Homemade via Mike

Thanks to Mike for the following recipe and bringing them to my party!!

The churro donuts were a modified recipe, but here’s a edited version with my additions

1 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoons mexican chili powder
1 lime
3 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup buttermilk
3 eggs
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 cup butter, melted
Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Lightly grease a donut baking pan.

In a medium bowl, mix sugar, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, chili powder and flour.

Mix buttermilk, eggs, honey, zest from the lime and the juice from one half of the lime and butter in a separate medium bowl, and stir into the dry ingredients. Spoon the mixture onto the prepared pan filling them halfway.
Bake 8-9 minutes in the preheated oven, until golden brown.
While donuts are still baking, prepare two bowls.  one will have the lime juice from the other half of the lime, and two tablespoons of buttermilk.  the other will have a mixture of 2 parts sugar, one part cinnamon.
while the donuts are still warm roll each one in the liquid mixture followed by the sugar mixture. let cool and enjoy.

from Emeril

Another ground pork asian dish with a kick and another winner. This time, Emeril’s Spicy Pork Stir-Fry with Coconut Scallion Rice adds toothsome eggplant. The inclusion of ground pork versus slices is my input. I just bought ready made coconut rice from Fresh Direct for ease. For some reason, I have never made rice well from scratch – it ends up either hard in the middle or mushy.

from Giada

I quite enjoy having Giada on in the background but this is the first time I’ve made one of her dishes, and this Bucatini All’Amatriciana with Spicy Smoked Mozzarella Meatballs was spectacular! Bucatini is a hollow spaghetti, which I was happy to find was finally available at Fresh Direct, though it can also be purchased at any Italian market. While it may look like there are a lot of steps in this recipe, once they’re prepped, each element has a fifteen minute cooking or simmering time so it’s easy to get everything done at the same time in order to mix it into a sloppy, delicious plate. I didn’t have parchment paper for the meatballs – which have a cube of smoked mozzarella inside them!! – so they crumbled a bit, but with no sacrifice to the flavor. If this is any indication, I’ll be making more from Giada soon!

found on Serious Eats

A simple recipe with a small ingredient list is appealing for ease, but downright exciting when the list consists of favorite flavors that I’d never heard of together. Such was the case with this Spaghetti with Crab, Chile, and Mint recipe that I found on Serious Eats (a blog that never steers me wrong).

I love this recipe so much that when i had enough ingredients for a second batch, i counted down the hours to lunch the next day.

from Local Lemons

My friend Jessica is a friend in deed. At my recent brunch party, she arrived with an incredibly delicious Lemon Meringue Pie made from scratch. She found the recipe online at Local Lemons via Tastespotting. As a huge merginue fanatic, and a lover of sugary crumble pie crust, there shouldn’t be a happier treat for me!

from Simply Recipes

I’ll be honest, my cooking and baking lately has resulted in the unexpected. Banana bread turned into a thicker almost pudding like creation recently, and even chocolate chip cookies from a back of the box recipe turned out entirely edible but undeniably strange (baking soda vs baking powder and brown sugar versus natural sugar does make a difference, it seems), and this Simply Recipes White Chili proved to be no different.

As you can see from my mediocre photograph, it’s not exactly white, which could be  in part because of my inclusion of a generous amount of chili powder and red kidney beans, and it’s far more on the soup side of things than chili. This is my fault for opting to use what I had on hand, namely canned beans (both kidney and white) and guessing that two cans equals a pound of dried. I think I was wrong, and yet the meal was still absolutely delicious and fulfilling.

Seems that any recipe with a good basis can be messed with and still turn out noteworthy and Simply Recipes always has some good recipes to play around with.

From Kitchen Parade

Broiled Grapefruit may be a simple recipe, but it’s one that adds a new spin on the grapefruit which I have been enjoying for months now and enjoy this new way to eat it.

from Paula Deen

I know, you think a scrambled egg is a scrambled egg, is a scrambled egg, but Paula Deen’s adorably labeled Lady’s Perfect Scrambled Eggs, are in fact, perfect. Sour cream may seem like an unlikely missing key ingredient, but trust me, I’ll never make scrambled eggs any other way again.

from Monday-to-Friday Chicken

Potato salad is a grand dish I always look forward to once cookouts are in full swing. I jumped the seasonal gun a little bit with this Chicken Dill Potato Salad, which adds a punch of protein and garners main entree status with the addition of chicken.

Aside from the cook book, it can be found on Fresh Direct’s website.