I thought it might be fun to take a stroll with you through my garden. Over the years I have been adding a wide variety of cottage flowers and my garden now includes many charming old favorites. Let’s see what’s blooming today…
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It’s almost the end of June and my vegetable garden is in full swing. A few months ago I planted several varieties of tomato plants, european cucumbers, yellow squash, french string beans, lettuce and broccoli along with some herbs. The first crop to be harvested this year was the lettuce. I planted several different types such as butter, red, and a mesclun mix. This was the first time I had ever grown lettuce so I thought it would be fun to experiment with assorted varieties. I contained them in a wooden box for safety.
Lettuce Garden
This box has a screen top to keep hungry neighbors out.
Looking for a snack???
Is that lettuce you're growing over there?
It seems to have worked because I have an overabundance of lettuce. I wondered how well my other vegetables were doing, so I took a stroll around the garden. Come see…
Welcome to my garden...
Let’s check on the tomato plants…
Looks like the tomatoes are starting to grow..
How about the cucumber plants, they got off to a late start this year…
Beautiful yellow flowers...
How about the yellow squash?
It looks like the squash plant is finally beginning to grow!
Looks like somebunny has been nibbling on the broccoli plants. I guess they prefer the plant to the actual “broccoli”, lucky me 
I better eat that before the bunny does.
Well, the vegetable garden seems to be off to a great start. Let’s check on the wild blackberries growing in the backyard. Perhaps they are ready to be picked.
Those are not ready.
Oh, wait a minute, I think I see a few ripe ones over there…
They should all be ripe in a week or so.
Maybe I will try to make some blackberry preserve or perhaps even a pie if I am able to pick enough of them. I hope you enjoyed visiting my garden.
Pizza Success!
Yesterday, I decided to create another home-made pizza. I was left unimpressed with the last pizza pie I had made and wanted to improved my chance of success with this pie. I believe that a great deal of my trouble is stemming from my ingredients. I had yet to come across either a recipe for good home-made pizza sauce or a tolerable pre-made sauce in a can or jar. At this point the only element of the pizza that I was pleased with at all was the dough. I knew how to make excellent home-made dough and this was a good start. Since pizza is an Italian dish, I decided to visit my local Italian Specialty Store in the hopes of acquiring some top-notch ingredient and perhaps some advice on pizza making. Well, I was in luck. There was only one other customer in the store besides me and you guessed it….she was an Italian woman who made her own pizza! What good fortune! The pizza gods were in my corner today. After a brief conversation she directed me to a can of Don Pepino pizza sauce, sold regularly at the store. She raved about the flavor and said that often times she would eat the sauce right out of the can. Sounds good to me! I’ll take two cans please! What else?? The cheese. What kind of cheese does she use on her pie? Scamorza of course. What? I had never heard of Scamorza before, but I had seen it hanging on my many visits to this lovely store. I thought to myself…”Oh! So that’s what you use that cheese for!” and was more than happy to give it a try. And I’ll take 1 scamorza please.
Freshly Grated Scamorza
Don Pepino Pizza Sauce
The gentleman at the counter asked if I would like anything else. Of course I do! I would like two loaves of fresh Italian bread and a pound of olive salad. Now I was finished! I paid my bill and off I went. Time to make the pizza. I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. After all I have been disappointed many times in the past but maybe this time would be different..
So I rolled out my home-made dough…
Grated my cheese…
Freshly Grated Scamorza
Added the sauce and cheese…
Add the sauce and cheese
Don’t forget to brush the crust with some good quality extra-virgin olive oil!
Brush the crust with olive oil.
Then I placed the pie in a 450 degree, preheated oven to bake….
Looks like its ready…
Home-made Pizza
I know it looks great, but how does it taste? The flavor was very good and this is the closest I have ever come to making a “pizzeria quality” pizza at home. We were happy with the results but will continue to learn more about pizza making. My husband found a site online called “Slice“, a Weblog about pizza making. Perhaps this site will be useful to me in my quest for pizza perfection. At any rate, I’ll keep trying)
Last year's summer garden....
Yes, it’s that time of year again. Time to start preparing for this summer’s garden. Every year I have my staple vegetables and flowers that I plant. In the vegetable category, I grow tomatoes, cucumbers (european), peppers and string beans. I sometimes plant squash, zucchini and lettuce. These are some photographs of last year’s garden…
Can't wait for that one to ripen!
