Yummy Valentine's Treats

I came home and made Orzo with pine nuts and wilted spinach for dinner. It was pretty yummy. Then I started on some homemade Valentine's sweets. I made lavender heart cookies, chocolate covered strawberries, and chocolate raspberry truffles...half with sugar coating and the other half with toasted coconut coating. It's all pretty yummy!! I LOVE chocolate covered strawberries and chocolate raspberry truffles!!

Holy Banana Cake, Batman!

Oh my! I have a cookbook of Southern Cakes and I decided to try a new recipe today. It is HEAVENLY!! It sounds kind of strange, but it is one of the most yummy-licious things ever!! It is a Banana Cake with homemade chocolate frosting...I definitely licked that bowl clean!! I was so anxious to try it that I just threw on the frosting and it was definitely worth not having as pretty icing to taste that yummy cake! It's like banana bread, but cake with yummy chocolate icing!! Here's a picture...not very pretty, but who cares...it's scrumdiddlyumptious!

Evening Update: I made Basil Ricotta Risotto and Spinach Ricotta Gnocchi for dinner tonight. It was so yummy! I don't know if I like making gnocchi though...it's kind of icky to make from scratch...it's almost that same kind of ickiness as rolling meatballs or something like that. They are both new recipes that I haven't tried before, but they were both very yummy! Yay me! :)

Let there be heat...

Yay!! The repairman FINALLY came and fixed the AC/Heat!!! It's nice and toasty in here...just in time for the twenty degree temperatures heading this way tonight!!! Maddog was so happy to lay on the air vent again (for some reason the vents are in the floor in part of our house)!! He's back to his hyper self and is running around like crazy!

Since it's nice and chilly out, I am also making gumbo from my favorite Paula Deen cookbook!! :) I've made it before and it's yummy!! It smells soooo good!!

Eww...

As I have mentioned time and time again (yes, I am pretty much a broken record) I haven't had the energy this week to do much of anything. I was watching Giada de Laurentis on the Food Network this morning, so I thought I would go through some of my Italian cookbooks. What I have been doing with a couple of my French cookbooks is going through the books and making a list of recipes that I would like to try and their corresponding page numbers. I successfully make it through my Americanized "Italy the Beautiful" and "Tuscany The Beautiful" cookbooks, but a lot of their recipes were more Americanized than I was looking for (though I do love me some American Italian food from the Olive Garden from time to time...it can rock...ask Kendra!! Haha).

Anyhow, I have this really traditional old Italian cookbook called "Italian Regional Cooking." I've paged through it before, but not to a great extent. This time I start from the beginning. I pass the title page and get to the introduction and staring at me is a full page photo of a table with truffles being grated next to two poor little dead quail that are staring at me!!! I am Southern and I am used to having deer and hogs skinned in my front yard, but I really don't like to see my meat being prepared or barely dead. I think I could hear Chickadee hiding outside (My brother was raising Quail and a bunch of them got out, but one of them hangs around and is friendly so mom named it Chickadee...maybe it's friendly because mom's Cockatoo, Sarah Gail, got off the porch and she found her walking around outside with Chickadee asking her "Whatcha doing?").

I turn the page and am relieved to see fresh vegetables on a table with a view of some region in Italy. Pfew. Next page is safe too. Pfew. Then comes pages 12 and 13...Ahhh!! Page 12 features a beautiful spread of food and alongide it is a freshly dead guinea fowl looking at me! Oh...that's nothing...page 13 features dead pheasants as decorations for the dish with a stick at the back of the table a poor dead bunny rabbit haging with its legs tied to the stick...and yes...he's looking at me!! How is this supposed to want me to eat the food??!!

I have trouble enough on the rare occasions I eat veal thinking about the poor little moo babies trapped in tiny cages to give me my dish. I have thought about not eating meat because I feel bad for the poor little animals that are mistreated in order to make my food. I guess I feel less bad about eating animals that have been hunted because at least they were not raised in a tiny little cage and could frolick and live happy little lives and they didn't even know what was coming. In general, I don't really eat a whole lot of meat anyhow. I do eat beef, but mainly I eat chicken and seafood. For some reason I don't really feel as bad about eating chickens. I love having a nice rack of lamb with mint jelly, but I inevitably think of the cute little lamb that died for my meal. I ran over a bunny rabbit on my way home one night and cried the rest of the way home!!

I'm not a PETA advocate or one of those "meat is murder" people. I just don't really want to see my dead dinner next to my cooked dinner. In a recent issue of US Weekly they did an article on Mary Kate Olsen's fur clothing and bags. Now that's kind of crazy because these animals do suffer and it's not to nourish people. I can't imagine carrying a bag that took something like 12 adorable little chinchillas being brutally murdered to make!!! If it's not for survival, why kill animals just for their skin. On one of my musings of this topic at another time my friend's husband, Dale, so "thoughtfully" pointed out to me that they kill cute little moo cows to make my shoes, bags, etc.

So hopefully I can get through this cookbook without seeing a dead cow next to my food. I don't plan on cooking any of the quail or rabbit recipes anyhow. Now moving on from these disturbing images...

Resolutions...

This year I have decided that I am not making any New Years Resolutions. What's the point anyhow? We never keep them. I can't really exercise much and I am still not back to work, so what am I going to resolve to do?! 2008 was such a horribly crappy year that 2009 can only be better, so I am not really in need of life changing resolutions that I won't keep anyhow. I'm not going to resolve to curb my potty mouth because I won't and I will never be less sarcastic, so those things are out. OK...so maybe I'll make a little "resolution"...I want to keep my new car clean. It definitely looks a lot better than the Nissan (I do love Nissan's, but mine was old and had the scars from it's trip backwards through the barb wire fence a few years ago) and it definitely goes faster...ask my brothers...I've already told them that they are paying for the new tires (see tire marks in front of James' house from him power braking on Christmas morning!). :) Someone wanted to buy it so badly that they showed up at my house the first day the tag office opened back up and I could drive my Mustang!! It was crazy!! I hadn't even had a chance to clean it out! Here's a pic of it because I like it. :-P It's nice to have a car that was actually made in the current century.

The other thing I would like to do this year is cook more recipes out of my cookbooks that I haven't tried before. I love to cook and bake, but I just get so tired easily that it can't be something that requires me to stand for a long time. I've gotten to where I sit at the table to peel things and such so that I won't get tired as easily. Ok, I've just ran out of attention span, so good night and Go Gators!!

Yummy...

I decided to make a fruit pizza today since I hadn't made one in years. It turned out really yummy!! It's a giant sugar cookie with cream cheese, jelly, and whatever fruits you want or are in season.


I've been really tired lately from all the hustle and bustle of the holidays, so I have had to lay around the house for the past couple of days. It gets really weird when your body just won't do anything...literally. It's even weird to try and describe. I saved up my energy yesterday and cooked dinner. I made some French recipes out of one of my hundreds of cookbooks (yes, I really do have a lot of cookbooks). I made an Eggplant and Tomato Casserole, Cauliflower gratin, and Provencal Tomatoes...yes it was a meatless dinner. They all turned out well. I have been pretty surpised at how easy the French recipes have been. I think French cooking often gets a bad reputation for being complicated and difficult to make, but in my experience thus far most of it really isn't that bad.