I decided to tweak my banana bread recipe and create the best banana bread recipe ever! This is an exaggeration of course, but it is great. I added extra spices to give it a more comfy feel and the taste of Fall.

The Ingredients for Banana Bread:

• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 stick of softened butter
• 2 large eggs
• 4 ripe bananas
• 1 Tbl. milk
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. ginger
• 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 325 degrees and grease a loaf pan.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Crack the eggs and add to the batter one at a time,

beating in between additions until incorporated.

There goes the second one!

Peel and mash the bananas with a fork. You can

leave a little texture in the bananas if you want.

Add the mashed bananas to the batter and incorporate.

Then, in a separate bowl mix the flour, cinnamon, nutmeg,

ginger, baking powder, salt and baking powder. Add that to

the batter and mix until incorporated.

Spoon the batter into greased loaf pan and sprinkle

with a Tbl. of sugar. This will give it a sweet and

crunchy top. Bake for 1 hr. and 10 min.

Let cool for about 30 min., if you can wait.

Enjoy the best banana bread ever!

Julia took the fear and mystique out of the French cuisine and cooking in general. She made mistakes, left things out, dropped food and in general showed that human beings are flawed, but they can still have fun in the kitchen. She showed us how to be fearless as we navigated live lobsters, the perfect poached egg and her famous beef Bourguignon. For me, Julia Child was not only a teacher and a mentor, she was a friend. She helped to forge a bond between me, my kitchen and my mom. Our cooking successes were always in some small way also her successes. I read her cookbooks to this day, use her techniques daily, and hold her memories close to my heart.

So, on this day that would have been your 100th birthday, Happy Birthday Julia!

I have been working on the menu and the recipes and I thought I would give you a little teaser. Here are three I have been working on this weekend.

This is Catalan Guacamole. It is lighter than its

Mexican counterpart. The addition of sherry vinegar

and lemon gives it both a freshness and a  tangy flavor.

These are grilled potatoes with a Romesco Sauce

that is a perfect accompaniment of the potatoes.

By grilling the potatoes they take on a charred taste

that will stand up to the roasted red pepper in the sauce.

This is a White Bean Spread with sun dried tomatoes and

served on grilled bread. It is a perfect snack for a warm

summer afternoon.

I hope this gives you the inspiration to sign up for the cooking class on Tuesday, August 21. I will have the recipes available in the upcoming weeks. Stay tuned!

Now, I always thought of my food and my cooking as an expression of love, but I never thought of it as a form of art. Until now. Joel, the speaker today, went on to say that the creative process has everything to do with an intuitive, emotional, feelings approach. I think this applies to so much more than photography, it can just as well apply to scrap booking or cooking.

In photography, as well as cooking, people always ask me, “what kind of camera do you use?” or “do you have a top of the line mixer or the newest gadget?”.  The technical instrument can never create anything, that is reserved for the human mind. Sometimes we need the technical to enhance our creation, but the buck stops there. The beauty of the mind is that it knows no bounds. Your heart and mind take over and that is when art is created. Your pallet may be canvas, a plot of earth, a photograph, or a dinner plate.

This brings me to my question, are you an artist? Think before you answer. I think that we all have a bit of artist in us. We may create in our daily lives, or it may just come out during the holidays. I think we would all be a little happier if we approached cooking, writing, painting, gardening, or whatever creative thing you dabble in as art. Let your self expression explode in a medium you love. And don’t forget to share it with others.

Polenta transports me back to Italy in a nano second. It is a staple of Northern Italy and if you ever find yourself there, you must order polenta. Trust me. As I thought about polenta, and which recipe I would post as an introduction, I found myself drawn to my polenta with goat cheese. The recipe is below, but in a nutshell I cook the polenta, add tons of goat cheese and refrigerate over night. Then I cut it into rounds and sauteed it, only then to drizzle it with a balsamic glaze. Can you say YUMMMM? If you aren’t a goat cheese fan, though I can’t imagine why, substitute any cheese you like. Please jump onto the polenta train and try it out. You won’t be sorry.

