Boise, Idaho

We went to a great new place for dinner the other night.

Soup Kettle Grille is both new to us and newly opened.

It’s fresh, fun, and funky inside.

Many of the soup recipes come from Sophie Markiewicz,  one of the owner’s grandmother. They called her Babcia (Bab-cha). Babcia made over 50 gallons of soup each holiday season for friends and families.Rich had a soup and sandwich. I had grilled cheese and kettle potato chips. (Pardon the pictures. Something’s wrong with my phone’s camera. 🙁 )

Everything was delicious.

Rich loved his soup. Both of our sandwiches were good.

And the freshly made kettle potato chips were AMAZING!

We will definitely be going back, and I will be ordering LARGE kettle potato chips!

A few more photos of the place…

Gold Canyon, Arizona

The Pickleball Club had their monthly potluck event last night.

Wow, was it good.

I ate so much I’m Bluto-ed. That’s what Rich and I call it when we eat way too much.

Sloppy Joes, beef or chicken, were provided for the main course for the price of $2.00 per person. Each person/couple brought one side dish to share with others.

What is it about potlucks that makes them so good?

I think it’s the opportunity to try so many different types of food without having to do all the work.

We all generally fix an item that we are comfortable making, so there’s no stress involved in trying to cook something new.

Where else besides a potluck can a person eat apple pie, chocolate cherry dump cake, Top Ramen cabbage salad, and pasta salad all at once?

Other than eating too much, my only regret is that we won’t be here for next month’s pot luck. 🙂

Gold Canyon, Arizona

We fixed Sunday brunch for our friends here at the RV Park this morning. This is the same group we had for bagna cauda last fall.

Today’s menu included sourdough pancakes, Canadian bacon, scrambled eggs with pepper jack cheese, and sauteed apples with cardamom.

Yummy…

The featured food was the sourdough pancakes. None of our guests had eaten them before.

I think they are scrumptious and our guests did, too.

The base for sourdough pancakes is a starter that’s mixed with flour and water the night before you’re going to use it. The next morning, you remove some of this mixture to use as starter next time. The remainder  is mixed with the pancake ingredients and cooked.

To begin a starter, you’ll need to mix flour, water, yeast, and sugar or honey. At least that’s how I started ours. There are as many ways to make a sourdough starter as there are ways to use it.

Our sourdough starter is only four years old. That’s very young compared to Carol’s which is over 30 years old.

We hadn’t used our starter for about a month, so it had a layer of dark liquid on the top.

The liquid is alcohol from the fermentation process which acts like a preservative.

So while the starter looks hideous, it’s actually a good thing. And it tastes much better than it looks! 🙂

Gold Canyon, Arizona

Dear Gentle Blog Reader:

If you are reading this first thing on Friday morning, here’s what I’ll be eating while you are reading…

A doughnut!

I LOVE doughnuts! They are one of my top five foods. Cheesecake has always been and will always be my favorite food of all. But doughnuts are securely in the top five.

The doughnut pictured above is a bear claw. It’s my second favorite doughnut.

Numero Uno Doughnut? A Cronut!

 Croissant + Doughnut = Cronut

I actually haven’t had a true Cronut. But I’m guessing that they are as divine as they sound–taking the best of each pastry and perfectly blending them into one delicious delight!

There’s only one place that sells a Cronut: Dominique Ansel Bakery in New York.

Shoppers can buy a maximum of two Cronuts if they are lucky enough to get some before they run out for the day…

Because I’m nowhere near NYC, I’ve only had a Croissant Donut at Dunkin’ Donuts. (It can’t be called a Cronut because that’s trademarked. 🙂 )

While I’m sure it’s nowhere near the Cronut in taste, it’s a decent alternative, at least for those of us who can’t fly to get the real thing.

It’s really quite good, but I wish they had a red light at Dunkin’ Donuts like they do at Krispy Kreme to say when the doughnuts are fresh and hot!

For many, many of my working years I rewarded myself every Friday with a doughnut. Seemed like the perfect reward for making it through the week.

Some weeks, I had two Fridays because the week seemed twice as long.

The Gold Canyon RV Resort offers free doughnuts every Friday. All we have to do is listen to The Buzz–news in and around the park for about ten minutes.

Seems like a small price to pay for a doughnut!

Thank goodness it’s Friday!

Gold Canyon, Arizona

I love broiled bread.

Brushed with just a bit of butter, heated under a hot broiler until the butter is melted, the bread is warm, the top crust is toasted, and the rest of the bread is chewy… So delicious!

Alas, there is no way to broil in Homer.

There is a convection/microwave combination that does it’s job well, but it’s just not geared to cook some of my favorite things the way I want.

