Author: evelyngraham0046

Week 9 – Street Tacos

evelyngraham0046

Hello friends and family!

I’m back!! I’d like to apologize to those of you who have been asking me where I am and how I’ve been doing with this project. Honestly, I’ve been a little lazy with the website aspect of it – which I knew would be one of my bigger hurdles. I’ve still been trying several recipes, but now I’m pretty behind on posting. I’m working on catching the website up to where I am in the book. As a treat for your patience, here is one of the many things distracting me from posting:

Working in Downtown San Antonio has given me an appreciation for “Mexican Street Food” that I definitely did not have before. So I’ve been branching out slightly more lately on what I’m willing to try.

I was excited to try a couple of different taco fillings cause they both looked really good.

I did not know what to expect with these. I was worried I was going to have to find something called Oaxacan Beef which I had never heard of. Luckily Martin had heard of Oaxaca cheese. I am pretty sure that I mispronounce this cheese every time I try to say it. As the package implies, it’s pretty similar to mozzarella in consistency and taste.

I started the beef ones first because the meat mixture had to cook for so long.

I got to use my large cast iron skillet for this which I think worked really nicely.

This is after I took the meat out. I think I should have boiled it down or something more because when I tried to blend it, it still seemed pretty watery.

I used 2 forks to break up the meat. It seemed to work well. The meat was nice and tender and the taste was great!

I have never liked fish tacos before. I wasn’t really excited about this recipe which is why I combined it with the beef tacos.

I missed taking pictures of me dredging the fish, but I liked doing that part. I don’t fry a lot of things even though I like to so I get a little bit excited when I get to. I’m partial to battered fried things over breaded fried things. I thought this recipe had a nice flavor and crisp without being too much.

Here’s our taco spread! I was pretty proud of it. for toppings we had cole slaw mix, avocado, lime, pico de gallo with mango, parsley, salsa, and a couple of mexican cheeses in addition to the sauce that was in the recipe. A word of warning about that sauce: it was pretty spicy! If you’re sensitive about to heat, you may want to go easy on the peppers or make sure you really get all of the seeds and stuff out. The taste of it was really nice though.

We had black beans and Mexican street corn with our tacos. If you’re interested, Mexican street corn is usually corn off the cob, mayo, lime juice, Parmesan cheese, butter, and chili salt. Obviously, feel free to customize it to preference.

  • Martin’s
  • Evelyn’s

Martin’s plating was much prettier than mine. I think this has been one of my favorite dinners from the book so far! The whole meal was so colorful and delicious and I couldn’t stop raving about it.

Next week is Meat Loaf and Pasta Salad!

Week 8 – Breakfast

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I love breakfast foods! The first things I remember being allowed to make on my own for my family was the biscuits and pancakes. It was a safe task for me because we always used a local mix I just had to add milk to. But it helped encourage my love of baking and gave me a good base to build off of.

Every so often I start really craving breakfast foods. This weekend was one of those times.

017. Buttermilk Pancakes:

I made pancakes on Saturday. I grew up using Pioneer Baking Mix which started here in San Antonio, and I have always liked it. The mix pretty consistently tastes good and creates nice fluffy pancakes. Because of this, I haven’t really branched out into trying my own stuff from scratch.

Luckily, this was a very easy recipe.

With pancake batter, it’s better to leave it a little lumpy. If you beat all of the clumps out, they won’t rise as well.

The pancakes will be ready to flip when the edges look dry and any bubbles that pop don’t immediately close up. My other tip is to cover the pancakes
with a towel and put them in the microwave/oven to keep them warm while you make the rest.

We didn’t try anything fancy on the pancakes, just butter and syrup.

020. Flaky Biscuits:

On Sunday, we tried the biscuits. They were also very easy and a big hit. My family used to use the same mix for the biscuits that we used for pancakes, so I was comparing both recipes to how the Pioneer one tastes. I thought these held up nicely! I used a pastry blender to blend in the butter.

