Happy Things!

I feel like spring is finally here!  Three days in a row with 50+ temps!

The only fun thing about the rainy weather this past weekend was watching Clyde sashay through the house.  He wears the towels we dry him with as if they're a fancy cloak.

Sometimes he carries the end of the towel in his mouth like it's the royal train.  And he looks at me as if he's saying, "Cue The King's March.  I have arrived."

Plopping himself down to take a nap.  I think he keeps the towel wrapped around him so that he will have royal dreams...dreams where he waves a perfect royal wave to his subjects.

Or maybe he just wears the towel because it's comforting on a rainy day.

Thank you to all who commented about their favorite comfort food to enter the giveaway for the Whole Foods gift card last week.  The winner was Carly G., whose favorite comfort food is "a toss up between baked mac and cheese and biscuits with gravy!"

"Biscuits?  Did somebody say BISCUITS?!

Hope you are all enjoying some glorious spring weather wherever you happen to be!

Lemon Ricotta Muffins

Every day, every walk we take, Clyde picks up a stick or a branch along the way.

Today, this one stopped him in his tracks.  He turned around and looked at me as if to say, "Yikes!"  Then he did an about-face and dragged me home.

We came home and he promptly took a nap so he could sleep off his trauma.

While he slept, I baked a batch of muffins.

  I wanted to take a picture of the muffins, and the best place for natural light is on this bench in my dining room.

Gus understands the meaning of "look but don't touch."  Clyde--not so much.  Good thing he was sleeping.

If you haven't yet entered the giveaway for the Whole Foods gift card, head on over to this post and leave a comment telling me what your favorite comfort food is.  The winner will be announced on March 31.  Good luck!

Comfort Food Cooking Show...and Whole Foods Giveaway!

  I'm so ready for the snow to be gone!

Even though it is fun to throw snowballs for Gus.

Got it!  Clyde usually looks on in admiration, he simply doesn't have the desire to catch snowballs. 

 We filmed another episode of the cooking show this week.  With the freezing temperatures outside, it only seemed fitting that the theme of this show should be comfort food!

What did we make?

 Chicken Pot Pie

A large, family-sized chicken pot pie and cute li'l individual ones.

Lentil Soup.

Puff Pancakes with Strawberry Sauce

Click on the links to be taken to the recipes.

Chicken Pesto Pizza (with mushrooms)

Caitie:     We should bake something today!

Erin (smirking, sarcastic):    uh, WE?

Caitie:    Well, YOU should bake something, and I'll sit here and keep you company!


That was a recent conversation between the two of them.

If you read my blog regularly, you may have seen the brownies and cupcakes and creative cakes that Erin regularly bakes.

Caitie does her best to avoid the kitchen.   Just imagine my surprise when I walked in the door one day last week and was greeted by this:

Caitie got busy baking blondies.  They were still warm!

And then she requested that I make Chicken Pesto Pizza.  She's hard to resist when she plies me with warm blondies.

I feel the need to warn you that this is going to be a long recipe.  Three recipes, actually.   I made the crust from scratch.  I made the pesto from scratch.  And THEN  I made the pizza.

But before I made the crust, pesto and pizza, I roasted the garlic (for the pesto), roasted the chicken (for the pizza), sautéed some mushrooms (because NO pizza-o-mine is complete without 'shrooms).  It turned into a two-hour ordeal.  Two hours!!!  For two pizzas.  But it was soooooo good.

Make that sooooooooooooooo good.

To save time, make it easy on yourself.  It's the pesto & chicken combo that's important,  and nobody's going to judge you if you don't prepare all of your ingredients from scratch.  Buy ready-made pizza dough.  Buy ready-made pesto.  Buy pre-cooked (or rotisserie) chicken.

Breakfast is My Favorite Kind of Dinner--Cooking Show #6

When Erin was about 3 years old, she declared, "Turkey is my favorite kind of chicken."

