Another lovely Sunday brunch.
Pancakes are always a good option for breakfast. It only takes a few minutes to whip up the batter and a few more before they’re done. I love baked goods, too - muffins, scones, etc - but prefer not to have the wait for them to be ready early in the morning. I like to eat breakfast first thing and am definately one of those people who will not skip it if I can help it.
As it so happened, I had some buttermilk in the fridge this morning and wanted to put it to good use. My first thought was to make some muffins, but, as I said above I would basically prefer to have muffins for a snack. Pancakes were the order of the day.
I think I actually prefered these to the buttermilk waffles that I made a few weeks ago, but only because I am somewhat more partial to pancakes than waffles. They were delightfully soft and light. Oh, and did I mention easy? I added some (skim) milk in addition to the buttermilk to thin out the batter a bit; overly thick pancake batters force you to cook the pancakes longer and make a tougher “skin”. No one wants that.

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This is the perfect soup for a chilly, rainy day. Or a snowy day. Any day when you may want some soup, as a matter of fact. It has a nice spice to it and it so easy to make. I had it with some leftover baguette slices.

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Isn’t this baguette pretty? I really enjoy baking bread, but I don’t get to do it too much. These loaves were my first try at making baguettes.

I have to admit that I am intimidated by recipes that call for making a sponge days in advance - and don’t get me started on how terrifying saking sourdough from scratch is. I tend to stick with recipes that involve one or two non-scary rises. I searched through the recipes at AllRecipes until I found this one for French Bread. It sounded easy and got good reviews. It turned out to be chewy with a nice, though not terribly thick, crisp crust. It only took 5 cups of flour, and I substituted one cup of all purpose flour with one cup of white whole wheat flour, and I couldn’t even taste the change.

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 If you happen to live in the US and own a television, perhaps you have seen the new reality show on CBS, Wickedly Perfect. Say what you will about reality television, but I think that this is a pretty fun show. The premise is to have a bunch of Martha-Stewarts-in-training compete for a book deal and several TV spots. Yeah, the requisite whining and moaning takes place, but instead of breaking that up with bug eating contests, Wickedly Perfect uses cooking, construction and interior decorating.

My favorite contestant, Mychael, a professional chef from San Francisco, was voted off last week. The other people seemed to be threatened by her because she was an excellent chef. I did not personally sample the food she prepared on the show, of course, but her dishes looked great and there were certainly no detractors when it came to compliments.

Bearing this in mind, I took advantage of the fact that CBS posts a “how-to” for every project on the show and undertook to make Michael’s Wickedly Perfect Turkey Apple Sausages . And here are the photos of my endeavor:

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I have learned that not everyone is a fan of sweet potatoes. These sorts of people often cannot offer a solid explanation as to why they don’t like these sweetly delicious veggies. My personal theory is that they were scarred at a young age by being forced to consume some great-aunt’s marshmallow and brown sugar saturated sweet-potato-from-a-can casserole. One of those dishes where you love the parts, but just can’t stomach the whole.

I, however, love sweet potatoes, particularly because they are equally good in sweet and savory situations. I actually have it in mind to make a sort of mole flavored sweet potato salad in the near future…. But that is not what this post is about.

In an effort to win over some non-fans of sweet potatoes, I made twice baked potatoes using a combination of sweet and regular potatoes. The presence of regular potatoes took a hint of sweetness off and these were thoroughly enjoyed by all.

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I spent a lot of time thinking about this month’s IMBB, hosted by Cathy over at my little kitchen. Typically when I eat beans, they are of them plain or refried with hot dogs variety. It wasn’t until I reached into my fridge, looking for a snack, and pulled out some hummus that it hit me: chickpeas.

My first thought was to make hummus. I figured that with a theme like Beans, other people might be making hummus, too. I opted for falafel instead - besides, I already had pitas.

I love falafel, but they’re not the healthiest things. The ingredients are super healthy, but they’re traditionally fried. This makes them nice and crispy, but I wanted something less greasy so I decided to oven “fry” mine. You might also notice that they’re a bit greenish, which is a result of using fresh parsley and cilantro in the recipe rather then dried. I won’t discriminate against falafels of different colors as long as they all taste good.

This recipe originated on Food 911 and made about 24 golf-ball sized falafel patties. I served them on pita bread with cucumbers, tomato, lettuce and a combination of hummus, tahini and sweet chili sauce. They froze really well and heated up in the microwave in just a minute. I would definately make them again in a heartbeat.

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