My turn to make dinner. I made my International Hot Wings, but I don't have the recipe memorized, so I had to follow the link to this blog to remember how to make it. This time it came out yummy, but it was too sweet. Mark liked it.

The power team. New team member is the hot chile flavored oil. Offical notice: I don't like normal Tabasco sauce. Tonight I used chipotle smoked Tabasco and this was extremely yummy.

A bunch of eye-balling of these ingredients went into a pot with 2 sticks of butter.

I was fortunate to be the first one to use their Fry Daddy for the wings


Plating - before we ate


Plate after eating -- 13 wings later


Now for dessert, I made carmel corn 

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My brother-in-law Mark made us fresh pad thai while our wives and kids are staying in Boston. They might be off visiting a great historical location, but we're going to cook and endulge.

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I had pork steak and chicken breats soaking in a homemade brine. The attack plan for dinner was simple: grill the meat. The converstion with myself went something like this. "What else to make?"; "We have a huge bag of potatoes and I love fries."; "We heard about baking the potatoes to make oven-chips"; "Can I make scalloped potatoes without cream?"

End result: baked potato chips and scalloped potatoes. I'm sure you all agree with me that this was a very sound idea. As you'll see in the pictures, I had to slice the potatoes for both dishes, so why not make them both?!

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Scalloped Potatoes

Chips

Dinner Time

Scalloped Potatoes Continue

Summary

Overall, I'm pretty proud of myself for making an entire meal without using a recipe card. It is fun to play with my food and I hope everyone out there will take the adventure of playing with there (opps, sorry, Chica for the typo) their food.

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Mmmm, now that is good and fresh -- homemade chocolate sauce. This stuff is so easy to make and fun, too.

1 1/2 C	sugar
3/4 C	water
2 T	light corn syrup
1/4 t	kosher salt
3/4 C	cocoa, unsweetened
3/4 stick	butter, chopped into table spoon pieces
1 T	vanilla extract

Combine sugar, corn syrup and water in a medium sauce pan. Bring sugar solution to a boil. Add salt. Reduce heat to medium and, using a whisk, mix in the cocoa. Add one piece of butter at a time and mix it in before adding the next piece. Try to keep the liquid at a low simmer, which might require increasing the heat. You can replace the cocoa and butter with Dutch-processed cocoa.

After the ingredients are mixed in, let the syrup come to a boil then reduce heat to medium low, but keep a simmer. Reduce the syrup to a slight thickening.

After it is cool, you can pour it into a squirt bottle. After the chocolate sauce is safely put away, you can get your first cup of hot chocolate. Set the pan over medium low heat. Deglaze your pan by adding a little milk and scrapping the pan. Slowly add more milk to deglaze the pan. Scrap the sides and bottom to work all the chocolate into the milk.

Rachel is enjoying the first cup of hot chocolate.



Rachel is also enjoying licking out the used funnel.



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They say pride comes before the fall. This might be true, but this chili is amazing!! There will be a chili cook off in my department soon, so I had to make a dry run of my chili. I think this is terrific stuff and I am no longer using the store-bought season packet!

Before

After

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Friends Christy & Alvin had their first baby. I made the pancit for dinner and kept some for my family.














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We had a couple over for dinner. I grilled tri-tip and chicken, made mashed potaotoes and rolls.


Fresh rolls. I love this shape for rolls. When the are ready, you just pull them appart at the seam to butter or add honey. Easy to do too. When you shape the dough, just cut it up and shape into little balls. Put three balls in a muffin tin holder.


I had a bunch of potatoes to cut so I could boil them for the mashers. To ease the work. I chopped the pototes in half and then used an apple slicer to get pieces the same size.



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It is always fun to cook. It is more fun to cook with friends. Even more fun if someone else cleans up for you. I've been to a few cooking classes at Great News. This one was focused around BBQ. Here I have a few pictures from the adventure. Included are a few pictures of coworkers I roped into going with me. They all had a terrific time. (I think)

As part of the class, everyone is assigned a task in preparing the meal. Here was one of my jobs: rub the steaks! Following the recipe, I made a rub for the beautifully thick prime ribs.

Here are the coworkers. On the left is Gwen and Tina on the right. They worked together to create the zucchini corn side dish.

Here Alvin and Jenn work together to make the unbelievable chocolate cake.

At different points in the class, the group is expected to stop and then demonstrate specific techniques for the dishes we're making. You go to the front of the class and show off. Since I'm such a showman and don't care if I'm front, I was always picked. Each time though, I did nothing, but give support and clear away dirty dishes.


A different group produced our appetizers. These are bacon-wrapped scallions with a spicy / creamy salad dressing they made.


Here is the main meal: grilled prime rib with feta cheese and tomato sauce; zucchini and corn with cheese; and macaroni cheese salad.


Dessert!! Chocolate cake and ice cream. We didn't make the ice cream. The cake was delicious. Someone at my table called it evil. It was not very rich which made us feel like we could eat several more pieces.

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This delicious meal idea came from our friends the Maxwells from Illinois when we visited summer 2007.

Here the adults are having fresh basil and chives. Elijah is having a pepperoni pizza while the girls each made a cheese pizza for themselves.

These are super simple to make. You build your pizza on pita bread using any spaghetti sauce with some white cheeses. I made a mix of mozzarella, jack and provolone. Add whatever toppings you want. We normally make a BBQ chicken pizza. Tonight, I chopped up a little left over chicken breast and mixed it with garlic and green onions. Bake at 350 degrees until the cheese is melted and golden brown. Let them cool a bit after coming out of the oven, but don't let them sit on the cookie for a long time because steam will build up and the crust will get soft.






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Camping time. I committed to making a chicken stew to be served at my boy's group's upcoming Camporee. I made it a few nights before the Camporee and froze it. The plan was to warm it up at the campsite.

Onion-cutting protection. I put it on after doing all the cutting. Oh well.



I started by using my dutch oven to build a rue. This is my first time ever doing this. I did not cook the rue for long, so this is like a blond.

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