Meal # 47 Homemade Apple Pie

My friends the Hargers make this extraordinary apple pie and they refuse to share the recipe but I have been on the lookout for a while. I inherited some apples from a friend and decided I would have a go at it. I searched online and then decided on one that involved a lot of drizzling brown sugar goodness over a pile of apples. I got this apple peeling contraption from the Minor's for my wedding a couple of years ago. It took me 8 months to figure out what it did. But now I love it! It peels, cores and slices thin pieces of apples in seconds. So back to the pie. I have stopped making my own crusts for health reasons. Too much stress and crumbles. I buy the trusty packaged ones now and have a much better outlook on life. My mom in law was here and we made this together. It was absolutely beautiful with the lattice top. But what was even better was how it tasted. I can't say that it is Harger quality but I might be really close. I shared it with my students the next day and some of them had never had apple pie before. I had real joy giving them this first great experience. A boy even dropped his on the floor mid way through and ate the rest of the floor it was so good. I agreed with his choice, it was too good to waste.

So thanks to Lori & Tom Minor for the apple peeler. Thanks to the Hargers for keeping me motivated in beating your apple pie. And to my student who can appreciate good pie...even on the floor.

:)

Mmmm...pie.

Tiff

Meal # 46 Exploding Pyrex Dish

Yesterday I was in a baking mood and started on a new recipe from a favorite Bed and Breakfast cookbook featuring all the New England's favorite B and B's recipes. I was taking my beautiful blueberry gingerbread out of the oven and I set it on the stove burner to cool. Next, I started cleaning my cast iron griddle. I always dry it on a burner so I set it behind the cooling Pyrex dish and turned the burner on High. I then proceeded to walk away and clean the bathroom. I had just walked out of the bedroom when I heard the loudest explosion of my life. Which I am sure is nothing compared to what they are hearing in the Middle East but still...I saw my husband's face (he was a safe distance away) He yelled that my dish had exploded! I turned and looked and sho' nouf' glass shattered everywhere. Including about 10 feet away on the carpet. You have probably already figured out that I turned the wrong burner on and was putting concentrated heat onto my glass dish. It was sad to see it go. I also insisted on trying a little of the blueberry gingerbread to see if I would go to the trouble in making another one. My husband did not think this was a good idea because of some embedding glass poking out of the bread. But I am a die hard chef and we must always taste our creations..."glass or no glass" I hollered, "I must see!" I choose very carefully and tasted. It was good. So my cooking skills are increasing but my errors are still killing me.

Anybody have an extra 9 X 9 glass pan?

Tiffany

PS. I got this picture from http://qwickstep.com/search/pyrex-dish.html
because I forgot to take a picture.

Meal # 45 Fried White Fish and Rice and Beans

I was reading in a book about hobbies yesterday and one of the highlighted hobbies was Frying Foods. You may think that this is ridiculous but I did not after I read the blurb about it. See people like the taste of fat and that is why anything fried is delicious. I totally agree. But see, liking fried food is not popular with the "in" crowd because it supposedly means we do not care about our bodies and blah blah blah. I realized that all the thin people around me are depriving themselves of this kind of food. Now, everything in moderation. Don't eat too many carrots or fried Twinkies. That is called addiction but fried food every couple of days in between the celery and Bulgar wheat is a good thing.

Here is some fried fish I made with a kickin' coating. I also made a pot of white rice and some beans for a side. The fish was excellent (like most fried foods). I often have a hard time cooking fish because it always comes apart and stuff but the coating was really perfect. It was a boxed breading if you are wondering. I will call it my secret ingredient because I am not going to share it.

I am getting hungry now and wondering if today is a french fry day or roasted beets???

Tiffany

Meal # 44 Death by Chocolate

I wanted to make a birthday cake for my friend Amy who comes to our homegroup on Monday nights so I dabbled with a recipe from online. It was to die for! Here are the layers if you need a chocolate fix yourself!
Devil's Food Cake cooked and crumbled with chocolate syrup: let sit.
Chocolate pudding (not instant!)
Cool Whip
Reeses pieces
Reeses peanut butter cups

Repeat...it was delicious!

