A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

June NightShift Birthday Party: Zebra-stripes Purse Cake

 

Happy Birthday to our June Birthday girls on NightShift!  Had some extra time this month and wanted to play around with a new cake design so I worked on this little Zebra-stripe and pink purse idea.  The great thing about purses is that you can make them as detailed as you have time for and even with the hour I had to put it together once the cakes were stacked, it was a cute and quick come together idea.  Will have to explore this more with future cakes when I have more time. 

Gene's Low & Slow Boneless Country Ribs for the Grill or in the Oven

 

Gene's been watching Food Network and exploring his own food making abilities lately. And I am the grateful recipient of all of his efforts.  These ribs are his best so far:  sticky, crunchy, sweet and smoky outside with fall-apart tenderness on the inside--and he didn't even have to break out the big grill to make ribs for just the two of us!  Yummy!

BLTO's (Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato, and Vidalia Onion) for Long Hot Summer Days

 

Mmmm....BLT's or BLTO's, my favorite summer sandwich, the ONE sandwich where I actually crave good old Sara Lee Iron Kids soft white bread. For me, not even toasted. I love the crisp bacon paired with the soft squishy white bread, the fresh lettuce and juice tomatoes with the bite of onion and the tang of real mayo.  That's an all-American sandwich that defines summer!

I have a trick to cooking the bacon, one I learned in the hotel business in professional kitchens. It won't save you time overall but it will save having to stand over a pan for a half hour dodging oil splatters that seem to know how to target hands and forearms. The trick is baking sheets, parchment paper, and the oven to get perfectly straight pieces (no curly cue bacon for good BLT sammiches) of crisp bacon.

Not Always a Dessert: Ham & Swiss Bread Pudding with Tarragon Mustard Sauce

 

When I think of bread pudding, I think of a wonderfully sweet creamy concoction created out of bread, eggs, sugar, spices and fruit.  But last night I stepped out of the plane of usual and created a  wonderfully creamy SAVORY bread pudding using that same base of cubed stale French bread and eggs, but added ham, celery, carrot, and savory spices that I served with a tarragon mustard sauce.  It was a huge hit in our house.  It has the down home tastiness of a ham and cheese casserole but with a little more downtown taste of the tarragon mustard sauce. This will be on our table again and again!

One of the great things about this recipe is that it's very versatile in the ingredients it will take to make a wonderful dish. I call recipes like this "This or That" recipes, meaning you can use this or that or some other thing and still make it turn out very well which comes in handy when you have, like the title of this blog, a fridge full of food...but not necessarily every exact ingredient for a certain recipe.

 

Move over Food Pyramid for Choose My Plate

 

I really like the way First Lady, Michelle Obama, has headed up replacing the old Food Pyramid style nutrition icon with the new Choose My Plate icon. To me, even though this lacks in depth information about calories, the simplicity and the heart of the message is much, MUCH better.  This is what a meal plate should look like, even breakfast.  The concepts of breakfast and lunch or easily seen and comprehended, breakfast is if you think in terms of omelet with veggies, fruit, and whole wheat toast or yogurt with fruit, carrot sticks, and half a whole wheat English muffin sort of thing.  The glass icon for the milk is good, although I wish a second glass was there for water.

I applaud this change.  Very nicely done.

Stuffed Baked Tomatoes

 

Nothing says summer like tomatoes off the vine...and I couldn't wait so I actually pay way too much for vine-ripened tomatoes at the grocery but they were worth it!