Eating Dinner With My Family

I guess I had something to prove, because I set out to make meatless Monday's dinner another soufflé. Making this so close to the quasi failure of my last one can only be attributed to my wanting redemption.  The original recipe called for cheddar, but I had swiss on hand and it was great.  I'm sure any cheese would be good so long as you like it.   I still don't know why (well except the last tasty mess, I guess I kind of know) soufflés are considered so difficult to make.  They are not that hard, they are economical and they are good!  I also don't consider this a repeat even though  I have made a cheese soufflé before.  (4 I think) Each one was different, different cheeses and one even had a slightly different technique.  Cheese Souffle Butter room temperature, for greasing the souffe pan 2 Tbl grated Parmesan 1 1/2 ounces (3 tablespoons) butter 3 Tbl flour 1 Tsp dry mustard 1/2 Tsp garlic powder 1/8 Tsp kosher salt 1 1/3 Cup m...

It was one of those moments where you think the universe is telling you to do something!  I had on deck for this week, and indeed scheduled for today, this grilled ham and cheese sandwich with a mustard/ apricot jam dipping sauce that I saw on an article of grown up grilled cheeses on Yahoo. Yesterday, I got my latest issue of Food and Wine, and under the heading '7 minute dinners' here was this recipe for the inside out grilled ham and cheese. It also had an apricot/mustard sauce but the main difference was that you press a layer of grated Parmesan cheese in to the buttered bread before grilling. Brilliant!  Genius!  The result, even without all the other tasty ingredients, was this crispy perfect, ultra thin Parmesan frico. Now figure in the apricot/Dijon sauce and the pickles and you have one heck of an awesome sandwich. I don't know why I don't want to give it a 5 star rating, but I'm going with 4.5. Perhaps it was my son not digging it quite as much as we did. ...

So, if you follow the link to the original recipe, you will see I changed it a bit.  Biggest change, was that I cooked it the way I cook pizza, and not for 20 minutes at a lower temperature.  Also I changed the  frisée to mixed salad greens.  (because I don't care much for it, it is pricey and they didn't have it at publix)  I also tweaked the amounts a bit.  I increased the dough by 1/4 lb and used less mustard than they recommended for the 3/4 lb pizza.  I also added a pinch of the mustard to the dressing but still had about 1.5 tsp. left that I didn't use. Oh and I used garden variety Swiss cheese instead of Jarlsberg.  My husband was looking at me like I was crazy while I was making this, but he had to admit that the smell of bacon cooking and then shallots was pretty wonderful.  I thought  the 1/4 cup mustard called for was a bit excessive, but I measured out that amount and then spread it on the dough from...

A great recipe for leftover ham and who couldn't use a salad the day after Thanksgiving;).  We have had this salad at the Columbia restaurant in St. Augustine and we loved it.  Then, some years later, we were in a cabin in North Carolina with some family and they had recreated the salad for dinner one night. It had become one of our family recipes and we all love it.  It is super easy and the dressing is wonderful on any salad.  If you have kids that require some extra calories or carbs, we add a baguette and butter for them.  Not only is is a great use of leftover Thanksgiving ham, but we had a lovely oriental salad mix from the Front Porch Picking basket.  Normally the salad is made with romaine, and it is great that way, but also wonderful with the mixed greens.  The recipe is a little vague because it was never written down properly and I hate to now assign an arbitrary measurement now, but for the sake of, some, clarity, I will throw out a m...

I made one deviation from this recipe, I used burger patties made from 1/2 ground chuck and 1/2 ground pork. Why? Well because I had some ground beef & pork leftover from the last time I made meatballs. We mixed those meats and made patties and froze them in vacuum bags. We didn't have enough meat to make patties from one type of meat but we had enough for 3 if we mixed them together. What was I going to do with them? I turned to the burger master, Bobby Flay, and the cookbook I got free on iBooks (Called Bobby Flay's Bold Flavors).  This is like a Cuban sandwich and a burger had a baby and those are two of my favorite sandwiches.  All I have to say is DANG it was good.  We all devoured our burgers.  I think we had patties that were a bit bigger than the 1/4 pound called for and that was my only issue with the burger; I thought the patty was a bit big, but that's my fault:).  We all were really pleased with the whole  meal.  A solid 4.5. Miam...

I was really tired today, and wanted nothing more than to skip feeding my family and go to bed.  Instead, I wracked my tired brain and browsed my many recipes saved on pinterest to see if I could find one that would be fast, easy and tasty and didn't involve a crock pot. (it was already after 4)  I thought these looked really tasty and decided to make them.  I did alter it a bit.  First of all, and not intentionally, I left out the poppy seeds.  I didn't have them.  I was sure I did and didn't even check before I ran to the store for the rolls and ham.  I still believe that there are some in there.  I have celery seeds, sesame seeds (white and black) mustard seeds, and two (2 really?) jars of fennel seeds.  Oh and huge bags of coriander and fenugreek too.  So really, no poppy?  I just don't believe it but they were left off.  I also used 3/4 pound of meat and cheese each.  I still thought it was a bit much.  I was pr...