Garden Tuesday - Spider Condo!

My houseplants enjoy the summer outside. But when I went to clean them off and bring them inside for winter, this is what I found on my Christmas cactus!!! I never saw the spider that created this little spider mansion (and I don't think I want to). I almost..almost..hated to clean it all up, I mean, what an intricate amount of work!

Bookmarked Recipes Round-Up Number 24!!!

I am so excited to be the host of this week's Bookmarked Recipes. Just look at all these great recipes, I don't know which one I'm going to try first!





Teresa (Indiana, USA) from I'm Running to Eat shares a Chicken Chorizo and Tortilla Soup from Rachael Ray. I love chicken tortilla soup, and this version with chorizo sounds fantastic.



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I think that Happy Cook from Belgium at My Kitchen Treasures is probably very happy right now! She bookmarked and made Garidomakaronada Ouzo and Fresh Tomato from Peter's recipes at Kalofagas - Greek Food & Beyond. I can't pronounce it, but I sure do want to try some!



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Ning (Manila, Philippines) our lovely host from last week, at Heart and Hearth is back this week with a recipe that I will definitely be cooking. Her Vietnamese Pork Chops were bookmarked from Wandering Chopsticks and now I'm bookmarking them. It's the great food blog circle of life.



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I love the title of Arika's (Biloxi, USA) blog, My Yummy Life. Isn't that perfect? And speaking of perfect, check out her Basil Wrapped Thai Beef Rolls with Sweet and Spicy Chili Sauce. You don't even have to read the recipe, the title is enough to tell you it's going to be good. She found this gem at Serious Eats .



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Cristie (Wisconsin, USA) from Edible Antics has made my husband a very happy man. He loves hot food, and she has posted a Hot Hot Chili recipe that has him drooling on my keyboard. I never knew there were so many hot ingredients! Check out her recipe at her blog and also at Wisconsin Made, there are all kinds of great things made in Wisconsin!!!



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Gloria (Chile) from Canela Kitchen's Recipes has the cutest blog heading ever. I love the little kitty cats on the wall. Not only is her blog heading cute, but just check out her Cherry Tomato Tarta! I always have some cherry tomatoes on hand, so I am filing this away for later use. She found this wonderful recipe at Pimienta y Chocolate.




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Patsy (New Jersey, USA) from Family, Friends, and Food brings us a pressure cooker recipe for Mexican Chicken Soft Tacos and I am so glad that she did. I keep forgetting to use my pressure cooker! She found this recipe in the cookbook, Pressure Cooking for Everyone (oh no, a cookbook I don't have!).



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Elizabeth (Toronto, Canada) from Blog From OUR Kitchen posts a Banana Cinnamon Bun recipe that looks delicious! She says that they could use a little more banana, but I love the concept of bananas in a cinnamon bun! She combined, plus changed a bit, two different recipes.




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This must be the week for yummy banana recipes! Jin Hooi (Australia) from Smell & Taste Are My Memory tempts us with Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins . The title alone convinces me that I will be making these soon...very soon! She bookmarked this recipe from Sweet & Simple Bakes Recipes.



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Deeba (Gurgaon, North India) from Passionate About Baking brings us a fabulous recipe for those gorgeous end of summer tomatoes (or at least it's end of summer here). Just look at her Tomato Tart! With tomatoes, garlic and basil, you know it's going to be good. Her inspiration came from The Cook's Bible by Le Cordon Blue and the blog Mimi on the Move.



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This is the week for bananas and tomatoes!! Becke (Columbus, OH, USA) from Columbus Foodie posts the recipe for possibly the best sounding risotto I have ever read. Her Heirloom Tomato Risotto has me hoping that there are some tomatoes in my CSA shipment this week! She found her recipe at the Lambert Bridge Winery website.




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Jen (Boston) from Bean Town Baker
brings us a delightful, seasonal dessert, Pumpkin White Chocolate Chip Cookies. I am always looking for ways to use pumpkin for fun, fall flavors and these cookies are perfect! She found them at Ambers Kitchen, but, I promise, you are also going to find them in Pam's kitchen!




