Corn Pancakes

I remember when IHOP used to have corn pancakes. I really loved them. It was like almost like corn bread but in a pancake form (and I love corn bread!). Then one day, they decided to break our hearts and take them away with no explanation (maybe there was an explanation but I didn’t look it up). Anywho, I stumbled across a copycat recipe and YAY, something to satisfy my craving.

Mix corn meal, flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder.

In another larger bowl, eggs, and sugar.

Then add buttermilk, whole milk and melted butter.

Add dry ingredients to wet.

Then let the batter sit for a little bit, while you prep your pan.

Heat up some butter in a skillet or griddle.

THEN ENJOY!

Corn Pancakes
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup butter, melted
butter for cooking

Directions
Combine the first 5 ingredients in a small bowl. Set aside. In a large bowl whisk together eggs and sugar until well combined. Mix in milk, buttermilk, and melted butter. Slowly mix in dry ingredients to wet ingredients until well mixed. Let batter sit for at least 10 minutes.

Heat a skillet or griddle to medium low heat. Add butter to coat the pan. Spoon batter into pan and cook pancakes until golden on each side.

Posted on January 12, 2015 by miemo 0

Dog Birthday Cake

I love my pup. A lot. He’s my furchild. You can make fun of me if you want, but I threw Bawse a birthday party this year. It will be the last year that he’s an only child, and hes a lot calmer now so we can have dogs in our tiny space without much destruction.

He had his buddies come over, we took them to run around in a park, then came back to cake and ice cream.

Here’s how I made his pup friendly cake!

Mix whole wheat, oats, and baking powder in one bowl.

Pumpkin, eggs, natural peanut better and vanilla extract in another.

Then mix THAT together.

And bake!

Cream cheese, yogurt, and honey.

Mix til smooth.

Decorate with milk bones!

I didn’t want the extra cake to go to waste after I trimmed it flat, so I made cake balls!

Bawse’s Birthday Cake
Ingredients
3 ½ cups whole wheat flour
½ cup oats
1 tbsp baking powder
2 ½ cups water
½ of 15 oz can of pumpkin puree
1 egg lightly beaten
½ tsp vanilla extract
Mini Milkbones for decoration

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350F. In a medium bowl mix flour, oats and baking powder together. Set aside. In a large bowl, mix water, pumpkin, egg, peanut butter and vanilla until well mixed. Stir dry ingredients into wet, until thoroughly mixed. Scoop into non stick cake pans. Bake until center sets about 45 minutes.

Cool completely. Remove from cake pan. Frost and decorate.

Frosting
8 oz low fat cream cheese, room temperature
2 tbsp plain yogurt
1 tbsp honey

Directions:
Mix until smooth, spread on cake!

Posted on January 9, 2015 by miemo 0

Spam Musubi

I have my moments, where I miss the sunny days spent in Hawaii a few years ago for my birthday. And now being pregnant, I crave things even stronger than I did before. My husband gave me a spam musubi mold, so I was like. HECK YES. I have to use it right?

I gathered all my ingredients. Cooked 3 cups of sushi rice, sliced up a can of spam, nori furikake (rice seasoning), and cut sheets of roasted seaweed.

You want to make sure you have all your ingredients ready before you cook the spam. I cut the seaweed in half, and cooked the rice and pulled it out of the cooker to cook a little so it wouldn’t stay too wet. Mix the sugar and soy sauce.

Cook the spam in it until crispy and caramelized.

Spam Musubi
Ingredients:
3 cups of uncooked sushi rice, cooked
1 can of low sodium Spam, cut into 10 even slices
4 tbsp soy sauce
4 tbsp sugar
5 sheets of seaweed, cut in half to make 10
Furikake

Directions:
Cook the rice. After it is done cooking, take it off of heat, stir and set aside to cool. Cook spam in a non stick pan in the soy sauce until caramelized and crispy. Place a musubi press on the center of a half sheet of nori. Take desired amount of rice and scoop into press. Press to pack tightly. Sprinkle furikake to taste. Top with a slice of spam. Press through and wrap.

This is just one way to do it! You can add egg, less seaweed, the possibilities are endless. There are even different flavors of spam to experiment with. Once you get the basics down, you are good to go!

Posted on January 7, 2015 by miemo 0

Comfort Food: Chicken and Rice Soup

When I’m sick, I’m a big baby, BIG baby. And when my mom was still alive, no matter how old I got, if I was sick, I could always go to her and she’d make me some of her magic maman soup and everything would be better. Then I would take a nap and feel better. Now that she’s gone, I’m forced to make it myself. It doesn’t have the same touch as love from my mom, but it still does make me feel comforted.

