Building a Better Sauce
I have learned much about cooking in the past month. I have read more and more cookbooks that deal with how to cook not just books of recipes. One of my culinary desires was to to create my own barbecue sauce. So after doing some reading I set out to make some sauce last Saturday.
It started with getting some bottles to hold my sauce, so I went and picked up three squeeze bottles. Then I came home and started mixing. My first sauce had I was looking for a good rich flavor, not too, not too sweet. It ended with a slightly overpowering cumin flavor, and a little more spicy than I wanted but had some good flavor. I had copied down the ingredients so I can replicate the sauce but without the cumin.
Then came sauce two, this one was my sweet sauce. Sweetened with molasses, brown sugar, honey, and maple syrup. I will probably make a few tweaks on it during the next try, but it was really good.
The third and final sauce was my spicy sauce, this was a vinegar and molasses based sauce with a decent kick, I wanted it a tad spicier but I tasted it when I was reducing it a little, and the heat (temperature) made the flavor hotter (flavor) than it was after it was chilled, so again I have some tweaks to make.
Then I had two friends over to try my sauces that evening, it was a byom BBQ so we had steaks and some burgers. Both of them like the flavors of them but I'm not quite sold on them yet, so I will continue to tweak, but I'm glad they enjoyed it. Let me know if you want to try my sauces, let me know, I'll see what I can do.
A Return of the Blog (Sort of)
One of my reasons that I stopped blogging is that I wanted to start designing website. Well the site I had been working on for the last 8 months is almost done which is giving me some time to start working in my own site. So this has been 2 hours of design sorry you can't comment quite yet. still working on all that stuff.
Summer school
So 4 days into summer school. It's pretty fun I have 9 second and third grade students that i'm instructing in math and reading and some language as well. I only work from eight to non so it's a really quick and enjoyable day. The kids are fun and I'm learning how to balance struggling students with more brilliant ones. Especially becuase I have two classes together.
Renae And I are settling into our new place Tuesday we got our bookshelves set up and yesterday and today we are working on finishing cleaning our old place so I'm in for a busy afternoon. We I got to get back to the playground. I'm loving my iPhone.
-hold nothing back
Famous Dave’s Field Trip… and more
I know the what more important is the "and more" so I'll start there. About 8:45 this morning I was told I needed to call my father at home. In my mind I immediately knew what I was going to be told. My Grandmother was just recently diagnosed with Lung Cancer and had been under some chemo which helped. About a month ago her doctors told that there wasn't much more they could do, and gave her about a year. My parent had seen them on Saturday; they enjoyed the time. So I called my father and my dad told me that she had passed away last night in her sleep. They think the cause of death was a heart attack, however since she was a sleep the hospice nurse said she probably didn't feel a thing. I went and found Renae and relay the news, and then talked with Pastor Davidson who was very comforting.
This afternoon, I had planned to take my yearbook class to Famous Dave's in celebration of finishing the yearbook. None of my five students had ever been so we were in for a treat. The food was GREAT! the student's loved it. I had the 2 meat combo with the beef brisket and a hot sausage link, with the sides of potato wedges and mashed potatoes, along with the cornbread and corn that always come with it. Here is some pics. Not going to do a restaurant review here, sorry.
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- Famous Dave’s Long Beach
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- Menu
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- Decor
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- Renae’s Brisket Sandwich
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- My Two Meat Combo
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- Tim’s brisket
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- Bryant and Tim’s Brisket
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- David’s Devil Spit Burger
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- Thalia’s ribs and chicken combo
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- Pokey’s Hot Wings
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- Enjoying the ribs…
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- David eyeing his burger.
-hold nothing back
-praise God because He's active
Entirely Way Too Long
It has been a long time since the last time I blogged, especially since I said I was going to blog the day after my previous post. I guess I should make promises I cannot keep. I will admit I have been working on redoing Bethel's website. Although the final version still maybe upwards of a month away.
Iron Chef was fun. The secret ingredient was cocoa powder. The game plan ended up to make stuff shell noodles with a spinach, cream cheese, ricotta cheese, and cocoa powder for the main dish. It turn out pretty descent. Our appetizer was cocoa biscuits, nasty things... we didn't have baking powder and the girl helping out substituted it with baking soda nasty nasty nasty. For dessert we picked a winner going with a chocolate pizza... Topped with chocolate cream cheese, and chocolate chips and peanut butter chips, drizzled with chocolate. My group got second place.... oh well. if it weren't for the nastybiscuits...
