Spiced, Sugared, Bourboned Pecans

Time stamp: 3:30 pm 12/28/13 - Full tin. 

This year has been a special Christmas.  It was my first year not at home in Atlanta.  We can blame the cute as a button-ness that is my new niece and the true blessing it is that my brother and his family are a mile away from me.  So, this year my parents came to Arlington for a Virginia Christmas.  And along with an SUV load of luggage and Christmas presents, my mom brought pecans.  Delicious, golden, soft, sweet pecans.  Her source?  The veterinarian's office of all places.  Don't ask.  Just find yourself some pecans to put in your face.  Preferably delicious ones.  

This recipe will last 5 adults about 6 hours or so.  And heaven forbid you let the tin go empty.  This was the third time tinkering with the recipe (ingredients as well as time and temp) and as the saying goes, third time's a charm.

Ingredients
1 egg white
1 T bourbon (you're only using 1T...  go ahead, grab the top shelf)
3 C pecan halves
1/2 C sugar
1/2 t salt
1 t cinnamon
1/2 t cloves
1/2 t nutmeg
1/4 t  cayenne pepper (more if you're feeling ballsy)

Directions
Preheat oven to 300.  Beat egg white and bourbon in a large bowl.  Stir in pecans letting soak while you mix up the sweet spice mix.  Mix up the remaining ingredients in a separate bowl.  Toss in to the pecans stirring to coat.  Cover a cookie sheet in foil (for easy clean up).  And put nuts on cookie sheet being sure to have a single layer.  Bake for 25 minutes, stirring and monitoring often.  The first (still edible) fail/attempt on Christmas Day was a bit charred.  Happy to do all the dirty work, so you can just go straight to the winning recipe.  Enjoy!  

Time stamp: 8:45 pm 12/28/13 - Nearly gone.
Also, a giant 5 pound cupcake for hermano's birthday. 

Epically Doctored Up Artichoke Dip

I'm grateful to have a foodie friend, who also wanted to avoid malls on Black Friday.  We managed to motivate ourselves yesterday for a trip to a winery and a field trip to Wegman's on the way home to get fixings to make ourselves a nice dinner.  (And as I write this post devouring a wheat carrot muffin from their bakery, I wonder why my life doesn't include more Wegman's field trips.)

Anyways, last night we landed on some bone in pork loin, homemade applesauce, and bacon cabbage reheated in an iron skillet.  And a weight watchers lemon cream pie - (I've altered it some, so maybe I'll post that on a rainy day.)  A last minute addition to up the veggies was 3 artichokes.  They were a game changer.

Anyways, after our trip through the check out with 3 piles - yours, mine, and sharing the cost for dinner - we headed back to my apt to get cooking.  The artichoke dip, a complete last minute brain dump of what we should dip artichokes in when we both kind of abhor mayo, I decided to doctor the heck out of it and made one hell of a dip.  I'll do my best to recall the approximate measurements.  But I would just read through for ideas and generate your own proportions and mix of flavors.

Ingredients:
3 steamed artichokes ready for eating.
Awesome Doctored Artichoke Dip

Ingredients for Dip: (all approximate) 
2 heaping T light Hellman's Mayo
2 garlic cloves roughly chopped
1/4 tsp paprika
1 tsp olive oil
salt and pepper
1/2 tsp of magic honey that is lime and cayenne infused
1 tsp lemon juice

Directions:
Puree in the immersion blender attachment.  Serve in ramekin.  Top with a sprinkle of paprika.  Devour with artichoke leaves.

Pumpkin Cheesecake Fro Yo aka Crack

Patience while it churns.

Go ahead and judge.  I might
make a hot water bath in
the sink to lick the frozen bowl. 

"Oh hey, is that fro yo in your hair?"  Why yes, maybe I was licking the bowl, beaters, and spoon over the sink...  I am truly not sure how this took so long for me to decide to create, since I've had this ice cream maker for 6 months now, but alas.  It was truly worth the wait.  My only complaint, if I had to make one, is that the cream cheese is clumpy because of my impatience to wait for it to warm to room temp.  But really, not a bad day if lumps of cream cheese in fro yo is your biggest complaint...

Ingredients:
1 block reduced fat cream cheese warmed to room temp
1 C fat free plain greek yogurt
1 C pumpkin puree
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 T pumpkin pie spice

Directions:
1. Mix everything.
2. Follow ice cream bowl instructions.  (ie: set up everything and turn it on stir setting before adding batter, and wait until it starts clicking.)

3. Save the majority in a container.
4.  Eat a little in a bowl, though you might need a straw when it's fresh.
5.  Lick the mixing bowl and spoons.  (Be careful your tongue doesn't freeze to the sides. I suggest a sink bath.) 

It's soupy and delicious
out of the ice cream maker.

Head of Cabbage + Bacon = The Way Cabbage Should Be Eaten

So when the CSA gives you a head of cabbage.... 1 week ago, it is well past time to make room for a new crop of veggies.  And that cabbage is looking at you, every time you open the refrigerator door. And CSA day is upon you again, what's a girl to do?  I am too stubborn to chuck it, so I will cook it in bacon.  And I may forever cook cabbage in bacon.

And if I am going to cook in bacon, I might as well go to the fancy pants butcher and acquire fancy pants bacon.  This was my first trip there, to any butcher actually, but certainly not my last.

Inspired by a few Irish recipes I saw....

