Recipe Roundup

So I frequently get an email from my Dad after he reads the blog, but this latest one contained a shocking revelation about St. Urho.

First, he was from Finland, not Norway, and here’s the shocking part….He was made up by some old Finnish guy who was mad about all those Irish people celebrating St. Patrick’s day!

I’ve gone all of my life thinking he was real! Dad swears up and down that he told me he wasn’t real, but I don’t think anyone did. My Grandma Shirley celebrated him too, which is where I got Norway from instead of Finland. She was Norwegian. I was shocked!

Here’s a link to the Wiki page about how the legend got started. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Urho

Fancy was shocked and sad that my own father could have tricked me like that. This is her disappointed face. 😉

Regardless of my whole life being rocked by this revelation, I did make a bunch of new dishes this week.

I psyched myself up last Sunday and made Instant Pot Lamb Pho from Chef de Home. http://www.chefdehome.com/Recipes/801/pho-recipe-instant-pot

It was a little off-putting smell-wise. I loathe the smell of raw lamb to begin with. It makes me gag every time and we don’t have it often because of that. The Husband walked into the kitchen as the stem was being let out and said “It smells like lamb mixed with feet…” I’m having trouble eating meat at the moment (texture issue) and still had the raw lamb smell stuck in my brain, so it wasn’t as successful as it could have been.

That being said, it tasted much milder than it smelled. It actually tasted pretty good and I just avoided most of the meat. We had all sorts of things to put in it. I ended up eating two bowls of it. Not pictured are the rice noodles and the pickled ginger, which is the pink stuff in the bowl above. It had a ton of spices and we had black cardamom, which was new for us. We might try it again with beef.

We also had apple pie with cinnamon ice cream that night. The pie recipe was from our Pie Contest kit and was supposedly an award- winning pie. I’m not trying the throw a lot of shade at the original pie maker, but it was pretty much a complete failure…

It called for 1 1/3 cups sugar, which is more than the ice cream had in it. That is way too much sugar for an apple pie. It was so watery! I had it in for an hour and it just soaked the bottom crust. There was no flour or anything to absorb the liquid. I used the Better Homes pie crust and it also didn’t cooperate. I ended up rolling out small circles of dough because it was too thick. It looked pretty, but was not nice.

The ice cream though… I tried it after it was churned and I’m pretty sure I almost cried, it was so good. Creamy, silky, rich, not too sweet, perfect hint of cinnamon. Mmmmm…. Updated: Here’s the link for Pinch My Salt. http://pinchmysalt.com/a-sweet-goodbye-to-summer/

I want to make more right now. I also want to use the custard base with other flavors. I may have found my perfect custard recipe. It only has two whole eggs in it too, so it doesn’t leave me with wasted bits of egg.

Fancy loves cinnamon. We could put cinnamon on cardboard and she would eat it. Okay, she would at least gnaw on the cardboard anyway, but still. I make her sweet potato fries with cinnamon and they are her favorite treat. This was her whenever I was eating the ice cream. (I’m not sure why it looks like I have three legs…I assure you, I’ve got the normal two. I must have been sitting cross legged.)

Maybe I’ll make her some banana “ice cream” with cinnamon.

We tried a new turkey recipe too. It was Parmesan Crusted Turkey Tenderloins from Ginger and Oregano. We had roasted carrots and I had roasted zucchini and summer squash. I broiled it for a few minutes to get a crispier crust. It was a tiny bit salty, even for the Husband. Now he wants everything Parmesan crusted. 🙂

I think that’s it. I’ve made yogurt as well, but just the regular recipe. I have a sweet potato to make Fancy more treats, but am feeling lazy tonight. Maybe tomorrow. I hope your Friday night is treating you right and you’re relaxing as well. 🙂