Saturday, February 26, 2011

New Delish

Thank you guys so much for posting your opinions on the last post. I think we should go ahead and switch things up! Lets open it up as a general recipe blog. If you have a recipe that you love and are willing to share, please post it. I am fine if you want to use this as your "recipe book" to store all your favorite recipes for easy access.

Anyone can post whatever type of recipe they would like. There are labels that can be helpful in searching and I suggest you use them. For example: main dish, appetizer, drink, salad, soup, bread and dessert.

To keep in the spirit of delish I would like to encourage you to try other people's recipes and post about it. Along with that, try not to be offended if someone doesn't like the recipe you posted. You may end up with suggestions that would make your dish even more amazing. 

I would also like to encourage you to post a picture if you can. I am such a visual person I prefer to make recipes that I've seen a picture of.

So, lets do this! I'm excited to see what you've all been eating!

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Catherine's Squash Revisited

This is another recipe I made a while ago but didn't post. I wanted to try acorn squash, so I decided to make stuffed squash. I cut the acorn squash in half and baked it until it was almost done (I don't remember now how long that took; probably half an hour). I stuffed it with sausage stuffing (this recipe, only I made it on the stovetop instead of in a crockpot), then drizzled melted butter and grated parmesan cheese on it and baked it again for another 10 minutes.

(I made a lot because I was visiting family in Utah.)

So, what did we think? Well, I got rave reviews from all my family, even the one who doesn't really like squash, and the one who doesn't like sausage. But... I didn't really like it. I guess I was expecting it to taste more like butternut squash, which is sweet. It didn't. My mom described it as an "earthy" taste, which I guess is pretty accurate, but I wanted a sweet contrast to the stuffing. So I tried it again after Christmas using butternut squash. Definitely tastier, although not nearly as cute. I do like that the acorn squash makes a perfect individual serving, which you don't get with the butternut.

Catherine's Poached Eggs

I made this a long time ago, but I'm finally getting around to posting it. I can't eat eggs, so I used my husband and daughter as taste testers. Both like eggs, and both are a little picky, so I figured they'd be good judges. I thought the texture was very interesting, like a mix between a hard-boiled and a fried egg. Both my judges liked them, although not enough for me to try it again except on special occasions. When they're perfectly happy with an easier egg, why change it up?

Sunday, February 13, 2011

Posting Behind the Bird: Turkey Salad

Going to post regarding the turkey salad recipe in this episode later today. We had a roasted turkey breast last night so I thought this would be a good way to use some of it up.

I couldn't actually find the recipe on the food network website but this is the episode when the crew was "snowed in" and had to do what they could during that time. Here is the link to utube for the episode.

Here's the recipe:
1 lb Roasted Turkey meat
1/2 c mayonnaise
1/2 small lemon freshly squeezed
2 stalks celery, thinly sliced
1/2 small red onion, finely chopped
1/2 c pecans, toasted and roughly chopped
1/4 c dried cranberries, roughly chopped
2 TBSP fresh sage, chiffonade
1/4 tsp kosher salt
black pepper, to taste

Combine everything in a large airtight container. Refrigerate for 1 hour before serving. Store in the fridge for 3 days.

I normally don't like fruit mixed with my meat. But this was great. I think the fresh sage really added a lot to this salad.

It is on page 163 if you have the book.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Next Rotation?

As we're entering our last week of this rotation I want to hear your thoughts on delish. So, if you could all just answer the following questions in the comment section, that would be great!

1. Do you want to continue choosing recipes from the Good Eats cookbook? What are your general thoughts about this book?
2. Do you like the structure of delish? Would you rather make it more or less formal? 
3. Danielle and I have been tossing around the idea of making delish more of a place where we all submit recipes we like and recommend from any cookbook. Do you like this idea?
4. Do you find it too hard to make the recipes in the one week time frame?
5. What is your favorite and least favorite part of delish?