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You may have noticed that I don't have an entry! I had a post all selected, but then developed the old stomach flu this weekend, and didn't get mine posted. Luckily, I did most of this work before I started feeling completely crummy!


Thanks everyone for your submissions!!! It's always exciting to see what people have been making and recreating as well as meeting some new bloggers.

That's it for this week. Remember if you want to take part here's all you have to do....
1. Pick a recipe from a book/magazine/blog/website/tv show and make it. (Note you can only submit 1 recipe per week)
2. Blog about it
- include where you got the recipe in your blog post (including a link to their website if possible)
- include a link to this post or this blog in your blog post
- include the logo (see above) for Bookmarked Recipes in your blog post
- include a photo of your recreation on your blog post
3. Email bookmarkedrecipes[AT]gmail[DOT]com with the following information:
- Your name and where you're from
- The name of your blog
- The permalink for your entry
- A photo of your entry
- A note of where you got your recipe from

Cilantro-Lime Sour Cream

Some people use the library as a means of saving money. They check out the book instead of buying it, read it, and then return it. Money saved. That's great if it works for you, more power to you. It tends to have an opposite effect with me. I check out a couple of cookbooks from the library and before you can say "wow, look at Pam saving money", I've all ready decided that I can't live without them, and I've ordered them from Amazon. And if your saying..."wow, Pam's husband must be really understanding", um...I've got six magic little words for you..."I get home from work first". Problem solved.

My latest acquisition is Sara Foster's Casual Cooking: More Fresh Simple Recipes from Foster's Market. Everything in it looks good, seriously, everything. So, I guess it might be kind of odd that the first thing I tried was a condiment, but I'm glad I did. I know we all know how to flavor sour creams and mayo with an herb, but what I like about this is the addition of the hot sauce. I never thought about putting hot sauce in my flavored sour cream. And since there is a possibility that you haven't thought of it either, I to share it with you. This is great with tacos, burritos, quesadillas, whatever!!

Cilantro-Lime Sour Cream
Makes about 1 cup

1 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
1 teaspoon cumin, ground
1 teaspoon hot sauce (I used Tabasco brand)
Grated zest and juice of 1 lime

Combine in a small bowl and stir to mix. Serve or refrigerate. It will keep in the fridge for up to one week.




This will be my entry for this weeks Weekend Herb Blogging hosted this week by Haalo at Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once.

Weeds

See that pretty little white flower, peeking through my Sedum Autumn Joy? It's one of those morning glory type weeds. They go crazy, wrapping their tendrils around everything, and pretty much take over a flower bed, if allowed to. But this one looked so determined and kind of pretty, that I didn't have the heart to pull it out. Really doesn't it look like it's just trying to get along with the other flowers, only it knows it's different. Or, am I just thinking way too much about this??

Not My First Choice

You know, sometimes I think my husband is a little bitter because he was not my first choice.

You see, I was actually supposed to marry Donny Osmond, Davey Jones, or David Cassidy.

Donny Osmond, of course, was first. I have no brothers and sisters, and he has plenty to go around. Plus, Marie would have been the best sister-in-law (no offense to my current sister-in-law, who is fabulous, by the way). But I could have gotten tickets to Dancing With The Stars!!! Heck, I would have actually been on stage, cheering her on.

Davey Jones comes in a strong second. The only problem with Davey is that I believe he is shorter than me. I do not have a good history with short boyfriends. When I was 14, I was dating the boy next door. Unfortunately, I had gone through my growth spurt and was 5'8", he hadn't, and was probably not even 5 feet yet. Other than the height, we looked alot alike, both with blond hair and green eyes. Well, one Friday, we were roller skating at the rink, and this cute older guy (probably 16!!) started talking to me and asked who the little kid was. I said that he was my younger brother. This didn't sit too well with my boyfriend. You should have seen the scathing note he passed to me in the hall the next day!!!

