So Delicious: Chicken Parmesan Meatball Sandwiches

So.
I think I need a new hashtag to add to a bunch of my recipes.  That would be #alljessersfault.
I follow her on Pinterest, and I seem to pin a whole lot of yum that she finds.  This would be yet another one of those recipes.  I'm not asking her to stop, because those pins are so good.  I'm just thinking that maybe I need to back away from the computer more often.  I'm never going to catch up with all the pins that I have.
This also continues the meatball theme that I seem to be building upon.  J and I seem to be eating a whole lot of them right now, and they're always good.  I have difficulty finding ground chicken at the store, so once again I ground my own with the handy Spong meat grinder. And, I used a zucchini.  it was quite the afternoon.
Meat grinders, sneaky vegetables, and peer pressure.  And you thought you were just showing up to see my dinner.  I present to you now Iowa Girl Eats' Chicken Parmesan Meatball Sandwiches:

A Teatime Treat: Glazed Buttermilk Orange Donut Muffins

So.
When I was little and we went to the donut shop, I would pick the biggest donut I could find to order.  Often I would have an apple fritter, or (my still personal favourite) a walnut crunch, but sometimes it would be an orange or cherry blossom stick.  Frankly, it was pure greed; but I developed a love of cake donuts as a result.
Fast forward to today:  I don't have donuts often anymore.  J's buying me a Keurig for Christmas means that I don't need a Timmy's fix on a regular basis.  Perhaps it's a good thing that I don't have donuts often, but I still like them. 
While cruising Pinterest, I found this recipe for muffins that used buttermilk.  I'm working on using up a liter of buttermilk, so I thought that this would work.  I also saw it as a way to relive my childhood.  I present to you now Our Best Bites' Buttermilk orange Donut Muffins:

So Good: Chicken Black Bean Enchilada Pie

So.
It's a well-established fact that we love Mexican here on the Mountain.  It's also a well-established fact that I love Pinterest.  This is one of the happy stories of Pinterest and my Mexican food love coming together in a weeknight dinner that J tells me I can make whenever I want.
Once again, I was looking at jesser's pins and this caught my eye.  The sauce was easy, the ingredients are things I keep in the house, and it took me about 15 minutes to throw this together and get it in the oven.  Dinner in an hour?  Don't mind if I do!
When I have made Mexican lasagna in the past, I've had issues with the tortillas on the bottom drying out and being uncuttable.  That didn't happen in this case.  Then again, the lowest tortilla wasn't right on the bottom.  I might let it sit a little longer before cutting, but it was all good.
I present to you now Make and Take's Chicken Black Bean Enchilada Pie:

Classics: Sweet Rolls

So.
At my house growing up, there were many Christmas morning traditions.  Most of them made my 8 year old self a little crazy.  They make my almost 40 year old self happy, but things change.  One of the traditions that I liked both then and now was breakfast.  After we got up at 7:30 (not before) and opened our stockings, we had to get ready for the day and have a big breakfast.  That breakfast always included sweet rolls.  The pan would be half raisin, half plain because my Dad didn't like raisins.
Fast forward to my mother finding a new recipe for sweet rolls that include a whole lot of pecans, something my father would bring home from Adcock's in Georgia.  This recipe is easier, faster, and should include a whole lot of nuts.
Work has been crazy this week.  Crazy to the point that I have been wondering if I brought the crazy with me this year, or if it always existed and I just don't know how to contain it properly.  I'm thinking it's a little from column A, and a little from column B.  But at the end of a very hard week, I decided to make a treat for those of us still standing and laughing (because the other option was to cry from exhaustion).  Here is the treat - my mother's sweet rolls, but with raisins instead of pecans because we're nut free.
I present to you now my mother's go-to sweet roll recipe:

Magazine Challenge: Buttermilk-Garlic Biscuits

So.
This officially marks 6 recipes from the Jan/Feb issue of Everyday Food 2005.  I'm going to say that I've done what I need to with this issue.  While I do want to make the other 6 things from there that I found, I've officially made 6 things.  This would even be a high note to go out on.
When we made chili at our house, we use a kit.  I KNOW!  But it's just the spices, and it's really good.  It's also one of the few culinary things that J brought to our relationship.  So, for those of you looking for a wicked easy way to make chili, and who are going to the US, might I suggest dropping by a Kroger for your own box or 12 (don't judge) of WIck Fowler 2 Alarm Chili?  It's got a good burn to it, and it's easy.
I often make cornbread from my Holly Hobby Cookbook to go with the chili.  Sometimes, I made rolls, or pull them out of my freezer.  But this time, with a partial quart of buttermilk in the fridge, I turned to Martha and a recipe that I'd seen a while ago.
I present to you now from EDF 2005 Jan/Feb, Buttermilk-Garlic Biscuits:

