Barefoot Bloggers: Flap, Jack, Do It Again, aka: Ina Garten's Banana Sour Cream Pancakes

Breakfast.... for dinner. This is one of my kids’ favorite “special” treats. Little do they suspect that Breakfast for Dinner is when mommy didn’t think of what to make until it was waaay too late to whip something up and that she was just not in the mood to do so.

Enter Ina Garten’s Banana Sour Cream Pancakes. (Cereal is holds the number 1 spot on the BFD charts, followed closely by Eggos and french toast sticks). We made these on the weekend and froze the leftovers. (Just layer them in between sheets of wax paper and pop the brick of pancakes/waffles/french toast in a ziptop bag and into the freezer for later).

Easy to make and DH and the kids liked them (well, except for the Little One. Apparently he’s a pancake purist and doesn’t like “stuff” of any kind in his pancakes, so we didn’t add bananas to a few just for him; I had a bite and then went back to my oatmeal.) As an aside, we do the same sprinkling of fruit on top of pancakes with blueberries and apple slices. For apples, just core and peel then slice into thin rings and plop them on top of the uncooked side before flipping.

Many thanks to Karen of Something Sweet by Karen for selecting this recipe. If you yourself would like to make these Banana Sour Cream Pancakes, you can find the recipe on the Food Network site here or in Ina Garten’s book, Barefoot Contessa Family Style, page 177. To join the BB community or to see what all the others did with this, please visit the the Barefoot Bloggers site.

Barefoot Bloggers: Pappa was a Rolling Stone Al Pomidoro

A thousand pardons. I am a few days late in getting this posted in the month of December, but it is done and thusly sent out into cyberspace. I plead guilty but insane and beg for your understanding and forgiveness.

From Back to Basics: This “is a classic Italian tomato soup that’s thickened with leftover bread”. As usual, I made some modifications to this recipe, based on the ingredients I had on hand. I didn’t have any ciabatta bread or leftover bread of any ilk for that matter, so I used good old Publix whole wheat, cubed up into pieces. Fennel? No gots. Scallions look sort of the same, but different taste and much smaller, but what the hay. Plum tomatoes? Also no gots, but I did have canned diced tomatoes and a whole, fresh tomato. I cubed that up and into the pot it went. Homemade stock? (snicker) Red wine? YES!!! We have wine. I like to cook with wine and sometimes I even put it in the food.* Fresh basil? Alas, my beautiful basil plants are gone for the winter. Dried basil it is. Other than that, I had everything needed.

This was pretty easy to make. I cubed up some more of the wheat bread to make the croutons and I sprinkled parmesan cheese in and on the soup. Messy Boy liked it, I liked it and DH hasn’t tried it yet - he just got home from work. (Update: he likes it.) The Little One and No Thank You Boy turned their noses up at it, but No Thank You Boy did like the croutons.

Many thanks to Natalie of Burned Bits for selecting this recipe. If you yourself would like to make this Pappa Al Pomidoro, you can find the recipe on the Food Network site here or in Ina Garten’s new book, Back to Basics on page 68. To join the BB community or to see what all the others did with this, please visit the the Barefoot Bloggers site.

(*props to WC Fields)

This is one serving, based on the 6 serving size noted.
Go to http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php to analyze YOUR recipes.
The 1/2 cup olive oil is what puts it over the top in the fat category...

Barefoot Bloggers: Coq au Vin

Flambé better late then never! I love a good flaming pot of food, especially when I intentionally set it ablaze and not accidentally. This post is late due to my unfortunate incident with the exploding water. My hand healed really well and I can use potholders and everything now just like a big girl.

Coq au Vin. Chicken au vin, coq and wine, chix and wine (which is what we really have here when I'm with my friends, versus cooking like a fool right now) and at last we settle on chicken and wine. I really chopped up this recipe and made it my own due to extreme laziness and the fact that my kids don’t eat anything with “weird” ingredients like small frozen whole onions or (heaven forbid!) cremini mushrooms. DH HATES ‘shrooms, so there’s no point throwing them in just for myself to hear everyone whining and moaning about it and then having to pick them out.

The chicken part was easy – I used boneless skinless chicken breasts as I was too lazy and cold to walk downstairs and shuffle thru the freezer to dig out parts or defrost the bowling ball that is a whole chicken down there. Parts is parts. I also just used up every last shred of carrot in the house – literally just shredded from making a carrot cake - so I used parsnips. If anyone asks, they’re albino carrots. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. So, I blithely start making the chix wit’ wine in my Colossal Pan. Yes, it actually IS called the Colossal Pan. This is one of my favorite pans - it's a big 6 quart puppy and because it’s so big, it’s almost a pot. Would that make it a pant? Hmmm.

Anyhoo, I cooked the bacon (I crumbled it after frying it whole because who wants to dice when they can crush?) I browned the chicken, I sautéed the onions. I added the garlic. I’m thinkin’ to myself – WOW 5 large cloves of garlic? You go girl! Alas, I have the cookbook open to page 2 of the recipe and forgot that my ingredients are on the page before – the pot roast on page 117 uses 5 cloves of garlic, if anyone’s interested – so my c.o.v. had 5 cloves instead of 2. Good thing I love garlic.

