Rhubarb Sauce

It’s too early to be sure, but I think this could be a dessert-heavy week here on the blog. Usually though, people don’t complain about seeing a lot of sweet things. I never hear “you post way too many chocolate recipes” but rather “how about some normal food?”

If you remember, way back in June, my Mom and I had a rhubarb adventure when a neighbor let us harvest some from his yard. We got to work right away making some amazing rhubarb streusel muffins, but we had plenty of rhubarb leftover for another recipe. We decided to make a simple rhubarb sauce, using this recipe which calls for just butter, rhubarb, and sugar. I added a dash of vanilla and cinnamon as suggested in the comments. The sauce tasted great, but the sad part was that our sweet teeth had been satisfied by the muffins. So we let the sauce cool and put it in the freezer for another time.

When the rest of the family had to head home on the Fourth of July (you know, for real jobs and things…) my Mom and I broke out the sauce and some vanilla ice cream, and enjoyed a sundae while watching the fireworks and playing a game of Scrabble. Don’t worry, we didn’t eat all the sauce, there’s plenty leftover so everyone can give it a try. But you probably should bring your own ice cream.

Strawberry Nutella Muffins

With an overflowing quart of local strawberries, I got the urge to bake. Oh, I ate plenty of strawberries right out of the carton, but fresh strawberries have a short life and I wanted to preserve a few. I found the recipe for Strawberry Nutella muffins, and decided to give it a try. I was concerned about having a dozen muffins and a jar of Nutella in the house when I was done, but it was a risk worth taking. (If you’re looking for a slightly less decadent strawberry muffin recipe, try this delicious whole wheat version!)

The recipe itself is a fairly simple one. After you put half of the batter in the muffin cups, you add a spoonful of Nutella to each cup and cover it with the remaining batter. The end result is a chocolate hazelnut surprise in the middle of each muffin. The first one out of the oven was the best, with just a little steam still rising from the top and warm Nutella in the center. I knew I had to get these to the freezer fast, to share with my family on Fourth of July weekend. If only I could forget about that jar of Nutella in the back of the cupboard.

The muffins kept well, but the Nutella lost that creamy quality. So my advice is to go ahead and make these but try to gather enough friends to enjoy them the very same day. It shouldn’t be too difficult to gather a group excited to try freshly baked Strawberry Nutella muffins!

Blueberry Yogurt Multigrain Pancakes

Just in time for the long holiday weekend, Smitten Kitchen posted a new pancake recipe – Blueberry Yogurt Multigrain Pancakes. These pancakes use white, whole wheat, and barley or rye flour with plain yogurt to create a thick batter. (To be fair, we only had white and whole wheat flour in the house so our pancakes had one less grain.) We did, however, have plenty of blueberries. A large bowl of them disappeared quickly – some when into the pancakes, some went right into our mouths. These pancakes seemed to take longer to cook than I expected, but the end result was a nice pancake.

These were good, don’t get me wrong, but they weren’t our favorite pancake. Of course, I like the idea of making whole grain pancakes, but I used whole wheat flour when we made these Banana Sour Cream pancakes and they came out great. The banana adds some sweetness and body, and by all means you could throw some blueberries in as well. But sour cream isn’t something that you always have in the refrigerator, so maybe I need to try that recipe with Greek-style yogurt? I may still be on the hunt for the perfect pancake recipe, but we will sure enjoy breakfast along the way.

Tasteful Selections Parmesan Potatoes

One of the sponsors of Fitbloggin‘ was Tasteful Selections, a company which offers bags of ready to cook small potatoes. There are no other ingredients in the bag, just potatoes! Using a coupon, I tried the Sunrise Medley bag which contained red, white, and purple varieties.

I used the bag to make these Parmesan Potatoes, an easy recipe which combines the potatoes with oil, garlic, seasonings, and Parmesan cheese. The potatoes took longer than indicated to cook, but were ready in about 45 minutes.

Everyone enjoyed this side dish, but there was nothing particularly special about these potatoes. Personally, I’d rather try different varieties of potatoes which are readily available at area markets. I already view potatoes as a healthy ‘convenience’ food, and don’t need them to be packaged for me. Still, I appreciate the opportunity to give these a try!

*These potatoes were obtained using a coupon for free product provided by Tasteful Selections. I did not find these in the Boston area; my Mom actually located this bag in a Connecticut Price Chopper. I was not compensated in any other way for this review, and the opinions contained are entirely mine.

Mediterranean Chopped Salad

One of my favorite meals this weekend was Mediterranean Chopped Salad, which I made by loosely following a recipe from Oprah. I love that we served it salad bar style, and everyone could pick and choose their own salad ingredients. The choices included chopped Romaine, grilled zucchini, eggplant, and red onion, roasted red peppers, grape tomatoes, olives, and feta cheese. Everything looked so pretty on an antique tablecloth from my grandmother.

The salad bar was great, but the basil dressing stole the show. I used a smoothie maker to blend everything together, and the result was incredible. I was a bad blogger and didn’t document the exact measurements, but the dressing roughly contained:

1 chopped shallot

1 spoonful of minced garlic

1 spoonful of mustard

1 spoonful of sugar

1 cup basil leaves

1/2 c. red wine vinegar

1 c. olive oil

1/4 c. water

Here is a shot of my Dad’s (first) bowl, ready to be enjoyed with a glass of wine on the deck. We may have to make the Mediterranean salad bar a Fourth of July tradition!

