wonderment » grab a spoon

Linkfest: Summer Drinks

kelly — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 20:22:32 +0000

Some things I’ve bookmarked recently:

Is It Iced Coffee Weather? – Simple, yet informative.
Frothy Ginger Infused Limeade (Raw Epicurean)
Iced Coffee? No Sweat (NYTimes)
Savebucks! How to make incredible iced coffee at (One Particular Kitchen)

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Linkfest: A Bit Healthier

kelly — Tue, 25 May 2010 14:39:45 +0000

Some things I’ve bookmarked recently:

7 Fat-Fighting Dinner Recipes | Fitness Magazine – Specifically, Southwestern Black Bean Cakes with Guacamole, but there are 6 other recipes that look good too!

Salads

Mediterranean Chicken Salad | Epicurious.com – Salad is good. Chicken isn’t bad. We might be on to something.
Chinese Cabbage Salad | Eating Well, Living Thin – Ah, a recipe modified to be healthier than the original!
PF Chang’s Chicken Lettuce Wraps | Recipezaar – Not specifically salad, but I always feel like I’m eating a salad when consuming these (at the restaurant – I haven’t actually tried this at home).

Shrimp

Spicy Grilled Shrimp | The Kitchn – Grilled shrimp (well, all shrimp really) is a great low-calorie protein. I love it on the grill, though I haven’t tried it spicy yet.
garlic shrimp pasta | simmer down! – OK, if you switch out the pasta with a whole-grain variety, or just eat less of it, I think you’re good here. No cream sauce to clog your arteries.

Soup

Black Bean Soup | The Other Side of Fifty – Soup is a tough line to walk, but this one seems to do well. Full of enough stuff to stave off hunger and still relatively healthy.

Other

Low Fat Oatmeal Banana Bread | Joy the Baker – Bread should be enjoyed in all its varieties, including low-fat (though I am not a lover of banana bread, I know many of you are).
meringue nests | Night Baking – Meringue, an excellent (kind of) diet cookie! Low in fat, at least (not low in sugar, but I can only do so much!).

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Linkfest: Chocolate Obsession

kelly — Mon, 24 May 2010 18:16:17 +0000

What’s that you say? You’re having difficulty getting enough chocolate into your diet? Never fear, I have collected some recipes to help you get through this trying dietary dilemma.

Some basics:

chocolate ice cream | use real butter – If you’ve ever made your own ice cream, you know it’s worth it. Try it with Dutch-process cocoa powder and you’ll swear you’ve died and gone to a special level of heaven where they keep the good chocolate.
Chocolate-Ricotta Icebox Cake | marthastewart.com – Want something a bit fancier than ice cream but just as cold? Here you go.
Sour Cream Chocolate Cake | Bake List – Everyone needs a good cake recipe.

Taking cake to the next level:

Texas [Chocolate] Sheet Cake | TheKitchenSinkRecipes.com – Chocolate cake Texas-ized. Fab!
Kitchen Sink Bundt Cake | Sugar Plum – Oh my. It’s like Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (chock full of so much extra stuff, you can hardly find the ice cream!), but cake!

Feeling nutty? Hazelnutty?

Nutella Cake | LKS – Two words that belong together? Nutella and cake.
Chocolate Hazelnut Tart | Naturally Ella – It’s like a brownie, in pie form, with hazelnuts!

A bit more sophisticated:

White chocolate mocha cupcakes | One Ordinary Day – One day I will find decaf espresso powder, and then my stockpile of mocha recipes will finally get put to use. (More likely, one day I will go back on caffeine and then try out all these recipes in celebration.)
Chocolate Kahlua Budino | Food Lover’s Odyssey – Did I tell you of my love of Kahlua on Friday? No? Well, I love Kahlua. Let’s make some pudding with it, OK?

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Linkfest: For your [hungry] inner child

kelly — Fri, 21 May 2010 17:44:37 +0000

Lately, my inner child wants to eat lots of yummy (bad for you) foods at a time that will most likely ruin my appetite for the upcoming meal. I have to tell her to be quiet (sometimes I shove a rice cake in her mouth, and that seems to hold her off a bit).

But if you feel like indulging your inner child, here are some recipes for you

Nesquik Cake | Palachinka – Nesquik reminds me of my childhood, and the 80s. Not that I consumed much Nesquik – not a huge fan actually. This recipe isn’t so much a Nesquik cake as it is a cake dusted with Nesquik, but it sure is pretty!

Snicker’s Bar Pie | recipegirl.com – Taking a classic candy bar and turning it into pie? Fabulous! I don’t even like Snickers that much and I want to make this.
Homemade Twix Bars | Cooking Books – And Twix bars? Lord help us all [fit into our jeans].

