It's July! Time for Ginger Salted Caramel Ice Cream Sandwiches!

July has to be my favorite month - it's full of birthdays!

There's Independence Day, of course. We went to a great barbecue party at a friend's house. Fabulous :)

And the 4th is also my dear daughter's birthday. The whole country celebrates with fireworks JUST. FOR. HER.

(What? You thought the fireworks were for Independence Day? Sorry to burst your fantasy bubble!)

Later in the month we celebrate my birthday :) and our anniversary.

So July is just one party after another, all month long!

This year, I thought ice cream sandwiches would be fun, so I started browsing through the internet for ideas. Susan Branch had an interesting sounding recipe on her blog - Susan Branch's Ice Cream Sandwiches - but I couldn't find the ingredients here in our corner of the midwest.

So I came up with my own concoction - -

Ginger Salted Caramel Ice Cream Sandwiches

The ingredients are so simple:

For the sandwich part, you need a thin, crispy cookie. Anna's was the brand I found here, but I've seen other brands in other parts of the country. Basically, you need to look for the cookies that are sold stacked vertically in boxes like this one. These are ginger, but there are other flavors, too.

The salted caramel part needs, well, caramel. And salt. You also need a small can of evaporated milk.

And finally, the ice cream. Since my ginger cookies were already going to be fighting for attention with the salted caramel, I chose vanilla ice cream. If you had vanilla cookies, chocolate ice cream would go well.

So the first step is to lay the cookies out on a tray, pretty side down. I lined my tray with parchment paper.

You might want to have two boxes of cookies handy, because these can be pretty fragile. You might find several broken cookies.

And then you'd have to eat them instead of using them for your ice cream sandwiches.

Too bad. :)

Now unwrap your caramels (I used a 4 ounce bag) and put them in a microwave safe dish with one Tablespoon Sweetened Condensed milk.

Microwave for thirty seconds, stir, then microwave and stir at 15 second intervals until the caramel is runny. I only had to heat mine for a total of 45 seconds.

Next, drizzle the caramel on half of the cookies, and then sprinkle with coarse salt. I used a half-turn with my salt grinder.

Let the caramel cool for about ten to fifteen minutes, and then put a small scoop of ice cream on each caramel drizzled cookie. Put the other cookie on top and squish them together carefully and lightly. Be careful not to break the cookies!

You can eat them immediately (of course!), or you can put the tray in the freezer for a couple hours. Once they're completely frozen, you can store them in a freezer bag or container.

Now, if you've been paying attention, you'll notice that I only used one tablespoon of sweetened condensed milk out of the whole entire can.

And since I'm not one to waste anything I don't have to, I made Magic Cookie Bars - Mounds Candy Bar style.

Preheat your oven to 350°.

In a 9x9 square baking dish, melt 1/4 cup butter. (I just stick the baking dish in the oven while it's preheating.)

Sprinkle 1 cup graham cracker crumbs on top of the melted butter.

Sprinkle 1 cup 60% Cacoa Ghiradelli Baking Chips on top of the graham cracker crumbs.

Pour your leftover sweetened condensed milk over the chocolate chips.

Sprinkle about 1 cup flaked coconut over the whole thing (I used unsweetened coconut flakes).

Bake at 350° for about 20 minutes, or until it's bubbly and the top is browning.

Let it cool completely before cutting and serving.

The perfect way to use leftovers, and my husband loved them!

What is your favorite way to celebrate in July?

Happy Fourth! Walla Walla Sweet Onions and Cast Iron cooking

Happy Fourth of July everybody!! The Fresh Pioneer is back in the cafe and we're still frolicking somewhere on the west side of the state.

 See? This is frolicking. Best done in a meadow of buttercups. But it's week two. maybe we're ready to come home! We love the Fourth of July fireworks on the beach. We light a big driftwood fire, watch the fireworks, walk home with sand in our pants and marshmallows stuck to our sandals.

 We'll also be eating the best ice cream in the state at the Tillamook Cheese Factory. (Yes, I know it says Cheese factory. And we eat about a 2lb loaf of it a week, but I'm telling you... the ice cream is really where it's at.)

Last year we decided to collect sea glass instead of agates and shells, in order to preserve the natural beauty of the coast. 

Our marimos love the sea glass! (Click the link to learn about marimos. Maybe I've mentioned them before. My 11 year old asked for some for his birthday last year. They are endlessly entertaining! Well, entertaining because people are always asking what they are. )

 We'll be sad to be leaving all this dry desert land behind...

 Well, maybe not really. I love the barns, but I'm looking forward to the lower temps. Eighty sounds perfect to me!

 We find so many sea creatures. It's one of our favorite educational trips!

My poor son is hoping to be reunited with Seaweeda, his first true love. She was sort of a drifter, went with the flow, ya know? (Her favorite dance was The Wave, of course.) She always said she was so healthy but she seemed a bit green to me.