I think everybody gave this 5 stars!

Tiff

Meal # 44 Blueberry Jam

This was over the summer and I just realized I haven't blogged about it. It all started when Tamara found a blueberry patch that we can go picking in. She rounded us up and we spent a Wednesday morning sweating and picking blueberries. I ate about as much as I picked. When I weighed out it was like 4 pounds! They were delicious. I was not discriminating however and did pick a few sour ones. Tamara was very picky and chose only the plumpish sweetest ones. Owen had trouble filling up his pail because he is like 3 years old. Beth mostly just chased Owen around but managed to be cool and collected in the heat. We decided that we would combine our pickings and make some jam. How hard could it be? We met up the following Saturday at Beth's huge house with the best kitchen. We washed and boiled our jars and took out the sure-jell directions (which were double sided with about 4 different ways to make jam depending on blah blah blah). We first pureed the berries in a food processor. Then I read the directions and it said to add 7 cups of sugar. This was the first sign that it was going to be long day. Everyone questioned me and had to read the directions for themselves. I was pretty sure Noris was not going to let me do this because she is all about watching what she puts in her body BUT I managed to work my charm and calm them all down by saying that we must follow the directions because we know NOTHING about jam. They knew that this was true so I dumped 7 shiny cups of sugar into the berry puree. Then we boiled the jam/sugar and then we thought "Oh, that was easy!" We poured the very hot jam into the jars and screwed on the air tight lids. We put them into a huge pot and started boiling them. Here is where my cooking instincts crept in. It did not seem like a good idea to put glass on the bottom of a huge pot of boiling water. So I began to google this and come to find out that it was not a good idea. I maybe began shrieking about getting the jars out of the huge pot of boiling water. This maybe freaked us all out because we were imagining the glass jars exploding on us. That is when we noticed the innocent lemon juice on the counter. I asked, "Did anyone put the lemon juice in? I feel like that is important." From the blank stares, I gathered not one of us put lemon juice in. So what did Tamara and Beth and Noris decided (not me) to do? Unscrew all the boiled jars and dump out the jam back into a pot and bring it back to a boil while adding the lemon juice. I wanted no part in this because I hate doing things twice. But I helped reboil both the jam and the jars because I may have mentioned botulism and said that people can get really sick if there is any bacteria caught in the lids. Hence the boiling of the jars. Some of them got boiled 3 or 4 times because every time any of us touched a boiled lid or jar with our hands we felt the need to reboil. Okay so we were about to put the filled jars back into the huge boiling pot of water but I was insistent that we put something in there so that the jars are not touching the bottom. We finally put a bunt pan or something down in the water with the jars on top and that worked. We ate a fabulous lunch made by Beth as we finished our project. The directions (which I kept reading wrong too and eventually torn off the only needed part) said to let them sit for 24 hours and then enjoy. So I didn't try the jam until Tuesday and it was ....very very sweet. :) But delicious! Quite an experience...but I wouldn't have changed a thing!

Jamming,

Tiff

Meal # 43 Blueberry Chocolate Chip Cookies

To be honest I can't remember if these had chocolate chips in them or I ate some cookies Brittani made with blueberries and chocolate chips. I do remember that they were not MY personal favorite but some people liked them. I had made them for a SYTYCD night with the girls and I was surprised at how many people ate. I just don't know about mixing blueberries and chocolate chips. They both look the same in the cookie and I never know if I am about to eat a blueberry or chocolate chip when I take a bite. Those sneaky foods. Anyway...another blueberry crossed off the list...

