Are You Watching The Cooking Channel?

Have you checked out the new Cooking Channel yet today? I have. I have to say that I'm already a fan. I mean, of course I would be, right?

So far I've watched Chinese Food Made Easy with Ching-He Huang and French Food at Home with Laura Calder. I'm planning on checking out at least one episode of Rachel Allen's Bake as well.

Much as I'd love to park it in front of the tv all day and watch cooking shows, I don't think it'd be all that productive of me, so I'll be checking it out throughout the day and have already bookmarked the blog and the official website (for recipes!).

Alrighty. Hope everyone is having a great Memorial Day. Get out there and cook something great and enjoy the nice weather we're having!

Boulder Popcorn

I'm a popcorn fanatic. I have been for quite some time now. In fact, my whole family is pretty much addicted to the stuff and each of us has our own favorite toppings and our own favorite way of making it. I'm going to do a few popcorn posts for you here with some of my favorite methods, but first I have to point you in the direction of a good kernel. No, a great kernel. No, the BEST kernel!

Forget the prebagged microwave stuff, Boulder Popcorn is the only popcorn I make these days. I discovered them at the Boulder Farmers' Market where they set up each Saturday (and possibly Wednesdays, but I haven't been) showing off their red, blue, and yellow kernels and handing out samples of the fluffy popped product. Yum! I buy the stuff three bags at a time. For a normal person this would probably last quite a while. I have to stock up two or three times during the Farmers' Market season, though, to make sure that I have enough to last through the year.

Now you might be asking how I pop the stuff: the microwave, of course. You can do it stovetop (helps if you have a gas range), but I tend to burn it that way or end up with underpopped corn because I'm impatient.

I did have a fabulous microwave popper, but it's so old that you can't buy the required pieces for it anymore so it's pretty much useless. In the midst of my popcorn desperation, though, Mike came through with a microwave popper that Boulder Popcorn actually advertises (and sells) through their site. So I'm good and set right now!

As for the corn itself, Boulder Popcorn offers three varieties: Kailey's Kernels, Cambria Cream, and Ryder's Red. I like the Mayor's Mix, mixed bags of all three. The taste is just out of this world and I promise that if you try it and then go back to the microwave stuff (or the movie theater stuff) you're going to realize just how cheated you've been all these years. Trust me, I go into withdrawal if I have to start buying grocery store brand now. But that's ok, because Boulder Popcorn ships! And at $4.95 a bag, you get quite a bit of popcorn. I pop up about 1/3 a cup at a time and still have a whole bag and a half left of what Mike got me for Christmas. And since it's a fairly low calorie snack (if you leave off toppings) I sometimes eat it 3-4 times a week.

Give them a try if you're a popcorn lover like I am. You really won't regret it. I promise! If you're in the Boulder area, you can even try it yourself and visit their table at the Farmers' Market on Saturdays.

Shrimp and Grits -- My Way!

I spent a year of my working life putting together cookbooks. I know, I know. I am published. It's weird. But they weren't my recipes. They were collections of Bed and Breakfast recipes. I have copies of each one and, typos and all, I kind of love them. They're home cooked recipes from other people, a treasure trove of new dishes to try.

Anyway, while working on Georgia, I got in some recipes for very popular southern dishes, including Shrimp and Grits. We were looking for an appropriate cover shot so I fixed the dish and Mike took some pictures. They never did end up on the cover of the book, but I guess that's ok because I can use them now (and it'll be the best picture of food you probably ever see on this page!).

I made shrimp and grits again the other night and they turned out amazing. This time I put my own twist on it. I started with the New Orleans BBQ shrimp recipe you can find here at Homesick Texan, which is based on the recipe from Ralph Brennan's New Orleans Seafood Cookbook.

New Orleans BBQ shrimp is amazing, but not what you would typically think of as BBQ shrimp. I've had BBQ shrimp, glazed with BBQ sauce and hot off the grill. This isnt' that. This is shrimp sauteed in a wonderfully yummy Worcestershire and butter based sauce. Perfect for serving over grits in my opinion, though you typically find them shell on with crusty bread (as Homesick Texan says to serve them). Since I changed it quite a bit, here's my recipe:

BBQ Shrimp and Grits

1 tsp olive oil

1/2 green bell pepper, chopped

1/2 onion, chopped (yellow or white is fine)

1 lb small, raw shelled shrimp (size doesn't really matter, I think I used popcorn size)

4 tbsp Worcestershire sauce (since we're serving over grits, I wanted it more saucy)

1 1/2 tbsp ground black pepper

1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1/4 tsp cayenne (I used more like 1/2 tsp)

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp minced fresh garlic

1/2 of 1 lemon, seeded

1/4 pound unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch slices

Heat the olive oil in a heavy bottomed pan or skillet. Saute the onion and bell pepper until beginning to cook through. Add the shrimp, Worcestershire sauce, seasonings, garlic, and juice from the lemon to the pan, tossing the sqeezed lemon in the pan with the shrimp.

