Well, we’ve had some lovely grey days lately. Today had a nice bonus because it was rainy too! Found this video and thought I’d share because it seems perfect for a day like today. I get a kick out of the cooking videos these guys make. Sometimes the vids are over the top but this one just makes me want to curl up with a cozy blanket in front of the screen drooling. Oh and this isn’t food one can eat everyday, but once in a blue moon, I say indulge. Life is short.
Personally, I could have done without the crushed potato chips. Probably would have put a layer of homemade or at least Pillsbury refrigerator biscuits on top with the shredded cheese. Mmmmmm! I would also skip the maple syrup, I’m not a big sweet person when eating something savory. What do you think? Me, I’d be happy as a pig in slop as the saying goes.
I also have another cozy dish for you. I ran across it yesterday and was blown away by the pastry. So amazingly flakey! And easy!
You can find more info on this amazing dough here.
As an added bonus I’m including a short recipe, also by Chef John (no affiliation). It’s his version of puff pastry which might be kind of fun to play with and not intimidating like other similar recipes. If you’re feeling super indulgent, make these with the sausage gravy from your favorite biscuits and gravy recipe. It’ll probably be a little bite of heaven. We all need a bit of that. Enjoy!
Here are just a few more wonders I ran across in my search for raspberry baking nirvana:
and
Aren’t these just enchanting? If you watch the second one with the blue berries, you’ll be amazed at the amount of work in those little berries…but the payoff, is so wonderful!
As you can guess, I won’t be making any of these, I’m simply happy to enjoy their beauty and admire the patience of the artist who created these. Frankly, I’ll just be happy to eat my raspberry stash “au natural”. Enjoy the videos even if you’ll never make these wonders!
P.S. No affiliation or “kickback” btw, just pure admiration!
Raspberries were on sale in the grocery (a rare, rare occurrence) so on my little internet safari this weekend I focused on recipes where they were the stars. You don’t need to twist my arm, not even a little bit. Here’s some of what I’ve found:
As I said these are the gems out of many found, at least IMHO. Who knows if I’ll ever make them, but I do love to dream, don’t you? If you actually act on your dreams and make one of these, send a pic my way so I can add it’s beauty to this post to inspire myself and others! Happy weekend and thank you for reading! 😀
Ok, hello and how are you today? I just came across a mind-bending kitchen hack for something I absolutely hate doing. Combining cold butter into flour for a baking recipe. Hate using this:
This article explains how and makes me crazy because I’ve never had any success with it, just a big clump clinging to the cutter. Very sad.
Well, those days are over. While researching Raspberry Scone recipes I came across an idea that is genius and my days of limited pastry making are over…yay! Just go here for the video.
Ok, so you may know this already but since I didn’t I’m sharing in case there’s someone else out there like me who’d be very happy with this info. 🙂
Oh, and here are a few other links to really yummy sounding raspberry scones. Enjoy and have fun baking:
White Chocolate Raspberry Scones (and I happened to get a bag of white chocolate chips “free” with a recent Vons.com order…so yum!) This could be your Sunday brunch treats!
Hi, yes, I know it’s spelled “hors d’oeuvres” but I recently saw it spelled like it is above on someone’s blog (can’t remember whose). I can never recall how to spell these little mouthfuls of goodness, but so far have always had success in finding the correct spelling if I type my ghastly version into Google. The internet very politely and without judgement, finds the correct spelling for me. 🙂
Anyway, enough about spelling. Since Christmas and New Year’s are barreling down upon us, I thought you might enjoy a recipe or two for entertaining. Just look at what I found today:
Aren’t these yummy looking? Since I’m not planning any holiday get-togethers I’ll probably only make one or two hors d’oeuvres so I decided to share a few with you! I’m planning on entertaining myself with these… 🙂 …yum!
Here’s the link to a 1-minute Brie Bites video by Erin of Well-Plated. (No affiliation, just loved her hors d’oeuvres and thought you might too.) Plus, it looks really easy and quick! So enjoy.
