Category: Food and Recipes

The title of this blog post makes me think of my favorite tv show of all time, The Brady Bunch. Whenever there was a Brady Special aired after the series was over it was called “A Very Brady Christmas, movie, or sequel.”

As I was making Marty’s birthday dinner one day ahead, A Very Betty Birthday was all I could think of for the blog’s title. His birthday is today, February 16, but I have belly dance, and he has deliveries up north, so we decided on a late birthday supper tonight around 9 pm. 

I chose the title because as I was getting out the ingredients and recipes for his birthday dinner, I realized everything was from Betty Crocker, even some of the ingredients.

As a young, new cook, I learned to make recipes I was familiar with. I didn’t get serious about cooking until 25 years ago. 

One of the first desserts I learned to make was a pineapple upside-down cake. One of my cherished items is my dad’s copper pineapple-upside-down cake pan. I used the recipe from my mother’s 1955 Betty Crocker Cookbook.

I used to follow the whole recipe as written, but then we needed to go gluten-free and adjust the cake part gluten-free. My father’s favorite dessert was pineapple-upside cake, it’s one of Marty’s favorites too.

I’ve repeatedly said that I am a cook, not a baker. I can bake, but it’s not my thing. Gluten-free baking is like throwing dice if a recipe will come out correctly. I don’t have time for a game of dice. 

Yesterday, we were in double production because we have orders out the ass. We finished late, which meant I went grocery shopping late. I made the executive decision to buy a box of Betty Crocker gluten-free yellow cake mix in the baking aisle. 

While I was in the same baking aisle, I grabbed a box of Betty Crocker gluten-free Bisquick to make his favorite Cheeseburger Pie. I wrote all about Cheeseburger Pie last year on my blog.

When I make the Betty Crocker Impossible Cheeseburger Pie, I doll it up by adding American cheese, sliced onions, pickles, lettuce, and burger sauce. I am not a food snob when it comes to dishes made with Bisquick; it’s delicious, bottom line.

I always add the pineapple juice from the can of pineapple rings to the cake batter, which turns out to be 3/4 of a cup, replacing the 3/4 cup of water on the cake mix directions.! How convenient! 

I finished making everything just before 9 pm. After dance class, I just have to reheat the Cheeseburger Pie and top it with the burger fixings. 

Last year, I had the time to make Marty a fancy dinner and cake, but with wholesale business booming and it being a dance night, I went with these two of his favorites. 

Just for the record, Marty insisted I go to dance class on his birthday after missing so much last year and knows how much I look forward to it all week. He is such a great guy, and I am fortunate! 

This is a short post after our production that I am squeezing in before leaving for dance class, so please excuse the grammar. Happy Birthday, Marty! 🥳

I’ve been on a fancy toast kick for the last month, and it has saved my ass several times when deciding what to make for meals. Those items I stocked up on a couple of weeks ago have also been a God-sent since I cannot run out to the store alone because of this damn vertigo.

Eggs Benedict is my favorite breakfast dish, slightly ahead of biscuits & gravy and huevos rancheros coming in third place. 

We picked up some gluten-free english muffins at Trader Joe’s after reading so many people raving about them on the Gluten-free Albany Facebook page. 

They are as good as all the hype and then some. I made breakfast sandwiches with them a couple of weeks ago that were fantastic. I decided today to make eggs benedict, something I haven’t made or eaten in a few years.

Then, I started thinking about how eggs benedict were one of the original fancy toasts! How do you like that? 

I used a few meager pieces of leftover prosciutto from the other night because I didn’t have any Canadian bacon on hand. I crisped it up slightly in a frying pan. It did its job providing salty goodness to the dish. 

I toasted the english muffins and got the eggs ready for poaching. Then, I made a tiny batch of hollandaise sauce. I used a cheaters version this morning because I am still unsteady from vertigo and didn’t want to stand at the stove whisking the fuck out of egg yolks, butter, and lemon juice to make the sauce. I’d be upset if the sauce broke, so I played it safe. 

It’s hard to get perfect poached eggs eating out, let alone making them yourself, but today the breakfast gods were shining down on me and helped. The eggs benedict came out amazing! This gluten-free dish can never be ordered out, so I appreciated that much more. I found it only once at a restaurant on Long Beach Island, NJ.