S’mores Cupcakes | Living Eventfully – If you find yourself unable to go camping this summer (perhaps you’ve waited to long and can’t find an open campsite, or your camping supplies have gone MIA, or you insist on sleeping in a real bed – whatever), make some of these up and reminisce in a distinctly sleeping-on-a-mattress, living-with-air-conditioning way.

Kahlúa and Cream Cupcakes | How To Eat A Cupcake – Don’t have an inner child? Or maybe your inner child is really a rebellious teenager? Feed her Kahlua cupcakes and she’ll love you forever.

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Linkfest: Fruity Summer Deserts

kelly — Thu, 20 May 2010 14:09:15 +0000

Some things I’ve bookmarked recently:

Banoffee | Mike’s Table – , a warning – this is a banana desert, but it’s combined with toffee. Is toffee OK with you? I have a hard time keeping all the different caramel-like things straight.
Fresh Strawberry Cake – Country Living – ooh, strawberry cake. This sounds fabulous!
pink lady cake | smitten kitchen – More strawberry cake. I didn’t know that pink cake was strawberry-flavored (though perhaps I should have guessed this)
Strawberry Shortcake | Chocolate Shavings – I always want to eat strawberry shortcake. Always.
Strawberry Shortcake | The Dabble – So having multiple recipes is a good thing, and to be expected.
Strawberry Banana Cream Pie | Joy the Baker – One of the few fruit combos I enjoy, strawberry-banana, might make an excellent pie. Might have to give this a shot, but modified for a graham-cracker crust (since hates normal pie crust).

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Linkfest: Brunch

kelly — Wed, 19 May 2010 15:38:24 +0000

and I are planning to host a brunch for family the day after ‘s wedding. Conveniently, I have several recipes bookmarked in my “brunch” folder. Of course, we’ll be making cinnamon rolls (because I have a fabulous recipe that we both love), and there should probably be fruit salad (it is June). I’m really tempted to make Prize Coffee Cake, but there are some good coffee cake recipes below that I’d like to try. Sometimes it’s good to try something new, even if you know the new can’t possibly be better than the usual.

What do you serve at brunch? (Or, perhaps more appropriately, what would you like to eat at brunch?)

Waffles

Pancakes

Lemon Poppyseed Pancakes | About.com

Coffee Cakes

Sour Cream Coffee Cake with Chocolate and toffee Chips| Furey and the Feast
Sour Cream Coffee Cake | TheKitchenSinkRecipes.com – Can it compete with Prize Coffee Cake? Probably not, but it can probably stand on its own regardless.

Muffins, Biscuits, and other Breads

Cereals

Miscellaneous

Pattypan Squash with Eggs Recipe | MyRecipes.com – Maybe I can try this late in the summer with pattypans from our garden!

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Friday5

kelly — Fri, 14 May 2010 18:43:52 +0000

What is absolutely the best cookie you’ve ever had? I’m a huge fan of Super-Sized Ginger Chewies from Big Fat Cookies by Eleanor Klivans (the cookie book I talk about all the time – it has every recipe you will ever need except for chocolate chip cookies*). I have made them as gifts, given the recipe out to others, and just adore it. Yum!
What is a cookie you really don’t care for? Oatmeal Raisin. Anything with raisins, actually. (Yes, I know earlier I said I was eating raisins. Raisins aren’t bad. Baked raisins are bad. There is a difference.)
What are some other cookies you are rather fond of? Girl Scout Samoas, Chips Ahoy Chewy Chocolate Chip, snickerdoodles, and shortbread cookies. I love shortbread. It’s all that butter; can’t go wrong with butter.
Grocery-store cookies are, of course, never as good as anything that comes out of someone’s kitchen, but what’s a packaged cookie that’s still pretty good? As mentioned in #3, Chips Ahoy Chewy Chocolate Chip. Yes, they’re technically not that good, but they stay chewy forever! And chewy is good.
In general, do you think cookies should be chewy and gooey, or should they be crispy and crunchy? Definitely chewy, though perhaps not gooey. Crunchy is also OK (like nuts in the cookie), but I like them to overall be chewy. Crispy I’m not so much a fan of.

*Yes, there are in fact several chocolate chip cookie recipes in this book. I have tried two of them and they massively failed. Like, unuseable, uneatable, never have I had a cookie be so awful failed. So I don’t recommend those. But all the other recipes in it that I’ve tried have been perfect and delicious!

Do you know how long I could talk about cookies? Especially baking cookies? It’s a good thing there were five (and only five) guiding questions. Otherwise, we might still be here tomorrow.

