Flashback and Foodie Friday...

It's Friday so once again that means I am joining Michael (Gollum) at Designs by Gollum for Foodie Friday and
Suzy at Kitchen Bouquet for Flashback Friday.

This week's foodie friday is themed for Cinco de Mayo and I had some trouble finding flashback photos showcasing food photos for this event. But, I did find this photo showing one of our favorite snacks in a Mexican pottery dish...homemade salsa with chunks of fresh avocado served with flour tortillas baked with pepper jack cheese...
and going way back to last fall, a bowl of chili with cheese and tortilla strips.
In keeping with the Mexican theme, let's flashback to last summer's garden and showcase...
the Mexican Shell Flower (Tigridia pavonia)...
and the thousands of Monarch's that migrate through each fall on their way back to Mexico for the winter.
Thank you Michael and Suzy for hosting these events. Click on the links at the top of the page to see other's participating.

Chicken part two...

Since I bought the family pack of chicken breasts we had them for dinner again tonight. This time I made Honey Lime Grilled Chicken but since it is raining and only 46 degrees, I chose to bake them at high heat with the air-bake feature turned on rather than stand out in the cold to grill.I found this recipe on a blog called "Mommy's Kitchen", but forgot to bookmark the exact page.

1/2 cup honey
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup lime juice (about 4 limes)
1/2 cup Mr. Yoshidas Gourmet Sweet & Savory
4 - (4 ounce) boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

Mix the marinade together in a zip lock bag. Add the chicken breasts and marinade in the refrigerator overnight or 4-8 hours. The blog author said "you can use teriyaki sauce, hoison sauce or pineapple juice if you cannot find Mr. yoshidas sauce. I get mine at Sam's club" so I used hoison sauce but only about 4 tablespoons. I will definitely make this recipe again, trying it on the grill next time.

Marsha - Thumbs Up
Jeff - Thumbs Up - he is so funny these days, if he sees I take a photo of my plate he knows to give me the thumbs up or down so he just flashes me the symbol after a few bites ;}

Chicken with Sour Cream and Salsa

Cook Time: 35 minutes
Ingredients:
4 each skinless boneless chicken breast
1 package taco seasoning mix
1 cup salsa
1/4 cup sour cream
Preparation:
Place chicken breasts in a lightly greased shallow baking dish; season with the taco seasoning mix. Pour the salsa over the chicken; bake at 350° for 35 to 45 minutes, or until chicken is tender. When ready to serve, remove the chicken from the casserole, stir sour cream into salsa, then return chicken. Serve sour cream chicken and sauce with warm tortillas and Spanish rice.

I saw this recipe at southernfood.about.com a while back and I had some leftover sour cream to use up so we tried it tonight. My only change was adding some sliced black olives. No tortillas in the house so we had it with store bought black bean and cracked pepper bread and Trader Joe's fire roasted sweet corn. Not a "pretty" dish but it sure tasted great.

Marsha - Thumbs Up
Jeff - Thumbs Up

Spring brownies...

spring has arrived with the first tulips blooming outside and...inside. Of course, after the first blossoms comes the arrival of the bees and butterflies.
I bought this fun bugs and butterflies cake pan thinking how fun it would be to use for garden tea parties. My first effort was mocha brownies with chocolate ganache. They tasted wonderful and looked pretty darn cute.
I think you will be seeing lots more bugs and butterflies as summer arrives ;}

meat and potatoes...

One of my families' favorite ways to eat a beef roast is to make it into "beer roast"

One jar of Heinz chili sauce
One can of beer and
One envelope of Lipton Onion soup mix.
Mix the sauce together and pour over the roast and bake at 300 degrees for 4 hours. Shred the meat with two forks and serve with the sauce it was baked in.

I was all set to make it today, when I realized I didn't have any onion soup mix. Then I remembered my friend, Carol [There's always thyme to cook] did a Passover edition of Flashback Friday with several brisket recipes and one was very similar with the beer and chili sauce. You can view all the recipes for brisket she shared at the link above but this is the one I used. Now being a farm girl, I don't buy my meat in a store but from a local farmer and a freezerful at a time. It is cut and labeled by a local butcher and I have never had anything labeled brisket - but this recipe sure worked well with roast. Carol's notes are in parentheses.

