BLrTwsbamyd - The Perfect Storm of Sandwiches

Today for lunch I had a BLrTwsbamyd, also known as a bacon-lettuce-roasted tomato-with-sourdough-bread-and-mom's-yummy-dip sandwich. It began simply enough, with just a desire for a good BLT. I purchased the needed ingredients: bacon, lettuce and tomatoes. The next day, I decided to oven-dry the tomatoes for a little twist (I'm such a dare devil!). The following day my mom came to visit and made the yummiest sourdough bread dip you can imagine. Today at lunch I decided it was time to create my much-anticipated sandwich.

I toasted the sourdough bread, slathered it with dip, added three oven-dried tomatoes, a leaf of crisp lettuce, topped with warm crispy bacon and another slice of toasted sourdough bread. I paused just long enough to photograph it, and then I inhaled it. It's very likely that this sandwich will never again occur. Bacon and sourdough bread are specialty items around my house and never last long. The bread dip my mom made, while very delicious, is not something that I'll always have on hand, and unless I need them for a recipe, I'm not sure I'll be oven-drying my tomatoes regularly. Ah, but it was a good sandwich. (insert wistful sigh here)


Oven-Dried Tomatoes
(great on pasta, or for just eating as a snack)

Slice tomatoes in half and place seeds-up on a cookie sheet. Bake in a 300 degree oven for 1 hour. Reduce heat to 200 degrees and bake tomatoes for 2 hours. Turn off oven and leave tomatoes in for 1 more hour. Remove from oven, cool and place in a bag to store.


Kaymak
( Yugoslavian cheese spread)

*great on sourdough bread, or as a dip for veggies*

1 8-oz box of cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup feta cheese, room temperature
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 teaspoon Italian Herb Seasoning

In small bowl of electric mixer, beat all ingredients until light and fluffy. Spoon into a small serving dish. Cover and refrigerate. Let stand at room temperature 20-30 minutes before serving. Makes about 2 cups.

Giveaway! Happy 100th Post!

With the posting of this week's menu, I have now officially hit the century mark. By way of celebration, I'm giving away one of my favorite (albeit small) things:

I found this adorable, yet functional notepad a couple of weeks ago and it has become a permanent part of my purse-stuffings. I write my grocery list in it, my books-to-check-out list, important phone numbers, and things needing to be done that I think of while waiting at red lights.

I love the little green elastic band that wraps around and keeps my important scribbles cozy. It prevents pennies, lip glosses & melted M&Ms from making a mess of my notes.

Now, I'm not going to give you MY actual notebook. No one is that lucky. Instead, I went back and purchased a new, clean one, ready to be mailed off to one of you lovely readers. To be entered in the drawing, just submit a comment to this post or another post during this week. (Your comment can even be, "ooh, ooh, pick me!") I'll put your names in a hat - or better yet, my favorite mixing bowl - and draw one out. I'll announce the winner on Sunday, August 26th.

Good luck, and keep cooking!

Week 25 Menu

Monday - Chicken Salad Croissants & corn on the cob
Tuesday - Simple Beef Stroganoff & Skillet Cornbread
Wednesday - Fajita Chicken Quesadillas
Thursday - Pork Chops w/ apples & onion
Friday - Crockpot BBQ Chicken
Saturday - Tacos
Sunday - Ratatouille au four (oven ratatouille)

Week 25 Recipes

Corn Bread Baked in a Skillet
from The Way We Cook

2 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
2/3 cup canola oil
1 1/4 cups buttermilk
3/4 cup yellow cornmeal
1 1/4 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter a 10-inch ovenproof skillet (cast iron, or other). Beat eggs, sugar and oil in a large bowl with a whisk until thoroughly blended. Add the buttermilk and whisk to combine.

Stir in the cornmeal, flour, baking powder and salt with a wooden spoon. Pour into skillet. Bake for 40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Set the skillet on a rack to cool. Cut bread into wedges and serve.

**note: This is one of the best corn breads I've had in a long time. We couldn't eat the whole thing the first night, so I left it in the pan and covered it with foil. While I cooked dinner the next night, I heated up the leftover cornbread in a 200 degree oven (still in the skillet covered with foil). Still delicious!




Pork Chops with Apples and Onions
from The Way We Cook

4 thick center-cut pork loin chops
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
1 Tbsp butter
1 onion, thinly sliced
2 medium apples, peeled, halved & thinly sliced
1 Tbsp flour
1 1/2 cups chicken stock
2 Tbsp chopped fresh thyme

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Sprinkle chops with salt and pepper. In a large skillet with an ovenproof handle, heat the oil. When it is hot, add the butter. Brown the pork chops over high heat on both sides - about 2 minutes per side. Remove from pan.