The Ingredients:

• 3 cups chicken stock or water
• 1 1/2 cups quick cooking polenta
• 8 oz. goat cheese
• 1/2 tsp. salt and pepper
• 1 cup Balsamic Vinegar
• 1/2 cup sugar

Bring chicken stock or water to a boil. Add polenta

slowly, stirring constantly for 3-4 minutes. Add salt

and pepper and crumbled goat cheese. Stir and taste

for seasoning.

Pour polenta onto a jelly roll pan or 9×19 pan and

cool in the refrigerator for 2 hours or overnight.

Cut into small rounds or squares.

Heat a frying pan over medium high heat and add

enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan.

Fry the polenta cakes for 2-3 minutes per side.

Place on a cookie rack and keep warm in an oven

on very low heat.

Heat Balsamic Vinegar over medium high heat and bring

to a boil. Add 1/2 cup of sugar and reduce by half. You really

need to watch the balsamic syrup because it can quickly

reduce to a syrup in an instance. You want the consistency

to be thicker than water, but not quite a syrup.

Drizzle balsamic reduction over the polenta cakes.

Enjoy!

Download printer friendly recipe

You need to know one thing before you serve it at an event or to your family, they will ask for it again and again. Wendy made it for her work potluck for 20 years and I think they would have hung her out to dry if she had missed. It is a favorite when I bring breakfast to church to feed the pastors, band and sound guys. There is something so homey and scrumptious about it. There is one other thing I should mention. Don’t be scared off by the amounts, it is not a healthy dish. Once again, this dish is not for the faint of heart, but at the same time, I only make it once in a while.

The keys to this dish is that it has to sit over night and then it is cooked in a bain-marie or water bath. A water bath is simply taking a pan larger that the one you are baking in and putting about an inch of water in it and then setting the actual uncooked dish of cheese fondue in it right when you put it in the oven. This process will help keep it from overcooking on the bottom and it will be very tender and fluffy.

So on that note, here is my recipe for cheese fondue.

The Ingredients:

• 6 eggs
• 6 slices white bread cut or torn into 1″ size pieces
• 2 cups milk
• 8 oz. grated cheese
• 1/2 stick melted butter
• 1/4 tsp. each salt and pepper
• 16 oz. cooked, crumbled sausage

Beat eggs, add butter, milk, salt and pepper

Layer 1/2 of the bread on the bottom of a 9×13 pan.

Layer 1/2 of the cheese and all the sausage.

Layer the rest of the bread and the rest of the cheese.

Then pour the entire egg mixture onto the layers.

Cover and refrigerate over night.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees and place cheese fondue

into a water bath. Bake for 1-1 1/2 hours. The center

should come out clean if checked with a toothpick.

Let the cheese fondue rest for 20 minutes before cutting.

Enjoy!

This is a recipe for muffins. It is very simple and straight up. It was actually the first thing I ever cooked completely on my own as a youngster. I used to make these muffins for my dad on Sunday mornings when my repertoire was limited. My mom was not a morning person, so we were left to our own devices during the week, but on Sunday mornings she would make us a breakfast fit for kings. (Which my dad was, at least in our household) As soon as I was old enough, my mother passed the breakfast tradition onto me. I loved cooking breakfast for my dad. My mom wasn’t much of a breakfast eater, but she always sampled my dish. These muffins are made with Bisquick, because although my mother went shopping each day for that evening’s meal, she did not do a lot of totally scratch baking. She loved Bisquick, and so do I.

My mother passed away a couple of years ago, but holding this recipe made me feel like it was Sunday morning again. So, I did what came so natural, I baked muffins, but I amped them up a bit. I added fresh blueberries and topped them with the homemade blackberry butter I had made. I call them very berry muffins. I had forgotten how simply lucious these muffins could be, and with the addition of some berries, they were elevated to scrumptious! I hope you try making these simple, yet yummy, very berry muffins.

