These burgers look great in the picture. I was under the impression they were made out of some kind of meat (turkey or beef) mixed with beans. Not so. The burgers are made entirely of bean. Holy frejoles. Almost like a bean “meatball”, they have breadcrumbs, cheese, and cilantro as well. Breadcrumbs give them a little extra substance, while cheese adds texture and goo. The cilantro, however, was eliminated. Christine does not like cilantro. Quite frankly, I think there must be some deep, dark, secret story concerning this herb we have yet to hear…either way, she wouldn’t even consider putting it in. And the recipe calls for a pretty hefty amount! We replaced it with fresh spinach and basil. Delicious alternatives, I have to tell you.

I convinced Christine to shred the cheese in the food processor. It called for over a cup, and that’s a lot to grate by hand, even for the Superhuman C. We agreed that our aversion to the food processor in general stems from years ago, when we used to have pancakes on Wednesday mornings. To make pancakes for a family of seven who eats at seven in the morning, one needs to start preparations early. Also, being the health nuts we are, we didn’t just dump some Bisquick in a bowl and stir in some milk. Oh no. We had this intense blender pancake recipe that used whole grains like millet and kamut. The loud, raucous sound of hard grains being blended into smooth submission was always slightly scary at 6:32 in the morning. You understand. Anyway, Christine acquiesced to my plea to use the loud and tedious food processor. Speed was definitely the order of the day.

I don’t really know why that was the case, though, since we were completely done preparing the burgers at 4:00. Since they only cook 20 minutes, we had lots of time  to wait. We mixed up the amazing mango salsa to go on top: fresh mango, avocado, fresh lime juice, and fresh mint from our garden. <yum>

The other element of the meal was fries, and we <whisper> bought those. So we set the table, chopped up some carrots and celery, and generally hung around until it was time to cook the burgers. Speaking of which, we also removed the cumin. My mother can’t stand cumin. It probably gives her stomach problems, too. She has a very delicate digestive balance. The finely chopped jalapeno pepper was also replaced with a few dashes of red pepper. We’re not a Mexican family – what else can I say?

The burgers were supposed to cook 10 minutes before being “gently turned” and cooked another 10. HA. The things are complete mush after 10 minutes, and it takes a quick, strong hand and a confident flip to turn them over. The dinner pretty much hung in the balance during those three minutes. But all the burgers did eventually get turned over, and stuck back in the oven.

They sat on the stove, cooling off a little, before being served. This allowed the cheese to congeal and everything to come together very nicely, so that they were more like burgers, instead of blobs. Nice.

And then we ate! I thought they were fantastic! You barely miss the red meat – everything tasted great. The mango salsa positively made it, although I do think it would have helped if both mangoes we used had been ripe. :-S Oh well. Can’t win them all.

On a scale from 1 to 10: 8.

The only thing I would change would be to have completely ripe mangoes. We also used our Buttermilk Ranch dressing on the burgers, since ketchup and mustard were hardly applicable. That was very tasty. The mint in the salsa, although not a part of the original recipe, was an extra plus. Definitely a make-again.

Tonight, we’re headed out to a (hopefully) delicious dinner at Arooji’s Wine Room. This is a first for me.

So I thought I’d tell you about the incredible dessert parfait my sister and I put together earlier this week. As Adrian Monk would say, here’s what happened:

I had this really horrible mouth sore, and we all know the worst thing to do is eat ice cream or have a high liquid-sugar intake when you have a mouth sore. However, my mother taught me that one of the *best* things you can do for a mouth sore is eat plain yogurt that has live cultures and stuff in it. So my dessert parfait was layered like this: Honey Rice Puffins (gluten-free and really good cereal), a big spoonful of crunchy, salted, organic peanut butter from Trader Joe’s, a small squirt of caramel ice cream topping, more Honey Rice Puffins, two spoonfuls of plain yogurt, a sprinkling of heath bits, a few Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips, a douse of pure maple syrup for good measure.

I have one word for you: heaven. You should try it. My sister Christine is big on pairing unlikely flavors. A favorite joke between us is freshly cracked black pepper and raisins.

P.S. – my mouth sore was healed the next day.

