Happy New Year - We Have A Winner!

Congratulations

Jennifer Garcia!!

You have won the premier membership

to 

Capture Your 365

for 2016!!!


Thank you to each and every one of you who took the time to stop by and leave us a comment.  We appreciate your input and will do our best to incorporate your suggestions into our 2016 posts.

If you didnt win this time, stay tuned because we have other treats up our sleeves!  

Monday in Texas - Birthday Gifts

It is Monday, but I am writing to you from Texas,  rather Tracey from Michigan, because today is my birthday and I want to share the recipe for my all-time favorite birthday cake with you.

My mom was not much of a baker, but she did always make this cake for me on my birthday.  Mom has been gone nine years and I can't remember the last time that I made the cake myself.  With a daughter who is a pastry chef I have not gone without birthday sweets; they have just been different.  This year I decided to make my own cake and return to this childhood favorite, Chocolate Cinnamon Cake.

CHOCOLATE CINNAMON CAKE - THE RECIPE

THE CAKE

Mix in a large bowl:

     2 cups flour

     2 cups sugar

     1 tsp cinnamon

Melt in a saucepan:

     1 stick butter

     1/2 cup shortening

     1 cup water

     3 1/2 tsp cocoa

  Bring this mixture to a boil.  Add it to dry ingredients.

With a spoon mix in:

     2 eggs

     1 tsp vanilla

     1/2 cup buttermilk with 1 tsp baking soda mixed in.

Bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes.

Let cool 30 minutes.

THE FROSTING

In a saucepan melt:

     1 stick butter

     1/3 cup regular milk

     3 TBS cocoa

Pour the above mixture over a box (3 1/2 cups) powdered sugar.  Mix until the sugar is incorporated.  Pour over the cake.

ENJOY!!!

And here is another treat!!!

Because it is my birthday and I believe it is just as much fun to give gifts as it is to receive, Tracey and , with the help of Katrina Kennedy at Capture Your 365, are giving away a premier membership to Capture Your 365 for 2016!  We want all of you to enjoy the community and friendships that are built by sharing a photo of your life every day with a community of like-minded people.  It doesn't matter whether this year will be your first time taking a photo a day or your 54th, it is a wonderful experience!  To see the details of what's included in the Capture Your 365 premier membership, click here.

All you have to do to enter for a chance to win is leave us a comment on this post telling us what you'd like to see here at Pixels, Plates, and LOLs in 2016.  Is there a recipe for a particular dish or ingredient that you are interested in?  Something you'd like to know about us?  Something about our photography process?  You name it.  Almost anything is fair game!

We will announce the winner on New Year's Eve at 11pm Central time.  Good luck and thanks for reading!!!

     

Food Friday - Soup-er Easy Meals for Busy Days!

from Kris B.

Seven days and counting....this time next week, Christmas morning will be over.  And after that, just as quickly it will be 2016!  How is it that some days it feels like the days drag on and on and then all of the sudden you have no idea where the time went?  I wish I understood this phenomenon.

Our big sit-down family meal on Christmas is brunch.  Food service later in the day is usually limited to a big pot of chili or soup that I made ahead, brunch leftover, and/or whatever  anyone would like to fix for themselves.  As a church musician, I sing for two services on Christmas Eve, the second being midnight Mass.  By the time I get home and finish up the last Christmas chores, it is very late when I get to bed.  I always look forward to a nap on Christmas afternoon.  No cooking for me!

This week's recipe is a simple and hearty vegetable beef soup.  As is the case with many soups, it tastes better on the second day so it works perfectly with my make-ahead plan.

INGREDIENTS

2 lbs. ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
4 carrots, sliced
4 ribs of celery, sliced
4 potatoes, any kind, cut into 1" cubes
1 15 oz. can tomato sauce
1 14.5 oz. can diced tomatoes
1 14.5 oz. can cut green beans, rinsed
1 15.25 oz can kernel corn, rinsed
2 bay leaves
1/4 tsp thyme
salt and pepper to taste
water

Slice and dice the potatoes,  onion, carrots, and celery.

Place the vegetables and ground beef to your soup pot. Cook until the beef is browned and cooked through.  Drain off any fat.  Add to the beef the diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, green beans, corn, and potatoes.  Mix well.  Add the bay leaves and desired seasonings.  Add 1/4 - 1/2 cup of water to the soup mixture.  This soup is thick, almost like a stew.  If you want more broth, either add more water or some beef or vegetable broth to achieve your desired consistency.

Simmer the soup covered until the potatoes are done, about an hour.

