I'm Straying Away... Just Once :)

So I'm straying from my plans just a little bit but I've been talking about this recipe at work for a couple of days and I had to fix it.  It's in the oven finishing off as I type.  Dr Pepper Spaghetti!!!  Ok, don't knock it until you've tried it!  I promise I wouldn't lie to you.

Dr Pepper Spaghetti
1 c. chopped onion
2 t. minced garlic
1/2 t. Italian seasoning
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper
12 oz. can Dr Pepper
15 oz. can tomato sauce
2 T. Worcestershire sauce
16 oz. cooked spaghetti
1 1/2 c. shredded mozzarella

Brown ground beef and drain well.  Add onion, garlic and seasonings.  Cook about 5 minutes.  Add Dr Pepper, tomato sauce and Worcestershire; cook an additonal 5 minutes.  Stir in cooked and drained spaghetti. Stir in cheese.  Pour into a well greased cassesrole dish.  Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.  Enjoy with a salad, green beans, garlic bread and an ICE COLD GLASS OF DR PEPPER!! :)


I got the recipe out of a little Dr Pepper cookbook I bought in Waco years ago and I've only actually cooked it twice.  The first time I followed the recipe exactly, but the next time I made it I had some friends coming over and I tried to cook it differently.  Instead of mixing it all together, I made the meat sauce and put it in the crock pot so I wouldn't heat the house too much.  It doesn't taste sweet, but you can taste the Dr Pepper.  When I made it in the crock pot it was much sweeter and the taste was a little stronger.  I liked it both ways.  But I am a "Pepper" afterall!  Too bad God didn't make it something good for you or I'd never drink anything else!

My test subject... I mean Steve...  will be here in a little while and this will be the first time he's ever had it.  I'm not going to tell him and see if he can figure it out. hahaha  I'll post a pic and the outcome later!  Try it! I promise you will like it!

She Was Right!

I have to say that Rosemarie was right on the money when she said her Cranberry Swirl Coffee Cake was "DEE-lish!" It seemed to be a hit at work because not very much came home with me.  And those who knew what the cake was all about enjoyed it.  It turned out a little different than what I expected.  The cake was more like a pound cake - very thick and heavy.  A few people suggested making it again but using either blueberry, cherry or APRICOT (thanks, Mom!)  As for me, next time I'm adding about double the nuts - that's the best part!

It didn't take too long to make the cake, but it seemed to take forever to cook - it was hot and it had to cook for nearly an hour.  With the luck I seem to have with my bundt pan, it was close to being the longest hour of my life.  I said if it stuck in the pan you'd be able to hear my screaming no matter where you lived.  When I turned the pan over on the plate I heard the most wonderful sound in the world - the "foomp"!! Check out the empty pan!  The girls weren't too excited about it to begin with but decided they didn't need to eat any of it before it ever baked.  :)  And I couldn't wait to dig in but had to wait until the next morning at work!  Time to pick the next recipe!

And so it begins...

My plans were to cook an entire meal from all these recipes on Saturday for dinner.  But it was WAY TOO HOT inside and out to make it even hotter by having a gas oven on all afternoon.  But I'm way too anxious to get started with these so I broke down and heated up my house tonight instead!!

First attempt - Cranberry Swirl Coffee Cake.  Sounds really good.  And according to Rosemarie's notes, it's "DEE-lish!"   She made it for the first time for Aggie and JoeRobert (yes, one word and NOT Joe Bob!) and this cake eventually became a "regular favorite at bridge."  I love games of all kinds, but bridge is one game I've never learned how to play.  If I played, I suppose now I'd have to start taking this cake!