Similarly to the pancakes, it’s okay to have little clumps in your dough. If you work the dough too much you’ll cause the the dough to get tough, or you’ll melt the butter before it goes in the oven so you won’t get the flaky-ness you want.

I don’t use a rolling pin to roll out the dough; patting it flat with my hands works just as well. When cutting biscuits out: dip the cutter in some flour to prevent sticking, press firmly down, then pull up. Don’t twist the cutter or you’ll seal in the sides which will prevent them from rising as well in the oven. After you’ve cut as many as you can in one roll out, mush the dough back together and pat it down. As with all pastries like this, try to mess with the dough as little as possible. The more you play with it, the more likely you are to get flat, tough biscuits.

I hadn’t ever heard of brushing the tops with milk before, so I tried both ways to see what sort of difference it made. I couldn’t see or taste a difference between the 2 ways. So I guess you could brush them if you’ve got some more milk and you feel like it?

Lastly, I made an Italian Sausage gravy to go on top. It wasn’t until after I was finished that I remembered the book has a recipe for country gravy, so I will just have to make this breakfast again to check that recipe off.

Next Week: April 6, 2019

This week, we’re making Mexican Street Food! We’re going to try 030. Oaxacan Beef Tacos & 031. Baja-Style Fish Tacos.

Week 7 – Cheesecake

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I made cheesecake because my best friend loves cheesecake and I got to go see her this weekend!! Our other friend and I had to drive 5ish hours up to Dallas to get to her, so I was worried that it wouldn’t travel very well. It turned out great!

094. Classic New York-Style Cheesecake:

I really liked this recipe. It was very similar to the recipe my mom has, so there weren’t as many surprises for me.

One of the main differences was how much butter was in the crust. They asked for 2/3 cup melted butter. That’s 11 tablespoons! We did the math 3x because it seemed like way too much.

I started with putting the cake in for 40 minutes as requested in the recipe, but it was still fairly jiggly so I added another 5 minutes before pulling it out.

We were correct in thinking it was too much because a lot of the butter melted out of the bottom during the first bake. I ended up wiping away the excess butter off the tray before putting on the sour cream topping and putting it back in the oven.

To transport it to Dallas, I wrapped the entire spring-form pan in foil and put it in a cooler full of ice. I think it got there with minimal damage.

When we cut into it and were eating it, it seemed to be slightly under-baked still. It wasn’t bad enough that it was inedible, but it was a little bit too sticky in the middle.

I think that’s been a common trend for the recipes I’ve tried so far; all of them have needed at least an extra 5-10 minutes to the recommended cooking time. I’m not sure if this is because of different ovens or altitude or some other reason. Maybe they just like all of their food slightly under-cooked.

Toppings!

Right before we dug in I made the raspberry compote and chocolate ganache. As I told my friends, these are just fancy words for raspberry jam and chocolate sauce.

For the compote I put about 2 cups of fresh washed raspberries in a saucepan over med-high heat with 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water. Let all of this boil while stirring and smashing the raspberries, making sure to scrape the sides and bottom. It’ll be ready when the sauce coats the back of a spoon. This means that when you pull the spoon out of the sauce and run a finger down the back of the spoon (CAREFULLY! Don’t burn yourself!) it should leave a clean trail that does not immediately fill back in.

If you’re like me and don’t like a lot of seeds in your sauce, about halfway through (once the raspberries have been smashed down) put the sauce through a strainer/sifter into a separate bowl and remove as many seeds as you prefer. Then return the sauce to the pot and continue boiling.

The chocolate ganache is even easier. In a microwave safe bowl, put 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream. Heat this in the microwave for 60-90 seconds until the cream is boiling. Take out of microwave and add to 1 cup chocolate. Let sit for 30 sec. Stir until all of the chocolate is melted.

