I definitely plan on making this again and again.

Here is a link to her recipe:

Butter-toasted-vanilla-pound-cake-with-macerated-strawberries.html?soc=sharingpinterest

Here is a pic of mine; pretty awesome, huh?

Yeah, I thought you would think so.  Tomorrow, should there be any leftovers, I will try toasting it like Daphne does.  In the meantime...

Happy Eating!
Kathy

Working on my Christmas desserts...& Thanksgiving recap

I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure out what I want to do for dessert this year.  I've made four different lists, crossed out more than I've left uncrossed, and re-written the list on way too many scraps of paper.  Good thing we are recyclers!  I have a few favorite recipes I love to make, but we are such a small group that I feel like I am the one who ends up eating mostly everything.

I've gained ten pounds since my gallbladder surgery.  SIGH.  VERY LOUD SIGH.

A nurse friend told me last night not to stress about it, that my body needs time to adjust, but I know the truth,  I've grown lazy and have a tendency to binge eat with no ability to portion control.  I need to get off this emotional path I am on and get healthy again!  I am realistic and know that this is NOT the time of year to try to change.  Too much going on, too much stress with work and life and getting everything done in time.

So where was I?  Oh, yeah.

For Thanksgiving, I made a wonderful assortment of single serve desserts.  Mini Cannolis, mini peanut butter cheesecakes, mini apple pies and turtle cookies.  Much easier to watch how much you eat when you are only having a small piece, right?  As long as you don't keep going back for more and more, right?

I had a picture of these yummy desserts on my iPhone, but someone (who shall remain nameless) deleted all the food pics from the Photo Stream in effort to make more room in our cloud storage.  :(

So here are the links for Thanksgiving yumminess (all recipes were made with clean ingredients, of course:)

Peanut Butter Cheesecakes

Mini Cannoli

Apple Pies

Turtle Cookies

Well, I gotta say while I enjoyed not having pies, and doing something different, I think my sister-in-law and her family were disappointed.  They expected and wanted pies.  I think all the time and effort I put into making all of the above went unappreciated.  So next year they will get a boring apple pie and a boring pumpkin pie.  Hmpf.  I ended up with a lot of leftovers (left a lot at their house too) and some even went in the garbage after a few days.  So so much for that.

Now I am back to Christmas...do I stick with my traditional cookies to avoid disappointment by my guests, or do I make what I want?  LOL Or do I do a combination?  There are only eight of us; eight.  Four adults, three teen boys, and a pre-teen girl.  Most who have experienced teen boys would argue that three teen boys = six adults, so I should count them as double.  I don't want tons of leftovers, no one wants me bringing plates of cookies anymore (I used to LOVE baking for an entire weekend then giving it all away) so what to do?

I'm so overthinking this.  Kathy

Gallbladder Removal & Recovery

Today is Saturday.  The surgery was this past Monday.  I am still living on bland foods, sigh!

Monday was not too bad coming out of anesthesia.  In my rush to get my kids to school and get to my 7am arrival call, I forgot to bring my own crackers with me, so I was stuck eating the saltines at the hospital, along with some ginger ale after the surgery.  First soda in...I don't know how long!  Months, easily.  Maybe even a year at this point.  So my day did not start out unprocessed, but it ended that way as I was unable to really eat anything else until late, when I had some home made chicken broth with a few grains of rice floating around in it.

Tuesday brought more broth and rice, with the rice slowly taking over in the broth to rice ratio, and some home made applesauce.

Wednesday, I woke up feeling awesome.  So good.  Steel cut oats with a bit of organic skim milk to thin and a sprinkle of cinnamon for flavor for breakfast.  Lunch, well, that's where the problems started.  I felt so good I fried an egg, melted two pieces of cheese on an organic english muffin, put a piece of ham in there too, with a small swirl of organic ketchup for flavor.  BIG MISTAKE. I can't capitalize that statement big enough.  I enjoyed every single bite...5 minutes after finishing it I thought my chest was going to explode.  Full blown acid reflux attack.  I will save you the details of my pain, but had some applesauce later that night just to put something in my stomach.

Thursday, still dealing with the aftermath of the bad choice I made Wednesday.  Back to rice and broth...at every meal.  Applesauce as a snack.