Moving forward to the flambé part.

I got the Colossal Lid to my Colossal Pan, just in case I needed to smother the flames before setting my kitchen alight, and grabbed a long fireplace match. I lit it from these cute little penguin candles from Bath & Body Works. Aren’t they sweet? Cinnamon scented, discounted with purchase, you can get coupons from their website if you sign up for email. But I digress. I pour in the cognac and light the match and POOF! Up in flames goes the pan. Coooool. Messy one comes running thinking I’m about torch the place and also says Cool when he is assured that I MEANT to set fire to dinner this time.




Now, I know you’re thinking, well Lisa, that Colossal Pan doesn’t look like it has an oven proof handle. And of course, you’d be right. It always usually helps to actually READ the recipe – I missed the whole preheat your oven thing or else I’d have started out in the other pot that can go in the oven.

Presto changeo. Through the miracle of the internet and my DH who washes the dishes without complaint, the dinner is now clad in stainless steel.



40 minutes later, we’re good to go. I thickened up the sauce with the flour/butter paste and stopped there as we weren’t partaking of the ‘shroom and onion action. Served with egg noodles and they liked it. What? Oh, those are albino carrots honey. No? Oh, silly me those are actually potatoes. You like potatoes. Eat them. No whining, Santa knows when you whine. Trust me.

Many thanks to Bethany of this little piggy went to market for selecting this recipe. If you yourself would like to see exactly how easy, simple and tasty this Coq au Vin is, you can find the recipe on the Food Network site here or in Ina Garten’s new book, Back to Basics on page 116. To join the BB community or to see what all the others did with this, please visit the the Barefoot Bloggers site.

How NOT to Roast Garlic...

This is what NOT to do:
1) prepare 2 perfectly innocent heads of garlic by peeling the skins off, leaving the root intact, then cutting off the tops of the cloves and rubbing the entire thing with olive oil, especially into the cut areas.
2) put said garlic heads into 2 cute little mini-Pyrex ramekins that you love and are the only 2 you have left from a set of 6.
3) put the above assembly into the microwave for 5 minutes.
4) get distracted doing something else in another room
5) come back into the kitchen trying to find the source of that horrible burning smell.
6) open the door to the microwave and have massive clouds of thick, choking gray smoke billow out.
7) set off the fire alarms and fill the whole house top to bottom with smoke and that sickening burnt stuff smell that will take about a week (or more) to fully disappear. Open all the doors and windows in the interim, letting all the heat (and smoke) out.
8) try to clean the inside of the microwave out using spray cleaner and Barkeepers Friend.
9) set your favorite 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup in the microwave with 1 cup of water and a splash of lemon juice and bring to a boil so that the water vapor helps steam off the goop and clean out the smell that is now permeating the guts of the microwave.
10) open the door to the microwave and remove the favorite measuring cup and have the bloody thing start reboiling, overflowing onto your hand.

Things TO do:
11) scream obscenities at the top of your lungs that would make a sailor blush and fling the cup and liquid across the room in the general direction of your porcelain sink and have it shatter in there into a million pieces. Try to get it all in the sink and not have it splash all over the floor and cabinets. Avoiding hurling it through the window is also a good idea.
12) run your now scalded hand under cool water for several minutes until you realize that your state is in a drought and that they changed the billing /water tier consumption rate charges on your house and that it will cost a small fortune to keep running the water. Yell for your 9 year old to bring you a bowl (NOW!) and plunge your hand into the bowl of cool (not cold) water. Add a few ice cubes when the water becomes bearable.
13) sit there for, oh, about 1 1/2 hours, swishing your hand gently back and forth. While you're doing this, it's a good time to make your kindergartener sit and write out 10 times "I follow class rules". This will take the whole 1 1/2 hours, so it is a constructive use of your otherwise free time.
14) call every urgent care center within a 20 mile radius and discover that they all close at 8:00 pm and that unless you want to go camp out in the ER until morning with all the really sick people, you're SOL.
15) call Walgreens to see if they have anything and learn that the answer is no, not really.
16) send your husband to dig around in the medicine closet and find the jar of Silvadene burn cream that expired back in 2005, but that you kept "just in case".
17) realize that this is one of those moments and apply the cream. Have pain ebb and flow between excruciating and tolerable for about an hour.
18) breathe a deep sigh of relief and gratitude that the old cream still works and that the pain is abating.
19) do not take a picture of your hand to document the experience.
20) be extremely grateful that the cream and cold water worked and that the burn is not near as bad as it could have been.
21) tell the internet and the Barefoot Bloggers that you were going to make the coq au vin but got sidetracked by all this and you'll do it in the next few days. Beg forgiveness and plead insanity. Type the post with the one good hand and two fingers from the other because you are not 100%, but can't be separated from your computer and the internet for any length of time without going loco.
22) the next time you boil water in the microwave for a longish period of time, put a bamboo skewer in the water to give the bubbles an escape route and not explode on you.
23) buy a jar of roasted garlic at Trader Joe's or Harry's/Whole Foods. You'll have it on hand (ow!) when you need it in a pinch and don't have time to roast it properly.