Oops, I hope I didn't offend you. But I really can't stand that shop.

Oh, none taken whatsoever.

Here's the recipe.

Thank you so much! I bought blackberries and sour cream at the store today. I meant to check the blackberry bushes out at the farm this weekend to see if they're ready to be picked, but I forgot. I highly doubt they're ready anyways. Either way, I'll be trying this pie soon!

My dad has diabetes and is wheat intolerant, I might add; so that limits my parents a lot.

Hmm... yeah, that gets tricky. It's very important for someone with diabetes to get lots of protein and the easiest way to get it is through meat. But there are other options as well like cheese, eggs, tofu (and pretty much any soy product), and I think beans and lentils have a fair bit of protein as well.
How experimental are you? My first idea for your family was a pizza that you guys could build your various pieces with the ingredients you prefer.
The trick is the crust as your dad needs it to be gluten-free, but I did find a recipe online with loads of stellar reviews. It's got some pretty crazy ingredients in it though.
http://glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com/2 ... ecipe.html
I'll keep trying to think of more recipes for you Ithil that you might like.

Well I stumbled across a recipe today that I absolutely MUST try...
Voila! Thai Steak Salad
http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/20-mi ... 00831.html
I LOVE Thai food and this one looks just awesome. Plus I have a lot of those herbs growing out in my backyard... convenient. The only trick will be finding Fish Sauce. It wasn't in my local grocery store, even in the International Food section, and while I know we have an Asian food market SOMEWHERE in town, I'm not quite sure as to the exact location. I guess that's what google maps or a phone book is for huh?

I've also been on a big cheese and crackers kick lately. I've been doing so much outdoor work lately that I've been needing a midday snack. So tasty...

Oh, and poor Twigs up above reminded me of another food that I really can't stand that other people seem to like, and that's processed cheese product, like Velveeta, Cheese Whiz, etc. Ugh... blech... ugh.

*pokes head in* Due to the fact that I was just recently diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, Rosie suggested I look around in here.

I'm a huge meat lover. Bacon, hamburgers, sausages... I love it all. My mother calls me her carnivorous child. ( ) Luckily, I can eat as much meat and cheese as I want without having to take extra insulin. However, I really have to limit baked goods and high carb foods, such as goldfish crackers and bread. Salami has become my new best friend.

Foods I don't like:
- Peas. I just can't stand them.
- Cottage cheese/sour cream. It's a texture thing for the cottage cheese and I just don't care for sour cream.
- Apricots. Don't ask me why, but I just don't like them. My family loves them though.
- Hotdogs. I've never liked them.

Fantasia - Nope, we don't do anything to the blueberries before freezing them. We just stick them in ziplock bags, get all the air out, and put them in the freezer. We don't wash them first because otherwise they tend to stick together in a huge clump - we just make sure to wash them before eating them. And, like SnowAngel, we don't bother about putting anything on them before freezing.

SnowAngel - Ah yes, we make jam as well! I'd forgotten about that. The family favorite is strawberry jam (it tastes so much better than the artificial kind!), but we've experimented before with peach as well.

By the way, that sour cream blackberry pie recipe sounds super yummy. I'd like to try it out this summer.

Foods I don't like:
- Lima beans. I dislike both the texture and the taste.
- Beets. I actually can't say I dislike the taste... as far as I can recall, I've never actually eaten one. The smell is enough for me to keep my distance.
- Peanut butter and caramel. (The gooey/stickiness... ick.)
- Cooked carrots. I think this kind of goes along with Bella's comment on steamed onions. I like carrots raw, but cooked they're just too slimy.