I'm excited to be back in my converse. At 110F, it's sandal weather and I miss my fun shoes. My friend Christalee sent me a teal pair, too. Sometimes I wear one of each. My two favorite colors!

 But last weekend we went into Walla Walla to look at the Walla Walla Sweet Onion Festival. This building just caught my eye. Lovely bones. There's also a giant graffitti sign that reads "Where is Your God?"  Love these college towns. So philosophical.

Here are my kids, conned into some hard labor again. My oldest daughter has definitely inherited her father's hands. Yikes!

 We bought a ten lb bag of sweet onions for $6. Mmmm. I made chicken and onion enchiladas tonight... with Tillamook cheese, of course! Locally made tortillas, local chicken, and home made sauce. Doesn't get any better... unless it's ice cream, of course.

 So, this doesn't look like much but this here is the best sausage in town.

 Their little truck. Again, doesn't look like much but YUMMY. And they have ten kinds of mustard from which to choose.

 File this under "Americans playing with their food". It's one of our little games, trying to spot people playing with their food. Not eating it, just playing. And here we have a sweet onion basketball game! There were onions all over the sidewalk.

Not sure what these were but my boys found them endlessly entertaining.

 The thinking frog. I think he's actually wondering why he's out in the sun instead of in a pond where it's cool.

 This little town has some beautiful old signs
                                         
We still have a candy company here that makes home made chocolates and sweets, but it's down the other direction.

 And the columnar basalt that's all over the hills here makes some nice decoration. And yes, that is a Burger King crown. My husband took the kids to BK and my six year old wore his crown for three days straight. We all know how delicious BK is, right? Hmmm... And he also got orange soda. That's why my kids love my husband MORE.

 I think this is an old coal chute. Or maybe a hatch where the monsters emerge. Either one.

Hey, an actual hole in the wall. 

Now, we're to the cast iron part of the post. I have a bunch of cast iron. And I had no idea how to take care of it. Honestly... it was a mystery. And somehow it ended up in the cabinet, pushed way to the back. THEN I was introduced to the best thing ever. The Cast Iron Cooking facebook page! 170,000 people who love cast iron and cooking! It's fascinating. I think we've been over this but I STILL love them. They're so helpful and kind. And never snark at me for letting a pan get to this point.

Or like this. UGH. 

 Well, I started to season and clean them like the facebook page directed and sadly, I discovered this old griddle had a crack.

 Both sides, all the way down. So, I'm don't think it's safe to use, but I'll use it as a lid on the skillet,just to keep the grease or whatever from getting all over.

But this pan is really looking wonderful! This is dry. I know it looks wet, but it's completely dry and as slick as glass. I dripped some water on it and the drop rolled around like mercury. It was amazing! There are all sorts of methods but I used the 500F for an hour, scrub with steel wool, grease with lard, 500F for an hour, scrub, grease with lard, 500F for an hour, etc. method. My house smelled awful. Small drawback. I had to put a lot of vanilla scentsy bars in the warmers. But this pan is like obsidian. I'm in love. 

That's it for now, but the next post will be all about cast iron cooking and recipes! We'll still be traveling so I'm just guessing about how the recipes will turn out. I hope I don't have to eat my words and let you all know the food turned out charred and horrible!

Best Hamburgers!

The Best Hamburgers!

Missy Tippens

I'm sharing a quick, easy recipe that I've seen lately on a commercial for mayonnaise. I believe it was for Duke's Mayonnaise, which is what I use, so it caught my eye.

They show a person adding mayonnaise to ground beef to make moist burgers. Made sense to me! So I decided to give it a try.

First, I pulled out my go-to spices for burgers. Well, actually, the Steak 'N Chop is new (thanks, Ruthy!). The other two I've used several times.

Next, the main ingredient (well, besides the beef). :) We really like to use the mayo made with olive oil. And I've always used light mayonnaise. So this one is perfect for us.

I added the spices and a big blog of mayo--probably about 3 TBS (maybe more) in one pound of lean ground beef (I buy the 93% lean). Mix well, pat out burgers with a dip in the center, and place in a hot skillet or on the hot grill (my grill died, so I'm grill-less right now). I like ground beef well done, so mine are sometimes dry. But these weren't!

Serve on a nice soft bun with your desired toppings. I was already eating when I remembered to take a photo! They were really moist just like the commercial said. I loved it! I plan to add mayo from now on.

Ten Minute Delicious Lasagna from Mary Connealy

Mary Connealy made this for our recent writers' retreat. It was wonderful, a crowd pleaser!