DO NOT REHEAT. Unless you are making a lot of sauce, the boiling cream will be plenty to melt the chocolate. Just keep stirring. It may take a few minutes, but if you heat the chocolate too much it will seize and that’s no fun. If you are sure the chocolate has gotten too cold and there are still clumps, put it in the microwave for 10 second intervals -stirring between each- until everything has melted. Let the sauce sit and cool for a few minutes until it reaches a good pouring consistency. You can put it in the fridge/freezer for a few seconds to speed up this part.

I used Guittard chocolate again because it is my favorite.

Next Week: March 30, 2019

I pulled some brisket out of the freezer to make for this week, and I know that I want to make pasta salad to go with it. Only 1 of the sides sounded like a good pairing to me, so I’m also going to try one of the breakfasts to get back to my 2+ recipes a week trend.

017. Buttermilk Pancakes & 020. Flaky Biscuits

Week 6 – Veggie Chips

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Week 6!! I have at least been consistent with going through the recipe book, even if I have been less consistent with writing down my thoughts. Thank you to those of you who have been following along! I am loving getting pictures and texts about how ya’ll are liking each recipe.

I decided it was the perfect week to get the first 2 recipes out of the way in one go because we were having a healthy potluck at work. I hadn’t been looking forward to making these because I don’t really like most chips and especially not the baked kind. Also I don’t like the taste or texture of kale.

Needless to say, I was going into this week with incredibly low expectations and standards.

001. Baked Root Vegetable Chips:

From the get-go these were pretty. I do really like beets and I knew I could find the normal purple ones, but I had never seen any other color of beets before. I wasn’t sure my HEB would have them. They did!

Martin came through and found golden beets which tasted pretty much the same as the normal beets to me. I also decided to make 1 potato and 1 sweet potato because I was worried about how many chips I’d have since the beets were so small.

I was right to make some other chips because after they were baked they got even smaller! There would not have been enough for everyone.

I got to use my mandolin slicer for these which made me pretty nervous because I cut off a good bit of my thumb on one a couple of years ago. This may have caused the inconsistency in cutting that happened. I noticed that some of the chips were not the same thickness which was annoying.

They were very pretty while drying out. I cut them, put them on paper towels, and then left them out for about 2 hours to try and get the potatoes to dry better.

These things took FOREVER to bake. The recipe book said like 30 minutes or so, but I think the potatoes were in the oven for 1.5 hours. Luckily I had separated the large chips from the small ones to bake, so I was able to pull out the ones that were done and not get them too burnt. I ended up flipping all of them every 10-15 minutes to try to get them to even out.

I thought they turned out fine. Martin seemed to like them. My coworkers loved them. I got asked a lot about the recipe and how I got them to crisp as well as I did, so I was pretty happy that they were received well.

002. Peppered Kale Chips:

This had to have been one of the easiest recipes ever.

I just have a picture of the finished product on these because all I did was buy a bag of triple-washed kale and put the oil, salt, and pepper on them before putting them in the oven.

They also baked right around 20-25 minutes according to the recipe. I had no issues. I think I finished all of them in 30 minutes all in.

I still can’t decide if I liked them or not. They definitely did not have as weird of a taste as normal kale and the texture was obviously different. But the texture was still weird! I would have expected them to be more substantial but they almost dissolved in your mouth?? It was very weird.

Martin and I were being more critical and we thought that I must not have dispersed the oil well enough because some of the chips seemed dryer than others.

My coworkers on the other hand couldn’t get enough! I got asked by just about everyone how I made them. People were surprised by how easy it was. It sounds like several of them have tried to make some in the past with poor results so they were impressed.

I might make both recipes again for a party or something, but I probably won’t be adding either to my snack drawer anytime soon.

No other pics yet!

Next Week: March 23, 2019

094. Classic New York-Style Cheesecake

I’m just going to be making the 1 recipe from the book this week because I’m also going to make a raspberry compote and chocolate ganache for it which are not in the book.