Tiffany (wholikesherberriesseperatedfromherchocolatechips)

Meal # 42 Fried Green Tomatoes

This is a great movie as well as a great healthy snack (snicker snicker). A good friend of ours, who has a super green thumb; brought me a sack full of green tomatoes. I have always loved the scene in the movie where the two main characters are in the kitchen and the one blond is trying to make friend green tomatoes and they end up having a food fight. It looked like so much fun! Unfortunately, I did not have a partner for this food venture but I did cook them up for a bunch of our youth from church. They were all eaten and many people tried them for the first time. That shows you that these people are not from the south or they would have long since sank their teeth into this salty, sour, warm goodness. I tried a couple of different batters but like just the plain flour with a little seasoning the best. I but some Parmesan in a couple but the flavor floated away in the oil. I am not sure if I had the batter really down but they tasted good. I think you should dip them in something like ranch to enhance the flavor but these were eaten naked! I think I need to use tomatoes 30 more times. Yikes!

Tiffany from the Whistle Stop Cafe

Meal #41 Stuffed Grape Leaves

Marlena taught me how to stuff grape leaves the other day. Gabriel and I came over and she made us work for our dinner! It was fun and delicious. She did use fake meat because they are PETA people but it still tasted good. Here is how you do it. First you get some canned grape leaves from the international food market in Orlando. Then you very carefully drain the jar and pull out the leaves. Be care not to rip them! Rinse the leaves. Next you cook some rice and some meat (or fake meat) put them together and Lena adds whatever spices suit her. Yes, she is one of those non-measuring types. Here is the hard part. You have to dish a little of the meat and rice mixture into your grape leave then roll and tuck it all together. It should be about the size of your grandpap's thumb. Finally you layer them in a big pot with lemons between each layer. I think this is key. The more lemon the better. Fill the pan up with some water; enough to cover the first layer and boil for about 45 minutes or until you can't wait any longer. Serve hot with some tazhiki sauce.

A couple of weeks later I tried them on my own. I used ground turkey instead of beef and it was just as good. My cooking buddy Bri came over and I found out something she is terrible at! Rolling grape leaves. She was really bad at it. But we managed to get about 30 grape leaves rolled up and cooked by the end of the night. I really like this special dish and think I will make it a tradition. What holiday goes with grape leaves?

Tiff

Meal # 40 Apple Brown Betty

I have this really old cook book from a flea market. It has some lady's notes all in the back and a bunch of McCall's Cookery magazines in it. There are some funny names like this one but here a few other examples: Huntsman's Soup (one of the ingredients is a game meat of your choice??) Melon Snow (melon ice cream I think), Cucumber Boats (IDK about this one) and Floating Island A L'Orange (oranges floating on meringue). I had more than a few chuckles as I browsed the pages looking for something int resting to make. Betty caught my eye and looked delicious. So used my beautiful little blue dishes and whipped her up. As my husband and I ate this dessert we thought Betty was very good. A very simple recipe in which I will share today...

Serves:6
Prep Time: 15 min
Cooking Time: 30
Preheat oven to: 350

1 c. flour
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 c. flour
1/4 c. sugar
8 tbs. butter
4 slices of firm bread, crust removed
1 cup raisins (optional)
3 small apples, peeled and sliced

Butter an 8 inch square baking dish. Sift together the 5 dry ingredients. Cut the butter in small pieces and work into the flour mixture, using a fork or pastry blender. Cut the bread into cubes and combine with the raisins and apples.
Sprinkle 1/3 of the flour mixture in the baking dish. Add the apple mixture and top with the remaining flour.
Bake in the preheated oven for 35 minutes or until crisp. Serve hot or cold with ice cream or whipped cream.

I hope you enjoy Betty as much as we did.

