All about my adventures with cooking, crafts, and travel
Guinness Ice Cream Floats are fun way to enjoy a great refreshing beer this St. Patrick’s Day. You won’t be able to resist this adult ice cream float.
Kids don’t have to have all the fun! Make an adult float with beer instead of root beer. It’s a creative way to enjoy a beer as dessert.
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Well, we have made it through Race Week and the Daytona 500. While the Daytona 500 was exciting the previous day’s Nationwide Race had a very scary ending with one of the cars becoming airborne and slamming into catch fence. Driver Michael Annett is out indefinitely because of a fractured and dislocated sternum and 28 fans were injured when debris went into the stands. I can only hope that people recover quickly and that this provides valuable information to help NASCAR continue to work on driver and fan safety.
This upcoming weekend’s Sprint Cup race is at Phoenix International Raceway. Since the race is in Arizona I felt that something with a Mexican influence would be fun for this week’s edition of Sprint Cup Snacks. I decided on some Steak Quesadillas because I love how they are perfect for snacking but filling for a meal. Plus when you walk by some fantastic looking beef at your grocery store you can’t resist.
I swear I could eat quesadillas every day. They are just so amazing! It’s a twist on a sandwich that I can enjoy. Typically my least favorite part of a sandwich is the bread, either because it is too soft and plain or too hearty and heavy. If I were goldylocks the tortilla would be just right. Plus how can you resist
Besides enjoying these Steak Quesadillas while you watch the race be sure to make them for a party as they make for a great dish to serve as you can prep them right before the party and you can keep warm in a oven at 200 degrees. Or just make and enjoy for dinner with some rice and beans. yum!
Be sure to check back every week to see what Sprint Cup Snacks recipe I have whipped up for the upcoming race. The next race is in Vegas… oh the possibilities. 🙂
Serves 4
Ingredients
ProcessÂ
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NASCAR races at the Phoenix International Raceway for the second and the second to last race of the year. There is a triv oval racing track as well as a 1.51 road course configuration.  The stands seat 67,000 fans… consider that is A LOT more fans than these new Baseball Stadiums- Marlins Park (36,742) and Yankee Stadium (50,287).
Track: 1 mile
Shape:Â “D”-shaped Tri-Oval
Banking:Â 10-12 degree banking in Turns 1 and 2; 8-9 degree banking in Turns 3-4; Â Â 10-12 banking in the Backstretch; 3 degree banking in the Frontstretch
Surface: Asphalt
Race:Â 312Â laps for 500 kilometers
2012 winners: Denny Hamlin, Kevin Harvick
This week Amanda and I are taking a break from our Thirsty Thursday’s posts so we each can bring you some different posts. Amanda has a giveaway on her blog and I have a post for the brand new Pass the Cook Book Club. Awesome right? But don’t you worry as we have some fantastic posts planned for March. 🙂
Kita of Pass The Sushi has organized this great group where she picks a few recipes from a cookbook for everyone to make. It’s a fantastic way of dusting off and cracking open all of those cookbooks we all own. I am so bad about buying new books to fill them up with post-it’s and then not doing anything with them. So I was really excited when I heard about the PTCBC because it would encourage us to cook from what we own. Anyway, the first book is The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier
 
From three options we had, I decided on making the Perfect Potatoes Au Gratin. I remember my parents making it when I was young so I wanted to try it myself. I’m glad I tried it myself since it was super easy and made a great side for our dinner. It is a great side dish and I like that it has the possibility to take on a lot of different flavors so I can make a lot of varieties.
 
When Ree says it will be garlickly she is not joking! 3 cloves of garlic!!! I love garlic so it was perfect for me and went really well with the pork cutlets I made with it. The potatoes are soft and flavorful from the creamy sauce and the cheese on top was so good. This is going to be making a regular appearance on our dinner table.
 
