Creamy, dreamy pie

It was a beautiful, sunny day out today. After rising pretty early, Drama Queen and I went to the grocery store for food for the week. We have pantry items up the ying yang, but got some fish, shrimp, veggies and dairy. And almost fainted at the bill.

I was in the mood for baking and had asked Dude recently what other types of pie he liked. He popped off a few and then said "coconut cream". Hmmm, don't ever remember seeing him order this in a restaurant or at his grandma's house, but I was game.

I looked in a couple of cookbooks......and the recipe was exactly the same in all 3. Is there really only one recipe for Coconut Cream Pie?

This is from Best of Country Pies-Taste of Home-but it was the same in a church cookbook from Idaho and also community cookbook from, well, I think it was Wisconsin.

Coconut Cream Meringue Pie

1 unbaked pastry shell

6 TBSP sugar

5 TBSP flour

1/4 tsp salt

2 cups whole milk

3 egg yolks, slightly beaten

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup flaked coconut

TOPPING

3 egg whites

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

6 TBSP sugar

1/2 cup flaked coconut

Line unpricked pastry shell with a double thickness of tinfoil. Bake at 450 degrees F. for 8 minutes. Remove foil and bake another 5 minutes. Remove to wire rack to cool. Lower oven temp to 350 degrees F.  In a saucepan, combine sugar, flour and salt. Slowly pour in milk and whisk together. Turn heat on to a medium-high and heat until thickened, stirring constantly. Reduce heat and cook two more minutes while still stirring. Add a small amount of hot milk mixture to beaten egg yolks, then stir yolk mixture into the saucepan containing the milk mixture, stirring while slowly adding. Stir constantly while bringing mixture to a gentle boil. Cook and stir for another 2 minutes. Remove from heat. Stir in vanilla and then coconut. Pour into cooled shell.

For meringue, pour egg whites into stand mixer bowl. Add cream of tartar and beat on medium speed until soft peaks form. With mixer still running on medium, add sugar, one tablespoon at a time, until stiff peaks form. Pour over topping and spread over filling, making sure you cover all the filling. Sprinkle with the coconut. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes.

Let cool on a wire rack. Store in the fridge.

Dude was a member of the clean plate club-times two!

Haters need not reply

I'm a nice person. Really-I have been told on numerous occasions that I always have something nice to say to someone, a ready smile, and a helping hand.While I know how FAR from perfect I am, I think when I reach the pearly gates they will know I always tried to be a nice person.

 our Ash tree that succumbed to the evil bug

I received an email a while back regarding my blog. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't full of loving remarks regarding my blog either. Briefly, I am boring, food is bland and not imaginative and pretty much people are looking for more than I had to offer.

 the fire pit is almost visible!!

Then I was thinking back to what another blogger I follow posted about people who say they create recipes, etc on their blogs but they truly don't (I'm paraphrasing here).  Hmmm, maybe this person has a point. While I have never, ever stated here that I create my recipes, maybe I don't make it clear enough that I make old family favorites from my childhood that I 'created' out of memory, but surely didn't make up Tater Tot hotdish. I get recipes from my MIL. I get recipes from other blogs. I get recipes from cookbooks that I mashup together because of an ingredient I or another family member do not care for, or we may not have it on hand. I have several subscriptions to different cooking magazines that I read cover to cover the day I get them. I get recipes from friends. I get recipes from co-workers.

  I love how the ice formed around the leaves and in the indents in the stones

While I stated that I feel that I am a nice person, I also suffer from being very shy and I always have had a problem with self esteem. I admit I was this close to taking my blog down completely. Not out of spite or hurt feelings, but more from the feeling that if one person was honest ballsy enough to email me, maybe others felt the same but never said anything.

my strawberry leaves never died off this fall-I don't know what that mean for this spring

After several weeks of re-reading my posts to make sure that I had given credit to others, or said that I combined recipes from various sources, or that it was a family favorite on a battered old recipe card-I realized something. Who cares if this person doesn't like my blog. Like I say to people who complain about music or programs that offend them-TURN THE CHANNEL!  If what I offer isn't what you think it should be, there are 1,498,633 other blogs you can look at. Maybe they are professional chefs or actual recipe creators, cookbook authors or just way smarter than me. I. me.