Apple Brown Tiffany

Meal # 39 Steak with Mashed Cauliflower

A friend of mine went on a health kick and it really affected me. We could never swipe a dessert on the way to a movie or grab a doughnut at church. I was afraid her healthy kick would end our friendship. Now, in motivation to save our relationship I asked her what I could cook for her so that I could make her dinner. She said a 6 ounce steak and a vegetable would be great. So I choose cauliflower and marinated the steak in soy sauce. I then wanted to mash the cauliflower but without butter or milk it was...very hard to say the least. I looked like I had just took a knife and stabbed it a couple of times. However, my friend was super grateful and loved the meal so I guess that it was matters. The steak was good and I almost always struggle to get it to be tender. Here is a piece of advice. If you plan to get healthy, go away to some foreign place to do it.

Tiff

Meal # 38 I totally Cheated with this Avocado

My husband is allergic to avocado. But Amanda felt the need to put it on my list 26 times. To bad she isn't my husband because I don't even buy this, this, vegetable? What the heck is an avocado anyway? Fruit? I feel like fruit has a big seed in the middle. So I am guessing it is fruit... Wikipedia says "The name "avocado" also refers to the fruit (technically a large berry that contains a large seed[2]) of the tree, which may be egg-shaped or spherical." I was right! Any who, Brittani went out of town and had a couple that might go bad so she gave them to me. I was going to make this caviar avocado mousse but just made this cheese platter instead. I mean, that makes it sound kinda fancy and it was really just a joke. But I am counting it Amanda. Oh, yes I am. 25 more uses of avocado. A breeze.

Tiff

Meal # 37 Blueberry Lemon Bars

I don't know what is up with all these desserts but I must be trying to refine my baking skills which are pretty low. The best bakers that I know are Jen Strahl and Lisa Gilbert. Whenever I have a cooking dilemma I call one of these two ladies. Take Jen for instance at this party last night I spotted the cake she made a mile away. Fancy but simple, smooth and to die for butter cream frosting which she claims is just butter and powdered sugar. Jen inspires me because she is a teacher, chemist, weather vane and a delicious cook. I mean, I can be that too! Well I can try! Then we have Lisa. Lisa has made some of the most mouthwatering desserts including a bridal shower cake with beautiful flowers on it. I will never forget how everyone loved that cake. Another think I like about Lisa is that she does these taste test on things. I would love to be at her house as she tries out different frosting or ingredients to find what tastes the best. I just hear the other day she made some beer bread and told her son to bring the bread to a neighbor and ask which one she like best. Plus she has 5 kids and is involved in a bunch of stuff at church. When does she even have time to tickle my taste buds? So that brings me back to why I am baking so much. This was a definite winner. With my last lemon bars falling up short, I added a ingredient (Lisa would be proud) to make them a little bit tastier. It totally worked. They were scrumptious. So there might be a chance I can live up to these two ladies and one day we will have our own baking show. I can be the test taster...

For Jacki
Ingredients
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
About 1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 cup (1/2 lb.) butter or margarine
4 large eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups blueberries, fresh and rinsed or frozen
Preparation
1. In a food processor or a bowl, whirl or stir flour and 1/2 cup powdered sugar until blended. Add butter and whirl or rub in with your fingers until dough holds together when squeezed. Press evenly over the bottom of a 9- by 13-inch pan.

2. Bake in a 350° regular or convection oven until crust is golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, in a bowl with a mixer on medium speed or a whisk, beat eggs to blend with granulated sugar, lemon peel, lemon juice, baking powder, and salt. Stir in blueberries.

4. Pour egg mixture into pan over warm crust. Return to oven and bake until filling no longer jiggles when pan is gently shaken, 20 to 25 minutes. Sprinkle lightly with powdered sugar and let cool at least 15 minutes. Serve warm or cool. If making up to 1 day ahead, wrap airtight when cool and chill. Cut into about 2-inch squares and lift out with a spatula