Last, is David Cassidy. I really wasn't all that crazy about David. But I really liked Susan Dey on the Partridge Family. I thought she was really cool, and we could become best friends forever. However, even I know it's probably not a good idea to marry someone because you like their pretend TV sister.

Who should you have married?

P.S. I forgot Peter Brady. Except that I can't remember his real name, so probably not a good idea on him, either.

Tomato Salad with Feta, Olives, and Mint

Tomato salads, for me, typically include mozzarella cheese and basil. So, when I saw the recipe for a tomato salad with mint and feta, I was intrigued. I love any kind of cheese (except for the insanely stinky ones, which I just can't get past the aroma), but feta is one of my favorites. I've all ready posted about The Best of Fine Cooking Fresh Fall 2008 issue, so if you haven't run out and purchased it, you have no one to blame but yourself. It will probably go down as my most all time favorite issue. This recipe just increases the love. Really, feta, olives, tomatoes, mint...what's not to love.

Okay people, this is your lucky day, they have the recipe posted at the website: Tomato Salad with Feta, Olives and Mint. I made it exactly as written, so I am not going to post the recipe here. And in case you were wondering, is Fine Cooking paying her to keep endorsing their product?? No, it's just out of the goodness of my heart and the gladness of my stomach. Though, Fine Cooking, if you're listening, I can be bought! Fairly cheaply, I might add.



This will be my entry for this week's Bookmarked Recipes hosted this week by Ning from Heart and Hearth.

Pasta Salad with Seared Tuna and Citrus Dressing

If you read my blog with any regularity, you know I am all about easy. I should have the word EASY tattooed on my forehead (on second thought, maybe not a good idea). So, I was browsing through Quick from Scratch One-Dish Meals Cookbook looking for something quick and from scratch. Quick, because I am a poor, tired, frazzled special ed teacher, and from scratch, because I like to pretend I am a chef. Don't you love when you find something to try, and you actually have all the ingredients, every single one of them?? I made this pretty much as written, except that I am a very bad judge of herbs when I am cutting them. I needed 6 tablespoons of chopped mint. When I'm out cutting the sprigs, it looks like I have plenty, but by the time I pull the leaves off the stems and chop them, I end up with a fraction of what I thought I had. So, this really only had about two and a half tablespoons of mint, it could easily have handled the correct amount of mint.

Pasta Salad with Seared Tuna and Citrus Dressing
serves 4
From Food & Wine Magazines Quick From Scratch One-Dish Meals

1/2 pound spaghettini
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon grated orange zest
1 tablespoon fresh orange juice
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
salt
fresh ground pepper
6 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cucumbers, peeled, halved lengthwise, seeded, and cut crosswise into thin slices
6 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
1 pound tuna steak, about 1 inch thick

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook per directions. Drain and rinse with cold water. Drain thoroughly.

In a large non-reactive bowl, whisk together the vinegar, orange zest, orange juice, lemon juice, mustard, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Slowly whisk in 6 tablespoons of the olive oil. Add the pasta, cucumbers, mint and toss together.

Heat a grill pan or a heavy frying pan over medium high heat. Coat the tuna with 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cook, turning once, about 2 minutes per side for medium rare. Remove from the skillet and cut into 1 inch cubes and toss with the pasta mixture.




This was really good for how easy it was. It was very fresh and would be perfect for a light summer dinner or a lunch. It was also very good the next day for lunch. This will be my entry for this week's Presto Pasta Nights hosted by Psychgrad at Equal Opportunity Kitchen.

Hollyhocks

For old-fashioned garden appeal, you just can't beat hollyhocks! In the second picture, you can get an idea of how tall they are. The terracotta pot on the walk way is 9 inches tall!

American Country Music

I have a question. Do other countries listen to American country music, or do they have their own version of country music?



