Check out today’s spotlight at Eat At Home Cooks. It is one of my favorite ingredients…peanut butter! Yay!
Archive for January, 2011
Menu Plan Monday
Posted in Cooking, Menu Planning on January 10, 2011|
Good morning, fearless readers! It is the start of another white and cold week here in South Central Kentucky, and we are expecting some more snow today and tomorrow and cold temperatures all week long. I know we shouldn’t wish time away, but I am missing some green grass and warm weather around here.
Recently, I have started planning springtime projects (at least in my mind) and I can’t wait to start on them! I see another raised garden bed and maybe a paver sidewalk or two as well in my future. Before the sidewalks can happen, C & I will have to extend a couple of gutter drain lines so that will probably be one of the first things we do.
Speaking of projects… since August, I have been trying to finish our upstairs. I decided since we had lived in our house for four years that it was high time to give those rooms some personality. When we built, we just used “builder’s beige” because it was easy at the time. Actually, it was Sherwin Williams “aesthetic white”, which I really loved since I used it in our living room, entry and kitchen. I decided the upstairs was the perfect place for some needed color punch. One bedroom is now purple, one is grass green, and the bathroom is a cucumber green. I promise before and after photos when I have the furniture in the rooms.
Speaking of furniture, we already had an antique cherry bedroom suite that I used in the green room, but I wanted a metal bed painted silver in the purple room. I don’t know if you have priced metal bed-frames or not, but they are not cheap!! Lucky for me, C’s mom had an old metal bed-frame in her attic and gave it to me. I have one great mother-in-law! I have just started refinishing it and hope to have it done in the next couple of weeks. Yay!!
As for food, I am trying to keep the sweet stuff to a minimum after the holidays, but it is so hard! I am still planning on one dessert a week, but I try to spread it around so I don’t indulge too much!
Leftover Pork BBQ
Hamburgers & fried potatoes
Pizza night
Salisbury steaks & roasted potatoes (I know I have made these 2 weeks in a row, but I love them!
Double Chocolate Snowball cookies (new recipe)
I am going to end on a cute note…here is Ellie snoozing on her new doggie bed!
Sweet Potato Casserole
Posted in Cooking on January 8, 2011| 10 Comments »
This is my absolute favorite holiday recipe! If I have this to eat, I don’t even have to have dessert. I got this recipe from a co-worker many years ago and it has been on the Easter/Thanksgiving/Christmas table ever since. I used to make it every time, but after C & I got married and I had other dinners to attend, my mom took over this recipe.
I took it back over, but I wish she was still here to make it for me. She discovered a great little trick to it as well. Neither of us liked to use the canned sweet potatoes because the fresh cooked is so much better. We boiled them for a while, but the casserole would always turn out runny. Mom discovered that by baking the sweet potatoes there was a lot less moisture and the casserole sets up much better.
3 cups baked and mashed sweet potatoes
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup additional butter, softened
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans, toasted
1-2 cups mini marshmallows
I baked 5 small to medium sweet potatoes at 400 degrees for 45 minutes. Just remember to pierce the skin to let the steam out. Mash the baked potatoes for this recipe.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9×13” baking dish and set aside. Combine the potatoes, sugar, eggs, milk, salt, vanilla and 1/2 cup of softened butter. Pour into the baking dish.
Mix the remaining butter with the brown sugar. Add the nuts and marshmallows and sprinkle the mixture over the sweet potatoes. Bake for 30 minutes.
Come join the fun at the My Baking Addiction and GoodLife Eats Holiday Recipe Swap sponsored by Kerrygold
It is a new year and a new spotlight at Eat At Home Cooks! This week’s focus ingredient is broth.
2010 in review
Posted in Uncategorized on January 2, 2011|
I want to thank all of my readers for a successful blog in 2010 and I hope to continue to grow!
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
Crunchy numbers
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 4,100 times in 2010. That’s about 10 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 138 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 253 posts.
The busiest day of the year was November 16th with 161 views. The most popular post that day was Cookies & Creme Cake.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were eatathomecooks.com, mybakingaddiction.com, goodlifeeats.com, southernplate.com, and thepioneerwoman.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for easy caramel cake, quick and easy caramel cake, velveeta cheese dip, hot cheese dip, and easy carmel cake.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
1
Cookies & Creme Cake July 2010
3 comments
2
Quick-And-Easy Caramel Cake October 2009
1 comment
3
Hot Cheese Dip November 2009
1 comment
4
Mississippi Mud Cake April 2010
5
Chocolate Cake with Cocoa Fudge Frosting August 2010
Brown Butter Blondies
Posted in Cooking on January 1, 2011|
There seems to have been a lot of recipe talk about browned butter in the last couple of months. I have seen multiple recipes and decided to give one a try. I made this for our chili/soup/game night back in November for one of the desserts and it was a HUGE hit!
These bars are rich and moist! Our guests kept going back for them again and again so this recipe is definitely a keeper. I found it on the website, My Baking Addiction, which is one of my favorites.
1 1/4 cups (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 cups packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
2 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup butterscotch chips
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9×13” baking pan. Line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper; grease and flour the parchment paper or spray with non-stick cooking spray.
In a saucepan over medium heat, cook the butter until it turns golden brown; remove from heat and let cool while you prepare the other ingredients. (Note: I probably could have cooked the butter a little longer, but I was scared it would burn.)
Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine browned butter and both sugars.
Add the eggs. Beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
Stir in the vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture until thoroughly combined. Fold in the butterscotch chips. Pour into the prepared pan.
Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely before slicing the bars. ENJOY!!
Come join the fun at the My Baking Addiction and GoodLife Eats Holiday Recipe Swap sponsored by Kerrygold
Picture Perfect Cooking 