Tiffany

Meal # 36 Sugar Cookies and Lemon Bars

For a Homegroup leader's meeting the other day, I was suppose to bring dessert so I opened up my cookbooks and choose these two items. I wanted them to be kinda fancy as to impress the other church ladies. (haha) But pride cometh before a fall. I really didn't like either of these items. I hate hard cookies and my were very hard. I dressed them up with drizzled chocolate but you would need a cup of coffee for dipping in my opinion. I think they got eaten but it was because they fooled everyone with their decoration. As for the lemon bars I thought they tasted really eggy and that. is. gross. However, I did get one fan as Jamis wanted me to make her another batch. I did but used a different recipe. I think I just did something wrong but I am coming to find out that 50% of all recipes...well...suck. I am a recipe follower to the T. Unless life happens and I am in a rush or don't have the right ingrediants or don't want to do something it tells me. That's only about 45% of the time. Some recipes I don't think people even try out before they type it up! Geez. Do your job people. Or hire me to.

Tiff

Meal # 36 Blueberry Crumble Pie

Yesterday at school I was giving the spelling test and I was about to start calling out the words when I suddenly thought about pie. I really like pie and I have this Sweety Pie book from the library that had the best pie recipes in it. So here I was with 18 kids waiting for me to call out words and I am thinking about making a pie. So to suffice my craving, I called out every word and gave a sentence about....PIE! It was hilarious. The first word was THIS, so I said, THIS. THIS is what I want, some pie. The second word was WENT so I said, WENT. I WENT to get some yummy pie. The third word was SHUT, so I said, SHUT. I would never SHUT a pie in a closet. By the last word we were all cracking up and each one of us was thinking about pie. A great way to give the spelling test. The kids were finishing my sentences with the word pie and I couldn't hold the giggling in a bit longer. I even got some pictures of pies later on. "To help you get through the day Mrs. Forsyth." one little girl told me. So that's my story on pie and here is another great pie. Blueberry! Served with some ice cream and gone by the end of the night. Just like pie should be.

Mrs. Forsyth

Meal # 34 Homemade Pizza

I don't really make pizza a lot but decided that I should embrace my inner Italian. Well, eh, there really isn't any in there so my pizza tasted good but felt weak in my hands. Not really soggy but limp. We had some friends for dinner and they ate it but that doesn't say much. I had sausage on one side and God knows what else on the other. I have totally forgotten. Which brings me to my next complaint. I am so far behind on my blog that I am not even remembering the meal! How pointless.

Tiffany, you need to be blogging once a week at least! You shame this challenge by not even applying yourself. You will loose your 12 followers. Is that what you want? No! No I don't (I whimper)

Hope to shape up soon.

Tiffany

Meal # 33 Not Yo' Mama's Banana Pudding

Paula Deen cracks me up. She is so southern but almost ghetto. Talking bout, "Butta this and put some mor' butta in da pan...da more butta da betta." I just crack up. In Savannah, they worship her and she even has her own restaurant where the line curls around the block to eat some of her cheese with some macaroni. Alas, I am bunny trailing. Banana pudding. Okay. I had bananas and a bunch of people coming over so I googled Banana Pudding and this title came up, Not Yo' Mama's Banana Pudding, it did it's job and I clicked, only to find Paula's smiling face telling me that this pudding is not the same old thing. I whipped up 4 different batches of pudding. One was regular, one was peanut butter and one was chocolate and one was peanut butter and chocolate. I basically started adding my own ingredients, so maybe I should call this, Not Paula Deen's Banana Pudding. Any who, the peanut butter one was the best! I love the combination of flavors from vanilla pudding, bananas, peanut butter and nilla wafers. Oh! So good. I really thought Amanda would let me cross bananas off 4 times since each one was different but she squashed that idea when Keith backed her up. I think banana pudding is such a treat but do think it should be made more often. Maybe around your mama. Or not.

