Day 196 - Popcorn

7/14/2010

I love popcorn. Sometimes I have it for lunch. Sometimes I have it for breakfast. Sometimes I even have it for dinner.

When I was a child my parents grew popcorn in our garden.

We used to have it for Sunday evening supper because we had our dinner after church in the early afternoon.

Day 190 - Chocolate!

7/9/2010

Sometimes stand-by passengers will bring treats for gate agents.

It doesn't really help them get a seat on the flight but it does say, "Thank you for helping me today."

It is always unexpected but a nice treat!

Day 184 - Corn on the Cob

7/3/2010
Corn!! My local grocery store has corn. What better food for the 4th of July?

Corn on the cob is one of my favorite foods. I particularly love the lovely bi-color "sugar baby" varieties that the local farms have during the summer here. When I was a child, my parents always had corn in the garden and it was always a treat to go out an pick some ripe ears and put them straight in the pot for dinner. Good corn on the cob can be boiled, roasted on the fire or even cooked in the microwave oven but it always must be eaten with lots of butter and some salt. One of the strangest corn dishes I ever had was a "flavor of the month" of Magnolia Ice Cream, "sweet corn"!

Day 144 - Cinnamon Toast

5/24/2010
I have been craving cinnamon toast all day! Probably because I was working near the coffee place that has those cinnamon rolls! Amazing that this spice, made from tree bark, is so wonderful with a little sugar and butter on plain toast.

Day 136 - Cinnamon Muffins

5/16/2010

Gotta love those little holes in the English muffins for holding the melted butter.

Day 131 - Amish Friendship Bread

5/11/2010
Rachael gave me a starter for this Amish Friendship Bread. You let the starter ferment in a plastic bag for 10 days, mushing it and adding ingredients on some days. Then you add more ingredients and divide up the batter into 4 bags to give away. The remaining batter is used as a base for this cinnamony bread. Yummy!

Day 97 - Apple Pie

4/7/2010

Passover is over so it is OK to use regular flour for baking. David bought too many apples for the charoset, so I decided to make an apple pie. Yum!

I love making pie. Sometimes I even just make the pastry without any filling. The design in the crust was made with a pie topper cutter from NordicWare. It flips over to a design with leaves.

Day 90 - Passover Popovers

3/31/2010
During Passover bakers don't use regular flour. Matzo meal, which is crushed matzos, is used instead. I have never made popovers before but was inspired by a King Arthur's Flour blog to try these made for Passover by using matzo meal and matzo cake meal. They were really good hot with butter and jelly. The actual recipe I used came from the iVillage web page.

Day 89 - Passover

3/30/2010

During Passover we eat matzoh (unleavened bread) and charoset.

Several of the young people who attended our Seders through out the years have said that charoset is their favorite part of the meal and my husband wants it even if we are not having a seder. This is the recipe I have used (multiplied for many more servings):

1/2 cup finely chopped apples

1/4 cup chopped almonds or walnuts

1 teaspoon cinnamon

cinnamon bark, if desired

Passover red wine or grape juice (concord grape)

Apples must be very finely chopped; add juts and cinnamon with sufficient wine to make a mixture that holds together. Add cinnamon bark, if desired.

I have seen many different recipes for charoset that have other ingredients from dates or raisins to different nuts. There is also a choice of how finely chopped the mixture should be. Some people like it almost paste like and others want it chunky. The apples you use will also change the taste of the mixture. I like using tart or tart-sweet apples such as Granny Smith, Macintosh or Fuji. Never use red or gold delicious. For our seders we always made some with wine and some with grape juice for children or those who didn't want the alcohol.

Day 84 - Pancakes

3/25/2010

On weekends I like to make breakfast: pancakes; french toast; waffles or some other treat. Because of my work schedule, Thursday is part of my "weekend" so we had pancakes for breakfast. (from scratch - no mix for me!)

Day 50 - Squash

2/19/2010

A lovely display of squash at the grocery this evening.

Day 17 - Food Shot

1/17/2010
Red Velvet cup cakes.
This was part of the dessert spread at the REI Denver post-holiday dinner. They were made by pastry chef Barkley Eberline of Eat Dessert First.

These are some of the other beautiful offerings from Eat Dessert First