Date Night

My hubby and I decided it would be nice to have an at-home date night, so we fixed a special dinner together and ate it on the back deck in the surprisingly cool evening. It was so nice. : ) Anyway, I tried to craft our dinner based around some of the aspects of our honeymoon in Oregon. While we were there we enjoyed lots of fresh seafood and one of our favorites was scallops. We got some cajun seasoning at the local grocery store and sauteed the scallops in butter and seasoning. Anyway, we made Spicy Orange Garlic Shrimp with Cajun Scallops.

We also had Risotto


and these A-MAZING Soft Honey Dinner Buns.



The shrimp recipe turned out really delicious, but I substitued the cajun seasoning instead of Old Bay and unfortunately it made it a tad too spicy. We were both eating lots of rolls. : ) But I will definitely make it again, just with a little less spice. It had this great, kind of sweet hint to it from the OJ that you could taste right before the flames hit...totally worth it. The scallops were really good too, but we already knew that. My husband mostly made the risotto, and he did a great job! It ended up wonderfully creamy and flavorful. And as I already mentioned, the rolls were to die for. We put garlic powder and sea salt on some and fresh parmesan on a few and then left the rest plain. The sea salted ones were definitely the best. They were substanially sweeter without the salt, so it would depend on how you want to eat them- i.e. with jam, or just butter, or as a sandwich roll. They were so soft and tender and had such great flavor. Plus they were really fun to make. My husband especially enjoyed making Nike symbols and ninja stars. : ) I'm already planning to make them again for church sometime, because they were so easy! In fact, I think I'll go get one right now...

Pruney

I rejoiced mightily today to have my plumbing back in commission! I celebrated by doing a bunch of three day old dishes. And loads of laundry. Lovely. But then I really celebrated by making this cake-
Grandma Iny's Prune Cake
My four year old niece, Lily, was here and she helped me make the cake. I told her we were making prune cake and she said, "Oh. That's...fun. I was hoping we were going to make a birthday cake!"
But when we tasted it she said, "YUM! This is the best cake EVER! Only it doesn't really taste like cake."
And that pretty much sums it up! It really does taste more like a coffeecake or breakfast bread, but it was very moist and delicious! I had some leftover Maple Cream Sauce from the Peach Crisp I made for Sunday lunch, so instead of making the frosting I just topped it with that. I think maybe the frosting would have added an extra sweetness boost that would make it better for a dessert, but the cream sauce is good for a breakfast or late night snack when you don't need so much sweetness. All in all a pretty good recipe!

Doesn't that just look so creamy and delicious??


The finished product- yum!

My little baker girl : )

Grillin'

Tonight was grilling night. Mostly because we love to grill. But also possibly because our plumbing is not functional at the moment and grilling makes fewer dishes...
Anyway. We grilled bacon wrapped round steaks and red potatoes. I had a few granny smith apples, and some caramel ice cream topping laying around...so I decided to experiment.
Basically, I just cored the apple and sprinkled some cinnamon on the slices, dumped some melted butter over that, and then generously poured said caramel over the tops of that. Then I wrapped it all up tightly in foil and grilled until tender and juicy. Yum!
Note the paper plate...a wonderful invention in times of plumbing trouble!

I'm gonna eat me a lot of peaches...

So when I was a little girl we used to go to Colorado every summer. On the way home we would always stop at a roadside stand and buy boxes of the best peaches you'll ever find. They were soo good. I was just in CO and we looked for these stands, but sadly there were none to be found. I don't know if we took a different route, or if it was too early, but either way, I remain Colorado Peaches-less. But, I still decided to make this yummy Peach Crisp with Maple Cream Sauce, even though I had to use inferior fruit. And my, was it ever yummy. I can only imagine how delicious it would have been with my Colorado peaches in it...
I was actually making this for the church lunch tomorrow, but it looked so yummy I had to make a small one for us tonight.
Yum!
I also made Hot and Sweet Drumsticks to bake tomorrow, so we'll see how those turn out. I had to buy apricot jam because my stock of homemade is down to 2 1/2 jars. The frost came too late this year and froze out all five of my beautiful trees. I just hope next year's crop is better!

And this little cherub is my darling nephew with, yes, peaches all over his face..
.


I must apologize for the lack of quality in the photos. I'm saving up for a Nikon D60, which will hopefully make my photography vastly more amazing. Unfortunately this process is hampered by the need for things like hot water heaters and plumbing. We're hoping to have saved up enough by December that it can be our Christmas present, but we'll see. Until then I'm still having fun with our old Kodak point and shoot.

Today's cooking play list included:
Gotta Have You by the Weepies
Lemonade by Chris Rice
and Dream a Little Dream of Me by Michael Buble'

I guess I was feeling romantic : )

Vanilla Sugar Sweet Buns

Yep. That's my new pet name for the hubby. Inspired, of course, by this lovely recipe:

http://www.thekneadforbread.com/2008/04/12/vanilla-sugar-sweet-buns/
(The picture is also from this blog)

Vanilla beans are used to make the vanilla sugar, but they're kind of on the pricey side, so instead I used Demerara Cane Sugar (a natural, coarse cane sugar with a bolder, richer flavor than regular refined sugar) and soaked it in 2 tbs. of Watkins Double Strength Vanilla for a little bit. Turned out quite yummy. I think next time (and there will be a next time!) I will even sprinkle some over the top for a nice crunch. My brothers were here visiting when I finished baking these last night, and sadly I only have two left of twenty-four.
Guess I'll just have to make them again...

Crusts and Crumbs

I'm a novice. I'm nothing fancy. I'm just the crumbs of a bigger world. But I like to have and share my own little crust of life.