Sour Cream Yeast Rolls

Dinner tonight was corned beef and cabbage, which I made last year in a huge batch and froze a few containers with 2 servings each. I just thawed it in the fridge yesterday and today and reheated it in a pot on the stove.

Since I was going kind of no-hassle on dinner, I wanted to do something a little special on the side, to spice it up. That's when I remembered that I'd flipped to a recipe in my Taste of Home issue I got last month. Sour cream yeast rolls! I instantly knew I was going to make them because the picture looked great, we love anything sour cream, and it was simple ingredients I always have on hand.

I will have to say, they turned out to be more work than I realized. I dirtied several dishes and the kitchen, and felt like I'd been working on them all day by the time they were ready for the oven. There's not a lot of hands-on, but two separate dough rise times, so they're occupying your attention for awhile. They were good, and I'll probably re-make them because Johnny loved them, but definitely not an everyday batch I'd whip up.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 to 3 cups all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp. sugar
1 pkg (or 2 1/4 tsp) active dry yeast
1 tsp salt
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup water
3 Tbsp, butter divided (I ended up using only 2 and substituted Smart Balance)
1 egg

In a large bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups flour, sugar, yeast, and salt. In a small saucepan, heat the sour cream, water, and 2 Tbsp butter to 120°-130°; add to dry ingredients. (That seemed a little on the hot side to me, so I only heated mine to about 110° - 115° so I wouldn't kill the yeast). Beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Add egg and 1/2 cup flour; beat 2 minutes longer. Stir in enough remaining flour to form a soft dough. (At this point, I stirred in only about 1/4 cup more flour, because I knew I'd be adding a lot more during the kneading process)

Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes. (I ended up adding 1/2 - 1/3 cup more flour during this.) Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease the top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour. (I put mine in the kitchen sink with a little bit of warm water and a dampened paper towel over the top of the bowl. I saw this trick on somebody elses' blog recently, but I forget whose!)

Punch down dough. Turn onto a lightly floured surface; divide into 12 pieces. Shape each into a ball. Place in a greased 13 X 9 inch baking pan. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 30 minutes. (Again, I did this in the kitchen sink with warm water.)

Bake at 375° for 25-30 minutes, or until golden brown. Melt remaining butter; brush over rolls. (I omitted this step.) Remove from pan to a wire rack.

Michelle at Lucky Taste Buds is having a giveaway here, so stop by before next Monday!

The host for this week's BSI is Laura at Hey, What's for Dinner Mom!, and she chose strawberries! I added them to my grocery list, but will have to put on my thinking cap!

Horrible Sunday

Almost every Sunday we go to Johnny's parents' house, eat, relax, and just have a calm day.

Well, not today.

On the way out, we usually walk down 4 or 5 steps into the family room to get to the garage door where the cars are. Currently, the family room is "under construction." So, there's cement floor, studs, and boxes of everything on the floor. It gets kind of messy down there, so we have a path of flat cardboard pieces making a makeshift walkway.

Today, I stepped off the bottom step onto the cardboard like any other day .... and sank. The cardboard was floating on inches of water. Like a slo-mo scene I looked up and it all slowly processed from what my eyes were seeing to my brain realizing that every inch of the family room, the laundry room, the bathroom down there and the crawlspace was completely under water!

It seems our sump pump must have failed sometime during the night or early morning, with all this rain and then when the water had nowhere else to go - it just kept rising.

I grabbed my rainboots and immediately started moving boxes of our stuff up to the garage, or on top of dry items. The boxes were so soggy and wet, they were just falling apart in my hands. And, each box I picked up would just POUR out water as you lifted it.

Thankfully, Johnny's dad ran to Menards and got us a replacement pump. While that was happening, I pried off the drain cover from the floor in front of the furnice with a chisel and amazingly the water started swirling down. Then, as the new pump was installed, all the water was cleared within about 15 minutes.

Unfortunately -- THAT pump broke, too, after only an hour!!! We ran back to Menards to return it and saw a man in line in front of us returning the same pump. So, we got a different brand and this one seems to be working fine, thank God.

It's just SUCH a kick-in-the-ass situation because the majority of ruined things weren't down there just a few weeks ago!! Cleaning up for the Superbowl party, Johnny boxed up all of his DVDs (read: hundreds) and put them down there, all of his video game systems and games and put them down there, and all of our board games!!! Just this past week Johnny has been clearing out his office and sorting through boxes of things and organizing. Some of these boxes were LITERALLY just brought down there last night!!! Also, I've been setting up my bookcases and was just in the crawlspace two nights ago and mentioned to Johnny that I should bring up more of the stuff - but I didn't!!! Arrrrgh, I wish I could press rewind.

