sprinklefingers

speaking of summer tomatoes, how about summer green beans? yes please.

check out these get-to-the-market-now-and-make-these-tonight recipes. we’re having the feta-dill number tonight…and i can’t wait.

ps: as always, hugh fearnley-whittingstall, i love ya.

i spent about an hour yesterday looking for a recipe for blueberry pie filling that i had experimented with, baked into a pie, subsequently adored and wanted to bake again. i must have asked every one of my co-workers (twice) if they saw a “small, square piece of paper with BLUEBERRY scribbled across the top of it” lying anywhere around the bakery.

after an hour, i found it. clipped to the wall behind the mixer. right where i put it in the first place.

and while searching for a scrap of paper with a recipe on it was a big waste of time, i still can’t imagine working out recipes on an electronic device. i love paper. and my cooking notebooks. i love my recipe notes & scribbles because they’re like a map - showing me where a simple idea started and then where it ended up. i save all my scraps, all my notebooks - even the ones with chocolate spilled all over, ripped sticky edges and flour-caked covers.

i took great comfort in this piece from the wall street journal - i’m glad i’m not the only one attached to my notebooks…

LOOK!  a box of my notes. and notebooks!

love food hate waste

recipes. storage ideas. portion suggestions. freezer tips.
all of it in one place.

genius. 

look at this. i love this! the fine folks at fine cooking have built a choose your own (cooking) adventure into their website. although they don’t call it ‘choose your own adventure.’ [which is understandable seeing as how that line is very much taken.]
instead they call it create your own … ! you fill in the blank with one of their many choices. they have cooking adventures create your own recipes for everything from meatloaf to brownies to baked pasta.



many, many, many of my friends have recently told me that they like to cook but they simply can’t deal with constantly thinking of WHAT to cook. handy tools like this recipe creator can help with that - i’m already inspired to whip up half the create your own dishes listed here. you should be, too!



head on over to the website and start thinking about dinner. and if you make a potato gratin, i expect an invite. consider it a finders fee for introducing you to this amazing food tool. you’re welcome.

as a kid i was required to ‘give something up’ for lent. usually i tried to give up being mean to my sister, but my omniscient mother knew that’d never work so she normally demanded that i give up something else while attempting to be nice to my sister along the way…

…i’d always choose chocolate. and then, most likely, i’d attempt to punch my sister in the face. (just kidding. kind of. i blame the chocolate withdrawals.)

thank goodness i’m not a kid anymore, huh?

anyways, back to lent. tonight folks around the world will be tucking in to pancake dinners. it’s tradition! use up all the eggs and butter so that you won’t be tempted by their deliciousness all lent long.

these pancakes are totally shrove tuesday worthy:

buttermilk pancakes
makes about 30 pancakes

first of all, if you don’t have buttermilk, make your own:

to one cup of milk add one T white vinegar. let stand 20 minutes then proceed with recipe. if you need more than one cup of buttermilk for your recipe, just increase these measurements, making sure you have 1 T vinegar for every 1 C milk.

proceed with the pancake batter:

you need:

• 4 cups AP flour
• 1/2 cup vanilla sugar
• 1 tablespoon, plus 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 t cinnamon
• 4 cups buttermilk (or homemade buttermilk as directed above)
• 4 large eggs, room temperature
• 1 T best quality vanilla extract
• 3 oz butter, melted & cooled

to make the batter:

1. in a medium bowl, whisk flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.
2. in a separate bowl, mix buttermilk, eggs and vanilla.
3. pour the wet ingredients into the dry, mixing until barely combined. 
4. add butter. mix until you don’t see any dry bits, but make sure batter is still lumpy.
5. let batter rest 20 minutes. 
6. griddle the pancakes on a well-buttered cooking surface over medium heat until dry and bubbly on the first side - about 3 minutes. flip and cook the rest of the way through.

pancake day! enjoy!

i’ll see you back here tomorrow where i’ll certainly be working my way through a bag of cadbury mini-eggs!

ps: leftover pancakes should be frozen! wrap them well and label. when a pancake craving strikes either reheat in a 350 oven OR pop into the toaster. everyday can be pancake day!

oh oh oh! how is it already this late? i should have been in bed an hour ago!

i blame the bbc. their good food site sucked up 100% of my free time tonight.

there are many reasons to love good food. the first being that they call zucchini courgette. the second being their library of blackberry recipes. seriously, bbc? seriously?

and the third reason i love it? the search engine. seriously. i typed in ‘chutney’ and screamed out loud: EIGHTY results for chutney. EIGHTY!

sure all the recipes are written for folks across the pond - but after a few conversions it’ll be a piece of cake. i’ve already picked out what we’re having for dinner tomorrow night. and dessert, too.

thank you, good food.