Sunday, June 27, 2010

Daring Bakers' Challenge: Chocolate Pavolva


The June 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Dawn of Doable and Delicious.  Dawn challenged the Daring Bakers’ to make Chocolate Pavlovas and Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse.  The challenge recipe is based on a recipe from the book Chocolate Epiohany by Francois Payard. 
A Pavlova is a meringue based dessert named after the Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova.  The dessert was created by a New Zealand chef to honor Pavlova when she visited that country as part of her 1926 world tour.  It’s still a popular dessert today, and often served at holiday meals.  

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Cannellini Beans & Broccoli


This meal is a tasty mixture of cannellini beans, broccoli, onions, garlic, mushrooms and soy sausage in a white wine broth.  I love the smell of sauteed onions and garlic when you pour some white wine over them, so much so, that I created a dish around it.  It’s a delicious combination of flavors, that is so good, I had to make it twice in one week.

Friday, June 18, 2010

Lemon Risotto with Spring Peas


I get lots of different kinds of food to sample at work.  Everyone wants us to sell their products.  I try to taste almost everything, but some things you get more excited about than others.  Yesterday, an Italian Food broker gave me a number of different, super high quality, products to try.  A bag of superfino carnaroli rice was one of those products, so I knew I would be making risotto for dinner. 

A New Garden Visitor


Today, we had a surprise visit from a swallow tailed butterfly.  I haven’t seen one of these in my garden before, or for many years, so I considered it a great honor that it chose to visit us today.  It sat on one of our hydrangea bushes for a long time until we took a picture of it, and then it flew away.  It’s camera shy.
Swallow tailed butterflies are from the family Papilionidae.  There are 550 species, most of which are from tropical climates but can be found on all of the continents except Antarctica.  The family includes the largest butterflies in the world.  This one was about 4 inches across.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Grainless Tabouli Salad


I have to admit that before I started making this salad a few years ago, I’d never eaten parsnips.  My mother never cooked them, so as an adult, I really didn’t know how to eat them until I got involved with a raw food project at work.  I was working with raw a food chef, Roxanne Klein, who introduced me to parsnip tabouli.  I don’t have her original recipe but I do know that the bulgar was replaced with a combination of parsnips and pine nuts.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes


My nephew is graduating from middle school and his birthday is coming up at the end of the month.   This resulted in a little family get together, for which my sister asked me to make the dessert.  In accordance with family tradition, I asked my nephew what he wanted.  We settled on chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting.   

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

A Trip to the Coast for Garden Ornaments


We took a day trip to the coast last week-end to walk on the beach and collect some seashells for our garden.  Mr. RK built some new garden “gates” to keep the cats out of the vegetable garden and he wanted to decorate them with seashells.