The picture EatingWell provided was equally tantalizing, which is why this ended up on our menu for Thursday, February 4. It’s fusili pasta (that’s spirals), mushrooms, tomatoes, and spinach. The best part? Big spoonfuls of ricotta cheese on top!

The pasta was boiling merrily away. I was slicing mushrooms. I have this fascination with slicing mushrooms. Every recipe we’ve made that used mushrooms – and there have been quite a few! – I’ve sliced the ‘shrooms. One of the things I both love to do and get irritated doing is cleaning the mushrooms prior to slicing them. I’ve read in many places that you’re not supposed to rinse them or soak them or anything, because mushrooms of any variety are easily waterlogged. It makes a whole lot of sense, especially if you’ve held one in your hand. They feel…weird. Like spongy or something. So, since they do tend to grow pretty close to the ground, you’re supposed to brush off the clinging dirt with a dry paper towel. I won’t gross you out by telling you how dirty the paper towel is by the time I’m done with the carton…anyway, some of the dirt has issues coming off, and it takes a little extra rubbing. And then, mushrooms being what they are, the whole cap of the mushroom starts to peel away, and it’s…well, it’s just plain frustrating sometimes.

But I digress. I was slicing mushrooms as Christine plated salads. There was a little scuffle over the salads, because, if you’ll remember, we had salad for dinner the night before. So who wants ANOTHER salad? Not I. But probably my mom would want one…Christine might want one…and our dad would probably be grateful for one. Plus, my dad went and got this half wheel of bleu cheese at Costco. HALF WHEEL. *Please*. Don’t try to picture eating the whole thing. You might get physically ill. The point of that bit of information being that Christine made him a beautiful salad, utilizing only romaine, dried cranberries, and bleu cheese. (We didn’t have anything else on hand, having used it all in our salad the previous night.)

When I finally finished the mushrooms, we started sauteing them in a little oil. They turned their normal grayish-brown and started smelling like they…<ahem> normally do, and then we added the tomatoes. I don’t know how you feel about canned tomatoes, but I’m not a huge fan. They have a funny smell. Especially if you’ve “grown up” on fresh. But we dumped them in, juice and all, and stirred that around for a while. The spinach was next. Christine started putting in huge handfuls of fresh spinach, piling it high. I was trying not to look as horrified as I felt. There was so much green going on there – and I couldn’t stir it anymore, because the spinach would fall out!

But all in good time, it wilted, like it’s supposed to. The pasta finished, and we stirred everything together in a big bowl. A little oregano, a little thyme, and plenty of parmesan, salt, and pepper. We served it just like that, and everyone got to put as much ricotta cheese as they wanted on their personal serving.

On a scale from 1 to 10: 8.

If at all possible, I’d find a fresher alternative to the canned tomatoes. The pasta was also just a tad on the chewy side – let it go for a little bit longer. Other than that? Perfetto! Let’s do it again!

This being a blog centered around cooking, I think National Carrot Cake Day warrants it’s own special post, don’t you?

Carrot cake, according to our mother (who is the fount of all wisdom, especially when it comes to cooking), is best after it has sat for a day. The moisture content increases, and the cake has better texture. Therefore, we made our cake on Tuesday, the day before the actual celebration.

My mom has the best recipe, and it makes a three-layer, well-frosted, moist, rich, satisfying carrot cake. We have had it many times prior to this, I can assure you. However, this marks the first time either Christine or I have ever made it. It happened like this:

We tied on our aprons. I started shredding carrot in the food processor, while Christine mixed up other ingredients. Then – the moment of horror. We’re out of eggs. That is, we have one, but we need four total. A quick call to our neighbors, who are usually the savers-of-the-day. No answer. Great. That means a lightning run to the grocery store, seven minutes away. I offered to go, since I’d finished with the carrots.

