Five for Friday: Five Pages You Should Read

1.) Common Kitchen Myths

Still heating your pan before adding the oil? Still afraid to salt that pork chop before frying it? This page settles many misconceptions about how things ought to be done in the kitchen.

2.) 12 Superfoods You Need To Be Eating

Finally, verifiable support for my avocado addiction!

3.) Why You Should Read The Numbers On Your Fruit Stickers!

Come on, you knew there had to be a super-secret code. Embrace 9, reject 8!

4.) Eat This, Not That.

Wouldn't it be great to live in a world where one never had to eat at a KFC or a Carl's Junior? But we gotta live in this world. This website can help with making better choices.

5.) How Much Coffee Will Kill You?

I'm a goner after 273.00 cans of Slim-Fast Cappuccino Delight Shake.

Aztec Brownies

I love sweet and spicy together and I love the combo of chocolate and cinnamon. These brownies fulfill all of those cravings.

If you don't like spicy foods, feel free to omit the cayenne. If you love, love, love spicy sweets, add an extra teaspoon. One teaspoon is enough to create a little bit of heat that builds as you eat but it's not so spicy that it becomes the focal point (or keeps you from eating more than is good for you, darn it.)

Ingredients

8 ounces of good-quality chocolate, chopped (try it with milk chocolate, try it with dark. Both are different and both are good.)
2 sticks of butter
4 eggs
1 1/2 cup of sugar (I use evaporated cane juice)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup flour (I use whole wheat)
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt

How To

Grease a brownie pan and preheat oven to 375 degrees. Begin by beating together the eggs, sugar, cocoa, cinnamon, cayenne and salt for about 5 minutes.

Melt the butter slowly over low heat. Once the butter is completely liquidated, pour over the chopped chocolate to melt.

Stir the chocolate and butter together. This is an easy way to both melt the chocolate and cool the butter.

Add the chocolate mixture to the egg mixture slowly, mixing very well. Lastly, add the flour and baking powder, mixing until just combined. Spread in your brownie pan:

Bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Look at the nice crackly top crust on this bad-boy:

You can either leave well enough alone, or you can sprinkle the top with additional chocolate while the brownies are hot.

Let the heat of the brownies melt the chocolate, then spread across the top with the back of a spoon. Num.

One last brownie beauty shot:

Patrick needs to take these to work tomorrow. I'm not to be trusted alone with them in the house!

Mother's Day Brunch Menu

Mother's Day is this Sunday. You better buy a card now-- all the good ones will be gone and you'll be left with something like this:

I don't know about you, but there are two days I really don't want to go out to eat-- Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. It's not that I don't want to celebrate both those days, but being in an over-stuffed restaurant surrounded by people at other tables whose faces hold all the joy of folks having foot surgery just under the table... it's not my idea of a good time.

So we're having a Mother's Day Brunch at our place. My parents are coming, Patrick's parents are coming and my grandmother is coming too. Here's the menu so far:

Asparagus Galette
Deviled Eggs
Potato Salad with Lots of Dill

Baby-Back Ribs
Grilled Shrimp
Brownies
Little Lemon Tarts
Prosecco & Bloody Marys

We're still open to suggestions and will flip some things around but this seems like a nice, spring-time menu.

Eating Out: Dish

So, I like food. I like to eat. And on Saturday, I had to eat crow like nobody's business.

A good friend of ours had her wedding on Saturday in La Canada. I wrote on "the family calendar" that the wedding started at two. Anticipating glasses of champagne, we were ultra-responsible and took a cab up to the La Canada Country Club. Yeah, the wedding didn't start until six. Six. Six. Poor Patrick. I still feel terrible about that screw up. Sorry, baby.

We had four hours to kill so we took another cab back down the hill and walked along Foothill Boulevard, looking for a place to have a drink. We originally thought of Taylor's but they are seriously under construction. And thank goodness! Taylor's is fab, don't get me wrong, but we would have never found Dish.
How cute is this place? This is the restaurant side (can you tell it was between lunch and dinner? It got a lot busier around 5 when we were leaving) but we sat on the bar side.

Because it was the Kentucky Derby, we were treated to the Dish Mint Julip (Maker's Mark, mmm...) We ordered sweet potato fries and they were perfect-- hot and crisp without being soggy or sticky like sweet potato fries can be.

The bartender urged us to have a red velvet cupcake and, oh, I don't like red velvet cupcakes but look what we did to this one:

And then three-and-a-half seconds later:


Want one? You can either go to Dish (and you should) or you can watch how to make them here:

We can't wait to go back for a full meal!