Ingredients:
1 head of cabbage
4 slices of delicious fancy pants bacon
water
1 tsp nutmeg; salt and pepper

Directions:
1.  Roughly chop cabbage, discarding core.
2.  Cook bacon in a dutch oven or skillet, on medium heat, until crisped to desired consistency.
3.  Remove bacon.  (Reserve some bacon grease in a small mason jar for a rainy day.)
4.  Stand back.  Add cabbage into pot.  Stir to coat all of the cabbage in bacon renderings.  Put a lid on loosely.  Cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally.  I added 1/2 cup of water to steam/boil the cabbage faster.
5.  Add nutmeg and stir.  Salt and pepper to taste.
6.  Chop bacon and add to cabbage.
7.  Eat up!

Loose Smashed Cauliflower / Thick Cauliflower Soup

So much cauliflower..

Last week's CSA Day... My favorite day of the week.  Busy running around and not getting to dinner until 8, but I wanted to make a dent in the bounty of produce.  So, I concocted this mess.  Just a matter of perspective whether you want to call it a thick soup or loose smashed mock-potatoes.  Either way a bowl and a spoon help the situation.    

Loose Smashed Cauliflower / Thick Cauliflower Soup

Ingredients

Post pilates dinner: Punkin Beer;
Overcooked crock apples;
Smashed Cauliflower..

1 and a half heads of cauliflower

The immersian blender fixes
everything...

1 leek
1 C chicken broth
2 C water (In retrospect - use less water if you want it thicker and more like mashed potatoes.)
1/4 C parm
1/2 C 2% milk
2 T garlic powder
1 T olive oil
Salt and Pepper to taste
Reduced shredded cheddar blend

Break up cauliflower.  Slice leek.  Bring broth and water to a boil with veggies.  Simmer.  15-20 minutes until easily breaks apart with a wooden spoon.  Stir a few times during that time to make sure all parts get submerged at some point.  Add a healthy amount of garlic powder towards end.  If I'd had garlic cloves I would have added that from the beginning.

When cauliflower is soft, remove from heat.  Add parm, milk, and olive oil.  Add salt and pepper.  Whip out the immersian blender.  Immerse and blend to desired consistency.  Top with shredded cheddar.  Enjoy!  (I enjoyed this later in the week mixed with cheese grits and some crawfish tail meat.... it's quite versatile..)

Nom nom.  Kind of a grits
consistency.. 

Reminiscing About Honey Lemon Lavender Fro Yo & Lavender Farm Visits

An overdo funny story.

I have many awesome friends.  But there is one who is as nutty as I am about playing in the kitchen and we buy eachother epic birthday presents.  She changed my life with the ice cream maker attachment for my KitchenAid.  In anticipation this present, back in May, I trolled around online to purchase culinary grade lavender for my frozen yogurt experiments.  I settle on some from Amazon.com that comes from Pelindaba Lavender Farm (none the wiser that I would visit the farm months later.)

Beach week commences in May with a house full of friends in the Outer Banks.  The perfect opportunity to christen the ice cream attachment.  (Yes, a Kitchen Aid is totally portable... So is a bicycle... whatever.)  No need to serve it up all pretty at the beach, just a pile of spoons during a game night and a container of fresh Honey Lemon Lavender Fro Yo.  It is a winner.  I promise.

Honey Lemon Lavender Fro Yo
Ingredients
1 quart vanilla non fat greek yogurt
Juice of 2 lemons and their zest
1 T dried lavender
1/2 C half and half or whole milk or fat free half and half
1/3 C honey

Directions
1. Bring half and half to boil.  Remove from heat.  Add dried lavendar.  Let sit for 30 min - 1 hour. 
2. In large bowl mix everything else. 
3. Strain lavender and add to mixture.  I left some lavender in though, it looks neat.
4. Follow manufacturer's directions for using ice cream maker. 
5.  You could serve it nice and pretty.  Or you could give everyone a spoon.  Your choice. 

Now for the funny part.  A solid 3 months after this wildly successful fro yo experiment, I am on a 4 day San Juan Bike Tour with my Mom, and on Day 4, there is a visit to...... Pelindaba Lavender Farm!  As our guides were talking about stopping at Pelindaba, I kept having a weird feeling, thinking that it sounded familiar, but could not figure out why.  When I set foot in the gift shop, I spied with my little eye - the exact same tin cans of culinary grade lavender for sale!  I found this to be eerily serendipitous and super weird and super awesome.  But mainly super relaxing from the scent and sights of lavender and super delicious.    

Sweet Milk Key Lime Pineapple Cookie Cake Thing-a-ma-jigs

Ohmygosh these are good.  Good thing I'm biking 100 miles tomorrow.  Do you ever get that sweet craving?  But it's raining, so you're just going to play the game 'what ingredients do I have on my shelf that I can make a cookie with'?  No?  Just me?  Weird.  Anyways, here is what happened on this rainy not getting out of pj's, yet, day.  I looked up a recipe, but mutilated it so much that I'm calling it mine.  Cut out a few things.  Added a few more.  (No shortening, but oil instead.  No sugar, but pineapple.  Totally normal.)

Ingredients:
1 egg
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 C fresh diced pineapple
1/4 C canola oil
1/4 C key lime juice
2 tsp cream of tarter
1 C flour
1 C rolled oats

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350.  Mix all of the things in a bowl.  Use cookie baller thing to scoop onto cookie sheet.  (This makes them stay round and almost like cake balls.)  Bake for 12 minutes.  Cool.  Devour.