Thanks a bunch! I'll post my thoughts down there later in the week, but I would love to know what you guys have to say!

Cami's Yogurt

This was a total flop for me. I have heard of people making yogurt in their crockpots and I thought this would be a good idea. I used the Good Eats recipe but changed the cook times to the crockpot recipe. This resulted in thicker milk like substance, but not quite yogurt. It just didn't thicken up. So, I tried cooking it a little longer which resulted in a tan colored mess that didn't look or taste like yogurt. It was more like spoiled milk. A total flop. I do want to try again, but if anyone has tips for making yogurt, please pass them along!

Sunday, February 6, 2011

February 6 Episode: Yogurt: Good Milk Gone Bad

I chose this recipe because I've wanted to make my own yogurt for a while but just haven't. I also chose this one because the list of recipes you can make are huge, so hopefully there is something for everyone. You can find the episode here. It includes:
I can't wait to see what you guys choose!

Cami's Lava Cakes

Although I thought these were good I didn't get a lava center and therefore was also disappointed. I was worried they would be too soft and left them in for an extra minute or two. I was wrong. If I had not had lava cake before I probably would have been thrilled since they taste like a flourless chocolate cake, which I like. 

I didn't do the melted ice cream because I prefer warm cakes with cold ice cream. I may try these again and decrease the cooking time by a bit.

Melanie's Chocolate Lava Muffins


I was super excited to make these! Then, I was super disappointed with the results. Like Danielle, my centers didn't have any gooey lava. I think the reason was because I added too much flour. I was following the recipe from the book when I made it, and the book only gives measurements for the flour and sugar in weight, not volume. Since I don't own a food scale (it's on the wish list, but the wish list is long so I don't know when I'll actually ever get one), I did my best to estimate based on an online weight to volume conversion tool. My conversion came out to about 1/3 cup for 1 1/2 oz. of flour. I halved the recipe, so I used about 1/6 cup. Again, this was an estimate since the smallest measuring cup I have is 1/4. Anyway, after I made them I happened to look at the online recipe and saw that the ingredients were listed by volume rather than weight, and I should have only used 1 1/2 Tbsp. (since I halved it) rather than 1/6 cup. Big difference!

So, my muffins turned out pretty dense. They were still pretty good, especially served with lots of vanilla ice cream (first I served it with the sauce, but then decided I preferred the cold ice cream) but I wanted to see a lava center. I used 70% cacao dark chocolate, and I think it was a little too rich for me. If I were to try again, I'd just use regular semi-sweet chocolate chips or maybe even some milk chocolate. I have another recipe I'd like to try that calls for putting a chocolate chip cookie on the bottom of the muffin tin, then you invert the muffin to eat it and you have a cookie on the top!

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Cami's Black Beans

These are quite tasty! I've never made beans that didn't come from a can before. These are significantly better than canned. I slightly undercooked mine but I liked the texture better than if they were all mushy. I made mine into burritos with broccoli and cheese and served them on handmade tortillas. Delicious! Okay, I thought they were delicious. Calder asked me to pick out the "mommy onions" and Jason said they were okay but he doesn't like black beans. So I now have 10 burritos in my freezer waiting for ME to consume them. All well, I still thought they were delicious. 

I can't wait to try the baked beans but I'll probably have to wait for an occasion to do it so I don't have a freezer chock full of beans. 

Danielle's Chocolate Lava Muffins

I don't have a picture because I actually made these a long time ago, way before we decided to use Good Eats as our new book for delish.

I saw this episode and really wanted to try the lava muffins. They looked so easy, and they were. They were a piece of cake to throw together, and they cook VERY quickly. And they were delicious.

But there was no lava flowing from our muffins... I made a half batch (six muffins), but I should've filled only four muffin cups. Each muffin was really small and cooked faster than I anticipated. If you do divide them as the recipe says, you might want to cook them for a little less time -- or just watch them closely.