Tinfoil Chef

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

After spending some time reading through a host of goodies of all kinds I’d have to say that not only does The Pioneer Woman Cook, but she’s also got a way with words that’s really refreshingly “just folks” and often funny to boot.

She also uses a lot of pictures to illustrate every step of a recipe, something I’d like to do but up until recently haven’t had access to a camera with enough system memory to take a decent number of sufficiently high resolution pics that still look good when you crop out everything but the star of the food show.

A great example is a recipe my wife found there for Biscuits and Gravy. This down home favorite is one that has eluded many an otherwise good cook for a long time in spite of the fact that it’s actually pretty simple (sometimes simple isn’t enough is it?).

She takes the whole thing step by step with a picture or two for each one. I honestly believe that most, if not all, of the people who have difficulty with making a basic white gravy would do a lot better after reading that recipe. It’s definitely a site I’ll be revisiting as there’s a bunch of great looking dishes that my wife and I would like to try.

Btw- The only changes I’d make with the Biscuits and Gravy would be to crumble the sausage into the gravy and use good old fashioned homemade cat-head biscuits to host generous ladles of the sausage gravy.

Technorati Tags: biscuits and gravy, recipes, cooking blogs, gravy, pictures, biscuits, easy directions

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

Lisa Cooking .com is loaded with tempting recipes and a wealth of useful little tidbits in the form of a “Tip Of The Day”

The blog itself is a no nonsense layout that’s easy on the eyes. It puts the main content on the left side of the page and the sidebars with navigation links and advertising are on the right side.

I really like the Tip Of The Day entries because they’re useful bits of information about a variety of cooking and food related things.

The recipes however, are where Lisa Cooking really shines. They’re simple, easy to make and almost always made with common ingredients that pretty much anyone can get hold of without too much trouble and / or expense.

A couple of good examples of this are the Chicken Enchilada Casserole and the Pizza Breadstick Casserole

Both are made up of common ingredients and are easy to prepare and cook up in less than an hour and they’re both easily adaptable to individual tastes. They could also be used as the starting point for entirely new inventions.

Technorati Tags: breadstick, recipe, blog review, chicken, casserole, enchilada, food blog, pizza, cooking blog

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

Ramblings of a Frantic Home Cook is one of those where you can tell that Francie really enjoys what she’s doing and has plenty of fun with it. If there were any doubts, they would be dispelled when reading You say it’s your birthday! It’s my birthday too, yeah!

This is the first year I’ve baked MYSELF a cake. I think I broke some unwritten Mama law in that I made a cake that ISN’T anyone else’s favorite. It’s mine. And you see all that frosting, 800 calories per spoonful and worth every stinkin’ bit of it! It’s only once a year.

I have to agree. After a year of making everybody else’s favorite, it’s time to make YOUR favorite just once and no apologies either!

In addition to her own stuff, She’s got some other great stuff. Like the video of the making of a dog shaped cake in Martha Stewart, I double dog dare you. A four day project is sped up into a four minute video and the results are amazing. The only question I have is who would eat it? it looks too real.

Technorati Tags: food blog, blogs, recipe, cooking blogs, cake, review, german chocolate

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

The first thing I have to say here is that this recipe is NOT a “Snickers” candy bar. It is however something that does a reasonably good job of approximating the famous treat. The big difference is that this one is diabetic friendly. Peanut butter lovers should especially like this. Since I don’t care for peanut butter myself, I’ll pass on this treat and you folks can have all of them.

Use a mixer to combine 12 oz of a soft diet ice cream, a cup of diet Cool Whip, 1/4 cup of chunky peanut butter and one (dry) package of sugar free butterscotch pudding. When all this is well mixed, stir in 3 ounces of Grape Nuts cereal.

Pour the mixture into an 8 x 8 pan, cover and freeze. Cut the frozen treats into four servings and you’re ready to go. If you make up several batches you can keep the bars in the freezer until you’re ready to use them.

Technorati Tags: snack, snickers, treat, diabetic, diabetic friendly, frozen treat, recipe, dessert

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

I don’t normally even like to talk about “Dieting” in general and so-called dieting drugs in particular because I don’t think they’re a good idea. As for the word “Diet”, your “diet” is what you eat, EVERYBODY is one one kind of “diet” or another. The problem is that most are on some pretty poor ones.

As for dieting drugs, that’s what I’m breaking with custom to talk about for a moment. I just read a page with a review of the fat loss drug “Alli” and I have to say that if I was against such things before I’m even more so now.

This stuff is a pure sham. It’s nothing more than something that’s aimed at people who want results *NOW* and are somehow under the impression that this magic pill will grant them a free cure without their having to do something sensible like eating right and OMG, Exercising!

Remember “TANSTAAFL” There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. So-called miracle drugs like this aren’t worth it.

Technorati Tags: fat loss drugs, weight loss, eating right, alli, exercise, fat loss

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

Anyone that knows me can assure you that I’ve never been a fan of camping. It’s not that I’m some sort of weenie that’s afraid of the great outdoors or anything like that. In fact I’ve slept on the ground in my days and I wouldn’t recommend it as a recreational event. I consider things like that to be better left for times when they’re necessary. If that means I’m reliant on modern conveniences like kitchen faucets with running water, indoor toilet facilities, central heating and air conditioning then you better believe it.