 
I only made a few changes to the dish’s ingredients and cooking process. First I didn’t serve the side with the green onions just because I forgot them in the store. duh! I swapped the black pepper for white pepper because I love white pepper with creamy sauces. I increased the amount of milk because when I put the sauce mixture in the dish it didn’t cover my potatoes. Also, since it is 8 servings I knew we would eat the leftovers over a few days so I didn’t want the dish to dry out either. Lastly, I popped it under the broiler for a minute so the cheese would get browned and crunchy- which I love, so if you don’t want it to browned then just bake it and don’t broil it.
Be sure to check out what everyone else made!
If you love cooking then you should join Pass the Cook Book Club for some monthly cooking inspiration.
Perfect Potatoes Au Gratin
Makes 8 servings
Ingredients
Process
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I love cheese steak sandwiches. I think it’s because they are loaded up with so many delicious things- meat, sautéed onions and peppers, and cheese. And I might buck tradition and piss some traditionalists off but I add a ton of steak sauce. I can’t pass steak sauce off since it packs to much flavor. I could put steak sauce on bread and be happy…
You know umami? Umami is one of the 5 basic tastes that we identify in foods. Basically, umani equates to savory flavors which is often related to foods that contain high levels of L-glutamate, IMP and GMP. Foods associated with umami are fish, shellfish, cured meats, vegetables, like mushrooms and ripe tomatoes, green tea, and fermented and aged products, such as cheeses, shrimp pastes, soy sauce, and – what for it – steak sauce.
To put a twist on the traditional steak sandwich I transformed a burger into a ‘Shroomy Philly Cheese Steak Burger by piling it high with sautéed onions and mushrooms and tons of melty cheese. And what about my favorite steak sauce? Well that is there too! As well, I seasoned the burger itself so it would be so juicy and flavorful.
This is a massive, juicy burger!! The steak sauce and Worcestershire sauce in the burger mixture makes the burger really flavorful and juicy. Of course if I am going to make a cheeseburger, I am going to cheesy!! The onions and mushrooms piled high make is a great Philly cheesesteak burger. It all comes together in a huge bite and then the theme song of The Fresh Prince pops into your head, right?
Enjoy your burger with some fries and a cold beer!
Makes 6 big burgers
Ingredients
Process
I am so ready for this weekend!!! Why?? Well, the Daytona 500 is this weekend!!! I’ve missed watching NASCAR Sprint Cup racing during the off season and this is the race that is kicking off the new season. So, like people who love to cheer on their favorite baseball, football, basketball, etc team I cheer on a driver in hopes that he drives furiously through the field of cars to win the race.
Since we love to watch each race we really like to make an afternoon, or occasional evening, out of it so we’ve decided to pair our snacks with each race. I was inspired by Pam of The Meltaways since she created a series of recipes called NASCAR Nibbles that paired a recipe with each track in the season. I decided to give this a try with our own spin on recipes for each race of the season based upon the regional favorites of each track. Please follow along every Friday for a new Sprint Cup Snacks recipe for the upcoming race that weekend.
To celebrate the start of the season with the Daytona 500, we decided to make a fun seafood dish called Bang Bang Shrimp. It would be a great way enjoy fresh seafood, which is a seaside and boardwalk favorite. Racing on Daytona Beach is what really kicked off racing that we know today since NASCAR formed at a hotel at Daytona Beach in 1948. I wanted to pay homage to the beach and fresh seafood with this Bonefish Grill restaurant favorite. If you go to Daytona you can even visit their Ormond Beach location and have some Bang Bang Shrimp there.
 
 
We’ve enjoyed Amanda’s Bang Bang Shrimp several times before. It does take some time to make as you have to coat the shrimp and then let is chill for 20 minutes and then it is best to fry in small batches so the oil does not cool too much with the edition of the chilled shrimp. It is worth it since these are just so fantastic.
 