Cucumber Patch...
Those look just about ready to pick...
There's a ripe tomato!
Wow! I had lots of basil last summer!
I also plant lots of herbs such as rosemary, basil, sage and parsley. You can see how well the basil grew last year! I think I had too much of it:) This year I want to grow lettuce once again. Or at least try to. I have some forces working against me with this endeavor… There’s two of them now..
They look hungry for a summer garden don't they:)
I also have bunnies to compete with. Therefore I’ve decided to grow my lettuce in a box in the garden. I will have someone construct for me a wooden box without a bottom that has a screened door on top. This is one solution to my dilemma. An article I read on the internet had other great suggestions. One of the recommendations was to plan things that deer and bunnies do not care for such as, marigolds (I do), lavender (I plant this as well), chives, onions, garlic and catnip. This is a great idea since I can use most of these things in my cooking. Okay maybe not the catnip and marigolds:) Here are some photos of last year’s marigolds and lavender…
Pretty yellow and orange marigolds..
I also have lots of lavender growing...
Maybe my dog Tiffy could keep the bunnies and deer away??
Keep those deer and bunnies away from the vegetables!
Perhaps I’ll visit the local nursery today and see what types of lettuce they have available. I understand that lettuce grows best when the weather is cool so I should get it in the ground soon. Looking forward to a bountiful summer garden.
Chocolate Ganache Cannoli
In the mood for something chocolaty and sweet? Try these simple, yet decadent Chocolate Ganache cannoli. I actually made these completely by accident. I was baking chocolate brownies for my family and considered topping them with a chocolate ganache icing. If you have never made chocolate ganache before, you simply heat 1 cup of heavy cream and add to it 1 bag of chocolate chips….instant ganache. I found this video on YouTube that actually shows you how to make it in the microwave. They added butter to theirs…
I chose to whip my ganache so I put it in my stand mixer at high-speed and also added 1 small cup of cream cheese to thicken it. The result was a thick creamy chocolate cream and I considered using this creamy mixture to ice my brownies.
Chocolate Ganache and Cream Cheese Whipped..
However, after the brownies were baked I decided to sprinkle powder sugar on them instead. Not wanting the chocolate ganache to go to waste, I planned to make a cake the next day and use the icing then, but when the next day arrived I no longer wanted to bake a cake. Now what will I do with this delicious chocolate mixture?? I know! I’ll buy cannoli shells and fill them with the chocolate mixture! Perfect and Simply simple! At first I tried to convert a small plastic bag into a piping bag by cutting a tiny hole in the corner like they do on T.V…. That should work..right?? Wrong! I attempted this two times and each time the bag would develop a secondary hole… This was not working at all and I was wasting lots of chocolate….not good. Okay. I will use a spoon then! Not as fancy but the end result will be the same. I’ll cover up any imperfections with powder sugar.
Fill the cannoli...
Wondering how they turned out?? See for yourself…
Chocolate Ganache Cannoli
Then I placed the filled shells back in the box and refrigerated them for later. Everyone enjoyed these sweet treats:)
Cannoli
Sausage and Peppers
Yesterday I decided to make the traditional Italian dish Sausage and Peppers. Most of the time I make this dish very plainly by frying the sausage with a little olive oil and then adding the peppers and onions and it comes out wonderful every time. This time however, I decided to take a chance with a red sauce variation of this dish. I know many people make sausage and peppers with a red sauce, but I do not so it would be an adventure for me. First of all, I needed a recipe to follow and decided to find out if Giada had a recipe for this dish. After all she does do a great deal of Italian cooking on her show and who better to learn from than her? Well, it turns out that she does have just the recipe I was searching for and I just happen to have Marsala wine left over from my Chicken Marsala dish I made the other night.
Marsala Wine
Okay, time to gather up my ingredients…
1 large “family size” package of sweet italian sausage
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 red bell peppers sliced
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
4 cloves of garlic peeled and chopped
1 teaspoon of italian dried spices (I didn’t have fresh basil on hand, so I used this in place of the basil and oregano)
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 cup Marsala Wine
1 15oz can diced tomatoes
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
and followed the recipe… Here’s a photographic tour of my cooking adventure…
Some ingredients..
Sausage in the pan with a little bit of olive oil.