Borscht I have had several times. I had it once from, I want to say a German Dinner? Do Germans make Borscht as well? Maybe it was Polish? I don't remember. Anyways, it was amazing. My poor mom tried to replicate it for me several times but hers was less-than-amazing. Would you mind sharing your Borscht recipe wild rose? And Shi I have not heard of. What's Shi

Borscht is originally a Russian/Ukrainan soup, very popular in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The Polish make borsht too, but the recipe is a bit different, I never heard of the Germans making it, but it's possible

Sure, I can share the recipe I usually make (I'm not so good on the proportions though, cause I usually make a 9 liter pot, enough to feed 10 people for two days. Also all the recipes I use have things in grams instead of ounces, but I have tried to convert and calculate everything )
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ingrediants
(for around 1 lb of meat)
1-2 beets
either 1 big or 2 small carrots
1 onion
Potatos (optional)
Fresh greens
2-3 tomatoes
tomato paste -2 tablespoons
about 1/3 a head of cabbage
1 tablespoon of vinegar
1 tablespoon of sugar
salt
pepper

(When I make borsht I use meat broth, but chicken broth is fine too ) Boil the meat in water for the broth (it should boil for about 1,5 to 2 hours), peel the beets and carrots and cut them into short strips and put them in a pot with the tomatoe paste, onions, greens, sugar and vinegar, add a few tablespoons of broth and about a tablespoon of oil. Cover the pot with a lid and allow all this to simmer for 15/20 minutes, then add the cabbage (also cut) and let it simmer for another 20 minutes, stiring it from time to time to keep it from burning, if it starts to burn a bit, add some water or broth. After it has simmered, add the broth, potatoes and tomatoes, add salt,a little bit of pepper and bay leaf and allow to cook till the vegetables are cooked all the way. And viola, soup is ready. In Russia it's very common to put sour cream in the soup before you eat it, but some people (like my brother) hate sour cream in soup, and prefer it without any.
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Shi is a Russian soup, very popular and has been around for ages and ages. We even have a saying 'щи да каша, пищя наша' roughly translated 'shi and cereal is our food.' Basically, shi is borsht without the beets and potatoes. Cabbage is perhaps the main ingrediant for shi, either fresh cabbage or sauerkraut and usually it's made with meat broth, but chicken is pretty popular too. There a tons of recipes for shi, it's not really one of my favorite to cook, but it's quick and simple and when I'm running late with lunch, or don't have very many ingredients, I usually make it

Another great soup is ocroshka, it's a summer soup and I really love it (though my older sister just hates it) you boil potatoes and cut them into cubes with boiled eggs, fresh cucumbers, sausage, radish and fresh greens, then you pour kvass over it all and there's your soup.

I'm a big meat lover, as is most everyone in my family, also with threee big guys in my family, we eat meat just about every day, or else they begin to rebel, usually we eat meat for dinner and one has to keep the recipes diverce or else the menfolk begin to complain a little, so if anyone has any meat recipes to share, I'd be so glad

Foods I don't like:
*Fish!!!!!!
*Caviar--oh I hate that stuff, it's just discusting, I remember one time I was visiting a friend and her grandma made a special treat, red caviar on boiled eggs, and I couldn't back out of it or she would get really offended, so I held my breath, and sort of swallowed it all down
*Beans
*Oats--we used to eat oatmeal cereal almost everyday for breakfast when I was young, I just sort of overate it, the smell of it makes me sick
*spinach, pumpkin, and squash

- Cooked carrots. I think this kind of goes along with Bella's comment on steamed onions. I like carrots raw, but cooked they're just too slimy.

I LOVE cooked carrots, everyone else in my family just hates them, whenever we have cooked carrots in a meal, everyone always dumps them on my plate

Thanks so much for the recipe, AslansChild.

~Riella

Your welcome. But I forgot to add to my post, by all means, you do NOT have to feel any obligation whatsoever to try it...I know that I like alot of different foods that maybe others wouldn't. There really isn't much I don't like, so...eat at your own risk.