Namaste

So.
I love trying new foods, to a point.  I haven't always been like that (frankly, I'm sure my mother is sitting in front of her computer laughing hysterically).  Growing up, I was a picky eater.  I preferred if no foods were touching each other on my plate (still do), and was skeptical of many things my mother made.
While I would say that I'm a lot more adventurous now, I still won't eat mushrooms and am skeptical of sandwiches that I didn't watch being made.
But world foods:  I'll give lots of them a shot.  I love Mexican.  I'm a fan of Chinese food (but not too often).  I adore French food - both cooking and eating.  Greek is yummy, but not something that I've spent much time replicating at home.  I also enjoy Indian.
Indian, in fact, is the one way that I like cauliflower: curried.  And daal.  And tandoori chicken.  And curry chicken.  And naan.  But my favourite is Butter Chicken.  I love the spices in the sauce, but I've never tried to recreate any of those flavours in my own kitchen.  Until now.
I'm lucky in that J is game for anything.  He doesn't like turkey and is trying to learn to like fruit, but he'll give whatever I cook a try.  When I announced that I was making this, he wasn't too sure until I started cooking.  Just the onions and spices made him interested enough to come into the kitchen to find out what I was up to.  He also enjoyed the results.
I present to you now The Looneyspoons Collection's Better Butter Chicken:

Pintertest Kitchen: BHG Chocolate Sour Cream Cake and Milk Chocolate Buttercream

So.
My mom's birthday was Easter weekend this year.  I offered to make her cake and bring it with us when we went to visit for the holiday.  She told me I could make whatever cake I wanted.  Well, that was a challenge!  Knowing that I had a bunch of things pinned (and striking out with something that took my fancy in my TOH cakes magazine), I started looking for something to make.  I eventually chose these 2 pins:

How could they not be a good combination?  I present to you now Better Homes and Garden's Chocolate Sour Cream Cake and Comfortably Domestic's Milk Chocolate Buttercream:

Magazine Challenge: April Planning

So.
I realized something while perusing the April EDF issue.  In the 3 issues so far this year, until I started the Magazine Challenge, I had never made a single recipe from any of these magazines.  I got EDF for 6 years.  I have all of them.  WHAT WAS I DOING WITH THIS MAGAZINE IF I WASN'T MAKING ANYTHING?
I don't get it.  I mean, I do.  I love magazines.  I love to look at them.  But the amount of money I've sunk into them and I haven't made anything.  That's a little crazy.  So in that sense, this is just as well.  I'm also starting to get excited at the end of the month to look through the next issue and pick out things to make.  April is a winner.
I have selected 8+ recipes for April that look yummy.  Once again, I like the looks of the Freeze It! recipe and the ways to use it.  There were also lots of things that I suggested to J that he liked the sound of.  Here's a run-down on what's up in my kitchen this coming month, plus the other assorted things I make in the course of a month:

1.  Garlic Pepper Sauce, along with the ways to use it in a variety of Tex-Mex dishes.
2.  Salmon with Asparagus and Potatoes
3.  Chicken with Paprika Sauce
4.  Chicken with Olives and Sundried Tomatoes
5.  Southwestern Meatloaf Burgers
6.  Blueberry-Peach Crumbles
7.  Warm German Potato Salad
8.  Chocolate Ricotta Pudding

That looks good.  J's excited.  I'm ready for a great month.

Magazine Challenge: Frosted Chocolate-Buttermilk Cupcakes

So.
January/February  of the magazine challenge didn't go very well.  I was busy, work was mental, and we lost J's dad.  Plus, I was trying to come up with 12 recipes from the issue to make.  I've come to the conclusion that it might not have been meant to be, but that doesn't mean I'm beat.  I've just been making recipes from Jan/Feb on an ongoing basis.  This recipe is a case in point.
Our home church does a sign up for snacks.  Every so often, I need to come up with something to take for an undetermined number of people (more than 5, hopefully less than 20) I saw this recipe and that it made 12, but figured it would be easy to double.  Thankfully it was.
The feature in the article was buttermilk, so I now have some.  Obviously, I'll need to make more recipes from the article.  I'm up to 5 from that issue.
I present to you now from the Jan/Feb 2005 issue of Everyday Food, Frosted Chocolate-Buttermilk Cupcakes: