Strawberry Rhubarb Cake

This is my first entry to Rachel's Baking Challenge. The theme for June's challenge was strawberries. My first thought was strawberry pie, but truly pie is not one of my giftings in cooking. And then I thought about rhubarb. I had plenty of it growing in my garden and I love the combination of strawberries with rhubarb. But what to make that is tasty and not so common? I pulled out an old cookbook my mom had given me. It is called Cookery Carosel and was produced by the MEI ladies auxiliary in the 80's. I have the second printin (1988). For those of you going who? What? MEI is a private school in the town in B.C. I grew up in. It stands for Mennonite Educational Institute and no, I didn't go there. But having grown up in a community with lots of Mennonite families, I know just how wonderful their recipes are! I found a recipe for Rhubarb Cake and adapted it to add strawberries. The result was really tasty. It's a coffee cake that we served up with ice cream. My friends who we shared it with really loved it.


1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 egg
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup rhubarb, cut up
1 cup strawberries, cut up
1/2 cup shortening
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup sour milk
2 cups flour

Mix as for any cake, pour into a 9 x 13 pan. Top with:

1/2 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Bake at 350* for 35-40 minutes.

I used a large springform pan (like you would for cheesecake) to make this as a round cake rather than a rectangle.

The original cake called for 1 1/2 cups cut up rhubarb and no strawberries.

*Sour Milk - I had to look this one up: 1 tbsp lemon juice plus enough milk to make one cup

Summer Greek Feast

This picture gives you the complete wrong impression that my son would actually eat all of this wonderful food. He won't. He'll eat the pita chips and hummus. The rest he will point at and say, 'no like this!'. 'sigh' - one day perhaps.
This Greek themed dinner included hummus, tzatziki, Greek Salad (all of which I've posted before), BBQ chicken skewers and pita chips.

BBQ Greek Chicken Skewers

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1/4 cup Greek Seasoning

Chop the chicken into 1 inch cubes. Toss everything into a bowl, coating all your chicken pieces well with the seasoning. Thread the chicken cubes onto the skewers. BBQ until the meat is cooked through.



Seasoned Pita Chips

This recipe comes from Eat, Shrink and Be Merry by Janet and Greta Podleski. (Titled Bewedged)

1 1/2 tbsp dried rosemary
2/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese (I used the shaker, not grated, it was fine)
3 6 inch pita rounds (with pockets)
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter, melted
1/4 tsp each garlic powder and onion powder

Preheat oven to 350*. Crush the dried rosemary with your fingers and combine it with the Parmesan cheese in a small bowl. Set aside. Using a sharp knife or kithen scissors (I used a pizza cutter), cut each pita into 6 equal wedges (I thought these were too big so I cut them into 12). Peel back the layers so you end up with double the wedges. Place the wedges, rough side up, on a large baking sheet. Do not overlap (I ended up using 2 sheets). In another small bowl combine the melted butter and olive oil. Brush the olive oil mixture over all the wedges. Sprinkle wit the cheese/rosemary mixture. Bake on a middle oven rack for about 10 minutes. Watch that they don't burn! Excellent dipped in hummus!

Chicken Salad Wrap

This is one of my favorite easy things to make. I will make a bunch on a Sunday and have wraps ready for the week for lunches. Now that most supermarkets sell cooked rotisserie chickens for a reasonable cost, I'm finding they are a great way to get some delicious meat for recipes needing pre-cooked chicken. I'm putting this post in this week at Deb's Kahakai Kitchen for Souper Sunday (and Salad and Sammie Sunday too). Her blogroll will be up sometime tomorrow. Check it out for some good eats!

1 rotisserie chicken, chopped into chunks
1/2 red pepper, finely chopped
1/4 cup finely chopped green onion
1/2 cup grated cheese (I use sharp cheddar)
2 generous spoonfuls of light mayo (to your liking)
salt and pepper to taste

Mix everything together in a medium mixing bowl. Scoop onto a wrap of your choice and roll and fold. They keep well if wrapped in saran wrap right away and kept refrigerated.

Post 100 is...Cheeseburgers!

So I'm still not on par with my blogging life, but I'll get there. Today was my last day of work for a little while (ahh, summer vacation), and what better way to celebrate what I consider to be the beginning of summer than a post about homemade burgers and potato salad?

Burger Patties

1 lb lean ground beef
1 egg
1/4 cup bread crumbs
1/4 cup BBQ sauce of your choice

Mix everything together with your hands. Shape into patties, your preference of size. BBQ. Add more BBQ sauce as the burgers are cooking for additional flavour. Add cheese to melt on if you wish.

