Dear friends, it has been a long time since I have updated you on my list. And I am shamed to say my year deadline is coming up. I have not completed my list of ingredients fully. However I will not give up! I have done a pretty good job of cooking with most of them at least once. Here are the ones I haven't even tried.

almond milk, Altoids (why?), chicken kabobs (maybe because I don't have sticky things or a grill), chocolate milk, dolphin the fish, Eskimo Pie (still not even sure what this is), goat (totally doable), gumballs, licorice, liver pate, mango, meatloaf, Nerds the candy, pickled pigs feet, pringles, pinto beans, pomegranate, quail, radish, ramen noodles, root beer, sardines, scallops (they're so expensive!), snickers, sprinkles, star fruit, and tofu.

I will be using my spring break to catch up on some of these easy ones and also asking the Trial and Error Board to give me an extension....I have almost 3 weeks to wrap this up and that is with my job that is at the highest peak of stressfulness. But I am committed and will give it my best shot. I will also be better about taking pictures as I know that really is the best part.

Thanks to those of you who are sticking with me!

Tiffany

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)