It's in the oven right now, so I have no idea how it's going to turn out, but it smells "DEE-lish!"  And of course I had to lick the beaters so what I could taste was pretty good.  I'm taking with me to work tomorrow so I guess I can judge how good it is or isn't by how fast it disappears and if I have to bring any home with me.  :)  I know my kids won't eat it because it's got fruit in it - Heaven forbid.  They like fruit but they don't want it cooked.  Go figure.  I don't know where either of them would get their pickiness from!! I'm certainly NOT the reason. hahaha

Here's the recipe, and I'll let you know tomorrow how it goes!  Let me just go ahead and say that if this cake sticks after all that grease and flour you will hear me screaming no matter where you live.  Enjoy!!!

Cranberry Swirl Coffee Cake

1/4 lb. butter
1 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 t. baking powder
1 t. soda
2 c. flour
1/2 t. salt
1/2 pint sour cream
1 t. almond extract
1 can whole berry cranberry sauce
1/2 c. chopped nuts

Cream butter; add sugar.  Add unbeaten eggs one at a time.  Sift all dry ingredients.  Add alternately with sour cream, ending with dry ingredients.  Add almond extract.

Grease and flour a bundt or tube pan.  Put a layer of batter in bottom of pan, the swirl some of the cranberry sauce.  Add another layer of batter and swirl remaining cranberry sauce.  Sprinkle the top with nuts.

Bake at 350 degrees for 55 minutes.  Remove from pan after 5 minutes of cooling.
 

Here We Go!

I can't believe I'm actually going to attempt to do this! I'm not a writer. I'm not a scholar. But mostly, I'm NOT a Dallas Socialite!  I am, however, a mother, a daughter, a friend and a FOODIE!  I collect cookbooks and kitchen gadgets.  Currently I have about 200-ish cookbooks and a drawerful of random handwritten or printed or scrawled out recipes for just about everything.  Let me just say that if there was one thing I could do full time and get paid well (ok - VERY well) for it would be cooking for people. I absolutely love to cook for friends and family because I love to see them happy and enjoying themselves. If I had the room to do it and the room to store all of the things it would take to do it, I would be having dinner parties every week!! I'm not a gourmet chef and I'm not so sure I want to be. I just want to have some fun and enjoy my friends.

I recently went to an Estate Liquidation in University Park that my friend, Mark, was organizing for a family whose aunt had recently passed.  Apparently her aunt was a foodie, too.  And she loved to cook and entertain.  This was evidenced by all of her dishes, gadgets, etc.  Mark let me come for a pre-sale because he knew there would be plenty of things for me to prowl through and find and take home with every good intention of actually using and experimenting with.  Her name was Rosemarie, and I didn't know her, but wish I had.  I think I would have enjoyed cooking with her!

Sadly, her niece didn't realize the value of the room full of cookbooks her aunt had collected over the years.  Before Mark had a chance to tell her not to, she had taken all of the cookbooks off to Half-Price Books to sell.  She didn't get much for them - and there is no telling what kinds of treasures she had.  So knowing there were no books to sit for hours and read through I headed for her kitchen to start my treasure hunt.  I felt like a kid in a candy store!! :)  Gadgets galore, pots, pans, dishes, appliances! Mark made me a heck of a deal on a table full of lots of miscellaneous things!  The one treasure I was most excited about was a clear, plexiglass recipe box FULL of Rosemarie's handwritten, stained recipe cards.  She made notes about how she might have changed things, when and where the recipes came from and how much she liked how they turned out.  Best of all, there are several that are handwritten in GERMAN! :)  I'll have to have some help from my German friend at work, Chef Andreas, to make it through those!

Thanks to a suggestion from my "let's talk about recipes and food and all things Southern" friend, Jeff, this is my journey through a Dallas Socialite's recipes!!  Starting this weekend I am going to go through the box one recipe at a time and then blog about how it turned out.  I can't wait to see how my teenage girls react to all of this! haha  If I ate every single thing I cooked I'd end up being bigger than my house, so be ready if I show up on your porch with a plate full of food - or better yet, if I decide to get fancy and actually invite you over for dinner!  There's always a place at the table for you!  Well, here we go!!