Pineapple snack cake...

I was all set to make a batch of quickbread early this afternoon, but then I had to go ask Jeff what sounded good to him for a treat today. He said the quickbread would be fine, but wondered if we could do something more like a snack cake. After sifting through a few recipes, I came upon this Lighter Pineapple Upside-Down Cake and ran with it.

Why did I chose this one? Well, mainly because I would of had to run to the market for any of the others. I already happened to have a big 'ol pineapple that I was actually planning on using for dinner Sunday, but I'll just push that recipe to another date. Nothing is too tricky about this cake, except for maybe the prepartion of the pineapple. Basically what you are looking to do with trim off skin, quarter the pineapple and then cut each quarter into 4 pieces to get 16 wedges. Then, just trim off the core from the end of each wedge (you'll end up with sticks now) and slice the pieces so they are about 4 to 5 inches in length. You'll have lots of juicy bits to snack on until the cake is ready at least! I know this isn't the best picture, but it's the only whole one that came out (the rack gave us troubles I think) well enough to show you how the alternating slices look.

Those trimmed sticks are then placed in sets of four into a prepared baking pan that has been sprinkled with brown sugar on the bottom. The viscous cake batter uses canola oil for the fat, instead of butter, and is flavored with tangy buttermilk and sweet vanilla. When you pour the batter on top, be sure to tap the pan firmly so it has a chance to wiggle down through the pineapple - oh, and if it goes the same way as it did for me, you might want a towel handy to clean up the bits of batter off your face! The cake bakes up very tender, moist and soft with just enough sweetness that still allows the bright flavor of the golden pineapple to pull through.

Recipes
Lighter Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

Crusty bread and gooey cheese... heaven!

Was it as beautiful outside today for you as it was here? Temperatures reaching to just about 80 degrees with a perfect light breeze - Spike spent most of his time lounging around the grass, soaking up the rays!

If we have sandwiches, we tend to have them at lunch, rather than at dinner time - however, give me a hot panini anytime and I'm a happy camper! Such was the case tonight with this Italian Panini with Prosciutto and Fresh Mozzarella I made.

I had to stop by the market this morning as I needed to pick up some plum tomatoes and while I was out, I also also nabbed a freshly baked loaf of French bread to use for this sandwich tonight. If you fancy a chewy focaccia or ciabatta for bread, feel free to use whichever you prefer. The original recipe called for hollowing out the "meat" of the bread on both sides of the loaf... I'm sure that would be a more classic way to prepare this, but carb lovers that we are, we skipped this step and the sandwich didn't seem to suffer in our opinion.

The layering begins by spreading a very thin layer of creamy mayonnaise on each half of the loaf. On top of the bottom half, shredded fresh mozzarella and threads of sweet basil are placed on top. Fresh mozzarella can be somewhat difficult to work with - sticky and soft. To make it a little easier to shred, toss the portion you want to do into the freezer for 10 or 15 minutes to firm up. Topping the cheese are paper thin slices of salty prosciutto and deep red rounds of plum tomatoes for a juicy burst. We used a The Griddler to press these, but you can get the same effect by using a grill pan and weighing the sandwiches down with a heavy skillet. Our sandwiches had an ultra-crisp crust with a moist interior, oozing with the mild mozzarella. One word can simply define our thoughts... Delicious!

Recipes
Italian Panini with Prosciutto and Fresh Mozzarella

A recipe to get in before that fresh spring asparagus is only a memory...

Fresh asparagus is still going strong and so far the bundles we have gotten from the market have been excellent! Tonight's dinner, Chicken-Sausage and Asparagus Sauté over Cheese Grits, is a recipe for two servings, however you could easily scale it up (or down) if you need more servings or if you would just like a plate for yourself.

There are many different varieties of cooked chicken sausages to choose from these days - for tonight's dish, we used a spicy version that we picked up from Costco a few weeks ago. To give the sausages a deeper flavor, we first sliced them into thin ovals and then caramelized them in a thin layer of olive oil. Because we want some of that developed flavor left behind, we scooped out the sausages with a slotted spoon and used the remaining oil and any drippings to soften a bit of red onion. Jeff is more akin to like the dish if the onions are chopped, but if the texture of sliced onion is not an issue for you, halve and thinly slice the onion instead.

To the onions, sliced asparagus, flavorful fresh thyme and a little water are added to gently steam the asparagus just until it is crisp-tender. To brighten up the flavor, fresh lemon juice is stirred in, followed by the chicken sausage to warm back up. While we were waiting for the asparagus, we also had a pot of broth on the stove coming up to a boil. Grits were soon drizzled into the bubbling broth and the grains quickly swelled and thickened within just a few minutes. For a creamy, tangy finish, we stirred in fresh crumbled goat cheese just as we removed the grits from the heat. Served by spooning the generous veggie and sausage mixture on top of the pool of grits, this dinner, done in just about 20 minutes, kept our forks quite busy until our plates were quickly cleaned!

