#1. Artichokes. Love em or leave em?
#2. What’s your favorite kind of bean?
#3. Share a recipe for any kind of cake.
#4. What’s your favorite dairy product?

1. I sickened myself a bit on artichokes. I do like them, but when I worked at a pizza restaurant one of the dishes I used to have to prepare was the tortellini salad which was full of artichokes and, of course, when you make a dish you have to test it out. I haven’t had artichokes since, and it’s been almost six years since I worked there.

2. Now beans I’ve also been missing out on since I’ve been married because 90% of beans my husband won’t eat, except for green beans and edamame, so edamame are my current favorite, although I am fond of kidney beans and baked beans. Nothing like beans on toast!

3. Cake I cheat on. I figure why spend all this time making one from scratch when I can open a box from Pillsbury or Betty Crocker and make a yummy scrumptious cake in half the time. I love making marble cake:

4. Hrm…dairy…I love dairy. If you were asking my son this question he would say “cheese pwease,” he is a cheese fiend. Me, while I like cheese. I have to say whipped cream, LOL. It’s in so many scrumptious desserts, and I’ve just recently discovered the joy of making home-made chocolate truffles and they are so yummy when made with heavy whipping cream instead of whole milk.

#1. When you need to serve desserts, do you buy them or make them?
That depends what it is I like baking cakes and brownies, and the Stonehenge thing, but if it’s something like tiramisu or eclairs I will buy it because it’s easier and always tastes great.

#2. When baking do you use butter, margarine or something else?
It’s mostly been butter lately.

#3. What meats or veggies do you cook in the oven?
Roast Beef has been the main oven baked meat I’ve done. I do a lot of potato dishes in the oven also, other veggies I steam.

#4. Share a recipe for anything that is cooked in an oven.
I made rice pudding for the first time the other day. That turned out pretty well.
Let’s see it was…

4 tbsps short-grain/pudding rice, washed.
2 tbsps sugar
2 cups of whole milk.

Bake in the oven at about 375-400 for hour intervals checking to see how things are going and adding more milk if necessary.

I actually used 6 tbsps rice and 3 tbsps of sugar…and it still turned out great, after nearly 2 hours. You’re supposed to use 1 tbsp rice for each person. I wound up with medium grain rice because I couldn’t find any short-grain at the grocery store.

Be sure to check out Val’s Site for her round up of entries tomorrow!

This weeks questions and answers are:

#1. Fruits and veggies. Do you prefer them peeled or not?
That really depends what it is. Not going to eat a banana or an orange unpeeled, but I usually don’t peel apples or potatoes.

#2. What’s your favorite fresh fruit or vegetable smell?
I think that has to be mangos. I love the way mangos smell and taste.

#3. What’s the worst food smell you’ve ever smelled?
Kimchee. My college room mate had a bead curtain that used to hang in her parents kitchen. It stank of kimchee and made me want to vomit.

#4. Share the recipe for the dish that you love to smell cooking in your oven.
Well, it’s nothing to do with fruits or veggies. I love the smell of brownies or chocolate cake, or any cake really cooking in the oven, cookies. All of those sweet and totally unhealthy things.
I cheat with those though. So, the recipe is basically:

1. Buy brownie mix from store.
2. Follow directions on back of box.
3. Cook and Serve preferably with ice cream and whipped cream

Occasionally I make cheese cake brownies, which involves. These steps.
Ingrediants:
1 Box Brownie Mix (and the ingredients it asks for).
Sometimes I double the lower portion.
1 packs cream cheese
1 egg
1/2 cup of sugar

1. Buy brownie mix from the store.
2. Follow directions to make the brownie mix and get it ready to go into the oven, but don’t put it in.
3. Soften cream cheese in the microwave
4. Mix in sugar and eggs, until it’s blended.
5. Pour cream cheese mix into brownie pan and swirl ’til marble effect is achieved.
6. Bake in the oven at 375 until golden.

I found it really useful to stretch a small thing of brownie mix in a 13×9 pan when having lots of people over. Occasionally I’m really evil and add chocolate chips to the mix as well.

Be sure and check back with Val at Fun Crafts and Recipes for her wrap-up of everyone’s Four Foods meme participation.