Today, for the drive to the grocery store, on a whim, I grabbed an Alan Jackson CD to listen to. It got me to thinking about country music in general, hence the above question. I like all kinds of music (except opera), but country music has a special place in my heart. I love the good old classic style of country, please don't mix any rock in with my country. I'm a country music purist, it has to have twangy guitars, a catch in the voice and must include beers, bars, and cheatin hearts. I'm also a purist when it comes to church. I want it dark, somber, with candles and robes and pipe organs. I'm a simple girl, I want my country music..country, and my church..churchy.



The best country is the good old country, my favorites are Hank Williams (senior, not junior), Tammy Wynette, and the ultimate, the best, the queen, Patsy Cline. I could listen to Patsy 24/7. I've been known to replay her CD, until my family cries "uncle". Seriously, I could play "Walkin' After Midnight" thirty times in a row and never get tired of it.

What do you listen to?

Chicken with Olives and Spanish Rice

When I don't have much time to browse through my cookbooks, and I have a somewhat specific list of ingredients, and I want something fairly simple, I always turn to Martha. Her website, more specifically. The reason I like it is because I can search for exactly what I have, or what I'm in the mood to make. So, when I found myself with some spinach that needed to be used, a quick search pulled up Chicken with Olives, Raisins and Spanish Rice. The picture was attractive (I am such a sucker for a good picture), I would almost...almost...make liver...if it was photographed nicely. Wait, I have to stop shivering at the thought of cooking liver, okay never mind, on the liver. Back to this chicken.

This was pretty good. My notes on it, like several of the comments listed, are that it was bland. It was kind of boring. If I make it again, and I might, because I like the combination, I will jazz it up a tad. I think even just using some chicken stock to cook the rice and in the sauce would give it a little more flavor. That's the beauty of this recipe, it's a great springboard for creative ideas. None of which are coming to me right now, sorry, but it's been a long day at work! But what I really liked about the recipe was that I discovered a new technique for my rice cooker. After I cooked the rice in my cooker, I opened the lid, tossed on the spinach and closed the lid. I let it sit until I was ready to serve, about 10 minutes and the steam from the rice perfectly wilted the spinach! Then it was just a matter of stirring the spinach into the rice. This was a revelation! Why hadn't I thought of this before???



This will be my entry for Bookmarked Recipes , which is hosted this week by Deeba from Passionate About Baking. I am not going to post the recipe, since it's a simple matter of following the link above. And besides you really should visit Martha regularly!

And for those of you still reading...as I was posting this, I was thinking, Martha, Martha, Martha. I was trying to think of why I was thinking it like that. Then I realized that I was saying "Martha, Martha, Martha", but I was thinking "Marsha, Marsha, Marsha". Get it?

Chicken Fried Rice

I know that this is not the most colorful dish in the world, but it tasted good, and it was just what I was in the mood for. My husband was working late (and by late, I mean all night doing some sort of database conversion), so I needed to make something for me to eat. I didn't want it to be too good, since he was going to miss it, but I didn't want just a quicky sandwich. A quick browse through the refrigerator showed that I had some cold rice and some eggs. In the freezer, I had a small portion of chicken tenders cut off of boneless breasts (my grocery store usually leaves the tenders part attached, and I cut them off and store them for when I need chicken for a stir fry). So, fried rice it was. I was really lazy and didn't even put any extra vegetables in it other than a couple chopped green onions. My fried rice was simply: 2 eggs, 2 chopped green onions, diced chicken tenders, and some leftover fried rice. The secret is the sauce that I use. It came from a cookbook that is actually geared towards children called Cooking the Vietnamese Way: Includes New Low-Fat and Vegetarian Recipes (Easy Menu Ethnic Cookbooks). You can use this sauce with any fried rice ingredients, my favorite is diced ham for the meat and green peas for the vegetable. The ingredients that I listed below are actually doubled from the original, but we like it so much, more is better. I usually scramble the eggs first, then saute the meat and vegetables, then add the cold rice. As I'm breaking up the rice, I add the sauce and cook until the rice is hot. I think that fried rice is one of those things that everyone does their own way.


