This Monday (June 14th) was a very special day - no, not because it was Flag Day, but because it was one of my best friends' birthdays!
Because Dan & I stayed in bed until 1pm with serious hangovers from celebrating Alyssa's birthday the night before (yes, we are still blaming it on Alyssa & Jess haha!), we knew the recipe Dan was going to make wasn't going to be a 4 hour one like the week before.
So, I searched through our recipe box for the easiest recipe possible and we found Grampie's New Year's Punch! Grampie is Dan's Great-Grandfather who Dan grew up living across the street from. He is such a wonderful man to sit down & talk to! Dan said we couldn't make it because it wasn't New Years, but when I asked him what he would like to cook instead, he gave in!
Because we were lazy bums all day, I had to rush to the grocery store to get the ingredients & we were STILL 1 hour late to Aly's bday (sorry!). We didn't have time to make the punch before hand so we grabbed all the ingredients & headed to the party.
Recipe for Grampie's New Year's Punch:
2 quarts 7-up or Sprite
1 quart Cranberry Juice
5th of Vodka
1/2 TBS Lime Juice
1 Lemon Peel
1 Orange Peel
Directions:
Put it all together in a LARGE container & have fun :)
****How'd it turn out?
DELICIOUS!
I'm sure if we had followed the recipe exactly it would have turned out even better, but because we forgot the recipe card, we didn't realize that it was just the lemon & orange peels, so we ended up cutting up the lemon & oranges & putting them in there. We also used blackberry flavored vodka, which gave it a little more flavor.
Lesson Learned:
1 - If you don't know how to make the recipe, bring the card with you OR have fun winging it :)
2 - Don't forget to put ice in it...it tastes much better cold.
3 - If you can make it before hand, soak the peels or fruit.
4 - If you decide to make a fun drink in front of your friends, they WILL convince you to put more alcohol in the drink (and if they don't convince you, they will sneak it in anyway!)
5 - Drink this drink sllllloooooowwwwwllllly ;)
6 - Who knew you could learn so much from making punch???
PS - This Friday (June 18th) I will be making MY first recipe for the summer since it's my first Friday off. I closed my eyes & chose the 4th recipe I randomly pulled out - Chris' Green Chili Burros! I am a little scared because the recipe looks hard, stay tuned to see how it comes out!
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Family Recipe Summer Project!
Last Monday, (June 7th) Dan got a craving for one of his favorite dinners that his family would make quite often - Boiled Dinner - Yum!
Dan hadn't made boiled dinner in quite while so he looked for the recipe in our "Family Recipe Box" that we use from time to time. As he was searching through the recipes, he would read random ones off - Christmas Breakfast, Grampie's Punch, Nana Jean's Ham Casserole.
Each time he read a different recipe off, we talked about the memories we had for that specific recipe. Like for Nana Jean's Ham Casserole - oh man, I told him how delicious it was. He said it didn't sound good to him. I told him I would make it one day & prove to him how fabulous it was. He laughed & said I never would. (I guess this is the time where I should mention that Dan cooks every night, when he's not home to cook I usually make nachos, a sandwich, soup, or something that I don't have to cook).
Then that got me thinking, there were so many recipes that we had never tried in our family recipe box that held memories of eating with our families when we were young, living in Maine or Arizona. It's funny how one recipe can bring back a flood of memories as we discovered as read all the way to "Z" in our recipe box.
Towards the end of the alphabet, we talked about how we should start trying some of those recipes. Dan suggested since he has Mondays off he could make a dinner from our recipe box every Monday (he's the one who does all of the cooking). Not wanting to be outdone, I suggested that since I have every Friday off for the summer I could do one every Friday. Dan says I won't live up to my end of the deal...maybe I'll do every other Friday! And so our adventure officially begins with this first blog post!
Monday, June 7th - Boiled Dinner
Recipe for Boiled Dinner:
1 package of Corned Beef Hash
1 Turnip
6 Carrots
1 Cabbage Head
1 White Onion
8 Potatoes
You need a large, tall pot to make this. The ingredients have to go in the pot of boiling water in this specific order or the ingredients won't cook correctly (we've discovered this through trial & error!)
Directions:
Corned Beef in pot for about 2 hours, Turnip & Onion for about 20 minutes, Carrots for about 10 minutes, Potatoes & Cabbage last & cook until everything is done. It usually takes about three to four hours for everything to be done.
****How'd it turn out?
DELICIOUS! This is one of Dan's all time favorite dinners. I had never tasted it until I met him & it's now one of my favorite :)
Lesson Learned:
Boiled Dinner ROCKS!!!
Dan also made Brownies! (The reason why he made these is because the night before, we went grocery shopping & I grabbed some brownie mix from the baking aisle, I made them when we got home & after I had put them in the oven for some reason Dan looked at the expiration date on the oil I used - it had expired in 2009! So obviously the brownies tasted like crap & had to be thrown away). So, since I was still craving brownies he decided he would be nice & try brownies from scratch for the first time for me!
