With a mere three weeks to go until I officially become “Mrs. Other Half”, I have thrown caution (and calories) to the wind. For months I worked at increasing my water intake, exercising more, and (gasp!) actually lowering my food consumption to try and get into decent shape before the big day. Well guess what? I’m as good as I’m gonna get, and he loves me even if I don’t maintain a size 2. Not that I achieved a size 2… but you catch my drift! The last thing I need during these stressful final few weeks of planning is to starve myself, and boy howdy, did I avoid that in style! Allow me to introduce you to a few of the more calorie-dense offerings from The Pioneer Woman Cooks…
For some reason #53: Creamy Rosemary Potatoes, a.k.a. scalloped potatoes in any civilized nation, took me an extraordinarily long time to put into my dinner rotation. In my mind it was going to be a time consuming dish that wasn’t all that interesting. Sometimes I can be dumb. My biggest hangup was about slicing the potatoes thin, a process that took a grand total of three tubers and about three minutes to make a generous portion. If I had cut them by hand, of course it would have taken much longer and been far less consistent, but with the use of a mandoline slicer, I knocked it out in no time. The filling could have been more complex, but it wasn’t really a detriment; mostly just cream and spices and frankly I’m not complaining. I think technically I was supposed to use whole milk, but I had an expiration situation, so heavy cream was the winner! Combined with tons of shredded cheese and both rosemary and chives from my garden, I whipped this whole thing together in just a couple minutes, then baked for less than an hour. Like the title suggests, creamy, potatoe-y goodness ensued!
Much as I love my husband-to-be, sometimes the man is just plain wrong. Take olives for example. He thinks all varieties are gross! Silly boy… For that reason #54: Olive Cheese Bread had to wait for just the right time when I was going to be home alone and not have to defend my meal. This recipe is precisely what it says, nothing more and nothing less, with the exception of the softened butter and mayonnaise which served the purpose of a medium to make the chopped olives spreadable. Now, as this project winds to a close, I have decided I will not endure icky ingredients in what I make for myself as long as the “spirit” of the recipe is honored. Green olives stuffed with pimentos sits firmly in that category! I used black olives only (clearly the superior choice!), and I may have also included some crushed garlic cloves. This bread was absolutely delicious, and I will admit I didn’t have really high expectations for it. I ate the entire half-loaf over the course of a couple days as my breakfast (don’t judge), and I have discovered the air fryer does a masterful job of reheating and de-sogging the leftovers! A brilliant thing about this recipe is that I was able to save the other half of the bread in the freezer with the spread already on it by wrapping it in cling wrap and aluminum foil. It will be ready to bust out the next time I have a weekend alone with no one to make faces at my olives!
Once in a while I am blown away by something I expect to hate, or at the very least feel ambivalent about. Making #55: Peach Crisp with Maple Cream Sauce was just such a time. I’ve never cared for a crisp, a crumble, a cobbler, a buckle, you name it. It’s all basically the same thing, and none are the best dessert on the menu in my opinion. I’d also like to point out that the word “crisp” has absolutely no place in this description, and should be removed immediately as false advertising. The texture was moosh, moosh, moosh, and I wouldn’t have gotten it to crisp even if I’d left it in the oven for another hour. Regardless of the less than inspiring mouth-feel, this peach dessert was 100% a winner! Part of it may be that I live in Colorado with their world-famus Palisade peaches, which I sliced fresh instead of using frozen store-bought fruit. Another factor may be the equal ratio of flour to sugars (both white and brown), mixed with warm pie spices like cinnamon and nutmeg. Whatever the nature of the alchemy, all this combined to make an astoundingly hot (molten lava has been known to retain less heat), sweet, fruity melange that paired perfectly with the maple cream sauce, prepared earlier in the day by stirring light corn syrup and maple syrup into warm heavy cream. Since my only problem with this dish was lack of anything to actually chew, when I make it again (not IF), I will perhaps double the amount of crumble in order to deal with the excessive juices produce my Colorado native peaches. Oh, and by the way, you’re gonna want to make extra of that cream sauce and add it to everything you eat!
At long last… a Sangria recipe I can get behind! I have long held the opinion that sangria is supposed to look refreshing and delicious and I am supposed to want to drink it while having a carefree dinner party with my fabulous friends on my sun-drenched lanai. However, the first time I actually tried it, it was bitter and unpleasant, despite a whole fruit salad dumped into the pitcher. Ok, so technically I didn’t actually make the recipe as described in Ree’s book, but I did finally figure out how to adjust to make it palatable for those of us sweet wine drinkers! I was pleased to start with the colorful mix of chopped fruit as a base for the lovely concoction I planned to serve to real-life fabulous book club friends on my real-life sun-drenched back patio. Apples, strawberries, grapes, lemons, lime, and pineapples all took a bath in my liquors of choice, lending their own natural sweetness to the overall flavor. What liquors you ask? Well… seemed like all of them! Ree called for a bottle of dry white wine like Chardonnay; nah, I used regular moscato. She also used a bottle of yucky, bitter, tannin-y red wine (I may be editorializing here) such as Cabernet Sauvignon. I decided to use rosé moscato, which I didn’t know existed but am now pleased to have in my repertoire. Finally, I added an additional cup of citrus rum (I used lime) and a cup of citrus vodka (I used lemon). I feel I showed considerable restraint by NOT using the extra cup of sugar the recipe called for, since my wines were plenty full of sugar already! The end result was mildly sweet (not syrupy the way I was afraid I might have tipped it) and gently effervescent, owing to the bubbly moscato. The only caution here was regarding how actually refreshing and delicious this was, leading to the misguided notion that one could down a whole tumbler-full and still remain standing. It may need to come with a warning label, but nonetheless I have found my go-to sangria!
Have Book, Will Cook 