 
The Bang Bang Shrimp has a spicy sauce is perfect with the crunchy fried shrimp. The original recipe calls for the sauce to coat the shrimp but I prefer it to just be drizzled over the shrimp or served beside it for dipping as I like to control the amount of sauce is on the shrimp. No matter how you like to dress the shrimp I think you will love Bang Bang Shrimp.
Ingredients
1 lb. medium shrimp*, peeled and deveined
For the egg mixture:
For the breading mixture:
For the sauce:
For frying:
Process
*For larger shrimp, reduce the oil heat just a bit more and cook longer. For example, when I used large shrimp (U-15 shrimp), as pictured, I reduced the temperature of the oil to 320 so that the shrimp could cook longer to thoroughly cook throughout in 3-4 minutes without burning the exterior breading.
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The Daytona 500 race is the race that really kicks off the new season of NASCAR Sprint Cup Racing.  This is the equivalency of the Super Bowl for racing. There is a week of duels prior to the race where drivers are getting back into the grove of things since the season ended in November. This year there is a new car called the Gen 6, which looks more like a stock car compared to the cars in the past recent years.
Racing at Daytona started on the beach back in the early 1900’s and was vital in the development NASCAR. Racers would come near and far to race the road coarse, but as years went on drivers were getting frustrated in the lack of organization in the racing, promotion, and securing sponsors. William France Sr, worked hard in creating and organizing the races in the 30’s and 40’s, which ultimately resulted in the development in NASCAR on February 21, 1948. Racing on the beach came to an end in 1958 because the new raceway was opening in 1959.
Track: 2.5 miles
Shape: tri oval
Banking:Â 32 degree banking in the oval turns;18 degree banking at the tri-oval
Surface:Â Asphalt
Race: 200 laps for 500 miles
2012 winner: Matt Kenseth
Driver with the most Daytona 500 Wins: Richard Petty won 7 times
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Samoa Cookie Cocktail – Now you can have your favorite Girl Scout Cookie in a fun adult drink! Enjoy!
Amanda picked the theme this week and it is the best yet!!!
I had just impulse bought a bottle of caramel vodka so when Amanda msg’d me that we should do a Girl Scout Cookie theme this week I immediently knew what cookie I would be recreating. A Samoa!
I needed to cover the chocolate, caramel, and coconut flavors in the cookies and I knew just how to do that with the bottles I have on hand (so proud of our random mix of boozes). Chocolate = chocolate liqueur. Caramel = caramel vodka. Coconut = Malibu rum. With those three you get a nice, sweet dessert cocktail that will packs a kick that no cookie can give you.
If you love Samoa cookies then you will love what we made this week! Be sure to check out Amanda’s Samoa Brownies… just try not to eat the whole batch yourself. I cracked this year and bought too many boxes of Girl Scout cookies, but once they are gone I’ll need to make these crazy, layered Samoa Brownies.
Makes 1 drink
Ingredients
Glass Garnishes
Drink
Process
When we first got Kemper I took most of the next week off so I could run outside with him every hour-ish so we could get him trained quickly. Well in hopes of that. Also in making wrong assumptiongs… I thought I would get so much blogging, scrapbooking, cleaning done while he sleep but that is a big fat no since I just ooed and awwed over him while he slept. Seriously. Hopeless.
 
 
 
At least I did manage to make some great meals for my lunches and for our dinners that week. I’ve been looking all around at the mass quantities of cookbooks I have and I’ve decided that I need to actually crack them open and make some recipes from them. The first one I grabbed was The Ultimate Casseroles Book: More than 400 Heartwarming Dishes from Dips to Desserts. This is such a fantastic Better Homes & Gardens cookbook.
 
