Challah French Toast
My husband loves french toast. He’s been asking for it for a few weeks now. His idea of a proper french toast is regular sandwich bread, dipped in egg and fried in butter. I’m right along with him until we discuss bread. I much prefer challah, or some eggy, slightly sweet, buttery bread. And it’s difficult to find good challah in these part of the woods. So I decided to make my own. I may have overcooked the french toast a wee, but that’s the way Richard likes it, too. Some things are worth compromise. (more…)
A quick totally fabulous dinner, this baked chicken and orzo salad is a great weekday meal that can be put together in 30 minutes. Do yourself a favor, and get a rotisserie chicken from your favorite outlet. In Billings, I personally like the chickens from Costco. They’re perfectly seasoned, plump and juicy, and can serve a family of four for five bucks.
Yesterday, I made this absolutely phenomenal recipe for 
I don’t use fresh ginger that often, but it is very important to Asian cooking, especially marinades, stir fried dishes, and the like. When you buy fresh ginger, put it in a ziploc bag and pop it in the freezer. Preferable in the freezer door, so you don’t forget you have it, like I did. Anyway, this was a perfect solution for me. I hope it works for you, too.
Tomatoes, lovely tomatoes! My poor little garden pumped out some amazing tomatoes this summer. In fact, there are still some on the vine. It’s getting cooler here in Billings, but I’m hoping the lovely red fruits will survive another few weeks.
There weren’t enough of the tomatoes I picked to can large batches of sauce, which is the way I planned it. I didn’t want the job to be so overwhelming that I wouldn’t look forward to the same thing next year. Also, I didn’t blanch the tomatoes to peel off the tomato skins. I just used a paring knife and skinned them that way. Wouldn’t recommend this method for a large canning batch, but it was easier than waiting for a large pot of water to boil, finding a large bowl for ice water, and all of that. For the amount of tomatoes I used, probably took me as long as blanching.
I’m in love with Italian food. Isn’t everyone? So many dishes are creamy, rich and very satisfying. They’re easy to prepare and fun to make, unpretentious – something to please everyone. And Italian food is inexpensive and serves plenty. Besides, I have two tomato plants in my garden with lots of ripening fruit. So, I made a couple of batches of marinara sauce Saturday. And I made the sauce expressly with this recipe in mind.
This is the thing I really love about the Internet. As I sit through reading about more of the same, every once in a while a recipe makes my eyes go wide, my jaw drop, and I have to make it – RIGHT NOW! 
I was searching for inspiration and there it was staring me in the face. Tomato Cobbler with Biscuits looked too good to be true. Why had I never thought of doing something like this before? And, it just so happened that I collected a very large bowl filled with tomatoes from our garden that morning. Tomatoes are a fruit, right? They’re juicy and slightly sweet, and with a savory, crunchy topping? Oh my – sheer genius. It must have been fate. The other reason this is a perfect recipe is that you don’t have to use your prettiest tomatoes for the cobbler. A few blemishes here and there – just cut them out. 
Many of the recipes I found for this dish called for cherry tomatoes. Those looked pretty. Others had a variety of different colored cherry tomatoes, yellow, red, purple – very pretty. And if you don’t have a bounty of fresh tomatoes, you can make the casserole using canned tomatoes. How versatile is that? While this scrumptious cobbler takes an hour to bake, putting all the ingredients together is a cinch. I started at 4:30 and we were ready to eat by 6:30 – the cobbler needs to rest for 20 minutes before serving. The majority of prep time is baking and resting. Many of the recipes I found online called for thyme. I’m not a huge thyme fan, so I added basil and a little pinch of thyme. And the biscuits called for grated Gruyere cheese – I substituted sharp cheddar, because that’s what I had. Another interesting cheese substitution is blue cheese or gouda. I bet that would be delicious, too. Are you ready?
I found this substitute when I couldn’t find mascarpone cheese in my neighborhood. It worked very well in a frosting I made for an orange cake. What a lifesaver!
I bet everyone has a favorite recipe for Sloppy Joes. This all-American sandwich is a standard I bet eaten in most households in one form or another. I bet, too, that most of us make the sauce using a powdered pre-packaged mix or sauce from a can. I get it – it’s easy and quick. Great in a pinch when you have to get a meal on the table in a hurry, and one that the family will enjoy.