Some other fancy toasts I’ve experimented with are pesto, fresh mozzarella, and roasted red peppers—sautéed mushrooms and onions with melted Gruyère cheese. Finally, pears, prosciutto, and blue cheese. They all have been good, and I will make them again, plus they come together so quickly.

Today, the vertigo seems to be calming down, but the meds still make me so tired. I’ve been listening to my body by resting and drinking lots of water. I tried to have a glass of wine last night because I like to drink wine when I cook but almost fell over dizzy after the second sip. Dammit! 😣

Enjoy the Super Bowl tonight if you are watching it. We used to look forward to it and have so much fun at big Super Bowl parties a few years ago. Most of those friends have either moved away or died. We were the youngest couple in the group, even though it didn’t seem like age mattered back then. Apparently, it does.

The Super Bowl isn’t the same when it’s just the two of us. It’s all about the food served and commercials anyway. Have a great night; I’ll catch up with you next week. 

Marty and I went to an Indian tea house and had a dish that we loved twenty years ago. I couldn’t find a proper recipe for it, so I replicated it before my palate forgot what it tasted like. I call that dish…Jeweled Hot Cereal. Jeweled because the dried fruits look like jewels.

The recipe is very loose, meaning I make it with whatever pantry items I have. Today I used grits, but I’ve used cream of rice and gluten-free oatmeal. For those who don’t have to worry about gluten, I started making this cereal with cream of wheat.

I’ve made my jeweled hot cereal with fresh fruit like diced apples and dried fruits like apricots, figs, dates, raisins, and cranberries. Today, I used raisins and cranberries. I sprinkled a little turbinado sugar on the cereal. I also added additional raisins, cranberries, and slivered almonds. Later, I looked online for a recipe to share with you since mine is free for all, especially before the coffee kicks in.

The Quaker Oats recipe uses ground cardamon as their spice, plus crystallized ginger and vanilla sugar. I used cinnamon, ground ginger, garam masala, and a few cardamom pods this morning. (I forgot to remove the cardamon pods, and Marty got all of them!) 😬

I used maple syrup to sweeten the cereal and a pinch of salt. I finished the dish with a pat of butter and a touch of milk. I plated my cereal very much like the Quaker Oats recipe photo.

If you want to try making this hot cereal, you could follow the recipe link above and adjust it to your taste, adding anything you want or have on hand.

It’s a satisfying dish of goodness on a cold day; that’s not too sweet or savory. It’s in between with some lovely Indian spices.

We are trying to be a bit more adventurous with different products at the farmer’s market. There are so many veggies we haven’t even tried before let alone cooked. 

I grew up eating mostly all frozen or canned vegetables, I think the only fresh vegetable my mother made were candied carrots. I ate everything that was put on my plate because I had to and never gave it much thought since I didn’t know better. Once I got a taste of what fresh vegetables were like I vowed to make them for my own family. 

We were talking with our market manager Steve on Saturday and he told us about some bok choy he got the week before and cooked it during the week. He described how he cooked it and it sounded delicious. The next thing I knew Marty came back to our spätzle stand with some baby bok choy.

I wasn’t sure what to make with it besides straight-up Asian food. I had waygu ground beef for burgers and wasn’t sure if that would go with the bok choy.

I looked up a few recipes online and came up with a menu. Korean waygu burgers with quick-pickle sesame cucs and Asian mayo. Also on the menu were roasted potatoes and caramelized bok choy with garlic, honey, ginger sauce. 

The Asian mayo was nothing but mayo mixed with a splash of soy sauce, ginger, garlic, and a touch of Korean gochujang sauce. 

I make quick-pickle veggies all the time. Basically, it’s white vinegar, sugar, salt, and water. You soak whatever veggies you want in the pickling liquid. I usually quick pickle red onions, thinly sliced carrots, and radishes; it’s funny that I never did a cucumber before. The veg only soaks in the liquid for 30 minutes but picks up the sweet, sour, and salty flavors leaving a fantastic crunch. 

For the baby bok choy I cut each in half and seared them in a cast-iron frying pan with butter. I flipped them over once they were golden brown and the sugars caramelized. 

After I removed the bok choy from the pan, I added a small knob it butter and sautéed garlic and ginger. I threw in a splash of soy sauce and a big drizzle of honey. I let the sauce cook just for a minute and poured it over the bok choy. 