Recipes
Chicken-Sausage and Asparagus Sauté over Cheese Grits

Now here's a way to get that spinach in...

If you're a fan of making dinners ahead of time and stashing them in the freezer to pull out for those hectic nights, you may want to try out these Spinach-Feta Turnovers I made for dinner tonight!

Wrapped inside a golden blanket is a mess of chopped onions and garlic cloves that have been softened in a couple tablespoons worth of olive oil. To those vegetables, a healthy dose of thawed frozen spinach is added. Now, I know I've mentioned this trick before, but in case you haven't seen it, I like to use our potato ricer to squeeze out the excess liquid from the spinach. I just find it less messy and more efficient that using a towel or pressing the spinach in a colander.

To add a salty bite, a couple cups of crumbled feta is added along with a few tablespoons of fresh lemon juice to brighten up the flavors. You don't have to add the dash of cayenne, but it brought added interest as there is a ton of spinach being used. If you like the spinach and nutmeg combination, a few fresh grates from a whole nutmeg might be nice. You will use both sheets of puff pastry that are included in the package (I love the newer Artisan Puff Pastry from Trader Joe's - all butter!) - once stretched out, each piece is divided into quarters and filled with a heaping mound of the spinach mixture. A light egg wash around two edges and the pastry is folded over to create tidy triangles.

You will get 8 hearty servings from this - you can cook all of them at once, or do as we did and wrap four of them tightly in plastic wrap and store in the freezer. You can then pull them out as needed and have a freshly baked turnover - you will just need to add 5 or 10 minutes to the total baking time. With their buttery, flaky enclosures, these appetizing turnovers really hit the spot this evening with a light salad on the side.

Recipes
Spinach-Feta Turnovers

How can one go wrong with cupcakes?

It won't be just an ordinary Wednesday Treat Day tomorrow for Jeff's co-workers... this week's treat is all about cupcakes!

Because it is not quite the best time for fresh strawberries in the market, I used a local batch of delicious strawberry jam for our first recipe - Strawberry Shortcake Cupcakes.

The "shortcake" part of these cupcakes is a light and moist vanilla-scented cake. If you're feeling especially extravagant, I think the addition of a vanilla bean, instead of the extract, would add a sweet boost. There really isn't anything too unusual or tricky about the preparation of these - the only things I would note would be to allow the eggs and milk to be at room temperature so the batter is silky smooth and not curdled. I do have to say though, other times where recipes have called for this and I missed it, the resulting baked good turned out just fine.

The frosting for these is just a basic butter and confectioners' sugar frosting - however, be sure to add a pinch of salt (fine popcorn salt works well) to help cut the sweetness. This is where your jam comes into play - add enough to give the frosting that fresh hint of strawberries and a light pink hue... add tablespoon by tablespoon until you get the taste and consistency that you like. I think I went a little heavy with the jam and the frosting lost some of its smooth texture, but I decided to stay with flavor over looks! If you do find some especially tasty fresh strawberries, top each cupcake with a whole berry that has been fanned out.

If you're a big fan of those chocolate cupcakes with a creamy filling inside, you may wait on those strawberry cupcakes and give these Chocolate Cupcakes with Cream Filling your attention.

While these cupcakes are a bit more fussy preparation wise, that extra work paid off in the texture department. While the above were light with a tighter crumb, these chocolate guys are a bit more tender, airy and almost spongy (in a good way though). The reason? Cake flour and taking the time to separate the eggs and beat the whites until they were stiff and glossy. Before adding the whites, the rich chocolate batter was thick and fairly dense - however, as soon as those whites were folded in, the batter flowed beautifully from a spoon. I do have a note on this process - be sure to just stir in a small portion from the whites into the batter to help lighten the base. This will make folding them together much easier and help not deflate all the air you put in the whites.

Once the chocolate-y cupcakes had baked and cooled, a fantastic filling is combined by beating together butter, confectioners' sugar and a secret ingredient... Marshmallow Fluff! We love that stuff (remember those Fluffer Nutter Bars?) - while I'm sure Marshmallow Creme would work fine, it just isn't the same to me! This mixture is placed into a pasty bag and then plunged into the bottom of each cupcake (hence why these have no cupcake liners!). A quick squeeze from the bag and they are filled! While you could fill them from the top, you will be frosting these with a shiny and decadent chocolate ganache, so you want to leave yourself a nice, smooth top. You could stop there, but I know I wouldn't be satisfied unless it had that classic squiggle on top! This simply comes from thinning a bit of the leftover filling with cream and pipping it out with a small plain tip. Sweet, without being too sugary or cloying, I'm afraid these might not even leave the house in the morning if Jeff has his way!

Recipes
Strawberry Shortcake Cupcakes
Chocolate Cupcakes with Cream Filling

Veggie-packed pasta dish...

