Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Buttermilk Pancakes


Saturday morning I decided to make pancakes. I had purchased some buttermilk the night before, so I thought I’d give buttermilk pancakes a shot. I have this cookbook I used in the past to make pancakes. What I really like about the Betty Crocker cookbook is “she” offers variations at the end of the recipe. One of the variations includes the buttermilk version.

I guess I wasn’t totally awake as I was doing this, so I was carefully following the variation methods, and totally forgot to add in the sugar & vegetable. As I was cooking them I thought they were SO thick. Then as I took the first one off I tried a bite (I always do this!). Good thing I did. I immediately though “UGH…. these are not sweet at all. This recipe sucks!” Then I realized the missing ingredients. So I trashed that batter and started all over. This time, the batter was just fine, and the pancakes turned out delish! I think I prefer this buttermilk version over the regular version. Oh, and I used 1/2 whole wheat flour and 1/2 white; and I also added in 1 tsp vanilla. I thought they tasted great! I served them with turkey bacon cooked alongside on the griddle! YUM.

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Buttermilk Pancakes

adapted from the Betty Crocker Cookbook

Ingredients:

1 large egg
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 cup buttermilk
1 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp canola oil
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla

Directions:

In a small bowl combine flours, baking soda, baking powder.

In a medium bowl, beat egg until fluffy. Add in buttermilk, oil, sugar. Once combined, add in dry ingredients until smooth.

Heat griddle to 350 degrees. (The original instructions said 375, but mine always burn if I heat my griddle that hot.) Pour 1/4 cup of batter onto griddle and cook until tops are bubbly. Flip, finish cooking, and enjoy!

Sunday, September 14, 2008

An Addiction

Sorry for the fuzziness, an iPhone snapshot.

My name is Erin, and I have an addiction…  Hershey’s Pumpkin Spice Kisses.  From the first bite I was hooked.  They’re soft & creamy, with the perfect amount of pumpkin spice.  I love autumn.  I love the temperature, the colors, the smells, the feeling.  Everything about autumn I love.  Football season, “back to school”,  festivals… I love it all.  I love all things pumpkin.  Pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread (to be baked soon), pumpkin spice lattes, and now, my newest discovery, these little bits of heaven wrapped in foil.  From the moment I purchased them I knew I wanted to make a special treat with them.  I have something planned, but I won’t be making it until right before Halloween.  I knew there had to be something else I could make.  Friday night I decided to use up the Rice Krispies I had and make some Rice Krispie treats.

I like to dress them up, with peanut butter, or candy, or anything I feel like adding.  The boy is a bit of a purist, and prefers them in their classic form.  So I made a half batch of regular Rice Krispies.  The second batch I “spiced” up (no pun intended).  After the marshmallows melted I added in 9 Pumpkin Spice Kisses, removed from heat, and stirred until they were melted.  Then I added the Rice Krispies like usual.  It was the perfect twist I must say!
If you like pumpkin spice ANYTHING definitely purchase some of these kisses, and make these Rice Krispies as well!

Can you tell which are Pumpkin Spice & which are regular???


Sunday, September 14, 2008

Garlic Rosemary White Bean Dip

I’ve been meaning to make a white bean dip for quite some time.  I even bought the cannellini beans a while back, but just never got around to it.  Flash forward to now… I recently purchased a bag of Archer Farms Garlic Rosemary Baked Chips.  These are just liked Baked Lays, but with gourmet flavors.  I was first turned onto this line of chips by my friend Jamie.  She introduced me to the black pepper & salt variety.  I had been purchasing Archer Farms blue corn chips for a while, but never tried any of their other flavors.

For those of you who don’t know, the Archer Farms line is Target’s gourmet packaged food.  All the Targets I shop at here in Nashville have a pretty large expanded food section.  I’m talking frozen food and everything.  They aren’t SuperTargets, though we do have one, it’s just about 25 miles southeast of town, so I’ve never been.

Back to the food…  The Garlic Rosemary chips were really good, just a really strong distinct flavor.  Luckily this means you don’t want to consume the whole bag in one sitting.  I knew when I first ate some, they were a chip that would compliment something well.  What exactly they would compliment I wasn’t quite sure.  On this lazy Sunday while watching the Titans, I finally decided to make the white bean dip and eat them with the chips!  I browsed the Food Blog Search and came across this recipe and used it as my inspiration. I eyeballed the ingredients and made it using my magic bullet blender.

