Red Broccoli Salad and White Chocolate Party Mix

June is a busy month for my family; Father’s day, birthdays, anniversaries, graduations; so for a Sunday Father’s Day + a little bit of everything party, I was destined to cook. The Red Broccoli Salad was a little challenging. The recipe did not have any broccoli in it so I was immediately confused. I was going to make the recipe as is until I talked to my Mom. She convinced me that Red Broccoli salad does in fact have broccoli in it…Elementary Dear Watson. So my Friday night consisted of cooking up two pounds of bacon on two pans with oil that was entirely too hot. As always, a good portion of the bacon made it only as far as my mouth. I toasted up some almond slivers and decided the rest of the chopping should be saved until Sunday to ensure freshness. The White Chocolate Party Mix was really easy and good! The ingredients are roughly the same as the Scramble, but you add white chocolate instead of salty toppings. I had to leave the house while the chocolate dried so the pans ended up on my bed with the door closed. That little sneaky kitty can’t be trusted!
So on Father’s Day Jeff helped me to chop of the remaining veggies for the salad. My mom caught him eating some broccoli and me eating some grapes. I wonder if any recipes anticipate that people will eat as they cook and provide slightly more of the tasty ingredients. My recipes from here on out will say 2.1 pounds of bacon…just to be safe.

Cheese Fondue, Potato Salad, Veggie Pizza, Chocolate Mint Squares, Chocolate Fondue, Coffee Cake, Lemon Drop Martini

Happy Birthday to Kori! For her birthday we had a little dinner party at my apartment. I started the morning grocery shopping and returned home. My mom had stopped by after church to drop off my camera that I had forgotten at her house. I thought she would just stay for a little while, but she ended up staying until dinner to help me prepare and cook. Thanks Mom! We quickly started on the Chocolate Mint Squares (Mom) as they needed to set for 4 hours. After the squares were in the freezer my mom took a seat at the table and began to chop…and chop..and chop! She sliced and diced like the expert that she is. I worked on the Coffee Cake (Amanda A.) which gave me a little trouble. I hadn’t evenly dispersed the 4 butter cubes in my streusel topping so there was dry cinnamon streusel on top of the baking cake. So much for a nice brown top! But I had the best idea yet, and I think Paula Deen from food network would agree. I just melted and dumped more butter on the thing. My mom put it well, “butter never hurts.” Jeff came home just in time to help me prepare a little bit. As I squeezed fresh lemon juice for martinis he tried to make lemon twists. Our lemon twist creation device is not top notch and it took Jeff so long to make them.
Once everyone arrived Jeff mixed up some Lemon Drop Martinis and I started on a Cheddar Cheese fondue upon Kori’s request. I can officially call myself a cheese making expert; because this one was delicious!
Everyone pretty much filled up on the cheese and they were slightly worried about how much more they had to eat. We then had potato Salad (Holly) which I accidently drowned in paprika and Vegetable Pizza (Mom). I had also utilized some fresh spices from my garden (chives for the cheese and parsley for the pizza). Recently, I bought some fresh spices, pots and soil and was so excited to have fresh spices all the time. As this dinner party was a week ago, the spices were thriving. At the current moment, it is safe to say that the garden has failed. The apartment faces south and has a covered porch so I couldn’t get enough sunlight. My next action really put the project in the dump; I rigged up bungee cords to suspend the pots slightly over the edge of my porch. All was going well until I woke up one windy morning and my pot was gone, 2 stories down, and my bungee cord was dangling from the porch. I had to retrieve the plants which had fallen into a thorny bush below; I thought the best time to do so was when I was wearing a skirt and heels. I broke a branch, cut up my legs and was covered in sap all in one fail swoop!
Sorry, huge digression….
We finished the dinner with chocolate fondue, chocolate mint squares (which taste like mint chocolate chip ice cream) and coffee cake. It wasn’t until after we had finished our martinis that I realized we had forgotten the lemon twists Jeff had spent so long making. Opps! I think the strength of the martinis assisted in this mistake. And of course, we played Wii. Amanda is a terrible rower (sorry!), Kori found her calling as a rower and the sword fighting was intense! Mike even held his own despite having a very bad reaction to the cat. I made everybody take leftovers this time so my next blog isn’t, “how I gained 100 pounds."