Fried Rice Sauce

1 teaspoon black pepper
2 teaspoons sugar
4 teaspoons fish sauce
2 teaspoons soy sauce

Mix ingredients in a small bowl, until sugar dissolves.

Smudge in the Garden

Question: Where does a 15 pound cat sleep in a flower garden?
Answer: Anywhere he wants.

Pasta with Bell Peppers and Prosciutto

One of the things I cannot grow (and there's lots, but let's just focus on this one) is bell peppers. I don't have the patience. Especially if I want them to be any color besides green. Mine never ripened. They turned green and then sat there, stubbornly, little and green, forever. I gave up on them, and now only grow chili peppers, which, thankfully mature and ripen quickly. So, it was with great pleasure that I received the above beauties in my CSA box. I remembered a pasta recipe that I had seen while thumbing through Four Seasons Pasta: A Year of Inspired Recipes in the Italian Tradition by Janet Fletcher.



The original recipe calls for large red bell pepper. Well, I had four multi-colored peppers, in various sizes. Close enough! That's what I love about cooking and hate about baking. I am rarely if ever exact. Also, there was a final step in this recipe that I hardly ever do, and that is, add butter to finish off a dish. This recipe has you add 2 tablespoons of butter at the end. I decided that as stressful as my life has been and as healthy as this dish was up to the butter, I deserved it. And...wow! What a difference it made. I was swirling pasta around scooping up every last drip of that butter. The observant ones among you will notice the two different pasta shapes. I always end up with lots of half used bags of pasta in my pantry and decided to just be frugal and combine. I feel very virtuous.

Pasta with Bell Peppers and Prosciutto
Serves 4

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 large cloves of garlic, minced
5 large red bell peppers (or whatever you've got), seeds and ribs removed and sliced 1/4 inch wide
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
salt
3 to 4 ounces prosciutto, minced
1 pound dried pasta
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian (flat-leaf) parsley

In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the garlic and saute quickly until it become fragrant (about a minute). Add the bell peppers and oregano, crushing the oregano with your fingers. Season with salt. Turn the heat to low, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally until the peppers are tender but not mushy (about 30 to 40 minutes). Stir in the prosciutto and remove from heat.

Heat a large pot of salted water to boiling. Cook pasta as directed on package. Reserve 1 cup of the pasta water and add drained pasta to the sauce in the skillet. Add the butter and parsley and toss until the butter melts. Moisten with some of the reserved pasta water if it's too dry.




This will be my entry for this week's Presto Pasta Nights hosted this week by Ruth at Once Upon a Feast.

Roasted Chicken Thighs with Late-Summer Vegetables

This recipe has to have had the quickest bookmarked-to-actual-cooking time ever in my household! The magazine arrived in the morning and I made the recipe that night! How's that for turnaround time?! I have to say that it was probably the wisest decision I've ever made! It was amazing. You know how some dishes are really simple, and they taste really simple. You think...yeah it's pretty good for a simple dish. Well, this is not that! It was simple and yet it tasted so complex. My best compliment for one of my meals is that I would pay for it in a restaurant. I don't know about you, but there are so many times I go to a restaurant and I find myself disappointed. But this...I would not be disappointed with this. It came out of my very favorite magazine, Fine Cooking, in their Best of Fine Cooking Fresh Fall 2008 issue. They even have it listed as one of their free recipes on their site: Roasted Chicken Thighs with Late-Summer Vegetables.

I am not going to repost the recipe, since I made it pretty much as written. The only change I made was to use wax beans instead of green beans. Also, I really, really liked the technique with the chicken. Browning the chicken thighs first and then finishing them off in the oven while the vegetables roast, is an absolutely perfect idea. I served it by itself, but it would be great over polenta. Really, you must follow the link above and add it to your bookmarked recipes, or better yet go buy the magazine. There I've enabled you. If anyone says anything, you just say, I had to, Pam told me to. And she's a teacher. And teachers know best.



This will be my entry for this week's Bookmarked Recipes at Ruth's Kitchen Experiments.