Linkfest: Gardening and Homegrown Food

kelly — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:52:52 +0000

Here in Minnesota, it’s not exactly gardening season yet (last frost date, according to Bachman’s, is May 10), but it’s definitely time to start planning. Here are some gardening and fresh food resources for you:

Should You Grow Head Lettuce or Leaf Lettuce in Your Garden? | Planet Green – Short but helpful article on growing lettuce in your garden.
How to Attract Birds in St. Paul or Minneapolis, MN Year-Round | Associated Content – Useful for locals, if you’re in the planning stage of gardening (which you should be, because it’s not time to plant yet), and you want to bird-watch.
Where to find pick your own farms and orchards in Minnesota – It’s probably too late to join a CSA, but never too late to pick your own (limited only by the seasons). I’ve only gone the orchard route, but would try something else if anyone wants to plan it.
Enjoy Fresh, Local Food All Year | Mother Earth News – Excellent tips, including links to more resources.
GrowVeg.com – Free 30-day trial of the Garden and Crop Planning Tool – If I knew the dimensions of our garden areas, I would have started my plan already. Because, well, I’m a planning girl. I like graph paper.
75 Things You Can Compost, But Thought You Couldn’t | Planet Green – We don’t compost, and I don’t really see myself picking up this habit any time soon. But, I know people who do, or who want to. This is for them.
Vegetable Harvest and Storage | University of Missouri Extension -
Vegetable Storage at Home | University of Vermont Extension -
How to Get Your Kids to Eat Almost Anything | Dumb Little Man – Bound to be controversial, but I found this article many months ago and bookmarked it for reference later. I like it. Think I can use it on myself?

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Linkfest: Grilling

kelly — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:48:32 +0000

For most people (in this hemisphere), now that it’s warm out, grilling season has begun. Our grill happens to be less than five feet from the kitchen door, so we grilled throughout the winter (just have to make sure to shovel a path after it snows), and our neighbor across the street grills daily, year-round. But I know that’s not the norm, so I’ve saved these for sharing until now. Enjoy!

Grilled Herb Chicken with Vinaigrette | Have Recipes-Will Cook – This makes me wish that I was better at maintaining an herb garden. I have that one plant… but anything in pots tends to die on me.
Taco Chicken | Our Best Bites – Yum. You can hardly go wrong with lime, garlic, chili powder, and cumin.
Chicken Satay Recipe | hsa*ba: please eat – I love Chicken Satay, especially the peanut sauce. Such an odd combination, but so tasty.
How to Prepare Chicago Style Hot Dogs | Apartment Therapy The Kitchn – This is just for Prince Charming, though I’m sure he could figure it out on his own. I think we need to have a party, though, since otherwise we’d have a ton of leftover ingredients (I don’t care for hot dogs that much, especially Chicago-style; chili dogs are about the only way I eat hot dogs).
Grilled Pork Chops with Chipotle Sauce | Grumpy’s Honeybunch – We don’t make pork often, but I do enjoy a pork chop now and then. It’s such an easy meat to cook – like chicken, but without all the worry (of undercooking).
Easy Ribs Menu | MarthaStewart.com – I have not yet been brave enough to try ribs, on the grill or otherwise. Sure would like to give it a try some day, though.

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Bookmarks for today: Lemons!

kelly — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:25:29 +0000

Next Tuesday is the final night of my literacy class, and so we are having a party. I volunteered to bring lemon bars, because sometimes I like to make things other than cookies. However, this has me searching for a lemon bar recipe that is … similar to those they used to serve at Starbucks (they may still, but I don’t frequent Starbucks anymore, so I don’t know). Searching through all the recipes I have bookmarked (to share with you all, of course), here are the lemon-y ones I found.

Citrus Bars | marthastewart.com – Basic, classic lemon bars.
Creamy Lemon Bars | Straight from the Farm – Rave reviews of this in the comments.
Lemon Bars – Everything Nice – Double the filling. Interesting. But… I love the shortbread crust part too! Oh, what to do?
Ultimate Lemon Butter Bars | Apartment Therapy The Kitchn – This is closer to what I want to make, but will take a lot more work. The only time I have to bake is Sunday afternoon, or late Monday night after class.
Lemon Coconut Bars – Probably not the best for class, since not everyone loves coconut, but I sure do. Ooh, these would be good with lime juice subbed in, wouldn’t they? ~You take the lime and the coconut…~
Lemon-Olive Oil Cake | TheKitchenSinkRecipes.com – Cake, oh I love you. I would eat all of you, right now. You know, to help you fulfill your destiny.
Lemon Buttermilk Tart | Rosa’s Yummy Yums – I’ve never made a tart before. This looks like a good recipe to start with. Since the “crust” is just shortbread, I wonder if would eat this (he who eschews all things crust-like).
Tartest Lemon Tart | Babette Feasts – Because I really need an excuse to buy a creme brulee set like this one.
Key Lime Pie | King Arthur Flour – OK, not lemon at all, but this looks so much better than the “Key Lime Pie” flavor of Yoplait Light yogurt that I had for lunch. Sigh.

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