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I loved the flavor of the caramelization from the bok choy. Sam said it was interesting which I laughed at meaning it wasn’t his favorite, but at least he tried it. Marty and I both liked it a lot. I can see us experimenting with more bok choy in the future. 

The burger was fantastic and the roasted potatoes were seriously delicious dipped in the Asian mayo. Here is the NY Times Korean Cheeseburger recipe I loosely followed. It still tastes like a cheeseburger, just with yummy umami. 

 

Last week, I mentioned how excited I was to start making fancy toast. I watched a few YouTube videos for inspiration and came across a video with Brad, a chef from Bon Appetit. The guy is a total crack up and down to earth, making cooking look so fun and easy, which it is. 

I learn from watching and wanted to replicate his fancy toast. He used a baguette, ricotta cheese, garlic cloves, sugar bomb tomatoes, a couple of Calabrian hot peppers, olive oil, salt & pepper. 

When I went to Aldi on Friday after making deliveries, I was dumbfounded when I saw they had the same tomatoes the chef used. This meant I HAD to make this fancy toast now. 

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The only thing I did differently from his the first time was whipping my ricotta cheese with a handheld beater for a minute, making the cheese smooth, light, and creamy. 

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I threw the tomatoes, whole garlic, and a few hot chili flakes in a cast iron pan with olive oil, salt & pepper. The tomatoes began to blister just like he did, and the garlic started to roast inside its skin. 

The chef was cooking in a professional kitchen and didn’t give two shits what kind of mess he made; I partially covered the skillet when the tomatoes started to splatter not to make a big mess in my kitchen.

When the tomatoes looked done, I took them and the garlic out of the pan. I removed the tomatoes from the vines and took the garlic out of its skin. 

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Next, I chopped up the garlic, mashed it into a paste, and then folded it into the whipped ricotta with a splash of olive oil, salt, & pepper. 

I took an Against the Grain gluten-free baguette and placed it in the cast iron pan, soaking up some oil and juices. Then I put the baguette under the broiler. 

Just like the chef did, I smeared the toasted baguette with the ricotta topped with the blistered tomatoes. He added a few fresh basil leaves, which I didn’t have but used a refrigerated basil paste. 

The results were delicious! It tasted exactly as I imagined it would. Ok, maybe even a whole lot better. 

Since I still had the other half of the sugar bomb tomatoes to use, I made the fancy toast again, but this time I added a balsamic reduction syrup which added a sweetness that pushed the fancy toast to another flavor level. OMG! 

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This will be something I make whenever I find those sugar bomb tomatoes on the vine or in the summer when fresh grape or cherry tomatoes are available since regular tomatoes won’t work.

If I didn’t watch that Bon Appetit YouTube video, I never would have looked at the sugar bombs twice. I am so happy I did! 

While we were eating, I could imagine that if a cafe had this fancy toast on its menu as a small plate, people would go crazy over it. The good news is. We don’t need a restaurant to make it; we can make it ourselves! 🍅 💣 

Right after I turn off my sauce, it’s my tradition to have just a little taste to make sure it tastes good.

I pick a small bowl and put one meatball and one sausage in it. I top it with a little sprinkle of parmesan cheese. I always stand next to the pot on the stove and eat it. I think I always say, “Oh damn, that’s good.”

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It’s not really that I need to find out if it tastes like “my sauce” because I have already tasted the tomato sauce a few times to adjust the seasoning. It’s because I have to taste it after smelling it for hours on end.

Ever since Sam was little, whenever he sees a pot of sauce on the stove he gets a big smile on his face. He takes the same kind of small bowl and does the exact thing I do, having just a little taste.

Today, he came down in his scrubs, and while fixing his coffee before heading off to his overnight shift, he asked, “What’s in the pot?” He asked this with a big shit-eating grin on his face. He knew what was in the pot from the smell of the house.

He wasn’t going to have time for his little taste, so he packed up his little bowl along with two slices of his favorite butter bread to go. He likes to get to the hospital early before starting his shift so that he can eat it then.

I always think Sam is like Marty with his intelligence and interests, but I know he is very much like me with everyday life stuff. I already know my oldest son Noah is very much like me artistically and personality-wise. This all makes me very happy. Happy Mama Julz. 🥰

I’ve written about my love of Chinese food; one of the hardest decisions of my childhood was to have Italian or Chinese food for my birthday dinner. 