So there it is. I'm just a middle aged wife and Mom. I enjoy my job. I enjoy my kids and hubby. I enjoy my cat (who wouldn't-she is cuter than the dickens). I like to make people feel good with my food. I enjoy watching them eat something and really enjoy it themselves. I enjoy beer, and wine, and apparently last night a little too much Cuervo. I love bonfires, camping, fireflies, tulips, fresh cut grass and riding around our yard on our white trash golf cart.

And I like hanging out here.

all the pics were taken today on a walk around the yard. I can't wait to plant the garden, use the fire pit, and barbecue. It has been winter waaaay too long!

It's Easy gettin' Cheesey

I love bread. Like, A LOT. I am the first one in the bread basket when it arrives at the table. Bread, butter.....a match made in heaven.

I get email updates from Kraft, Betty Crocker and Pillsbury and I click and look and will say "Hmm, that might be good" or "my family would bolt from the table if I ever served that". One day I got the email and it was a round Sourdough loaf that was cut, drizzled with butter, stuffed with cheese and then baked.

I'm really not a Sourdough fan. Please do not send the hate mail (like the ones I received when I admitted to not liking ice cream, strawberries or any pie other than pecan and chocolate). I know lots of people enjoy the taste of Sourdough, but not in this house. I kept looking for a round loaf I could use and finally found this in the bakery section of our local grocery store.

mmmmmm, bread

The recipe, if you can even call it that, is pretty much 3 ingredients-bread, butter and cheese. I, however, wanted to bump up the flavor, so I added a fourth element. Garlic powder. I mean, c'mon-who doesn't like garlic bread?

Cheesey Party Loaf

(adapted from on-line recipe**)

1 loaf round bread

1/2 stick butter, melted

1/2 tsp. garlic powder

1 cup shredded cheese

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Slice across the loaf in 1-inch increments, not cutting through the bottom of the bread. Turn the loaf 90 degrees and cut across the loaf again in 1-inch increments. The bread will have 1-inch 'fingers' now. Fan the bread a little to open it up. Stir the garlic powder into melted butter. Pour the melted butter down the rows of the cut bread, making sure to cover horizontal and vertical rows. Take pinchfuls of the shredded cheese and stuff down each row, again making sure to go across all rows, tucking the cheese down into the crevices.

Wrap the loaf in heavy duty tin foil, or a double layer of regular tin foil. Place wrapped loaf on your oven rack that is placed in the middle of the oven. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the cheese is all melty and gooey.

The second time I made this, I melted a little extra butter and just sprinkled a little more garlic powder in then brushed it over the top of the loaf.

It is so simple but oh so good. My family devoured it at our family Christmas a couple of weeks ago. You just break off a hunk and go. I also made it last weekend for our Girl's Night and brought the half loaf home and we re-warmed it to go with our leftover Prime Rib.

Your tummy-and your family-will thank you.

On to other business.

Twenty years ago at about 5:25 AM, we were blessed with our first daughter Ally. Happy Birthday Baby! I love you even more now than I did when they placed you in my arms all those years ago. I'm sad that I don't get to make you a special dinner or a cake, but I know you have fun plans tonight with your high school BFF and your sister who are driving up North as we speak. Be good, be careful, have fun!



** I checked all of my on-line recipe e-mail sites and can't find the original recipe, so I'm not sure who gets proper credit. UPDATE: it is from Taste of Home, just got an update and checked their site :)

Raise your hand if you are sick of winter...Or, how delish are these leftovers?

photo by Amanda Glaus from MN

This is what the weather looks like where I live right now, and this is good compared to what it was like down in the country where we live. It was Girls Night tonight, but got pushed to Girls Afternoon due to the impending weather. I get together with my friends C and M, whom I used to work with at the Bank. We get together not as often as we would like, but usually every other month or so. We all make food then sit and eat said food and talk about what is new in each of our lives. Today, our food was awesome like always! C made turkey meatballs with a glaze of Cocktail sauce and grape jelly and some mustard and her famous guac, M brought veggies and dip and a pan of chocolate chip cookie bars and I made popcorn salad and made a loaf of cheesy bread (which I will share this upcoming week). I also brought a bottle of Rose Regale for them to try-it was a 10 on everyones list.