Cook, stirring, over high heat until the shrimp begin to turn pink (about 2-3 minutes). Reduce heat to medium-low and add the butter one piece at a time. Stir and allow each piece to melt before adding the next. By the time all of the butter has been incorporated in the sauce, your shrimp should be cooked through.

Serve immediately over grits or with crusty bread. Garnish with chopped green onion and parsley if you like (and sprinkle a little Tony's over the top!)

For the Grits, I cooked two servings on quick-cook grits on the stovetop. Once they were finished, I added two tablespoons of butter, about a teaspoon of pepper, and about a cup of grated Tillamook Garlic White Cheddar cheese, stirring it together until all of the cheese had melted.

Pea Shoots

Hey, there. It's been a while. I have to be honest, it's not that I haven't been cooking so much as I haven't been taking pics. And I'm a terrible photographer so it's with that in mind that I'm not snapping images of every dish I make. Sorry.

The warmer weather may actually be finally coming (it's been eight long months of dreary crappy weather so far and I could really use an indication that summer is not going to pass Colorado by!). We planted seed pods and we'll see if this year we can get anything to grow.

My latest obsession thanks to the produce box are sprouts. I've been getting pea shoots and I have to say they are super yummy. I use them in place of regular salad greens with crab or chicken salad. Amazing.

So far these are the only ones I've been able to find to try, though. Sure I can get alfalfa sprouts, but I want the good stuff. I want microgreens: kale and mustard greens and tiny arugula. I want to try it all! I just can't find it. Until I can track them down or try and grow them myself, I'll be buying pea shoots every opportunity Door to Door Organics gives me.

College Eating

When I was in college I didn't eat well. Not surprising, right? My freshman year I had a meal plan, an exorbitant amount of money spent to buy a plastic credit card to be used at on campus eateries. My choices: the cafeteria (did that once and discovered a bowl of cabbage in place of the iceberg on the sad, sad salad bar and never went back), a deli, pizza, Chick-fil-A, burgers, or the other cafeteria that never had staff but always had prepared sandwiches.

My almost daily lunch those days was a tuna fish sandwich, or tuna stuffed tomato (hello, mercury), cherry Coke (because I was in my Pepsi mode and we didn't have Pepsi on campus), and BBQ chips. Healthy. And knowing that I would never, ever use the thing up, I even bought the largest cokes I could since they cost more. Smart college brain usage.

I did have a mini-fridge in my dorm and a closet shelf stocked with SpaghettiO's with Franks and Campbell's Chicken Noodle for the dorm microwave. I rarely left campus to eat. One problem was limited parking and I was definitely not going to lose my spot.

But I always had whole milk in my fridge and I went home every weekend.

In those days, I'd yet to discover Old Tyme Grocery, the FAMOUS sandwich shop (a shame, too, because I would have eaten it at least once a week), but my dad had introduced me to Cedar Grocery, a Lebanese place walking distance from campus, so that was one healthy highlight.

It was the following year, though, that a place called Gallagher's opened up across from my old dorm. By then I was living off campus and no longer walking distance away. In fact, I had no reason to be on that side of campus anymore. I'm not sure what prompted me to head over there, but I did and man I wish it had been there the year before!

This place was fantastic! Home cooked food and a rotating set of choices that changed every day. Veggie sides and a roll all part of your meal. Plate lunches, man! Plate lunches!

I miss plate lunches so much. Do they not do this outside of Louisiana or is it just Colorado that's missing them? I could go for a Gallagher's plate lunch right now. Ugh. Homesick for plate lunches.

Banana Bread!

My family is big on banana bread. The recipe that we use is from the old Fannie Farmer cookbook, whatever edition my grandmother gave my mom way back when (not my edition. I have the anniversary edition without the expanded recipes.) And you don't mess with the recipe. Sure you can add chocolate chips if you're feeling chocolatey, or pecans if your feeling nutty, but the basic recipe stays the same.

When I moved to Colorado in '05, I'd of course heard about the high altitude baking issues. It took a while before I started to notice them in my own cooking, though. I'm superstitious enough to believe that it didn't really start happening until other people started pointing it out as a possible problem, aghast at the fact that I'd yet to experience the issue in my own kitchen.

Suddenly my cupcakes exploded. my cookies turned into crispy flat messes, and my banana bread turned into this dense, dry thing that barely resembled what I remembered. I miss sea level baking!

Over the weekend, faced with four banana bread ripe bananas, I finally decided to try a new recipe. And I vowed to find a recipe that was different enough from my basic Fannie Farmer one that there was a possibility that it might work (and that I wouldn't feel guilty for abandoning the family favorite). I am happy to announce that I succeeded on both counts!

Ree Drummond over at Pioneer Woman posted what turned out to be the most fantastic banana bread I think I've ever baked up! It stayed nice and moist and tasted phenomenal. I did make some tiny adjustments to the baking soda and baking powder - and thank GOD I did, because it baked up dangerously close to the edge of my Bundt pan as it was - but otherwise it worked perfectly even here in Colorado.

I won't repost the recipe, but you can get it off of Ree's website here. We topped it off with melted butter (of course), but here in the pic that's actually Pine Cone Syrup from Zingerman's (a gift from Dad). Amazing stuff!