When I grow up I want to be...

...Ree Drummond. The Pioneer Woman herself. She is pretty close to amazing. 


There are things we have in common, for sure. 


She loves food. I love food. 
She lets her dog take over her life. I let my dog take over my life. 
She is married to the Marlboro Man. I am married to the Camel Man. 


But I have a ways to go. 


She gets up at 5am. I get up at 9am. 
She has a lot of children and a ranch. I have one dog and an apartment. 
She has a published cookbook. I have a notebook where I scribble ideas of things to make. 


If you have not read her blog, do so immediately. 


The Pioneer Woman



And do you know what else she does? She takes all her own photos, even the action shots. 
So I am working on my action shots.


I will demonstrate said action shots with the following recipe. 


Creamy Peanut Butter Pie
this recipe came from another blogger and it has a very touching story if you want to take a minute to read it.

CRUST ingredients if you want to be fancy:

8 ounces chocolate cookies

4 tablespoons butter, melted

4 ounces finely chopped chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/4 cup chopped peanuts

Otherwise, you can BUY A CRUST. 

PIE ingredients:

1 cup heavy cream

8 ounces cream cheese

1 cup creamy-style peanut butter

1 cup confectioner's sugar

1 – 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

Here we go.

First, whip the heavy cream. I used a hand mixer because I am not very patient. I suppose you could be a purist and do this by hand. Be my guest.

Next, smile. You are making something delicious after all. Creamy peanut butter & cream cheese at room temperature. 

Here's a fun fact: sometimes it can be a "sticky situation" to get PB out of a measuring cup. In a 2 cup glass measuring cup and fill to the 1/2 c. line with cold water. Then plop your PB in by spoon full until your water level rises to the desired line.
Example: need 1 cup of PB, fill until the water reaches 1 1/2 c. line .
I don't know who deserves credit for this. I learned it from my mom way back. Your peanut butter will come out of the water no worse for the wear and you won't lose half your peanut butter to the measuring cup.

Mix PB & CC. Look! I'm doing it... self action shot!

Add your powdered sugar. It looked so soft and fluffy. I wanted to sit in a giant pile of it. I refrained.

Add lemon juice. 

Add vanilla. This is good non-imitation Vanilla from Mexico. It was my honeymoon souvenir. I am so lame.

Add can-o-milk. I was impressed with myself for this picture. I feel it really captures the pouring action.

Mix all these things together. There I go again with the action. I might be getting the hang of this. 

Now fold in your whip cream. I did not fold. I mixed because it was pretty and I paid for it later. This pie was a little soupy. But the next day when I made this exact same pie AGAIN I folded.  And it was not soupy. Just fold. You'll be glad you did.

Pour your pie filling into your crust and freeze or refrigerate it, but I thought it was better frozen. It doesn't get hard so you can slice it with a butter knife even straight from the freezer... and you avoid potential soupy-ness? soupiness? That looks wrong.
Also, this makes a very large pie. It's really enough for two pies, especially if you are using one of those small store-bought crusts.

I have eaten WAY too much of this pie. I won't be making it again for a while, but I will remember it when I need a no-bake dessert or a make-ahead dessert.

Starting to try new foods

In our house growing up my mom had a phrase to get us to try new foods that has stuck with us all.

"Try it. You might have grown a new taste bud." 

I recently discovered a taste bud that is oh so fond of V8 V-fusion drinks. I know I don't get enough fruits & veggies in a day and these are delish!

This juice doesn't just look delightful, my friends.

Also, in an effort to satisfy my craving for salt & vinegar chips (stop the rumors right there- not a pregnant craving, I always love these) & to meet my calorie-counting needs I tried POPchips and whoa mama! they are go-od!

I should put some of those google ads at the bottom of my page so I can at least make a little moolah for my product endorsements. Maybe if V8 & POPchips have a surge in sales in the Chicago market they'll come knocking on my door with one of those giant checks!

Well, let's see... what else have I made in the last few days?

