Sunday brunch

A little Sunday brunch porn to start out your Sunday!

Biscuit cups with scrambled free range eggs, organic uncured pepper bacon, and cream gravy. Enjoy!

Brekkie Sandwich!

Pepper bacon, cibatta bread, free range egg and grilled tomatoes. Yum!

Nanner Time!

Carmelized bananas over B&J's Creme Brulee ice cream, with dark chocolate sauce and chocolate chips. Teenage heaven!

I have been picking up 1-2 paper bags full of bananas for $2 each for the last several weeks. The freezer is full of bananas for smoothies and banana soft serve. Bananarama!

Cake! (balls)

 Per request, cake! Well, cake balls, as the recipe I used came our a bit dry in mini cupcake form, so some leftover buttercream, some melted dark chocolate, and some sprinkles, and there you have it.

 Cake balls are the poor person's truffle. Easy to make with a box mix cake and a can of store bought frosting, these little morsels have been popping up all over the place for the last couple of years.
 If you've never had a cake ball, they are definitely different. The taste and texture are not quite cake, not quite candy. The mini-people seem to like them.  

Yes, yes, I know!

Yes, it has been a long time! Running a bakery/personal chef business when you are the only 'employee' takes up a huge amount of time. Here's the FB page, Sugar³. I've finally got a bit of breathing room, so on to what you REALLY want, FOOD PORN!

 Since my bday is on a Tuesday this year, I decided to do a bit of celebration this weekend. This was Saturday's breakfast, French toast with homemade carmelized bananas (From my huge $2 bag of nanners!), uncured pepper bacon, and a tiny cheese omlette. The good thing about being a chef, the fact I cook really well. The bad thing, no one else cooks for you! Ah well, a small price to pay. Today is cake, pics to follow soon.

It's been too long!

Wow, time flies when you're having, well, fun's not quite the term.....

 Things have been busy around the place! The Farm is taking off, I hope to have enough organic produce to sell to a local restaurant or two this season. For those of you interested, check out the Cat Creek blog to keep up with the Farm. http://catcreekgardens.blogspot.com/

 In FP news, after finding one of my Depression-era mother's recipes, I decided to give it a try. On a silverfish nibbled scrap of paper was Mother's ricotta cheese recipe. Back when my mother, an Italian/German from Chicago, was transplanted to Texas, she and my grandmother couldn't get many of their fav ingredients, so they turned to making their own. However, they tended to only write down the barest info on their recipes, since they had the full one in their heads. My scrap of paper says

  Ricotta cheese

1/2 gal. milk

1/2 Junket tablet

 And that's it. So thanks to much research online, I found that milk+cream+heat+acid results in ricotta, or farmer's cheese. So I gathered up the stuff, and off I went. I decided to save the Junket for making some cheddar later, but that's another post.

 I scalded the milk/cream mixture, added acid, and got curds and whey. Spider check.

 I used a fine meshed strainer to drain the mix, saving the whey for later breadmaking. A bit of salt, and it's ricotta! Rich, creamy and much less salty than commercial mixes.

 Guess I need to knock out a batch of fresh pasta and make some lasagne!

I'm so bleu.......

 Blue. It's a color, a feeling, and a cheese. I love blue cheese. Even though I know the blue is mold, and I was taught to avoid moldy food, I still love it. I was put off blue cheese a couple of months ago by a REALLY nasty dish at Manny's Uptown Kitchen (See previous post), but I saw something that made me want to reaquaint myself with the moldy creamy stuff.

 Never been much of a buttermilk fan, even in salad dressing or pies, but as I get older, I find my tastes changing more and more. As I was checking the ads for my weekly foray into grocery shopping, I saw this on sale.....


 So I bought it and brought it home. One taste, and I was in love all over again. The cheese is smooth, rich and creamy, no bitterness at all, and the taste, oh my yes, the taste was heavenly! Sale or not, this is a keeper in my fridge!