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Friday, June 17, 2011

Brisket, just like my Daddy makes!

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Bob and I have mostly moved into our new condo (hooray) and we want to have an awesome house warming party so I thought we should make something awesome, like....my Dad's brisket!  But I didn't want to test out the brisket when we have the party so I had a test run yesterday and I must say, I am most definitely my Daddy's Gal because it was delicious.

I bought a 4 lbs brisket from our local market, Bi-Rite, rubbed it down with Angelo's Beef Rub, put it in a deep roasting dish, covered it with foil and let it cook on 250 degrees for almost 24 hours.  I cut up an onion and placed it all over the top of the brisket.  I pulled the brisket out of the oven after about 10 hours and scooped up the juices and poured it all over the top of the brisket to keep it moist.   When I pulled it out of the oven after the 24 hours I was a little nervous that it was going to be burnt, but after slicing into the brisket we were pleasantly surprised to see that it was wonderfully juicy, and after tasting it....delicious!

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To go with this delicious piece of meat made corn on the cob and covered it with butter and cayenne pepper.  I popped it under the broiler for a few minutes to help make it kind of crunchy and turned out great.

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We also had blue cheese potato salad.  I found the recipe online and I must say I was kind of disappointed with it.  I wanted some bite to the potato salad and it was just so-so.  I'm thinking some dijon mustard would have helped quite a bit.  If you'd like to try the salad for yourself you can check it out here.  Who knows, you might like it more than we did.

I mixed up a garden salad with mushrooms, tomatoes, carrots, onions, orange pepper, avocado, and blue cheese.  I was going to make my grandfather's awesome dressing for the salad but ended up not really having everything I needed at the last minute, it's okay we'll try again next time.

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To satiate our practice guests I picked up a fruit platter and a couple of different kinds of cheese with rye triskets, and made my own guacamole to go with chips and salsa.  As per usual, especially with my family, I made way too much food so we ended up with a lot of leftovers.  The brisket was a success and we ate almost all of it, there's just enough left over to make fajitas.  I'm pretty excited about this plan and will update you on how delicious it is.

We now know that I can replicate the awesome brisket and we're really excited about the house warming!

:)M

 

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Pancakes! They're what's for dinner....tonight anyway.

IMG 1905Tonight's post was going to be about yummy spicy chicken with guacamole, blackbeans and corn and steam veggies, but Bob remembered at the last minute that he had a dinner date with some peeps.  I was all alone, and decided it was going to be pancake night, the only problem was I didn't have anything with which to make pancakes.

As I'm a little lazy in the evenings, give me a break I've been unpacking for days, I took the J Muni line to the Castro Safeway.  On a side note, I'm unsure as to why the Castro Safeway is so poorly lit, I like to be able to see my groceries in all their glory.  I like to walk into grocery store that are brightly lit and full of happiness, the Castro Safeway makes me feel like it might be a night club after hours and that I'm viewing it's unsightly day time ensemble.  But I've gotten off point...  I took Muni to Safeway and picked up some bisquick (I know, blasphemous, I just didn't want to buy all the ingredients to make pancakes from scratch) cinnamon and sugar, milk, eggs, and orange juice and then promptly jumped back on the J to get home.

It's been a while since I've made pancakes, I'm more of a french toast kind of gal, but I had an overwhelming desire to make pancakes and then cover them with butter and cinnamon and sugar and wash it all down with a large glass of milk.  YUM.

Okay, so I got out my cooking gear:

1 - electric skillet (inherited from Grandpa Smith)

2 - mixing bowl with little poury spout thing (bam Target!)

3 - spatula and flipper thing, for some reason I don't own a whisk.....I shall have to get one, btw the spatula is red

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4 - measuring cup

5 - Awesome but unnecessary little bowl thing that I bought at sur la table today.  It came in a set of 4 and they're super cool because you can squeeze them and they make a little spout area.  Check them out here.

6 - All the ingredients bisquik told me to use: 1/2 cup milk, 1 egg, 1 cup bisquick

So I turned on my electric skillet, it has a handy dandy little dial on the side that tells me what temp to cook pancakes at, 350degrees, if you're wondering.  I put some butter on the skillet to make things extra delicious.  I mixed all the ingredients together stirring like a crazy lady to get rid of all the lumps of bisquick and then pour my first pancake.

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While the pancake was cooking I mixed some sugar and cinnamon in my awesome sur la table bowl so that

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I'd have a wonderful concoction to put on top of my pancake.  (I like about half as much cinnamon as sugar.)  The pancake was really fluffy, which was weird because at my house we always had thinner easier to roll pancakes.  We'd roll them and eat them like burritos when we put cinnamon and sugar on the pancakes.  My pancake was to thick to roll, so instead I slathered it with butter and then tossed a bunch of cinnamon and sugar on top.

I would like to say it was everything I wanted and more but it wasn't.  The pancake was so-so, so I mixed so sugar and cinnamon into the actual batter which made it much better.  I think next time I'll put even more cinnamon in, it just tasted too bland the first time around.

I poured myself a gigantic glass of milk and enjoyed my pancake in front of my laptop while I tried to figure out why my iPhoto was syncing properly.  (Side note on that, Bob eventually had to figure it out when he got home.)

And last but not least, I wore my cute new apron while making pancakes.

Overall dinner was filling, mostly satisfying and really very easy.

:)M