Two other recipes that I can think of right at this moment are
1. Egg sandwiches
&
2.Leftover burritos.
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To make the eggs: (for two people)

Melt 2 tbsp of butter (or olive oil) in a skillet/pan on med/high heat. Crack 4 eggs in a bowl and partially stir, just make sure the yolks are broken, but don't blend completely, to where it's all one color, make it swirly. Pour mixture into pan once butter's melted, season with salt, pepper, etc. Cover with a lid. Once the top of the eggs starts to look partially done, take a spatula and cut the mixture down the middle, lift each half up so as not to stick. Flip onto other side, side should be golden brown. Once flipped, season that side. Top eggs with cheese, take a cup of cold water and pour a little bit into the center of the pan and immediately cover to make steam to melt the cheese. Once steam evaporates, check to see how the bottom of eggs are doing, once golden brown, serve each half on a plate and enjoy!

(I like to put my eggs on a toasted buttered bagel with a hash-brown, bacon, and some onion dip Mm... )
_____________________________________________________________________
For the leftover burritos:

I call them leftover burritos because I make them when I have leftover rice from the night before, when you have rice, you need chili, and rice and chili makes an awesome burrito! But of course, if you want to you can make all this from scratch that day.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Open a package of soft tortillas and wrap them in a big bundle of tinfoil. Place on cookie sheet.

While oven preheating, you'll began to cook. Heat the leftover rice up on medium heat in a saucepan, add some water in the bottom and mix to coat the rice. Cover. (This keeps the rice from becoming hard little...things that juts pop around in the pan... Water steams up to make it more like rice. )

Open up a big can of chili with beans. Pour into separate saucepan and heat up, depending on how spicy you like your chili, you might have to season it. I always have to add alot of salt, along with garlic powder, onion powder, and a little bit of chopped jalapeno to give it a kick. When you just open the can, it just tastes flavorless to me.

Also, I add a heaping 1-2 tbs of cornstarch to the canned chili, to thicken up the sauce.

This is a pretty basic recipe, you can add whatever else you may want: corn, bacon, chicken, whatever. Just heat it up the same way you did the beans and rice.

By now you should have your oven preheated, put the wrapped tortillas in the oven to warm, about 10-12 min.

So now you just wait until everything's hot, then you assemble your burritos! You can top with cheese, olives, sour cream, anything you wish.

Just as a tip, if you don't feel like having an assembly line of ingredients, you can always mix it all together in a bowl and put the mixture in that way...I do that with the leftovers, rather than have a thousand different containers in the fridge, just mix it all in one big one. Makes it easier. And the mixtures pretty good cold too, to me, anyway.

_____________________________________________________________________

Another recipe you could do is a big bowl of rice and chili! No flour, no meat, yum... (I need to stop now... LoL)

Lia, I've been loosely following your saga on Facebook and I was wondering if you had diabetes. That's a tough diagnosis, but my uncle has Type 1 diabetes and he manages it very well. It's a good thing you like meat. Were you here looking for new recipes? Or just coming in to check out what was here?

MissRosario, thanks for the tip about the blueberries. I will have to keep that in mind in the future. First we all have to stop eating them off the bushes as soon as they're ripe....

wild rose, so cool hearing about your different soups and foods over in Russia Lots of potatoes and cabbage. Not that we don't have them here, but they're not staples. Thanks for the borscht recipe. I'll have to try that sometime, but it probably won't be til the fall when it starts to get cool again and I have all of my own veggies.

AslansChild, I love your idea for the leftover burritos.

Well I was pretty stoked today to find Fish Sauce in a grocery store I've never been to before (mine didn't have it) so now I can make that Thai Salad recipe that I ran across a couple days ago.
http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/20-mi ... 00831.html
Definitely making that for dinner tonight. And if I can get REALLY motivated, I'll make SnowAngel's pie as well. (We'll see on that one. )
I was also super excited to discover a non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening. It's by Spectrum, and I found on their website that they sell it at the store I went to, so I'm definitely going to be making a pie crust with this to see how it turns out.