We're back again with another speedy dish for our dinner tonight - I think the warm plates filled with this Two-Pea Pasta with Ricotta and Tarragon were on the table in just under 30 minutes!

Feel free to use whatever short pasta you have on hand - the original recipe called for gemelli, but we used a tri-color fusilli as that was already in the pantry. To keep this a one pot dish (hurray for less dishes!), the crisp sugar snap peas and green peas are added in two stages to the pasta near the end of its cooking time. Once those ingredients have finished cooking, the water is drained away (though a 1/2 cup worth of the starchy liquid is first reserved) and they are placed back into the pot to finish up the sauce that goes with them.

A couple knobs of butter, creamy ricotta cheese and the star ingredient, fresh tarragon, are tossed in to melt down into a sauce. As is, with the ricotta, the sauce will be too thick, so add a few splashes of that reserved pasta water to thin it out to your liking. If you've never had fresh tarragon before, you may want to start out with a tablespoon or so and then add more if you feel it needs a boost. With its slight anise flavor, it can quickly dominate the dish if too much is used - however, don't let that scare you off as it brings such a bright and fresh flavor, especially when used with chicken. Filled with spring flavors, this zesty pasta dish, with it's myriad of colors (thanks to those colorful twists of pasta!), is one I can see making for us quite a few times when we need a speedy dinner.

Recipes
Two-Pea Pasta with Ricotta and Tarragon

A different take on meatloaf...

We didn't have many recipes this week since we were gone on vacation, but we did still manage to squeak out 6 new ones. Out of those few, our favorites were those Toffee and M&M Monster Cookies and that tasty Cheesy Polenta and Egg Casserole. I do have one sad note... I'm sorry to say that the lawn mowing season has officially began at our house. I actually don't mind it that much, but I did not miss it at all over the winter!

The prepartion for tonight's dinner, Tex-Mex Meatloaf-Cheddar Pie, seemed to go well, but when I was reading through the directions again, something just didn't seem right. The recipe that I had printed out only baked this dish for 20 total minutes and that didn't seem nearly enough time for a thick meatloaf. I went back to the website where I got the recipe and it had been changed to a total cooking time of 45 minutes! While I caught it before it even hit the oven, it meant dinner was going to be a little late tonight - oops!

This interesting twist on meatloaf has you begin by lining a large pie pan with roasted red bell peppers. If you are using a jarred pepper, be sure to let them drain well and you may even want to pat them dry with a paper towel. I didn't do this right away and the moist peppers just wanted to slump down - they stayed in place better once I had patted them with the paper towel. A blend of shredded Mexican cheeses is scattered on top of the peppers. The meatloaf itself is just a basic combination of lean ground sirloin, breadcrumbs, a couple eggs, parsley, and for that Tex-Mex flare, chunky salsa. I let Jeff pick out the salsa at the market so he could have some input to the recipe and he choose this habanero salsa with roasted tomatoes and cilantro from Frontera (a Rick Bayless product).

He did ask for my opinion, so I steered him to this brand - we have actually had the chipotle version before and while he did enjoy that, he said he wanted something a bit more spicy. Well, he got what he wished for... man does this stuff have a fire-y kick! While part of the salsa is used inside the meatloaf, the rest of it is spread over the top as you would with ketchup. Before the meatloaf has completely cooked, another dose of the shredded Mexican cheese blend is scattered on top and allowed to melt. The meatloaf was very moist, thanks to the addition of the spicy salsa inside - we also found that the texture allowed it to slice and present quite well after giving it the 15 minute rest. I did find that even cooking it for 45 minutes total, as you can see, the center was still a little pink... next time I would probably use a meat thermometer to test it. I didn't know if the peppers would actually adhere to the meat, but they grabbed on pretty well!

Recipes
Tex-Mex Meatloaf-Cheddar Pie

One monster of a cookie...

Have you ever wanted a large, crunchy (yet not dry), over-the-top cookie packed with fun and tasty mix-ins? Well then, look no further than these outrageous Toffee and M&M Monster Cookies that I made before we left for our Disney trip.

Since we were bringing the pups down to the farm so they had some familiar faces watching them, I wanted to bring a treat with to say thanks. Big, thick and a fantastic crisp/chewy texture, these cookies pack a wallop of peanut butter flavor thanks to the generous addition of 1 1/2 cups chunky peanut butter. Creamy peanut butter would be fine, but I know I wouldn't want to miss out on the extra nutty crunch the chunky peanut butter added.

With just a touch of flour, the majority of the dry ingredients are simply old-fashioned rolled oats. Because of this, it is highly recommended that you allow the assembled cookie dough to rest for at least 30 minutes to give the oats a chance to absorb some of the moisture from the butter. You could probably throw whatever bits and pieces of chocolate or candy you want in these, but we choose bittersweet chocolate, toffee bits and full-sized dark chocolate M&Ms. Because I wanted them to look a little extra special, I did fuss and arrange the M&Ms on top of the dough, rather than just mixing them in with the other ingredients.

