Cranberry "Margarita"

I needed an excuse to use these cute sugar swizzle sticks from Trader Joe's.


They are perfect to sweeten up a tart drink!

Juice of half a lime
2/3 a glass 100% cranberry juice from Trader Joe's
Top with Pellegrino or other sparkling mineral water.


Stir!

The pure cranberry juice is very sour, so the swizzle stick adds just a bit of sweet!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Doughnuts for Lunch at the Rochester Cider Mill

A trip to the cider mill is an autumn tradition in Michigan.

Unfortunately, most of the apple blossoms in Michigan froze after an early warm spell last spring.

Cider is VERY expensive!

But who needs cider - we all know what we really want is the doughnuts!

A good chance to do some pumpkin peeping!

The doughnuts at the Rochester Cider Mill are only $3.50 for a half dozen.   Here's a peak inside my bag - cinnamon, maple, blueberry, and chocolate glazed. Sugary sweet with that slightly crunchy crust on the surface. MMMMMM!
(Photos edited with the Vintique  app)
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Fresh Berry Tiramisu from Maggianos

Ladyfingers, marscapone cream, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, a chocolate star lemon cookie, and $1 donated to Make-A-Wish. (It was yummy! I think doing a good deed cancels out calories!) Apologies for the dark picture.

A few years ago I made a similar recipe by Giada De Laurentis that was featured in Bon Appetit. Excellent recipe and pretty easy to make. Here is the link to the recipe: Strawberry Tiramisu

Hello, Cupcake!

My friend Gail recently has been taking cake decorating classes. Gail is more into baseball than baking, so her friends have been entertained by her new hobby! For my birthday, she gave me her "homework" from one of her classes, this gorgeous cake topped with sugar lilies.

So when I saw the book Hello, Cupcake!: Irresistibly Playful Creations Anyone Can Make! I knew it would be the perfect gift for her! It is filled with cute and clever ideas on ways to decorate cupcakes. Some of the unique ideas include these darling fishbowls:

Or how about spaghetti and meatballs?

And these Christmas ornaments are so pretty!

If you are looking for some fresh ideas for decorating your cupcakes, this book is a gem!

Treat Dreams

The warm Indian summer weather gave me an excuse to have some ice cream at my new discovery, Treat Dreams on Woodward in Ferndale. They make their own ice cream in lots of unique flavors.


They have lots of yummy looking baked goods as well.



For $3.50 I had this big cup of ice cream. This time I had "Trick-or-Treat Bag" with 4 kinds of candy bars mixed in. On the bottom something more adult - Cardamon Pear. I've also tried their Salted Caramel and Mounds of Pink - both amazing!



I heard they sometimes have German chocolate - I love that flavor and hope sometime I can try their version. It would be nice if you could check their updated daily flavors on their website.

-- Post From My iPhone

Mango Salsa Couscous

I love mango, and especially love it in salsa! Several years ago I was playing around with making mango salsa and I got the idea to combine it with couscous. This colorful dish has ended up being one of my top ten favorite recipes - one that I make over and over again. It is fresh and tropical and goes great with any kind of chicken, fish, or shrimp that has a citrus base. I will eat it even as my main dish, it is that good!

I make this dish with Israeli couscous (sometimes called maftoul in the Middle Eastern section on the market) which has a larger grain than regular couscous. This can be difficult to find, but recently I have found it at Trader Joes. If you live in the Detroit metro area, you can likely find it at one of our many Middle Eastern markets. I'm sure it would work with regular couscous, but I love the texture of the larger couscous.

Mango Salsa Couscous

To make the couscous:

1 1/2 cups Israeli couscous
2 cups chicken broth
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup water
1 Tablespoon olive oil


Combine the broth, juice, and water in a pan and heat until warm. Meanwhile, in another large shallow pan (I use a Dutch oven), heat the olive oil. Add the couscous and toast it, stirring it constantly, until golden brown (about 5 minutes). Add the warm broth and stir. Reduce to medium heat and boil until the liquid disappears. Set aside to cool.

To make the salsa:

2 0r 3 mangoes
1 red pepper
1/2 sweet onion
1 bunch of cilantro
juice of one lime
salt to taste


First cut the mango into pieces. I like to score the mango in 2 directions and turn it, so the mango pops up in cubes that you can easily cut off.