If you are making this soup ahead, let it cool and then refrigerate.  Reheat on the stove when ready to serve.




from Tracey G

Pea soup was a nemesis of mine for ages, and I'm not sure why, it's a super easy soup to make. I think part of my trouble was I tried to make it more complicated than it is! LOL It's taken me years to finally get it the way I want it - and it's based on an Ina Garten recipe, that I then tweaked a few things here and there to my own taste. But it has finally gotten me the recipe for split pea soup that I've always wanted and it comes out consistently every time for the flavor I'm looking for! It does make a large batch, so usually we have it for dinner one night, then there's enough to freeze for another meal and sometimes I can get a couple lunch portions frozen out of it too. :-) It is one of those things that does the miracle crazy thickening so I make sure to have extra chicken broth/stock on hand for the left-overs and to thin down as needed as it's cooking - water works well too, but I like to use the broth or stock as it adds a little more oomph to it all the way around. Serve it with some yummy bread and a nice salad and it's a great fall or winter meal - or if you're like me it's an any time of the  year meal! :-)

I usually lighten up on the salt in recipes, out of habit from when I was taking care of my mom and her special dietary needs - and it's just one I've continued with. And that let's everyone season their individual servings to their taste.

Split Pea Soup

Serves 10-12

1 to 1 1/2 c chopped yellow onions (1-2 onions)

1 tbsp minced garlic (3-4 cloves)

1/4 c olive oil

1 tsp dried oregano

1-2 tsp kosher salt

1-2 tsp pepper

4 c diced carrots

2 c diced potatoes

2 lbs dried split green peas

16  cups chicken stock or water

In an 8-qt stock pot or Dutch oven on medium heat, saute the onions and garlic with the olive oil, salt, pepper and oregano until the onions are translucent, about 12-15 minutes. Add the carrots, potatoes, 1 1/2 lbs of split peas and chicken broth/stock or water. Bring to a boil, then simmer uncovered about 40 minutes. Skim off foam while cooking. Add the remaining split peas and continue to simmer for another 40 minutes or until all the peas are soft. Stir frequently to keep the solids from sticking and burning on the bottom. Serve hot. 

Food Friday - Christmas Brunch

from Tracey G

I love this dish - and I'm sure most people have some kind of version of a "ring" in their bag of recipe tricks, lol. It uses the refrigerated crescent roll dough to make it pretty. My mom found this particular recipe years ago, and I know she's added a few tweaks here and there and I've even made my own on the fly with it. I discovered that what's written in my book is different from what she had written down, lol. So I made my version this time, but I know we've made hers more, lol. She called for shredded Colby Jack, I used shredded Swiss, so you can go with whichever you like - or change it up each time you make it. Sometimes ham and Swiss is what you after - so go for it, as I did!

 I also upped the Dijon mustard amount - I go by taste, so I start with the 2 tbsp called for and go from there. I think in this particular go, I added a couple more extra (could even have been 3 extra for a total of 5, lol) - I love the flavor it adds. It also calls for chopped/minced onion and since Harry is not a big fan, I used some onion powder (to taste). Although, since it has broccoli in it, my hopes of him eating it were dashed. But I did decide it would be good without the broccoli, lol.

The longest part of the recipe, for me is arranging the crescent roll dough in an even pinwheel - I'm so particular I arrange and rearrange more times than I can count so I can get if fairly even. You really don't have to be too particular because once it bakes it looks pretty anyway. ;-) It's also one of those recipes that tastes better the next day - so leftovers, if there are any, are really good if not better than the day before!

Broccoli Ham Ring

Preheat oven to 375°

2 - 8 oz. tubes refrigerated crescent roll dough

1 ½ c shredded Monterey Jack cheese with Colby (Colby Jack)

¼ lb fully-cooked ham, diced (1/2 c)

2 ¼ c finely chopped broccoli

1 small onion, finely chopped

2 tbsp Dijon mustard (more to taste)

1 tsp lemon juice

Unroll crescent roll dough and place triangles on 12” pizza pan (or large cookie sheet), forming a ring with pointed ends facing outer edge of pan and wide ends overlapping. Press wide ends together.

Combine remaining ingredients; spoon evenly over wide ends of rolls. Fold points over (towards center of pan) and tuck under wide ends (filling will be visible). Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.

from Kris B.

First let me apologize for my uninspired photo of this week's recipe.   This poor shot has nothing to do with the fact that I am behind with everything and am not yet fully feeling the Christmas spirit.  It is much more traumatic than that!  My tripod, with camera attached, tipped over and my lens took the brunt of the fall.  Thankfully, despite the fact that for some reason I had taken my UV filter off of it, the glass didn't break.  The plastic ring around the edge, however, is another story.