We did divide most of the dough into 1/4 cupfuls, which produced beautiful and massive bake-sale worthy cookies, but we also did scoop out a few cookies with a heaping tablespoon worth (as seen as the smaller cookie in the above photograph) to freeze and save for us. I kept the smaller unbaked dough pieces in the freezer while we were gone and have been baking them off since we got back - we enjoyed the last while writing this post. With brown sugar in the dough, the cookies already had a small, but noticeable caramel flavor in the background, but with the addition of those crunchy toffee bits, that flavor was brought out even more for a wickedly good treat. We did think that one of the best advantages to this recipe is the fact that the dough is easily mixed by hand so you don't need a mixer (a great recipe if you have little helpers around!).

Recipes
Toffee and M&M Monster Cookies

Slaw and pizza muffins...

There are umpteen recipes out there for slaw - while most call for cabbage to make up the bulk of the mixture, we tend to like a crunchier texture and use broccoli slaw instead. That is exactly what I ended up doing when I made tonight's side dish of New-Fashioned Apple and Raisin Slaw.

This slaw leans more to the sweet versions out there with chunky pieces of Fuji apples and plump golden raisins. So you get that striking color contrast, be sure to leave the nutritious peel on the apple if you don't mind the added texture. To moisten and slightly soften the broccoli slaw (which is just shredded broccoli, carrots, red cabbage and sometimes cauliflower) is a combination of sour cream, mayonnaise, white balsamic vinegar and a dash of sugar.

To not give an off or dark color to this mixture, we used the white balsamic for that tangy bite - this is basically just a sweet white vinegar. It works well in uses like this or lighter sauces, but don't expect the same depth you get with regular dark balsamic. The original recipe called for a pound of the shredded slaw, but I only added about 12 ounces or so as there didn't seem to be enough coating for our tastes. I would recommend doing the same with either the broccoli slaw or regular cabbage - you may even want to bring it down to 8 or 10 ounces if you like it especially moist and creamy. Ready in just about 5 minutes, this snazzy side dish was crisp, light and very refreshing!

Since I didn't really menu plan for this week, I just picked out a few recipes before I went shopping mid-week without thinking much about what would work well together. I actually intended to make these Mini Greek Pizza Muffins to freeze and store for a quick savory snack, but we decided to have a few each and call it dinner.

Chopped onion and red bell pepper are first softened to start out the base flavor. This is done right away as the two need to cool down before adding the rest of the ingredients. To the cooled vegetables, milk, salty feta cheese, an egg, tomato paste and briny kalamata olives are whisked in. These went ingredients are stirred into the dry ingredients (which are a blend of whole-wheat pastry and all-purpose flours) and then scooped into tiny muffin cups - since you are filling 24 of them, just look for the cups to be about 2/3 full so you have enough to fill them all. Bake these until the centers spring back or when a toothpick placed in the center comes out mostly clean with a few moist crumbs attached.

Enjoy these moist bites warm out of the oven or at room temperature - I found the flavor actually came through better when they were cooler. Jeff was not near the kitchen when I was preparing these, so I think he was a little surprised and a little disappointed when he saw me pulling these out of the oven and not the pizza he thought he smelled. After popping one of these in his mouth though, his face lit up and he stopped pouting! Being so concentrated, the two tablespoons of tomato paste added a nice punch of flavor that we thought helped to bring out the fresh oregano. The only change I might think about doing is adding a fresh garlic clove or two in with the onion and red pepper, rather than using the granulated garlic in the dry ingredients.

Recipes
New-Fashioned Apple and Raisin Slaw
Mini Greek Pizza Muffins

Gooey bars for a surprise treat day...

I debated if we should try and work in a Treat Day this week with everything going on, but while I was on the plane, I noted a recipe that I wanted to try out in one of the several magazines I brought along to keep me busy. Since I was at the market yesterday, I also picked up a bag of fresh sweet cherries to make these Cherry Revel Bars.

To give the bottom of these bars a sturdy base, a dough is combined that is quite reminiscent to a rich, chewy and brown sugar-packed oatmeal cookie. The dough is made first, but then set aside while you continue on with the recipe. Right after mixing, the dough was fairly sticky, but allowing it to rest a bit gave the oats a chance to absorb some of the moisture. The recipe called for quick oats, which I rarely have in the pantry, so I just buzzed up some regular old-fashioned rolled oats in the food processor. If you do the same, you don't want to pulverize them at all - just pulse them enough to break up the thick pieces.

To go on top of the base, a very thick and viscous mixture is combined by heating together brown sugar and butter. Once fused together, the sweet mixture is allowed to cool slightly. You will be beating in a few eggs, so you want it to just cool down enough so you don't scramble them when they hit the pan. After the eggs went in, a bit of flour to thicken it up and a generous handful of chopped bittersweet chocolate is added. This is spread over the unbaked cookie base and the top is adorned with the sweet dark-red cherries. Some of that same oatmeal cookie mixture that formed the bottom is then dotted on top to form golden buttery crumbles. Slivered and toasted almonds for a nutty crunch are the final addition before they hit the oven to bake.

