Bitchin' Vittles
Wednesday, August 10, 2022
Potluck for the Win!
Wednesday, December 29, 2021
Simply the BEST!
Awwwww yeah....Tina belted it out but I bet you didn't know she was talkin' bout biscuits and gravy; better than all the rest is no joke! It's Thursday after Christmas, I am off all this week too and today is my last day home where I feel like I can lounge in my PJ's watching trash TV and not adulting - the melted/refrozen snow outside has me locked up anyway, so why fight it? Today was the day I would say YES to the carbs, not count a gram of anything, and just enjoy a couple of my favorites from one Mother to another - Lisa Schroeder of Mother's Bistro hits alllll the marks so I'm sharing her finest with you!
I received my "Mother's Best" cookbook in a basket raffle, not directly, but from a co-worker who won it but wasn't feeling Lisa Schroeder's mojo; she knew I wanted to win the basket for the cookbook alone,so she gifted it to me - still bowled over by her generosity, and she would be pleased to know that several pages are stuck together signifying a recipe that's a keeper....there are a couple stuck together for these two alone! I made a few adjustments, one because the biscuit recipe makes a sh**load in it's full glory, the other because I had a package of breakfast sausage from my local grocery store and it wasn't quite as much as her recipe calls for. Other than that it is 100% Mother's, let me know if you've dined on this in her bistro because I have not and would love to know if this measures up!
Handsome Stranger loves him a good biscuit, but his go-to is the standard butter Crisco, buttermilk, and baked until the top AND bottom are crispy golden brown....good? Yes. My fave? Nope. Lisa's biscuit is like a crusty pillow, so tender inside, but with a crispy bottom, a craggy top with the sheen of melted butter brushed over, and the flavor and texture that says "This has butter AND cream in it!" The gravy is flat out amazing, and you can taste the cream there as well....use a nice flavorful sausage and the herbs and spices added perfectly complement that meaty goodness. And keep in mind this is utter indulgence, and I only make it a couple times a year and suggest you follow suit - your heart and your cardiologist will thank you.
MOTHER'S BUTTERMILK BISCUITS
- 3 C. flour
4.5 tsp. baking powder
1.5 tsp. table salt 1 tsp. and a pinch of kosher salt
3 T. sugar
3/4 of a stick of cold butter (cut in half, then cut one of the halves in half and only use one small half), cut in small cubes
1-1/4 C. buttermilk (I use whole buttermilk)
1-1/4 C. heavy cream
3/4 C. flour for dredging
2 T. butter, melted
Heat oven to 450, spray square pan with spray and set aside.
In large bowl, mix flour, baking powder, salts and sugar, add butter cubes and cut or smash in with your fingers until pea sized. Make a well and pour in buttermilk and cream, stir with fork until a shaggy wet dough forms with no dry pockets. Put 3/4 C. flour in another bowl, then using a 1/2 cup scoop if you got one, scoop one biscuit at a time into flour, roll around with your hands and toss back and forth to knock off excess flour, then place in greased pan. Repeat until you have 9 biscuits in pan. Place in oven and bake 10 minutes; turn pan and turn oven down to 375; cook 20-30 minutes, turning once more until golden brown (if you stick the point of a sharp knife under the edge of the center biscuit and pull up a little, you can see if the dough in the center is done). Remove from oven, brush with melted butter and let stand 20 minutes (hahahaha....that never happens here)
MOTHER'S COUNTRY SAUSAGE GRAVY
Butter or bacon fat if needed (I had to add 2 T. of butter because it's so friggen lean!)
1/4 C. flour
1.5 C. milk
1.5 C. heavy cream
1 tsp. garlic salt
1/2 tsp. onion salt
fresh ground black pepper
1/2 plus pinch of dried thyme
pinch of cayenne
Brown sausage in large skillet, breaking into small chunks; add additional butter or bacon fat until you have 2-3 T. in with sausage; add flour and stir, cook until flour starts to brown. Add seasonings and milk and stir until it starts to bubble and thicken; add cream and whisk until it starts to bubble and thicken. Turn down to simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes.
Mother's splits her biscuits and pops them cut side down on a buttered griddle before serving with gravy; you could also put in toaster oven or broiler cut side up...I like them soft and squishy so I just split/ladle/enjoy! The parsley on top is simply frippery...but I lovelovelove my new Fiesta bowl plates and adding that little pop of color DO makes for a nice presentation. The other plate was my second fave - BRAVO to whoever produced that blackberry jam that I bought at St. Edwards Christmas Bazaar this year, holy Catholic Gramma that stuff is Heaven on a biscuit!
