Treats from the Tipsy Turtle

Normally I make this is in a crockpot but I decided to do it in the oven tonight--either method works great! Here's the cast! It's so wonderfully easy--drain a can of corn. Drain and rinse a can of kidney beans or black beans, if you prefer. Roughly chop a can of black olives and add them to the beans and corn. If you prefer you can cook the onion to soften it but I love the bite of onion and the baking time is enough softening for me. I used about half an onion. I had a package of Costco's rotisserie chicken breast in the fridge. Love this for quick meals and it's nice not to have to fight with the whole carcass sometimes. I added the chicken to the veggies and poured about 1/4 of the enchilada sauce over the mixture. Toss to combine. To start the layering, put a thin layer of the enchilada sauce in the bottom of a 9x13 pan. Cut the tortillas in half and layer them onto the sauce. If you want a thicker tortilla layer, go for it! It's not a finicky recipe at all. Dr...

My mom passed this recipe on to me--it was one of the "My Best Recipe" entrants in the Honolulu Advertiser back when it was still the Honolulu Advertiser. I wish there was a date on it but I am willing to be it was the late 80s. As I mentioned in a previous banana bread post, Layla loves bananas so we always have lots of them, in different stages of ripeness, in the house. Between her and the turtles they usually get consumed before they get squishy. Either she slowed down her banana-eating rate or Gramma over-calculated because four of them reached the "even the turtles aren't going to eat that" point. Time for banana bread. Here's the cast--the butter isn't in the photo because it was already getting nice and soft in a bowl. I doubled the recipe since I assumed, by looking at the ingredient amounts, the recipe only yielded one loaf. I wanted one to taste and one to give away. I ran out of regular granulated sugar so I ended up using some of the vanilla...

Yesterday was a difficult toddler granddaughter day--let's put it this way, she had such a huge, long-lasting tantrum that the painter who came to do touch-ups on the window repair asked if she was ok. Sigh. To work out some lingering frustration on my part, I decided to try a new way of fixing zucchini other than my usual butter, salt and pepper sauté. Here's the cast. Put a rack onto a rimmed baking sheet and give it a good spray with some non-stick. The herbs, salt, pepper and cheese were put into a bowl--in the recipe she sprinkled the mixture onto the oil-coated zucchini but I thought I would try tossing it instead. I had some of the Kraft powdered Parmesan that I wanted to use up so I threw that in and the balance of the cheese was shredded Parm that I crumbled with my fingers as I tossed. The zucchini was cut in half horizontally then each half was cut into eighths. I drizzled the zucchini pieces with oil, tossed them around... Then put them into the coating mixture. I r...

Tom made a sudden request for peanut butter cookies a couple of weeks ago and I had a likely recipe waiting and ready but cookies are hard to make when the small fry are around; they both require to much time and attention! This recipe needs to be refrigerated for a minimum of a few hours so it helped to break the tasks down into smaller chunks. Here's the cast--Tom requested chunky peanut butter instead of smooth. Butter gets creamed with the two sugars. The "until fluffy" part of creaming used to amuse me as a child. It didn't seem that anything mixed with butter would get fluffy. The two eggs were mixed in on high until they were combined. Then the peanut butter and vanilla were beat on high, too. Literally took seconds to acquire this nice, gooey mix! The dry ingredients were combined in a separate bowl and mixed in at low speed. If you wanted to do a drop cookie, you probably could do that at this point but since the recipe called for the dough to be rolled, I fo...

A non-Korean recipe from Maangchi that lives up to its name as a fluffy bread! I have been making sourdough recently so this was a nice change in both flavor and technique. Here's the cast. I melted the butter in a large pan.  I removed the pan from the heat and added the sugar and milk.  Stir until the sugar dissolves--talk about enriched dough: sugar, milk and butter! I stirred in the yeast and let it sit for a bit. Once the yeast was activated and foamy... ...I added the eggs and salt. And once the eggs were incorporated,  I added the flour. One thing that is cool about Maangchi is how she often uses pans in ways I would not have thought of. Because this pan is so wide and shallow, it could be used to knead the dough in. Once I started handling the dough I got concerned though. It's supposed to be a soft dough because it's enriched and it's going to make a very soft-textured bread but this felt too soft. I tried working it but it would not get any firmer. I ended up ...