sweet potato hash

I truly don't have anything to write as I just made this literally a mere few hours ago and wanted to get it posted ASAP. You must make this. If you are a fan of the 'hash family' not hashish, although that might be kinda good..no don't go there! Let's stick with the fact that this is one very tasty hash. It truly melds perfectly with fresh hollandaise sauce; wow do they go together! So many flavors in this hash all melding together nice and cozy. Have you ever seen sweet potato hash? I've never seen this before, but had it in the back of my mind for a while and finally put it to the hot, greasy skillet this morning.

sweet potato hash
by vanillasugarblog.com
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2-3 sweet potatoes, chopped into 1-inch cubes
extra virgin olive oil
a few TB of butter
salt & pepper
caramelized onions
few dashes of worcestershire sauce
couple dashes of Tabasco sauce, optional but wonderful

Caramelize some onions (about 1 giant sweet yellow onion) after it's done caramelizing add a few drops of the Worcestershire sauce, set aside. Heat up skillet with some EVOO and fry up the sweet potatoes until nice & crispy, season with salt and pepper. Towards the end of cooking add a few tablespoons of butter to the skillet to melt into the hash. Then add in a few dashes of Worcestershire sauce, mix until combined.

I served the hash with a fried egg and a touch of fresh hollandaise sauce (as seen in the background of the pic). Love my sauces; sauces are my friend. I'm a true sauce-junkie. Raise your hand if you are a sauce-junkie!

tomato & spicy corn relish on puff pastry with horsey sauce

An easy post today as I had my butt kicked at the gym today, so I am exhausted, but it's a good kind of exhausted; a kind of exhausted that will make you sleep like a baby. I had a workout session that was easy in the beginning, harder in the middle because I wanted to give up and say that's enough for now, but no I pushed harder and made it to the end thus feeling like a million bucks. Don't you love that after workout feeling? Good stuff. But most times when I workout like crazy I get like 'prison hungry' afterwards. Ever get that? I try not to overeat and look like a pig eating four meals at once because I get the strangest looks from friends and family. Speaking of the gym, you know what's the worst? Those meatheads who make all those grunting noises. What's up with that? Why all the noises? I know it's hard lifting weights, but why all the excessive grunting and then "slam!" of the weights after each set? And a constant stare at me in between sets? Are you trying to get me to notice you? You're scaring me away...

Tomato, cheddar & spicy corn relish on puff pastry
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2 large tomatoes, thinly sliced, left to dry out a bit on paper towels
1/4 to 1/2 cup of spicy corn relish (see below)
1/2 cup shredded cheese (your choice)
Puff pastry
Horsey sauce (see below)

I don't know about you but I do love working with puff pastry. Some times when I'm not in the mood to make my own puff pastry I use my go-to pre-made puff pastry Dufour's. Which I find at Whole Foods in the frozen section. Always keep your puff pastry frozen till ready to use, then defrost according to directions on package. Puff pastry does not keep in the fridge long after it's been thawed. Here's is the recipe I use for spicy corn relish. Or I use this pre-made relish, which is just as good, it's from Stonewall Kitchen who make wonderful products.

So all I did was slice the tomatoes thin and let them drain a bit on paper towels. Rolled out the puff pastry onto a greased cookie sheet, layer the puff pastry with a thin layer of cheese of your choice (I used cheddar) then a thin layer of the spicy corn relish, then the tomatoes.

Sprinkle with a bit of salt & pepper and bake in preheated oven (375 degrees) for about 15-20 minutes, making sure to turn pan at midpoint. Let cool and slice. You can top with the horsey sauce. Puff pastry, once cooked, does not keep well after a day, really should be eaten straight away--which is no problem in my house.

Horsey Sauce

1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup horseradish
1 ts of white wine or vinegar

In a small bowl stir together the sour cream, heavy cream, wine, and horseradish.
Makes about 1 ½ cups sauce; you can halve this or even quarter this recipe.