Roasted Mini Pumpkins

A couple of years ago, I decorated my classrooms with mini pumpkins for Halloween. When Halloween was over, I brought them home and threw them in my flower bed, thinking that they would rot and feed the soil. Much to my surprise, the next spring, a big squashish looking vine started growing in my flower bed! It has come back two years in a row. Last year, I just used the pumpkins for decoration, but this year, I did some searching and saw that they were edible!



They are really simple. You just slice off the top, scoop out the seeds, season how you would like, replace the lid, and bake in a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes. I used a little dab of butter and a sprinkling of brown sugar and cinnamon. It was okay. The mini pumpkins didn't really taste like pumpkin at all, they tasted more like a squash, not very sweet. I think a savory application would have been better. I think next time, I might drizzle with a little olive oil, salt and pepper and some fresh (or dried) sage leaves.



They come out really cute. One thing, though, I should have cut more of the stem off. You can see that the stem part sort of burned. These would also make adorable vessels for a stuffing. I'm thinking a sausage/rice mixture would be lovely!

Purple Coneflower with Butterfly

Yeah, I am as original at naming my photographs as I am at naming my recipes.

Also, I already have my first cold of the school year. It's all there, stuffy nose, sore throat, headache, teeth hurt, ears stopped up. What fun. And it's only September 2nd. I've tried so hard. I wash my hands a zillion times a day, I wash my desk, computer, mouse, door handles, everything once a day. It's hopeless.

Pasta with Chorizo, Tomatoes, and Green Olives

I made this wonderful pasta last week, and unfortunately I didn't take notes in my handy dandy cooking notebook. So, I am going to have to recreate it from memory. The thought of me recreating anything from memory should send you into peels of laughter. I can't remember what I did 5 minutes ago, much less what I cooked last week. But I'm going to give it the old college try, or in my case, the old lady try. The reason that I'm going to try, besides the fact that this is my only pasta dish waiting in the wings, is because this was so good! I used some heirloom tomatoes from my CSA. They were gorgeous yellow and orange tomatoes, which seriously, had the best flavor of any tomatoes that I have ever eaten. I didn't seed them or anything, just diced them up and if you look closely at the picture, the pool of golden orange at the side of the plate is the luscious, thick tomatoe-y sauce that they made. If you are wondering what the longish thin orange things are, that is the tomato skins. I know, if I was a fancy-smancy chef, I would have peeled them. This whole thing was pretty basic, except that for a little extra kick, I added some diced green olives. I would like to say that I was trying to create lovely Spanish flavors or something like that, but actually my hand bumped against them while getting something else out of the fridge, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Pasta with Chorizo, Tomatoes and Green Olives
Serves 2-4 (depending on who's eating!)

2 onions diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 cups diced heirloom tomatoes (or regular tomatoes if you are not as lucky as me)
2 chorizo sausage links (mine were the fresh kind, not the dried, cured ones)
1/2 cup of sliced green olives
Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
8 oz of dried pasta
1/2 cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

Start a large pot of salted water over high heat to bring to a boil.

Heat a large skillet over medium high heat. Add onions and saute for 2 minutes, add garlic and saute until fragrant, about 30 seconds to a minute. Slice or dice sausage and add to skillet. I like to use my kitchen shears to just cut the sausage up and let drop directly into the pan. These keeps a cutting board from getting all messy from the sausage. Brown the sausage with the onions and garlic, stirring occasionally. When most of the pink is gone, add the tomatoes and stir. Let simmer of medium-low heat for about 20 minutes.

Cook pasta in boiling water per package instructions.

Add the diced green olives to the tomato sauce and the cooked pasta. I just scoop the pasta straight into the skillet, which allows a little of the pasta water to cling to it and thicken the sauce. Taste and adjust salt and pepper. Serve with a grating of fresh Parmesan cheese if you so desire!




This will be my entry for this week's Presto Pasta Nights hosted this week by Abby of Eat The Right Stuff.