Friday, still dealing with the aftermath of the bad choice I made Wednesday.  Back to rice and broth...at every meal.  Applesauce as a snack.

Here we are on Saturday, almost feeling better. Peach Chobani for breakfast.  Melted American cheese (I know, but it's the lightest cheese I had in the house, everything else is very heavy) on whole wheat bread for a modified grilled cheese sandwich for lunch.  Broth and pasta for dinner.  I made a home made apple crisp Slow Cooker Apple Crisp for my family for dessert and had a TINY bowl; so far, so good.

Hoping Sunday is a bit better, as we are heading off to Comic Con tomorrow.  Not only will it be a challenge to eat unprocessed, but finding anything that I can eat at all will be tough.  I bought a box of Ritz crackers for emergency company during my recovery; I think they are coming with me tomorrow...just in case.

Happy eating - eat something good for me!!
Kathy

P.S.  The above recipe comes from one of my favorite clean eating sites.  I made the recipe as written except substituted turbinado sugar for the sweetener.  I love the molasses flavor the turbinado gives to the apples.

Happy snow day!!

Well I had planned on going to Costco today to do all my pre-Christmas shopping.  The things you can buy now, and put either in the freezer or set aside until you need them.  Around here it is so busy in the stores the week before Christmas, I'd prefer to not have to fight my way to the butcher section.

Mother Nature had other plans for me.

So here we are, stuck home for a snow day.  My 14 year old son & I decided to have some bonding time by searching for cookie recipes on Pinterest.  If you have not joined yet, what are you waiting for?? Be forewarned, it is addicting.

We had an enjoyable time picking out new cookie recipes and decided which old recipes to skip this year.  We only have a gathering of 10 people, so I don't need a LOT of desserts.  I decided this year to do a small cookie assortment, skip the heavy pies or cakes, this way we could pick as the evening goes on,  We're making a mulled wine to serve after lunch, to smell up the house nice and festive.

If you want to follow me on Pinterest, I am KathIsMath - click on my name to find my page.  Some of my recipes are under Christmas 2013; others are in my cookbook and not online.

If you are interested in my Christmas fun last year, search back by clicking the labels below the post; I had a lot of fun celebrating "The Twelves Treats of Christmas."  I'm off to re-write my shopping list with the new ingredients I need.

Happy Eating!
Kathy

Book Review - Chocolate Pudding Mix

Checked this book out of the library this week: Make-A-Mix by Karine Eliason & Nevada Haward & Madeline Westover.

It is partially "mix" recipes and partially recipes to make with your mixes.  Since I am still looking for acceptable replacements for some of my family's favorite foods, like tacos and pudding, this book seemed to give me some choices worth trying.

Over the next few weeks I am going to try to make some of the "mixes" and see what happens!

Since I am still missing desserts, I decided to start with their chocolate pudding "mix."  The copyright notice in the front of the book say I am allowed to post their recipe; even though I am linking back to their book & I got it for free from the library, I will just post my opinions.  Don't want to do anything I am not supposed to!!

So I measured out the dry ingredients of my cleanest unsweetened cocoa powder, granulated sugar, cornstarch and salt and mixed it all up:

And then proceeded to actually make the chocolate pudding.  You add milk to a cup of the mix & cook in a pot, stirring just like you would a package mix.  You are supposed to stir in butter & vanilla at the end; since I need to eat low fat, and I couldn't see why I would need butter anyway, I left it out.  I let it sit on the stove while I took pictures, and that film that I love formed on top, just like the box mix.  Take a look:

It's cooling as I type...but sure smells like chocolate pudding.  One thing I can say is that it makes more than the 6 cups of mix. I have a 6c storage bowl that it would not fit in.   But once I used 1c of the mix, it fits nicely.  If you do the math on the dry ingredients, it's a bit over 6 cups.  But once you whisk them together and add in the extra air, it will not fit.  Go for a bigger bowl if not using any right away.

So extra mix is stored, the family's portions in bowls, covered & put in fridge for dessert tonite...and mine is just about cool enough to try. :)

Here goes: it's good!! The taste is slightly different...maybe not as sweet?  Would the butter have made a difference? Hmmmmm...I use fat free dairy milk but it is still thick, creamy...it's good. Will definitely make again AND will be looking through the book to see what other pudding recipes these ladies have included.

Yummy!! Happy eating! Kathy