Everything else is going well. I've been able to keep up with the giants more this year than previous years, I have been listening to games on the radio which in great. they are doingok, 14-13 today. Second place in their division.... That means everyone else in the division with the exception of the blue team is doing horrible. The giants are 6.0 games back and have a 3 games series in LA this weekend... BEAT LA!!! BEAT LA!!!! Sweep the series and we'll be only 3 games back. Which brings up an interesting topic. Manny... that's rightManny Ramirez suspended for 50 games for taking a banded substance. Now is the time for any team in the NL West to capitalize on the blue team losing their star player. LET'S GO GIANTS!!!!! LET'S GO GIANTS!!!!!
To Jay, This next Tuesday afternoon I'm heading with my yearbook class to Famous Dave's Restaurant in Long Beach. Totally looking forward to it.
To Everyone: Don't forget to wish your mom a "Happy Mother's Day" this Sunday!
-hold nothing back
here are some iron chef activity pics
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- Simeon mixing the shell’s filling
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- discussing the buscuit recipe
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- some waiting time
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- stuffed shells prior to the sauce
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- with the sauce
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- anna
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- drizzling the chocolate sauce on the pizza
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- nasty nasty buscuits
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- using a double boiler method to melt our own choclate
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- baked stuffed shells
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- shells topped with cheese and basil
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- other team’s strawberries
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- other team’s pudding thingy
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- other team’s chocolate breaded chicken
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- other team’s mini croissant
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- other team’s crepes
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- matt with the other team’s pudding thingy
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- other team’s rice dusted with cocoa powder and cinnamon
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- evaluation form for the judging
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- other team’s choclate steak
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- other team’s choclate drink
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- the table with the creations
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- everyone
Spring Festival and Iron Chef
Last night was Bethel Baptist School's Spring Festival 2009. It was a blast. We had a 30 ft. inflatable slide, a jump house, a splash zone, can knock down, ping pong ball toss, dunk tank, and a ton of food. I was asked to volunteer for the dunk tank, so why not... just 15 minutes... It was pretty fun. I had told my class all week to be saving up there money to get me wet. At least 8 of my students tried to dunk my and several went 4 and 5 times if not more. I did the first 15 minutes of the festival just to get it done with; but I had a blast. Once I was out of the water I was helping supervise the dunk tank. About 2 hours later there was an empty block so I jumped in it again for another 15 minutes. My students all came running back to dunk me. This time I didn't get dunked for like the first 10 minutes. still had fun though. One seventh or eight grader who had been trying to get people dunked all day, got up to try and get me in. I told him if he missed with all his throws I would jump in... so I had to jump in. after his third miss. By the end of the day, I was tired and exhausted. We went home; I forced myself to stay awake until the Giants had finished their games, beating the D-backs 5-1. And then Sleep.
Today is an event I have been looking forward to for nearly two months. Are youth group is having a "Iron Chef" style of event. We'll meet at the church around noon. Pastor Matt will let us know the secret ingredient, and then we have about 3 hours to go shopping, go to our designated kitchen and make 4 courses which each contain the secrete ingredient. After the time is up we meet back at the church and have potluck with the prepared dishes. Each dish is judged by everyone and the group with the most points wins. I will probably write tomorrow to let you all know how it went. Complete with picture I hope.
- hold nothing back
Three 3.0+ Earthquakes
Probably my first memory as a kids was an earthquake. The Loma Prieta Earthquake 10/17/1989, I was not even 4 years old yet. My mom was cooking dinner, my Dad was doing some work in a library, and my older sister and I were probably playing. And it shook hard. Nothing broke in our house but there was a lot of damage throughout the Bay Area. Earthquake have always facinated me. I think it's quite the sensation to fell the ground quaking beneath you.
Tonight there were three earthquakes magnitude 3.0, 3.8 and 4.0 just some 20 miles from our apartment. I felt the 3.8 and the 4.0 for sure; the 3.0 followed the 4.0 by only a minute so I may have felt that one too. It got me excited and I thought I should share with all of you.