A Facebook friend posted a link to an article in the San Francisco Globe about 7 Different Ways to Use Your Waffle Iron.

That got me thinking and having my own little MacGyver Moment…

So we bravely went to Walmart yesterday and elbowed our way through all the other crazy people stupid enough to go there on the Saturday after Christmas to buy a waffle iron. 

Last night we had some delicious Anasazi beans with Waffled Toast!

It was so good that it was almost worth waiting seven months since my last broiled bread…

Stay tuned for more Waffle-Creations…

Gold Canyon, Arizona

Pretty quiet here, so I thought I’d talk about Melissa’s entrepreneurial endeavors.

She and her best friend, Kassi, are baking cupcakes for friends and family. They’ve been doing it off and on for most of this year.

But now that Melissa has HUGE medical bills to pay for her appendectomy, she and Kassi have been baking up a storm and holding bake sales at Melissa’s school.

Over the last four weeks, they’ve baked and sold over four hundred cupcakes!

Visit their Web site: calico street cupcakes.

These aren’t just ordinary cupcakes. Yes, I’m biased because I’m the mom. But these cupcakes are incredible–in flavor sophistication and in texture!

Here are a few samples just of their seasonal offerings…

christmas sugar cookie

sweet sugar cookie cake, filled with very vanilla frosting, topped with more very vanilla frosting and christmas sprinkles

candy cane cookies & cream

an oreo cookie on the bottom, candy cane oreo cookies & cream cake, filled with peppermint cream, topped with peppermint cookies & cream frosting

cranberry orange

cranberry orange cake, filled and topped with white chocolate cream cheese frosting

pumpkin

pumpkin cake filled and topped with cinnamon cream cheese frosting

And some of their standard offerings…

lemon

lemon cake, filled with lemon curd and topped with lemon buttercream frosting

blueberry pancakes

white cake with lots of delicious blueberries, topped with maple cream cheese frosting

caramel and peanut

white cake topped with caramel frosting, peanuts and a caramel drizzle

chocolate peanut butter

rich chocolate cake, filled with peanut butter cream cheese, topped with peanut butter frosting and a chocolate drizzle

As you drool over these, you can see why I’m anxious to get home to my new job: Official Taste Tester!

Gold Canyon, Arizona

The other day we had a delicious linner (lunch + dinner) at Freddy’s.

A while ago we had dessert for lunch there. Their specialty is frozen custard. It made for a great lunch. 🙂

“Frozen custard, for those unfamiliar with this midwestern specialty, differs from ice cream in that it is made with eggs in the cream-and-sugar base, which gives the results a particularly smooth texture. Frozen custard is much denser than soft-serve.”

I would describe as soft-serve on steroids. And I would also describe it as yummy!

It comes in vanilla or chocolate. And you can order it plain or with a plethora of fixings. Those fixings can be placed on top or blended in similar to a Dairy Queen Blizzard only they are called Concretes at Freddy’s.

After trying dessert for lunch, we decided to try a traditional meal for our linner.

We both had a patty melt. I ordered shoe string fries and Rich went with onion rings.

I gave my patty melt an 8. Could have used more cheese and I like a really robust rye bread…

But the fries and the onion rings both got a 10! Crispy, firm, and flavorful.

The only bad thing was that we both were too full for a custard.

But we did get something sweet on that visit: this lovely couple sitting side-by-side as they ate their meal. ❤

Gold Canyon, Arizona

Last night we had a group dinner party — a bagna cauda feast with our neighbors.

Pronounced “bawn-ya cow-da”, it’s a delicious dish from northern Italy that literally translates into ” hot bath”.

Think oil and garlic fondue with vegetables, meats, and breads.

The ingredient list for the sauce doesn’t look very appetizing, but I have yet to have a guest not eat way more than they ever thought they would consume.

The sauce is just four ingredients: equal amounts of butter and olive oil, a bucket of garlic, and a small handful of anchovies.

Meats include sliced chicken and beef, shrimp, scallops, and halibut.

Vegetables include carrots, artichokes, asparagus, zucchini, snap peas, and green beans.

Bread should be hard crusted and soft inside so that you can soak up lots of the sauce.

Diners cook their own meals in the gently boiling sauce, eating as they cook. (From left: Wayne, J. J., Jan, Mike, Debbie, and Rich)

So very delicious!

It’s the perfect party food because all inhibitions are pushed aside by the overpowering garlic smell and all the cooking and eating encourages lots of talking.

Jan provided delicious cannoli tarts with decoratively green and red dyed walnut toppings.

The only bad thing about bagna cauda is smelling like a garlic factory for the next few days. But the tastes and the good times are so worth it. 🙂