Here are the questions:

#1. Cake. Buttercream, whipped cream or ice cream?
#2. When entertaining do you use real, paper, plastic or styrofoam dishes?
#3. When hosting a party do you cook, have it catered or go to a restaurant?
#4. Share a recipe that you frequently serve when having a party.

1. Oooh, with cake, whipped cream if it’s an or situation, but generally I have whipped cream and ice cream with cake. Maybe this is why I’m having problems with diet? LOL. But yes, especially if there’s chocolate involved with the cake, oh, and there’s that chocolate whipped cream! That I just found out about the other day, that is SINFUL.
2. When entertaining…mostly it is paper or styrofoam plates (if there’s a lot of people) because we don’t have that many dishes. If it’s just one friend or a couple I’ll use real stuff, although the munchkin still has plastic dishes.
3. If we’re hosting a party I try to cook, or our friends will bring dishes and we’ll do dishes, and make it like a “Jacob’s join” situation; but the last two parties we’ve hosted I’ve been able to make everything. I kinda stock up the energy for a few days or make little bits in advance, like the last time I did the wonton mix the day before, and then my friend and I made the wontons up the next day, after we made the dessert and put it in the fridge to set.
4. Recipes…hm…well, I make Helen’s Layer pudding fairly often, and I’m usually requested to make wontons, but the wontons are often a spur of the moment recipe. This last time I did cream cheese wontons and turkey wontons, but it was a bit of a hodge-podge of ingredients. The Helen’s Layer pudding…I think I may have written about that before, but I’m not sure so I’ll share it again:

Technically it’s called “Helen’s Layer” pudding, but I know from now on in our house it’s going to be chocolate stonehenge

Ingredients for basic recipe

4 Rounded tablespoons drinking Chocolate
1 Level tablespoon Coffee Powder
4 oz (100g) Demerara Sugar (Light brown sugar)
½ pint (330ml) Whipping Cream
4 oz (100g) Fresh White breadcrumbs (use 2-3 day old bread through grater if no Blender)
Chocolate Flake Bar (or grate regular chocolate)

Now, when I made it this in June for my friends I quadrupled the recipe because while that above says it’s feeds four…I don’t know how, probably because it’s my Gran’s recipe and she believed in small portions, like mouthfuls each. So, for us it was.

16 tablespoons of drinking chocolate and cocoa powder
4 level tablespoons of decaf coffee powder Folgers
16 oz of Demerara sugar
2 pints of heavy whipping cream
16 oz fresh white breadcrumbs (wound up being about 6/7 slices of bread).
2 small hershey bars and 1 small hershey dark chocolate bar (for henge)

And that fed 7 with enough leftover for K and I to have it for lunch the next day (LOL).

Now to make it. (This is the hard part LOL)

Crumb up the bread in the blender, and mix in a bowl with the coffee, drinking chocolate/cocoa, and sugar. Until thoroughly blended.

Whip up the cream until it’s fairly stiff but still fluffy. (I don’t put confectioner’s sugar in the cream. I hadn’t heard of that until my friend asked me if I was going to do it…and we still didn’t and agreed afterwards that the dessert would have been WAY too sweet if we had0.

Find a large serving bowl (preferably clear so you can see the strata effect Ooooh!). You can also make mini ones in short drinking glasses for individual portions.

Put a layer of chocolate mix, then a layer of cream, repeat until you use up all the chocolate mix and the top layer is cream. Keep a bit of cream back, and use it to stick the henges together in your stone henge.

Arrange the squares/rectangles of chocolate however you want into your henge, using leftover cream to stick pieces together to make arches and stuff like that.

Or you can just grate chocolate or use sprinkles or something if you want.

Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving, although it can be in the fridge over night and be super yummy the next day.

Oh, and be sure to check out Fun Crafts and Recipes for her wrap up of the Four Foods meme that she’ll be posting some time tomorrow probably.

#1. What’s your favorite form of potatoes?
That’s a tough one I really like potatoes pretty much anyway they can be made. Especially if they’re scalloped and covered in spices, and everything, or french-fried. How about my favorite way to have them is any way that I don’t actually have to make them, LOL.

#2. Pie crust. Premade or from scratch?
Pre-made. Definitely. I suck at pastry. Unless I cheat and do almost pre-made and get the kind that you get frozen and actually have to roll out, but don’t have to mix.

