Watermelon-Yogurt Ice

I've been invited to a virtual birthday potluck at Lick The Bowl Good. Today is Monica's birthday. Go by and tell her to have a great one!

This is what I'm bringing to the shin-dig. I found the recipe at delish.com and wanted to give it a try. I've never made anything like it and thought turned out pretty good. It tastes like I think watermelon ought to taste....sweet, cold, and refreshing.

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 4 cup diced seedless watermelon (about 3 pounds with the rind)
• 1 cup(s) low-fat vanilla yogurt
• 1 tablespoon lime juice

Combine water and sugar in a small saucepan. Cook, stirring, over high heat until the sugar is dissolved. Transfer to a glass measuring cup and let cool slightly.

Puree watermelon in a food processor or blender, in 2 batches, pulsing until smooth. Transfer to a large bowl. Whisk in the cooled sugar syrup, yogurt, and lime juice until combined. Pour the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into another large bowl, whisking to release all juice. Discard pulp. Pour the extracted juices into an ice cream maker and freeze according to manufacturer's directions. (Alternatively, pour into a shallow metal pan and freeze until solid, about 6 hours or overnight. Remove from freezer to defrost slightly, 5 minutes. Break into small chunks and process in a food processor, in batches, until smooth and creamy.) Serve immediately or transfer to a storage container and freeze for up to 2 hours.

I'm not sure what they mean freeze up to 2 hours. Seems to me if you want to keep it frozen you should keep it in the freezer.
I tried the ice cream maker method first, and it was an epic fail. So if you decide to make this just save yourself the trouble and stick it in the freezer to start with.
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And here's a sneak peek of something I'm thinking of offering for a giveaway in a few weeks :)

Desperation....

It's never a pretty thing. The longing, the craving...gnawing at you like a...umm...beaver?

I was wanting some more of those chocolate oatmeal no bake cookies in a bad way. But lots of reasons not to make them. First of all, last night I just about made myself sick on them. Secondly, not enough oatmeal.

So I got to thinking....what if I just had something that tasted like those cookies? Just a little something. Not a whole batch of cookies that I'll just scarf down alone while my children are at grandma's and the hubby's snoring in the other room. Then I came up with this....

Looked kinda pretty in the bowl. Pretty much the same ingredients just made differently. But what I wound up with was....

A bowl of chocolate oatmeal. Not quite what I had in mind, to be honest. But might be okay for breakfast....assuming I want a bowl of sugar-laden, artery clogging (there's a lot of butter in there) gloppiness.

Hopefully I'll have something else to post soon to cover up this mess.

Italian Baked Chicken and Pastina

I'll have to say that Giada was resting on her laurels with this recipe It's got potential, but it just turned out rather blah. I know she makes some good stuff, I've made a few of her recipes that turned out really delicious.

I thought it looked pretty yummy all mixed up together, and a little bit colorful too. But it definitely needed something.

There was a fair amount of butter on top....so that wasn't the problem. Maybe it needed some more garlic, or the addition of some Italian seasonings might have been nice. Maybe a different kind of meat, some sausage may have boosted the flavor a bit.

The topping was pretty good, just a mixture of bread crumbs and parmesan.

Well, thank goodness I had some yummy no bake cookies to make up for the disappointment. (yeah that's a dirty potholder there, sorry)

A friend of mine in college would make these for us all the time and she recently sent me her recipe. I used to be able to make these but lost the touch somehow, and they would always turn out too runny or something. But her recipe is just right!

1 stick butter 2 cups sugar 3 Tablespoons Hershey's Cocoa 1/2 cup milk Stir while boiling 4 minutes over med heat. Remove from heat and stir in 1 Teaspoon Vanilla 3/4 cup Jif Peanut Butter 2 Cups quick oats Drop quickly onto wax paper and allow to cool. Eat before the kids get out of school and hide all evidence.

Bowls of Hope*

I can't think of a clever way to start this post (but when has that ever stopped me), so let's just jump right in, shall we?

For every purchase of Post Shredded Wheat the company will donate one bowl of cereal to Feeding America, up to 15 million bowls. The purchase of a Bowls of Hope specially-marked cereal will support Post’s efforts in donating a bowl of Post Shredded Wheat Original, Shredded Wheat Spoon Size Original, Shredded Wheat and Bran, Shredded Wheat Lightly Frosted and Shredded Wheat Honey Nut.