Baked Macaroni, Strawberry Salad, Cheddar Cheese fondue, Yin/Yang Chocolate

Baked Macaroni, Strawberry Salad, Cheddar Cheese fondue, Yin/Yang Chocolate

Ahh prom. What a lovely time…you get dressed up, your hair is done, your nails are done, you get dinner with your date and dance the night away….too bad I am just the cook for the evening! All joking aside, I was really excited to have Shannon and her boyfriend Connor over for dinner before the prom. Shannon called, she was so nice, ‘since you are a good chef and all now, would you cook us dinner?’ Her well placed compliment made the decision easy; I would love to show off my cooking skills.
I started out with a cheddar cheese fondue, similar to the Melting Pot recipe, but with vegetable broth instead of the beer base as Shannon is not too keen on beer and they are under 21! I deserve an extensive round of applause, because get this….the fondue was great! This was my fourth try at making fondue and I was hoping it would work! I was careful to dust all of the cheese with flour and the consistency turned out fabulous!
As they ate I checked on the Strawberry Salad (Jenny). It is a Midwestern ‘salad’ recipe…jello, marshmallows, dream whip and strawberries. It was supposed to set for 4 hours and I had only gotten it in the fridge 2 hours ago…bummer, it hadn’t solidified. Last year at this moment, I would have panicked, decided the whole dinner was ruined and FREAKED OUT! Not this time…I can keep my cool. I rummaged around my fridge and produced an extremely simple fruit salad; oranges and strawberries. It was better than nothing!
The next course is mouthwatering! I made two baked macaroni dishes; one for Shannon and Connor and the other for myself and Jeff. The first had cavatappi (corkscrew) noodles with a homemade cheese sauce (lots of butter, milk, flour, cheddar and mozzarella cheese) and was topped with bread crumbs. They loved it….well except for the bread crumbs. I tried to make them by hand instead of buying a package of bread crumbs, but my bread was too soft and ended up in chunks on the top. A good attempt but not quite what I was looking for. The other macaroni had the same base ingredients but I added white truffle oil ($16 for 12oz!) and nutmeg. The white truffle oil permeated the whole dish and I had only used a teaspoon. The stuff is heavenly! White truffle oil has a really strong, kind of different flavor, but for some reason I love the stuff (interesting considering I hate mushrooms).
Side note: in between my slow effort to get each course out, Shannon and Connor sat on my couch watching NCIS…I have taught them well!
For the final course I melted down some milk chocolate and white chocolate and mixed it with a little milk. I tried to make a yin yang like they do at the Melting Pot and was fairly successful. All those tips I learned from Mauricio and Alejandro (Melting Pot employees) really paid off. Thanks guys! I served the chocolate with brownie bites, pound cake bites, rice crispy bites, strawberry slices and banana slices. I drove the stuffed kids down to the dance and worked on all the dishes I had incurred. Anyone want a job as a dishwasher at my house? I pay in cheese.