Banana Bread
adapted from a bunch of websites & my brain
warning: i'm starting to feel a little wacky, there is definitely chair dancing* going on while i write this one

*chair dancing: the act of dancing from the waist up while sitting in a chair. often includes swaying, head bobbing, and finger pointing

[preheat your oven to 325]

1 stick of room temperature butter (yes, I'm still working through my freezer stash of buddah)
1 cup of granulated sugar (I was really tempted to type sugah just now)

[whip those together]

2 large eggs aka grande juevos

[whip those in one at a time until you have some fluffy goodness]

3 ripe bananas (more than a few brown spots if you know what I mean)
1 tablespoon milk (a splash will do)
a serious sprinkle of cinnamon

[mash 'em till the sun don't shine]

[combine the fluffy goodness with the mashed mess]

2 cups of flour

1 teaspoon each of baking soda, baking powder, salt

[combine dry ingredients]

[bring the whole gang together until just combined]

[Grease a loaf pan: I got to debut a new pampered chef loaf pan courtesy of mi madre]

[bake for an hour-ish until an unused toothpick comes out clean]

Let it cool for 10-15 minutes

While this was cooling I toasted some chopped walnuts (bake them on 350 for 7ish minutes to let the flavors take on new life)

Then I served warm slices with the nuts, honey, and butter. 

Obviously you could add the nuts in during baking if that's your style.

OH I ALMOST FORGOT-

I was recently presented with the prestigious Wife of the Week Award.

It was super exciting. I was nominated for making a weekday morning breakfast.

I made it to feed my hubs & start his day of right, but also I really needed to make something fatty on my new baking stone so it could get seasoned and biscuits were a recommended item. 

Biscuits, cheesy scrambled eggs, jonagold apple

A success, a failure, and a new invention.

Success: Enchilada Casserole

This recipe came from the cookbook compiled after my bridal shower. 
It reads "From the kitchen of Amy (Hambrick) Pierce. My mom used to make this and we have always loved it! :)"
I was really excited to try a Hambrick family tradition! I vote it a success for being easy, inexpensive, and flavorful.


1 lb ground beef or 2 1/2 c. cooked and cut up chicken 
(I chose chicken, sauteed it with butter, salt, pepper, and a little garlic powder)
1 can enchilada sauce
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 can corn, drained
1 small can chopped or sliced black olives, drained (I omitted this because neither of us really like olives)
Tortilla Chips
1 1/2- 2 c. grated cheddar cheese


Preheat oven to 350. Brown ground beef/cook chicken. Strain fat, add enchilada sauce and mushroom soup, corn and olives. Stir together and simmer. Crush tortilla chips in bottom of 9x13 pan. After mixture of beef has simmered for 15 min, pour over chips evenly. Sprinkle cheese and back for 30 minutes or until cheese is melted. Serve with salsa and sour cream.


To make this more "after work friendly" I cooked the chicken, sauce, soup mixture in the morning and stored it in the fridge. 
After work, I layered chips, fridge mixture, corn, and cheese while Adam threw together a salad.  I think I could have used more chips than just to cover the bottom of the pan to make more of a "crust." Adam opted to stuff this casserole in a tortilla even though I explained the enchiladas-with-a-fork kind of concept. I chose a handful of tortilla chips and a dollop of sour cream and "scooped" mine. 


Failure: Italian Paninis


Lucky for me and you blog readers that I tried this one out on Sunday night before I even decided to blog about this because tonight was a capital D disaster. We'll start with the recipe and then I'll explain in painful detail how I failed.

Courtesy of Mario Batali: Coppa, Hot Salami, Ham, Fontina and roasted garlic puree panini (serves 4)


8 slices of thick country bread (I used sourdough)
3 T extra-virgin olive oil
4 oz. coppa, sliced (I actually used capicola, because there wasn't any coppa at the deli)
4 oz. hot salami - such as pepperoni or picante, sliced (I used a hot peppered salami)
4 oz. Fontina cheese, sliced
4 oz. roasted garlic puree (I just used the jar-o-garlic with a little olive oil as a substitute)
My own special addition, Prosciutto, gotta love it & a handful of fresh basil leaves


Preheat grill pan  (the bottom right pan on the pic above) on medium. Brush both sides of the slices  of bread with EVOO.
Assemble the sandwiches as follows: bread, capicola, salami, fontina, basil, garlic mixture, prosciutto, bread.
Cook 2-3 min on each side between grill press.


