Posted on 02/10/2017 3:05:10 PM PST by Yaelle
Happy Weekend, Everyone! A little birdie in a kilt whispered to me that we should have a cooking for Valentine's Day theme this weekend, and that is a perfect idea. I love chocolate so let's get some tried and true old favorite recipes out, as well as some new challenges if you want. But don't stop at dessert! Lots of our true loves have savory desires on Valentine's Day. Steaks, beef stew, potatoes Anna or Baked with sour cream... what is going to delight your honey, family, or even just yourself this week?
Me, I'm thinking of chocolate this week. I keep hearing Sean Hannity's commercials for chocolate covered strawberries, but can't afford those. He deserves support for his sponsors, for sure, but if you ain't got the cash, let not your heart be troubled (lol). They are easy to make.
Get some good quality chocolate chips (you can spend more $ using bars of European chocolate too), like guittard or ghirardelli. Dark, semi, milk. Your preference. Some white for decoration.
Buy organic Strawberries if possible because pesticides really Get Into the berries. Get a lot. Either way, rinse them in batches in a colander, then dry well with paper towels so as not to stain your dish towels.
Melt the chocolate chips in a medium bowl in the microwave, 10 seconds at a time only. Stick a chopstick in after each warming to attempt to stir it. They will suddenly go liquid while faking you out by holding their little shapes.
The rest is easy. Just dip the strawberries by their green stems into The chocolate, and place them on silicone or parchment lined cookie sheets. Let them get hard in the fridge. To decorate with white Chocolate, melt some and put it in a little Ziplock bag. Seal it and snip the tiniest corner off on the bottom. Squeeze little squiggles of White onto the chocolate covered berries.
Make a lot because they will go fast!
What's cooking at your house? What will you make for Valentine's Day?
I hike a lot and one of the groups had a “Chocolate Hike” for Valentines Day - everyone was encouraged to bring something containing chocolate. The hike leader was the judge .... her (admitted) way of getting lots of chocolate on that day. I made these for the chocolate hike two years ago .... better than plain rum balls - just delicious (but strong)!
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Recipe link: http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/chocolate-bourbon-balls.aspx
These deep, dark confections are a bit like truffles (though much quicker to make), with sophisticated, toasty flavors from nuts, coffee, and bourbon.
Ingredients (my notes in parenthesis):
1-1/4 cups crushed chocolate wafer cookies (used oreos, scraped off white filling)
1 cup confectioners sugar
2/3 cup toasted chopped pecans
4 Tbs. unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup bourbon
1 tsp instant expresso powder (couldn’t find it - used instant coffee... deep roast)
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1/3 cup white sanding sugar or turbinado sugar (didn’t work for me - resorted to confectioner’s sugar)
Directions:
Combine all of the ingredients except for the sanding sugar in a medium bowl. Refrigerate until firm, at least 1 hour.
Scoop the mixture by the rounded teaspoonful, then roll into 1-inch balls with your hands.
Roll the balls in the sanding sugar to coat, put on a rimmed baking sheet, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 12 hours and up to 2 weeks.
Make the Jello cooked pudding recipe , not instant. Add a bag of Giardelliee dark chocolate to Original Chocolate Jello cooked pudding recipe when it's warm. Best food ever! Add a bit of Whip Cream!
I love Brazil nuts; they’re one of the lower-carb ones, and a great snack on a low-carb diet.
If I recall, those were hard to crack, too. I’ve never bought them in-the-shell, but sometimes our stockings had a mixture of nuts, not just walnuts. My Grandmother always made our stockings up at Christmas, and I think nuts were something she didn’t get much of as a child herself, so they were a special ‘holiday’ thing. :-)
LOL!
That whole thing was a bit of a disillusionment to me; but she did come out of prison very stylishly. Somewhere I’ve got the pattern for that crocheted poncho ;-)
Agree with the Brazil nuts. if I could get away with snagging all of them from the mixed nut bowl I'd have been happy. Claw hammer to smash the shells and nut picks to dig out the meat. How they get the meat whole from those shells remains one of my deeply mystifying mysteries.
We always got Tangerines, too; and little packs of M&Ms, which I think were relatively ‘new’ to her. Chocolate is another thing my Granny probably didn’t get much of, as a kid, and thought of as a holiday treat ;-)
It’s been interesting to me that people can develop allergies to things in mid-life and later, that they were never allergic to before. I think it’s happened to me with some pollens, and CATS!
I’ve had cats all my life, but only began having reactions to them in my ‘50s; and only in the past few years have had problems with the blooming trees in Spring.
(However, I’m surrounded with blooming trees now as I never was in my younger life..)
...and all I have in the house are little dark chocolate squares...
Looking at those and thinking on my mention earlier, the possibilities are many for special ice cream treats.
Mini muffin pans come to mind for icream cupcakes. Most anything with a tapered form. even those flexible ice cube trays. pop in a brandied cherry or such, hard coat chocolate or fudge topping... MmmmmmmmMmm
Correct. Brazil Nuts require a sledge hammer to crack and extracting the meat a challenge. Good deterrent when attempting to defend yourself. Hard as a rock. You wouldn’t want one thrown at you. In today’s PC world they go by Brazil nuts. In the ‘olden’ days they were known by another name (which was what we kids called them) An enigma: when and why the change of common name usage; which came first? Brazil nuts?
Ha ha. I know exactly what you mean. Can’t say it here, though.
I think it’s pretty common that our colloquial nomenclature should change over time, as we develop and become more sensitive and aware.
Did you know that it’s illegal to cut down a Brazil Nut tree, in Brazil? For that reason, you can find them everywhere down there.
Reminds me of the Dogwood Tree, that was outside of my childhood home. The Dogwood is the State Tree of Virginia, and my Grandmother, a Virginia native, would never let us cut flowers from it...
Just a matter of respect.
Of course, now-a-days, there are gay and probably transgender cartoon characters.
My understanding of dream interpretation has always been that any personage that you encounter in a dream is simply an aspect of yourself.
Oh, at first I thought you were talking about cats developing allergies. I have one that developed a grain allergy late in life. Probably because the store bought kibble is full of the stuff and it’s not normal for them to eat it.
What does it mean if I can’t remember my dreams?
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