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Growing up in NJ, there was a lot of good Chinese food from take-out only to my favorite place called The Jade Isle. Technically it was a Polynesian restaurant, but they had Chinese food and a pool inside with turtles and fish. I loved their pupu platter!

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Being gluten-free has put a damper on my ability to eat Chinese food. We used to go to PF Changs, which has a gluten-free menu with ok joined and ok food. Then we heard about Ala Shanghai in Albany. 

Ala Shanghai is very gluten-free friendly, with choices clearly marked on the menu. Some of the menu items are a gluten-free dream come true, like sesame or crispy beef. Other fried dishes are prepared in a non-contaminated fryer; dishes like General Taos, sesame, sweet and sour, and orange chicken. This may not seem like a big deal to some people, but these items are never available in Chinese restaurants because the frying oil has wheat in it. 

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My favorite is their steamed shrimp dumplings, another thing you can’t get at traditional Chinese restaurants. The owners are very nice, and the service is fast and professional. Even if you aren’t gluten-free and in the area, you should check it out. Call ahead for a reservation since the place is always packed.

Making Chinese food in a home kitchen is hard to do. I make pretty good Thai & Korean food, but Chinese cuisine is still a challenge. It never really tastes like authentic Chinese food except for Chicken & Broccoli.

I have been making this Chinese dish for ten years. The recipe is easy and on point. I have posted photos and the link to Simply Whisked recipe on my Facebook page for years. Many people have used the recipe with the same success. Even though I use a Chinese wok, you can use any large skillet.

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Chicken and broccoli are dishes I also used to order at Chinese places. Because it has soy sauce in it, which has wheat, I can’t have it anymore. Gluten-free people use tamari sauce with us like soy sauce just without wheat. 

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The well-known brand La Choy’s soy sauce is also gluten-free and cheaply found in any grocery store. It says gluten-free right on the bottle. Their teriyaki sauce is gluten-free as well. 

I use boneless chicken thighs when making this recipe. It takes a bit extra time trimming away the fat, but the thighs have more flavor than boneless breasts and stay moister.

I won’t take credit for this recipe because it isn’t mine. It is one of the very few recipes I follow and don’t change. I included the link to this recipe above.

Egg drop soup is a very simple soup to make. My recipe tastes pretty darn close to egg drop soup at a Chinese restaurant. I experimented with different ingredients and amounts until I found what I liked best.

Most recipes don’t tell you to keep the ginger and scallion bottoms whole, steeping them in the broth. This takes away the task of fishing out ginger and scallions in your broth. I remove them before I add the cornstarch slurry and eggs. The flavor is subtle, but it’s there. Another trick that I learned from trying many recipes is adding the sesame oil to the eggs while scrambling them. It helps the eggs come together better in the broth without it.

I have written many times about trying a new recipe once to see if you like it, if you don’t you can adapt it to your taste. With this recipe, I taste it throughout the process. After adding the ginger rounds and scallion bottoms, I let the broth simmer for 10 minutes; I taste it.

Tonight, I was satisfied with the taste coming from the scallions and removed them. There wasn’t enough ginger taste, so I added another ginger round and let it simmer for five more minutes. That did the trick! I removed the ginger rounds from the broth.

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The other secret to making egg drop soup is to stir the broth in a whirlpool manner while adding the cornstarch slurry. I check to see if the soup is too thin or too thick. I make adjustments if necessary. I do the same whirlpool method when adding the eggs and sesame oil.

I give the soup a taste and decide if it is salty enough. Instead of adding kosher salt, I add 1/2 tsp soy sauce at a time to adjust the seasoning. This depends on the saltiness of the chicken broth you used for the soup. Tonight I added 1/2 tsp to the finished soup. Some recipes call for white pepper in their egg drop soup. I don’t like it, so I leave it out but add it if desired. Be careful; it is potent stuff. I think it takes away from the lovely ginger flavor.

I hope if you are a Chinese food fan like me, you will try these recipes that have proven successful over and over, saving yourself a trip to get Chinese take-out.🙂

Egg Drop Soup

Ingredients

4 cups chicken stock
2-3 rounds of fresh ginger
2 white scallion bottoms
2 Tbsp cornstarch
3 Tbsp water
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp sesame oil
2 sliced green scallion tops

*** 1/4 tsp white pepper optional
***Soy sauce to taste

Directions

Add the chicken stock, ginger, and scallion bottoms to a pot. Bring to a boil. Simmer for 10 minutes. Taste the broth. Remove the ginger and scallion bottoms when you are happy with the flavor.