Look! They're starting to brown...
Slice up the Peppers!
And the onions....
Don’t forget to chop the garlic!
Chopped garlic...
Take the sausage out and add the onions and peppers to the pan….maybe just a little more olive oil as well! Don’t forget to season with salt and pepper to taste.
Peppers and onions frying in pan.
Once the peppers and onions browned, I added the garlic and spices cooked for a few more minutes and then added my tomato sauce and wine. Next I reintroduced the sausages into the pan and let the flavors blend together…
Add the sausage and cook some more...
And Voila! Dinner is served….
Dinner is Served!
While this recipe was good, I wasn’t overly impressed and actually prefer my method of making sausage and peppers. I served this dish with some fresh italian bread and overall everyone enjoyed it. I personally won’t make it again though.
Chicken Marsala with Rice Pilaf and Spinach
Lately I have been exploring the world of Italian cuisine and decided to make Chicken Marsala for dinner last night. Chicken Marsala is an Italian dish that is believed to have originated in Sicily, the home of Marsala wine. This is a simple dish to prepare and only requires a few ingredients.
Ingredients
6 Chicken Breasts (Butterflied and then pounded with a mallet to make thin cuts)
Chicken Breasts
Dredge them in a seasoned flour mixture (1 cup all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon dry italian seasonings)
Season the flour
Dredge in seasoned flour
Heat frying pan with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and 1 pat of butter and put cutlets in to brown on both sides. Add additional olive oil as needed while frying.
Fry the cutlets
Once the chicken was cooked and browned on both sides I removed them from the pan and set them aside.
Nicely browned chicken, set aside...
While my chicken was browning I sliced up three cups of shiitake mushrooms. Note: The mushrooms do cook down quite a bit, so if you like mushrooms I would add 1-2 more cups.
Slice the Shiitake Mushrooms
Once all the chicken was removed from the pan, I added 3 tablespoons of butter and placed my sliced mushrooms in the pan to brown. After the mushrooms had browned I added 1/2 cup of Marsala wine to deglaze the bottom of the pan, then added the 1/2 cup chicken broth.
1/2 cup Marsala Wine and 1/2 cup of chicken broth
I then proceeded to add the cooked chicken back into the pan and let it cook together. While the chicken and mushrooms were cooking over a low flame I continued to add more chicken broth (I like a lot of sauce) and also seasoned it with 1/2 a packet of Goya Chicken Bouillon.
I served it with Rice Pilaf and Spinach..
I served the Chicken Marsala over Rice Pilaf with a side of spinach. Everyone really enjoyed the chicken and had seconds! The only request was to add more mushrooms next time. Overall I was very pleased with the results and would make this dish again.
Spring is in the air! Le printemps est dans l'air!
Bonjour everyone. I thought I would give you an update on how well I am doing mastering le Francais. It’s been three weeks so far that I have been using Berlitz “French Guaranteed” in the car and the Pimsleur Language Program, “The Short Course”. The Pimsleur French Language Short Course comes preloaded on an MP3 player, all I need to supply are headphones and two batteries.
Pimsleur French Language Short Course
Since beginning both courses two weeks ago I am able to understand and speak the following in French terms…
Hello, How Are You?
Good Evening - Bonsoir
Good Night – Bonne nuit
Hi/Bye – Salut!
Goodbye – Au revoir
Yes/No – Oui/No
Please – S’il vous plait
These are just a few of the simple phrases I have learned. I am also able to introduce myself, say where I am from, ask where someone else is from and what language they speak. Although it is a slow process, I’m am finding this a very interesting journey. I also find the more I listen to the French speakers, the easier it is to understand. Besides listening to the CDs, I have also watched two French films that I would recommend to anyone interested in watching French films with English subtitles. Both movies, although different from one another, had interesting plots and were definitely worth watching. The first film was Au Revoir Les Enfants
Photo from Wikipedia, Au Revoir Les Enfants.
Definitely a must see… This is definitely the better of the two films. The other French film I watched was Mademoiselle Chambon.
My goal is to be able to converse comfortably in French by the end of one year. I feel that I am off to a good start:)
Au Revoir for now!