I have subscribed to her logic ever since. 

 Hence, breakfast is my favorite kind of dinner.

We filmed another cooking show this week, with a breakfast theme.  Or breakfast for dinner.  Or, as my friend (a.k.a. Superwoman) Maureen's daughter calls it, "Brinner."

Puff Pastry Omelette Torte

Really, really, really good.  Really.

Buttermilk Coffeecake

If you're into coffeecake with a lot of crispy, crunchy topping, this is the one for you.

Berries with Vanilla Glaze

Perfect.

(Click on the above links to be taken to the recipes)

Here's the view from the opposite end of the table.  We made lots of fruity drinks.  Dinner drinks!

Madras

• 1 shot vodka
• 4 oz. cranberry juice
• 1 oz. orange juice

Fill an 8-oz glass with ice.  Add ingredients.  Stir.  Garnish with an orange slice, lime wedge and maraschino cherry.

Fuzzy Navel

• Peach Schnapps
• Orange Juice

Fill an 8-oz glass with ice cubes.  Add a generous shot of Peach Schnapps.  Fill with orange juice.  Stir.  Garnish with an orange slice and maraschino cherry.

Tequila Sunrise

• 1 shot Tequila
• 3 oz. Orange Juice
• 1 tablespoon grenadine

Fill an 8-oz glass with ice cubes.  Add tequila, then orange juice.  Slowly pour grenadine along the side of the glass.  Do not stir!  The grenadine should settle in the bottom of the glass.  Garnish with an orange slice and maraschino cherry.

Almond Cookies

Here's the view from my driveway.  I'm not a snow person, but I'll be the first to admit that it sure is pretty.

Gus will tell you that it's fun to play in.

I'd almost say that Clyde and Gus have more fun playing in our backyard full of snow than they do playing in our sunny backyard in the summer.

Almost.  I myself prefer the sun to the snow, and I don't want to say anything that might tempt the fates to favor my dogs' wishes over mine.

Heaven knows, their wishes very rarely get denied around here.

It's hard to ignore the stare of persuasion.  Especially when it's accompanied with the harder-to-ignore whine of imploration.

 Hey, Clyde, help me out here.  I'm being ignored.

Happy to oblige, Gus!  I'll melt her with my pleading puppy face.

Mission accomplished.  No whine necessary.

I tell myself...look away, Fran, look away.  If I don't look away, I'll be baking dog cookies instead of almond cookies!

Okay, today's recipe is my go-to cookie recipe.   The drawback is that you have to mix them up in advance because they need time to chill before you bake them.

Let's be optimistic instead, and say that it's a PLUS that you have to mix the dough and scoop the cookies in advance.  The dough will keep for a few days, so it's like having ready-to-bake cookies in your fridge!  

Cooking Show #5--Cupcakes!! With Salted Caramel, or Nutella Filling...& Mascarpone Frosting

We filmed cooking show #5 this week.  My featured guest, Emily, is a friend of my daughter's.  Emily is currently enjoying a gap year before enrolling in Harvard this fall.  She's doing all sorts of fun things--taking classes, working on service projects--but I'll bet it'll be hard for her to top the three months she spent in the south of France this fall.

Here's Emily behind the counter of a bakery that she worked at while she was in France.

Before she left on her adventure, I asked her if she would be a guest on my cooking show when she came back.  She enthusiastically said, "YES!"  I've been eagerly awaiting her return, wondering what types of exotic treats we'd prepare when she came back.

The best-selling treats at the bakery?  Cupcakes!  And the best-selling flavor?

Nutella!

Not quite the exotic recipe I was expecting, but I've never filled cupcakes with anything, so it was a bit of a challenge.

Emily also suggested making salted caramel cupcakes.  GET. OUT.  My favorite.  How did she know?

We used my vanilla cupcake recipe.  Emily told me that the recipe at the bakery was a very closely-guarded secret.  She was allowed to make the cupcakes, but the ingredients were already measured and she was never told the exact amounts.

