The Skinny Chef

Just found a great site if you are trying to get some weight off and eat well. The owner is Jennifer Iserloh and the site is named The Skinny Chef where I found lots of great recipes with great ideas. When you go there look for Buttermilk Chicken and Chocolate-Zucchini Brownies. Course there are lots more recipes but these two just hit me enough to try. Chicken and brownies are two of my favorite foods where I am always looking for new ideas.

Lemon Pound Cake for Easter

Today is a good day to make a "lemon pound cake" using the recipe I posted a year ago on my old recipe blog at Granny's Tasties @ http://grannycbb.blogspot.com/. This has become an annual recipe at Easter time. Here is the recipe
if you might be interested in making a loaf pound cake.
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I just finished baking a 'lemon pound cake' in a loaf pan from "Taste of Home". Strawberries are available again, so I planned the baking in time.
Ingredients: Loaf Lemon Pound Cake·
2/3 cup butter-flavored shortening
· 1-1/4 cups sugar
· 2 tablespoons lemon juice
· 1 teaspoon lemon extract
· 2/3 cup milk or 1/2 c yogurt
· 2-1/4 cups cake flour *
· 1-1/4 teaspoons salt
· 1 teaspoon baking powder
· 3 eggs
· Confectioners' sugar
Directions:
In a large mixing bowl, cream shortening and sugar
until light and fluffy.
Beat in lemon juice and extract.
Add milk; beat for 30 seconds.
Sift cake flour, salt and baking powder;
gradually add to creamed mixture.
Beat on low speed for 2 minutes.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Pour into a greased wax paper-lined 9-in. x 5-in. x 3-in. loaf pan.
Bake at 300° for 1 hour and 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack to cool completely. Remove waxed paper. Dust with confectioners' sugar.
* I used 1 3/4 c regular flour + 1/4 c corn starch**
Have all your ingredients measured and at room temperature.

If you are interested in looking at recipes from my old blog, please go to this address http://grannycbb.blogspot.com/ and look in the left column for "recipes on this blog" title. Here is listed all the recipes and the date to search for the item.
Happy Easter to everyone and happy baking.

Food, Fax and Saveur Recipes

I found a point of interest today for those of you who are interested in replacing kitchenware. Houseware companies launch their fall/winter lines this month, so summer merchandise will be on sale. Not a bad idea considering how long I have had my kitchenware, pots and pans, etc.
Here is another tip if you ever need to fax information. There are two sites that you can send a fax free which is good considering I do not have a fax machine. Here are the sites-- http://www.FaxZero.com (send for free), and http://www.K7.net where you can receive faxes and voicemail for free, if you don’t mind a 206 (Washington state) fax number. As long as it is free why not use them. I went to both sites to see if there was a glitch but I did not see anything. However if anyone has used them or has a comment, please let us know.
I did receive an email today from Saveur(my favorite food mag) with two interesting food recipes.
One is for Boston Cooking School Brownies. This recipe for a gooey and rich brownie was originally published in Fannie Merritt Farmer's The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (Little, Brown, 1911).
The other is for spiced apples which make a great foundation for apple pie or strudel. Spiced Apples. Check them out if interested.
BTW, PLEASE VOTE FOR MY SITE OF GRANNY'S TASTIES2 as there is a contest going on at DivineCaroline.com. Look (here) in the top right margin for the badge and click on it to go vote. I surely would appreciate it.

Gustav passed us by!

Not alot going on today as we have been thru quite a weekend just waiting to see what Gustav was going to do. Being on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi it was just where is it going. Luckily where I live on the coast, we only got wind and rain but not flooding. Down around Gulfport it was not so good with Highway90 being flooded and further up Hwy49 bayous were overflowing causing much damage along with the wind. Anyway I am home, safe and sound and only need to go out tomorrow and pick up all the tree branches that dropped.
If you are still getting lots of squash and maybe your neighbors are still giving it to you from their gardens, here is a recipe you might want to look at for a good hot dish. About.com put out a fine recipe to try.
BTW if anyone knows of a site for purchasing decaf coffee pods for my Senseo coffee maker, please let me know. Every now and then I would like a cup of coffee and I only drink decaf. Thanks.