And, believe it or not, this is the second time my stuff has been flooded! Before I moved in with Johnny, I was living in Prince Edward Island, Canada. My stuff was all up there, I closed the house up for the winter and left the key and the care in charge of a contractor who was hired to do work while I was out of the house (like I'd done the year before). Except - this year, the work didn't go as planned and the PIPES FROZE before the plumber ever made an appearance and the results were disasterous.

Johnny's taking off work tomorrow to try and get started on cleaning up the aftermath, but I unforunately have a HUGE work obligation I can't get out of - so I'll have to wait until Tuesday to help and start the sorting through my boxes.

Hopefully this is the last time my stuff gets flooded. I don't know how much more I can take!!

Salsa Chicken

We love Mexican food. I'm not one for repeat flavors, but we could honestly eat Mexican food 2 or 3 times a week and not get sick of it.

I had the rest of the pack of thin sliced chicken breasts to use up, but it was too little to use a full pack of seasoning to make tacos, so onto plan B.

1/2 cup salsa
1/4 cup frozen corn
maybe 2/3 lbs. (?) of thin sliced breasts
salt and pepper to taste

Pour all into a skillet over medium heat and place the lid on. Cook for about 10 minutes, turning once or twice.

I went to the pantry for rice and found a box of Mexican Style Rice a Roni, so decided to cook that instead. Last, I opened up a can of black beans and heated them on the stovetop. We dressed everything up with the usual shredded cheese and sour cream. Mmm, mmm yummy!

Oven Roasted Cauliflower

About two weeks ago we ordered pizza from a local place and I got the breaded cauliflower as a side. $3.75 bought me a little take-out bag of, maybe, a 1/2 of a cup of fried and breaded, cheesy cauliflower florets and a ranch dipping sauce. It was good, but I knew really unhealthy, and the price left a little more to be desired. Still, ever since then, I've been in the mood for cauliflower, so during the last grocery trip I bought a big head, figuring I'd stumble upon some recipe or idea to use it.

Today, Biz posted a cauliflower soup that looked delicious and reminded me of the cauliflower soup of 101 Cookbooks I've made a few times. It awakened my craving, but I wasn't in the mood for soup, but remembered that Heidi had posted another cauliflower recipe that had caught my eye - roasted cauliflower! I'd add a little cheese to make it reminiscent of the cheesy, fried cauliflower, but it'd be healthier!

Ingredients:

1 medium to large head of cauliflower
3 Tbsp olive oil, divided
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup panko bread crumbs
1/4 cup grated cheddar cheese
1 large clove of garlic, minced

Pre-heat oven to 400°. Wash and cut the head of cauliflower into little florets. In a medium bowl, toss florets with about half of the olive oil and the salt. Spread on a sided baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes, turning once to prevent sticking.

In the same bowl, combine the remaining olive oil with the bread crumbs, garlic, and cheese. Sprinkle over the cauliflower after the first 15 minutes of baking time, then bake an additional 10-15 minutes.

This smells absolutely delicious as it's cooking and tastes even better once it's done! I served it with thin sliced chicken breasts that I cooked in a skillet with a little of Drew's Italian dressing, and couscous cooked with sliced carrots. All three were so complimentary of each other - definitely a dinner I'll revisit in the future! The cauliflower hit the spot with a hearty, roasted flavor and just the perfect amount of crunchy, cheesy goodness. Mmm!


Michelle at Lucky Taste Buds is giving away Barney Butter, but it ends tomorrow, so hurry!

Give-away 2 winner

Alisa at One Frugal Foodie was only 6 jujubes off with her guess of 122 (there were 128), so congratulations - you are the winner!!! Email me at mystinamarie@gmail.com with your info and I'll get your salad dressing out to you!

Coincedentally, she's having a huge give-away of her own, so go check out her blog and leave a comment!

Also, Biz is having her 1st of the month give-away here, so head over there and leave a comment, too!

Don't forget to check back here every 23rd, because I'm making Dinner at Christina's give-aways a monthly treat!

Peanut Butter Banana Cheesecake

As promised, I wrestled this recipe from my God-daughter's mom, and made it tonight. It's still cooling, so I haven't dug in yet, but boy does it smell good!

