Friendship Bread Goldmine

Have you ever gotten friendship bread or a friendship bread starter?
If not it's kind of like sourdough bread where you have a starter and you can keep refreshing it and using it and giving (and possibly annoying) all of your neighbors. 
I did once.  The bread was quite good but I wasn't sure it if it was sooo much better than regular sweet bread and you had to babysit for ten days before you could make it.
Plus I had to find three friends who wanted to take the starter after it had mulitiplied.  So the next time I was asked I said no.
Then I read the book, "Friendship Bread" which I loved.  And I learned that you can make tons of variations on the original.
So, I just thought I would share this site with you in case you were ever offered some friendship bread starter.  The possibilities are endless!

Check it out here.

White Sauce Chicken Enchiladas with White Mexican Rice

I made this and this for dinner tonight after finding it on a recipe blog that I love. It was really yummy and simple. It almost seemed like there wasn't enough sauce for the enchiladas, but it turned out perfect in the end. Per my husband's request, I added a little bit of corn inside the tortillas...and I think it added a nice little touch. The rice is SO yummy! I could probably cook up a batch and just eat it all on my own.

Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

Having recently received some fresh vanilla beans, I figured the best use of them would be to make ice cream.  I found a recipe that I REALLY liked here.  Here is the shortened version if you don't want to go to the site.  If you are not too familiar with making ice cream, she does include pictures and step-by-step instructions for making it on the site.

Ingredients

• 1 whole Vanilla Bean, Split And Scraped
• 3 cups Half-and-half
• 2 cups Sugar
• 8 whole (up To 9) Large Egg Yolks
• 3 cups Heavy Cream

Preparation Instructions

Heat half-and-half and 2 cups sugar in a saucepan over low heat, adding vanilla “caviar” to the mixture. Turn off heat when mixture is totally heated.
Beat egg yolks by hand or with an electric mixer until yolks are pale yellow and slightly thick. Temper the egg yolks by slowly drizzling into the 1 1/2 cups of hot half-and-half mixture, whisking constantly. After that, pour the egg yolk/half-and-half mixture into the pan containing the rest of the half-and-half mixture. Cook over low to medium-low heat (depending on how hot your stove gets) until quite thick, stirring constantly. Tthen pour into a bowl with the heavy cream. Stir to combine.
Chill mixture completely, then freeze in an ice cream maker until thick. Place container in freezer to harden for at least eight hours.
Serve with something chocolate. Enjoy!

Blueberry Oat Scones

Tried these this morning.  Delish!! Next time if I have lemons on hand I think I will add some lemon zest.

Apple Cake

My sister in law made this and had me try it. It was SOOO yummy! So, I snagged the recipe from her...but when I made it, it wasn't as amazing as hers. So, if you try it, let me know what you think. 

Apple Cake
1/2 c soft butter
1 pkg yellow cake mix
1 can apple pie filling
1/4 c sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 c sour cream
1 egg


Combine butter and cake mix. Pat mixture in 13x9 pan. Bake @ 350 for 10 minutes.
Arrange apples.
Mix sugar & cinnamon.
Sprinkle over apples.
Blend sour cream and egg.
Drizzle over apples.
Bake 25 minutes.
DO NOT OVERCOOK! 

 Here are my tips on the cake: 

I made the crust too crusty...with the butter and cake mix, I melted the butter, but next time I won't, I'll just set it out all day and let it get soft. Mix the soft butter in really really good with the cake mix. Also, I pushed the cake/crust too hard into the pan. Next time, I'll just lightly pat it down so the moisture can seep into it more. Other than that it turned out really good, the non-crust stuff was super yummy...kind of custard-y.

Sorry, I didn't take any pictures of it!

Pizza-Nini

I just made up an awesome dinner tonight.  I was cooking something in the crock-pot and it was no where near done when the troops starting getting ravenous. 

So, luckily I was at Sam's early today and they had a bag of Ciabatta Rolls (8 large rolls for about $3.50).
I have a weakness for ciabatta so I grabbed a bag knowing I could make something awesome out of them.

So, basically we put pizza sauce, turkey pepperoni, olives, and cheese in the roll, then cooked them in my panini maker (Christmas present-love it!), until bread was crispy and cheese was melty.

Yummmmmm!!!!

I'm already thinking up my next filling when I pick a bag again.

And I have dinner all ready for tomorrow.  Bonus!

Chicken Fried Steak

My husband I are big lovers of a good chicken fried steak. I have wanted to make some for a long time, but had never found a good recipe. I found one recently that looked promising and tried it out. The recipe can be found here. As for how it was, I liked it but it does need some tweaking.  If you make it, you need to add more seasonings to the flour as the flour was bland.  Also it came out tasting a bit greasy.  It was my first time frying something with Criso, so that might have been why.  Also add more S&P to the gravy, otherwise this is a good starter recipe.