It may be a little tough to decide when they are done - just let the bars bake until the top is a light golden brown. The center should still be moist and just a little jiggly - they will continue to firm up as they cool and chill out in the refrigerator. Dense and a little gooey (the center pieces were a touch more gooey, which is where I took my test piece from!) with a nice chew, I had a hard time controlling my urge to keep "testing" these out after my first piece. Even though the bars were a touch on the sweet side, the juicy cherries with the darker chocolate was an enticing combination, especially when combined with the delicious cookie crumbles and base. One note on the filling - I wasn't sure if the chocolate was suppose to melt into the mixture or stay whole. While my pieces softened, they did not melt into the mixture. I think we liked it better this way, getting chunks of the chocolate rather than having an all chocolate filling.

Jeff has really become a fan of polenta, so I knew he would be excited when he saw this Cheesy Polenta and Egg Casserole I was preparing for dinner tonight. I did, however, make a few changes to the recipe to suit us a little better.

Instead of using all water to prepare the cornmeal, I used a higher proportion of chicken broth to water to add a boost of flavor. When you are making the polenta, know that the time it takes to cook will depend on just how coarse your cornmeal is - our grains were fairly large, so it took us just about 25 minutes or so to get to the texture we like. If it looks like the polenta is getting too thick or dry before the grains have softened enough, don't be afraid to add a splash of broth or water to thin it back down. It should be thick, yet still easily spreadable. To add a rich and creamy note without adding butter, shredded fontina and fresh grated Parmigiano-Reggiano is stirred into the hot polenta.

The original recipe has you spread the polenta into a 9" x 13" pan to make 6 servings - to me, this amount didn't look like it would cover our pan well, so I opted to place it into a smaller 9" square pan instead. When the polenta was spread into the pan, we used a spoon, dipped in water to quell any sticking, to make 4 divots large enough to hold a whole egg. Once the eggs were slipped into each divot, we gave them a sharp bite with a bit of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.

For additional flavor and a dash of heat, the naked polenta around the eggs was topped with browned and crumbled hot Italian turkey sausage. This dish is finished by placing it in the oven to warm up the polenta and set the eggs. After removing it from the oven, try and let it set for 5 or 10 minutes - this will allow the polenta to firm up just enough so you can cut out tidy pieces. Hearty, without being too heavy, we both enjoyed this casserole and were glad we made the changes we did to make it a bit more filling. If you do stretch it out to fill the larger baking pan, increase the eggs to 6 instead and bump up the sausage to around 6 ounces.

Recipes
Cherry Revel Bars
Cheesy Polenta and Egg Casserole

Getting back into the groove with speedy gnocchi dish...

We finally have trimmed our Disney pictures down to a reasonable 200 or so and uploaded them (we have many more, but that is all we can show with flickr right now). Rather than try to pick and choose, I'll just add a link below that you can click on if you want to browse through them. It will probably take us a few days to add titles or descriptions though.

We went back and forth a few times about where we wanted to stay, but we ended up at the Port Orleans French Quarter Resort - we had a very quiet room that had a fantastic view of the water way! Very relaxing.

Thanks to the Disney dining plan, we were quite well fed (honestly way too much food for us though) - a few of the highlights were Jiko (Animal Kingdom Lodge - one of our top picks with amazing food!), WolfGang Puck's cafe (downtown Disney), Todd English's bluezoo (Swan and Dolphin) and Le Cellier Steakhouse (Canada, Epcot). We just savored the food, instead of trying to take pictures, but we did take a couple snaps of the Le Cellier entree and desserts.

Jeff had the Filet Mignon with wild mushroom risotto, white truffle and herb butter sauce.

I chose the Chili-Seared Pork Tenderloin with pickled vegetables and Udon noodles tossed in peanut sauce.

Both of our savory dishes were excellent! We went the fun route with desserts - we shared the Chocolate Moose...

and the grownup Campfire S'Mores.

We hopped back and forth from the parks several times and took our time checking out all the nooks, crannies and hidden Mickeys that can be found throughout Disney World. I could post picture after picture here, but feel free to browse through the pictures at flickr.

Click here for our Disney flickr pictures.

I've been kind of picking through the pantry and freezer for our lunches and dinner the past couple of days, but decided to make a run to the market this afternoon to up a couple ingredients for tonight's Gnocchi with Broccoli Rabe, Caramelized Garlic, and Parmesan.

This speedy dish starts out by removing that extra bitter bite from the broccoli rabe (also labeled rapini) by dropping the greens into a pot of boiling salted water for a short time. Once scooped out and set aside to drain, prepared gnocchi is dropped in and left to bubble for just a couple of minutes until the potato-y pieces float up to the top. Before draining them, be sure to save a bit of the starchy water that will be added later on.

