Author Archives: bearinthepantry

Weekend Recap: July 19-21

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Hey guys! Sorry about the delay in getting this out. I wasn’t quite sure when I was going to have time to write everything up so I figured a recap of this past weekend, with several recipes, would be a good idea.

Friday night started out with leftover Chicken Soup with Noodles. There was an SF GIANTS game on we were watching that evening and cooking time got away from me. Fortunately I try to keep something good in the freezer for just these types of nights. It definitely hit the spot with a red leaf lettuce salad on the side that had an apple cider bacon vinaigrette for the dressing.

chicken_soup_noodles

Saturday morning had me wanting to either make a big breakfast casserole, it will happen, or something with the pint of blueberries I had. After mulling it over I decided a Blueberry Sour Cream Coffeecake would be a good idea. This is one time that I’m not going to share that recipe, I could have been better and it look way too much like the Mixed Berry Cobbler I recently made. I will come up with something worthy of sharing, I promise.

mixed_berry_cobbler_collage

Saturday evening I grilled a meaty half-rack of Baby Back ribs, topped them off with an Apple Chipotle BBQ Sauce, and made Cheater Baked Beans. We had salad left over from the night before so veggies were covered. In fact, the vinaigrette from the night before was better after sitting overnight. And the BBQ sauce also had overnight for all the flavors to marry as I made it on Friday, a very good move indeed.

apple_chipotle_bbq

Sunday was an easy cooking day. I had originally planned on doing roasted Cornish game hen, mashed potatoes, and some sort of veggie. There were a few preparations in store for that hen so I got the first on underway which was an apple juice brine.

brine_game_hen

My theory on brining is that pork and poultry can always benefit from some sort of brining or injecting, both types of protein are usually very bland on their own and they need flavor help. This is why I brine chicken when I can, wings are the exception, and I like to brine pork chops and pork tenderloin. I also brine my turkeys at Thanksgiving, or any other time of year for that matter. I will do a post about roasting the game hen, that is dinner tonight. Enjoy!

For the love of berries …

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TGIF everybody!!! The weekend is right around the corner and I am so ready. How about you? Before the weekend is officially here I wanted to share this Mixed Berry Cobbler recipe I came up with last night, absolutely delicious!

Right now berries are on sale just about everywhere you go and when I was at our local Safeway the other day blueberries, and raspberries from Watsonville which is local, were such a great deal that I had to buy some. I had an idea in mind, Blueberry Pull-Apart Biscuits from Stacey Little over at SouthernBite.com, so blueberries were already on my list, the raspberries were going to be a great addition to whatever I was going to make or simply delicious in a bowl of cereal. Whatever was going to happen, the berries were too good of a deal to pass up. And the dogs love them as treats.

mixed_berry_cobbler_collage

As I was gathering the ingredients to cook the pull-apart biscuits I got the idea for doing a mixed berry cobbler instead. We had vanilla ice cream in the freezer so it seemed like a marriage made in heaven. The pull-apart biscuits are definitely on my list of things to make some weekend morning though, I hear the glaze on those things is nothing short of amazing!

Here’s the mixed cobbler recipe I came up. Next time I’m going to try making individual servings. I hope you enjoy!

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

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Show you care; say it with love.

What I mean is that one of the best ways to show love to someone is through food that you make. It’s amazing what something homemade, made with love, can do for someone; how it can lift their day and make them feel better. And you too in the process.

As always with dear friends, this was never more true than this past Sunday when I went to visit very dear friends, Eve, Mike, and Wally. We already had plans to get together that day for around the lunch/brunch time but no real firm plans as to what we would actually do. Sadly a lot changed Saturday morning when I found out that Mike’s grandpa had passed away the day before. They still wanted to get together so plans got set really fast that we would stay in at their place and just chill. Mike loves banana desserts and Eve asked that I make something to make him feel better, possibly banana ice cream since we had just bought the new ice cream machine last week. I remembered he really liked the banana bread I make and he really loved it when I put in chocolate chips. How could I not make Chocolate Chip Banana Bread?

chocolate_chip_banana_bread

 

Click here for the recipe.

Easy Greek Pasta Salad

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Who doesn’t love a good cold pasta salad, especially in the summer and more especially one that won’t go bad if left out for a while. This isn’t a mayo-based salad so you’re safe.

easy_greek_pasta_salad

Thanks to our sister-in-law, Dianne, I discovered a really easy pasta salad that used whatever favorite vinegar based dressing you preferred as the liquid for the salad. I believe she used an Italian that was really good when mixed up with the pasta and the cheese and the veggies … YUM!

Recipe and full story here.

Pizza, Baseball, and Good Neighbors

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TGIF everyone!!! I have been meaning to share this with you all day and finally just got everything ready to go. I promise to keep this short, sweet, and simple. Like me. Well, I’m not so short …

Last night was a very good night. I needed to use up some things in fridge, and I had plans to baptize the new ice cream machine with some peachy goodness. The menu ended up rounding out a little something like this:

We had homemade pizza — sauce and dough recipes.

homemade_pizza_collage

We had homemade peach ice cream and homemade poundcake.

peach_ice_cream_collagecold_oven_poundcake

We had a visitor. Our neighbor, Miss Deborah Kaye, stopped by.

deborah_kaye

AND … the GIANTS WON last night!!! FINALLY!!! I am cautiously optimistic again. Life is good. Here’s hoping for another win tonight … and here’s to the weekend!