The Next Paula Deen (hehe)

Meal # 32 Peking Duck with Plum Sauce

I can't say I boned a duck like Julia and Julia but I did some other awful things to a duck. Like cut off it's head and pulled out it's innards. I went to the oriental market to get my frozen duck. I stored it for a while, putting off the day of cooking because it was all freeze wrapped in a ball with it's beak and eyes mashed up against the plastic staring at me. I saw it's nostrils on it's beak and thought about the breath that might have once entered them. It was quite sad. So the day came when courage reached it's potential. I carefully had a recipe laid out and all my supplies. First it said to steam it with a bunch of herbs inside of it but a precursor to that was to get rid of the head and feet. My dad, a superb cook happened to be by this day. I wanted to be hard core and do all the major cutting and trimming of the duck but it's claws snagged my apron and I lost all courage. So my dad may helped out in this area. :) Thanks Dad! Then I stemmed Donald Duck for a long time then I basted him with some honey mixed with soy sauce and baked him for a while. After he was all cooked and aromatic, Brit and I deboned the duck from the bones. It was fall apart meat. We had a bunch of duck pieces on a plate and 3 different sauces. Plum sauce, hoisin sauce and orange marmalade. I had also made chinese pancakes to wrap up the duck in. So you have like a duck quesadilla without cheese anyway. I was really good at making these thin pancakes. It was just flour and water rolled into a log. Then you make little balls about the same size and dip half into sesame seed oil and press with into another ball. Then you roll the two balls together into a pancake. Then you dry fry them and when they are nice and browned you pull them apart and you have 2 super thin pancakes! It was amazing! So we rolled up the duck with the sauces into the pancakes and ate! I truly like duck.

Daisy Duck

Meal # 31 Wine Soaked Ribs with Veggies

I have found that if you go to Albertsons and get their weekly add and coupons and then take them to Publix, (who has better prices) will accepts these so called coupons and you can get Buy One Get Two Free Meat. A couple of weeks ago I got my coupons and saw that Ribs was the meat of choice. I was excited because I have never cooked ribs and soon I would have 3 racks of ribs in my possession. So I went and chatted with the butcher guy at publix and loaded my ribs into my cart. Then later that week I was invited over to a dear friend's house who had made BBQ ribs for us! She is the one who told me about these coupons! I asked her how she cooked her ribs and so on and ate in the most messy way each of my BBQ ribs at her house. I took some mental notes and was getting nervous about all the roasting/marinating/grilling in no particular order. Then that Saturday, the husband and I went for dinner at my parents house, where guess what we ate? BBQ Ribs. Soaked for 24 hours or something in Lime Juice. Mom said that the juices cook the meat so we just have to grill for a few minutes and baste with BBQ sauce. First of all my mother is a exceptional cook, I have called her many of times for help and advice but I thought my mom had really lost it this time. Lime juice? Really? Well we ate them and they were fabulous. We accumulated left overs in each place so we had two different kinds of ribs to finish off the following week. I was over BBQ ribs big time. But I need to use my meat. However, I heard that you are suppose to pull the silvery skin of the back of the ribs before you cook them. This proved to be tricky and confusing. I am not sure I pulled off all of this thin layer of, I don't know, FAT? I watch a couple of YOUTUBE videos to help me. Finally, using the crock pot, a rack of ribs and a bottle of red wine, I began the cooking process. I figured that these were solid ingredients and I just let them cook until they had fallen off the bone then threw some carrots in for good measure. It was are veggies for the meal. So here is what I am learning. Ribs are really just meat still stuck to the bone. I mean obviously. I shan't be scared anymore of the awkward things. Next time, perhaps I will cook them in a soup. Who says I can't? Nobody. That's who.

Tiff

Meal #31 Bluberry Cupcakes (muffins?)

So what is the difference between a cupcake and a muffin? After I did this recipe I was utterly confused. The recipe SAID Cupcakes but they sure looked like muffins to me. Plus they were not very good. I think the bran was a clue. Anyway they made quick snacks and I always feel better about offering my guests a Blueberry Muffin instead of a cupcake. They tend to believe I am healthier and more conscience of what I eat. Ha.