I suggest that you try the Spanakopita Stuffed Chicken Breasts because they were just fantastic. I love spanakopita with it’s puff pastry pockets stuffed with spinach, salty feta, and fresh lemon. Stuffing the chicken breasts with that mixture was a great way to spice up some chicken for dinner. I love Greek inspired dishes and this is one that I will make again.
I made some changes along the way but it still worked out just a planned. Mainly, I used boneless skinless chicken breasts instead of bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts. My preparation of the chicken differed as I didn’t stuff the spinach mixture between the skin and breasts, but created a pocket myself. Also, the recipe called for 3 tablespoons snipped fresh dill added to the spinach mixture, but I didn’t have it around so I didn’t want to buy it just for this as I don’t really like dill anyway.
Serves 6
Ingredients
Process
When we’re home on the weekends we generally keep things low key, since the rest of the time we are running around traveling. On Saturdays we run over to Haymarket early in the morning so we can get all of our produce shopping done quickly and then the rest of the morning I try to lounge around watching Food Network Shows. For a long time the show Mexican Made Easy aired on Saturday mornings (now Friday afternoons) and I would glue myself to the sofa to watch Chef Marcela Valladolid for those 30 minutes whip up fantastic Mexican and Mexican inspired dishes. Plus I seriously want her wardrobe- so many tunics!
I’ve made several of her dishes but there was one that I saw and knew immediately I’d have to make. Plus I’ve made it repeatedly since then. And that would be her Chocolate Margaritas. I loved them the moment I made them. How could you not? Chocolate. Tequila. More chocolate. Since I love them so much I’ve made them quite often and overtime I’ve made some modifications. Mainly, instead of using heavy cream I used reduced fat milk. I mainly made this substitution just so I could drink more margaritas without feeling awful about the how rich they were. More margaritas for the win!
Today is Valentine’s Day so we decided on a theme that just screamed that to us so we each picked a chocolaty thing to share. And O.M.G. Amanda picked a kick ass Brownie Pudding. Seriously?? Seriously!!!
Makes 4
Ingredients
Garnish:
Process
To rim the glasses:
Put the syrup on a plate and roll the rim of the margarita or martini glasses with the chocolate syrup. Set aside.
To make the Margaritas:
Mix all of the ingredients, except ice, in a pitcher. Working in 2-4 batches, transfer the mixture to a shaker full of ice. Shake to completely combine and chill. Pour into the prepared glasses. Grate the Mexican chocolate on top of the drink.
Some something magical happened at Christmas…
My mom got me a 12-cup food processor. Oh, the joy! I have wanted a food processor for so long. I’ve managed to make pestos and sauces in our blender but it is just the same. So I knew having a food processor would making pesto, sauces, mayo, grated cheese, and ground meat so super easy. But best of all I was looking forward to making pie dough in it.
I’ve been pinning different pies like crazy on Pinterst. My “Sweets-Pie” board is filing up. I have some plans to start to tackle the pins this spring. So, well, you’ve been warned. The first thing that jumped out to me was a Dark Chocolate Pie from One Ordinary Day and I knew I had to make it asap. But guess what… no need to use the food processor as it has a graham cracker crust. Well, go figure! ha!
Making a graham cracker crust is so easy so I felt I should make my own instead of buying one. Plus this was when we were snowed in last week so going out for a pie crust was not an option. Just 3 ingredients and a bit of mixing and you’re already half way done to a homemade graham cracker pie crust. The one disadvantage of making the crust is that is thicker than a store-bought crust, which meant I could not get all of the pie filling in the pie. Oh the horror! A bowl of just chocolately pie goodness. noms!
The pie is basically a cooked pudding so it is quick and easy to make. You really need to keep stirring the mixture while it is heating up since you don’t want clumps or for it to burn  to the pan. My mixture didn’t come to a boil as I have the tendency to burn milk to pans (and then subsequently swear at them or throw them out) so I cooked the filling on a medium-low heat. This meant the overall process took 25 minutes. The most important thing is for it to cook and thicken so I don’t really think boiling is key.
