Double Take: Baked Potato Soup

Potatoes in milk. Blah.

This week we bid farewell to the all-new ultimate Southern Living Cookbook. Tabitha and I have both been having trouble finding tasters. Some of Tabitha’s tasters have flat-out said no more SLC. So, we have decided that it is time to shake things up a bit. It is quite possible that we will pull out this, er, not-so-trusty
book every once and a while, but for now we are going to move onto other sources for our recipes. The majority will come from the blogs we love, but we will also turn to cookbooks and TV shows for inspiration. If you have a recipe you’d love to see us feature, please let us know!

Double Take: Mississippi Mud Cake

A Sweet Ending to a Not-So-Sweet Week

Mississippi Mud Cake. 'Nuf said.

I did it again. I was away from my kitchen for a long time and the first opportunity I had to cook in it, we went out. You see, since the last post, our lives have been kinda crazy. Bender’s passport was stolen (Not intentionally, someone intentionally stole his bag, and his passport just happened to be in there.) so we had to make an emergency trip to the embassy to get a new one since we would be flying overseas in three days time. Amazingly, the embassy was incredibly nice to us even though we didn’t have a copy of his passport page, etc, etc, etc. Passports in hand, we boarded the plane Sunday, excited for our journey that we’d be looking forward to since we randomly planned it one night in September. We would be at our destination for five full days, and we had something planned to do all but one of those days. We’d use the fifth day to relax and revisit one of the four places. The first day, however, things did not go as planned. We woke up late so we decided to stay in town and go to a museum rather than venture out of town to see the popular landmark on the outskirts of town.

Double Take: Lemon Meringue Pie

What is it about the word meringue? For some reason, I just can’t spell it. Nicely my word processor has spell check so you don’t have to read three different versions of the word throughout the post, but that’s just one of the words with which I have major issues (Sandwich and lingerie also give me fits. Am I the only one who has trouble these words?).

Pretty on the outside! Tabitha and I had a long discussion about the beads on the meringue... some people like them, some people don't because they imply you rushed the cooling process. I say, do what makes you happy!

Daring Cooks Challenge: Confit and Cassoulet

Our January 2011 Daring Cooks Challenge comes from Jenni of The Gingered Whisk and Lisa from Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. They have challenged the Daring Cooks to learn how to make a confit and use it within the traditional French dish of Cassoulet. They have chosen a traditional recipe from Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman.

Double Take: Pork Scaloppine

We’ve been a bit sporadic lately, but I’m sure you understand. The Christmas season was busy and I was out of the kitchen for almost two whole weeks. I actually have had a hard time readjusting to cooking every day. Go figure. Maybe it’s the short days? Maybe December’s weather just really got me down? (Seriously folks,
we went ~30 days with temperatures never reaching freezing.) Maybe it was coming back to cold Germany after 10 days in warm, sunny Italy? (Okay, so Venice was more like Germany is currently: cold and rainy, but the weather in Rome was spectacular.)