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jillbcooks 9/1/2010 5:33:00 PM
Have you ever cooked or baked something purely for the sense of nostalgia it would bring you?
I did just that last week, even though I knew could only approximate the taste I was hoping to recapture: Crystal Beach Sugar Waffles.
Crystal Beach was an amusement park in Fort Erie, Canada, probably less than thirty minutes from where my grandparents lived in Port Colborne, Ontario and just across Lake Erie, where we lived on the American side. It was a place we went just about every summer, maybe even a few times. My mom even worked there when she was a teenager. When I was a kid, Crystal Beach was a ...
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rosettes, sugar waffles, powdered sugar, childhood, iron, timbale
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jillbcooks 8/26/2010 8:04:00 AM
Today is my mom’s birthday: Happy Birthday, Mom!
Mom is having a milestone birthday this year. Last month all the girls in our family got together to celebrate with my mom on a cruise. We had a terrific time, and even though I do appreciate my family, it made me feel even more grateful for my mom. She lives quite a distance away, and while we might not see each other as often as we’d like, I do think about her influence on me every day. I get my love of food and passion ...
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mushrooms, recipe box, share, birthday
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jillbcooks 8/22/2010 8:54:00 PM
As summer is winding down and kids are headed back to school, are you planning to do anything that you do “every year?” Maybe it is going to the state fair or spending the day school clothes shopping, or heading up to the cabin or out on the lake one last time? Creating rituals that you do every year can be a great way to develop memories and also times to look forward to.
I’ve been meaning to blog about what we do each July Fourth. Usually we entertain and grill, but we also play a game every year. The game is called Know your America, and I originally heard of it when I received it as a gift when I was probably ten years old. The ga...
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activities, cooking, July 4th, summer, dessert, Mr. Sun Cupcakes, games
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jillbcooks 8/19/2010 11:06:00 AM
In case you haven’t heard, bacon is the new black. For a while now, food magazines and blogs tout the presence of bacon in all things, even sweets like doughnuts and cookie bars.
I had been thinking about a salad I had at a white tablecloth steakhouse in March. It was simple enough—a classic wedge—with iceberg lettuce, tomato, blue cheese and Applewood Smoked Bacon. The bacon was so, so, so good—sort of chewy, sort of crispy, and definitely cooked with something sweet like brown sugar. I wanted to make some noteworthy bacon to add to a salad. After some research, I made this rec...
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bacon, wedge salad, praline bacon, baconisthenewblack
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jillbcooks 8/17/2010 11:56:00 AM
As I blogged about earlier in the spring, I was gangbusters about starting a vegetable garden in our backyard. I blogged about raising the plants from seeds, and we ended up with many, many happy little seedlings that we transplanted into raised beds we had prepared.
Flash forward several weeks: I had a veritable jungle of plants jumbled and twisted together, fighting bravely for sunlight in my tiny raised beds of good intention.
It was inevitable. I would have to wear long sleeves, pants and gloves and just hack away at what was there in an attempt to save some plants and sacrifice others. I learned the hard way that I should have taken thinning the seedl...
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gardening, Minnesota, tomatoes, mistake, fried green tomatoes, garden
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jillbcooks 8/13/2010 1:31:00 PM
Got plans for this evening? How about pizza and a movie?
We’ve been on a pizza kick recently and have invested in a pizza stone, pans from the restaurant supply store and a wooden peel (a birthday gift from my husband, which he realizes is a gift that will keep on giving). I wanted to give the new peel a whirl this week and prepared a couple pizzas using leftovers and refrigerator odds and ends, and flour, salt and yeast, which I always have on hand.
The first pizza used up the remnants of a taco dinner, with taco sauce topped with leftover seasoned ground beef. Shredded cheddar cheese, jalapeno slices, onions and tomatoes topped the pie before it wen...
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pizza, leftovers, dinner and a movie, taco pizza, cheeseburger pizza
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jillbcooks 8/11/2010 8:01:00 PM
The other day we had tacos for dinner, and I was in the mood for dessert, so I whipped up a batch of fruit empanadillas as a sweet ending to our meal. Empanadillas can have savory or sweet fillings. When they are small and fruit-filled, they are also called hand pies or pocket pies.
The only ingredients I used were: a Pillsbury refrigerator pie dough, a couple apples (they were in at the farmer’s market this weekend already!), and a touch of cinnamon sugar. Cut the pie dough into rounds (I used a small juice glass) and place them on a lightly greased baking sheet (or use Silpat or parchment paper). Toss the chopped apple with cinnamon sugar to your ta...
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apple, pie dough, empanadillas, dumpling press, Mexican
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jillbcooks 8/5/2010 10:01:00 PM
Today is my birthday, and that absolutely puts me in a cake kind of mood. We are actually celebrating my birthday on Saturday. I don’t know exactly what my dear husband has planned, but I was given the gentle directive “dress fancy” and was assured that there will be cake. I got lots of fun prezzies, including a subscription to a cooking magazine and a gift certificate to a cooking store. Does my family know me or what?
Enough digression! This post promised cake memories. When it comes to birthday cakes, my taste runs purist: white or yellow cake with stiff, sugary white buttercream. My first cake, and maybe my most favori...
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birthday cakes, birthdays, dinosaur cake, pink castle cake
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jillbcooks 8/2/2010 5:33:00 PM
Last week we had some guests over for dinner, and I helped their teenage son actually make the dinner himself. He had made a list of things to do this summer and the list included learning how to grill and how to make brownies from scratch. Hearing this, I offered to give him a cooking lesson and help him make dinner. As we set about making a menu, he informed me that he cooks all the time, that he makes ramen noodles almost every day. I told him that he would learn much more than how to microwave noodles!
We started out marinating chicken, which...
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brownies, summer, grill, chicken marinade, scratch baking, teenagers, bored, burger
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jillbcooks 7/29/2010 1:34:00 PM
A week ago we had some guests over for dinner. I was making Italian and was a bit stymied about what to make for dessert. I tend to like making themed menus and always get stuck on Italian desserts, my favorite of which is zeppolis, but I was not willing to do the chore of deep frying, plus I needed to make my dessert in advance.
Among the guests were two kids—a second and a sixth grader—so I tried to think about what would have been an exciting dessert for me back in the day. With a little bit of surfing, I came across this recipe for Frosted Chocolate Malt Cupcakes. ...
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Bisquick, buttercream, frosted chocolate malt cupcake, frosting, confectioner's sugar