Try this pie. You can whip it up easily. Perfect for Valentine’s day to show the person you love that they deserve something sweet (besides you). Or make these at any time to show yourself that you deserve the best chocolate pie.
Servings 12 slices
Ingredients
Graham Cracker Pie Crust
Chocolate Pie
Process
To create the pie crust:
To make the pie:
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Mardi Gras is next week so that is why Amanda and I picked a Mardi Gras inspired drink and treat to share this week. And of course I had to make a Hurricane!
Pricer was down in Biloxi in ’07 to work on designing and building houses destroyed from Hurricane Katrina. He left in August and came back in December, and the only time we saw each other was for his birthday in September when we met in New Orleans. It was such a great weekend since we got to see each other, celebrate his birthday and fall in love with New Orleans. We stayed at Le Pavillon Hotel and wandered around the French Quarter finding great bars, fun restaurants, and great shopping. All of it was fantastic from the beignets to the gem & lapidary shop but best was that we could walk around with a bevie in hand. Stark comparison from Boston where you’ll get carded in your 50’s. So we really enjoyed getting to wander around with a drink in hand, most often a Hurricane.
Once we decided to have a Mardi Gras theme I thought of making a Hurricane. It’s really a great drink to enjoy in the hot summer but I just had to make it now in February (on the eve of a massive blizzard) since it reminded me to much of my visit to The Big Easy.
I hope you enjoy a Hurricane and a King Cake Cupcake to celebrate Mardi Gras no matter where you are. I think Amanda should send me some King Cake Cupcakes, right? They look so cute!!
Makes 1 drink
Ingredients
Process
The Superbowl is just a few days away so Amanda and I decided to make it our theme this week. My office has set up a Squares Board so I’ll probably get a square for $5. At least there is no thought involved at all like picking a winner or the score since I don’t know anything about these teams. Well, the only thing I know about the 49’s is that my brother used to deliver newspapers to Steve Young’s parents. 20 years ago. See, totally relevant.
Once Amanda told me she was making some awesome loaded up Texas Cheese Fries (seriously. omg.) I knew that I light drink wouldn’t do. Besides it’s a day about football so a beer really does have the spotlight. So I decided to make some Michelada Marias.
I had seen Michelada Marias made before by Ingrid Hoffmann on Simply Delicioso and I had always wanted to try one. I love beer with a lot of lime so I figured this would be great with it’s extra kick of a salted rim and sauces added to the beer. And it really was great. Ingrid recommends Tabasco but I didn’t have that on hand do I used a cayenne pepper sauce and it was good as well. You might be able to take an extra dash or two of the hot sauce but go easy on the Worcestershire sauce as you are already salting the rim and you don’t want the beer to get to salty. weird.
Makes 4 drinks
Ingredients
Process
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Looking for more ideas for what to serve during the Superbowl? Then check out these perfect game day food and drinks!
It is Secret Recipe Club time!!!
 
This month I was giving the blog by fellow native New Englander Jess. She, and husband Nick, are living in Mississippi as Nick is in the air force. Jess has the blog called Flying on Jess Fuel where she documents what she makes for the 2 of them. They met through a friend at a Mexican restaurant, where she impressed him with her jalapeno eating skills. Ohh spice! I knew I would love this blog.
 
I browsed her recipes and had several in mind but I picked one that featured jalapenos! I decided to make the Jalapeno Cornbread Poppers because it would be fun to make for the upcoming Superbowl and I love them as much as Jess. They are definitely different than a typical jalapeno popper but the change up is so much fun. There are much lighter as they are not packed full of cream cheese and cheese but the cornbread gets nicely fluffy and the crunchy cheesy top is a nice finishing touch. I only made a few simple changes along the way by adding some paprika to the corn bread and then broiling at the end to get the cheese extra brown and crunchy.
I hope that you’ll add these to your Superbowl menu. We are relaxing at home this year and I can’t wait to kick back with chips and something spicy to enjoy with a cold beer!
Makes 24 poppers
Ingredients
Process
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Check out the rest of the reveal day posts!
Check out my previous Secret Recipe Club Posts.
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