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Garlic Rosemary White Bean Dip

adapted from GourmetGirl

Ingredients:

1 can cannellini beans, rinsed & drained
a couple drizzles extra virgin olive oil
salt
black pepper
dried rosemary
a few squirts lemon juice
3 cloves roasted garlic

Directions:

Add beans, garlic, salt, pepper, rosemary, then eyeball amount of olive oil & lemon juice. Blend until smooth. Add more oil & juice if necessary (I added in more because mine was really thick & I had a hard time blending it). Serve with Archer Farms Garlic Rosemary chips, pita chips, tortilla chips, or even carrot chips or slices & enjoy

The Titans laying the smack down on the Bengals.  Go Titans!

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Kentucky Cookin’

I’m originally from a teeny tiny town in KY.  We have ZERO stoplights.  We don’t even have caution lights.  Now, there are lights at one of the railroad crossings.  Does that count?

Today in our CSA box, we finally got something I have been waiting and waiting for… OKRA!  Whoo hoo!  Who’d of thought, I’d be so excited about a slimy lil vegetable?  See, when I was growing up, occasionally my babysitter would take us to Po’Folks.  They served iced tea in Mason jars, but most importantly, fried okra.  Whenever I told my mom I liked fried okra she was shocked.  I don’t think I ever got her to make it for me, but I always ordered it at Cracker Barrel.  So today when we got it in our share, along with yellow squash, I immediately knew what I was having for dinner.  Fried okra & fried squash!  As I mentioned, my mother never made me fried okra, but she often made fried squash.  I don’t know what to do to make it as good as hers, but I sure do try.
Another thing I’ve been wanting to tackle was buttermilk biscuits.  I bought some buttermilk a week or so ago, and I keep inching closer to the sell by date.  Since I got out of work a couple hours early for a quick doctor’s follow up appointment, I had plenty of time to try out the biscuits as well.

First up, biscuits!  I’m not gonna give you the recipe, because I got it from a great blog.  Just go to the wonderful Homesick Texan’s blog to get the recipe for these TASTY biscuits.  I will say though, I don’t trust myself with all the biscuits, so I halved the recipe.  And I used 1/2 whole wheat flour, 1/2 white flour.

My dry ingredients before adding in the butter.

They were really yummy, but I think I need more practice to get them fluffier!  This was my first biscuit attempt, EVER.

Next up, friend okra & squash.  I didn’t follow an exact recipe but here’s my ingredients.
okra
buttermilk
salt
pepper
hot sauce
yellow cornmeal

Cut the okra into little slices and soak in buttermilk for about 5 or more minutes.  Mine soaked 30 minutes.

Soakin’.

Then I realized I didn’t have any cayenne for the breading, so I added hot sauce to the buttermilk to give it some hot flavor.  Next time I’ll add more.
Combine cornmeal, salt, pepper, (cayenne pepper if you have it) in a bowl.  Heat oil (I used canola) over Medium High heat until hot.  Once I started cooking I turned the heat down to Medium.  Transfer okra to the breading mixture (I just scooped them out of the wet bowl with one hand, a couple at a time) and toss in breading to coat.
Testing the temperature of the oil.

Messy!
Fry in oil until golden brown.

Good stuff.  Honestly… you should try it at least once.
Just sprinkle some salt when you take em out of the oil.  Let cool & enjoy!  I did the same thing for the squash, I just didn’t get a picture.
Along with the biscuits, fried okra & fried squash I cooked chicken breast in the oven with barbecue sauce, just like my mom used to do.
AND FOR DESSERT… earlier in the summer I purchased some sorghum from my CSA.  I have great memories of being at my Grandma & Grandpas.  After dinner my granddad, Pop, would take his fork and smoosh butter on his plate with molasses or sorghum, and then spread it on a biscuit.  It’s been so long since I’ve had that.  That’s part of the reason I bought the sorghum.  So now that I made the biscuits I felt it was the perfect ending to my “Kentucky Memory Meal”.
Butter, meet sorghum.

I warmed it in the microwave.

Right before eating the very last crumb.
Each one of the things I ate for dinner today brought back a separate memory from home.  I hope you try at least one of these delicious bites at least once!