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Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Mom's Buttermilk Biscuits


My mom was a great cook and we always had a home cooked meal and ate as a family. Looking back, I don't know how she did it. Work full time, raise 3 kids, AND put a home cooked meal on the table every night! She was Super Woman! With those meals we almost always had my her buttermilk biscuits. She made them from scratch and they were so fluffy and delicious. Unfortunately, I never learned how to make them before she passed away in 2000. She tried to teach us before she died, but I was like 13 so I didn't really get it then. So a couple of years ago I was going through some old stuff in my dad's house and found all of my mom's recipes! (We thought we had lost them in one of the moves.) So I took them without telling anyone, scanned every one of them, and had a cookbook made for my dad, brother, and sister for Christmas. Anyway, one of the recipes is for Mom's Famous Biscuits and I've been trying to perfect the technique since.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Fun with: Won ton Wrappers!

So I'm a HUGE Hungry Girl fan. And if any of you out there subscribe to her emails, you received an email last week with three new recipes using won ton wrappers. Well this was right up my alley (and Kyle's) because I've made Southwestern egg rolls before using egg roll wrappers (a Weight Watchers recipe) and they are the perfect snack. You can make up a batch of them and stick them in the freezer. Then whenever you want a hot snack, just pop a few in the oven. EASY! So what did I do? I tested all three won ton recipes!

Up first, Hungry Girl's Won ton 'Quitos. These were pretty darn good if you need a Mexican food fix. Spicy, cheesy, chickeny...what could be better? I missed the crunch you get when you bite into a true, fried, delicious taquito, but that goes for all of these recipes really. The edges got crispy and some of the cheese oozed out during baking! Yum!

So here's how you make them. You mix a can of chicken with salsa verde and refrigerate for 15 minutes to let the flavors meld. Then you add some reduced fat cheddar (the recipe calls for fat free, but I really don't like fat free cheese!), corn kernels, and some chopped roasted red pepper (I didn't have this so I left it out). And that's your filling.

Now this recipe makes 16 taquitos. I like to lay out all of the won ton wrappers at one time and put a tablespoon of filling on each won ton. I found the easiest way to roll these up is to spread the filling out over the bottom 2/3 of the won ton, roll the won ton up over the filling and put a line of water on the blank edge to seal it up. Put the rolled taquitos seam side down on a baking sheet and bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes. I put a little salsa verde on the side for dipping.


Monday, March 28, 2011

Butter makes everything better.

That's just an expression, of course, but not an entirely false one. The only exception being my waistline!

I'm just a southern girl on the hunt for great tasting food. I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and my parents are from the backwoods of Mississippi, so I was never deprived of good, stick to your ribs, food growing up. But my cooking journey didn't begin until college. I was a junior at LSU and turned on Food Network one day. I started by trying a few Rachael Ray recipes. That was about 5 years ago and I've spent those years trying to learn everything I can about cooking. I'm no professional, I just love food.

So what can you expect from Must Love Butter?

I LOVE Cajun food! Go figure. I also really love sweets. I could live off of cake if I wouldn't gain a million pounds. And really, I'll try (almost) anything in the kitchen. Unfortunately for me, I'm also trying to drop a few pounds, so I'm constantly on the search for diet friendly recipes. Everything in moderation, right? (Does that ever actually work for anybody??? Not me...) But no matter what I'm cooking, it must taste great! Otherwise, what's the point?