pineapple-bacon crackers

You know I made these little savory gems back in winter--the season where my cheese cravings are at an all time high. Why I crave cheese so much in the winter is beyond me; a lack of calcium maybe?
So I'm just going through the "food porn" pictures archives and noticing how much I have not shared with you. I am fixing that stat. :::cue rap music::: "I'm gonna fix that stat, yeah you know that!..." OK, that's great, so much for the rap career.
I hate seriously hate to call these crackers as they are not thin and crispy. They are crispy and thick, and cheesy, and baconey, and pineapplely. Another wonderful savory sweet with the salty creation. Not diet food at all. These do go well with a nice crisp, dry white wine. What kind? I haven't clue what kind I just get whatever is on sale or prosecco, I'm easy.
I am back to being good at exercising. Little time off, but now I'm back to going to the gym every other day and doing my weightlifting routine. Getting my killer abs, legs, and guns back (and chest because I don't want my boobs in my shoes when I'm older). I'm kinda excited about this, I have finally found the perfect way (for me) to do my squats. To be honest, for years I avoided squats like the dentist. I hated them because they hurt so much and I was never seeing progress. Well, the hurt part made me stop more so. But now I do my squats with the aide of two chairs to help give me a little support as I plunge down and to watch myself in the gym mirrors to make sure my form is spot on. What I learned was I was never plunging down far enough in a squat. You need to plunge down further in a squat in order for all the muscles (upper & lower) in the leg to get worked. So now with the help of two of the gym chairs I can go down further and eventually get strong enough where I don't need the chairs. No wonder I never saw results! How did I figure this out? Well, first never seeing results and getting frustrated and second, my workout buddy Adam at Baking with Dynamite cued me in on how to properly do a squat. He's an all-natural professional bodybuilder who used to compete. If anyone knows best exercise forms and methods it's him. Thank you for all your help/advice past and future. My squats, although it's only been a couple + weeks, I'm already seeing results and the knees are definitely getting stronger: that, is the part that keeps me going to do more and more and more.....
Just out of curiousity what exercise are you bad with or let's say you neglect because of _______?



pineapple-bacon crackers
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1 & ½ sticks unsalted butter, room temp.
1 1/2 cups extra old (at least 3 years old) cheddar, finely grated
1 3/4 cups white flour
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ cup finely chopped dried, unsulphured pineapple
2 TB finely chopped cooked bacon (you can add more, I just wanted a hint of bacon)
¾ cup rice crispies
(I also used a dash of half & half as the dough was really dry)

Cream the butter and cheese together at high speed in your stand mixer.
In a separate bowl sift the flour, salt and baking powder together.
To the flour mixture, add in the pineapple, bacon and rice crispies, and mix.
By hand, add the flour mixture to the butter/cheese mixture; gently combine. If the end result is too dry add in drops of half & half, bit by bit. Remember these are dry by nature, so don't make them too wet when adding in the half & half.
Turn dough out onto a large piece of waxed paper. Roll the dough into a log shape, roll the paper around it and twist the ends shut. Refrigerate for at least 45 minutes. You can freeze the dough at this stage as well.
Preheat oven to 375F. (these cook fast!)
Unwrap the dough log and, using a very sharp knife, slice the log into rounds 1/2 cm thick. Place rounds on parchment lined or greased cookie sheets and bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the bottoms of the cookies are golden brown. Remove to a cooling rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container.
Note: when they're cooking don’t wait for the tops to turn brown, it will be over-cooked by then. You want them lightly brown. They cook fast, so when the 10-minute mark comes up keep an eye on them.

Should make about 30.

mint chocolate Oreo chunk ice cream

Back in the beginning of spring I finally broke down and bought an ice cream maker. Of course it sat in the box unopened for a good two months before I finally used it. Why did I wait so long? To be honest, I truly though ice cream making was hard, very hard. Slaving for hours over the stove, stirring till your arm is numb, then chilling, reheating, then chilling again, then churning to finally freezing. That was so not the case. My friend the ice cream expert, Ms. Esi told me ice cream making couldn't be easier (kiss my hips goodbye!). I fell in love with the whole process of making ice cream; I can now make my own ice cream MY WAY. I don't know about you, but I am a stickler for having lots o' junk in my ice cream. I cannot eat boring smooth ice cream without some sort of texture and flavor combo. And my dear friend Ben & Jerry has, over the years, gone way down in the amount of stuff they put in their ice cream. I mean you're lucky if you get a whole smashed up cookie in their ice cream pints. What's up with that? Why all the decrease in stuff in ice cream? Is there a cookie shortage somewhere?
I will say this, ice cream is super hard to photograph! Tips I found out, thanks to my buddy Manggy, is too make sure the bowl the ice cream will be sitting in is kept in the freezer for a while before you put the ice cream in it. And get a good ice cream scoop! I bought one of those cheapy crappy ones at the grocery store and it broke on the third scoop! Which brings me to my photo; this is the only good photo I got as my ice cream scoop broke. I was lucky to get this one photo.
The easiest recipe people I promise! And it really tasted very rich and creamy just like a homemade ice cream should. I started with is Alton Brown's chocolate ice cream. And from there all I did was add in a hint of mint and lots of crushed up Oreo's. Mmm hmm.
So, the recipe is found here Alton Brown. What I did: I used only half the amount of vanilla extract; and before it goes into the fridge to chill that's when I added the peppermint flavoring or peppermint oil (1 tsp); lastly during the last 3 - 5 minutes of churning in the ice cream maker I added about 1 & 1/2 cups of crushed Oreo's. You can add as much or as little as you like.