Monday, April 17, 2017
Love at First Bite
Sunset from inside my church |
I wasn't going to make baskets for the "kids"....in July they will ALL be over 30, so maybe that should be my guilt free cut-off age to stop doing that?? Ended up putting it all in a "platter basket", and for all my good intentions of NOT overdoing it, I thought I was going to need Walt's engine lift to get it into the kitchen. And even at that, it was mostly gone this morning....nothing but a few Twix, a couple snack bags of Almond M&M's, and a bag of pistachios that someone has yet to claim. If the boys are still in bed when I get home, I should probably sneak into their rooms and give them each a shot of insulin. I had a FEW.....still haven't learned to not buy candy I love, so those stupid sour watermelon gummies kept calling my name. Which is apparently "Hey, you....yeah, the one with your pants unbuttoned"....
Breakfast was the Easter Absolute....cannot celebrate the Risen Lord without Polish Dish (another post, look it up), and some lovely asiago roasted garlic bread toast dripping with butter. We went to bed late (Saturday Vigil Mass takes FOREVER), got up late, but apparently the kids were hibernating so we finally stood between their bedroom doors and said LOUDLY "We are eating breakfast in 5 minutes, with or without you", so 10 minutes later they got up. Which was good, because I decided that we had to have some kind of sweet bread after all, did a speed scan of Pinterest, then whipped up my version of the offering "Best Ever Cinnamon Roll Bites". Everyone LOVED them....they are sweet, and petite, and tender, and super-duper yummy ESPECIALLY if you smear some butter on them, and SO much faster than cinnamon rolls. I also tweaked the recipe because biscuits need buttermilk, and buttermilk makes things more tender and with a pleasant tang....you could probably use Bisquick for this, but you know how I feel about that so don't tell me if you do. Enjoy.....your first bite will not be your last!
Better Cinnamon Bites
I will admit I cranked up the recipe a bit, and perhaps the pan could have been less full, but what the heck....you could probably pile some on top, or use a small oven proof dish or put them in cupcake tins or whatever....just make them and I think you'll discover no one cares, and it's hard to complain when your mouth is full.
Dough:
2.1/3 Cups flour
1 T. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 Cup cold butter (1 cube)
1 C. buttermilk
Topping:
1/4 Cup brown sugar
1/4 Cup white sugar
2 T. cinnamon
2 T. melted butter
Icing:
1 T. butter, melted
1 C. powdered sugar
Milk
Preheat oven to 350, grease or spray a large pie plate or tin, or an 8x8 square glass pan, or maybe a 8 or 10 inch spring form pan and set aside.
Mix topping ingredients in medium sized bowl and set aside.
Mix flour, baking powder, salt and soda in large bowl, cut in cold butter with pastry blender, a fork, or your fingers until small pea sized chunks. Stir in buttermilk with a fork, adding more if needed to get a rough shaggy ball, and don't over work or they'll be tough. Once you have the sides scraped, grab a cookie scoop or two teaspoons and start making rough balls about an inch diameter, and drop each into the cinnamon sugar. roll around and put in baking dish, continuing until you've used all the dough. Squeeze them in, or put some in another container if you feel like there's too many - I ate a fair amount of dough so that helped me, lol.
Melt butter and drizzle over top, then bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes or until you can stick a knife tip in between two center balls and check to ensure they are no longer doughy. Put on trivet and let cool for maybe 10 minutes. While waiting to cool, melt icing butter, add powdered sugar and whisk, adding enough milk to get a creamy but thing icing. Drizzle on top of balls and serve warm. With butter on the side.....I will add a picture of the recipe next time I make them, but never thought about it yesterday because I was too busy stuffing my face, so you get one of my church I thought was beautiful and more Easter appropriate. But come to think of it, I wonder how I get ANY food pictures on here since I'm forever stuffing my face....
Friday, March 31, 2017
He's the Apple of my Eye
I really am a bit of a mess....wicked bad arthritis in one knee, plantar fasciitis in one foot, Achilles tendinitis in the other, and bone spurs aplenty in all of them. No matter what I wear I am sporting New Balance walking shoes, white for casual and gray for more formal attire....they cost dang near as much as Manolo's, so if you see me in a cocktail dress cut down/up to there, remember that my walking shoes look far better with it than me belly crawling across the floor. I graduated to a pair of "engineered" sandals, and they're pretty cute....but the jury's still out, I wore them today to Ikea so whether I sleep tonight without lightning bolts in my heel or not will determine if they're good enough support until my healing is complete. I hope so...spending the summer in walking shoes is not my idea of fun....my toes need their freedom!!
