We have been watching lots of I’ll Have What Phil Is Having on Netflix as we sit in our lazy boys and dream of the adventures that we live through Phil. He goes everywhere and eats the most amazing food. We were so thankful that when we watched his episodes of his travels to Florence and Venice, we were already in the process of planning our trip to Italy next April, where we hope to stay for 3 months trying to fit in and look like the locals. I know, I will need to give up walking up to folks and saying, “hi y’all, how y’all doing today? We were fixin to eat some vittles and wondered where the good ones are? We’d be must beholden to you if you could hep us”. I’ll work on my accent and maybe learn a word or too of Italian. Already have pizza, lasagna and gelato down pat. Just need to learn a few more important words.
The last episode we watched Phil travel through was Ireland. That had never really been on my radar to visit….until we watched Phil eat his way through the lucky clovers.
It made me stop and think about how much time and money we had. Do we have the time and resources to go everyplace that we want to go? If not, how could we experience some of the great foods that we see on his program. So the last trip to Wally World, I decided that I wasn’t going to let $1 get in my way of being adventuresome. I proudly walked up to the butter counter and reached over the Great Value brand of butter and without a moment of hesitation, threw the Kerrygold, pure Irish Butter in our basket. Yep….we went for the gold! Sorry kids, another dollar gone from your inheritance. But We were so proud of ourselves. We had really gone out of our comfort zones. We couldn’t wait to get home and smather (is that a real word?) a tablespoon of this Irish butter over a fresh slice of bread. We stood in the kitchen, downing our first bite of real Irish butter. I think we both thought that little leprechauns would come dancing out of our cabinets by the way we stood there waiting to see how it tasted.
We looked at each other and until finally one of us said, “darn, we could have spent that extra $1 on a McDonalds fried apple pie. We couldn’t really tell that much difference. But it had so much more color to it that our normal butter we buy ,so we figured that maybe the cows in Ireland were much more colorful than cows in America. But it did wake up the notion in us that we need to be willing to spend the extra $1 here and there and experience some new flavors now and then. The best thing about the Irish butter was the recipe I found inside the carton. It sounds amazing and cannot wait to bake these scrumptious biscuits. Randy is going to start practicing drinking green beer and has already sang “My Sweet Irish Rose” to everyone who walks by our house! Guess its a good thing we are moving!
Dubliner Cheese Biscuits with Sage and Walnuts
Ingredients:
2 cups flour
2 teas baking powder
1/2 teas baking soda
1/2 teas salt
1/2 cup cold Kerrygold Pure Irish butter, cut into 1/2″ cubes
1 cup (4 oz) shredded Kerrygold Dubliner Cheese, divided
2/3 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts
2 teas dried ground sage
1/4 teas freshly ground pepper
Directions:
Heat oven to 400 and lightly grease a baking sheet. In medium owl, stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add butter to dry ingredients and cut in with pastry blender or fork until mixture resembles coarse crumbles.
Stir in 1/2 cup of the Dubliner Cheese and remaining ingredients. Stir until mixture forms a ball, adding a little more flour if dough is too sticky.
On a lightly floured board, press dough into a 1″ thick circle. Sprinkle with 1/4 cup of the cheese over the top and press lightly into surface.
Turn and repeat with remaining cheese. Cut into 12 pieces and place on prepared baking sheet.
Bake on center rack of oven for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.
Makes 12
It was a shock to me to find that I had never posted my Spaghetti & meatball recipe. It is one of our most requested dinners from family and friends alike. When I lived in Corpus Christ for years, there was a neighbor, Cam, who was Italian from New York and she gave me so many of her recipes that to this day, her meatballs, pecan pie, sour cream pound cake, and so many other of our desserts are still most treasured.
I love Fridays. It makes me think of what all I want to bake for the weekend and who can I invite to have dinner with us. It is fun to immediately think, “wow, we can watch Netflix until midnight if we want and still sleep in on Saturday and so what do I want to bake for a Republic of Doyle, or Call the Midwife or our new favorite, I’ll Have What Phils Having” marathon?”
