txaggie

Dinner (made by cjsadler) on wednesday was beef stroganoff with roasted carrots and for dessert, we had flan. Both recipes are from Cook's Illustrated.

Cinnamon Buns Dough: 3/4 cup 4% milkfat cottage cheese 1/3 cup buttermilk 1/4 cup sugar 4 Tbs unsalted butter, melted 1 tsp. vanilla 2 cups flour 1 Tbs baking powder 1/2 tsp salt 1/4 tsp baking soda Filling: 1 1/2 Tbs unsalted butter, melted 2/3 cup brown sugar 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon 1/2 tsp ground all spice 1/2 tsp ground cloves 1 cup pecans, chopped Glaze: 2/3 cup powdered sugar 2-3 Tbs cold milk 1 tsp vanilla Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a springform pan (or whatever baking dish you're using). In a food processor, combine cottage cheese, buttermilk, sugar, butter, and vanilla until smooth. Add flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda and pulse until dough clumps together. The dough will be soft. Knead dough on floured surface until smooth. Roll dough into a 12X15 rectangle. Brush dough with melted butter, leaving a 1/2 inch border along the edges. Combine brown sugar and spices and sprinkle over the buttered area. Sprinkle nuts over sugar mixture. Starting at the long edge, roll up dough jelly-roll style. Cut the roll into 12 pieces. Set pieces, cut side up, in pan. Bake until golden brown/firm to touch, about 20-28 minutes. Cool in pan for 5 minutes. Combine glaze ingredients and drizzle glaze over the rolls.

No yeast. Just a combo of baking powder and baking soda. If you'd like the recipe, PM me.

Sunday's breakfast was homemade cinnamon rolls and bacon. From start to finish, the cinnamon rolls only took an hour to make. The recipe in the latest issue of Fine Cooking.

Leftovers from a meeting last night - 4 different cheeses from Cowgirl Creamery (midnight moon, mt tam, one blue, and one other cheese) and a small baguette.

Dinner on Sunday was a salad with duck confit and a poached egg and mushroom risotto.

On our drive from Florida on Monday, we stopped at Lady and Sons in Savannah for lunch. Unfortunately, there was a long wait for lunch but fortunately, they do take out. So, we took our food to go and ate at a local park that was a couple of blocks from the restaurant.

cjsadler reminded me that i had not posted any pictures from our dinner at Bern's in April. It wasn't the best steak that we had ever eaten but the experience was great, and I love the separate dessert room. After dinner, we toured the kitchen and the wine cellar. Sprouts for the salads are grown at the restaurant. The wine cellar is incredible. For dessert, cjsadler had the Banana Cheese Pie ("The Classic. A banana-cream cheese mousse in an almond praline crust with sliced fresh bananas, whipped cream and banana coulis.") I had the King Midas ("A signature recipe of rich and moist carrot cake, with macadamia nut ice cream and warm Valrhona chocolate sauce. A Bern's original.")

My aunt in Chestertown has two fig trees/bushes in her backyard. One produces small brown figs that look like this. And the other produces a larger fig (about twice the size of the brown one) with a green skin (edible). Both are delicious and were even better roasted.

Dinner last night was made from cjsadler's farmer's market purchases. Heirloom tomato salad with ricotta and goat cheese Buffalo sausage and shrimp sandwiches

Blackberry Caramel Cheesecakes, Adapted from Alice Medrich's A Year in Chocolate Caramel: 1 cup sugar 1/2 cup water Cheesecakes: 6 oz white choc, chopped 1/4 cup boiling water 1.5 lbs cream cheese 1/2 cup plus 2 T sugar 1.5 tsp vanilla 2 eggs 5 oz blackberries 8 5-6oz ramekins Preheat oven 325. Make the caramel...Mix the sugar and water over high heat until it's a nice amber color. Pour the caramel in the ramekins and swirl around (so the caramel coats the bottom and the sides of the ramekin). **A tip from cjsadler...Add 1/4 cup water to the caramel after it is done. This will help the caramel stick less to the ramekins and come out as a sauce. This tip was told to me after the fact. For the cheesecakes...Place white chocolate in bowl and pour boiling water over the chocolate. Stir until smooth and set aside. Beat cream cheese until smooth. Add sugar and vanilla and beat 1-2 minutes. Add eggs one at a time and incorporate. Stir in melted white chocolate. Divide blackberries among ramekins, add the batter and bake (using a water bath) for 15-20 minutes (outer edges will be puffy and the center will jiggle. Cool completely, cover, and refrigerate overnight (at minimum).

Yup - the crabcakes were homemade. cjsadler made them. I bought the crab meat at Costco. It was 1 pound of Phillip's lump crab meat. $14 at Costco. I made the cheesecakes in ramekins. It's the easiest recipe (I can send you the recipe if you're interested), but you do have to make the cheesecakes at least one day in advance.