Add the onion and apple slices to skillet and cook over medium heat, stirring often for 10 minutes or until the onion softens. Add the flour and cook, stirring constantly for 2 minutes.

Pour the stock into the pan. Stir until the mixture comes to a boil and thickens slightly. Add the salt, pepper, and half of the thyme.

Return the pork chops to the pan and spoon some of the onion mixture over them. Place the skillet in the oven and roast the pork for 10 minutes or until the chops are cooked through.

Taste the sauce for seasoning. Add more salt and pepper if you like. Sprinkle with the remaining 1 Tbsp thyme before serving.

Brownie Cookie Ice Cream Sandwiches

I stumbled across a yummy-looking recipe on a blog called Just Recipes and I've been waiting for just the right moment to try it out. Yesterday our nieces and nephews came for a sleepover and I knew they would make the perfect guinea pigs for a new cookie recipe. My 4-year old nephew and 10-year old niece even offered to help - can't beat that!


Look at their flour-leveling skills! These two are well on their way to becoming my permanent soux chefs (is a head chef allowed two soux chefs?)

Well when the brownie cookies were done, we decided to make them sleepover-worthy by filling them with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. They're very good cookies on their own, and simply divine in "sandwich" form.

Here is the link to the Brownie Cookies recipe, and I'll also post it below.


Brownie Cookies
(Original recipe by Lindsey Johnson)

14 Tbsp. butter (1 3/4 sticks)
1 oz. unsweetened chocolate
1 1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 whole egg
1 egg yolk
1-2 tsp. vanilla extract

Whisk together:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Place butter and unsweetened chocolate in a large, microwave-safe bowl. Microwave for several minutes on 50% power until melted. Whisk to combine. Add the brown sugar and the cocoa powder. Whisk well until smooth. Let the mixture cool slightly. Add egg and egg yolk, whisking well again. Add the vanilla.

Add the dry ingredients a little at a time and whisk well between additions. (You may need to switch to a wooden spoon towards the end. Add the chocolate chips

Use a small ice cream scoop (1 Tbsp. size) or two spoons to drop tablespoon size balls of dough onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake cookies for about 8-9 minutes. (Check a little before just to make sure...) The cookies will look dry on top, but will be soft in the middle.

Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet and then remove to a cooling rack to let the chocolate chips set before storing.

Makes about 3 dozen.

My Secret Weapons

I have this recent need to perfect my bread-making skills. I figure if I'm going to have all of this wheat and flour in my food storage, then I darn well better know how to use it.

My latest experiment (around our house it's pronounced suh-periment) was a white/wheat bread recipe based on the Honey White Bread recipe I posted earlier. The only change I made was to substitute 1 cup of the white flour for wheat flour. It still turned out great - not too heavy. I might actually try 1 1/2 cups next time.

Now comes the part where I reveal my secret weapons. Yes, plural...weaponS.

#1: An electric knife
#2: A bread slicing guide

If you're going to bother making your own bread, you'll want your finished product to look as good as it smells, and these two tools do the trick. You place your beautiful loaf of bread in the guide, plug in your electric knife and slice away. The knife does all the work and slides right through the toughest crust. (It's great for turkey carving too!) You get a perfectly sliced loaf of bread ready to eat or freeze for later. No more sawing and mashing your bread. Wait. Now I'm sounding like an info-mercial. Anyway, now you know my secrets for great looking sliced bread.

note: I have to add that I was DYING to somewhere include the pun "it's the best thing since sliced bread" but I refrained out of respect to my readers.

Sign of a Great Cookbook

A few of you have asked where I find my recipes. My biggest source is the internet of course. My next best source is cookbooks that I check out from our library. If I like the book enough, I'll buy my own copy. I checked out this one a few days ago and I've already gone through it to mark recipes that I'd like to try. As you can see, this book has a lot of potential. I'll try a few recipes and if we like them, then I'll buy the book for my for-keepsies library. This week, the Corn & Pasta Salad and the Maple-glazed Chicken with Pears recipes are both from this book.

I added two recipes this week - Aloha Coleslaw & Tuna Waldorf-Esque Salad. I'll add the recipe for Zuchinni & Ravioli in Walnut Sauce later. That one still needs fine tuning.

Happy Cooking everyone!