Start off with some bone in, whole chicken pieces. Thighs or breast, your preference. Salt, lemon grass and ginger. THAT’S IT. Bring to a boil and let simmer until chicken is cooked. Remove the chicken, then scoop up all the fat and gunk at the top.

Then add rice to the broth, cook until rice is tender.

Mix in shredded chicken pieces. And serve with your favorite toppings! I like chili oil, white pepper and sometimes a little green onion and cilantro.

Since this is made with love, I didn’t really keep track of how much what, in where. This is definitely going into my cook book, once I start keeping track of measurements. If you want to try it out yourself, feel free to contact me (twitter, facebook, IG), and I’ll try to help you out!

Posted on January 5, 2015 by miemo 0

Shrimp Etouffee

Maybe you knew, maybe you didn’t know. But my family has Louisiana roots. My love for cajun food, and mardi gras is probably apparent. One of my favorite dishes is etouffee. I can’t eat it often because its so buttery and delicious that it can’t possible be good for you right? I don’t make mine with roux. I only use that for gumbo. It’s pretty time consuming for me.

The base of many if not all cajun dishes. The holy trinity, celery, onion and green bell peppers.

Butter. Always butter.

Smother the veggies until tender.

Add your shellfish and garlic. Season.

Add water and flour. Check the seasoning again, season to taste!

Stir in parsley and green onions, turn off heat.

Mama Miemo’s Etouffee

Ingredients

1 ½ stick of butter

1 medium yellow onion, chopped

1 large green bell pepper, chopped

3 stalks of celery, chopped

4 cloves of garlic, minced

2 lbs of peeled, deveined shrimp, or crawfish tails with fat

1 tbsp all purpose flour

2 stalks of green onions, sliced thinly

¼ cup parsley, minced

Cajun Seasoning, black pepper, cayenne pepper, to taste

Directions:

In a heavy bottom pot with a lid, melt down butter. Add onions and sautee until clear. Add green bell pepper and celery. Cover, stirring occasionally until golden. Add shrimp and garlic. Stir until shrimp is pink. Whisk 1 cup of water with one tablespoon of all purpose flour until well blended. Add to pot, stir and add seasoning. Bring to simmer. Continue to season to taste. When sauce thickens up to a gravy consistency, add parsley and green onion. Stir, cover and turn off heat. Serve over rice.

Posted on December 10, 2014 by miemo 0

Garlic Mashed Potatoes

I used to eat only boxed mashed potatoes. Gasp, I know. But that’s how my mom made them for Thanksgiving. I never really grasped the concept of making mashed potatoes from actual potatoes. Then one year, I stored my mashed potatoes in the same bin as my dryer sheets when I moved. And when it was time to eat mashed potatoes…they tasted like my dryer sheets.

I am scarred for life.

I learned how to make mashed potatoes from real potatoes. It was a lot easier than I expected. And again I have no recipe.

First I take a whole bulb of garlic. Slice off the top, drizzle olive oil over and in it. Wrap it in foil and throw it in the oven. Whenever I eat mashed potatoes, it is usually with a roasted dish, so at the point it’s already on.

Peel and cube the potatoes. I think I used about 4 russets. Then cover with cold water and salt. Boil until fork tender. After those are done cooking, I drain them and set aside. In a small sauce pan I heat up a little cream, then peel the roasted garlic and then toss them into the pot. I let them infuse until bubbling but not boiling.

After the potatoes are drained, I put them back in the pot, and using a potato masher I mash it with butter (to taste) and add the garlic and a little bit of cream at a time until its the preferred texture. Here you can mash and add salt and pepper to taste as well!

Sorry I don’t have a recipe. I hoping it will be intuitive enough. If not, I’m sure there’s plenty of recipes to follow, like this one!

Posted on December 8, 2014 by miemo 0

Quick Garlic Bread

I’ve never made garlic bread before. I was always the…buy some from the freezer aisle and throw it in the oven type. It’s so good, I just felt like it would be more complicated that it really is. And honestly…I didn’t even look up a recipe for this. I was like, lets use my cooking instinct.