To caramelize the garlic, flour cloves worth of thinly sliced pieces are added to a healthy layer of olive oil - however, just be sure to keep an eye on them. You want to take them far enough that most of them achieve a light golden color - all of the pieces don't have to be perfectly golden though as they can go from done to burnt quickly and will add an unpleasant bitterness. To finish the dish, the broccoli rabe, gnocchi and reserved liquid are added to the toasted garlic to warm the ingredients back up.

Once plated, a shower of fresh grated Parmesan cheese is added on top for a sharp note. Quite light, the pillow-y bites of potato and tender greens had a nice clean flavor with a bit of heat from a dash of crushed red pepper added at the end. The garlic was a perfect touch with its mellow sweetness to contrast against the tamed bitterness in the broccoli rabe. I'm not always able to find the specific green called for in this recipe, but I would have probably substituted broccolini, which I can usually find no problem, if my market didn't have the rabe in stock.

Recipes
Gnocchi with Broccoli Rabe, Caramelized Garlic, and Parmesan

Some pics from the farm... Disney coming tomorrow!

We spent most of this morning heading down to the farm to pick up the pups as they had their own little vacation there while we were away. We took a few snaps to give you a peek into the spring happenings down there (some of these are from when we dropped the pups off last week)! As with the rest of the pictures on the site, you can click on them to view them in a larger and clearer size.

Here are a few of the new faces - the first is a three day old baby goat!

The next is another baby that has quite the chin goin' already!

These cuties just wanted to be held so they could cuddle!

Mom has quite the bounty (several dozen already!) of baby chicks going this year - this one just had to strike a pose.

She is also getting her copious plants, vegetables and herbs ready for the farmers market - here's a purple flower that was soaking up the sun.

The tomato plants are growing at lightning speed as well - I can already imagine the fruit that this plant is going to produce!

I'm still going through the Disney pictures - I'll get a couple of those up tomorrow and talk a bit more about what we did (and where we ate!). Tonight's dinner will be nothing new or fancy... just some leftover chili I froze before we left and a big ol' baked potato.

Taking a side trip to see a mouse...

Well now... this didn't go exactly as planned. Sorry about the lack of updates over the past 8 days or so! What happened?

That's what! Our plan was to post updates while we were down chatting it up with Mickey and friends, but our laptop decided it was on vacation too and would not work with any internet options we tried!

Thank you for all of the e-mails wondering what happened to us - we are fine, if not a bit red from all that blazing Orlando sun! I'll get a link up to some of the pictures if you want to browse through them in the next day or so. We will be back to our regular daily posting again starting Wednesday!

Elegant polenta cookies...

I usually reserve a portion of our Saturday mornings to bake up some snacks for us to have through the weekend. This morning was no different and once I got things together, I started working on these Italian Polenta Cookies.

Rich, buttery and decidedly crunchy, these "S" shaped cookies have a high ratio of cornmeal to flour. To achieve that fantastic bite the cookies have, you are looking for the more jagged and coarse yellow cornmeal for this recipe, not the fine sandy cornmeal you might normally use in baking. To get a full lemon flavor, without adding excess moisture to the cookie dough, we added a full tablespoon of fragrant lemon zest, utilizing the same technique we used in that Lemon Poppy-Seed Tea Cake by rubbing the zest into the granulated sugar.

When the flour and cornmeal are added to the dough, it will be quite stiff with a bit of the flour mixture hiding in the bottom of the bowl. Go ahead and remove the bowl from your mixer and just use your hands to be sure that extra gets completely mixed in. Since I had some sturdy, yet disposable, large pastry bags, I went ahead and filled it with all of the cookie mixture. While it held the sturdy dough just fine, I found it was a little difficult to put enough pressure on it to allow the dough to come out nicely. Once I took about half of it out, it was so much easier - so I would suggest working in a couple batches. You may want to cover the other half to prevent any drying out of the dough.

You don't have to pipe the dough into "S" shapes, you could do "O" or whatever you prefer - I quite liked the curves that this letter provided though. Because the dough is heavy, you may have problems with the parchment lifting up when you are pipping - to solve this, just squirt a little dot of the dough onto the baking sheet to give the parchment something to grab a hold of. With the high butter content, and not a lot of dry ingredients to help absorb the moisture, you will want to freeze the unbaked cookies for about half an hour to control the spreading as they sit in the hot oven. They will be baked enough when the edges just begin to turn golden - you want the centers to be still a little soft in the center as they will firm up as they cool. Because they are still soft, you don't want to try and move the cookies once they are taken out, but you don't want to leave them on the warm baking sheet either. This is where the parchment comes in handy! Gently pull the entire sheet off the pan and place it on a wire rack to continue the cooling process.