Well, this must be the year the pecan tree (which towers over this house) is fruiting. The amount of activity and thunks on the roof has been rather startling. Oh, and when I say “activity and thunks”, I don’t mean nuts falling, I mean squirrels going out of their little minds and landing with thuds on the roof while chasing one another and leaping from branch to roof! And the chattering, nattering lectures they deliver to anything impeding their nut gathering has me in stitches. They can go on for five minutes at a crack!
Well, the weather here in Southern California has been reasonably gracious for most of the summer. That is, until three or four days ago. It’s predicted to be 105F+ for the next ten days. OMG. Here in my neck of the woods that means at least 110 to 115F.
I’d gotten away with waiting till about 3 or 4 p.m. before having to turn on the living room window AC unit. Not today though and probably not for the next ten days either. I turned it on today at 1 p.m. Yep. We’ve entered Hades and will probably be here for the next two months, the hottest here in So Cal.
The grocery service I use had cans of Progresso soup on sale about two weeks ago for $1.09 per can vs. $3.79 which was great! I bought about ten cans. Guess what’ll be the source of my meals for the next week and a half? You guessed it, cans of soup. “No effort food”.
I didn’t even put the cans away in the pantry since I knew I’d be using them soon and figured it was just as easy to fish a can out of a bag on the floor, use it, rinse it out and then toss it. Again, “no effort food” when the temps soar. Each can will be two meals. Easy peasy as they say.
I really need to find some free photo editing software, that image is just way too big for this column. But it’s all I’ve got so there we are…Progresso soup.
I’d like to have some salads but in heat like this, I find bags of salad have a very short shelf life so ordering two at a time is a waste of money and food. By the time I get to the second bag, it’s starting to “melt” into rot. Again, a courtesy of the cheap ass landlord for buying used junk for his rentals. In this case the refrigerator. Supposedly it’s new but I think not because it drips incessantly all over the food from the top of the refrigerator compartment.
The last three or four days, I’ve also started sleeping in, while it’s still cool in the morning. Then getting up and working and watching stuff on my computer from about 3 p.m. till almost 2 a.m. just because of the heat. This way I can sit in front of the small fan in my office/front bedroom so I’m not so hot, nor am I an ice cube from laying in my bed.
This is a really crumby junk of a rental. The tiny AC window unit in the bedroom is a piece of broken down trash that the landlord put in when the previous unit broke. Air only comes out of the left side of it and blows right on my head. Nothing on my body. The louvers are all broken so there’s no using them for any kind of directional aim. Yes, Eric Westrope is a cheap ass landlord who gets by with spending as little as is humanly possible on anything. If you knew what I pay for rent, you’d die. But then it’s the way all of L.A., San Bernadino and Orange counties are.
because he lives in Canada and I can enjoy snowy weather in this heat. He has a tiny cabin on his property and often treks out to it and spends the day. He puts up cooking and gardening videos among other things. The video I put up is of him canning his sweet and hot homegrown peppers. He has a very nice, relaxing voice and I often listen to him before bed instead of a television program.
It’s about 6:30 in the evening now and 96F! Ick. To my disbelief, something going by outside just caught my eye…a woman jogging. To each their own I guess.
Well that’s it for today. Will let you know if I decide to take a vacation from blogging (which as you can see from the dates on my last two posts, I already have done this month). Sorry about that. Enjoy Dale’s video.
I try not to talk about my health too much here since we all have problems but today just takes the cake or in this case the Conga. My day started out okay, I had a slice of Oroweat Jewish Rye with cold butter (yum) and a glass of V8. Seemed innocuous enough.
Well, it took on a life of its own. I’ve always had a spastic stomach and colon but it hasn’t bothered me for some time. Till this morning.
I spent the entire time (all morning and into the afternoon) less than ten feet from the bathroom. During this time, every cartoon and image of Conga lines I ever saw in my life popped into my head.
Yes, my stomach and intestines were doing a wild Conga gone horribly wrong. I didn’t dare step away from the bathroom. Even going to lay down was risky.