Week 5 – Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup

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My favorite comfort food!! I love grilled cheese sandwiches. They are super tasty and easy and I always like to make them with vegetable soup or a really good tomato soup, which I usually get from a can.

027. Deluxe Grilled Cheese Sandwiches:

Typically, I go with the extra easy – bread & cheese only. However, these are supposed to be DELUXE grilled cheese, so I figured I had to step it up a little bit.

I still used plain wheat bread, but we did have 2 types of cheese (pepper jack and cheddar) and I added mayo, spinach, and tomato to the sandwiches too.

I would like to add my own tip to their recipe that my mom always used – cover the pan to keep the heat in and melt the cheese faster so you don’t over-toast the bread.

It still tasted like a grilled cheese, so I enjoyed it. I liked the idea of having different fillings and mixing things up, although it is still fancier than I will probably try to do in the future.

076. Fresh Tomato Soup:

I am so disappointed in myself for this one. I messed up all over the place. Tomato soup is a food that I have just recently acquired an appreciation for, so I was really looking forward to learning how to make it. And the pictures in the book made it look so good!!

I would have to say the overall theme of my mistakes was not paying attention. My littlest helper was distracting me and I missed a lot of things. (Additionally, this is why my post is especially short on pictures)

My first mistake was not thinking about how many tomatoes I had. I was told that we are not in peak tomato season, so when I was at the store I looked for the ripest tomatoes I could find and then planned to supplement those with a can of tomatoes.

I ended up with about 3 good looking ones and one large can of tomatoes. Instead of thinking about how close to 2 lbs. of tomatoes I was getting, I charged right on through to my next mistake: putting the whole can of tomatoes and juice into the food processor. Additionally, I didn’t realize this was incorrect until I had already begun blending and was getting confused about why it was SO watery. There was also A LOT of it. I decided that I’d ended up with too many tomatoes somehow.

My plan became to boil off some of the excess liquid to try and salvage the consistency which had turned into salsa. It was around this time that I realized I somehow didn’t have any honey in my house(? How could that even happen? At one time I had 4 different types of honey from 4 different areas of Texas!). So instead I tried to substitute some sugar, but I have no idea what the correct ratio of sugar to honey is. Also, I couldn’t tell if I had doubled the recipe or just had a little bit too much, or if maybe this was how much soup the recipe was supposed to make!

Even with all of my attempts to boil it down, add sugar and cream, and I think at one point I added flour to thicken it for some reason, it still came out with the taste and texture of a really nice meatless marinara sauce.

I thought about putting it back in the blender or straining out some of the juices, but at this point the sandwiches were done and Martin was back. So I just chalked it up as a loss and served it. Martin was very sweet and finished his bowl and my bowl.

I’d like to try the soup again sometime because I think I could learn from my mistakes and make it a little better.

Next Week: March 16, 2019

Next week I will be knocking out 2 recipes that I have not been excited about since the beginning!

001. Baked Root Vegetable Chips & 002. Peppered Kale Chips

Week 4 – Salmon & Salad

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This was another good set of recipes! I didn’t get to make them until Monday night, but everything came together quickly for a weekday.

Also, as Martin pointed out, this meal is deliciously Keto. If you somehow haven’t heard of the Keto diet, my brilliant cousin has a write-up about it on her blog HERE. Whether you are on Keto or not, this meal is undeniably healthy & delicious.

050. Salmon in Parchment:

I thought the taste of this was great! I liked how the oranges made it a little sweet and went well with the salmon and veggies without being overpowering.

I added green & yellow squash to my salmon because I’m pretty unoriginal and I couldn’t think of anything better. Next time I think I’d like to try how a variety of vegetables cook if they’ve usually got different cooking times.

I used foil because I didn’t have enough parchment paper. I don’t have a lot of notes about this because it really was so easy to make.