Sunday night this worked like a dream and they were delicious.

Tonight was a different story. 
Sunday night I must have been energized by the freshly unpacked groceries or at least thinking clearly since I hadn't spent 10 hours at my desk immediately prior to this culinary adventure. Sunday night I prepped (layed out all my ingredients on a cutting board and gathered my tools). Then, I preheated with the timer on for 5 min while I assembled sammies. Then I put them on the press, was watchful and attentive, and voila! Italian delight. 


Thursday night I preheated, then prepped, then realized the pan was already too hot, tried to turn it down, assembled, threw them on the press, turned around to clean out the sink before my 3 minute flip only to smell burning and find the bread completely stuck to the top of the press. To make matters worse I tore the bread in my attempt to free it from the press. The middle of the panini fell out in my mad attempt to flip and during the time I'm doing battle with the top of the press the bottom has well surpassed seared, if ya know what I mean. My exasperated outbursts brought Adam to my aid. I was on my way to the garbage can with this dinner failure when he calmly suggested that all we had to do was abandon this bread, salvage the middles, and re-assemble. Ahhh.... a voice of reason. 


New Invention:


Two separate yet equal desires brought me to this "invention." 


First of all, let me tell you how much I LOVE to go to the grocery store. I blame Mema. She grocery shops more than any woman should, especially when you are the only one in your house and you pretty much eat oatmeal three times a day. But my Mema loves to go to the grocery store. She loves different stores, finding a deal, stocking up on essentials. Need a can of this? Short a frozen package of that? She's got 4 and she got a deal on them. I guarantee it. Well, the grocery store has become a favorite spot of mine too. When I've been too broke to buy clothes or shoes (many a month in my early twenties obviously) I can spend that grocery money with the same gusto. A little sale paper reading/couponing/mental calculating later and it's pretty darn fun for me. A few weeks back I scored a d-e-a-l on butter. Like, not just a buck off or something, it was $.50 a pound. That is nuts! And what? No limit? I started running back to Adam and the cart who were moving through the cheese aisle with armfuls sputtering "we can freeze this! this cartful of butter is the same amount it usually costs for on box! this is crazy! can you believe this?" Needless to say he did not share my enthusiasm for the butter or the deal. As soon as I got in the car I pulled out my phone and dialed that 727 number so close to my heart. You bet she did. She was as happy about my soon to be freezer full of  butter and my deal as I was. 


So I currently have a lot of butter.


It is equally fair to say that I have a Starbucks problem. I know this is not special or unique because they have done a good job of sucking in most of the country, but I do visit Starbucks once, twice or thrice on a given day. The perfect afternoon complement to my Doppio Espresso over ice is the shortbread cookies. Love those things.


So, I rifled through the recipe book and found a "Basic Shortbread Cookie" recipe I copied from my mom's archives. It was simple and I had all the ingredients in the pantry so I put a batch together in a jiffy.


Basic Shortbread


1 1/3 c. butter, room temp (YES! This used up almost three whole sticks!)
2/3 c. sugar
3/4 t salt
3/4 t vanilla 
3 1/3 c. flour


Heat oven to 275. Butter 9x13 pan, line bottom with parchment (I was out of parchment and it turned out fine). Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy (2 minutes), add flour one cup at a time beating on low until just combined. Press into pan. Cut into squares. Bake until evenly golden now brown 70-85 minutes. Let cool out of pan. Slice of break bars.


So, you made shortbread cookies? Get over yourself. I know.


I did not let them cool. I pulled two perfect ones out of the middle while they were still soft and warm. 
I sliced a few strawberries very thin and added a dollop of freshly whipped cream. 
Strawberry short-cookies. 


Maybe this has been done many times. Probably should have googled it before I posted it, but I was proud and they were scrumptious. AND I'll be eating shortbread cookies with my espresso for days. I win.