Muffin (wo)Man

Meal # 30 Angel Food Berrie Layered Cake

The last couple of Fourth of Julys I have made a patriotic layered cake for my parents. They try to eat healthy and not eat to much sugar. So I like to do the fruit and cake mix for them. This one I kinda cheated on because I bought the cake from Pubix and cut it into pieces. Then I layered fruit and whipped topping on each one. I did take some time to make a creative top! It was so good and light with minimal sugar. It wasn't a recipe either so I am proud I am learning to improvise! Ice cream and cake topped with berries is always a winner!

Tiff

Meal # 29 Slow Cooked Chicken and Rice with Asparagus

I have a lot of dear friends. My friend Tamara fits in this category. She is a teacher like me and very ambitious like me too. We don't hang out as much as we would like but when we are together she just fits like a old shoe. Friends like that are hard to come by so I treasure our time together. Since it is summer and we are both twiddling our thumbs (ha) we invited them over for dinner. We invited them at 6:30 but Tamara is on CPT (Colored People Time) This is not offensive to her or me so now you don't go and be offended. So dinner started around 7:30. Tamara bought this amazing Blueberry Tart with a Wine Glaze on the top. Oh my, it was delicous! It totally stole the night. Even her husband (a very picky eater) said he would even have some more. Then we may have eaten a couple of crickets to Tamara's horror. But even those were tasty. The whole meal was a success and the company even better. Wouldn't be nice to share more meals with people you love? I think so. So thanks Tamara and Chris for sharing our meal.

Tiff

Meal # 28 Asian Cooking Day

So not only do I cook copious amounts but so do most of my friends. Now we have these fun days called cooking days. We decided a theme, then we go shopping, then we prep and eat lunch and then we COOK, like all day. It may be my favorite thing to do yet. I enjoy the people I am cooking with. They never get mad or frustrated when I am in their way. They are very laid back people and are very funny. We cooked at my dearest friend Brittani's house, she has the biggest kitchen and the coolest gadgets. Jenny came from (God only knows where she lives) and drove us all around looking for our asian ingrediants. We must have gone to 4 stores looking for Lemon Grass. I was at the point of plucking some from the yard and squeezing some lemon juice on it. Then we have our male addition, Caleb. He is very helpful and knows many random facts. He is handy to have around to open jars too. We started the day off by brainstorming recipes and our grocery list. Jenny took detailed notes and all of the supplies we already had were set out. Finally, we loaded into the car and started out for the Oriental Market in Orlando. This is like an attration, everyone should go and experience it. It has many intresting smells and is not organized in a way that I can find anything but duck eggs which can be put in any aisle. Their are tiny turtles in the foyer that smell so bad that even Brittani passess them by without even blinking. We wander around searching for oyster sauce, noodles, lemon grass, celery, tuna, salmon, and other necessities. We pass some odd things like chicken feet, pickled intestines, roast ducks, a buffet of fresh fish (all parts included) escargot, live lobsters, crabs and shrimp, and a dozen different kinds of pastries that look sweet but have things like bean curd in them with lemon zest. Oh and don't forget the BoBo tea; tea with big black soft balls of tapioca in it. Very popular. Okay so we get our stuff and head to a couple more stores to get the rest of our list. I was making crab ragoon, shrimp egg rolls, and orange glazed cornish hens. I don't even remember what everyone else was making though I did help with it. But sheeze they can write their own blog, ya know. So we cooked and cooked and Jenny tried to make rice for something but it never cracked and it was super hard but wet all at the same time. We tried everything to save it, including adding sugar and milk to make a rice pudding thing but sadly we ended up chucking the whole thing. That was about the only problem the whole day! My crab rangoon came out crispy and creamy on the inside. My egg rolls where spectacular with the help of Jeff who worked with me on my wrapping skills. And my cornish hens where okay but really just tasted like chicken. Which I guess they are. But they were so tiny and cute, with their little wings and legs. Everything turned out edible and that means...Success! Tiff
Here is a video of Caleb and the Pudgy Pilgram ~ working together!