Brisket
by Irene Wolpin

1 4-pound beef brisket
Kosher salt
Pepper
2 onions, thinly sliced into half moons (I use 3 large onions)
1/2 cup ketchup
1/2 cup prepared chile sauce (Heinz Chile Sauce - I use the whole bottle)
3 tablespoons brown sugar (I use a bit more)
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 12-ounce bottle beer

Salt and pepper both sides of the meat. Place beef in a roasting pan. Cover with onion. Combine ketchup, chile sauce, brown sugar, garlic, and beer. Pour mixture over meat. Cover securely with foil. Bake at 300 degrees F for 4 hours or more until tender. Remove the meat from the pan, and puree the gravy with an immersion blender to thicken it up. Slice the meat against the grain, and return it to the gravy! Tastes even better the next day. Freezes well! Sometimes I just puree half the onions because we like the onions. and most of the time I never even bother to puree it at all. It's great no matter how you do the gravy.

It was fall apart tender and I didn't slice the meat, just shredded it apart with two forks.

Marsha - Thumbs Up
Jeff - Thumbs Up

Cookie Bouquets...

This weekend was the first bridal shower for my future daughter-in-law, Tammy. My wonderful sisters and sister-in-laws hosted a beautiful open house shower for her and it was just so much fun to have lots of guests come and celebrate this happy time with our family. I wanted to contribute something for her special day so I volunteered to make the centerpieces. Ever since Mary (Once Upon a Plate), showed many of my friends and I how to paint cookies I have wanted to try them. I admired hers and then Suzy's (Kitchen Bouquet), then Monique's (La Table De Nana) and many others but was always hesitant to try myself because I am not a fan of the hard royal icing. Recently my friend, Jayne (A Grain of Salt), came across a glace recipe that hardened enough to paint on while still staying soft and tasty so I knew now was the time! It has been a busy couple of weeks and I didn't have a whole lot of extra time so I ordered 12 dozen cookies from our local bakery made into cookie lollipops. After unpacking them I gave them all a coating of the glace icing in white, blue, pink & yellow.
After the first coating of icing dried, I got out my painting supplies, Wilton cake decorating colors, Wilton food writers and inspiration photos from my friend's blogs.
I started with my favorite design, the bird nests...
and added toparies, wreaths, , flowers, birds & trees...
Texas bluebonnets and wildflower baskets...
pineapples and tulips.
There were some N loves T's and 72 different butterflies
and finally they were individually bagged and 10 cookies were added along with tulip candy suckers into 10 different centerpieces.
Did you notice the scrapbooking supplies? Jayme took photos of the guests at each table and printed them out on her photo printer. During the shower each table had to create a page with their photo, signature and words of advice for the bride and groom which made a wonderful keepsake of the day for Tammy. I wish I would have taken some photos of the pages...we had some very creative women attend ;)

Nathan's great aunts who served us homemade muffins, fruit kabobs and dip, nuts & candy, orange juice and coffee...
a great time was had by all.

PS - there wasn't a cookie left to bring home ;)
The glace icing and a cookie decorating tutorial can be found at Our Best Bites. I am so thankful to Jayne for discovering this site and forwarding it on to me. She is such a great friend, a surprise package of cookie sticks, food writers and wilton icing colors came in the mail soon after I told her my centerpiece plans. Thank you Jayne! (I owe you big time)

Flashback, Foodie Friday...

It's Friday...so that means once again I am joining Michael at Designs by Gollum for Foodie Friday and Suzy at Kitchen Bouquet for Flashback Friday.
Does anyone remember the movie, Waitress, with Keri Russell? It had a wonderful song...called "the pie song"..."Baby don’t you cry, gonna make a pie, gonna make a pie with a heart in the middle." ...

Some of my online friends and I took "heart" to the song and did all kinds of things with a "heart in the middle". My offering was Ina Garten's Portobello Mushroom Lasagna. You can find the recipe on Food Network HERE.
I plated it up with another heart stuck in the middle...parmesean cheese melted in a heart cookie cutter.
Dessert was also heart themed...Chocolate Truffle pie. This recipe is from Kraft Foods and you can find the recipe HERE.
Hearts came into this plating in the form of heart shaped ice cream.

I hope you enjoyed this foodie flashback! Since I didn't have a kitchen blog back then, it is fun to be able to post some of these past events on this blog. Please click on the links to Gollum & Suzy to view others participating in these events.