Picnic Menu Planning

Menu One: Lunch in the Park with Family:

 

Fried Chicken

– click for Alton Brown’s recipe at foodnetwork.com

Potato-Egg Salad

Ingredients:

  • 2 lbs waxy potatoes
  • 1 rib of celery, diced
  • 2 tbsp onion or green onion, minced
  • (¼ parsley, minced)
  • 3 hard boiled eggs, diced
  • 1/3 cup light sour cream
  • 1/3 cup light, real mayonnaise
  • 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
  • (1 tbsp grainy mustard)
  • (1 tbsp sweet pickle relish)
  • Salt, to taste
  • ½ tsp freshly ground pepper, or to taste
  • 3 tbsp chives, chopped

Procedure:

  1. Boil potatoes (with skins on) in salted water until just tender.
  2. Drain, peel if you wish and cut into bite-size pieces.
  3. With all other ingredients, prepare dressing in a large mixing bowl.
  4. Add still warm potatoes to the mixing bowl and toss to combine.
  5. Cover and refrigerate. Serve chilled.

            Cheesecake Brownies

Ingredients:

  • 2 ¼ cups white sugar
  • 2/3 cup cocoa
  • 1 ¼ cups flour
  • 1 tsp baking power
  • ¾ cup butter, melted
  • 4 eggs, beaten slightly

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  • 1 (250g) package cream cheese, softened
  • ½ cup sugar
  • 2 tbsp butter, softened
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tbsp milk
  • 1 tbsp flour
  • Handful of chocolate chips

Procedure:

  1. Brownie base (first group of ingredients)
    1. Preheat oven to 350̊F
    2. Mix dry ingredients
    3. Add butter and eggs and blend well.
    4. Spread in 9 x 13 inch baking pan and bake for 30 minutes.
  1. Cheesecake top (second group of ingredients)
    1. Beat cream cheese, sugar and butter until creamy.
    2. Beat in eggs, milk and flour.
    3. Sprinkle with chocolate chips.
    4. Pour over cooked brownie base and bake at 350̊F for 40 minutes.
    5. Cool completely then drizzle with melted chocolate . Continue reading

Tradition-bending Ideas for Christmas Dinner

Whether you’re hosting Christmas dinner or attending a festive potluck dinner party, it’s hard to walk the line between tradition and innovation. Some people are happy with the same turkey, mashed potatoes and jell-o your family has been making all your life, which is to say, as long as time itself. However, some people like to branch out and try cooking and consuming new and exciting things. Although I look forward to eating my Granny’s pies and making jokes about jell-o all year long, I also like exploring new foods. Here is my list of dishes to try this Christmas that are exotic enough to be exciting, but inconspicuous enough to entice even the most stringent of tradition upholders. Continue reading

Dinner Party Dessert

My husband and I bought a new couch from IKEA today. Since our Volkswagen lifestyle does not support these kinds of large purchases, we needed to enlist the help of a friend with a larger vehicle. This friend would need to do the 45 minute drive with us – both ways – as well as assist my husband with the heavy, awkward lifting of getting the new couch in and the old couch out of the apartment.

We felt that a simple “thanks, here’s some gas money,” wouldn’t cut it, so we decided to host a small dinner party to thank our helpful friend and show the new couch to the others. For dessert I made one of my specialties, Mystery Cake – the mystery ingredient is tomato soup, trust me, it’s delicious and guessing what the mystery ingredient could be is great fun for guests.

Cake Decorating

My first time doing proper printing on a cake – I was pleased with myself

Continue reading

Crust-less Peach Pies

Before I moved the part of Ontario I currently reside in, I thought I didn’t like peaches. Then I tried one that had literally been grown fifteen minutes from my apartment and I fell in love with this fresh, local autumn delicacy. As the harvest season approaches again, I become giddy with the thought that I can again prepare my favourite peachy dessert: crust-less peach pies.

Crust-less Peach Pies Continue reading