TWO SIMPLE IDEAS

I imagine you are going thru heat withdrawal just like alot of the country. So how about a tall glass of lemonade.
Here are the ingredients:
1 qt. water
1 cup sugar
1 cup lemon juice
Put all these items in a quart container(or larger). Place a lot of ice in a few tall glasses and pour the mixture over the ice. Try to let it sit long enough to get cold. Duh!
I am making Crab Louie for supper and needed a dressing. I found this one that should do the trick.
1/3 cup mayo
2 TBSP + 2 tsp chili sauce
1 TBSP sweet relish
Mix all this together and put in refrig until ready to make salad.
Crab Louie Salad is just lots of lettuce for the base. Use a can of crab meat or fresh crab if you have it and spread this over the base of lettuce. The rest of the ingredients are what you like to add. A hard boiled egg(cut in half), cold asparagus spears, tomatoes diced or cut in quarters, and avacado-- whatever makes for a good salad. The dressing itself is a thousand island dressing drizzled over the crab and lettuce bed. The other items are placed around the outside of the salad to eat as you go along. I usually like saltines or hot french bread to go along with this salad. It is a meal entirely in itself depending, of course, on how big you make it. This salad can be found along the coastline where crab are plentiful and is a luxury. This also could be made of shrimp.
Hope everyone has a good weekend. For us they are predicting rain for the weekend to go along with all the heat.

Celebrated the big day

Here we go, another year tacked on to my life. It has been great just to see how the world is evolving what with elections coming up, the stock market up and down, food and gas prices are horrendous, and the heat index sitting in the high-90's. This could really get to anyone BUT I took a day off from all this mess and said "Thank You, Lord for another year." Not much me or you can do with the above mentioned chaos, so I took sometime out for me. I proceeded to have a lovely lunch and said "Well, now what!" which turned out to be fun. I went to my favorite casino and played many different slots for hours. Nooooo, I did not win and did not lose. That is good news. Got a free bloody mary on the house and even tho I would have liked another, I knew one was enough. Living in the South for so many years has turned out to be a joy(until hurricanes come thru) being as I love the food and seafood available all year round. Without being gushy, I have been truly blessed over the years with a lovely husband and sweet pets to enjoy. My travels have taken me all over the USA and overseas. Now I am enjoying my passion, cooking old and new recipes. Enjoy your day as I am enjoying mine.

Summer fruits and vegetables

I was visiting Slashfood.com and found two interesting items to bring up today. The first one is on blueberries. They are in season and possibly you might be able to find someplace where you can pick your own. Someone in my family went out picking and came home with twelve pounds. Now that is alot to work with but they will enjoy. Anyway this site at Slashfood lists(scroll down the page) many different ideas for using blueberries for muffins, pies, etc. You may just find something of interest to use the pickings.
Also at Slashfood-ate I browsed all the blog entries back to 2006. These articles were written by numerous people and covered a large area of food and cooking. I noted that the blogs usually refer to food sites for the topic of the day and this is how I have acquired food blogs I would never had found otherwise. Also I found if I click on the author it will show all that the person has written recently. Usually in the middle of the page there is a list of all those who write for Slashfood over the years. It is a very interesting site to peruse.
I just wondered how your gardens were doing this year. With the price of food, having your own garden would sure help cut the cost of purchasing fresh vegetables. I may have to head to the farmer's market as my neighbor's garden did not put out too much this year. BooHoo! At Slashfood I also found a list of items(scroll down on the page) for all the zucchini that is coming forth.
So Slashfood.com has given me and you great ideas for lots of recipes including those for blueberries and zucchini. Check out the site and see who is writing what.