Vancouver.

We are off to Vancouver tomorrow until Monday, so hopefully I'll have some beautiful photos to share when I get back. I also plan on eating a lot while I'm there, and I'll have some food photos and stories as well.

Barefoot Bloggers:Panzanella

The first recipe for Barefoot Bloggers for August was Panzanella from the Barefoot Parties book. I never would have made this in a pink fit, but I'm glad I did now. It is delicious!!! I had some for lunch, but I'm sure it will taste better later when all the flavours have had time to develop. I did leave out the capers and the red bell pepper. The recipe has red and yellow peppers and I don't really care for them normally, so I just chose yellow for the added colour and put it in. I only had white wine vinegar, and I didn't want to buy a whole bottle of champagne vinegar, so I just used the white wine vinegar, as that was the closest.

Here is the recipe

I'm actually going to use the rest of it for dinner tonight. I'm roasting a chicken, so and I'm also going to do roast vegetables, but there will be a choice of roast vegetables or the Panzanella to go with the chicken. Yum.

Meringue Sandwich Cookies with White Chocolate Raspberry Filling

My friend Lisa "Pierogie Fingers" came over today and we made these meringue cookies together.

We had a recipe that Lisa found on a blog and it looked great, but the first batch didn't turn out the way we anticipated and they were too "eggy", so we made up our own recipe for the meringue and they turned out much better. Lisa piped perfect little round of meringue and then it was my turn and all mine were the shape of Hershey Kisses, which isn't that good for cookie sandwiches, but they still taste good.

Lisa's perfect piping!

Recipe:

3 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup sugar

1/4 cup heavy cream
4oz white chocolate
2 tablespoons raspberry jam

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F

In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment,
whip the egg whites to a peak, gradually add the
sugar and keep whipping until the peaks are stiff.

Fill a pastry bag fitted with a plain tip with the batter and pipe small rounds onto parchment paper baking sheets,or you could spoon them on if you are not that good with the piping bag, they will turn out just as well .

Bake for 15 minutes, then let sit out for while you mix up the filling.

Filling

Heat the cream until hot. Drop the chocolate and jam into the cream and stir until all are melted
and come together. Let cool until firm enough to pipe or spoon onto the meringue shells. I refrigerated mine to make it harden quicker and it's also easier to spread.

Where Have I Been?

In the basement watching the Olympics on my HD TV!!! It's just like being there. I'm loving it (while hating NBC's coverage - but that's a whole other post)

Since we returned from our beach weekend, I didn't really cook anything spectacular or do much of anything. So I'm deathly boring this past week.