I bought a block of KerryGold butter and a baguette from Society Fair the day before and when it was decided I was making fancy spaghetti for dinner, I decided to use my left over baguette to finish off the meal. Garlic bread literally tastes like, butter, garlic and Italian herbs. So that is what I did. I cubed up some room temperature butter, a couple cloves of garlic, and sprinkled in some dried Italian herb mix. Stir.

I cut the baguette in half, then I generously rubbed my butter mixture on it. In every nook and cranny.

Then I baked it in a preheated oven at 375F and watched it until browned. I like mine extra garlicky, and the Kerrygold was salted, so it was deeelicious.

Posted on December 3, 2014 by miemo 0

Succotash

This is one of my favorite side dishes. In the summer I like to use fresh corn, but since that’s not in season anymore sweet frozen corn and lima beans will do!

Chop onions, and squash, don’t forget to smash and mince the garlic.

Melt down butter and olive oil.

Toss in garlic and onions.

Add the squash, and cook until a little bit clear. Then add the corn and lima beans, and season it with salt and pepper! So easy, yet so tasty. I can’t even write a recipe for this because you can make it your own way, to taste! Enjoy.

Posted on November 26, 2014 by miemo 0

Fancy Mac N Cheese

Caramelized onions, cheese, bacon, macaroni. All delicious, even better together. One of the favorite sides I make is this glorious dish. I got the recipe from The Pioneer woman herself, but made it with my own favorite cheeses. So definitely make it your own way, after reading her instructions.

First you gotta prep all your ingredients, so you aren’t scrambling around for them later. I like an organized kitchen. Bacon takes the longest, so it goes first. After its mostly cooked, but not too cooked, I set it aside. Save about 2 tablespoons of bacon fat too.

Then in the hot bacon fat, I sautee the onions. Your house should smell fabulous at this point.

Then set everything aside.

Boil your macaroni for half the time they tell you to on the box. Drain and set that aside. Now for the fun part.

Take the bacon fat you reserved, and melt it down with some butter.

Measure out your cheese and your flour while the butter melts.

Don’t forget to whisk it real good. Then slowly add the flour and keep whisking so it is smooth.

Then add your dairy…

And your seasoning.

While that cooks, whisk together the egg yolks. Then grab a quarter cup of that hot milky, buttery, fatty liquid…

And slowly whisk it into the eggs. Then add it back to the pot!

Stir in the cheese until melted. Turn off heat.

Add in the bacon and onions.

Stir in the macaroni.

Lay it out on a baking dish and then top with more cheese and some bacon. Then watch it disappear at dinner. You can find this recipe at The Pioneer Woman’s Website. My changes were just the kinds of cheese I used. I used cheddar, gruyere, and an italian mix. Enjoy!

Posted on November 24, 2014 by miemo 0

Turkey Day Turkey

I don’t know about you, but roasting a turkey for Thanksgiving is super intimidating. I can roast chickens all day, but something about the turkey that makes my cooking confidence zero. No matter how much I read on how to do it. It just makes me nervous. My older brother is always in charge of roasting/deep frying the turkey, even if it’s my year to host.

Well this year, we are headed to my husband’s family’s home for Thanksgiving. He so boldly volunteered to cook the turkey. To my disbelief. To prepare for it, I made a trial turkey to brine. For some reason, they didn’t put out whole turkeys yet, so I had to work with a turkey breast with wings…no dark meat. Weird right?

I usually would measure out salt, herbs, etc for the brine. But we found this jar of stuff, and decided to try it out. It’s also got dried fruit in it. I approve.

If you don’t already have one, and you cook a turkey every year, I suggest you get one. It’s just a big multipurpose bucket from home depot. With a lid. This is where I’m brining the turkey overnight.

Instead of a whole gallon of water, I dissolved the salt mixture in half a gallon of water, and then half a gallon of apple cider.

Dunk your turkey in there, I like to put the hole at the top so it can fill up and sink to the bottom. Cover and set outside (if it’s cold enough) and let it brine overnight.

The next day I opened up and saw that the turkey was completely submerged. YAY!

After I took out the turkey, I stuffed it with these goodies to make it fragrant.

Then I rubbed it down with butter, lemon zest and herbs.

My over is a little uneven. But pretty successful for the first try. The meat was cooked all the way through and it was surprisingly moist! It took me a few hours to cook it. I preheated the oven to 450F, then when the turkey went in I turned it down to 350, then basted every 30 minutes or so. If it gets brown too quickly, you can loosely cover with foil.

Do you have any turkey tips?

Posted on November 19, 2014 by miemo 0

Miemonster Archives

Old Posts from my dot net site