That said, this recipe will work just as good on a backyard barbecue as it will over a campfire in the middle of Jurrasic park.

For this recipe you need to leave the skin on the banana. Slice it lengthwise but not all the way through. Put some marsmallows and chocolate chips in the slit. Sprinkle brown sugar lightly on top.

Wrap this tightly in foil, making sure to seal the ends. Place on grill over campfire or coals, seam side up. The boat will be ready to sail in about 7 minutes.

Technorati Tags: banana, banana+boat, camping, dessert, treat, grill, recipe, barbecue+grill

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

How to Cook Like Your Grandmother is one of those blogs that does something that I really appreciate seeing because of how seldom it’s there to be seen. It goes out of it’s way to return to the older recipes and methods and literally do things the way it was done before the corporate world with it’s mass produced, homogenized, mochachino land turned most food into something that isn’t fit to eat.

The best description of How to Cook Like Your Grandmother is on the top of the sidebar of the blog:

Cooking used to be all about making food that tasted good. But somewhere along the way, we seem to have decided the diet-of-the-week was more important. How to Cook Like Your Grandmother is a return to recipes and techniques that are based on what tastes good, not on junk science and fad diets. You won’t find the words lite, low, lean, free or skim anywhere. This is all real food, cooked the way Grandma would have done it.

Of course, any mention of a good food blog wouldn’t be complete without a look at one of the recipes on it. How To Make Chili Sauce For Chili Dogs is a perfect seasonal recipe that looks good enough to make me think about making it with ground turkey. (I’d consider beef but the way beef prices have gone lately it’s not likely i’ll be around for the opening of any Johnston and Murphy wallets to shell out a small fortune for ground beef when turkey can be had for a LOT less.

Another thing I have to mention about this blog is that there’s a LOT of good pictures to make very clear what they’re talking about and showing you how things look at every step. I’m bookmarking this one and I’ll be back… soon.

Technorati Tags: blog, cooking+blog, old+style+cooking, recipe, review

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

It’s called Bakers Banter according to the heading at the top of the page and this blog from the folks at King Arthur flour is positively chock-full of every sort of baked goodies you can imagine.

I leaned of it when my wife sent me this Puff the Magic Pancake recipe on StumbleUpon. Frankly, I defy anyone to read that all the way through, check out the great pictures of the whole process of making it and still not at least WANT to run right out and make up a batch of ‘em!

I’ve never actually heard of King Arthur Flour before but I can say that I’ll be back to visit this blog again, anticipating more baked wonders.

Technorati Tags: baking, baking+blog, cooking+blog, food+blog, blog+review, breakfast, dessert, treat, recipe

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

I’ve never considered myself all that much of a vegetarian. I like and frequently prefer dishes that include or are pretty much based on meat. However that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any good vegetarian recipes out there. One good source of examples of this is a blog that was recommended in a recent comment. “My Recipes” is a blog that is specializing in vegetarian recipes that the author has tried, some of which are traditional favorites such as a Beans curry that not only looks interesting, but is apparently used as a means to get kids to eat veggies.

Most of the recipes do use some ingredients such as “Urad dhall” and “Toor dhall” that aren’t exactly common to American cooks but after looking them up it turns out that they’re a sort of bean that’s at least similar to lentils.

I think it’s a good idea to reach out of one’s native food culture once in a while. You learn how much variety of tastes and cooking styles there are and just plain run into some really good food that way. Yeah, it’s true that there’s always things you’ll find that don’t agree with you but the good stuff is worth all of the others.

Technorati Tags: bean+curry, Cooking+Blogs, curry, indian+cooking, indian+recipes, recipes, review, vegetarian, vegetarian+recipes

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

 Powered by Max Banner Ads 

I’ve been a fan of Chinese food for a long time and this Almond Chicken recipe sounds too good not to share.

This dish calls for the chicken to be marinated for at least an hour. A Marinade is A mixture of ingredients that are used to add flavor to foods as well as moisten them. A marinade can be liquid or dry. The liquid based are usually acid based and dry marinades are most often salt based. In this case we’ll be using a liquid based marinade.

Stir together a couple tablespoons of soy sauce, a tablespoon of rice wine, 2 tablespoons of chikcen stock, a teaspoon of cornstarch, a half teaspoon of sugar, a half inch of ginger root minced up and a minced up clove of garlic.

Cut two whole boneless skinless chicken breasts chicken into strips a half inch wide by about three inches long and pat them dry in paper towels. Put the strips in the marinade, turn them to make sure they’re coated all over. The chicken needs to soak in the marinade for at least an hour. Be sure to turn the chicken halfway through the marinade time.

Take the chicken out of the marinade and lay it on paper towels or perhaps a cake-rack or something to let it drain (no, you don’t want to wipe it off).

Beat an egg lightly with a half teaspoon of water. Dip the chicken pieces in the egg and coat them by rolling in some ground almonds. While the almond coated pieces set 15 minutes, heat about 6 cups of peanut oil 350.

Fry chicken pieces in batches one layer deep until crisp, golden brown. Be sure to let oil come back up to 350 between batches. Drain on paper towels and serve at once. If you like, you can garnish the chicken pieces with some chopped green onion.

Technorati Tags: almond+chicken, chicken, chinese+food, Dinner, fried+chicken, marinade, recipe

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!