071. Fresh Herb Vinaigrette:

Another easy recipe! I used a combination of fresh thyme and dried basil and oregano. Shallots were in the recipe again; this book seems to like them.

I liked the ease of everything going into one mason jar that I can store the leftovers in. I feel like I could potentially have several different versions in the fridge which would be fun.

My favorite part of this book/experience is the opportunity for variety. They give you some alternatives, which opens up my creativity and makes me want to experiment and try new things.

Any new pics I get will go here.

Next Week: March 9, 2019

027. Deluxe Grilled Cheese Sandwiches & 076. Fresh Tomato Soup

I LOVE grilled cheese sandwiches. And tomato soup. And especially the 2 together. The weather is supposed to be terrible, so I’m looking forward to staying warm with homemade soup. Like always, thank y’all so much for your participation! I hope you’re having at least a little bit of fun with this.

Week 3 – Muffins & Cookies

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You’ll notice that there are no pictures yet. I took some, but I have not been able to get them uploaded on to the website yet. I wanted to post anyway and I’ll just update the page with my pictures later.

For Week 3’s recipes I wanted goodies that were easy to store and would give my house guests treats to snack on conveniently. Additionally, I needed an easy week, and muffins and cookies are absolutely in my wheelhouse. I was excited to try their chocolate chip cookie recipe because I’m always on the lookout for the best recipe for soft chewy cookies. I have another recipe the yields a good cookie, but it is a lot of work and takes a lot of time.

021. Double-Blueberry Muffins:

I did not get to make these as ahead of time as I had intended which ended up working out for the better. My sister-in-law and her kids were already staying with us, so my niece wanted to help me make these on Saturday morning. It was a great recipe for that! It didn’t require a mixer and used just one bowl, so she was able to help measure and mix and pour which reminded me of when I would help my mom bake.

The only hiccup I had was that I wasn’t paying attention to the recipe and ended up mixing the citrus sugar to the butter before putting it on the muffins, but I don’t think it affected the taste or presentation much. They were very popular with everyone who tried them, except for my helper who thought we were making chocolate chip muffins.

The muffins were a good consistency and I liked the idea of a preserve filling in the middle of them; I think I’ll try some of the variations of this recipe – maybe even a chocolate chip variety.

084. Chocolate Chip Cookies:

I was super happy with these cookies!

I won’t lie, I was a little skeptical of how the shortening would affect the taste, especially since my sister-in-law had mentioned their mom would make cookies with all shortening which made a good chewy cookie on day one, but after a couple of days, the shortening flavor really came through.

Luckily, it has been several days now since I first made them and they still taste fresh. I think I will be keeping this recipe in my rotation.

Other Pictures:

If I get any additional pictures I’ll post them here.

Next Week: March 2, 2019

050. Salmon in Parchment & 071. Fresh Herb Vinaigrette

BONUS: Chocolate Raspberry Cake (From Evie)

My coworker’s last day is this Friday, so I’m making her favorite – a chocolate raspberry cake with some chocolate raspberry macarons. I’ll post my recipes and steps next week.

Just like always, comment below with your experiences!

Week 2 – Lasagna & Caesar Salad

evelyngraham0046

February 16, 2019

Welcome to week 2! Last week was fun and I want to thank everyone for being supportive!

I would like to start this week’s post with a disclaimer that I don’t think I’ve brought up yet: I am not a cook. I feel like I should be since I bake a lot, but I don’t have the same instincts I do when baking. That’s part of the reason I’ve started this venture – to get better cooking instincts. That said, I was pleasantly surprised by how well this week’s dinner turned out even though I made some simple mistakes.

Martin was working on Saturday, so I made the lasagna Saturday night for dinner on Sunday. Since I wasn’t hurrying to put anything in the oven, I was able to go slower and do more prep work than last week.

I started with the Bechamel Sauce which had a fancy name that scared me, but it was a pretty simple cheesy gravy sauce. I think the consistency was right and it didn’t take very long for me to prepare – less than 10 minutes.