Pizza
One of my goals on this blog is to improve both my French and Italian cooking skills and one of the Italian cuisines I have a hard time perfecting is pizza. Simple, yet hard to perfect… After all it only requires three main parts, sauce, dough and cheese. How hard can that be? Extremely difficult actually.. For some reason, there is always something that doesn’t seem quite right… One time it’s the dough and another time it’s the sauce or another time it could be both. At one point, I had gotten so frustrated with the whole pizza making thing that I resigned myself to several years of buying pizza. The problem with this solution was twofold. First of all, I still didn’t know how to make pizza and second the pizza we liked was very expensive. How expensive?? Well, for one Grandma Style Pizza, One Pizza Margarita, and One plain pizza (everyone likes a different pizza), with delivery and tip came to around $70.00!! I think that’s a lot of money to pay for 3 pizzas, wouldn’t you agree?? So after a two year hiatus I decided to try again and I am determined to succeed this time. Okay, now that I’ve decided that I was going to make pizza, I needed dough. Let’s make some. All we need is some yeast, sugar, salt, flour and olive oil.
Here’s how I made the dough.
1. In a large bowl combine 2 1/4 teaspoons yeast, 1 tablespoon of sugar, and 1 1/3 cup water (105-115 degrees) and wait for the yeast to become foamy. This takes approximately 5 minutes.
2. In a separate bowl combine 2 teaspoons of salt and 3 1/2 – 4 cups all purpose flour. (My husband said the dough was salty, I didn’t notice it but this is how much salt the recipe called for and it does make enough dough for two pies)
3. Combine together the flour and the yeast mixture. I do this by hand at first and then use my standmixer with a hook attachment to finish the job.
4. Once I have a nice ball of dough I place it in a bowl with about a teaspoon of olive oil, coat the ball of dough, seal the bowl with saran wrap and set it aside to rise.
5. After the dough has risen, I punch it down and let it rise for a second time and then it’s time to make the pizza!
dough ball
Now, how about a pizza sauce? Well, I don’t know how to make good pizza sauce at this point, therefore, for my first time I will use a jar sauce.
and two packages of shredded whole milk mozzarella cheese. Next I’ll start assembling the pizzas..
First I’ll roll out the dough..
Rolled out dough
Then add the sauce..
Add the sauce
Next we’ll add the shredded cheese…
Sprinkle on some shredded cheese and put in a 425 degree oven to bake.
Once the crust was browned and the cheese melted the pizza was ready…
Pizza's Ready!!
Now this was just my first pizza and it came out okay. I’m sure I will be able to come up with my own pizza sauce, but for a store-bought brand this one was pretty good. My homemade crust came out great and I was pleased with the overall texture and taste even though my husband said it was a bit salty. While looking through my old cookbooks I came across one called “Pizza Any Way You Slice It” by Charles and Michele Scicolone. This book contains many pizza recipes along with advice on how to create the perfect pie. I will be working my way through this book and trying the various types of pizza recipes found within. I’m looking forward to perfecting the pizza pie…
Chocolate Mousse Pie (Tarte Mousse au chocolat)
The other day I was in the mood for something chocolate. One of my favorite French desserts is chocolate mousse (tarte mousse au chocolat). I didn’t have a great deal of time on my hands and wanted to find a simple easy recipe for chocolate mousse. I was fortunate enough to find such a recipe on the Food Network. I chose an “ Easy Chocolate Mousse Recipe” by Michael Chiarello. What I liked about his recipe was the short list of ingredients and the fact that it was easy. In order to simplify even further, I chose to use a ready-made chocolate pie crust rather than make one from scratch. The recipe was pretty straightforward.
First I gathered my ingredients…
Eggs(Oeufs), Cream (Cre'me), Sugar (le sucre) and Vanilla (La Vanille)
I chose to use milk chocolate (chocolat au lait) instead of bitter-sweet.
Some butter (beurre)
According to the recipe, I melted my butter and chocolate in the microwave, whisked in the egg yolks and set aside to cool. Note: This recipe does call for raw eggs, so I made sure to purchase high quality eggs and followed the recommendations for safe preparation on the Food Network site. Next according to the directions, I whipped up the ingredients in my stand mixer.
Fluffy Mousse
And Voila! Perfectly fluffy chocolate mousse! Now all I had to do was pour it in my pre-made pie shell and chill. I was very pleased with the results and it didn’t take too long to make. I would rate this recipe at least 4 stars but I used milk chocolate instead of bitter-sweet and that might have made a big difference.
