Grilled Rosemary Lime Chicken (Green Chicken)

Rosemary Lime Grilled Chicken

This past weekend, I had a few friends over to celebrate summer and my move to by new house. It was a huge success. We all had some great food, conversation, and cocktails followed by some ladder ball and a few more cocktails. Life on the porch is how I grew up and how I love to spend my summer evenings. If you knock on my front door and there is no answer come around to the back porch and more than likely you will find me and Charlie (my golden retriever) in the garden or sitting on the back porch.

The next few recipes that I am about to post are going to be my party fare. I came up with a unique menu with few recipes I had stashed away for a later time. The full menu consitisted of:

Signiture Drink:
Strawberry Riesling Slushies
Woo Woos

Appetizer:
Beet Hummus, Goat cheese Mint Crostini
Hummus Goat Cheese, Basil Crostini

Entree:
Rosemary Lime Grilled Chicken
Grandma Ethel's Calico Baked Beans
Rosemary Deviled Eggs
Minted Couscous Salad- (Provided by my friend Ginny)

Dessert:
Cannoli Cupcakes

Feel free to use one or all of these recipes for your July 4th cookout or your next get-together.

Hummingbird Cake

Hummingbird Cake

This past week, I had the opportunity to get together with one of my great friends and bake. This is one of both of our favorite past times and she was a major influence in my new blogger life. We spent the afternoon together chatting, baking and of course drinking some good wine.  My friend R blogs at William's Kitchen  Make sure you check her out. She is a bit of an outdoor lover and specializes in picnic foods and camping fare. She is a "down-to-earth" girl in both her demeanor and her rustic cooking skills.

The recipe of choice was a Hummingbird bundt cake. It was a mixture of fruit, nuts and of course topped with cream cheese icing. It is a southern classic that I have seen on menus during many of my trips to the Charleston, SC area. As you all know, I am not a southerner by heritage but I have been here now for 13 years and have really embraced the southern culture and of course southern food. I have learned from the locals here how to fry okra, slow cook grits and how to make low country boil. Oh, and of course, how to enjoy a bourbon while sitting on the back porch on a hot Saturday afternoon. Now, I can officially say I have made a southern Hummingbird cake.  Does that make me a southerner? Who knows, but everything about this cake is delectable.

Southwest Black Bean Stuffed Peppers

Southwest Black Bean Stuffed Peppers- A little messy but a lot of YUM!

At the office, we have been trying to bring healthful things to lunch in order to save calories and be more mindful of what we are putting in our bodies. We decided to each bring lunch one day per week for the whole office. This way each person only had to cook one day but got to enjoy healthy food and snacks 3 days per week. Then on Friday, we eat the leftovers from the week. This has been a huge success and we have kept it up for 4 months now. We have specific rules that we follow: no bread, no red meat, no preservatives, and include as many veggies as possible. We also really eat very little if any meat. We have succeeded in being very inventive and have found some new favorite recipes along the way. This is one that got rave reviews the first time so I decided to revisit it. The recipe just really come from what I found in my fridge one day. I always bake with a recipe but a lot of times I cook with what I have on hand and what I am craving. No instructions has resulted in some great dinners. This is one...

Chewy Caramel Bars

 


Chewy Caramel Bars

While I was home visiting my family in PA, aside from visiting my sister, parents, grandparents and all other family, I had the opportunity to go through some things that had belonged to my Grandma Ethel. One of the prized things that I spent a lot of time sorting through, was her recipe file. Some of the recipes were old original copies that where written in my Grandma's perfect hand writing; some were stained from being present when she was baking. Others, were just clippings from a magazine that I assume she had saved for a later day.  I sat in the living room of my parent's house and went through each recipe one by one. It was a rainy day and as I was sorting my Dad was sitting there in his chair.  As I came across something I thought was interesting, I would share it with him.  He laughed at some of the recipes stating that my grandma would never have made that or that he never remembers eating some of the concoctions. Other recipes he definitely remembered and some he even seemed sentimental about. It was a nice afternoon spent with him. My dad is a man of few words but sometimes just the time spent together says everything; no words needed....

Everything Caramel is Good!

I made a batch of these to see how they turned out and to try my newly fixed oven. They were melt in your mouth amazing. I took them to work and they were gone fast!  I can not wait to make another batch to share with my family at OBX 2012.

Molten Chocolate Nutella Mug Cake

Molten Chocolate Nutella Mug Cake

So as most of you know, I am going through a transition in my life. One that originally, I was having a hard time with. Among other things that are going on, I recently just sold my house ( the house that I loved) and moved into a place of my own; the first place of my own that I have had in 13 years and it has been a big step for me. I thought that this move would be a horrible emotional  thing, and it was while I was packing up memories and stuff, but as soon as I got out of my old house, I feel as though I have been set free. Since I have gotten in my new place, I have been busy organizing, decorating and planting.  This weekend with the help of a great new neighbor, who spent 3 hours tilling up a large patch of lawn into a garden, I planted an entire vegetable garden.  Other than the tilling, I have done it all by myself and am especially proud! I also planted lots of  flowers to add great color to my porch and front yard.  The  neighborhood chipmunks have different reasons to love them I am finding out, but that is OK. I seem to even be O.K. with  that...

My new oasis...

In my move to my new residence, I have of course experienced a few snafus. One night, the neighbors' who are on vacation, car alarm went off all night long and the following day, I am perpetually forgetting where I put things and since it is an older house I am constantly searching for an available outlet. Oh, and did I mention the chipmunks....
But the strangest thing that happened?  I decided before I baked anything  important that I should test out the oven to make sure that the temp was accurate and that the timing was on. So I bought a premade pizza from the frozen food section. This is totally against my definition of pizza but I thought, how can you mess this up. Even if it takes a little longer, I will have a good idea about the oven settings and I will have a cheap (albeit unhealthy) meal. I preheated the oven and put the pizza in on my pizza stone. I then went back in the guest bedroom and continued to unpack boxes. About ten minutes after I put the pizza in the oven, the oven was screeching and the display blinking F2, which Google later told me the sensor and heating element have gone and that the oven temperature had exceeded 720 degrees. Glad I did not go outside to talk to the neighbors! What I ended up with that night was a pizza that was almost total charcoal and for dinner I had a can of soup. So five days later, I am still waiting on the part to fix my oven.




F2 must be the equivalent to FIRE!


Until this coming Friday, I have to come up with recipes that do not require baking in any way. That is hard for a girl like me that relies on her oven for all things inventive and spectacular. And just like most things in life, when you can not have something, you want it even more. I have been dreaming of lasagna and chocolate gob cake, roasted beets and all things made in the oven. But tonight, I pulled out a recipe that I had found a while ago, that can be made in the microwave. It is a simple combine/stir/ microwave recipe then Voila! you have a fabulous one serving Molten Chocolate Nutella Mug cake.  I believe this will become one of my favorite single girl recipes that I will rely on. Wonder if there is a single girl microwave lasagna recipe? Hmmmmm.......