Some friends of mine are visiting DC this week so last night we made them dinner. To start, a tomato, watermelon, and feta salad, a perfect salad on a hot and humid summer day. The main dish was crabcakes with remoulade and roasted peppers and corn. And for dessert, blackberry caramel cheesecakes. We picked the blackberries at Butler's Orchard on Sunday. The cheesecake recipe is from Alice Medrich's A Year in Chocolate.

I'm slowly eating them a cup at a time and I'm going to make another buckle or two. The buckle recipe from Cook's Illustrated is a keeper.

cjsadler and I picked blueberries at Butler's Orchard on Friday afternoon. The blueberries are great this year. They are sweet and perfect and have a very concentrated blueberry flavor. We picked 15 pounds of blueberries. And I made a blueberry buckle. Raspberries should be ready for picking this weekend or next week.

Dinner on Friday night was fajitas with peppers and onions and an avocado-tomatillo sauce (the recipe is from the September 2007 issue of Saveur). Margaritas to drink.

Starbuck's does have plain "iced coffee." They'll add some simple syrup to your iced drinks if you asked for the drink sweetened.

We had dinner with legant and a non-DR.com friend on Friday. When the four of us get together, we pick a theme in advance of dinner and everyone prepares a course. The original theme for Friday's dinner was softshell crabs but after calling around for softshells and learning that they were either to $$ or frozen, the theme changed to crabcakes. Starters were a tomato, mozzarella, and basil salad (Eric) and a soup made from legant's CSA items (tomatillos, onions, garlic, peppers, cream). The main course was crabcakes (cjsadler) with a red pepper slaw (cjsadler) and corn pudding (txaggie). Desserts were a lemon blueberry tart (legant) and ice cream sandwiches - brown sugar cookies and vanilla swiss almond Haagen-Dazs (txaggie). Saturday's dinner was made from Friday's leftovers. Crab cakes with fresh corn polenta and tarragon oil And to drink...

cjsadler and I were in Philly this weekend. Lunch was a philly cheesesteak taste test between cheesesteaks from Pat's and from Geno's. There were five of us at lunch and from each place, we got the following three cheesesteaks: Cheese Whiz and onions, only Cheese Whiz, and provolone and onions. The ideal cheesesteak would be with Pat's meat, Geno's bread, Cheese Whiz and onions. For dinner, we tried a new BYOB called Mandoline. Appetizers (not pictured) were a pistachio goat cheese cake with figs, tuna tartare with crispy wontons, and veal ravioli. Entrees were seared scallops with a mascarpone and pea risotto, roast chicken with mashed potatoes and asparagus and topped with a soft fried egg (this dish was great!), and grouper with candied carrots, potatoes and mango and vanilla coulis. For dessert, we shared the smores (graham crackers, brownie bits, marshmallow gelato from Capogiro's, and caramel and chocolate sauces) and the apple bundt cake. And to make the evening exciting, there was foie gras protest at Amada, the restaurant next door to Mandoline.

We were experimenting with scallops this weekend. Dinner on friday was seared scallops with pearl pasta, papaya and avocado salsa and a chipotle honey vinagrette. Lunch on Sunday was scallop-shrimp burgers with roasted cauliflower. I attempted to make homemade hamburgers buns but they ended up tasting more like sourdough kaiser rolls.

Logan @ The Heights website

The 1st Annual Brainfood Grill-Off was a success! I'm proud to be a part of this organization and to have been involved in the planning of this event. I wanted to share some pictures of the ingredients that were available to our Grill-Off teams and a sample of some of the final dishes. Available was an abundance of fresh herbs and vegetables, such as tomatoes, squash, eggplant, potatoes, and more, , a variety of meats (pork tenderloin, scallops, shrimp, flank steak), spices, dairy products, etc. Shrimp and flank steak were popular protein choices among the Grill-Off teams.

Hi everyone, The Brainfood Grill-Off is tonight and we're in need of one more chef to work with our Grill-Off teams. One of our guest chefs has food poisoning and cannot attend the event. If any chefs are available tonight (from 6:30-9:30pm, Hotel Monaco in Chinatown), please PM me. For more information about Brainfood please visit www.brain-food.org. Thanks!! Binni

Hi, If anyone is interested in attending the Grill-Off, the last day to purchase tickets is this Friday, June 22. Visit the website to purchase tickets online. Binni

Saturday night's dinner was a tapas experiment. On the menu was a Spanish potato and onion omelet Chickpea flour crepes with caramelized onions and capers Bruschetta with quince paste, roasted red peppers, and ham and oven-roasted artichokes And garlic shrimp All dishes were keepers. The favorite of the night was the potato and egg omelet.