Our Fabulous Bites

I'm happy to say that we have finally hit 100 posts! It only took 3 years! (wink) I am going to work at posting a lot this year and hope we can exceed well over 100 in 2011. Let's get this food blog happenin!

I've had bad luck with my canned tomatoes tasting acidic, metallic, like they are from a can.  I've heard of and used the sugar solution, adding some sugar to the tomatoes seems to help.  However, I don't like my tomato sauce to taste sweet.  Then I came across the idea of using baking soda, tried it last night and it worked. Bad part, no recipe.  So start out small and add if need be.  Last night for our sauce that used 2 large cans of tomatoes, I probably used 3 pinches of baking soda.  But it will depend on how acidic the tomatoes are, so again, start out small because you can always add more, but you can't take it out once you mix it in.

I'm not a huge banana bread fan, but if I'm going to eat it, it has to have chocolate chips.  And lately Rees & I are really into making muffins, so I made banana bread, but in muffin form.  Also, I have tons of baby food.  So I decided to make the bread using baby food bananas, and it worked out great.  If you ever have too many jars of baby food, you can use those here.  Lastly, I used some wheat flour, and Jeff said he couldn't tell the difference from the last time I made these with all white flour. Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins 1/4 cup butter, softened 3/4 cup white sugar 1 egg 3 mashed bananas or 2 (4oz) jars of baby food bananas (I hear the blacker your banana, the better) 1 cup white flour 1/2 cup wheat flour 1 tsp baking soda 1/4 tsp salt 1 cup chocolate chips Either grease muffin tin or use paper liners for 12 muffins.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and sugar together.  Add egg and beat well.  Add mashed bananas. Mix flou...

January 6 is the Epiphany, a day to celebrate when the 3 kings visited Baby Jesus.  I think it is a Catholic holiday.  I learned about it while in France and love the tradition of making a galette des rois/Kings Cake.   The tradition goes you make the cake with a hidden bean inside.  The youngest person at the table sits under the table.  As a slice of cake is plated, the youngster names who gets that slice.  (make sure you slice the cake so you have only as many slices as you do people eating the cake)  Whoever finds the hidden bean is the King or Queen for the evening and wears a crown.  This year, I think I improved my recipe, with more almond filling than I normally add.  I thought it was going to end up messy but instead it made it yummier.  I had some extra filling and decided to make a mini kings cake with the extra puff pastry.  I added some fresh raspberries which tasted quite yummy all warm in the cake.  Though I...