Potato Salad

6-8 potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks
2 eggs
1/4 cup diced red onion
2 generous spoons of light mayo
a good squirt of mustard
salt and pepper
dash of paprika

Boil potatoes until cooked. Boil eggs until they are hard boiled. Cool both. Peel and chop eggs when cool. In a medium bowl add all the ingredients except paprika together. Mix together. Sprinkle paprika on top.

Pasta with Shrimp

Life has a way with catching up with you. This past week has just been so busy and slightly chaotic around here. I'm gearing down for the end of my work year. The last day with students was Friday and this week will be filled with classroom clean up and year end paperwork. I'm very much looking forward to the break. My mom arrives for a visit tomorrow and we are all very excited about that (especially my 4 year old who has many plans for him and his Gramma!)
I fully intend to go back and peruse all of your lovely blogs at my leisure over the next week or so. I'm sure I've missed some great dishes!
This pasta was one of those complete accidents that turned into such a delicious dish. I made it on a night where I was just busy. I think I fed the kids chicken strips and fries and forgot to feed myself. When my husband came home from work after the kids were in bed I decided to thaw some shrimp and see what I could make with it. This is what I came up with. It was very tasty, so much so that I've planned to try it again with scallops in my next menu rotation. The measurements here are approximate as I was just throwing stuff in.

1 cup pre-cooked shrimp - thawed in cold water, drained and pressed with paper towel to remove excess water
1-2 tsp olive oil
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1-2 cloves pressed garlic
1 tbsp mixed Italian seasoning herbs
1-2 tbsp dijon mustard
salt and pepper to taste
1-2 tbsp parmasan cheese

Saute onion and garlic in olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Once vegetables soften, add shrimp, herbs, mustard, cheese and salt and pepper. Mix all together and heat thoughroughly. Add pasta of your choice and mix everything together well. We used whole wheat spagettini.

Cherry Chocolate Muffins and a Bananaberry Smoothie

Well, my oldest son asked me to buy some cherries not too long ago. Sure. Unfortunately, he decided that the best way to enjoy cherries was to make cherry juice and squish them. After cleaning up a good sized mess (note to self, never leave 4 year old with cherries unattended), I hid the rest of the bag in the back of a fridge drawer.

Coincidentally, I started noticing cherry based posts on some of my favorite foodie sites. One for chocolate cherry muffins caught my eye. This morning I decided to bake those muffins. But do you think I could find the original post? Why, oh why didn't I bookmark it? I should know better, I'm not going to remember who posted it...there are too many lovely recipe sites out there. So I started to search. Yes, I went through each blog site and typed in the word cherry to search. After about 10 blogs I found it. It was at Joy in My Kitchen. The recipe can be found here.
The muffins turned out quite nicely. I did omit the chocolate chips as I had used up what I had earlier this week making chocolate chip cookies. My son really liked them too.
I thought smoothies would make this into a more complete breakfast. They are so great and so easy. This version had:

1/2 container of vanilla yogurt (650 g size, PC provantage brand)
1/4 cup skim milk
2 generous cups of frozen mixed berries
2 ripe bananas, cut into chunks

Everything goes into the blender and blend until smooth. I did have to stop a couple of times to push the fruit down, but it all worked and tasted so delicious.
The funny thing was my youngest who watched me make the smoothies. He saw me put the banana in and said, 'no like banana Mama', but he was the first one to ask for seconds of the drink :o)

Would the real Neiman Marcus Cookie please stand up?

As I was purusing through my favorite foodie sites tonight one post in particular caught my eye. Barbara Bakes posted the $250 Neiman Marcus Cookie recipe. Interesting! I had read this story more than once in my email, but never made the recipe myself. The cookies look delicious.
Then I got to thinking, trying to remember exactly how the story went. I went to my favorite 'is it real' site truthorfiction.com to check it out. I found the story - I also found out that the story is fiction!
Here's the story as it appears in the emails:

A TRUE "GET EVEN STORY " MUST READ The following is a story of a lady who decided to get even with a company that ripped her off. I thought it was an interesting way for one to get even and illustrates the power of people when empowered with the Internet. Enjoy...Not A Joke

My daughter & I had just finished a salad at Neiman-Marcus Cafe in Dallas & decided to have a small dessert. Because both of us are such cookie lovers, we decided to try the "Neiman-Marcus cookie". It was so excellent that I asked if they would give me the recipe and the waitress said with a small frown, "I'm afraid not, but you can buy the recipe". Well, I asked how much, and she responded. "Only two fifty, it's a great deal!" I agreed, just add it to my tab, I told her.

