Posted by: @silverlily

What's your go-to comfort food when you don't have energy to do something fancy but you want something satisfying? 

I like grilled cheese or eggs with bell pepper and onions. I haven't really made grilled cheese for a while, although I would like to, I am still trying to get my homemade bread sliced thin enough for the cheese to melt. I have been thinking about trying to make sandwiches in the oven instead of the stovetop to see that works with my bread. 

I made toffee coconut milk ice cream today. The ice cream is currently in the freezer waiting to be served since the toffee chunks I cut didn't fit in the ice cream maker bowl I had to stop it before it was actually ready. This past summer we got a Cuisinart 1.5 quart ice cream maker and it is amazing.  

SnowAngel

@snowangel Oh, nice! What sort of cheese is your preference for grilled cheese? I'm normally a cheddar girl but smoked gruyere is really nice, and there was that one time I did provalone and artichoke hearts and dipped it in marinara...

And toffee coconut milk icecream sounds so intriguing.

@Silverlily, my top choices would be pepper jack or sharp cheddar. Yesterday I made toasted open-face sandwiches with provolone, ranch dip, and red onion, yummy.  

The ice cream was pretty good, it didn't have as much toffee flavor as I was expecting it to have. So the recipe is going to need some tweaking, so sad I will have to make it again.  

SnowAngel

Even if I don't have "wretched sausages half full of bread and soya bean either, but real meaty, spicy ones, fat and piping hot and burst and just the tiniest bit burnt..." at least I have "great mugs of frothy chocolate." (Silver Chair) 

Hot Chocolate in my Narnia cup below 🙂

Your hot chocolate looks delicious, @queensuthegentle. Nice mug.  

Yesterday I made sour cream blueberry pie for Pi Day. I decided to make it in 9x13in glass pan instead of a pie plate. I made a recipe and half of each the crust and pie filling, and it was just right for the pan. I love it when recipe tweaks work the first time.  

SnowAngel

@snowangel Sour cream blueberry pie sounds lovely! Is it a tradition for you to make this dish on Pi Day every year? 

 I can totally relate to changing up the recipe a bit and having the results turn out better than you thought they would! One of the best feelings for a baker, especially if you usually just follow the recipe 🙂

@queensuthegentle, I try to make pie on Pi Day every year, it's often a sour cream berry pie because it's one of my very favorites and it almost always turns out great. Last year my brother and I made apple and pumpkin pies for Pi Day, so this year I really needed to make a berry pie.  

Today I made mint chip ice cream in the little ice cream maker. I used the base of my vanilla coconut milk ice cream recipe and added a teaspoon and half each of peppermint oil and chlorophyll, then I put 3/4 of dark chocolate bar cut into tiny chunks in during the last few minutes of churning. I served it with buttermilk brownies for everyone except for mom, she got a larger serving of ice cream. It was a hit with the whole family.

SnowAngel

No pies here, but I can happily report that tonight I ate two different vegetables from my garden, plus a peach from my tree (peaches aren't doing well, so I cut out the bad part, sliced it up, and cooked it in light syrup for a few minutes, served with plain yoghurt).

I had fish sticks, fried potatoes, and salad for dinner. It's almost close to the dinner that the Pevensies had with the Beavers in LWW (except for the salad, of course). But they had fried fish and potatoes.

I've made Pear Cream Breakfast Cake today.

Pear Cream Breakfast Cake

1 (29 OZ) can pears in heavy syrup

8 oz cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup apricot or peach preserves

2 tablespoon butter

1 package yellow cake

2 tablespoon oil (I've used avocado oil)

1 egg

1 teaspoon ground ginger

Drain pears, reserving 1/2 cup syrup. Slice pears; place on bottom of 8 inch square baking pan. Beat cream cheese, preserves, and butter in small mixing bowl at medium speed with electric mixer until well blended; pour over pears. Beat cake mix, reserved syrup, oil, egg and ginger in large mixing bowl at low speed with electric mixer until well blended; pour over cream cheese mixture. Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until golden brown.

That sounds tasty, @jasmine_tarkheena!  

So, I did a rather stupid thing today. I am making lemon meringue pie for family coming for this Canadian long weekend, and I accidentally put the lemon filling topped with loads of meringue in the oven without having baked the pie crust first!  Good grief. Anyway, I pulled myself together, scraped off the meringue, scooped out the lemon filling, and set both aside. I then got a new crust, baked it (what a good idea ), plopped the lemon back in to the baked crust, topped it with the now raggedy meringue, and ... there we go.   I tasted a bit and it is as delicious as ever. The only issue is that is just doesn't have as much aesthetic appeal now.  

Other than that, all my other food prep has gone well: pumpkin muffins, bran muffins, homemade hamburgers (to grill over the campfire!), rhubarb pie. For the spinach salad, skillet lasagna and garlic bread, I prepped a few of the ingredients ahead of time.

Today I made peanut butter pie bars. I used this GF oreo recipe to make the crust, this is first time I have used it for a pie crust, but I have made it as cookies a few times before and it's great. I also know that the oreo cookies work great for cookies'n'cream ice cream.  

For my pie filling, I basically added gelatin to my peanut butter ice cream recipe because I couldn't find any pie filling recipe that fit what I was wanting to make. We'll find out tomorrow if it's good, I forgot to make a sample for tonight.  

SnowAngel

Even though I haven't tried this myself, it's been a method to add soda to cake mix. Even though I'm not a big soda drinker myself, the soda cake sounds really easy.

Some ideas I've heard are-

White Cake Mix+0range or grape soda

Lemon Cake Mix+7up or Sprite or Starry (formerly Sierra Mist which used to be one of my favorites)

Chocolate Cake Mix+Coca-Cola or Pepsi or Root Beer

Red Velvet Cake Mix+Dr. Pepper

Butter Pecan Cake+Cream Soda

Strawberry Cake Mix+Strawberry Soda

Spice Cake Mix+Ginger Ale

The pie bars turned out pretty real good. So glad I wrote down my new recipe.  

Recently got to pick tart cherries for the first time ever. So naturally the siblings and I got to make cherry jam and preserves for the first time as well. We used the cherry jam recipe from the SureJell package and the preserves recipe from Ball Canning Back to Basics. After tasting both the jam and preserves on buttermilk biscuits, the preserves were the favorite of the two.

I also made cherry sauce that was served on vanilla ice cream one evening. And one of the siblings made a blueberry cherry cobbler on another day. We don't normally have cherries since my dad can't eat sweet cherries, so it's been fun trying tart cherry recipes.  

SnowAngel

We plan to get strawberries, which is my favorite fruit, from the family-owned farm store that is not too far from us sometime this week. Then sometime in August, we'll plan on getting some peaches.

I have no idea what we'll do with the strawberries and peaches. Maybe some will be in smoothies and maybe strawberry rhubarb pie and peach cobbler.