The Ingredients:

• 3 cups Bisquick
• 2 eggs- whipped until frothy
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup fresh blueberries

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and coat muffin tin with non stick spray.

Makes 12 muffins

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Then add wet

ingredients and mix until just incorporated. There

will probably still be lumps, but its okay. Fold in

the blueberries gently with a spatula. If you are

rough with the berries, they will break and you will

have purple batter!

Spoon into the muffin tins until 1/2 full. You should

be able to get 12 muffins out of the recipe.

Place in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes,

rotating the pan after 10 minutes so they bake evenly.

Here they are fresh out of the oven. Let them cool

in the pan for about 3-5 minutes before taking them

out. They should lift out of the pan easily.

Here is my very berry muffin topped with blackberry

butter. Yummmm!!! I hope you enjoy!

Enjoy!

The Ingredients:

• 2 Sticks of Butter
• 1 cup of blackberries

Soften butter until it is at room temperature and soft.

Do not try to soften it in the microwave. It will melt

instead of soften. Add berries to the bowl with the butter.

Mash blackberries into the butter. The best results

are if you mix by hand with a fork.

Wrap the blackberry butter in saran and mold

into a log. Twist the ends and refrigerate or freeze.

Enjoy!

I had some leftover chicken, which many of you probably do too, some leftover peas and onions and sauteed polenta. I grabbed some chicken stock from the pantry, made a quick roux and found some frozen puff pastry in the freezer. I always have frozen pie crust, frozen puff pastry, and Bisquick on hand. They all give me freedom to create something on the fly.

I decided to make a puff pastry cup filled with a twist on chicken pot pie. I cubed the leftover chicken and polenta and added the peas and onions. I made a quick chicken gravy and mixed the leftovers into the gravy and served it in the puff pastry cups. I topped it with a little Parmesan cheese and served it with a salad. Voila!

Although living in the city means that there are 20 grocery stores in a five mile radius, it also can make a cook lazy. I, myself, have gotten in the habit of dropping by the store on my way home and just picking up whatever I am in the mood for. Now, although this can be fun, it gets expensive. I am now doing major shopping once a month with a mid-month dairy and produce pickup. This has really helped me to budget better. I have become a little more creative. I am also really trying to create something out of leftovers instead of just reheating them as a repeat dish. Although there is nothing better than leftover pasta, most foods need to be spiced up become a whole new dish.

This dish with leftover chicken will now become a regular dish in my repertoire. Who would’ve ever thought!

The Ingredients:

• Leftover chicken
• Leftover peas and onions
• Leftover polenta
• Puff Pastry
• Parmesan
• Salt and Pepper
• 2 Tbl. flour
• 2 Tbl. Butter

Take one sheet of Puff Pastry out of the package and

defrost by setting out on the counter for about 20 minutes.

Do not try to defrost it in the microwave.

Cut the puff pastry into four quarters. roll out slightly

larger with a rolling pin. (a couple of rolls in each

direction should suffice.)

Spray a muffin tin with nonstick spray and put 1

quarter of puff pastry into each cup, letting the sides

hang over. Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Check

every five minutes or so. You may need to take a fork to

the bottom of the cups while they are cooking and poke

holes into the dough. You want the bottom on the cup to

be flatter and the rest to puff up.

This how the cups look when they are cooked. Let

them cool in the pas for about 5 minutes before serving.

Meanwhile, make the roux. A roux is equal parts of

flour and butter cooked for several minutes over

medium heat and used as a thickener.

Heat about 12-14 ounces of chicken stock to a light boil

and add the roux. Whisk until smooth and thickening.

When thickened, add the diced leftovers and season

with salt and pepper. Heat through, about 10 minutes.

Spoon the chicken mixture into the puff pastry cups.

Top the cups with a teaspoon of Parmesan cheese and serve with a salad.

Enjoy!