I logged on to the Nikon website to see what the procedure was for sending it in for repair.  Surprisingly, it was an easy process, not often the case these days.  I was presented with a multiple choice menu from which to identify the nature of my problem.   #2 "Dropped or Impact Damage". I guess I am not the only unfortunate person to have such a problem.  Once all of the pertinent information was supplied,  I was given an estimate of the cost of repair.  Mind you, it is only an estimate; but, I had to provide payment information at that point in order to proceed.  The good news is that the estimate is a great deal less than the cost of replacing the lens.  The bad news is that this lens is the most expensive one that I own.  So after school this afternoon, I'll make my way to UPS with all those who are trying frantically to get holiday gifts shipped and send my lens on its way.  Hopefully it will not get lost in the Christmas rush!

Once Nikon receives the lens and assesses the damage first hand, they will send a specific cost of repair and I will again have an opportunity to decide how to proceed.   Until then, I will be forced to use some of the lenses in my bag that I haven't used much lately.  That is a good thing, I think.  I have been kind of lazy and have been relying on my "workhorse" lens rather than pushing myself to be a little more creative with some of my other options.  We'll see what happens...

Back to breakfast...

Despite what the photo looks like, this egg dish with a southwest touch is really good!  The recipe was given to me by a friend several years ago.  I believe she got it when she was working as a substitute innkeeper for a bed and breakfast.  I wish that back then I had been more diligent about making note of such details.

Because my older daughter is a vegetarian, our Christmas morning main course is always meatless.  (The rest of us have bacon or sausage on the side.).   And truthfully, the "protein dish" is never what anyone in my family looks forward to.  For the last ten years, said vegetarian daughter has made homemade cinnamon rolls by the dozens for Christmas morning.  (Leftovers are a must!). These are the part of the morning feast that we all anticipate!  But, I insist on something with protein during the morning to help mediate the sugar and caffeine high on which we all find ourselves.  Hyper adults on Christmas  are not nearly as cute as sugared up excited children. Lol!

INGREDIENTS

1 TBS olive oil

1/2 yellow onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, chopped

12 corn tortillas, taco sized cut into pieces

2 4 oz. cans diced green chilies

2 Cups Mexican blend cheese

4 eggs

2 Cups buttermilk

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp oregano

Dash of cayenne pepper, to taste (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

I make this is an cast iron skillet, but it can be made in a 2 quart casserole dish as well.  Coat the pan or dish with non-stick cooking spray.

Sauté the onions and garlic in the olive oil until browned.

In the cooking pan, layer half of the tortillas, all of the onion mixture, half of the green chilies, and half of the cheese.  Continue layering with the remaining tortillas, chilies, and cheese.

In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the eggs, buttermilk, and spices.  Pour the egg mixture over the layered ingredients.

Bake for 40 minutes.  Remove the pan from the oven and let rest for ten minutes.

This dish is good just like this, but can also be topped with sour cream, extra cheese, and/or diced fresh tomatoes.

I'm f you haven't yet settled on your Christmas morning menu, I hope you'll add this one to the list of contenders.

During this hectic and crazy time of year,  make sure to give yourself the gift of a few moments of peace in every day!

Food Friday - Merry Cranberry Christmas!

from Kris B.

I am having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it is now December!  I so enjoyed November, the month of intentional gratitude and thankfulness, but haven't yet made the transition to being in the Christmas spirit.  At this point my energy is being consumed by trying to finish up the fall semester at school.  Two more weeks!  Then maybe I can get some Christmas decorations up and actually enjoy the process rather than feeling stressed because there are so many more pressing things that I really should be doing.

During November, as I was making my gratitude list, one of the things that kept coming to mind is how thankful and grateful I am for my friends- those that I see regularly and those that I keep up with primarily via Facebook.   There is no greater gift in life than a caring and loving circle of friends.  One reason that I am particularly grateful for friends right now is because some of them have infused a little bit of Christmas into my otherwise Scrooge-like present life.

Some of our closest friends have an annual Christmas party on the Saturday evening after Thanksgiving.  Because my husband smoked our Thanksgiving turkey and my oldest daughter did all of the side dishes for our Thanksgiving meal, I had virtually no cooking responsibilities for that day so, I volunteered to help cook and prepare food for my friends' party.  I really enjoyed making twelve dozen cookies and hummus and chocolate mousse for forty.  The green and red sprinkles made an appearance as decoration for the sugar cookies.  That was the first touch of Christmas at my house.  (Don't worry;  cookies, hummus, and mousse are not all that we had to eat.  They did have some of the food catered as well.  Lol!).  The party itself was a festive celebration with lots of food, fellowship, a home decorated from top to bottom and a Christmas carol sing-a-long.  