Creamy Chicken Enchiladas and White Chocolate Fudge

Creamy Chicken Enchiladas and White Chocolate Fudge

My great plans to make dinner have been in the works all week. Unfortunately, a trip to the Italian restaurant Pasta Jays seemed like a better idea. Here comes Wednesday and I have to do a recipe though! I will fall behind if I don’t. The cooking has just been overwhelming. Jeff mentioned that I was talking in my sleep the other night…’the recipes… the recipes’ I mumbled. Jeff asked, ‘what about the recipes?’ and I responded, “I just want to be free of them!’
So Jeff started to drive to the grocery store. We were on a side street where traffic was backed up really far. The left lane had the traffic and we were moving in the right lane with no traffic. One guy traveling the other direction decided to turn left very quickly and not bother to look to see if anyone was coming. We were going to hit him, dead on. Jeff braked, but realized soon that we were not going to stop in time. He bumped up over the curb, we were now headed straight for a light post, he veered right as we skidded and was headed for a fence now, then steered a little left. We ended up on the sidewalk, an inch from the fence and 1 foot from the light pole. The guy who caused this whole thing just gave us a thumbs up to ask if we were okay. Jeff gave him a half hearted thumbs up mumbling (what an idiot) and we drove to a parking lot to check the car. The tires were surprisingly fine after the curb and there was no damage. What a relief! What makes this whole thing worse is I was lazily sitting with my foot up on the dash. If Jeff hadn’t navigated expertly, then I would have had A. a knee to the skull B. a broken leg or C. injury to my hips or back from the awkward position. It is a good lesson learned though; keep your feet planted firmly on the car floor!
So after all that, there was still grocery shopping to be done. We took to King Soopers and indulged in cheese samples. An older gentlemen gave me a great strategy; take the toothpick and stab two cheese cubes at one time…genius! Also at the store I got a Bamboo plant for my sister Shannon’s birthday. I held the little plant like a peace offering to try and not spill the water and referred to the plant as a bamboozle for the entire car ride home until I was asked politely to please stop saying that!
Jeff cuts up the chicken for me and gives me a lecture about sharpening the knives (which I do, thank you very much!). I grab an onion in a bag from the veggie drawer to make the Creamy Chicken Enchiladas (Grandma). Once I set it down the bag I realize there was a brown liquid all over it which had transferred to my hands. I take a whiff to identify the substance…..sick!!!!! It is old meat juice that leaked out of a ground beef container. SICK SICK SICK. I immediately start gagging, move to the other side of the kitchen and gag and cough. Jeff starts screaming at me, “Go to the bathroom! DO NOT throw up in the kitchen”. I don’t move, if I move I will lose it. Max is staring at me in alarm. I cough and gag again….’Jenna go to the bathroom!’ Jeff grabs my wrist and pulls on me to leave the kitchen, but I stop gagging and regain my composure. Close call. I refuse to touch the meat bag that I had somehow thrown in the sink in my panic. Jeff takes care of the meat bag and I request that he please clean out that drawer, because obviously I can’t handle it. After the onion incident, the enchiladas went well. Although, the only tortillas I had left were low carb and whole wheat. So I took these healthy tortillas and stuffed them with a bunch of cheese. The enchiladas filled a whole casserole dish and I expected leftovers but when we were down to the last two Jeff asked if I wanted them. No I do not want them, we just ate a full meal! Then he proceeded to finish the enchiladas.
I was making the white chocolate fudge (from Jake) to have for dessert for my parents coming to dinner on Thursday. I inherited all the ingredients in a gift exchange my family does. Well actually my Dad received the recipe and ingredients but passed them down for me to make. The cooking got off to a rough start, the recipe said a bag of truffles was needed (8.1oz), but the bag I had was only 5oz. The recipe was saved though by some truffles I had received from my grandparents for Christmas. The pack was multi flavored, but Jeff and I were able to pick out 6 more white chocolate ones to complete the recipe. So I cooked and everything was going fine until I needed two cups of sugar. The recipe had come with a bag of sugar, but I didn’t know if it was measured or not. Alright measuring cup….in the washer, 4 cup bowl….dirty from dinner, 2 cup bowl….dirty from dinner. Crap! I need to measure this sugar, all the while, I have to stir my mixture constantly or it will burn. “I don’t have a measuring cup, I told you to help me with the dinner dishes, figure something out!” The stress turned me into a wicked witch and some fighting words were shared. We quickly rinsed a measuring cup and I was able to measuring the sugar bag…which was 2 cups all along. Boo for unnecessary panic!