So off I drive, in my blue Hyundai Elantra GT. I run through the rainy parking lot to the refrigerator section of the store. <pause> Can ANYONE tell me why the refrigerator section is always in the back of the grocery store? When EVERYONE knows that people most likely have to *quickly* stop for dairy products, such as milk, eggs, and/or butter? Do you realize how much quicker this trip could have been if they had just put the refrigerators up near the front? <moment of silence>

Anyway. I used the U-Scan, of course, and ran back out through the rain to my car. I was just driving out of the parking lot, when I felt my phone vibrating away in the my coat pocket. Answering it, it turned out to be Christine, who had called four times previously, telling me to pick up pecans as well, as we were apparently out of those, too. Why did we not check on these ingredients, since we knew we were making a carrot cake weeks beforehand??

So I parked again, ran through the rain again, ran to the nuts (which aren’t as far as the eggs), grabbed a package, U-Scanned again, ran through the rain again, and drove out of the parking lot again. It’s all good. My fault, anyway, because I can never hear or feel my phone.

When I got home, we dumped the ingredients in, gave everything a stir, and popped our three cake pans into the oven. They took a while to fully cook, being gluten-free, but at long last, they were removed from the oven in hot, delicious perfection. They cooled for about half an hour (the recipe said ten minutes, but we wanted to err on the long side) before we decided to take the cake out of the pans, to cool on a rack.

It was then that tragedy struck. We carefully ran a knife around the edge of the first cake, tested it’s looseness, and inverted it onto the rack. Nothing happened. Christine tapped it a few times, and then banged it against the rack, to get it to slide out. And slide it did…but only the edges. The middle stayed in the pan, leaving us with a decrepit halo of carrot cake on the rack, and moist, soft middle in the pan. It’s not that it was stuck fast or anything. We used a spatula to get the rest out, and it came out fine. But it was disconnected. Same thing happened to the second one.

I had to leave for a prior engagement, but Christine took care of taking the third cake out of its pan. We had waited a while to do that, hoping that when it was completely cool, it would come right out. No such luck. It came in pieces, too. We are failures.

So we started talking about “Carrot Trifle” and “Carrot Slump” and stuff. But it’s Carrot CAKE Day, not Carrot SLUMP day! I told Christine that if we made enough cream cheese frosting, we could stick the whole thing back together (minus the pieces people had already EATEN!!!), and no one would ever have to know. Being the good sport that she usually is, she agreed to try it.

On Wednesday morning, we began. We beat together a delicious frosting – and lots of it, too. We got out a nice, round cake plate. We took the container of carrot cake pieces from the refrigerator, and carefully started building a round base. We frosted, we built another layer. We frosted again, we built the third layer. Finally we covered the entire mess with frosting. And guess what?! You would never have known it had started out as big, irregularly-sized pieces of cake! It was beautiful, round, and perfect!

In fact, we even served it to a guest that night, and he had no idea. Shhh. Don’t tell anyone.

On a scale from 1 to 10: 9.

Yeah, ok. Nobody else knew it was in a jumbled mess, but Christine and I did. So next time, how about it all stays together in three layers? I’d be happy.

On Wednesday, therefore, we planned a very light dinner, since we’d made carrot cake earlier to have afterwards (a story I’ll tell you in just a minute). It was Chicken Sesame Salad, found in Tyler Florence’s Tyler’s Ultimate cookbook. The salad is basically spinach and cucumbers, so no sweat there. But the chicken! My goodness, what a headache!

You take a regular chicken breast, cut it in half to make two fillets, and then bread and fry it. Took forever. Christine is what I like to call our Ultimate Fryer. She’s not afraid of those hot oil splashes or sputtering grease (like I am). We took out our first two pieces, and they were beautiful. Breathtakingly beautiful. But, we’ve had trouble with chicken in the past, due to our inexperience, so we decided we had to mar one of them and <gasp> cut into it to make sure it was done. I gently sliced through the perfectly golden breading, through the tender, juicy outside, to <louder gasp> a bright pink, cold, raw center.

<look hurriedly both ways, remove knife from slit, and throw both chicken pieces back into frying pan>

Yeah. Anyway. Instead of the two minutes Tyler suggests, ours took about four to five minutes per side. Multiply that by about four or five batches, and we’re talking around an hour’s worth of standing their frying. Ew. Christine’s a trooper! Don’t know what I’d do without her. In fact, I was joking with her about it while we stood there with our thumbs in our ears, waiting for the chicken to cook. “<telephone rings> Christine, can you come over tonight and fry up some chicken for me? We haven’t had anything fried in a while, and you know how much so-and-so (my future husband) likes that…” I joked. Christine shook her head and laughed. “No, silly,” she said. “Your HUSBAND will do it for you.”

