Chocolate Chip Pancakes w/ Cherry Compote!

Hi everyone!  Ok, so I know that I mentioned in my last post that this post would be about nachos with a twist, but, you're just going to have to wait for that post.  It took me two tries to make them properly and on the second try I forgot to take a picture!  We were really anxious to eat, and it lasted for about two seconds.  I think if I had asked everyone to wait an extra second I would have lost a limb, lol.  I also need my brother's chili to really make it right, so you may have to wait 3 weeks for this dish.  ;-)

Buuuuut, you don't have to wait three weeks for something tasty!  This morning (ok, so it was closer to this afternoon, but who is keeping track?) I decided that I wanted to try making chocolate chip pancakes with a cherry compote. From Wikipedia, "compote is a dessert originating from 17th century England made of whole or pieces of fruit in sugar syrup. Whole fruits are immersed in water and with sugar and spices added to the dish, over gentle heat."  I think the most difficult part of preparing the cherry compote was pitting the cherries.  We don't have a fancy kitchen tool to help me pit the cherries, sooo I got to get right into it with my knife and fingers.  When I was done my left hand looked like it had been through a battle, lol.

Pitting cherries:

Bowl o' cherries:

I yoinked the compote recipe from this recipe.  

• 4  cups  pitted sweet cherries (about 1 1/2 pounds)
• 1/4  cup  granulated sugar
• 2  tablespoons  water
• 2  teaspoons  cornstarch
• 1/4  teaspoon  almond extract

You put everything (except the almond extract) together in a pot over medium heat, stirring constantly.  The recipe says to cook for 1 minute then remove from heat but I let it cook for a bit longer so it got a bit more syrupy.  The only thing I changed was the 1/4 teaspoon of almond extract.  We don't have that on hand, so I used vanilla extract and that worked out just fine.  (It smelled so good when I poured it in at the end, mmmm.)  Also, I didn't measure the cherries prior to cutting them, so I think I ended up with more cherries than necessary.  It still turned out tasty, so yay!

Right off the stove:

I didn't do anything fancy with the pancakes.  I just followed the recipe on the back of the Bisquick box and threw some chocolate chips onto them after they were poured on the skillet.  The cherries tasted great on plain pancakes as well as chocolate chip ones!  (Yep, I was a fatty and had a whoooole bunch of pancakes.  It was so worth the stomach ache, lol!)

Plated and delicious!

Overall, this was a really easy and tasty way to jazz up pancakes!


~Mich

Help my Uncle's band!

Hi everyone!  I know it's been a bit long since my last post.  I promise that I'll have a new fun filled post for you this weekend!  (Nachos with a twist!)  In the meantime though, please help my Uncle's band win a chance to open for KISS!

They are called Laughing Sky!  To vote for them, choose "Hershey, PA" from the list of tour sites!  Find their name (currently they're in 10th place) and click "Demand it!"  You'll have to answer a few quick questions: zip code, year of birth, gender, and e-mail and that will be your vote for them!

http://is.gd/coNwO

Thanks everyone!!



~Mich

Pseudo-Home Made Pizza!

I made pizza the other night for dinner and it only took me about a half hour total to get ready and cook!  It was also delicious.  ;-)  I didn't attempt to make my Mom's homemade pizza because that would have taken me all day, lol.  It wasn't your regular run of the mill frozen pizza either, hence it was only pseudo-home made.  ;-)  This dish was my Mom's idea.  So thanks Mom for a delicious dinner idea!

Ingredients:
Boboli pizza crusts (I made two mini 8 inch ones)
Grated mozzarella cheese
Artichoke hearts
Sun dried tomatoes
1/2 can of olives
Ricotta cheese

I took a little bit of olive oil, and oil from the jar of sun dried tomatoes and spread it on the top of each pizza crust.  Then I covered it with mozzarella cheese.  I chopped up the artichoke hearts and the sun dried tomatoes into small pieces and topped the pizza with those.  You don't have to chop them up, but I did because I hate it when you take a bite out of pizza covered in toppings and you end up with a piece of topping that just kind of falls off the pizza when you're attempting to bite through it.  Maybe it just happens to me because I'm weird, lol.

Where was I?  Oh, I cut olives in half and spread about a handful of them per pizza as well.  Last, I put dollops (is that a proper term?) of ricotta cheese around the pizzas to finish them off.  Then I popped the completed pizzas into the oven for about 12 minutes and you have tasty, cheezy pizza to eat!

All in all it took me almost 20 minutes to prepare everything and then another 12 for cooking.  I'm a little slow when I work so if any of you decide to try this it may not take as long to prepare.  :-)

Picture time!!

The completed pre-oven pizza:


A close up:


The cleanup wasn't too bad.  Here is the scene of the crime:


Finally done and out of the oven!!


Close up of the deliciousness:


Plated and being enjoyed!


I obviously didn't like it.


Word to the wise though... stop eating when you're full.  I know, you're thinking "Well duh Michelle, of course I'll stop eating when I'm full."  I ate half the pizza and thought "Hm, I guess I could save the rest of this for lunch, but meh, let me have one more piece."  Then there was one lonely piece left and I thought "Well, I can't just take one piece to work... so I'll just finish it now."  I had to wait to post this blog because I couldn't look at these pictures without feeling a little ill.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

Anyway!  This really was a very easy and tasty meal to make and it didn't cost an arm and a leg.  Chances are that you already have your favorite toppings tucked away in your pantry somewhere!  You can top it with whatever you want and don't need to worry about making the dough or letting it cook long enough because you're basically sticking it in the oven to make everything warm and a little crispy.

I highly recommend this to anyone with a bit of interest in preparing a relatively quick pizza meal (without all the grease) for themselves.  :-D

~Mich

Batman sighting!

