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how to caramelize onions
Oh, how I love these!
The two keys to really good caramelized onions seem to be time and low temperature. High temperatures will cause the onions to cook too quickly and burn on the edges. If you don’t have much time, though, as is usually the case with me, you can raise the temperature to about medium. Just be sure to keep an eye on them, and stir them frequently.
I made these specifically for the sandwiches Brooke and I ate at our picnic, but they would be delightful in a warm pasta salad, mashed potatoes, or an omelette.
roasted bell pepper sandwiches with grilled chicken, caramelized onion, and basil
Can you really go wrong with any of these ingredients? Brooke and I enjoyed these lovely sandwiches at our picnic alongside the roasted beet salad (glad I had air conditioning, with all the roasting, I must say).
an old fashioned picnic
Life has a way of lurching forward whether we stop to realize it or not.
Brooke and I had been planning this picnic for — oh, I don’t know, a million and one weeks. Amidst our crazy summer, that for some strange reason seemed to be filled with never ending days and weeks, was the hope of something fun and simple and perfect.
But coming up with something beautiful in the midst of chaos is a tall task, one I barely had the creative energy for.
Have you ever had a friend that doesn’t just reach out a hand when you’re struggling, but stops to carry you? In our life right now, we have several such friends, and Brooke is one of them.
She was the reason our picnic was wonderful. She has a talent of making everything she sees or touches beautiful and full of life.
When we met at the mountains, Brooke’s sense of style and creativity overwhelmed me. Her children looked like they had stepped out of a modern Norman Rockwell painting, and the lunches she prepared were the epitome of old fashioned Americana.
Within each basket was nestled a sandwich to satisfy the most ravenous sweet tooth, a vintage book, confetti corn, and a root beer.
As Brooke and I ate our salads and chatted, the children wandered and played. They were so content feeding corn on the cob to the lucky fish in the pond, we practically had to chase them down to feed them dessert.
As the afternoon rambled on, she and I shared our hopes and dreams for the future, and I was grateful we took the time to spend one last perfect moment together at the end of a very long summer.
To read more about the lovely and talented Brooke, be sure to click here and read her post of our picnic.
Her post made me cry.
roasted beet salad with goat cheese and thyme
When Brooke and I were making assignments for this picnic, she said, “Ooh, you should do something with beets and goat cheese. . . If you want.”
“Oh, really?” I said.
“Yeah, but you don’t have to. But they’re so good with thyme.”
“Okay.”
“But you can do whatever you want. You’re the sophistimom.”
“No, that sounds good, do you want me to make something like that?”
“Um, sure. But you’re in charge. I know whatever you make will be great.”
After Brooke had mentioned the beet and goat cheese a third time when we ran into each other down town, I knew I could not let her highly recommended flavor combination be passed over.
raspberry peach and panna cotta parfaits with shaken cream
Though time consuming, these are an easy, show-stopping dessert, and perfect for a hot summer day.
The shaken cream was my solution to whipped cream, which would have surely wilted in the journey to our picnic. Have eager kids take turns shaking the container until the cream is whipped, but be careful not to shake it too long, or it will separate and turn to butter!
how to roast a pepper
On Monday, I’ll be posting about a picnic I had with Brooke from Conversations With a Cupcake. She was in charge of the kids’ food, and I as in charge of the grownups’ food, so I decided to make sandwiches that we would love but the kids would probably hate. How better to do that than layering them with roasted bell peppers? (Not to mention caramelized onions, which are coming soon).
snickerdoodle cupcakes and guest blogger from mybakingaddiction
Well, hello, everyone! I’m ready for a fun post, aren’t you? I have been following Jamie over at mybakingaddiction on twitter for awhile now. She has such lovely photographs and recipes, but more importantly, we have the same name. I couldn’t resist asking her to blog swap for the day.
Look how nice she is, she even tells us where we can get all the cool things in the picture. I’ve been searching for cute cupcake liners for ages!
You can read my post over at her website by clicking here.
And be sure to follow Jamie on twitter, by clicking here
Snickerdoodle Cupcakes
A couple of weeks ago, Jaime asked me if I would be interested in swapping guest posts for our blogs. Since we share the same name and because I adore her and her blog…I happily accepted and sought out to find a great recipe to share on Sophistimom. I have heard a lot of buzz about Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes
After some browsing, I settled on Snickerdoodle Cupcakes, but decided to swap out Martha’s recommendation for 7-Minute Frosting with Vanilla Bean Cream Cheese Frosting and I think this was a great decision! These cupcakes were very delicious, although I personally found them to be a tad bit dry…so I will have to tweak these a bit for next time! Thanks, Jaime for allowing me to share this recipe with you and your readers! I hope you all enjoy these cupcakes as much as we did!