<whisper> Actually, don’t tell her this, but I think I’ll still call Christine. Wouldn’t want to pressure my poor husband after a long day’s work to come fry chicken for me. Christine likes to do it, anyway!

The salad, we fleshed out with candied pecans, cucumber, dried cranberries, and shredded carrot. It was great. The chicken had been semi-marinaded in a dressing with an Asian flair, and all the tastes melded together in Chinese intensity. I loved it.

On a scale from 1 to 10: 8.

Next time, we’re breading the chicken and oven-frying. No WAY are we pan frying those things again. But the taste was incredible! It will definitely warrant a repeat performance sometime soon.

4:00 | I head into the kitchen, accompanied by Christine, Mary, and our friend Emily, who happened to be over. It’s time to make pizza dough for Giada’s Pizza Rustica.

4:02 | Christine mentions that this recipe will take a long time. I, in the middle of eyeballing olive oil and “pinching” salt, am not paying too much attention.

4:10 | I take a look at the recipe, myself, and discover that the pizza cooks for 1 hour, and then sits for 2 hours. Did I mention that pizza dough needs another full hour to rise?

4:25 | The dough is rising, nestled in it’s little bowl and covered with a cloth.

5:17 | Christine starts making the ricotta cheese mixture, while I saute the spinach with some salt & pepper.

5:22 | We decide to pull the dough out and start working with it. Christine makes a perfect circle with 2/3 of the dough, and carefully places it in a springform pan. For those of you who have never done such a thing – it takes real talent.

5:27 | Emily grabs the spoon and starts spreading spinach on the bottom. Christine tops it with a handful of mozzarella, and then expertly spreads the ricotta mixture on top. I cover that with a layer of turkey pepperoni. Another handful of mozzarella. More spinach. Another handful of mozzarella. Ricotta mixture. Another handful of mozzarella. Turkey pepperoni. Another handful of mozzarella.

5:34 | Christine spreads out the rest of the dough, with which we top the pizza, now filling the springform pan. We fold the edges over, to create a raised crust on top, and sprinkly (heavily) with parmesan.

5:35 | We pop the pizza into the oven, on the bottom rack, and set the timer. At this point, Emily had to go, but she said she’d like to try the recipe herself at her own home.

5:50 | Our parents leave for their 6:15 reservation at McCormick & Schmick’s.

6:10 | Our sister leaves to meet a couple of friends for dinner.

6:32 | Out comes the Pizza Rustica, in golden glory.

7:54 | We decide we can’t wait any longer. Mangiare!

On a scale from 1 to 10: 10.

There is something alluring about the photograph for Giada’s Pizza Rustica. A “pizza” that stands three inches tall is magnificent. Stupendous! Glorious! TASTY.

The recipe starts, of course, with the cooking of the rice. Everyone knows that rice takes a long time to cook. Don’t tell anyone this, but I had actually never cooked wild rice before this. Shhh…

So we started that. Then I began slicing a pound of mushrooms, while Christine…you know, I don’t know what Christine was doing at this point. Possibly mixing up the egg and parsley mixture.

Anyway. It looked, as I finished cutting mushrooms, like the frittata was going to be solid mushroom. Say it with me, now – “GROSS”. We put them in the pan to saute, and the pan was *full*. Ok, I’m trying to like mushrooms. Smothered in cheese, encased in pasta, and dubbed “mushroom ravioli”, they aren’t bad at all. Of course, as a friend of mine once told me, anything covered in cheese will always be at least edible. But too much of anything is not a good thing. And trust me on this one – this was definitely too many mushrooms. I was starting to get worried, but Christine assured me they would shrink. This I knew, but how much would they shrink?

They slid around the in pan for a while, during which time we added salt and pepper and fresh rosemary. Christine and I have this system: she does the pepper, because she loves pepper, and I do the salt, because I love salt. Usually it works out well, but in this case, I think someone was a little heavy-handed on the pepper.