Sad thing is I’m now totally empty and starving even though I lay in bed all morning, moaning of an upset midsection. Colonoscopy anyone? I’m empty, it’d be the perfect time.
But I don’t dare eat a thing since I have no clue what set my bod off. It’s like having about 50 hands squeeze your stomach and intestines off and on, but all at different rates…kind of like the photo above. And they’re doing it horribly wrong to Conga music! I had planned to have chili for dinner but I wouldn’t dare now!! This hasn’t happened in quite some time.
I used to be a really “fun” date. A guy’d take me out to dinner and half way through it, my whole midsection would take on a life of its own and I’d be in the restroom for a half an hour or so. See? Real fun date. And it wasn’t like I was upset, it just seemed that anything out of the ordinary that caused me anxiety (good or bad) could do it and without any warning. I just learned that I’d better find the W.C. FAST.
With my left wrist out of commission I amaze myself with the stupid and sick sudden need I seem to have to write posts. Yes, the one-handed typist is out of her mind. Must be the heat which is starting to rev up here in So Cal. As you may or may not know, I hate summers here. Lately the days have been very humid, like 50-60% humidity. UGH.
On a totally different subject, I’ll never understand why people continue to use “cream of X” soups when making recipes “from scratch”. Boggles my mind! They go on and on about how they use seasonal ingredients and make meals from scratch for their family’s well-being and blah, blah blah and blah. Excuse me, but how is adding something whose label reads like a who’s who of ingredients that aren’t found in homemade soups meeting these goals?
Hmm…I guess I get grumpy when I’m in pain. Didn’t mean to rant like that. It all started when I saw a pack of “assorted pork chops” for sale while placing my Vons.com order last week. They were listed as “pork loin chops assorted ends value pak” for $2.49/#. So I called and asked what they meant. Turns out, it’s exactly that…a bunch of loin, shoulder, rib, blade chops.
Of course, my new rule for buying food, especially meat, is that I must have a recipe in hand or at the very least, in mind before buying. Keeps me from complete impulse buying. So often, I buy something with a vague memory of making something yummy but don’t think it through any further which means it languishes in the fridge till it turns bad and has to be tossed.
So I went on a little online hunt. Here’s what I found: Easy Crockpot Pork Chops with Onion Soup Mix. Sounded good except for the onion soup mix. So off to find a recipe for that without the package aka “from scratch” and found this.Looked good and had positive reviews but I still wanted to include some cabbage and kraut.
So my little (hah!) search turned into an entire afternoon safari where one thing led to another and I wasn’t even on Pinterest!
This continued till I was so overwhelmed by the variety of recipes I found that I gave up. Way too much to think about in this heat! It was 84F in the house. Time to turn on the living room AC. It’s so much more efficient than the cheap-ass landlord’s used piece of junk in the bedroom. That can be on and set at 70F all day, turn it off and five minutes later…walk into a hot room. My electric bill for half of June and July was $96+! Hate to think what August, September and October will be (hottest months of the year).
Anyway, back to pork. Whatever I do to it will have to occur in the slow cooker, since no oven is going on until November rolls around. I must close for now due to my left wrist and hand but I’ll leave you with this Pin. Actually two pins since I’m in a really grumpy mood but hate being totally negative.
Found a new food blog and it had some good recipes. But I really have to wonder what goes on in some people’s minds. The recipe involves thin, sweet Italian sausages like this:A person commenting on the post, wondered where to get such sausage. The blogger simply replied “You can probably find these sausages in most Italian pork stores.” Funny, I didn’t know there were “Italian Pork Stores” out there! Italian delis, yes, but a store devoted just to Italian pork? News to me.
So, did you ever note something like I did with the above info, only to leave a salient element like the link to the info out? Very annoying. But I will share with you a link to a truly yummy salad that I’m going to “have” to make.
Yes, this is one where I don’t have everything on-hand, so it’ll have to wait till the next grocery trip but I think you’ll agree it’s a keeper for upcoming hot summer days.
Looked good and had positive reviews but I still wanted to include some cabbage and kraut.
