July 3, 2009
Friday Link Love
Let's jump right in!
Fresh tomatoes are starting to come in to season so why not play around with them? Over at The Adventures of Kitchen Girl she posted a Caprese Pie. How fabulous does that look?
Susan at Stick, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy posted a Crabby Corn Chowder that looks right up my alley!
Make your own Peppermint Patties? Sounds good to me! That's just what Nosh With Me did.
As you know I'm a big fan of chocolate and peanut butter. Dinner and Dessert shared some Gravatt Squares (aka Chocolate-Peanut Butter Squares) that look amazing!
Truffle ice cream? I'll take some of that! Kieran over at Ice Cream Ireland revisits a recipe from the past.
My blog daughter Teri posted a delicious looking Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole that I'm going to have to try soon!
Cheese and pasta...What's not to like? Hop over to What We're Eating and take a look at the Baked Rigatoni with Turkey Bolognese. Yum!
Strawberries and mint are such a fabulous combination. Why not make some limeade with that combination. That's just what The Sensitive Pantry did!
How about a cookie to round things up? Over at Picky Palate she posted Double Chipped Cookies Stuffed with 100 Grand...I think the title for that one says it all!
What caught your eye this week (or last)?
Posted by Dianne at 9:22 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
July 2, 2009
What's For Dinner? As Well As Our CSA Week 7!
Well as you can see I didn't have time to get a recipe in last night. Oh well. Life happens. You just have to go with the flow!
Tonight we're having a slow cooker pot roast, with roasted fingerling potatoes from our CSA, as well as left over corn and asparagus. Alexis is having homemade chicken noodle soup.
What are you having?
And now let's talk about what we got from our CSA earlier this week.
We got snow peas, fingerling potatoes, more garlic, 2 large cucumbers and some green beans. We've already used one of the cucumbers and some of the snow peas. I'm cooking the fingerling potatoes with the roast for tonight in the slow cooker. I plan on using the green beans on Saturday for our 4th of July celebration. (Oh how I wish I had a grill!) Next week our CSA has the week off because they are harvesting wheat, so we'll get back to updating the week after!
Hope you're all having a good day!
Posted by Dianne at 1:37 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
July 1, 2009
What's For Dinner?
First up let me just say...How is it possible that it is already July?? It seems like just yesterday it was January. Time most definitely flies!
Tonight Alexis and I are having salmon with dill, roasted asparagus and roasted corn on the cob. Jamison is having a steak and roasted potatoes.
What are you having?
I hope to be back tomorrow with a recipe, but it will all depend on how things play out the rest of today. Tomorrow I am going over to church to help start decorating for camp so things will be jumping then. We will see. If you don't see a recipe tomorrow morning then recipes will resume on Monday with Better Bites. I'll post What's For Dinner though and hopefully Friday Link Love if I have time to sit down and actually locate some links!
Posted by Dianne at 1:28 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
June 30, 2009
What's For Dinner?
Today was another long day, but a fun one! Today I got a bike and we explored a bit more. Adventures are always fun! This evening after dinner Alexis and I rode together. Such fun!
Tonight we had lasagna (I had some frozen in the freezer), roasted asparagus and salad. My parents head back to Tennessee tomorrow.
What are you having?
Posted by Dianne at 8:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
June 29, 2009
What's For Dinner?
Whew what a day! We took Alexis for her 6 year check up today and then we went out and about. Grams and Pop got her a new bike for her birthday because she had gotten too tall for her old one and then we went exploring. We also ran by the orchard and picked up some fresh peaches, blueberries, peas and yellow squash. We left about 9 this morning and got back around 5:30 this afternoon. Busy, busy, busy!
For dinner we had left overs basically. We had the squash we picked up today, some green beans and new potatoes from last night, some sandwiches, salad, etc. For dessert we made some homemade peach ice cream.
What are you having?
Posted by Dianne at 8:25 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
June 28, 2009
Penguin Party Bash
Whew! The penguin party is over and I'm sitting down and still for the first time in days. Man do my feet hurt, but it was all worth it! Miss G had a fabulous birthday party, with family and friends and a grand old time was had by all. That's my kind of party!
Last year, the afternoon of her Tinkerbell birthday party, just after everyone had gone home, Alexis turned to me and said "Next year I want a penguin birthday party!" When I told people about this they assumed she would change her mind sometime during the year, but Alexis much like me, is all about making a decision well in advance and keeping to it, so a penguin party it was!
This year the cake was very simple. It wasn't anything difficult, but Alexis loved it and it took me next to no time to decorate. That my friends is my kind of cake!
I baked 4 - 13 X 9 inch cakes to make the ice shelf, 1 - 8 X 8 inch cake to sculpt into the hill the igloo was going to sit on and 1 cake in a heat proof round Pyrex bowl to make the igloo. I used the pieces that I shaved off the "hill" to make the terrain more "natural" and bumpy for the ice shelf. I placed the cake on a big board covered with blue cello paper to make the water.
I also cheated a bit. When I realized how many cakes I was going to have to bake to make the ice shelf and igloo and calculated that the recipe I was going to use was going to need 30 cups of cocoa powder I decided that I was going to go the cake mix route. I normally make all cakes from scratch, but you figure out how much 30 cups of cocoa is going to cost and you can see how expensive it was going to be to make this cake! I ended up using the chocolate variety from Dr. Oetker and it was really fabulous!
I also used the Wilton Buttercream icing recipe that I normally use. I used a 3/4ths to 1/4th cup ratio of shortening to butter since I'm not a fan of an overpowering butter flavor in my icing. I also use vanilla and almond flavoring in my icing. I sprinkled the top of the cake with a silvery sanding sugar to help the icing have that sparkly snow/ice look to the surface and it worked fabulously!
The penguins are all resin figures. I briefly thought about making fondant or marzipan penguins and then rapidly talked myself out of it. I treasure my sanity after all! ;oP
I made penguin sugar cookies too. These were some of the best sugar cookies I have every had! I ordered some black sprinkles and things from Fancy Flours and they included some recipe cards in my order. One of them was for a "No Fail Sugar Cookie" and let me tell you these lived up to their title!
I also made a little army of penguin appetizers! Black olives (jumbo and small), pearl mozzarella and carrots. They took bout 20 minutes to make and I got a lot of compliments about them! Someone I follow on Twitter recommended that I Google penguin appetizers and these were just too cute! I used mozzarella instead of cream cheese because Alexis isn't a fan of cream cheese. Black olives are also one of her all time favorite foods, not to mention an adoration of "white cheese" as she calls it, so it worked out nicely!
Overall it was a very nice party. The kids ran around in circles and generally did their kid things, the adults sat/stood around and chatted, ate some food and enjoyed each other's company. You can't ask for better than that.
So now I'm going to take a few days off. I'm seriously wiped out! My parents have been at my sister's house and are coming to stay with us for a few days. I'll probably post What's For Dinner between now and then but most likely I won't post a recipe until Thursday. I'm going to sit (which I haven't done in days!), relax and enjoy spending some time with my Mom.
Hope you all have a good week!
Posted by Dianne at 11:34 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)