My plate of food this afternoon

Last night Dude and I were going to have date night and decided to ask Drama Queen to come since we were going out for Prime Rib-and she hadn't had any for a long, long time. We went to Wiederholt's in Miesville, MN. It is an old fashioned supper club that has been owned by the same family for maybe 60 years. It is old school. Dark paneling, red curtains and carpeting, old fashioned chandeliers with the orange bulbs. They serve you a tray of crudities with dip and ice sprinkled over the veggies to keep cold, an assortment of crackers and fresh buns, a stick of REAL butter, salads and your main course. It is always busy on the weekends, so a nice man offered DQ and me his chairs and we all enjoyed a cocktail while we waited-DQ had a Shirley Temple only (she was our sober cab-I must say it is quite handy!) We all ordered the Prime Rib-Dude and I had the 24 ounce cut will Boo had the 16 ounce. We knew we would have enough to bring home and enjoy this evening. I made some baked potatoes, warmed the meat in au jus and reheated the remaining cheesy bread from this afternoon. It was delightful. Just enough for a small supper after watching an awesome Daytona 500. We are not big sports buffs in our house, but we love us some racing! We have a local track only 16 miles from our house, so we like to get to at least one race each year.

So, while the weather is awful (I don't even want to think about us having to drive in this crap-thankfully DQ is off due to the holiday) we had our fair share of wonderful food this weekend. Can't remember the last time we had a dinner bill of $114......darn Cosmos!

And they didn't even bring a Hostess gift

Some freaking bug has entered my body and refuses to leave. I had to cancel my lunch date with my best friend from high school and feel the need to go back to bed again. So much for plans of cooking this weekend.

I do hope to have an appy to share with you, as I am having Girl's Night with my former co-workers tomorrow (if this personal attack on my immune system will allow me). It was so easy-saw it on Kraft or Pillsbury maybe? I made it last weekend for my family Christmas party---and forgot to take a picture, so am making it again for the girls for tomorrow, along with Meg's favorite Popcorn salad.

I'm off to drink hot water and honey, gargle with some salt water, and slowly chip away at the layers of skin on my nose.

Devils Food Heath Bar Cake

While perusing several of the blogs I follow, I found this over at Framed. I did change it up a bit as I'm not a big fan of Butterfingers. Plus, since Hermit Crab was home with her boyfriend, I totally missed a step and an ingredient, but I actually liked it better this way. The cake the original way was very good, but it totally fell apart. I like my cake a little more...toothy, or at least in one piece on the plate. It is VERY rich, so we cut it in 12 pieces; next time: 16.

Devils Food Heath Bar Cake

1 box Devils food cake mix
--ingredients called for on box
1 jar Hot caramel sauce (for ice cream)
1 container Cool Whip (or homemade-I didn't have the facility to whip the cream)
2 regular size Heath Bars (I had minis, so we crushed up about 12)

Bake cake according to directions on package for two 9-inch round pans. Let cool in pan for about 5 minutes. Flip out onto wire rack, then flip again onto a cookie sheet. Poke holes all over the top of the cake. I used a chop stick. Heat up the Hot caramel sauce in the jar in the microwave for about 40 seconds. Pour over the cake and let it seep into holes and pool on top. Let the cakes cool, then place one top of the other and let cool completely. Right before serving, top with Cool Whip (if you have limited options) or fresh whipped cream. Sprinkle with crushed Heath Bars.

You can check out Kathleen's site for original recipe from where she got the recipe. The original includes mixing the Hot caramel sauce with a can of sweetened condensed milk, then pouring it over the holey cake. It was terrific, but you need to not layer the cake or it will crumble, and it will crumble a little on the plate.

A weekend full of food and lazing

My family celebrated Christmas yesterday. Yes, we are a little late, but there were circumstances that occured that were beyond our control. We were afraid that we were going to have to postpone again, as my Mom ended up having emergency surgery on Wednesday, but here she is below with my niece checking out said niece's new IPhone and all the cool technology that she doesn't understand.

The big surprise was that Hermit Crab and her boyfriend came home for the weekend and we didn't tell anyone so we could surprise the family. It sure was fun to watch every one's faces as they walked into my sister's house and saw them on the couch!

Today the morning is all about lazing around...mostly with a Tofu on my lap. I think I may go out and make some waffles for the kids and then nap until it is time for our dinner date with some long time friends. We have both heard excellent reviews about dinner, so I may need to bring the camera with!