Recipes and Fun Times

Since I have been here last, I have been to Corpus Christi, Texas with a bus load of students for state competition, celebrated Easter, spent 3 days quilting with my friends and celebrating my birthday.  At school, I have done 2 caterings,  2 restaurants, taught and practiced sauces, cupcakes and argued with my students about how to make Green Chili Enchiladas!!  Life has been busy to say the least.  Speaking of Green Chili Enchiladas, I have a friend coming to restaurant this week that has been put on a no meat diet.  It is killing her- a rancher's daughter who grew up eating red meat - to not eat ANY meat at all.  It would kill me, too.  She really wanted to come to our last restaurant this week, but we are serving green chili chicken enchiladas (yum!), but she can't eat any.  I thought about leaving out the chicken, but we use cream of chicken soup, and she can't have any of that either.  So, I created a black bean green chili enchilada just for her.  It is actually delicious despite the turned up noses of my students.  Once they tasted them - we had to bake a couple just to see if they worked - they thought they were delicious!!  This is a recipe that is great the way it is, but I keep thinking of other things I can add or change up to make them better.  (sour cream in the sauce?) ( green chilis inside the enchiladas) See, I keep tweaking it in my head and it keeps getting more delicious!  At least in my head it sounds delicious. 

Speaking of delicious, another item we are making this week for restaurant is tres leches cake.  This is one of those easy, simple cakes that everyone thinks is hard to make.  Trust me, it's not.  One group of students was slicing up strawberries and putting sugar on them getting them ready to go over the cake.  Another group were cutting up cilantro and doctoring up some salsa that I had on hand.  You know that commercial, "you got peanut butter in my chocolate. you got chocolate in my peanut butter" ?  Well, I took a strawberry and a cilantro leaf and . . . the rest is history.  Those flavors go really well together.  One of my students and I were tempted to toss it all together and leave class just so we could enjoy the loveliness in peace.  We didn't, but look for a dessert sometime in the future with those two as the showpiece!  (or maybe even a strawberry/cilantro margarita in celebration of cinco de mayo!)

I am trying to get one or two more backs sewn this week so I can send quilts off to my quilter.  I need to be sending her 2 a month until I can clear all the tops out of my room, but I don't get backs done that fast.  (to me that is the boring part)   It's a sad top overtaking my room situation.  I also want to create more tops.  I see something online and start pulling fabric in my head to create,  but know that I really, really need to work my way through my tubs and try and get some past projects finished.  I know, I will make myself a deal of some kind.  Make 2 quilt backs, finish up a tub and then at the end of the month I can start a new quilt.  sounds good to me, but then when the 1st of June rolls around, what then?  Make 2 quilt backs, finish up a tub and . . . work on the same project I started last month?  that sounds like another tub finish.  Oh, well, I will figure it all out. 

Just a little news and a recipe

In June, I traveled to Arkansas to give a trunk show and teach a short class to one of my mother's quilt guilds.  The first part of the morning I gave my trunk show and answered some questions before breaking for a pot luck luncheon.  Which,  by the way, was delicious and the homemade bread was awesome!  After lunch, I set up for a small showing of projects with plans to demo a bit and teach some strip piecing techniques. It didn't go that way, but was really wonderful anyway.  After showing some of my strip piecing projects, they all just wanted to look at my projects and ask questions.  They were not really prepared - most of them - for a "class".  However, one lady, pictured below with me and my sister, Paige, came prepared, but decided not to sew.  She was darling and requested that we take a picture with her.  They asked if I would come back and teach an all day class next time.  So, I am looking forward to returning to Arkansas to teach some more quilting in the future.  Don't know exactly when that will be, but hopefully sometime soon.  

 

 

 

One of my strip piecing projects that I took was this string quilt I have previously blogged about here.  Since returning from Arkansas, I have added a large blue border all around.  I was thinking at first that would be all I would add, now I am thinking about adding some gray and green 4 patches.  I still have some of the gray strips and I have some bright green fabric in the same print as the dark blue.  I think I will work on that tomorrow and see where it leads me.   I am not sure I want them all the way around the quilt or if I want them randomly spaced, clustered on the corners or what.  I will just make up a bunch and then play.  

 

 

Earlier this week I tested out one of the recipes I have copied down from the Internet - probably from Facebook - for easy lasagna.  It was fast, easy and tastes wonderful.  Here are the simple directions for making this fantastic lasagna. 