One of the most dear to my heart comfort foods is chicken pot pie. But, because one cannot ever find it without peas, I am forced to make my own. Actually, it is such a great dish to make. For some reason, it makes me feel like autumn is in the air, even though it is over 100. It brings back memories of sitting by a fireplace while the pot pie is in the oven and the apple crisp is sitting over on the counter waiting to bring about a wonderful closure to our meal. Yesterday I could not wait any longer. Chicken pot pie was on the menu. I didn’t care if there was no fire in the fireplace, or that the thermostat was turned down to 64 so the oven could be on. Because we had had the kids over for dinner on Sunday evening for barbecued chicken and hash brown casserole, there was still some of the potatoes left over so I began to think, “hum, the hash brown casserole could be used in my pot pie and give it a wonderful cheesy flavor. And flavor it did have. The pie was absolutely wonderful and we ate unit there would have been no room for apple crisp (ok, not for a couple of hours anyway, but we had pumpkin cookies and cherry pie so didn’t need to make anything else). The only thing I will change when I make it again is that I will homemake the biscuits to place on the top. Last night I used canned biscuits because I was in a hurry to get to game night at a girlfriends house. But it was still really really good.
Chocolate cake (or cupcakes) always seem dryer than vanilla so wanted to share something a dear lady taught me years ago! When baking chocolate cakes, take the layers (or cupcakes) out of oven when they still have a glossy look to part of the top. They will continue to bake for a min after removing them from oven so this helps keep them moist. Plus after frosting my cakes or cupcakes, i cover them and place them in fridge until a couple of hours before serving. Ensures a more moist cake!
Some sweet ladies came to our house for a brunch a couple of weeks ago. Because I had talked about sausage gravy over biscuits at water aerobic class, a couple of the ladies expressed a desire to have some, as they had never experienced this wonderful southern dish. While others in the class are talking about how this class is helping them feel better and building muscle strength, we are at the other end of the pool planning our sausage gravy biscuit brunch. One of the ladies said that she would bring some watermelon so we would have one healthy food item, while yet another said that she would bring a coffee cake. Well, this is the pastry she brought and everyone had a hissy (I’ve been dying to see that word)fit over it. We had such a grand time that morning. The night before, I got this great idea to type out questions to pass around the table and let everyone pick out one a the bowl was passed around. Here are some of the questions that got us talking and getting to know each other a little better. So before I post the recipe a little further down, why not think about having some ladies over that you would like to get to know and use this idea to start the conversation flowing. IT was a really nice morning and we had some really nice memory sharing among us.
Last evening a friend of mine and I decided that after playing golf for a few weeks, we wanted to participate in what is called Glo Golf, here in Arizona. Apparently, this particular golf club entices folks to come out at night with this marvelous idea of playing after the sun goes down. All I can tell you is that I don’t remember having that much fun outside of the kitchen when I have a mixer in my hand and a pound of butter beside me. Our husbands decided they would like to go so they could “help” us find the balls, or shine the flashlight on the course so we wouldn’t end up in a water hazard trying to find the tee box. So off we went to play in our first glow golf tournament. We picked out our out-fits that would go with our 4th of July led necklaces. Randy was even instructed to wear a shirt that would match the blue in my necklace so our pictures would look perfect, color wise. We arrived to find that apparently the 50 golf carts that were lined up had made a trip (or 5 trips) to the Dollar Store. Every imaginable glow in the dark neon bracelet, necklace, hanging ornaments had been purchased and adorned the golf carts. We were the only ones that didn’t have a golf cart that could be seen from space. But, what a night. They had told us that if we found ourselves using the glow balls that were given to us and needing more, they would could be purchased for $8/each. Those of you who know Randy know that he would swim an ocean to retrieve a lost ball before spending $8 for a ball. So we take off, realizing that, if at all possible, that glow ball that came in our alloted amount, would be treated like gold. And swim some of us did. On about the 3rd hole, I actually (in the dark don’t forget) crawled under a wire fence that separated the driving range from the “out of bounds” area to the right of the fairway. But retrieve I did. With the help of two different golf clubs and muscles from crawling on my stomach that I had not used in years since trying to get dirty diapers from under furniture that was too heavy to move, when the kids were little. Thank goodness, it was dark. A little further down the course, Teresa found herself crawling over a fence to find her glow ball which was laying near the street. She came back with a splinter in her finger from the wooden fence. Both of our balls landed in the water hazard which we, once again, using the longest clubs we could get, dragged the ball to the edge of the lake, then sticking our hand in that filthy water, was able to rescue the treasured ball. We discovered drainage ditches that we had never noticed when we play in the daytime. All in all, we had a ball. The laughter, the new adventure, the memories that were made with our husbands there to cheer us on, were priceless. We cannot wait to sign up for the next one.
Chocolate Castles 