For the cornstarch slurry, mix the water with the cornstarch well in a small bowl. Stirring in a circle, add the slurry to the simmering broth. Stir aggressively to prevent lumps from forming.

In a small bowl, scramble the eggs well and add the sesame oil to the eggs.

Add the egg and sesame oil mixture to the broth in a circular motion to the thickened simmer broth. Add the sliced green scallions. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Check for seasoning adding optional white pepper or soy sauce to taste.

To serve, garnish the egg drop soup with more sliced green scallions. Enjoy!

Makes 3-4 servings.

I’ve had two words on my mind since Saturday, fancy toast. Fancy toast? One of my friends who has to follow a strict gluten-free diet told me about fancy toast. Toast doesn’t just mean breakfast anymore but can be for snacks, lunch, or dinner. I remember cereal commercials that said something like, “Juice, toast & Trix.” There was always toast included.

When I was a kid and watched cereal commercials, I wondered why they always had orange juice as part of a healthy breakfast. In my experience, orange juice and milk from my cereal tasted like vomit. Kind of drinking orange juice right after brushing your teeth. Bla!

It’s hard to pop in anywhere and find a muffin, scone, or breakfast sandwich when you are gluten-free. It’s equally hard to find something simple and easy like soup and a sandwich for lunch. It’s the same story with dinner. When you have to be gluten-free it gets tiring looking for restaurants or delis that have gluten-free choices. Gluten-free choices that can be trusted are a whole other issue. Luckily, there are a few very good places in the Albany Capital District area in NY.

It’s easier to eat at home when you are tired of always looking for someplace safe to go. Unless we are on the road, we eat three meals a day at home. It’s hard enough to come up with dinner ideas, but figuring out breakfast and lunch dishes as well is exhausting. It’s easy to get caught in a food rut so I was excited to hear about fancy toast.

Fancy toast goes one step further than avocado toast. Avocado toast became mainstream and trendy in the 2010s. When people think of avocado toast, they think of California and hipsters.

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True, Californians and hipsters love their avocado toast, but you can now find it in the most remote, unlikely places. In the beginning, people couldn’t wrap their heads around a piece of toast costing $3 with just some avocado slices, salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lime juice. Today, avocado toast costs between $7-10 dollars in some areas!

Avocado toast has run its gamut to many people, and they over this trendy food. Enter fancy toast. Fancy toast isn’t new; it has been around since the mid-2010s but now gaining popularity.

Fancy toast isn’t anything new in England, where they have been eating Welch Rarebit since the 1500s. Welch Rarebit is a piece of toast topped with melted cheese, mustard, and spices. It’s economical, easy to make, and tasty! Today the Brits still love their Welch Rarebit, but their favorite is beans on toast.

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Beans on toast. I loved baked bean sandwiches on white bread when I was a kid, so this sounds delicious to me. They don’t fancy up their beans; they pour them right from the can over their toast. I would still be in on this one as well, plus the Welch Rarebit. Yum!

Now being gluten-free, we can’t have our fancy toast on gorgeous slices of sourdough bread, crusty peasant bread, or crispy baguettes. We have to have our fancy toast on the best gluten-free bread we can find. Most toasted gluten-free bread tastes and holds up better than untoasted bread anyway. We have found the companies Schar and Trader Joe’s bread the best.

My friend shared with me what they made that week for fancy bread. She showed me pictures from Instagram #toasts for all. The photos were gorgeous, with so many fantastic ideas. I also looked at #fancytoast and found more. Marty went on YouTube and found endless fancy toast videos.

What I am most excited about the new fancy toast idea is you can be as creative as you wish with endless possibilities. All you need to do is look in your refrigerator and pantry.

My friend found lots of fancy toast components in Trader Joe’s. She bought different fruits and vegetables than she usually buys. Then looked in the cheese section for anything spreadable or meltable. There are plenty of sauces, jams, pestos, and hummus to choose from as well.

We will be making a trip to the Albany area on Tuesday, another delivery day. By then, I will have a list of items to pick up at Trader Joe’s for our fancy toast. I want to pick three sweet and three savory ideas whose ingredients can be reused and recreated for at least six other toasts. The beauty of the elements is that they aren’t raw meats that must be defrosted or purchased for a meal idea.