The meat sauce is where I made my mistakes. Firstly, I didn’t notice that my fennel seeds were whole and I didn’t have a great system for grinding them like a mortar/pestle or a spare grinder or something (Christmas present Martin?). Upon re-reading the recipe tips while writing this, I saw that they recommended using a rolling pin to crush them.. That would have been a great idea. However, I was able to chop them up pretty well with my chef’s knife, although there were some chunks in there and I’m not sure if that affected the taste at all.

Secondly, even though the recipe clearly said to lower the temperature and simmer for 15 minutes, I just let that stuff keep on boiling for the whole 15 min. By the end of it, the sauce was really just red meat with some tomatoes. Because of that, the sauce didn’t go nearly as far as I think it was supposed to. (I’m also apparently brushing up on my reading skills)

I couldn’t find my grated Parmesan cheese until the lasagna was basically done, so I had to use the shaved Parmesan I had bought for the Caesar salad in the filling. There were chunky flakes in it that made the filling more annoying to spread, but I don’t think I messed up that layer as much.

Here’s my layering prep! You can kind of see how much my meat sauce boiled off in this picture. About 3/4 of the way through the layering, I added another can of tomato sauce and made it go far enough to at least cover the noodles. It seemed to work.

Pre-baked lasagna!! I covered it in with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge. When I baked it on Sunday I had to keep it in for 55 minutes before it became brown and bubbly, but it was a hit!

I would say this was a classic lasagna. I would also say that it is fool-proof! Even with my missteps it still turned out pretty tasty. I’m interested in trying the vegetable version of this recipe and maybe some other variations now that I’ve tried the original.

070. Caesar Salad (Bonus 010. Cooking eggs):

The dressing came together really quickly. I was able to do all of it on Sunday while the lasagna was in the oven. This even included hard-boiling eggs (I used their tips from recipe 010. Cooking Eggs so I’m counting it!!) which I forgot to do ahead of time.

I couldn’t find anchovies at my HEB, so I decided to try it with anchovy paste. That’s what the picture below is. It looked pretty gross and did not smell much better, but I think the flavor was the same from the vague memory I had of making this dressing several years back.

I started the dressing in my regular blender but ended up having to move it into my mini blender because the big blender wasn’t making the dressing smooth.

(Little Westley foot in the bottom left corner)

My smaller blender worked and I was again pretty happy with the result. I was worried that the little amount of dressing it made wouldn’t be enough for all of the lettuce I had, but it was just enough!

I didn’t make croutons even though the recipe called for them because I don’t like croutons and I didn’t feel like doing more work for something I’d just pick out anyway.

The final product! I thought it was very pretty and delicious. Overall, I liked these recipes way more than last week’s. They did really remind me that I am a much better baker than a chef. I’m excited to keep going and hone all of my skills to be all-around better.

Other Pictures:

Craig & JJ

Next Week (this week) : February 21, 2019

021. Double-Blueberry Muffins & 084. Chocolate Chip Cookies

I’m going to have some family in town this week so I decided to go with recipes that I could make ahead and people can eat them as needed instead of as a meal.

Just like last week, post your own experience below and if you have a picture, send it to me and I’ll post it on the website until I figure out how to let you post pictures yourself.

Week 1 – Burgers & Lemon Bars

evelyngraham0046

February 9, 2019

Before I begin, I’d like to say sorry about the delay in my first post. I was having some technical difficulties yesterday.

Hello! And thank you for joining me on my first experiment! I have been very excited by the feedback I’ve received for the idea of this, so I hope I don’t disappoint.

I chose to start off with burgers because it is the Tucker tradition to have burgers every Saturday night. Also, I have made burgers before so I figured it would be a good way to ease into this project. I made potato/sweet potato oven fries with mine which aren’t in the book, but they are a classic.