Five for Friday: Five Cooking Tools I Want

It's my birthday this month! I'm not one of those people who yawn and act bored by their birthday coming around. That's not to say I don't try to, but I stink at it. I always like my birthday-- it's a day where I see my favorite people and eat my favorite things and open pressies. What's not to like?

1. A Muddler

I'm pretty strict with myself about new tools I take into my kitchen. Our wedding stocked our utensil drawers to the brim and most of our four-square-feet of counter are occupied by appliances so anything new that comes into the kitchen has to be something that there is a demonstrated need for. I've learned that buying a tool will not make me do whatever it is that the tool does (I know, shocking!) So, buying a pasta maker will not make me make pasta. It's better to monkey around with pasta dough and a rolling pin to see if it's something worth pursuing than to spend a couple hundred bucks on a big machine that will just live as a testament to my own lack of follow through.

I've been smashing mint leaves with the back on a wooden spoon for months now. Time for a muddler!

2. The OXO Citrus Press

I broke my cheesy three-dollar plastic lemon sqeezer. Time to upgrade! I love pretty much every tool that OXO makes. They're sturdy but not heavy, comfortable in the hand without sacrificing function and they clean up easily.

3. An herb garden.

Nora, I'm lookin' at you for this one, good buddy. My thumbs are black but my heart is pure! Help me. I could fund a trip to the Build-A-Bear Workshop with the money I spend on mint, rosemary, basil and thyme every month.

4. A Le Creuset Square Skillet Grill

I look at this pan and imagine making steaks and burgers and paninnis and I also picture the weird pleasure I get from seasoning cast iron. But that doesn't seem like enough use to devote a whole pan to.

What do you think? Do you own one of these? How often do you use it and what do you use it for?

5. The Wilton Large Cupcake Pan

I feel giddy, honestly giddy, when I look at this pan and the magic it promises to create. It's a giant freakin' cupcake! Come on!

Roasted Cauliflower

I'm cheating again. I posted this recipe for the first time last year but it's worthy of a repost with pictures-- it's too yummy! And it makes a believer out of former cauliflower haters (like my husband.) Spicy and crunchy and savory and oh, so good!

Ingredients
1 medium or large head of cauliflower
1/3-1/2 cup olive oil (depends on the size of the cauliflower)
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
salt and pepper

How To
Mix the olive oil, red pepper, fresh ground black pepper (about a teaspoon) and garlic together. Wash the cauliflower and remove the florettes, cutting as much of the stems off as possible. Break the florettes up into bite-sized pieces and place in a bowl.

Drizzle with the olive oil mixture and sprinkle with salt, about a tablespoon.

Mix well. Let "marinate" for 20-30 minutes while preheating the oven to 400 degrees.

Spread the cauliflower over the bottom of a shallow baking pan and place in the oven.

Roast for 20-25 minutes, occasionally stirring in order to achieve even browning. Serve hot.

Here is is, served up with pork chops, mashed pots and homemade gravy:

Eating Out: Johnny Rebs'

On Monday, I was scheduled to have blood work done for my annual physical. So I did what any reasonable person would do and went for a gravy-laden breakfast at one of our favorite places: Johnny Rebs':

We go to the Bellflower location, though they have locations in Orange and Victorville. Johnny Rebs' has bad luck when it comes to their buildings. The screened-in porch above was slammed into by a drunk driver a few years ago and last year, their Long Beach location burned down (grand reopening is slated for May 16th.)

Maybe they can break this unlucky streak by opening a Pasadena location? Please? Really, I'm thinking of them and not myself here, oh no.

Now, I don't want anyone to get the idea that this is some weird California version of southern cooking. The only evidence that this place is on the west coast is the presence of a vegetarian omelette on the breakfast menu.

Their blonde ale is delicious and comes in one of the frostiest glasses you've ever seen-- it actually freezes the beer a little, making the most excellent beer slushy. Of course, it was 10 a.m. on this visit but that doesn't mean I didn't seriously consider it.

Patrick had the salty country ham (they will question you when you order it-- have you had this before? Do you know how salty it is?) a fluffy biscuit, a side of gravy, cheese grits, and scrambled eggs.

I had the chicken fried steak (crispy crunchy and tender), grits (check out that wad-o-butter. Paula Dean would be proud.), fluffy biscuit and eggs over medium. Heaven.

If you go for dinner, have some hushpuppies and sweet potato fries to start, then some of their ribs and pulled pork. They have a deep fried apple pie that I have never had the hubris to order, so let me know how it is if you do. The food is tremendously good, service friendly and absolutely worth the drive.