Last fall Handsome Stranger and I drove alllllll the way to Hood River, Oregon to pick our favorite apples right off beautifully manicured and well taken care of trees at Kiyokawa Family Farms, and got a little carried away....I think we had in the realm of 70 POUNDS of apples just for us, but it was SO MUCH FUN picking it was hard to stop. My favorite is the Pink Lady (or Cripp's Pink), and they were not u-picking them, but as they were in season, we were able to get them out of the stand, but my honey's pick is always Cameo's, and they were thick and heavy on those trees, just screaming to be picked! It didn't take long to load up our wagon, and it is truly amazing how good an apple is you just picked off the tree yourself....they are my second favorite, and we bought so many it brought the price down so it was fine by me.
We eat a LOT of apples on WW....it's free, they are filling, conquer the sweet cravings, and have tons of fiber and bulk - but maybe not 70 lbs. worth. After a couple months, HS decided that they were starting to soften just a tad, so he would cull out the ones that were aging and whip out a batch of applesauce, no sugar added. I have to tell you, that is the best damn applesauce I have EVER had....it was velvety smooth, sweet and tart, and be darned if a thick layer of it on top of demon oatmeal made me think I was eating apple not-so-crisp. I already miss it, but next year we may have to up the tally to 150 lbs and he can make half into sauce!
I can also find other uses for these beauties....they made great pie, fantastic apple sour cream coffee cake (recipe is in here somewhere), and one my new favorites, Apple German Cake from the good folks at Bob's Red Mill. They have a store in Milwaukie, and I visited there today....I walked over to the goody case they sell their baked goods from, and didn't see it there, but there was an empty shelf with a blank tag. I turned the tag around and sure enough "Apple German Cake" was written on it, and a lady who was hovering said "Apple cake, huh?" I said "HOW can they be OUT??", and she says "Yeah, I know...." and we both walked away with tears in our eyes...oh BOB, how COULD you??
Neither one of us trusts ourselves enough to make it because we know it's kryptonite, but maybe for Easter?? Here it is....I'm not putting it in there, but the recipe does call for some of Bob's products, feel free to use those or whatever you have on hand :-)
Bob's Red Mill Apple German Cake
This cake is not fancy; it's very dark when baked, and has no topping at all....do NOT let that fool you. It packs and apple punch like you won't believe, and it's sweet, dense, and moist as all get-out....the most I think I would attempt to fancy it up is put a pretty stencil on top and sprinkle with powdered sugar, but trust me when I say no one will care while they are stuffing it in their face. And it's RIDICULOUSLY easy...
2 C. Unbleached white flour
2 C. sugar
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
2 eggs
4 cups peeled apple, chopped in 1/2-3/4" cubes
1 C. walnuts, coarsely chopped
1/2 C. vegetable oil
1 tsp. vanilla
Heat oven to 350, grease 9x13 pan.
Combine flour, sugar, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda in large mixing bowl, set aside. In medium mixing bowl combine eggs, apple, walnuts, oil, and vanilla; stir together until well mixed, then pour into dry mix and stir until combined. Pour into prepared pan and bake at 350 40-45 minutes; cool and serve plain, with whipped cream or ice cream if desired.
Enjoy the apple-y and spicy goodness, and think of green orchards against a backdrop of a beautiful snow-capped mountain rising into the bluest of skies....it was a pretty awesome experience, you should do it at least once before your knees and feet give out completely!
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Let Us Wrap Chicken....BBBBOK, BOK!
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Meant to Be...
Friday, April 17, 2015
Passport to Pudge
WHERE IS MY FORK... |
SOPITOS
Pinch ridge along edge |
Form into ball.... |
Flatten with bottom of plate... |
Heat a skillet over medium to medium high heat, brush with a little oil or use pan spray and carefully put sope in. Cook until little brown blisters appear on the bottom, about 45 seconds (a bit longer if the heat is lower, same for the other side). Flip carefully and cool other side another 30-45 seconds, flip one more time, count to 10, and transfer to a towel or parchment lined cookie sheet. Keep warm in 300 degree oven. Now for toppings:
Pork verde
Refried beans, warmed (optional, but REALLY FILLING and adds a creamy element)
Pork verde