Back to the mushrooms. They were turning gray, that way they do, and starting to smell like…mushrooms, and they really did shrink. I think they lost half their body mass, quite frankly. Imagine what America would be like if all of us did the same…

By the time we were finished cooking the mushrooms, and were ready to add the rice, the rice had not yet made up it’s mind whether or not to be done. There was still quite a bit of water left in the pot, and I, being accustomed to cooking regular brown rice, thought something must be wrong. Rice is supposed to soak up all the water in the pot – like a sponge. Sometimes, you even have to add *more* water, because it’s still crunchy. But apparently, wild rice is not the same. We tested it, and it was still a little hard (although the recipe does say it’s supposed to still have “bite”), so we let it go a little longer. Fortunately for us, our mom was in the kitchen when I tested it again.

Wild rice starts to “butterfly” when it is done, or close to it. “Butterflying” is what they call it when the rice grains start splitting apart and you can see the lighter, more tender, insides.
You learn something new every day.

The wild rice got dumped into the frying pan with the mushrooms, mixed around, and then unceremoniously covered in egg. It looked really interesting, with the gray-brown of the mushrooms, the dark grains of rice, and the bright yellow of the egg mixture, sporadically tinted with green bits of parsley. The recipe says to cook it on the stovetop for a bit, then stick it in the oven and broil it for about 2 minutes. We did so, and the think came out VERY FIRM and brown. Wasn’t expecting the color change. (!)

I really liked it. It *did* feel like it was solid mushroom, with all the nooks and crannies filled with wild rice. Very…interesting!

On a scale from 1 to 10: 7.

Not half bad. This is a good way to use mushrooms, and the texture is mysterious and colorful for the tastebuds. Ours was a little on the spicy side, due, no doubt, to the PEPPER, nutmeg, and rosemary, all of which were not used lightly. The only problem that particular night was that the frittata was pretty much all we served, and the guys in our family needed some more substance. Other than that, this is a definite make-again.

No matter how it started, my grandfather apprised me of this upcoming event earlier in January. I made a note on my calendar and promptly forgot all about it. Being the gem that he is, he sent a reminder email about a week prior to the actual day, asking if I was going to “celebrate” it, or anything. I got together with Christine, and she picked a gluten-free crust recipe, and I picked the Better Homes & Gardens crust recipe, and we decided to make a party out of it.

So that morning, after I finished working at 9:00am, we headed into the kitchen to start making pie crust. It has been a very, very long time since I’ve homemade a pie crust, but I felt the occasion deserved the utmost in effort. Christine and I stood side-by-side at our kitchen counter, me trying to roll out a real pie crust with a rolling pin that’s missing it’s handles, and her trying to roll out a gluten-free pie crust that’s refusing to stretch. But don’t worry – we conquered it.

We peeled and sliced apples to the country-esque rhythm of Eddie Rabbit, stirring in cinnamon to “Hearts on Fire”, and watching the rain as Eddie told us how much he loves rainy nights. By the time he was singing the praises of rocky mountain music, our pies were ensconced in their overstuffed glory in the oven, baking merrily at 375 degrees. We brushed the tops with egg white and sprinkled with turbinado sugar, for an extra-special touch.

Guess what? They were great! Wow, I love apple pie after it’s sat in the refrigerator for a day or so…that juice and sugar thickens up and holds the pie together perfectly. We made the pies Friday, the 22nd, and had a slice that afternoon, since we’d be busy and/or gone all day the 23rd.

But they lasted a long time. In fact, I just finished off another slice.

On a scale from 1 to 10: 10.

I don’t think it gets any better than this.

We started with the squash. I don’t really know what dumpling squash are, or what the difference is between them and acorn squash. But our mom had gotten us acorn squash, and they were huge. We knew it would probably take them longer to cook than the dumpling squashes, so we wanted to get them in the oven as soon as we possibly could. Christine “Muscleman” started halving them with a big butcher knife. I mixed up the butter-brown sugar-amaretto mixture. Tyler said to *pour* the butter mixture over the squashes, but he also specifically said to *soften* the butter, not melt it…so…we spread it on. Who cares? Even Tyler the Superhuman Iron Chef can make wording errors.