Recipes
Italian Polenta Cookies

Dreaming of warmth and picnics...

Even though they are calling for an inch of snow overnight (enough already!), I know, or at least hope, warm weather that will last for more than a day is right around the corner. I can't wait for the first time that we can pack up a little basket, head out to one of the many local parks to overdose on fresh air and enjoy a picnic!

Once we prepare a recipe, it is filed in a number of ways, depending on what it was and what we thought of it. Tonight's dinner, Pacific Rim Wraps with Creamy Citrus Ginger Dressing, will definitely be heading into a file that is starting to fill up with picnic-worthy recipes.

With a couple interesting ingredients, the dressing for these wraps was an intriguing mixture of evaporated milk, fresh lemon juice, canola oil, granulated sugar, ginger, along with the obligatory salt and fresh ground black pepper. For ease of mixing, the ingredients are simply thrown into a small resealable container (we used a smaller canning jar) and shaken until well combined - a perfect job if you happen to have little helpers around! I thought the dressing would have ended up a bit too sweet for our tastes, so I only used half of the sugar - but once I tasted it, I added the other half. It looked like a bit much at first, however, with the pungency from the ginger and sharp lemon juice, it is needed to maintain a balance.

For the salad inside of the wraps, we first shredded up a bunch of crisp romaine lettuce and a few chicken breasts that we poached. To those, we added crunchy matchstick-cut carrots, crunchy sugar snap peas, chewy dried cranberries and a small handful of toasted slivered almonds. If you are going to serve all of this at once, go ahead and add the required amount of dressing and continue on. However, it's not like we were going to eat this all by ourselves, so I divided the dry salad mixture between a few containers and placed them in the refrigerator. This way, I can keep the dressing separate and won't have a soggy mess of leftovers to work with when we have the rest for lunch tomorrow! We served this by adding the dressed salad mixture to our favorite tortillas (we used the Chipotle Chile and Peppers flavored version), rolled them up and sliced them in half. With a myriad of textures, these appetizing wraps, with their unique dressing, were light, quite refreshing and I'm already counting down until we can finish the rest tomorrow afternoon! You could even take these in a different direction and make this bit lighter - how about serving the filling in a halved pita or just grabbing a fork and digging in for a delicious salad without the bread!

Recipes
Pacific Rim Wraps with Creamy Citrus Ginger Dressing

Shrimp pasta dish with spring vegetables...

I was at the market yesterday to pick up some ingredients for tonight's dinner when I saw there were a few bundles of asparagus that looked especially enticing and noticed they were also refilling a bin with fresh snow peas. I remembered a recipe that I had set aside to make a little later in the springtime, but decided to push back tonight's scheduled dinner to tomorrow and make this Penne with Shrimp, Feta, and Spring Vegetables dish instead.

This recipe even got a couple bonus points before we even got started - it is all done in one pot and can be prepared in less than half an hour! The timing for this dish will depend more on the directions from your pasta's package. Once the pasta has dropped, you want to let it cook by itself until there is about 5 minutes left before the pasta is al dente. For the whole-wheat pasta we used (I actually used a combination of whole-wheat and multi-grained pasta as we just enough of each left), the total cooking time was around 11 minutes. So, 6 minutes after the salted water had started working its magic, we dropped in the beautiful asparagus pieces. 3 minutes later, peeled shrimp and a couple handfuls of diagonally sliced snow peas are added.

Before you drain away the cooking liquid, remember to scoop out about 1/2 cups worth. I try to do it this way, rather than trying to catch it as I pour it, because I've forgotten to put a bowl underneath the colander more than I'd care to remember, watching the needed starchy water go down the drain. Once the pasta and veggies are put back into the warm pot, the mixture is dressed with a few tablespoons of slick extra-virgin olive oil, fresh tangy lemon juice, a couple cloves of minced raw garlic and some of that reserved cooking liquid to add moisture. Feta crumbles are gently tossed in for a salty bite with a scattering of bright mint leaves to add a fresh burst. Besides adding protein, the tender shrimp helped keep the dish feel light and fresh - however, I think it would taste well with some shredded chicken if you don't favor seafood.

Even though the garlic was raw, the stronger flavors that were added allowed it to be put into submission, so you get just enough pungent taste without it being annoyingly harsh. If you don't care for that type of flavor at all, just go ahead and toss the cloves in when you add the shrimp to mellow it out.

Recipes
Penne with Shrimp, Feta, and Spring Vegetables

Layered potato crisp...

Do you ever have one of those days where you just want to come home to a big comforting plate of mashed potatoes for dinner? Maybe it's just us and the day we had today, but the thought of having a dish like that tonight really sounded appealing.