Super Bowl Sunday - Cheese, Cottage and Chocolate

Super Bowl Sunday! The biggest, let’s sit around and eat until were sick, day of the year…oh yea and watch some football. I decided to make four recipes to bring to my parents house to share. In no particular order, they are; cheddar cheese fondue, green chili cheese rice dish, orange cottage cheese fruit salad and white chocolate peanut butter cookies. I ask Jeff very nicely if he will go with me to the grocery store, claiming I wouldn’t be able to carry the groceries in one trip (wasn’t I going to exercise this week?) and the dusting of snow would be absolutely impassable by my car (probably not even half and inch). The real reason: afraid I might pass out from stress at a very crowded grocery store, 11am on Super Bowl Sunday. Sometimes I wished I planned ahead more. Jeff agrees for fear I might not let him eat anything I make if he doesn’t and we are off.
The whole Starbucks stop is proving to be my favorite part of the trip. I get a white chocolate mocha instead of my usual tea. MMMM, so good on a snowy day. Jeff takes care of the cart for me (THANK YOU!) as the whole trying not to run into any small children with a cart only adds to my stress. I need a few items from the dreaded canned food aisle. The canned food aisle has chili, beans, tomatoes, veggies, fruits, soups….pretty much everything people are looking for on Super Bowl Sunday. It was packed! Jeff tries to get the cart through, but it is just too much, so he waits at the end of the aisle with the cart while I go in solo. ‘Excuse me, or sorry, sorry, pardon’…I am looking for the green chilies and almost get hit by a cart. I guy walks by saying ‘popular aisle’, and I make a face of exasperation. Jeff sees an older gentleman at the end of the aisle looking at beans; he is on the phone with his wife presumably. “I can’t find the navy beans; they have black beans and pinto beans and chili beans and kidney beans, and pork and beans…but no navy beans!” I can sympathize with this man.
The grocery store is actually quite full of men today, all of them as confused as I am. I stop at the bread section and glaze over…too many choices. As I look, another man stands next to me and glazes…followed by another man. We all three stare for a few minutes until the first guy throws up his hands in frustration and grabs a random bag (I really hope it’s the right one) and I find what I need. When Jeff and I get to the dairy section, disaster strikes; my chest tightens, I began short shallow breathing and feel dizzy. It was finally too much stress and I start a possible panic attack. We pull over (yes pull over, it is seriously like driving in L.A. right now with carts instead of cars). I try to calm myself as Jeff says “look around, look at all the nice big open spaces, there is a ton of space” (I disagree) eventually things return to normal and we trek on.
The only remain task is to find those green chilies, my first attempt at the canned food aisle turned into a ‘we will just come back when there are less people’. But you know, that really didn’t happen. I am preparing myself to enter aisle four (it’s ok…only harmless people) when Jeff jumps in and saves the day, “I will go in, you stay by the cart”. He comes triumphantly back with two cans of green chilies, hot and mild, as he wasn’t sure what I wanted. We decide to get them both because neither of us wants to go back in there. Time to check out. I guy trying to get into our line takes a fast tight turn and loses some pop off of his cart, then he tells us the physics of how to not make pop explode (tap on the sides, not the top). He then tells us about how grocery stores in California used to not have air conditions and it was 110 degrees and how this isn’t that bad today, and he sprayed his mother with a hose once in the produce section, and had to clean beans off of a ceiling once and no he doesn’t have a wife and why was I asking if he had a wife (I wasn’t asking). Okay, I would really just love to check out now…this guy is chatty. Jeff goes to put the cart away and takes it all the way to the back of the hall for carts. Once he gets there, he realizes a guy had been following him to use the cart (that’s right, they ran out), Jeff says, “sorry I didn’t realize you needed it, or I would have stopped long ago” and the guy replies, “it looked like you were on a mission, I wasn’t going to stop you”. And with that the mission was accomplished and we left.
Jeff carries all the groceries up (I could get used to this) and I start cooking. TV today: puppy bowl and CSI, that’s right, blood, guts and small animals. I start with the orange cottage cheese salad as it is supposed to chill for several hours or overnight. Two hours is long enough, right? This recipe is REALLY easy. It’s kind of a dump into bowl, mix and chill kind of thing. I start cooking the rice for the green chili rice and then start on the white chocolate cookies. These ended up being a total disaster. I started by carefully spreading the peanut butter between Ritz crackers. I then melt the white chocolate bark in the microwave in a glass bowl. As it turns out, if you have glass in the microwave for extended periods of time it gets hot; and then if you try to grab this glass bowl with your bare hands it burns. Nothing serious, just a hurt hand and a bruised ego. I then start in on the scotch (which almost fell on my head as I tried to get it from the top cabinet).
So back to the cookies, I am supposed to dip the cookies into the white chocolate, which is too thick and gets all over my hands and I place them on an ungreased baking sheet (I was suppose to use a drying rack, but I didn’t have one). Ungreased baking sheet +sticky chocolate=what the heck was I thinking? As suspected, when I tried to pull the cookies off they broke into pieces. My brilliant idea? Put them in the oven for a while until I can pull them off. So the top rack may have been just a tad too close to the heat bar…they melt all over the place, including the peanut butter that is supposed to stay inside the cookie. I push them back together (they look half decent) and transfer them to a greased baking sheet. Last step; drizzle milk chocolate over them. So what happens when you put a glass bowl in the microwave for long periods of time and then try to grab it? I am sure you remember the answer from earlier, but some lessons take a long time to learn for me. Once again, I lose patients and the chocolate is too thick. I try to drizzle, which turns into heaping globs of chocolate. These may be the ugliest cookies of all time, but they are done and that is all the matters at this point.
The rice dish has no serious problems; the recipe has a pound of cheese and lots of sour cream (heaven!). Everything is done except for the fondue which I will make at my parents house. Somehow Jeff and I managed to carry all three dishes, ingredients for the fourth, Wii games and controllers and Max in his crate all in one trip. We arrive and start the snackin! Once halftime hits I make the Cheddar Cheese. This is the 3rd super bowl attempt at it…and a 3rd failure. The first year…too much salt (actually the recipe doesn’t even call for salt). Year two, not enough flour; year three, not enough flour (some lessons take longer to learn!). I had poured way too much beer into start and realized I was gonna need more cheese. I started to shred but I was taking way too long! I asked my mom for help and she shredded while I stirred. The extra cheese added was not tossed with flour, and that was the problem. When you neglect the flour, it turns into a thick clump of cheese sounded by cheese water, but it was still edible and tasted good. Jeff like everything (or so he says) and so did my mom. Dad only liked the cookies (he doesn’t like rice, cottage cheese, beer or cheese). Shannon liked everything except for the cottage cheese and thanked me for cooking (so nice Shannon!). My friend Kevin was complimentary of the cheese, rice and cookies; but perhaps wasn’t so fond of the orange cottage cheese dish. I liked everything; my favorite was the cheesy rice! The game was good, a lot of action towards the end. I love the screaming chicken commercials. After the game, Mom Jeff and I played sword fighting and golf on the Wii. Another super bowl finished…another week of Tums and salad is about to start (or so I say…)