Sounds like a worthwhile program to me. Perhaps the bowl in question will look like this.

And maybe it will say this on the side....

I don't think I've ever had a personalized bowl before. I'm a little choked up.

For more info on the program click here.

*Not to be confused with the Sadness Bowl.

Carnivores 'R Us

This Father's day was filled with the delightful aroma of meaty goodness. Courtesy of Pioneer Woman's brisket recipe. About as easy as falling off a log but a whole lot tastier. Yeah, I know that didn't make any sense.

All sliced up and yummy swimming around in the marinade juices. It was really delicious over mashed potatoes.

Okay, here's a token vegetable. Just some cukes chopped up with onions and tomatoes covered in Italian dressing.

Cream puffs made by the MIL. The story is she hadn't made them in over 20 years and decided to whip up a batch for the special occasion. She said it took her 3 tries to get it right. That's dedication. After the first time I would have tossed it all and bought a package of Ho-Ho's. But I'm glad she persisted.

Boston Cream Pie

Martha Stewart is ruining my life. That might be a bit of an overstatement, but she definitely did ruin my day. I found the recipe for her Boston Cream Pie at her website, and though "oh, I'll try that...why not?" PFFT! Why not indeed. I think this is one of the more labor intensive things I've ever tried to make. I probably spent a little over 3 hours on this! For a stupid little cake!

I'd like to be able to say that it was worth the time and effort; that it's the most glorious piece of baked good I've ever shoved into my face. But that would be untrue. It's not bad by any means. But definitely not worth the blood, sweat, and tears that went into it.

I can recall some time in the past purchasing one of those dessert kits for boston cream pie that was easy peasy, and it was just as good. Next time I'll save myself the trouble and get one of those. Thanks a whole heap, Martha.

P.S. Oh yeah...I only need one more fabulous person to follow me and I'll have 90! I'm not above begging. PLEEEASE! Maybe when I get to 100 I'll have a little giveaway.

Onion Dip---Revisited

A few weeks ago I made the onion dip I found at Closet Cooking and shared the results with y'all. I wanted to try it again and change it up just a little, and this is what I came up with.

This time I used the entire (8 oz) package of cream cheese, with about 1/4 cup of mayo. Along with the parmesan (maybe 2 large handfuls) I added some colby & monterey jack mix I had. About one handful of that. I baked it at 350 for about half an hour. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention there's 1/2 of a chopped vidalia onion in there.

So overall not a huge departure from what I did before. I did like the lower mayo content...just enough to give it a nice creamy texture. And adding the colby/monterey jack gives it just enough greasiness.

On a different note, the hubby and I decided to be a little adventuresome when we went out to eat on Sunday. Actually, we were more adventuresome than we meant to be. We thought we were trying a new Mexican place, but it was actually El Salvadorian (or however one would say that).

The place was called Salvadoreno Restaurante, (I know, that should have been some sort of giveaway right there) located in Phoenix. Their website is totally non-English.

He ordered the carne asada (shown below). He thought it was really tasty and very tender.

I decided to be really brave and ordered the sampler.

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There's a lot going on this plate. The round things at the bottom are pupusas...one contained a meat mixture, and the other one had some beans and cheese. To the left of that are two little empanadas. One had meat & potatoes, and the other had plaintain in it. They were both so hard I thought I'd break my teeth on them. Between the empanadas and the weeds is some fried yucca. Aptly named, I'd say. There are 2 hunks of brown stuff in the middle of the plate...the lowest one I think is some type of roasted pork. Had a good flavor but was really tough. And the one with the white stuff (sugar) on top is dessert empanada with plaintain stuffing and cream filling. If you're still hanging in with me, the yellow strippy things at the top of the plate are plantain chips. They were pretty good dipped in that salsa, or the pico-type stuff that had a vinegary flavor. Lastly, in the silver wrap is a chipilin tamale. I had to google chipilin...it's some sort of legume. My favorite part, which I didn't get a picture of, was the corn tamales served with sour cream that we had as an appetizer. I would have been happiest with a big plate of those.