I was sitting at the bus stop on 1st and Washington street last Thursday and who do I see?  Batman.

(Click the picture for the uncropped version.)

Yep.  What you see there is a man, in a batman costume complete with foam muscles, riding around Hoboken on a "batcycle."  This batcycle is all decked out with the Batman emblem, and even includes a cardboard monitor and keyboard on the back and side of the bike.  The next time I see him I will try to get a better picture so you can see the bike too.  Believe it or not, this is actually the third time I have seen him riding around town, and this was his second pass of 1st street.  He also has a bike bell (or should I say bat-bell?) that he rings while riding... yeah, because he needs the bell to draw attention to himself, lol.

To my dismay, it was not Christian Bale, George Clooney, Val Kilmer, Michael Keaton or Adam West.  Damn.

~Mich

Cheese stuffed cheeseburger for Mother's Day!

Today, I made the ULTIMATE cheeseburger.  Ok, so maybe it wasn't the ultimate cheeseburger (I have a long way to go before I'm really good at burger making), but it was pretty tasty for a first attempt!  The family and I were watching The Food Network last night and cheeseburgers seemed to be the theme for about an hour.  So, Mom decided that she wanted cheeseburgers for Mother's Day, and cheeseburgers we provided!

Dad and I went out this morning and bought ground beef, I made the patties, stuffed them with white American cheese, threw them on the grill and ta-da!  Cheeseburgers!  The gooey cheese on the inside was perfectly melted, though next time I think I'm going to cook the burgers a little longer. 

Unfortunately, I completely forgot to take a picture of the burgers, so I'll just have to make them again!  I promise pictures next time.  :-)  All in all a pretty successful attempt at making burgers!  Hooray!

~Mich

Published Order or Chronological Order?

I personally prefer to read books in the order that they were published, not the order that the publisher decides to tack onto the book series after it has been out for 30+ years.  I am speaking of The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis.  I first read them when I was about 10 years old.  My father had the books in a box set (1970-something printing of them, I forgot the exact date) and they are numbered in the order of publication.  If you go out now to buy a box set, or better yet, one of those nifty huge compilation books with all 7 novels contained in one big brick of a book, you will see that the order of the books has mysteriously changed.  "Why?" you ask.  Because the books were not written in chronological order.  So, anyone who decides to read these books now, and who wouldn't necessarily know any better, will unknowingly read the books in whatever order that is put in front of them.  Which makes perfect sense.

The order I read them: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, The Horse and His Boy, The Magicians Nephew, The Last Battle.

The order you will now find them in: The Magicians Nephew, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, The Horse and His Boy, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, The Last Battle.

In all honesty, I truly enjoyed reading the books in the original published order better, I think, than I would have if I had read them in chronological order.  Each book was incredibly entertaining alone, but reading them and realizing as I read where each book fit into the timeline of Narnia made them even more exciting!  It was like finding a lost treasure!  You start out with The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and get sucked in by the story and then 6 books later you read about how it all came to exist.  The main characters that you knew and loved from the first book are slowly removed from your focus so you are able to see the "big picture."  It is very exciting!

I want anyone who decides to pick up The Chronicles of Narnia to be able to enjoy them the way I did.  Reading them in the order that I did allowed me to explore and discover the world and the characters because I had to think about what I was reading and relate it all together, rather than just eating up what the author was writing.  Does that make sense?

This makes me think of Anne McCaffrey.  She is another author whose books intertwine characters and timeslines.  She writes wonderful books if you're into fantasy/dragons/scifi stuff.  (The scifi aspect of her books doesn't come around until some of the later ones, but it's there none the less.)  I had to read one of her books as part of a summer reading list in high school.  At first I wasn't really impressed.  I found it difficult to get into the story, but to be honest with you, it having been a summer reading book, may have had a bit to do with it.  I have always loved reading, but sometimes those summer reading books were just awful.

Anyway, once I was hooked I couldn't get enough.  I just kept reading her books.  (No, I have not read them publication order.  I started reading these before I really had an opinion about it.)  I loved the characters (Masterharper Robinton is one of my favorites) and I wanted to keep reading more about this civilization on the planet Pern.  From what I can tell, anything that she wrote in the Pern series is all somehow related, but not in the chronological way you usually see in book series.  She writes small series within the Pern universe and they take place all over the timeline.  I really enjoy how she writes the same scene from different perspectives and uses that scene to link multiple series together.  It's very cool, and is fun to figure out while you're reading.

Sooo, while I generally prefer to read things in the order they were originally published, I guess that it doesn't really matter what order you read things in, as long as you enjoy what you're reading!  What do you think?  Would you rather read something in the published order or the chronological order?

~Mich

Celery Seed Encrusted Salmon = Thumbs Up!

Aloha everyone!  I just wanted to write a quick post about this delicious meal that I ate last night at Mr. Shrimp in Belmar, NJ.  It was celery seed encrusted salmon over shrimp risotto covered in a beet and something else (I can't exactly remember what) cream sauce.  I looked at the menu on their site for the full description, but sadly I wasn't able to find it because the dish was one of their specials for the day.

Oh man, was it delicious!  My first bite of the salmon was a little odd.  I honestly wasn't expecting to taste the celery so strongly, but it was definitely good.  You were left with a very nice celery aftertaste with each bite.  The sauce over top of it was also very tasty.  I'm a huge fan of cream sauces and whatever pureed vegetable they used (in addition to the beat puree) worked really well with the salmon and the risotto.  The risotto was nice and creamy and the shrimp mixed in there was like a little surprise.  The meal was a lot larger than I expected.  By the time I had finished the salmon I was pretty full.  Mom had to help me finish the risotto!

Here's a picture of the dish.  Sorry it's a little bit blurry.  The next time I eat something delicious I'll be sure to take a better picture!

~Mich