Thanks for reading!
~Jamie
Prop Info:
Plates, Coffee Cup and Napkin: World Market
Piping Tip & Cupcake Liners: Bake It Pretty
how fiction sees me through
I am not one to assign superlatives to phases of my life (This is my best accomplishment, That was the worst day, This is my favorite movie). But I think, after living through the last ten months, this has been the most difficult time in my life.
I am going through a divorce.
There, I finally said it.
The strange thing is, no one has died. Everyone dies, yet death is never a cliche. Divorce looks a lot like a cliche. But it doesn’t feel like one.
money saving bread and my new philosophy on eating
Well at least, when you’re trying to save money, don’t sacrifice good food. Just find cheaper ways to make it.
Okay, so everyone is looking for ways to save lately, and I have to admit, sometimes the idea of it makes me cringe, especially when I imagine skimping on food. I like cane sugar, not beet sugar, or better yet, organic evaporated cane juice. Margarine or Crisco is definitely out of the question, so we won’t even go there. And why should I use the no name brand of chocolate chips when Ghiradelli and Guittard chocolate chips taste so much better because they use real vanilla? I don’t believe in enriching the lives of food companies that want to pull the polyester tablecloth over our eyes by pumping everything full of artificial this and that and long lists of preservatives. We may be saving money on our end, but they’re making more off of us by cutting corners.
Over the years, I have been the smart shopper in the sense that I don’t come home with a humongous cart full of refined junk for only $89.76, but instead I try (try) to buy less food, but of a higher quality (Of course, that’s when dad comes home, looks at the refrigerator, and charters a large Costco run to get “real food”).
The thing I have discovered in the last year, is that Americans really eat WAY more than we have to. We really do.
We buy efficient houses, we talk about buying efficient cars. But then, when it comes to food, we say How much of this pizza can I cram into my stomach at once? Then we think, Oh crap, I have to burn this all off! Burning it off means hours at the gym, hundreds of dollars on diets, blah blah blah.
I think God made our bodies efficient for a purpose. We don’t need to eat as much as we have all been programmed. We can actually eat less, save money, have more time.
Have you heard of that study about the rats? (Which study, Jaime? There are about a million.) Well, once on the Discovery Channel, I saw this show Human Body: Pushing the Limits. The episode on Brainpower talks about how our bodies are capable of extreme efficiency. It talked about these rats: one group was given a normal diet, the other group was given half the normal diet. Many of the ones with the smaller diet lived twice as long as the rats with the normal diet. The show suggests that these findings are applicable to humans, and that humans who drastically reduce their caloric intake can have much healthier hearts and even healthier lives (Don’t worry though, the guy they featured was eating 2000 calories, and they were calling it close to starvation mode. If I’m not mistaken, 2000 is the FDA’s recommendation). Here’s the video clip:
Now certainly, you’ve seen my website. I LOVE good food. But now, in recent months, my philosophy has turned more toward my afore written ranting. I am now trying to curtail what I eat, and try contenting myself more with simple food on most days (you can imagine my children are only slowly getting on board). Then, I pick a few moments here and there to eat great, delicious, crave-worthy food (like s’mores bars, or tres leches cake with chocolate ganache, or lemon cloud cupcakes. Mmmmm…..). It seems to be working well for me.
So after all of that, here’s a recipe for white bread. Ha Ha Ha!!! I began this post talking about saving money, and then it turned to a quality not quantity thing, and then my diet philosophy. Now I’m promoting a bread with zero nutrition. Ha! Well, I’m definitely not perfect!
But don’t worry, white flour can easily be swapped out with whole wheat flour (which I actually do all the time). I just add 2 more tablespoons of oil and use 4 tablespoons of honey instead of the 2 tablespoons of brown rice syrup.
Back to saving money.
This recipe is really versatile for bread, rolls, whatever, and is even great as hamburger rolls. This makes 6 large hamburger buns (you could also make hot dog buns), with no preservatives, no bleached flour, and no refined sugar, for about $0.75, if that. That’s definitely cheaper than what I would find at Whole Foods or a regular bakery, which still wouldn’t be as good of quality as homemade. I think that’s a pretty good deal, don’t you?
