Bad Granola

Cleaning out the cabinets I found a large canister of oatmeal I needed to use up and what better way to use up a lot of oats than to make granola? So I found a recipe for vanilla scented granola. So I mixed it all up and put it in the pan. I tasted a bit, not bad. As soon as I put it in the oven it started smelling great. The recipe says to cook it at 400 degrees for 30 min. About 20 minutes in I noticed it didn't smell so good anymore, opened the oven and found my burnt granola. I ended up throwing the whole thing away:-( It might be worth trying again but I will definitely check it more often.

Please lend your support and donate to me on my walk to end Alzheimer's Sept 17.  

Yum... Fudge Pie

I thought this was great with the one exception being that the outside edges of the graham cracker crust got very hard. The recipe came from a October/November 2008 issue of Taste of the South magazine. It was easy to make and didn't used a lot of ingredients. It called for a tablespoon of whiskey which I omitted and it was fine without it and is to be served chilled but it's good room temperature as well. Next time I will try it with a regular pie crust.

Miss Mary's Fudge Pie

1/4 c. butter
1 1/2 c. sugar
3 tbs unsweetened cocoa powder
2 large eggs, beaten
1/2 c. evaporated milk
1 tbs Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey  (opt.)
1 9-in graham cracker crust (try a regular pie crust)
Garnish: sweetened, whiskey spiked whipped cream and additional cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Remove from heat. Add sugar and cocoa powder, stirring to combine. Add eggs, evaporated milk and whiskey. Pour into prepared piecrust.

Bake for 40 minutes or until set. Let cool completely.

Chill and serve. Garnish slices with whipped cream and cocoa powder, if desired.

I will be walking to end alzhiemer's on September 17. If anyone has a little spare money they would like to donate to this cause I would appreciate it.

Sloppy Joes and Homemade Hamburger Buns

The other night I made this recipe for sloppy joes and hamburger buns. The buns weren't bad but they turned out more like giant dinner rolls then hamburger buns. I altered the sloppy joe recipe a bit because I was using less meat  so I'll post the revised recipe. I took pictures of the buns but I completely forgot the meat mixture, that's okay I guess most everyone know what they look like anyway.

Sloppy Joes - revised from A Bountiful Kitchen

1 lb ground beef

1/2 onion, chopped (if you are planning leftovers, might want to use less, taste was stronger next day)

1/2 green pepper, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced or 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder (optional)

1 6 oz can tomato paste

1 8 oz can tomato sauce

3 tbs Worcestershire

1/4 cup brown sugar (was way to much, should try halving)

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground pepper

water 1/4 to 1/2 cup to thin sauce, if needed

Brown ground beef in skillet. Drain off any grease. Add chopped onion, green pepper and garlic. Season with salt and pepper. Saute until onion is softened. Add tomato paste, sauce, Worcestershire and brown sugar. Cook over medium heat. If mixture is too thick, thin with 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water. Serve with hamburger buns, top with cheese, if desired. 

 
I'm walking to end alzheimer's on Sept 17. If anyone can spare a little bit of money to donate to a good cause, I would really appreciate it.

2011 Walk to End Alzheimer's

I will be participating in an alzheimer's walk on September 17, 2011 and would be grateful for any donations anyone can afford to give.

Did you know that alzheimer's is the 6th leading cause of death and every 69 seconds another person develops this disease. In America, there are as many as 5.4 million people living with alzheimer's disease.

One of the people currently living with this disease is my Nanny, which is what I call my grandmother. She was most often a stay at home wife and mother and until a few years ago she did most most of the cooking at her house. In the last few she didn't do any of it.

My grandfather died of cancer last year and towards the end I would come over a couple of days a week, the days the woman from hospice came and helped with his bath. I would keep Nanny distracted so she wouldn't get upset that some strange woman was with her husband and I would make her lunch, not my Pepa's because he had a tomato sandwich everyday and I couldn't peel the tomato to his satisfaction. lol. I would fix their supper for them. Nanny would sit in the kitchen with me.

Sometimes it was like having a child in the kitchen. "Don't touch the pot, it's hot." "I know" she would say. Perhaps she did know but she didn't comprehend. She can also be incredibly impatient. I was making a banana pudding and while I was standing at the stove stirring the custard she would point to the dish filled with cookies and bananas and tell me i was supposed to put the custard in the dish in a bit of a haughty, I know better than you tone of voice. "It's still cooking." We had that conversation at least thirty times... that was the slowest thickening custard ever!

Nanny is a nursing home now. It's not an ideal situation to have to do that but in some ways it's better. One of the family still sees her everyday, there is a doctor who comes in often enough that he was able to adjust her meds and she still gets her bad moods but in general she is much easier to deal with.

I've put a button below and in my sidebar linking to my donation page. I know money is tight and the economy is bad but if you can spare even a dollar or two I would be thankful. 

Too many cucumbers leads to strange things...

The fridge is full of cucumbers. I guess I could learn to make pickles but I don't like them. I do use sweet relish but not enough to go to the trouble of making them. Google blog search here I come! Cucumber bread... I like carrot cake and I like zucchini bread, why not a cucumber bread?

I found a recipe that looks good and I give it a try. I don't have any buttermilk in the house so I used 2 percent, no cream cheese so I left off the frosting and it didn't say if I should drain the shredded cukes, so I squeezed some of the liquid out, but not all. They looked okay but how about the taste? Cucumbers, it tasted like cucumbers. That should have been obvious but carrot cake doesn't really taste like carrots and zucchini bread doesn't taste like zucchini. The people who tried weren't really impressed and although I didn't think it was bad I couldn't get used to eating a sweet bread that tasted of cucumbers. It's not going to be a repeat for me but if any one wants to try it and you aren't feeding a crowd you might want to half the recipe.

Crock Pot Jambalaya

If this recipe is anything to go one rice doesn't do well in slow cookers. I probably should not have even attempted this recipe because the blogger did not have rave reviews about this dish. Her review said the rice on the bottom was overcooked and the rice on top was not done. I figured since I always stir even when I'm supposed to set it and forget it everything would be alright, right? Wrong.

I halved the recipe just in case it didn't turn out, apparently I should have halved the cook time as well. Actually I did. I checked it after 4 hours on low and the rice was gummy and mushy and sticking to the pot. I didn't even bother adding the chicken. I ended up picking out the sausage and eating it on a hot dog bun.

Crock Pot Jambalaya

Dorie's not so perfect pound cake...

My mother loves pound cake but has never been able make them, so what she usually does is yellow cake from a mix baked in a bundt pan. I've seen the recipe for Dorie Greenspan's Perfection Pound Cake on numerous blogs and I thought I would give it a try. I followed the directions to the letter, used real Kerrygold butter, I'm pretty sure the batter tasted okay, not that I would recommend that anyone eats cake batter.

I was really hoping for the best but the flavor was unremarkable and the cake was dry. It was edible if it was covered in strawberries and whipped cream.  What a waste of butter this was. I'm not even going to link to the recipe as it's easy to find.