Recipe for Brownies:
2/3 Cup Cocoa
2/3 Cup shortening
2 Cups Sugar
4 Eggs
1 & 1/2 Cups of Flour
1 tsp. Baking Powder
1 tsp. salt
Directions for Brownies:
Cream cocoa & shortening together. Beat in sugar & eggs. Sift flour, baking powder & salt. Stir in after sifting. Bake for 350 degrees 30-50 minutes.
****How did the turn out?
Mmmm....well, let's see. First of all, I love dark chocolate & Dan decided since I love dark chocolate so much he would use dark chocolate cocoa instead of the regular cocoa. They didn't taste as sweet & I think it was because of the dark chocolate. Also, we couldn't find our sifter (we are moving -into our brand new house!!- at the end of the month so I've started packing things we don't use on an everyday basis) so didn't sift when the recipe told us to sift, we just kind of threw the other ingredients in. Also, they had more of a cake texture than brownie texture. So, they were OK, not wonderful. They tasted better after we put frosting on them. I definitely want to try this recipe again! Dan thinks they were fine haha!
Lesson Learned:
1 - Use the kind of cocoa a recipe calls for
2 - Sift when a recipe tells you to sift!
3 - Check expiration dates :)
Dan hadn't made boiled dinner in quite while so he looked for the recipe in our "Family Recipe Box" that we use from time to time. As he was searching through the recipes, he would read random ones off - Christmas Breakfast, Grampie's Punch, Nana Jean's Ham Casserole.
Each time he read a different recipe off, we talked about the memories we had for that specific recipe. Like for Nana Jean's Ham Casserole - oh man, I told him how delicious it was. He said it didn't sound good to him. I told him I would make it one day & prove to him how fabulous it was. He laughed & said I never would. (I guess this is the time where I should mention that Dan cooks every night, when he's not home to cook I usually make nachos, a sandwich, soup, or something that I don't have to cook).
Then that got me thinking, there were so many recipes that we had never tried in our family recipe box that held memories of eating with our families when we were young, living in Maine or Arizona. It's funny how one recipe can bring back a flood of memories as we discovered as read all the way to "Z" in our recipe box.
Towards the end of the alphabet, we talked about how we should start trying some of those recipes. Dan suggested since he has Mondays off he could make a dinner from our recipe box every Monday (he's the one who does all of the cooking). Not wanting to be outdone, I suggested that since I have every Friday off for the summer I could do one every Friday. Dan says I won't live up to my end of the deal...maybe I'll do every other Friday! And so our adventure officially begins with this first blog post!
Monday, June 7th - Boiled Dinner
Recipe for Boiled Dinner:
1 package of Corned Beef Hash
1 Turnip
6 Carrots
1 Cabbage Head
1 White Onion
8 Potatoes
You need a large, tall pot to make this. The ingredients have to go in the pot of boiling water in this specific order or the ingredients won't cook correctly (we've discovered this through trial & error!)
Directions:
Corned Beef in pot for about 2 hours, Turnip & Onion for about 20 minutes, Carrots for about 10 minutes, Potatoes & Cabbage last & cook until everything is done. It usually takes about three to four hours for everything to be done.
****How'd it turn out?
DELICIOUS! This is one of Dan's all time favorite dinners. I had never tasted it until I met him & it's now one of my favorite :)
Lesson Learned:
Boiled Dinner ROCKS!!!
Dan also made Brownies! (The reason why he made these is because the night before, we went grocery shopping & I grabbed some brownie mix from the baking aisle, I made them when we got home & after I had put them in the oven for some reason Dan looked at the expiration date on the oil I used - it had expired in 2009! So obviously the brownies tasted like crap & had to be thrown away). So, since I was still craving brownies he decided he would be nice & try brownies from scratch for the first time for me!
Recipe for Brownies:
2/3 Cup Cocoa
2/3 Cup shortening
2 Cups Sugar
4 Eggs
1 & 1/2 Cups of Flour
1 tsp. Baking Powder
1 tsp. salt
Directions for Brownies:
Cream cocoa & shortening together. Beat in sugar & eggs. Sift flour, baking powder & salt. Stir in after sifting. Bake for 350 degrees 30-50 minutes.
****How did the turn out?
Mmmm....well, let's see. First of all, I love dark chocolate & Dan decided since I love dark chocolate so much he would use dark chocolate cocoa instead of the regular cocoa. They didn't taste as sweet & I think it was because of the dark chocolate. Also, we couldn't find our sifter (we are moving -into our brand new house!!- at the end of the month so I've started packing things we don't use on an everyday basis) so didn't sift when the recipe told us to sift, we just kind of threw the other ingredients in. Also, they had more of a cake texture than brownie texture. So, they were OK, not wonderful. They tasted better after we put frosting on them. I definitely want to try this recipe again! Dan thinks they were fine haha!
Lesson Learned:
1 - Use the kind of cocoa a recipe calls for
2 - Sift when a recipe tells you to sift!
3 - Check expiration dates :)
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