For a dessert I picked lemon bars which are one of Martin’s favorites.

My mom came over to help and it was one of my first big meals to cook in my new kitchen, so everything was pretty exciting. I think we all had a lot of fun!

My little helper

025. Skillet Burgers with Shallot-Herb Butter

First Reactions: Reading the recipe for the first time, I was pretty much instantly into new territory because I’ve never cooked with a shallot before and I was only pretty sure that I knew what to look for at the grocery store. Although the burger recipe is much simpler than the one my grandpa usually makes, I decided not to alter the recipe this time since the butter was so fancy.

Process: For the burger meat, I used 1 lb. 85%, and 1/2 lb. 80%. As I had figured, the burgers were pretty easy to make. There was nothing added to the meat except for some salt and pepper. I think I should have cut the shallots up smaller because the butter was pretty chunky and I’m not sure it was supposed to be.

I didn’t do a great job of prepping the meal, so there was a lot of cutting and prepping while we were cooking and everything seemed to happen very fast. The whole meal took about an hour and a half to complete.

First, we made the oven fries which were a mix of regular and sweet potato. those were mixed with oregano, thyme, sage, salt, pepper, and olive oil. We put them in the oven at 400 and they were in there for a little over an hour while we did everything else.

I bought pre-sliced mushrooms, so we just rinsed them and threw them in the butter as they came. I think this was fine because it made it easier to pick off the big chunks after I decided I don’t like them.

We ended up cooking the burgers an extra minute per side and they were still a little pink for my mom’s taste. As you can see from the earlier picture of them, they were really red still after coming off the pan the first time. I think 5 minutes per side would have resulted in a more well-done burger, but if you prefer a medium burger, the 3 minutes suggested would have been good.

I used whole wheat buns that we toasted for about 5 minutes in the oven and then spread the rest of the butter on.


After the buns came out, it was just assembling them and enjoying them!

087. Lemon Bars Deluxe

Process: The lemon bars were easier than I thought they would be. I had to double-check the recipe several times to make sure I hadn’t missed something. I used foil to line the pan like the recipe said instead of parchment paper like I normally would.

In the future if I make these again, I’ll stick with the paper because the bars stuck to the foil. Other than that, I thought the recipe was simple and tasty. The timing of their bake aligned well with the burgers so that we didn’t have to wait that long for dessert.

On average, the general consensus of the meal was that it was so-so. Grandpa’s burger recipe is definitely superior, although the butter will be good on other things I think. Nobody seemed to like the shiitake mushrooms, so I don’t think we’ll use those again in future recipes.

Other Pictures:

Craig & JJ Burgers
Craig & JJ Lemon Bars

Next Week: February 16, 2019

I have picked 037. Classic Lasagna and 070. Caesar Salad for next week’s meal.

Below is a place to post your comments and experiences with making this recipe. I’m working on figuring out how to allow y’all to post pictures in the comments, but this website stuff is new to me so I haven’t figured it out yet. But you’re definitely welcome to send me your pictures and I can add them to the post!

Thank you for joining me and I’ll see you next week!

How it began

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The history behind this project has 2 parts. The first was mentioned on the Home Page: it has been a longtime goal of mine to cook my way through every page of a cookbook. However, that is a project I could have done on my own at any time. I decided to invite others to join with me because of a conversation I had with an aunt and Gma.

A year or so ago, my aunt had come to town to visit Gma, and she brought a cookbook with the intention of trying some new recipes with her. When they talked about it later, Gma said that my aunt was doing things wrong. My aunt’s argument was that she wasn’t doing them wrong – just different, and her argument was that everything would come out the same in the end.

The brief exchange got me thinking about how everyone’s cooking experiences, as well as what ingredients are locally available, could cause every person in our family to see the same recipe differently. That seemed like such a fun idea to me.

Our family is getting older, starting their own lives, and spreading itself throughout the country, so having a way for us all to feel close sounded like a nice concept.