Were you here looking for new recipes? Or just coming in to check out what was here?

A little of both. My mom and I found a website that you can plug recipes into and it will tell you the nutritional information, so I've been looking around for some new things to try.

Wild Rose, your borsht sounds super tasty! I might have to try it when it gets cooler here.

- Cooked carrots. I think this kind of goes along with Bella's comment on steamed onions. I like carrots raw, but cooked they're just too slimy.

I LOVE cooked carrots, everyone else in my family just hates them, whenever we have cooked carrots in a meal, everyone always dumps them on my plate

I love cooked carrots too! My mom makes them with butter and a wee bit of maple syrup or brown sugar. So tasty.

One of my favorite things to make (although I can no longer eat them) is banana pancakes.

Ingredients:

6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter - two will be for greasing your griddle. Cooking spray works just as well.
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 small, very ripe banana, peeled
1 cup milk
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Maple syrup/sliced bananas to top them

Cut the butter into 3 equal pieces. Put 2 of the butter pieces in a small saucepan and set the remaining piece aside. Set the pan over medium heat and stir with a wooden spoon until melted, 1 to 2 minutes. Using a pot holder, remove the pan from the heat and set it aside to cool. (You could also microwave the butter like I do. It's just quicker and makes less of a mess.)

In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Mix until well blended.

Put the banana in a small bowl. Mash with a fork until almost smooth. Add the milk, eggs and vanilla and stir until well blended. Pour the banana mixture and the melted butter into the flour mixture. Mix gently with a rubber spatula until the batter is just blended. The batter should still be a little bit lumpy.

Then just cook the pancakes the way you would normal pancakes. The recipe makes about 12ish 4-inch pancakes.

One of my favorite things to make (although I can no longer eat them) is banana pancakes.

There are some substitutions you can make so you can eat these without a lot of trouble.

Ingredients:

6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter - two will be for greasing your griddle. Cooking spray works just as well.
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour Whole grain wheat flour (do NOT get enriched whole wheat flour)
2 tablespoons sugar Splenda or whatever sugar substitute you prefer
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 small, very ripe banana, peeled
1 cup milk
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Maple syrup/sliced bananas to top them Butter and either sugar free syrup or sugar free jelly

And voila! You've either eliminated the simple carbs or replaced them with complex carbs.

Now, another trick that I have learned that I love to use in my pancakes (because I'm not a huge fan of wheat flour), is substitute whatever amount of flour called for in the recipe with 2/3 wheat flour and 1/3 oat flour. Oat flour is a complex carb and I think it tastes really good. You can't completely substitute oat flour because it will behave differently (chemically) from regular wheat flours, but at least for me it gives me a break from the whole wheat flour flavor.
Buying oat flour can get kind of pricey, but you can buy whole oats and pulverize them in a food processor until it turns to dust, and that's a much cheaper way of getting oat flour.

I recently tried a new recipe for Strawberry Banana Bread. Actually, the recipe is for Blueberry Banana bread but I substituted Strawberries. It passed the test with the guinea pigs. I had mentioned it to some of the mods and they wanted the recipe if it turned out.

Here it is:
1 1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup applesauce
2 eggs
3 medium ripe bananas, mashed (The recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups mashed bananas and says that is 3-4 medium. I just went with the three bananas and didn't bother to measure.)
1/2 cup buttermilk (I used skim milk with a little bit of lemon juice)
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup cut strawberries (I tried to cut them about the size of blueberries.)
Heat oven to 350 F. Grease just the bottom of a 9-inch loaf pan. Stir sugar, applesauce, eggs, bananas and milk in a large bowl. Stir in flour, baking soda, and salt just until moistened. Stir in strawberries. Pour in to loaf pan. Bake for about 1 hour and 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes in the pan. Loosen sides of the loaf from the pan and remove loaf from the pan. Cool completely.