banana-coconut cheesecake bars w/ rum soaked cherries

Any Cheesecake Factory lovers out here? Yes? Really the only reason I go there is for the crabcakes and then a big dessert. Small meal, big dessert. And personally I love the way they keep their restaurant so clean and shiny (cleanest bathrooms too). You know what cracks me up? They have a weight management menu, I mean seriously, The Cheesecake Factory and a diet menu are like an oxymoron. But hey you have to give them credit for appealing to all types.
They have the best tasting banana cheesecake. I have yet to find a similiar great tasting banana cheesecake, and they serve it with freshly chopped bananas. They do need a bit of help on their whipping cream though--it's really not that fresh tasting, does taste like it came out of a can. But that's ok, since I love the banana cheesecake so much. I have tried like the devil to recreate their banana cheesecake at home with no luck. On my last failed attempt I made these little gems. I'm still on my coconut kick so I had to add it to the base for these bars and I also wanted to add in some rum, but was afraid so I made rum-soaked cherries. Rum, can be at times a little overpowering, so I didn't want to chance it and ruin the cheesecake, after all all that cream cheese is expensive, so I added the rum to the cherries instead. It was a nice little hint of rum.
And if you do make this, make sure to grease your pans/tins. I forgot and it was impossible getting them out. Impossible. (as you can see in this photo the edges are frayed).

What is your favorite cheesecake?

banana-coconut cheesecake bars w/ rum soaked cherries
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for the base:
Butter, for greasing pan or tarts
2 tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
9 graham crackers
¼ cup of dried coconut flakes (not the sweetened/moist kind)
1 stick unsalted butter, melted

for the filling:
16 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
2 eggs
2 ripe bananas, mashed
1 lemon, the zest of and all it’s juice
1/2 cup superfine sugar

topping:
¼ cup +/- of cherries, split in half or pitted, soaked in a bit of dark rum (soaked overnight is best)
Powdered sugar, for dusting

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
Make sure to pit your cherries, slice them in half, place in a bowl and sprinkle with a bit of dark rum; just a coating. Cover and store in fridge until ready to use; they should marinate overnight or at least 5 hours.

The base:
Grease the bottom of a mini cheesecake square tart pans or muffins pans (or you could use a 9 by 9-inch baking pan) with butter. Spray with non-stick cooking spray. In a food processor, process the sugar, cinnamon, and graham crackers until you have the texture of bread crumbs. Then add in, by hand the coconut and mix.
Add the melted butter and pulse a couple of times to fully incorporate.
Scoop out the mixture and press into the tart pans or baking pans. Make sure to press down good and get into all the corners. I used a small spoon for the corners of the mini tart pans.
Bake in the oven for 12 minutes until golden. When done set aside to cool.

The filling:
Add cream cheese, eggs, mashed banana(s), lemon zest, lemon juice and sugar to the food processor and mix until well combined; you want a nice smooth, lump-free consistency. I then transferred the mixture to a pouring cup and poured the mixture on top of the cooled graham base.
Gently put about 3-4 of the rum soaked cherries on the top of each of the mini tarts—don’t push them down, just let them sit on the top. They might sink a little during cooking. Bake in the oven for 35 minutes, rotating pan halfway through or until the center only slightly jiggles. The baking time might be more if you are using a pan. The square tarts that I used only took 35 minutes. But I could have gotten away with cooking them 30 minutes as they were a little over-done.
Remove from the oven and cool completely before refrigerating for at least 3 hours.
Once set, they should remove easily from pan. If using the 9 x 9 pan, cut them into rectangular bars. Dust with powdered sugar.