We decided to step up ordinary mashed potatoes and made this Two-Tone Mashed Potato Crisp for our meal this evening. I know it's going to all end up in the same place and it may seem overly fussy, but we did a little extra work to ensure the layers would stay distinct. This means we cooked the sweet potatoes and buttery Yukon Golds in separate pots - in the end, this was an even better idea as I found that the sweet potatoes actually cooked a bit quicker. Once the potato cubes were tender, we drained them and put them back into the hot pot (with the burner turned off!). Placing them back into the pots, rather than into a separate bowl, allows the potatoes to evaporate any excess cooking liquid so they will be nice and fluffy when you mash them.

For a pleasant tang, sour cream is added with the rest of your typical mashed potato ingredients. If you think ahead far enough, take the milk, sour cream and butter out from the refrigerator to take the chill off - I find the texture of mashed taters is a bit better when the rest of the ingredients are not icy cold. An extra interesting note into both potatoes comes from a dash of fresh grated nutmeg. If you are so inclined, once the potatoes have been layered into the baking dish, you could stop at this point, cover and refrigerate to make these a day ahead of time. You will then want to pop the dish into a microwave for a few minutes to start the process of heating them through.

Before the potatoes go into the oven, they are topped with a mixture of crusty bread, fresh parsley and melted butter that has been buzzed together in a food processor. Baked until the topping is crisped and browned, this casserole will serve best when it has cooled down slightly. You could certainly present it right out of the oven, but it will not keep its shape when you portion it out if it is still pipping hot. With the smooth distinct layers underneath the golden crust, the flavor of the potatoes did not compete with each other and melded quite well! While this was probably meant to be served as a side dish, we went ahead and just divvied it out into bigger portions, putting us into a much needed carb-induced coma.

Recipes
Two-Tone Mashed Potato Crisp

Tea cake and a cranberry quick bread...

For the Weekly Wednesday Treat Day event this week, we thought that this time we should probably prepare a treat that didn't include chocolate for a change. I'm sure not everyone loves chocolate as much as we do (*gasp!*) and looking back over the past few weeks, we have been a little heavy in the chocolate department.

We had decided to make a quick bread, but rather than making two of the same kind, I also threw together a tea cake in the interest of giving them options to choose from (or both if so inclined!). *Just a note, to add some nutrition, we used some whole-wheat pastry flour as part of the dry ingredients in both recipes - if you don't have this, you can just replace it with all-purpose flour.

Since there were a few steps in the tea cake recipe, I decided to work on the Lemon Poppy-Seed Tea Cake first. Ever since I've been using that fantastic technique from Dorie Greenspan about rubbing zest into sugar before creaming the sugar with butter, I always try to do this extra step to maximize the zest's potential. When I was getting my list for the market together this past weekend, I had to run out to the garage to check my supply of poppy seeds. Since I don't use them all that often, I keep these crunchy, blue-grey seeds in cold storage because they can go rancid fairly quick.

Once the cake was in the oven, I began working on a sweet, yet tart lemon syrup. To create this, a simple combination of granulated sugar and fresh lemon juice is brought to a boil - doing this ensures all of the grainy sugars will dissolve into the juice. As soon as the tea cake tested done, the top was littered with holes from a toothpick and almost all of the syrup is poured over the top. It is essential that this part is done while the cake is warm so it is absorbed into the cake, creating a very moist inside. After a couple hours of cooling, the cake is turned out of the loaf pan and is given a brush with the remaining sticky syrup. Waiting until cake has cooled to finish with the remaining syrup allows it to dry on the exterior, giving the crust a delicious sweet crunch. Very lemony, this zesty cake, studded with the nutty seeds, was quite the refreshing change we were looking for.

Unlike the above, this Cranberry-Orange Nut Bread I also made took very little time to prepare. There is no creaming of butter in this bread, so all you basically do is dump a bunch of ingredients into a bowl and stir them together! My main reason for choosing this recipe was to finally break into my stash of frozen fresh cranberries that have been loitering in our freezer! I've mentioned it before, but around Thanksgiving time, I make sure to buy several extra bags so we can store them in the freezer and enjoy that fresh cranberry flavor throughout the year.

One flavor that is always a brilliant match with cranberries is orange. So we used freshly squeezed orange juice and the zest of said orange in this snazzy quick bread. Instead of butter for the fat, this recipe uses a combination of neutral canola oil and tangy yogurt to lend moisture and texture. If you don't happen to have yogurt handy, you could also use the same amount of buttermilk or even sour cream instead.

As with most muffins, cakes or quick breads that have chunky additions at the end, be sure to gently fold them into the batter with the least amount of strokes as possible. Overworking the batter can lead to rising and textural issues. You could leave the final addition to this bread with the coarsely chopped cranberries (food processors make short work of chopping!), but we thought we would add a handful of toasted walnuts for a nutty contrast. This studded bread was soft and slightly sweet - we both loved the tart little bites of cranberry we found in each bite. I think this bread would also be great baked in mini loaves and wrapped up to give as an tasty edible gift.

Recipes
Lemon Poppy-Seed Tea Cake
Cranberry-Orange Nut Bread