Thirty days later, I received my VISA statement from Neiman-Marcus andit was $285.00. I looked again and I remembered I had only spent $9.95 for two salads and about $20.00 for a scarf. As I glanced at the bottom of the statement, it said, "Cookie Recipe - $250.00". That's outrageous!

I called Neiman's Accounting Dept. and told them the waitress said it was "two-fifty," which clearly does not mean "two hundred and fifty dollars by any *POSSIBLE* interpretation of the phrase! Neiman-Marcus refused to budge.

They would not refund my money, because according to them, "What the waitress told you is not our problem. You have already seen the recipe. We absolutely will not refund your money at this point."

I explained to her the criminal statutes which govern fraud in Texas. I threatened to refer them to the Better Business Bureau and the State's
Attorney General for engaging in fraud. I was basically told, "Do what you want, it doesn't matter, and we're not refunding!! your money."

I waited, thinking of how I could get even, or even try and get any of my money back. I just said, "Okay, you folks got my $250.00, and now I'm going to have $25,000.00 worth of fun." I told her that I was going to see to it that every Cookie lover in the United States with an e-mail account has a $250.00 cookie recipe from Neiman-Marcus... for free. She replied, "I wish you wouldn't do this." I said, "Well, you should have thought of that before you ripped me off," and slammed down the phone on her.

So here it is!!! Please, please, please pass it on to everyone you can
possibly think of. I paid $250 for this... I don't want Neiman-Marcus to *ever* get another penny off of this recipe....
********************************
THE NEIMAN MARCUS
COOKIE (Recipe may be halved):
2 cups butter
4 cups flour
2 tsp. baking soda
2 cups sugar
5 cups blended oatmeal (measure oatmeal and blend in a blender to a fine
powder.)
24 oz. chocolate chips
2 cups brown sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 - 8 oz. Hershey Bar (grated)
4 eggs
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. vanilla
3 cups chopped nuts (your choice, but we liked pecans best)
***************************************************
Cream the butter and both sugars.
Add eggs and vanilla; mix together with flour, oatmeal, salt, baking
powder, and soda.
Add chocolate chips, Hershey Bar and nuts. Roll into balls and place two
inches apart on a
cookie sheet.
Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees.
Makes 112 cookies.
**************************************************
Have fun!!! This is not a joke-this is a true story. Ride free, citizens!
PLEASE PASS THIS TO EVERY ONE YOU KNOW!

Great story, but not true. (Cookie is still worth making though).

Truth or Fiction posted this find: This is one of the classic urban legends. It has circulated for decades and various versions have named different restaurants and hotels, although one of the most common versions says it happened at Neiman-Marcus.

Hmmm....very interesting. So I googled Neiman Marcus and they have addressed it on their site. Their post reads like this: An urban myth is a modern folk tale, its origins unknown, its believability enhanced simply by the frequency with which it is repeated. Our signature chocolate chip cookie is the subject of one such myth. If you haven't heard the story, we won't perpetuate it here. If you have, the recipe below should serve to refute it. Copy it, print it out, pass it along to friends and family. It's a terrific recipe. And it's absolutely free.

Oddly enough (or maybe not) their cookie recipe is completely different than the one in the email version. Here it is:

Ingredients

# 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
# 1 cup light brown sugar
# 3 tablespoons granulated sugar
# 1 large egg
# 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
# 1-3/4 cups all purpose flour
# 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
# 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
# 1/2 teaspoon salt
# 1-1/2 teaspoons instant espresso coffee powder
# 1-1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips



Directions

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Cream the butter with the sugars using an electric mixer on medium speed until fluffy (approximately 30 seconds)

2. Beat in the egg and the vanilla extract for another 30 seconds.

3. In a mixing bowl, sift together the dry ingredients and beat into the butter mixture at low speed for about 15 seconds. Stir in the espresso coffee powder and chocolate chips.

4. Using a 1 ounce scoop or a 2 tablespoon measure, drop cookie dough onto a greased cookie sheet about 3 inches apart. Gently press down on the dough with the back of a spoon to spread out into a 2 inch circle. Bake for about 20 minutes or until nicely browned around the edges. Bake a little longer for a crispier cookie.

Yield: 2 dozen cookies

So, I thought I have all these ingredients in the house, why not make this version and share. So really we get 2 great cookie recipes out of all this hoopla. Both very yummy!

You can find more Neiman Marcus restaurant recipes free here.
To find a recipe just choose a store and from there you can find recipe links.
The original cookie recipe is found here