#3. Vegetables. Fresh, frozen or canned?
I lived with canned veggies for a while, but those are now only kept for hurricane emergencies and things like that. We mostly have frozen and occasionally fresh around here, depending on how quickly they’re going to get cooked. Frozen tends to be best/most often used.

#4. What one dish do you wish you could prepare better?
Hm. I think I’m pretty good at working out how to do anything very well. There’s not been much that I’ve tried to make that hasn’t been edible. I guess pies would be something *L* pastry. I’m a bit daunted by some of the Italian recipes my husband’s relatives gave us…but I can’t really say because I haven’t tried them all yet.

#1. What type of m&m is your favorite?
I like just the regular M&M’s the dark chocolate ones are nice but I can’t find them any more. I’m not too keen on the peanut or almond flavors though.

#2. Peanut butter. Smooth, chunky, creamy. How do you like it?
Smooth. I don’t eat much of it any more either. I used to have toast with peanut butter and jam or marmalade every morning, but I haven’t eaten it in a while. I particularly don’t like peanut butter mixed with chocolate. Reese’s Cups or things are right out. My husband teases me about this failing on my part, but not too much, because it means he gets to eat all of those types of candy if we’re given them at Yule tide or for Easter or something like that.

#3. Do you usually drink out of glass, acrylic, Tupperware type or paper cups?
For the most part lately I’ve been drinking directly out of cans. I will use glasses if I’m drinking water or something. We also have plastic and styrofoam cups at our house too for when our friends are over gaming, and because my husband maintains that hot drinks keep their heat longer in styrofoam rather than mugs so whenever he has coffee or tea he drinks it out of those and I drink it out of a mug.

#4. Share a chicken recipe.
Hm. Well, I’ve shared a few recipes in the past few weeks that use chicken. Let’s think what else I can…oh, General Tso’s chicken. That’s actually fairly simple, LOL, because I cheat with it a lot so I can make it quickly.

1 cup of rice per person eating.
1 lb pack of chicken breasts.
1 bottle of General Tso’s sauce. (I usually get the Iron Chef kind).
Birds Eye Microwaveable Steam Broccoli.

Chop the chicken breasts into bite sized pieces and fry them up.
Set the rice to cook with one cup of water per cup of rice either in a rice steamer or in a pan on the stove.
Once the chicken is browned add the General Tso’s sauce.
Once the chicken is thoroughly coated, steam the vegetables and then add them to the mix.
Serve.

There are ways to make the General Tso’s sauce for scratch, but any time I’ve tried it’s always come out tasting absolutely horrible, so I go for the cheat way. The sauce is usually about $4 but it’s worth it to not have the hassle of a horrible meal.

Be sure to check out the Fun Crafts and Recipes blog for a the Four Foods on Friday round-up.

Here are my answers to the questions.

#1. Do you ever use scissors to cut any foods? Which? Raw or cooked?
I use scissors a lot in the kitchen, because it’s a lot easier for me to be able to chop things up without having hand spasms from the FMS which makes me very temp sensitive, especially to cold things. I have three pairs of kitchen scissors now because a friend got us a pair as part of a wedding present then we got another pair with our kitchen knives, and then my Mum just got us some really good kitchen knives as a housewarming present and they came with yet another pair of scissors, but it’s great because I use them *all* them time. I just used them at breakfast time because I was chopping french fries and left over hotdogs to make an egg concoction.

#2. Popcorn. Homemade, microwave, bagged, hot, cold. How do you like it?
I’m really not keen on popcorn. If we do make it here it’s more likely to be microwaved, but I really only like caramel popcorn.

#3. Sushi. Love it or hate it?
I LOVE sushi! I just made a couple of batches last week, and I’m due to make some more. I just have to get some more fish to make it with, although I’ll probably need to get some more wraps after I do that.

#4. Share a dessert recipe.
By far my favorite dessert has to be Helen’s Layer, which I learned from my Gran. She used to make it a lot especially around the Christmas holiday time, as well as this wonderful Chocolate Meringue but I’m not even going to attempt Meringue especially when Helen’s Layer is SO good and so much easier to make. For Helen’s Layer you need:

1/2 pint Whipped Cream
4 oz Brown Sugar
4 rounded tablespoons of drinking chocolate
1 level tablespoon Instant Coffee
4 oz fresh white bread crumbs.
Chocolate to decorate.