Cut the red pepper and onion into medium sized chunks. Cut the tops off the cilantro. Stick it all into a food processor. Use the pulse to chop it all together. Remove from the processor. (If you don't have a processor, you could chop it all by hand.)


Combine the salsa and the couscous together. Add salt and the juice of one lime and blend.

Serve chilled.

Roasted Garlic and Sun Dried Tomato Pasta

I've been enjoying making this easy pasta sauce. It's more like a pesto, without the basil. Roast 2 heads of garlic in the oven with some olive oil. When done, pop the cloves out of the skins into a food processor with about 1 1/2 cups sun dried tomatoes (without oil), 3/4 cups parmesan cheese, and 1/4 cup olive oil and blitz. (Note, I don't really measure this, I just dump.)

Cook your pasta. This time it was a whole wheat linguini. SAVE about a cup of the pasta water before draining. I always forget to do this, and I recently heard the suggestion to put your measuring cup in/near the strainer so you don't forget.


Toss the sauce with the warm pasta and add the pasta water as needed to get it the consistency that you desire. It will be more chunky than creamy smooth, but it coats the pasta into a nice orange with lovely flavorful bits. I add a few pine nuts and top with a bit more cheese before serving.

California Pizza Kitchen

Enjoying one of my favorites - Goat Cheese and Roasted Peppers Pizza on Honey Whole Wheat crust.



-- Post From My iPhone

Location:W Big Beaver Rd,Troy,United States

Olive Straws

Over the summer I saw these Olive Straws being made on Martha Stewart. I thought they were so unusual. And I love green olives! (I made the recipe pretty straight from Martha's website, so you can get it there if interested.)


Not that complicated to make, just fussy. Basically you encase the olives in purchased puff pastry and cut it into strips.


It was hard to roll the puff pastry thin and tricky to figure out how best to cut the squares and fussy to cut the strips. They looked messy before I baked them but they actually looked ok once baked and tasted pretty good!

Sweet Lorraine's - Berkley

A few weeks ago I met some friends at Sweet Lorraine's at lunch to celebrate a birthday. Sweet Lorraine's has been in Southfield (near Berkley) for years and has always been one of my favorite places to go to to go to for brunch on weekends. They also have a great lunch and dinner menu with fresh ingredients combined in interesting ways.


The decor is modern, a bit funky, with rich jewel tone colors. In all the years that I have eaten at Sweet Lorraines, this was the first time I have eaten in this side room.


Several of us ordered the flavored ice tea. Loved the curly straw! The tea was flavored with syrup, way too sweet for my taste.


Excuse this bad picture (still learning how to take pictures on my iPhone), but I had to include it because the bread is so amazing. I love the dipping sauce!


Someone ordered the chicken kebobs - what a spectacular presentation!


I had a fish special dish and I have totally forgotten what kind of fish it was - it might have been whitefish, but don't quote me on that! It had an excellent Asian sauce, rice, and snow peas. The snow peas were cooked just the way I liked them. The umbrella was a cute touch.


Our server, Jennifer, was one of the nicest waitresses (can you still use that word?) that I have had in a long time! We were a large group of very chatty ladies and she laughed with us, told us about all the good things on the menu, was patient as we figured out what to order. She had genuine enthusiasm for the dishes on the menu and really seemed to have fun as she served us! She deserves four stars!

Eve - Ann Arbor

I like to spend my last day of summer vacation doing some shopping and hitting a nice restaurant for lunch. So last week I headed out to Ikea (blogged here from my iPhone), and then decided to do a little exploring in Dexter and Ann Arbor. I ended up in the Kerrytown area in Ann Arbor and noticed the restaurant called "Eve." Just last week I had read that the owner of this restaurant was one of the contestants on the new season of Top Chef. I discovered that they had just started serving lunch about 2 weeks ago. The perfect place for the last lunch of the summer!


The restaurant is tucked behind the brick building that is next to the farmer's market. It is quite cozy inside - one main room and then a little room in the front by the bar. The decor is what I'd describe as an upscale lofty look. Even though the main room had a number of empty tables, I was put at a small table in the front which was about 12 inches away from the table next to me. A bit uncomfortable - I felt like I was eating with the strangers next to me.