We used Emily's frosting recipes, however.  Can I just state for the record that I, a staunchly loyal fan of buttercream frosting, have evolved into an even bigger fan of mascarpone frosting?

You'll need to put a bit more time and effort into these cupcakes than you would for basic frosted cupcakes. I think you'll agree, however, that the extra time that it takes--to make the salted caramel and to fill the cupcakes--is time well-spent!

Berries With Vanilla Glaze--A Pick-Me-Up for Winter Doldrums

Winter, be gone!

If only it were that easy.

Even though it has been pouring rain, the sixty-degree temps of the last couple of days brought a bit of spring fever with them.

Clyde has spring fever, too!

  I settled for a bowl of berries instead, doctored up with a vanilla glaze.  I know, I know...berries are not in season.  Which is exactly why I want them.  Because if they were in season, I wouldn't need them to cure my spring fever, because it would no longer be winter and I wouldn't have spring fever.  Are you following my logic?

This recipe is so simple, and so good!  At first bite, my girls declared, "This is a keeper!" "Make this again!" And I will, anytime I want to chase the winter doldrums away.

2013 Blog Review

I just checked my dashboard.  I can't believe that there were 247,000 page views last year!  A more than five-fold increase over 2012.  I am truly humbled and grateful!

Most Page Views

For the second year in a row, Crock Pot Boneless Country Style Ribs was the most popular post.  This recipe received 155,000 page views!

Coming in a very distant second, with almost 12,000 page views, Crock Pot Boneless Beef Short Ribs.

And finally, a dessert recipe!  The third most-popular post, with almost 7,000 page views,  Sea Salt Caramel Rice Krispy Treats.  This is definitely one of my favorite recipes from 2013.

The first time I made them, I scorched them.  They were still fabulous!

Audience

For the third year in a row, the country with the most page views was the U.S., of course.  This year, however, the country with the second-greatest number of page views was

Canada!

My Personal Favorite Post

It's only appropriate that my favorite post from 2013 is

Selfie.  How I wish I had started blogging when my kids were younger.

Thank you for visiting!

Happy 2014!

Cheesy Blueberry French Toast Bake

Happy New Year!!

I've been cooking up a storm throughout the holiday season.  Lots of tried-and-true favorites (which I've already blogged about), and lots of new recipes and experiments.  

This is what I made last night for our New Year's Eve dinner.  Heart-shaped lobster ravioli.

This recipe was filed under Good, But Not Good Enough To Blog About.  Not good enough partly because a. I was happy with the sauce, however the pasta dough could use some work but mostly because b. it took me two frustrating hours to make.

And so my streak of so-so recipes continued.

Until this morning, that is. 

I think my streak of cooking & baking failures has finally ended!

It took this package of not-quite-fresh bread to get me rolling.  Ba-dum-bum, pun intended.  Rolls, get it?

Okay, my comedic timing still needs work.  Something else to shoot for in 2014.

Anyway, back to our story....

Stale bread or rolls are perfect for making French toast.  I've never, ever had success making any type of French toast casserole, however.  Oh, I've certainly tasted casseroles that I liked.  One time I was at a friend's house and she had made a spectacular cinnamon French toast casserole.  

She sent me the link to the online recipe and I only looked at it long enough to see that it called for three sticks of butter.  I. Just. Can't. Not even for special occasions.  Unless it would provide at least 24 servings, but then only because if I were to host a breakfast for 24 I'd be frantic enough that I wouldn't care how much butter I used.  Yet again, I digress.

I'll cut to the chase:  I've attempted to make many French toast casseroles that weren't loaded with butter.  And I've never liked any of them.  Until today!

I googled like crazy and adapted a Kraft recipe to suit my needs.  Ironically, there was no butter in the original recipe. I decided that butter wasn't the enemy after all and used a teaspoon or so to grease the pan.