 

Ingredients:

1 jar prepared pasta sauce (I used a jar of Putanesca sauce I got at Big Lots and had in my cabinet - I think this made the dinner since it has great flavor with the olives and capers)

1 package refrigerated ravioli (I used Buttoni cheese ravioli in the smaller shape, but used a large package)

Mozzarella cheese grated

Parmesan cheese grated

frozen spinach, thawed and all the water squeezed out

 

Now to assemble.  Put a little bit of the pasta sauce in the bottom of  a 9 X 13 pan.  (You could probably use a 9 X 9 pan and make more layers.)  make one layer of the ravioli - do not overlap.  Pour a little of the sauce over the top and cover with half the spinach and mozzarella cheese, do another layer of the ravioli, sauce, spinach and cheese.  End with a layer of the ravioli and sauce. Be sure you have enough sauce to do this top layer because it's important to cover all the ravioli so it will cook and soften in the oven.  Cover the entire dish with the Parmesan cheese and cover with foil. 
Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.  Uncover and bake about 10 more minutes or until golden brown and bubbly.  Let set for a few minutes on the counter before serving. 

 

I hope you enjoy this as much as I have enjoyed eating on it.  I have put some in the freezer to see how it likes to freeze.  I figure it will be okay since all the ingredients can be frozen.  You could change it up just by changing your sauces and your ravioli.  I think the next time I make it I will use a vodka sauce and a meat filled ravioli in the large squares.  Enjoy!



Okay, new day and I am up and raring to go!! (6:20 a.m. - dogs wouldn't sleep any longer) Now, to start in on those recipes that I had planned for yesterday. First off the Butter Brickle Bread. A recipe I got from my sister via my mother. Apparently somebody served this bread at a party my sister went to and she begged for the recipe. Then my mother sent it on to me to try. It is an interesting recipe that is made using a cake mix, a pudding mix, hot water and 4 eggs. You mix it with a mixer and it incorporates a lot of air into the batter. I cooked it in my Pampered Chef mini loaf stone that makes 4 medium/small loaves of bread. they turned out pretty good. I think I need to shorten the cooking time, but other than that it looks good. Oh, yes, the recipe called for poppy seeds and I didn't want to use them so I put in pecans instead. Next time I will triple the amount of pecans. Here is a picture of one loaf.



and all 4 of them:



Next up was a recipe from the Tasty Kitchen, the Pioneer Woman's blog. Since peaches are so abundant right now, I copied off two recipes using peaches. The first was peach cups. It uses crescent rolls, marscapone cheese and peaches. Okay, if you read the previous blog you will know that I am subbing whipped cream cheese instead. The recipe says you can do this. I melted my butter and got my cinnamon and sugar ready and started dipping my dough and making cups out of them in my muffin pan. (yes, another Pampered Chef stoneware item. Love them)



Then I mixed my cheese with some sugar and mounded it into the cups. I slice up a large peach and decided that I may not be able to get those slices in the cup so I diced up that peach and put a bunch over the cheese mix. Sprinkle a little sugar on top of that and into the oven it goes.



After about 11 minutes (according to the recipe) I take them out and . . . and . . . the dough is not cooked much at all. I stick them back in for another 5 minutes and . . and. . . nope. I don't like this at all. Wait, I have another can of crescent rolls in my refrigerator. Let's try this one more time. I scoop out the filling and put it in a bowl. Peaches, cinnamon and all. Well, not all. I probably got some of the bottom of the peach cups into this mixture, but the rest of the dough went down the drain.



I cleaned the pan and started over. I decided that dipping the dough in butter was probably the problem. Also, getting the triangle shapes into a cup shape was a problem. So, this time, I spread out the dough from the can and pinched the perforated edges together to create one rectangle, cut that rectangle in half fat way and put that into the muffin cups. That works great. Then, I melted a little bit of butter and spread it into the cups with my fingers since I don't have or couldn't find a pastry brush. I sprinkled some Cinnamon and sugar mixture over the top of this and loaded them up with the new cheese and peach mixture. Put them in the oven, baked them the 11 minutes. Oops, needs some more time. 15 minutes total and voila



Peach Cups. They are pretty good. However, I will not be making this recipe anymore. They are just not worth it. However, I did scoop some of the cheesy mixture and put it on the brickle bread and that was very tasty. I might mix up some more of that and serve it with the bread. So this recipe wasn't a complete waste.