*reads over the recipes with interest*

Just have to link to a photo of one of my favourite unusual and weird food preferences. Yep, that's toast with creamy (lite) peanut butter, topped with sliced colossal olives. The contrast between the sticky, warm pb and the tart-ish, cool olives is so very yummy. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but couldn't resist to do so again.

(Those glasses are our solar glasses from the transit of Venus on Tuesday.)

Does anyone else here like angel food cake? It's one of my ultimate favourite foods. I tried making my own years ago, but it was so fiddly, and did not turn out nearly as nicely (even after trying multiple times) as good ol' Duncan Hines mix. Mostly I go for homemade recipes, but this is one case I will succumb to purchasing the box.

Does anyone else here like angel food cake?

Winter says, "Me, me, me, ME!!!" Also, we eat it for breakfast on her birthday.
My family all really likes it (except my dad who only moderately likes it---it's not chocolate ), though we usually only have it for special occasions. My grandmother used to make it for us, but my mom never tried it because she thought it was a really difficult thing to get right. She bought a cake mix for it once, though, and I tried it and it turned out just fine. So, like you, we always use the mixes too. We make it in two loaf pans and not as a round cake, though.

Winter just told me that, apparently, eating angel cake for breakfast somehow was started by me putting the loafs in the wrong oven and them baking into the coils. So we had to pull the tops off and then just stuck them in bags that evening...whereupon they got munched on the next morning.

1/2 cup buttermilk (I used skim milk with a little bit of lemon juice)

Does that make the same thing as buttermilk? Weird...but cool! I'll have to try that sometime.

Does anyone have recipes for hummus? I was pretty sure it was just chick peas and olive oil, but maybe not...do you need to toast the chick peas, or can you just use the ones in a can?

SnowAngel, I made your Sour Cream Blackberry Pie last week. It was awesome. I loved it and I'm definitely saving the recipe. What was interesting to me about that pie, and I'm sure it's because of the eggs in there, that it was almost more like a custard. Anyways, two big thumbs, way up.

Re: Angel Food Cake: Not a fan. I'm not sure why but I think it's the texture. I remember when I was really little, my mom made it for me for every birthday until I told her I didn't like it. She was probably crushed. I'll eat it, but it's definitely not one of my favorites.

AslansChild, my sister made hummus one time, and it was ok. But it had a fair number of expensive weird ingredients like Tahini Paste so we never made it again. Hummus classically has chickpeas or garbanzo beans, Tahini Paste, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and paprika.
Ironically, the best hummus I've ever had is a store-bought brand called Sabra - Classic Hummus. I don't know where all they ship their product, but it's found in just about every grocery store here.
If you really want to make it yourself though, I'm madly in love with allrecipes.com, they have a lot of good stuff on there and I'm sure you'll be able to find a recipe that you like.

The other night, our neighbors brought us a plate of fresh tamales that they had just finished making. I wolfed down two of them right then and there (10pm at night ). There are very few better tasting foods in this world than fresh tamales imho.

SnowAngel, I made your Sour Cream Blackberry Pie last week. It was awesome. I loved it and I'm definitely saving the recipe. What was interesting to me about that pie, and I'm sure it's because of the eggs in there, that it was almost more like a custard. Anyways, two big thumbs, way up.

I'm so glad you liked! I think it might be my favorite pie.

I made Vanilla Cupcakes with Key Lime Buttercream Frosting on Tuesday. So good! It's one of my favorite flavor combinations. I don't make Key Lime Frosting very often, but when I do it doesn't last long.

SnowAngel

So I had something this past weekend that blew my mind (and my tastebuds). My husband and I went to this local brewery, and I ordered the house salad as an appetizer, and on the menu was Cucumber Wasabi dressing. My theory has always been that if it's weird enough to survive being on a menu, it must be ok.... so I got some.
It was HOT. Tasty, but I tend to prefer having a fairly painless experience when I eat my food, so I probably won't be ordering it again any time soon.