Also, a colleague asked me if I would bake something for her to give as gifts.  Enter this week's recipe.  Last night I baked fifteen loaves of this Apple Cranberry Streusel Quick Bread.  Because she wanted them packaged as Christmas gifts, I was forced to unearth some red and white curling ribbon.   So there you have it...Christmas colored sprinkles and red and white curling ribbon are the total extent of Christmas at my house at this point.

I will get there.  We will get the tree up and the stockings will be hung by the chimney with care.  Wrapped packages will appear under the tree and brunch will be prepared for Christmas morning.  Right now, the process seems a little overwhelming, but it always does for me at this time of year.  I always feel better when a take a few minutes a slow down.  Today that happened with a cup of coffee (or three) and a piece of this delicious bread.  I needed fifteen loaves for my colleague and it just so happened that the math worked out that I made sixteen.  One for us, too!

Apple-Cranberry Streusel Quick Bread

INGREDIENTS

For the Streusel 

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 cup chopped pecans

For the bread

4 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 cup butter at room temperature

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup buttermilk

2 1/2 cups chopped apples, any variety

1 cup dried cranberries

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Butter 2 9x5–inch loaf pans or use 4 unbuttered 3x7 waxed disposable baking pans.

In a medium bowl, prepare the streusel topping first.  Mix the brown sugar, cinnamon and flour. Add  the butter with a pastry cutter.  Mix in the chopped pecans.  Set this mixture aside.

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda. and salt 

In a large stand mixer bowl, cream the butter.  Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy.  Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Add the flour mixture by alternating it with the buttermilk until you have a smooth batter.  Stir in the cranberries and apples by hand.

Equally divide the batter into your prepared pans. Top each loaf with the streusel mixture.

Bake 50 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center of bread comes out clean.

This recipe can also be halved.



by Tracey G.

I'm with Kris, I can't believe it's December already! It's just flown by, I barely remember November, lol. Seems like it was just the other day I was sitting on the beach! This year has me so behind and I'm not quite sure why - well, now that I think about it, I'm really not that behind in everything - I just have that horrible feeling that I am. Usually I have all the Christmas shopping done by November, I have none done. It doesn't help that Harry has given me nor Santa any ideas other than a few things that are still debatable. So, I know I need to buckle down and get that done this week - I hate last minute shopping, it makes me crazy! But on the flip side, I'm ahead of the game as far as the tree goes - we don't usually get it until about 2 weeks before Christmas, but today I sent Jeremy and Harry out with the task to get the tree - I had to trust them that they'd get what I want, lol. I'm an artificial tree kind of girl, but when we had Harry I started giving real trees a chance, and now that's all Harry wants, so I'm out of luck as far as ever having my perfect artificial tree anymore, lol. They did really well, came home with one I can live with - I wanted a bit taller and fluffier, but they did a good job and I really can't complain. :-)

I'll admit it -  I love McDonald's Cranberry Orange Muffins, lol. They're my favorite and I get one every chance I get. I finally decided since I love that combination so much, I really needed to start making them at home, lol. So, I searched around and found a recipe I really liked and tweaked it a bit, of course, lol. Now, there were complaints from the Peanut Gallery that they're not sweet enough, so I think next time I make them I will adjust the sugar up a bit, OR get some coarse sugar to use as a sprinkle on top of them before I bake them. I liked them a lot, the only thing I thought it could use was more cranberries! So, again, that might be something I'll adjust next time I make them. I also omitted the nuts, Harry doesn't like nuts in things like this, so I skipped them. I will though be making a batch of them one of these days WITH nuts though for  myself!

Cranberry Orange Muffins

Makes 12 muffins

2 c flour

3/4 c packed brown sugar

2 tsp baking powder

2 large eggs

1-2 tsp grated orange peel

2/3 c orange juice

1/3 c vegetable oil

1 c cranberries, coarsely chopped

1 c chopped pecans

In a large bowl, combine flour, brown sugar, orange peel and baking powder. In another bowl, beat eggs. Add orange juice and oil; stir into the dry ingredients just until moistened (batter will be lumpy). Fold in cranberries and pecans. Spoon into 12 greased or paper-lined muffin cups (cups will be almost full). Bake at 375° F for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from pan to cool on wire rack.