I ordered the Aromatic Lamb pastry. When it arrived, I first thought they had forgotten the lamb and just given me the salad. But when I pushed the salad aside, I found the pastry hidden underneath. I'm not sure why it was served like that, I'd think you'd want the pretty pastry on top, but maybe discovering it hidden underneath is part of the experience. The salad was delicious - it had a lot of mint mixed in with the spinach and I was surprised how refreshing that combination was! (A great way for me to use up some of the mint from my garden!) And the flaky pastry with the lamb inside was wonderful. The ground lamb was sweet with golden raisins (and maybe cinnamon?), crunchy from pine nuts, and it also had some heat. Very unusual and creative!


I needed to have some dessert to end off the last lunch of the summer. They only had one dessert - triple chocolate pots de creme. I guess you only need one dessert when that one dessert is amazing! It is served in two pots - one chocolate and one with brown sugar whipped cream. When I saw that, I thought, certainly I won't eat all that whipped cream! Wrong! A little dip of chocolate and then a little dip of cream - what a heavenly bite! The chocolate was perfect - I think it was a blend of dark and milk chocolate ( which I loved, because I'm not a huge fan of pure dark chocolate). The chocolate was thick and rich, almost like a ganache.


And you can see by my empty cup that I scraped out every last bit!


That night I watched the first episode of Top Chef to cheer for Eve. (I think she came into the restaurant when I was finishing my meal. I had pulled up the Top Chef website on my iPhone to look at her picture.) She ended up in the bottom two, but was not eliminated. Hopefully she will do better next week!

Coconut Pound Cake

This dense moist pound cake is not something you should make if you are counting calories (re: sugar, butter, coconut). But sometimes you just need to ignore the calories and go for it! This coconut pound cake works great served with strawberries or grilled pineapple. Actually, it is delicious all on it's own! Last time I made it, I wanted to add a little lime flavor, so I added some lime zest and a glaze of fresh lime juice and sugar. It didn't quite have enough lime flavor for my taste, so I think I need to experiment a little more to get that right! The basic recipe come from Epicurious.

Coconut Pound Cake

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon coconut extract
1 1/2 cups sweetened flaked coconut


1. Preheat oven to 325°F.

2. Butter and flour a 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan.

3. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.

4. Beat together the butter and sugar in a large bowl with an mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add the eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and coconut extracts. Reduce speed to low, then mix in flour mixture until just combined. Gently fold in the coconut with a rubber spatula.

5. Spoon batter into the loaf pan and smooth the top. Bake for 1 to 1 1/4 hours, until golden and when a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.

6. Cool in the pan on a rack 15 minutes. Run a knife around edge of cake, then invert the pound cake onto the rack and cool completely. Wrap in plastic wrap - it will keep for 3 days at room temperature. It also freezes well - put some in the freezer to serve with fruit for a quick and yummy dessert!

Lime Glaze (note: I'm not sure I have this mastered yet! If you try it, let me know if it works or any suggestions!)

Substitute the zest of 2 limes for the vanilla when making the batter.

Combine the juice of the two limes with 2 or 3 Tablespoons of sugar, to make a slightly thick glaze. Let the pound cake cool slightly. Set it on a plate and spoon the glaze over it. Let the glaze absorb into the bottom for a few minutes. Then transfer the pound cake back to the rack to completely cool.

Salmon Spiedini Kabobs

I spend WAY too much time during the summer watching the Food Network. This is a twist on a recipe that I saw Giadi De Laurentis make. She used swordfish, but I used up some salmon that I had in the freezer and it tasted wonderful! The pancetta adds a salty flavor and a crispy crunch to the salmon - yummy and easy.

You may wonder how I got my salmon into such perfect cubes??? Well, here is the secret - I used my George Forman grill! Actually (confession) there was no propane left in my gas grill and with my wonky elbow I hadn't been able to get it filled. :-) The Foreman grill worked like a charm and gave me picture perfect kabobs to photograph.


Salmon Spiedini Kabobs

1/4 cup olive oil
2 Tablespoons herbes de Provence
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
salmon, cut in 2 inch cubes - I used about a pound and a half
thinly sliced pancetta
wooden skewers, soaked in water for about 30 minutes.

1. Combine the olive oil, herbes de Provence, salt and pepper in a bowl. Add the salmon and toss to coat. Wrap the salmon in a strip of pancetta and thread onto the skewers. Set the skewers in an oblong pan and cover with any remaining oil. Cover and refrigerate for 1 to 2 hours, turning the skewers in the oil every so often.
2. Grill for about 10 minutes, turning often, until the pancetta is crisp.