Crust:
1 1/4 cup old fashioned or quick oats, uncooked
1/2 cup chopped peanuts
3 Tbsp packed brown sugar
3 Tbsp butter, melted

Filling:
2 8 oz. pkgs cream cheese, softened
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup chunky peanut butter (I used creamy)
3 Tbsp flour
4 eggs
1/4 cup milk
3/4 mashed, ripe banana (I used 2 bananas)

Combine oats, peanuts, brown sugar, and melted butter. Press into the bottom of a 9" spring-form pan. Bake at 325° for 10 minutes.

Combine cream cheese, sugar, peanut butter, and flour, mixing at medium speed until blended. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Blend in milk and banana, pour over crust. Bake at 450° for 10 minutes, reduce oven temperature to 250° and bake an additional 40 minutes.

Cool and loosen cake from rim of pan. Chill. Serves 10-12.

Tomorrow is the last day for my give-away, so if you haven't already, go ahead and take a guess at the jujubes! I'll announce the winner Sunday night or Monday morning.

For a free Kashi meal, go here and enter your information. They'll send you a coupon to try one of their frozen entrees!

Alisa at One Frugal Foodie is having a GIANT giveaway here.

And, finally, some much delayed Top Chef discussion. I was so, so glad to see Leah go. I thought Leah was this season's Lisa - she just hung around way too long and really needed to go. She had a really crummy attitude and I didn't like that this year's restaurant wars episode ended up being all about her and Hosea's personal cheating drama, rather than focusing more on the restaurants.

When they brought those three chefs back, I was pissed Leah had a second chance. I was really gunning for either Jeff or Jaime at that point, because I didn't want to live through Leah again. I thought Jeff did a good job, but in the end I was glad that he was booted off again - I wouldn't have felt like it was a fair fight if he made it all the way to the end, or won, after having been eliminated. He was eliminated for a reason - he shouldn't get a chance to win it!

The last episode, I absolutely LOVED that they brought back Marcel (love him!), Richard, and Casey. I adore Marcel, both Johnny and I really love Richard, and Johnny had a huge crush on Casey during her season. Those were three great choices to bring back, since they'd all made it to the end of their seasons and fell short at the very end. I still think Marcel and Richard should have won their seasons, but the past is the past.

Now -- I was actually really shocked when Stefan chose Marcel for his partner. When Carla drew the knife and it said 3, I instantly thought "she got Marcel," because I didn't think anybody would want him. Plus, I thought Stefan would choose Casey because she's an attractive woman and that had been his strategy so far this season - cuddle up and flirt with all the girls (straight or not!) I think if Stefan had chosen Casey the outcome would have been very different. Casey took a very front-seat approach to helping out her partner, and Stefan wouldn't have put up with it. Richard and Marcel seemed to just help their partners, so had Marcel been Carla's partner, I think she would have cooked food more of her own style, versus the suggestions Casey gave.

In the end, I was heartbroken for Carla. She had been doing really well and I thought she was a sweet, honest person. She does need to learn to stand up for herself in the kitchen, though. She can't let others boss her dishes around, she just learned that the hard way! I think Hosea deserved to win based on his final meal he cooked, because Stefan seemed to just think he had it "in the bag" and almost played it safe. He got overly cocky in the end, and I think that was his downfall. But, based on the entire season's performance, I find it almost shocking Stefan didn't win in the end!

Oh, and a funny thing - John Besh, the chef and restaurant owner who dined with the judges during the last meal, was the graduation speaker for Michael's CIA ceremony in August. Here's a picture I took of him:
You'll notice he's wearing the same blazer he had on during the Top Chef episode! When we were there, my brother said he had worn it to every event that weekend, and a few of his classmates noted that they've seen him at other events and places, wearing the same blazer! We've also heard from others that they've seen him a few times in magazines - again, the same blazer!!! So - the secret is out - John Besh must only have one blazer and he wears it to every.single.event! Invest in a new jacket, buddy, people are starting to notice!

Give-away 2!

It's time for Dinner at Christina's monthly give-away on the 23rd!

This month's prize is a bottle of Annie's Natural Cucumber Yogurt Dressing!

For your chance to win, just leave a comment below with your guess as to how many jujubes are in this glass! The nearest guess, without going over, will win! In the event of a tie, the person who left their comment first will win. Contest will end Sunday, March 1st at 8 p.m. (central time) Please only continental US residents!