My January menu is full of new recipes - thanks to some new cookbooks that I received as Christmas gifts. One of my favorites was a Vera Bradley cookbook from a very special girl. It is absolutely full of mouthwatering recipes. I love it so much that I made 4 different recipes out of the book in the first week that it was in my possession. Shrimp and Grits 2 cups chicken broth 1 cup milk 2 Tablespoons butter 1/2 teaspoon white pepper 1 cup uncooked grits 2/3 cup shredded Parmesan cheese 2 Tablespoons butter 2/3 cup smoked ham 3 Tablespoons flour 1 1/2 cups chicken broth 2 Tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped 3/4 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 36 medium, cooked shrimp
Spoon into tarts. Bake 5-10 minutes or until warmed. Top each with one shrimp.
Ciao!
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How do you spend a snow day? I'm such a homebody that I really don't mind spending a day stuck inside the house. I get all excited about everything that I can accomplished without the temptation of leaving to run errands. Last Saturday even though we planned for snow and it didn't really happen - I still treated the day as if it were a snow day. I stayed home and cleaned out the file cabinet, organized some boxes in the basement, put pictures in the photo album, organized business receipts from last year and did lots and lots of menu planning. When I say that I did lots of menu planning - I mean that I literally have 7 weeks of meals planned!! I cannot tell you how excited I am about this. (I know - I'm a complete nerd.) Menu planning takes so much time and having that task finished until the end of February is a huge time saver. (Most of the meals that I have planned are new recipes so you will get to see them on the blog soon.) I had a bunch of pinned recipes on Pinterest, some new cookbooks to test out and some new Cooks magazine recipes that I've been wanting to try. I am so excited about the next 7 weeks of meals. These whiskey barbecue ribs were at the very top of the list of recipes that I wanted to make. I love how easy they were to throw together and my family loved how tender and tasty they were. Whiskey Barbecue Ribs 1/2 cup ketchup 1/2 cup Whiskey 1/2 cup brown sugar 1/4 chopped onion 1 Tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce 1 Tablespoon hot sauce 1/2 Tablespoon Dijon mustard 1 clove garlic, minced 2 Tablespoons butter pinch of fennel seeds Baby back ribs Combine all ingredients, except ribs, in a saucepan. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes. Place ribs on foil lined baking sheet. Season with salt and pepper. Pour sauce over ribs. Cover tightly with foil. Bake 3 hours at 300. Place under the broiler just until top begins to brown. Serve with additional sauce. Is your mouth watering yet? I apologize in advance for any undeniable cravings for barbecue ribs that you will have for the rest of the day. You're best bet is just to give in and make a batch of these for your yourself. Trust me. ;) Ciao! Thank you to all of you who signed up to get my meal service emails. You can expect an email from me with all of the details of next week's menu, later today. In case you forgot to sign up, I am posting the sign up form one more time. I have been blogging for almost 6 years - I can't believe that I just wrote those words! It seems like last week that I announced to my family at the dinner table that I wanted to start writing a "blog." I really had no idea what I was about to embark on - but I jumped in anyway. (That pretty much sums up my life right there.) My blogging goal from the very beginning was to be honest and open about my life and the food that I was cooking for my family. A lot has changed since I first started writing but that is the one thing that hasn't changed over the last 6 years. I never wanted to deceive people into thinking that I was at home making 4 course dinners for my family every single night. The truth is just like most of you, we struggled to fit dinner in between practices, youth group meetings, piano lessons, baseball games, wrestling matches, cross country meets and soccer games. Those first blogs were written under the title "Meals for Busy Families" and that pretty accurately described our dinners at that time. In 2012, I changed the title of my blog to My Story in Recipes and I've been sharing my life stories with all of you ever since. I know how busy life can get and I don't judge anyone else on how they manage their busy lives. We're all in this together friends. Now that we're 6 months away from being empty nesters, I can tell you that you WILL get through this - Hang in there. If you happen to be at a point in your life where you need some help with dinner - I'm here to help. I'm offering dinners that are hot and ready to feed to your family every Wednesday night to anyone who lives close enough to pick them up. I put together a menu of Wednesday night dinners so that you can browse through and decide if you want to give my Wednesday night meal service a try. I am both humbled and honored to be able to offer a new service to all of my local friends and website followers. Here are the details you need to know about Wednesday night