Now I didn't use Prego because I had two quarts of sauce and about a dozen big meatballs left from making sauce earlier in the week. A big pot of sauce is about 3 quick (yes, high carb!!!) meals, but every now and again a girl needs pasta! I used my strawberry masher and mashed up the meatballs into the sauce... and then added the cottage cheese. I was short on cottage cheese (only 1.5 containers) so I added a cup of ricotta to the mix.

It was marvelous!  And the BIG JOY OF THIS is that you can use regular pasta lasagna noodles (I used Barilla), and they cook all by themselves. No pre-cooking the pasta! It was PERFECT.

We had a crowd for Sunday supper and this got thumbs up from everyone. So here you go, Mary's recipe (and if we're really lucky/fortunate/blessed we might get Connealy to STOP IN!!!!!) 

Anyway, back to Connealy!

Lasagna recipe

The only real time used here is frying the hamburger:

10-15 minute assembly 

1 hour cooking time

You can make it and let it sit overnight

In a skillet I brown 1 lb of hamburger

Added one jar of Prego Spaghetti Sauce

Added one large carton of cottage cheese

Heat through

Layers

Uncooked lasagna in bottom of 9 x 13 pan. Not the special NO COOK lasagna, just regular, then top with a layer of hamburger/sauce.

Layer of mozza cheese (note how casually she writes the recipe for me??? Like she's a GENIUS!)

Repeat layers. I do two layers but doubled this recipe and did three layers for the extremely hungry looking Seeker group.

Parmesan cheese on top only, not on other layers.

Bake one hour.

Ruthy now:

Amazing and good! How fun to not have to crazy-slave for hours for a delicious lasagna!

And Mary Connealy's got a wonderful book out right now, a new bestseller "Now and Forever"!  And she's going to GIVE ONE AWAY!!!!! So leave a comment below and we'll put your name in Ruthy's cat dish (freshly washed after the kitties ate lasagna, ala "Garfield") 

CLICK HERE FOR AMAZON PAGE!

Connealy, thanks so much for sharing with us! Got nothin' but love for ya'!

Ruthy Logan Herne loves to pen stories that resonate with the human heart... with the occasional smack upside the head, as needed! She loves God, her family, chocolate, coffee, cute kids and babies and thinks dogs rock!

Find her on facebook or check out Ruthy's website HERE

Bruschetta on Zucchini for a festive 4th

So it's July already!

How did that happen? 

Wasn't it just the other day we were shoveling snow and thinking summer would never come?

Well, now it's July and the 4th is nearly upon us, so what do I have to share with you today? A good old American variation on an Italian recipe.

Zucchini Bruschetta

A prize should go to whoever can pronounce that correctly.   You can test yourself here.


Now, if you're a visual learner, you can skip the first part of my post and just watch the video that comes on after your phonics lesson above.  Or you can go here - bruschetta.


Or you could go back and read Mindy's post from 2012.


But it's 2015 now so I have a healthy twist.

First, I have to say that this recipe is SOSOSOSOSO amazingly good. I woke up wanting it for breakfast then next morning.

As Mindy showed us back then, traditionally bruschetta is served on sliced baguettes or crostini. And it's really really good that way. I even sneaked and had some of this on a baquette.

BUT

I've looking to lower my carbs though so I decided to try it on zucchini slices instead.

Mmmmmm  As my Italian grandma would say (if I had an Italian grandma) Tutto va bene! At least that's what the Italian grandmothers in books say.  Correct me if you know better. This Irish gal promises not to have hurt feelings.

On with the recipe.

Did you read Mindy's post or watch the video?

If not, the recipe is simple. You chop up tomatoes, red onion, basil and garlic and mix with olive oil and vinegar. Most people use balsamic but I had red wine vinegar and I liked that better.

Mix and let marinate.

Isn't it beautiful? Molto bene.

Now usually you're done there. You put it on the crostini and enjoy.

And oh, you will. It's amazing! Did I mention that?

But remember the zucchini? They're going to look a little like the eggplant Missy made last week.
I sliced them (two different ways to see which worked better), brushed with olive oil, and roasted briefly.

I also tried sprinkling them with cheese because in my world cheese makes everything taste better.


When they were done, I did two more variations. I spooned the cold tomato/basil/onion mix on top of the zucchini. Some I left cold and some I slid back under the broiler briefly. Confession: I liked the slightly broiled ones best but the others were awesome too.

  

Sorry, I was so quick to eat them, I didn't think to take a picture of them on the plate.

So, this teacher is on vacation, but you still get a mini science lesson.

Why should you eat the ingredients:

I love this site for health information about food. They put out a giant food preparation book that I have, but the website is great for quick info and healthy recipes. World's Healthiest Foods

Here are links for each of the ingredients if you're looking to feel good about your healthy bruschetta.

zucchini

basil

red onion

tomatoes

garlic

PS - eat them all at once. That idea of eating it the next day didn't work. They got soggy.

Happy Eating,

Cate