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I have saved many fancy toast ideas to inspire me since I am new to the toast scene. I thought I would share them with all of you too. Many of the ingredients we already have in our fridges and pantries, we are one step from a new idea for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

For the folks that are watching their carbs, there is plenty of low-carb bread to choose from and sweet potato toast. Sweet potato toast! Who knew? Well, I did when I was watching my carbs, which turned out to be a bust, but that’s an old blog post.

Sweet potato toast is a thick slice of raw sweet potato that is lightly coated in oil and then baked until crispy. I made it once, and it was terrific. It’s a lot more work than toasting a slice of bread, but the idea and recipes are out there if anyone wants to give it a go.

Now it’s time to put on my thinking cap and decide what first types of fancy toast I will be making. Of course, I will share them with you and let you know what I think. Tomorrow I am making a batch of hummus to have on hand. I am also going to Aldis for groceries and start my fancy toast hunt.

It’s taken me a long time to get the timing right when cooking. You know the scenario, rushing around trying to get all the dishes done simultaneously, and in the meantime, something always gets cold, burned, or forgotten about. I can’t tell you how many times I forgot to serve those delicious little Pillsbury crescent rolls I used to make before we had to go gluten-free. I also burned them a bunch of times! 😖

When my sister Jennifer was here, we talked about the stress of everything being done at the same time for dinner. I told her my secret…my oven. If I use the oven for baking a dish, when it’s done I will pull the dish out and turn my oven down to 140-180 degrees. Once the oven cools down, I put the dish back into the oven and any other component that is done already.

When using your oven as a warmer, you are practicing good food safety. When food isn’t kept at the proper temperature, bacteria can grow and cause foodborne illness. Now, this won’t happen in a short amount of time but can occur if you prepare a lot of dishes for a dinner party or holiday dinner.

Hot food must be kept hot and cold food must be kept cold. Food temperatures between 41-135 degrees represent the danger zone. The longer the food sits in the danger zone, the greater the risk of bacteria growing on food.

Think about how long potluck dinner dishes, both hot and cold, hang around on the table at a 4-5 hour event. The danger zone begins when a dish is taken out of the oven or from the refrigerator. Then the dish is transported to the potluck and sits at room temperature for hours.

Getting food to the proper temperatures to start off with is an essential part of cooking. If you aren’t using a thermometer to check the temperatures of your food, you are putting undue stress on yourself, worrying if the food is done. Checking food temps take the guesswork out, therefore, taking away the stress and worry.

Barbeques and cook-outs always make me nervous when I see the person barbequing chicken and not checking the temps. I would not and have not eaten chicken at a bbq for this very reason.

Below find proper cooking temperatures for the following foods:

Poultry, stuffing, or pasta dishes made with poultry, meat, seafood, or fish must be cooked to 165 degrees.

Ground beef, pork and other meats, flavor injected meats, ground, chopped, or minced seafood should be cooked to 155 degrees.

Seafood, steaks & chops (beef, pork, veal, lamb), roasts of beef, pork, veal, and lamb should be cooked to 145 degrees.

For grilled steak temperatures and doneness click on this link.

When preparing cold dishes, you must get the food into the refrigerator as soon as possible. Cold food should be kept at 40 degrees and below. This also includes making food ahead for the next day, such as a pot of spaghetti sauce, stew, or soups. The quickest way of cooling the dish down before it sits too long in the danger zone is to put it into a shallow container and get it into the fridge as soon as possible. (Within 2 hours.)

Don’t put steaming hot food directly into the refrigerator on the flip side. This can lower the temperature of the entire refrigerator placing everything in the danger zone until the temperature goes back down again.

When using the oven to keep food warm, be sure to have the oven temperature at 140 degrees or above. Cover food with oven-proof lids or aluminum foil to prevent food from drying out.

Reheating leftovers can be done in a saucepan, microwave, or oven. Temperatures should be taken when reheating leftovers as well. Leftovers should be reheated to at least 165 degrees. Be sure to cover the food being reheated in the oven to prevent them from drying out.

Yesterday morning, I made Marty and me Sunday breakfast. I made Belgian waffles with sausage links. The greatest thing about my new equipment pantry is getting to my small appliances easily and quickly! I have not made waffles in the past because I didn’t want to take everything out of the cabinet to get to it.