meal service: First of all, this is not a subscription service. You can pick and choose which weeks you want to order a meal. Once you decide on a dinner, you have until Monday morning at 8:00 AM to place your order. Unfounately, I cannot accept any orders after 8 AM on Monday morning. Each meal will serve 4 (very hungry) people. We will arrange pick up times on an individual basis. You can pay me in cash or check at the time of pick up. The cost of each meal is 75.00. Lastly, and most importantly, if you think you might be interested in hearing more about Wednesday night dinners - sign up in the box below. No committment. You can sign up even if you don't intend to purchase meals and you're just curious about what I'm cooking every Wednesday. You will get an email from me on Friday afternoon detailing the menu for the upcoming Wednesday Night Meal Service. If you choose to order, just let me know before Monday morning and you will be added to the list. What do you do when you want to pre-make some meals for a crowd? You make a giant pot of paella. Chicken, clams, shrimp, chorizo, rice and peas all cooked in one cast iron pot on the grill. (There's a little something for everyone in this steaming pot of seafood goodness.) My dad is the one who introduced me to this delicous one pot meal last summer. He used a Cook's Illustrated recipe to create his version of paella and then shared with me his modifications. My dad used a 10x13 pan to make his paella but since I didn't have a similar pan, I decided to make do with the pan that I had - a cast iron dutch oven. I have to admit that I didn't expect the normally picky eaters who live in this house to love this paella as much as they did. I really thought they would eat a small helping to be polite but they just kept piling spoonful after spoonful onto thier plates. Paella 2 pounds chicken thighs 16 ounces jumbo shrimp 6 Tablespoons olive oil 6 cloves garlic, minced 1 teaspoon smoked paprika 3 Tablespoons tomato paste 4 cups chicken broth 8 ounce bottle clam juice 2/3 cup dry sherry pinch saffron threads 1 onion, chopped 1/2 cup jarred roasted red peppers 3 cups Arborio rice 1 pound littleneck clams, scrubbed 1 pound chorizo, cut into 1/2 inch slices 1 cup frozen peas
Arrange chicken over rice. Pour broth mixture and juices over chicken.
Sprinkle peas evenly over paella, cover grill and cook until liquid is fully absorbed and rice on the bottom sizzles. (5-8 minutes) Remove pan from grill and cover with foil. Let stand 10 minutes. This paella is super tasty and somehow the flavors just get even better the longer it sits in the refrigerator. I left the leftover paella in the dutch oven and stored it in the refrigerator for a couple of days. I pulled it out and put the whole pot in the oven to reheat and serve to my family for lunch on Christmas Eve. It was nice to have this fully cooked meal ready to reheat and eat on such a busy day.
Just make sure that you invite your friends and family over when you make this recipe - it's makes plenty for everyone. Ciao! We had a chance of snow in Atlanta this weekend!!! The govenor of Georgia declared a State of Emergency so we all raced to the grocery store to load up on supplies and prepare ourselves to be homebound for weeks. Businesses and schools were closed - even the local outdoor snow area where they make manufacture "snow" was closed: "Snow Mountain will be closed tomorrow, Jan 7, due to snow. Yes, we are aware of the irony." As you can see, we didn't get much snow. Better to be overprepared than underprepared I guess. AND now, I've got plenty of groceries for the weekend. I've never been able to figure out why people in the South buy up all of the milk and bread on the shelves when there's a possiblity of snow in the forecast. Stock piling eggs and bread just never made any sense to me. On the contrary, I was at the store this weekend loading up on beans and tomatoes for gigantic batches of chili to help us stay warm during "winter" weather.??? I've actually come up with a theory on this Southern bread and egg mystery though - I think it all comes down to French Toast. I have a sneaky suspicion that Southern families stay home eating huge portions of delicious, piping hot French Toast during bad weather. And why wouldn't they? French toast is delicous and it tastes even better when you've got a long time to linger over breakfast while looking outside at the "snow". This weekend, we became true Southerners. I bought chili ingredients AND a hearty supply of eggs and milk to bake plenty of Lemon Blueberry French Toast. These Southerners are onto something. It was sooo good. Warm French Toast and a cup of coffee = cold weather breakfast perfection. Lemon Blueberry French Toast 5 cups French Bread 3 eggs 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon zest from 1 lemon 1 1/2 cups milk 1 teaspoon vanilla pinch of salt 1 cup blueberries 1/4 cup butter 3 Tablespoons brown sugar
Pour over bread, cover and refrigerate overnight.
Bake 1 hour at 325. Best "snow" day breakfast ever!! It may not have snowed very much here but I'm still putting my bread and eggs to good use. Stay warm out there this weekend.
Ciao! |
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