That’s the ratio’s anyway. I often wind up making it in triple quantity so it will fill a huge trifle bowl and there’s plenty for everyone because it usually disappears REALLY quickly.

Mix drinking chocolate, coffee, bread crumbs and sugar together in a bowl.
Whip up the cream in a separate bowl, until it’s doing the thick, soft peaks and is somewhat stiff.

Spread alternate layers of the chocolate mix and cream in a new bowl finishing with cream.

Refrigerate for about 8-10 hours or overnight.
Before serving decorate with chocolate flakes,  chocolate chips or something else like that.

Voila!

Simple but GORGEOUS!

#1. Steak. Plain, steak sauce, hot sauce, ketchup or something else?
I like steak with steak sauce. I don’t make it very often because I’m not that keen on steak, but if I can get some on sale from the grocery store I will and I like to marinade it in steak sauce and then have a bit more on the side when I eat it.

#2. Water. Flavored, plain, carbonated. How do you like it?
Mostly if I drink water it’s plain and iced, but I have some crystal light sachets that I want to use up soon.

#3. What’s your favorite kind of waffle?
Leggo my eggo! Especially if they’re chocolate chip. Hm-mmm, and just fresh from the toaster so that the chocolate chips are melty.

#4. If you could have any one new small appliance for your kitchen what would it be and why?
A food processor. I used to have a mini chopper but it had an unfortunate accident with a fall from a great height and I miss it greatly, although if I were to replace it I would get a regular sized one. It was a big help chopping things up for me like mix when I was making pies or wontons. Although it still took a while because the most amount of food it could fit was a cup or so, which was fine when it was just me…but now with a family definitely need the full size.

Be sure to check Val’s Fun Crafts and Recipes site for her archive of everyone’s FFoF entries.

#1. What’s your favorite potato chip?
I’m a big fan of Pringles chips, particularly the BBQ flavor. Although I recently discovered a Mesquite Barbecue flavor from FritoLay Stax which is pretty nice. Before we emigrated my favorite was Salt n’ Vinegar Discos.

#2. Do you use butter, margarine, both or neither?
I use Smart Balance which is a margarine substitute.

#3. What’s your favorite mixed alcoholic (or virgin) drink?
My favorite has to be the White Russian, made with the fermented potato juice I mentioned last week. Vodka, and Kalhua and milk, poured over ice. I used to be a big fan of Absolut vodka, but my husband found Svedka vodka a few months ago and we’ve been getting that since. I like to make them frozen too by using vanilla frozen yoghurt instead of milk and mixing them in the blender.

#4. What’s your favorite vegetable and how do you prepare it?
Corn on the cob. I really like to steam it in the microwave. There are packs you can get from Birds Eye that you just nuke for six minutes and they come out perfect. I like to do Asparagus the same way.

#1. What is your favorite kind of juice to drink?
I love mango juice. I used to really love lemonade but I can’t drink that any more. It’s another thing I sickened myself of while pregnant. I like fermented potato juice too ^_~

2. Pizza. What’s your favorite?
That varies depending on the restaurant. If I’m up in St. Augustine at Pizzalley’s (where I used to work) I have to get the fajita lovers pizza. If we’re here ordering from one of the local pizza chains I’ll either get a buffalo chicken pizza or a hawaiian pizza. I like to do the modified hawaiian also which is chicken with pineapple.

#3. Mustard. Yellow, brown, depends.
I’m not really a mustard person. My husband is. If I’m going to get mustard it’s honey mustard. My husband’s favorite is a “Beer n’ Brat” mustard which I’ve been scouring all over the local grocery stores trying to find it in the end I googled it and ordered some online. We’d thought it was a Boars Head mustard but it turns out to be made by “Silver Springs”.

#4. Share a side dish recipe that uses rice or pasta.
Hm. A lot of time if I’m going to do pasta side dishes I just get something like pasta-roni or rice-a-roni and mix it up that way. We have a lot of dishes which involve rice in some way, it goes with the curry I talked about last week, or I make asian dishes with rice like General Tso’s or Sweet N Sour chicken. I think my favorite noodle dish at the minute is Pad Thai, but that’s a cheater dish because I buy the box kits at Publix and just add water and chicken. So, no recipe from me this time. I’ll share some thing during the week. I’m going to make a curry over the weekend so I will take pictures and show off.