I started the sausage on the stove and made the waffle batter while the sausage was cooking. After the sausage was done, I popped it into the 160-degree oven to stay warm.

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Next, I heated up the waffle iron and started making waffles. I have the type of waffle maker that flips back and forth. When I remove the waffle from the maker, I put a big spatula on one side, flip the waffle on the spatula, and put it into the warm oven.

I put a cooling rack on the oven rack when keeping waffles warm. The cooling rack holds the waffles keeping them crispy and not soggy like a sheet pan does.

We didn’t have eggs with our waffles yesterday, but if we did, keeping the waffles and sausage warm in the oven while the eggs were cooking is the way to go. I used to put the waffle and sausage on the plate while cooking the eggs, but they got cold quickly. One of my biggest food pet peeves is food that isn’t hot.

Nothing is more off-putting to me when I eat out is lukewarm food. I want my food hot and my cold food cold. I hate when I put a meal on the table at home, and it isn’t hot enough. I have reheated it in a fit of swears and fury in the past. I can control myself in my older years to not just take the whole plate and throw it in the trash like I would have when I was much younger. Imagine that? 😬

Look for a blog post soon following up on food thermometers. I use four different types for various things, but having one good one is all you need.

Being friends with a chef who cooks for us often has taught me not only about foods I have never heard of before but also the techniques.

Our friend Martin has been a private chef for the last 20 years but comes from a long history of working as the executive chef in restaurants in NYC, the Hamptons, NJ, and various other places. 

A couple of weeks ago, Martin had us over on a Sunday night, a Sunday night when the kitchen was torn apart. I laughed when he called to invite us; I told him I wished he would all day. 

We had Filet Mignon Steaks, Roasted Asparagus, and Potatoes Romanoff.

I eat small portions and get filled up quickly, but I ate almost everything on my plate that night. Martin was amazed while he watched me eat. It made him happy. It made me happy because the food was delicious and all the food we ate for the last week was either made in the microwave or toaster oven.

The steak was a perfect medium-rare and very tender. I love asparagus anytime, but those potatoes! Holy shit, they were good. They were also in the oven before we got there, so I didn’t get to see how he made them. 

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I asked what kind of potatoes he made. He said, “Potatoes Romanoff.” Potatoes what? I had never heard of them before. I never play a food know-it-all with Martin and asked him about the potatoes. He told me he shredded baked potatoes added some shallots, cheddar cheese, sour cream, salt, and pepper. Everything is lightly tossed and piled high in a casserole dish, then baked until golden brown and crispy.

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I looked up recipes and the history of these famous potatoes, and Martin was right on the money with the ingredients and technique.

Potatoes Romanoff originated in a restaurant in Greenwich Village in the city called The Strip House. A second location of The Strip House was located in Las Vegas; how fitting!

The Strip chef, John Schenk, made a special potato gratin that went perfectly with steaks. Chef John took a dish he remembered his mother making while he was growing up and turned it into an upscale dish. The dish his mother made was funeral potatoes.

I’ve heard of funeral potatoes but never really knew what they were. Well, duh, potatoes, but what else? Funeral potatoes were a side dish served at a luncheon after a funeral or at a potluck dinner.

Funeral potatoes are a hot dish and are popular in the midwest; however, I’ve seen them in a Pennsylvania Dutch Amish cookbook. The main ingredients are hash brown potatoes, cheddar cheese, cream of chicken or mushroom soup, sour cream, butter, corn flakes, or crushed potato chips. The casserole is usually served with baked ham.

I decided to make Potatoes Romanoff this week, and the dish came out just like Martin’s. We didn’t have it with steak, but with stuffed peppers. I was going to make mashed potatoes but tried these instead. I will be making them again.

It’s late as I am finishing up this blog post. I got home from belly dance class around 8:20 pm; it was almost 9 pm when we ate dinner. I made corned beef earlier in the day and made Rueben sandwiches. This is how my brain works…On Saturday, I saw a vendor making Rueben panini sandwiches at the Troy Farmers Market. It wasn’t gluten-free, so I could only wish I could have one. Sunday morning, while grocery shopping, I bought a…you guessed it. A corned beef!

Dance class was great again tonight. The three new belly students from last week came back again this week! I was thrilled when they said how much they like the class and how fun it is. That’s always been my goal! ✅ Yip!

I am exhausted and will literally have to drag my ass upstairs to bed. That’s a wrap. Goodnight!