Angel Food Cake

An angel of a friend loves angel food cake, so I decided to make it for her. I just love making cakes for people on their birthday!

Please don't be afraid of making this delicate cake from scratch. Repeat after me, "I can do it! I can do it".

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Get out a tube pan. Do not grease it. Yeah, I know... it's tempting to grease it... just don't.

Sift together 1 cup flour and 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar. Really actually sift. I usually skip the sifting for other recipes, but this time it's actually important to sift. Set aside.

In your clean mixing bowl, put 12 egg whites. Really, it's best if the eggs have been sitting on the counter for about 20 minutes so that they're not super cold. They beat up better.

Add 1 1/2 teaspoon cream of tarter to the egg whites.

Add 1 teaspoon vanilla to the eggs.

Now it gets fun! Beat the egg mixture until soft peaks form.

Cool, huh.

Slowly add 1 cup sugar to the eggs.

Beat this until stiff peaks form.

Slowly fold in the flour and powdered sugar mixture that you sifted.

Transfer the batter into your clean tube pan that you did not grease.

Put the cake into the oven and bake for 40-45 minutes. You will know it's done when you touch the top (gently) and it springs back.

Remove the cake from the oven and immediately flip the pan upside down. My mom always put it over a soda bottle. You want the cake to cool evenly.

Gently remove the cake from the pan and let it cool completely.
See? Not so tough to do!

Enjoy!

Stuffing for Zucchini or Peppers

We love vegetable based meals, and this one is a family favorite. You can use the stuffing to fill hollowed out zucchini or peppers. Tonight, we're just making the stuffing.

As is common for me, I doubled the batch so that I could freeze half. Freezing meals is something that I learned about a few years ago: it's great for nights that fast food is not an option, and no one wants to cook.

Here we go:

First, prepare your rice. Rice on the stove top is really easy. Take two parts water to one part rice-- translation? Put one cup of rice and two cups of water in a pot. (This is two cups of rice and four cups of water.) Put the lid on the pot. Put the pot on the stove over medium high heat. When the water is at a rolling boil (steam will come shooting out the edges of the lid), remove the pot from the heat. Do not remove the lid until you are ready to use the rice. The steam trapped in the pot will finish cooking your rice. This will take about 20 minutes, which is perfect for this recipe. That gives you time to cut up all your vegetables.

Wash your vegetables. I used about 5 tomatoes, 2 bell peppers, 2 zucchini, 2 little crook neck squash, and a medium yellow onion.

Dice your tomatoes and peppers.

Slice your zucchini in half.

Cut each half into strips.

Cut the strips into skinny strips (about 1/4 inch wide).

Turn the strips, and cut again to dice.

Dice up your crook neck squash using the same method as you used for the zucchini.

Cut up your onion.

Here's where you can go all vegetarian or choose to be meaty. If you're opting for the vegetarian way, drain one can of your favorite beans. Today we chose kidney beans. If you are feeling carnivorous, brown and drain 1 lb. ground beef or turkey. Drain off the fat, and continue to the next step.

Put a little bit of olive oil in a big skillet. Turn the heat on to medium.

Let the oil heat just a little bit, and then add your vegetables.

Salt and pepper to taste. I used garlic salt and lemon pepper.

Add your beans or meat.

Stir and cook the veggies until they start to get tender. If you want to speed up the process a little, add a lid to the senario. When the vegetables are tender, add your rice.

Put the lid back on your skillet, and let the lovely mixture simmer a bit.

Stir every minute or so, in order to make sure nothing's sticking to the bottom of the pan. Nothing ruins a beautiful meal so much as knowing that a horribly messy pan is waiting for you afterwards...

When the watery stuff in the rice mixture looks like it's just about gone, you're done.

It's at this point that you could stuff a hollowed out squash or several cleaned and topped off bell peppers, if you'd like. Just fill them and cover the tops with cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. We didn't choose this option today...

it looked to yummy to wait!

Enjoy!

Garden Pico De Gallo

Our garden is bursting with tomatoes and peppers: it's pretty cool. Today, I got a request from Troy to make Garden Pico De Gallo. I hope you enjoy it as much as he does.

I made a massive batch of it, since we were invited to an impromtu bbq this afternoon.

First gather together your ingredients:

tomatoes, peppers, chives or cilantro, corn, onion, salt, and pepper

I started by cutting up about 48 Roma tomatoes. Plan on about 2 Roma tomatoes (or one large tomato in another variety) per serving.

Slice a tomato in half.

Slice each half into three or four sections.

Turn the sections and slice into little pieces.

Repeat with remaining tomatoes.

This is how much 12 tomatoes looks like, diced.

Put the tomatoes into a large bowl.

Get your herbs. I ususally use cilantro, but my puppy ate our plant. Chives work great.

Put them in a bundle,

and chop. Add them to the bowl.

Now get your peppers. I used a variety of 4 little bell peppers, 2 Anaheim chili peppers, and 1 banana pepper.

Cut the top off the pepper.

Remove the seeds and membranes.
Slice into strips.

Rotate the strips, and dice the peppers. This is how much one bell pepper was after it was diced.

Add them to the bowl with the tomatoes.

Now get your onion. It really doesn't matter too much which variety you use. This is a yellow onion, so it'll have a bite to it. Other varieties that are a bit more mild are the purple onion, white onion, or the Walla Walla. Use whatever kind you like.

Chop off the top and the bottom.

Slice the skin and top layer.

Peel off the skin and top layer.
Slice your onion in half.
Make long slices like this,

then rotate and chop.Put your onion into the bowl.

Grab and ear of corn, and husk and rinse it.

Stand it up, and cut the kernals off.

Toss them into the bowl.

Get three garlic cloves. Peel and clean them.

Use your garlic press to add them into the bowl. If you don't have a garlic press, just dice them; then buy a garlic press. You'll love it.
Salt and pepper to taste.

Now, if you've made a massive batch, you may want to transfer the ingredients into a giant bowl. This will make it easier to stir the ingredients all together.

After stirring, put your Garden Pico De Gallo into your serving bowl.

Enjoy!

Note: Sometimes I like adding in extra things like fresh lime juice, finely chopped dried or fresh apricots, chopped dried cranberries or mango, and drained black beans. Once you get the main pico recipe down, have fun adding things to make it your own!