Spring Break
So this week has been spring break. A chance to just relax before the last 8 weeks of school, yes it's coming to an end quickly. Monday Renae and I picked her brother Tim up from the airport, and then hung out with her parents for the evening and had coffee with ruth a little bit later that evening. Tuesday morning I got up and went in to Bethel to work on the new youth ministry room. I was going to hang a shelf but things weren't going quite right so after a few hours of frustration I went home and spent some time with Renae. Tuesday night Renae and I spent back at Bethel doing some work on the computer and helping Spencer work on his weddding invitations. Wednesday we ran errands and prepared for the Beach Blast that the youth group was having. Some plans changed we still had the activity but becuase it was so cold and windy we didn't stay the whole time. This morning I went back to Bethel and sucessfully finished hanging the shelf and set of speakers. This evening holds a quiet evening at home with my beautiful loving wife; I'm going to cook her dinner too. Tomorrow evening I have a youth leaders meeting, that i'm excited about. I'm not sure what I'll do tomorrow morning, we'll see.
On a side note this is post number 100. My first post, published on March 7, 2007. With is exactly 770 days ago. That was slightly before I purchased the domain. I have averaged a post about every week. that's not to bad. I'll have to try a bit harder to fill you in on some more stuff, we'll see. Maybe I'll put some more recipes up... hmm....
Have a great day.
hold nothing back.
Strawberry Chocolate Pizza
So this last Saturday Renae and I were going to a get together with several other young married couples from our church. It was going to be a potluck were everyone brought a separate course of the meal. I was given the responsibility of bringing the dessert. This is quite the challenge, I make some pretty good desserts if I can say so myself, but there was an expectation given that I was going to bring something amazing. So I put my thinking cap on and the dessert pizza crossed my mind. I've never made a dessert pizza before and so I went in search of a few recipes. Many of them looked the same, some added different things or another. I finally found a simple recipe that had what looked like interesting flavors from Diana's Desserts: a Strawberry Dessert Pizza. Here is her recipe:
For Crust:
1/2 pound (2 sticks/1 cup/8 oz/226 g) unsalted butter
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flourFor Topping:
8 oz. package cream cheese
1/4 cup strawberry puree (about 4 fresh very large strawberries pureed in a blender)
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
3 pints fresh strawberries (medium to large size strawberries)
Basically what you do is cream the butter with the sugar, (works best if the butter is already at room temperature). Then blend in the other ingredient saving the flour until last, to make the crust; make sure the batter is smooth. Refrigerate for about 20 minutes to let the batter thicken. Place the batter on a greased cookie sheet or pizza pan. Get your hands dirty and make it looks like a pizza crust. Not super thick but not cracker thin either. Place it in a pre-heated oven at 350 F for about 20 minutes the crust should be golden brownish. Now you have made a giant sugar cookie for the pizza crust.
Now the filling,put the cream cheese, pureed strawberries, sugar and honey and blend until smooth. Don't spread it on the crust until that has had time to cool off. Slice the strawberries to get them ready as well. Once the crust has cooled spread the filling all over the crust (evenly please), then cover with the sliced strawberries. Now this is were I veered from the reciped
I rarely follow the recipe to the "t". In fact improvisation in cooking like my favorite pasttime. I wanted some chocolate on my strawberry pizza so I found a recipe for a chocolate glaze in one of my at home cook books. It wanted 4 oz. of melted chocolate (melted with 3 tbls of butter), 1 1/2 cup of powdered sugar, and 2 tbls of hot water. Mixed until drizzling consistency. (If necessary add a little bit more hot water. (do this right before you are ready to use it other wise it will harden and not drizzle correctly).
So I had the pizza all ready to go, snapped a picture and took it to the get together. We had salad, bread, enchilada, and lasagna. all of which were amazingly delicious. After dinner we had a bible study and then it was time for the dessert. There were 10 people there and everyone enjoyed it, There was none left over for me to take home even. It tasted delicious. The crust was a little on the hard side as we cut it but we really didn't notice that once we started to eat it. It was an an awesome recipe, that I found; and I considering trying other stuff with it too.
Ooops I crashed my site
ok this is is a temporary flash back to an old theme while i fix the mistake I made on my other theme. did i mention i don't really like this theme so i hope it won't stay this way for long.
sorry