The squash are topped with two sage leaves each, which is an interesting touch. I’ve never had sage in such a quantity before. The leaves feel like velvet. I didn’t know that feeling was found in nature – I thought it was made up by man. Apparently not.

Anyway, after we got the squash safely tucked away in the oven, we started on the sandwiches. I grabbed the loaf of Anthony’s semolina bread sitting on the counter, and sliced it long-ways, so that we could make one big sandwich – almost like a sub – and cut it into pieces when finished. This time, instead of grilling steaks, we just ordered roast beef from the deli and used that instead. We still made that fantastic sour cream/feta spread and sprinkled on some spinach leaves, plus we added some sliced white cheddar cheese. I put the top on the thing, and it was breathtaking. Then my mom walked in. She poked her head into our workspace and the first thing she said was, “Wait – you didn’t use the Anthony’s bread for the sandwiches, did you!?!?! Sweetie, you didn’t order that!” in tones of complete and utter horror.

I pretty much broke into a cold sweat. Turns out my mom and Christine thought we were making the sandwiches on regular bread – of which we now have plenty - and I had assumed the nice loaf of bread out on the counter was for us. The Anthony’s bread was, in fact, for Friday night’s dinner. Oh well. The nice thing about having a license AND one’s own car is being able to very quickly offer to get another, replacement loaf the following day. <sigh>

And hey – the sandwiches were *fabulous* on that Anthony’s bread!

The squash…well, they certainly took a lot longer than Tyler said, probably because of their size. The pools of butter inside where delightful, and the hint of amaretto throughout was tantalizing. But quite frankly, I think I prefer our normal recipe. Frosted cranberries top amaretto. I’m sorry, but they do.

So on a scale from 1 to 10: 8.

Those sandwiches were perfect. I’d do them on regular bread, too – the spread is what makes them. I also greatly preferred the deli-style roast beef to steak slices, simply because of they’re ease of consumption. And the squash was good, but could have been better. I like a little something in my acorn-squash cavity, you know??!

There we were, after a delicious meal of Tyler’s barbecued chicken with that amazing homemade peach barbecue sauce, sitting around in our living room. Christine was flipping through the EatingWell, I was knitting. I leaned over to ask her if she’d seen that sweet potato recipe, just as she looked up to ask me if I had seen this sweet potato recipe. It happens all the time.

Without further ado, we both decided to cast aside the weariness of the day, throw our aprons back on, hop into the kitchen, and make the cake for a special treat. While we did intend it for that night, – Wednesday, January 20 – it turned out that it needed to cool and set completely in the refrigerator before eating. Hence, we brought it with us to a tea party on Thursday afternoon and enjoyed it then.

This recipe was already vegetarian, corn-free, and lactose-free; we made it gluten-free as well by using our special gluten-free flour mix. It’s basically sweet potatoes, cooked and mashed into creamy perfection, a little flour, a whole lot of coconut milk (yum!), and raisins soaked in Jamaican rum. Now, we didn’t actually *have* any rum on hand…not something we keep in the pantry, if you catch my drift. So we soaked the raisins in amaretto instead, and it worked great. I wasn’t sure what the texture would be like, with the interesting selection of ingredients.

We brought this pig-in-a-poke to the tea party, as stated before. It was uncut, untasted, and just looked good. We didn’t know if it was going to be ok, but we figured that if it wasn’t, we could laugh it off. So we cut into it, and pulled out that first piece. It was eggier than I thought it was going to be, but tasted delicious. Christine compared it to gluten-free pound cake. I wasn’t following that analogy…but hey. Whatever she says.

Suffice it to say that by the end of Thursday, the cake was completely polished off. No crumbs remaining (probably because it wasn’t a crumb-y kind of cake, to begin with). I guess that means it was a smashing success.

On a scale from 1 to 10: 9.

I’d like to try the recipe with the rum, just to see what it’s supposed to taste like. I’d also like to see what happens when we use real flour – is it supposed to be kind of fluffy? More like a cake, instead of a quiche? Just for comparison, I think it’d be interesting.