Margarita Ice Cream Sandwiches

I hope everyone had a great Fourth of July weekend! My weekend extends through today, and the forecast dictates that I must be outside basking in the sun. But first, I’ll share the recipe that was indeed the hit of the weekend. My Mom suggested we make these Margarita Ice Cream Sandwiches, from Cooking Light. Wondering why the lime sherbet isn’t green? Because the local store didn’t sell any, so we went ahead and made our own. Cookies and ice cream from scratch on a holiday weekend!?! Oh yes we did…

First, we made the cookie dough very early in the morning. We formed the dough into two logs, wrapped them in plastic, and placed them in the refrigerator to chill. The dough was fairly crumbly at first, but firmed up nicely after a few hours. We sliced the logs into circles, garnished them with sugar, salt, and lime zest, and baked the cookies.

The cookies were really good just out of the oven, a sort of lime shortbread. We could have stopped right there and just had tea and cookies. But with our hearts set on ice cream sandwiches, we pulled out the Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker. It is really easy to make ice cream with the machine. I poured in half and half, lime juice, and more lime zest, and about 20 minutes later we had freshly made lime sherbet. Who needs green food coloring anyway?

Once the cookies were cool and the sherbet was frozen, we were ready to make the sandwiches. The assembly was really the trickiest part because you need to move fast before the ice cream and sherbet have a chance to melt. Then, you need to wrap each sandwich in plastic so that it holds it’s shape as it refreezes.

Finally, late that night, we sat down the enjoy the fruits of our labor. Some people like a margarita at the end of a long summer day, but we loved these margarita ice cream sandwiches. I am pretty sure your family will too!

Preparing for the Fourth

I am super excited to have an extra long holiday weekend this year, starting right this very minute. I am spending it away with my family and looking forward to enjoying the beach. As usual, there are plenty of cooking projects planned. We’ve having salads and kabobs and pizzas and pancakes, and even some ice cream!

Last year, the hit of the weekend was this Zucchini Galette.

The year before that, the hit of the weekend were these Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Sandwiches.

You never know which recipe will be the hit of this year, but I’ll be back next week to let you know. Have a happy Fourth of July weekend!

Pasta, Swiss Chard, and Goat Cheese

I know, another goat cheese recipe, but it was on sale this week and I couldn’t help myself. This dish was based on a recipe from Real Simple, but I simply couldn’t discard the Swiss chard stems as the original recipe suggested. I also wanted to use whole wheat pasta, and then I decided to add some Parmesan cheese as well. Next thing I knew, this became a different dish entirely.

I think Swiss chard is one of my favorite greens, and complements pasta well because it has just a little more bite than spinach. Unfortunately, the goat cheese got lost in the shuffle in this dish. I could taste the cheese, but missed the fluffy texture. Next time I would skip the Parmesan, and add the goat cheese as a garnish only. This is a great recipe if you’ve got a lot of Swiss chard from your CSA!

1 T olive oil
1 large bunch Swiss chard (12-15 large leaves)
2 c. dry whole wheat pasta, boiled and drained with cooking water reserved
2 oz. goat cheese
2 T Parmesan cheese

Heat olive oil in a large frying pan. Wash Swiss chard and separate leaves from stems. Chop the stems into 1″ pieces, and saute in olive oil for 10 minutes, or until softened. Tear the leaves into pieces, add them to the pan, and cook for 5 minutes, or until leaves are tender. Add 2 T reserved pasta water, cooked pasta, and goat cheese to the pan and stir to mix. Remove from heat and garnish with Parmesan.

Goat Cheese Blondies

The second recipe that I made for the BBQ was much sweeter – Goat Cheese Blondies, from the blog Real Food Has Curves. The assembly phase went very well; I beat the butter, cheese, brown sugar and white sugar for the full 6 minutes that was suggested, and everything went fairly quickly from that point. I popped them in the oven, and a short time later there was an amazing smell in my kitchen! I did run into some trouble cutting these out of the pan, and a few of them ended up a crumbly mess. My advice is to make sure the pan is greased and floured really well, and make sure the blondies are sufficiently cool before you try to cut them. And of course, any that aren’t good enough to take to a party are still fine for personal consumption.

The goat cheese here is pretty subtle, but you end up with just a slight salty flavor to balance the sweet. And of course any dessert with dark chocolate chips is bound to be good. This recipe takes an (American?) classic and makes it just a bit more elegant and interesting .

Kale and Chickpea Salad

I try to be really honest about all my kitchen adventures, because you have to try (and sometimes fail!) in order to appreciate the times when you really succeed. I set out on Sunday to make three new recipes, and two of them were for a BBQ I was attending that evening. New recipes for a party? Is she serious? Why yes, I am. Overly ambitious perhaps, but serious.

The first recipe was Cosmic Kale and Chickpeas, which I intended to serve over brown rice. The first step is to make a cashew sauce with soaked cashews, water, garlic, and bouillon. I loaded the ingredients into my food processor, and pressed the button. Oops, my food processor does not have a watertight seal like a blender. Cashew sauce flew everywhere. I took out some of the water and tried again. More cashew sauce spilled. At this point I realized the chopped onion was burning in the frying pan. There was such a mess in my kitchen I wanted to cry.

But I regrouped. I turned down the heat on the onions, and added in the chopped kale and chickpeas. Then I mixed up a new sauce with 1/4 c. peanut butter, 1/4 c. water, a dash of soy sauce, and a dash of red pepper for just a little heat. When the kale was cooked, I stirred in the peanut sauce and about 2 cups of cooked brown rice. A few minutes later, I declared the dish done, and then calmly cleaned just about every surface in my kitchen.

I did get at least one compliment from someone who really liked the peanut sauce, and there was no salad left when I took the bowl home. Whether you make the recipe as it was originally written, or use the “peanut butter shortcut”, you will never know what you can do until you try.