Tomato Cheddar Soup

This was a hastily thrown together meal.  Prepare to be underwhelmed.  I got the recipe for tomato cheddar soup here.  Of course since it was so hastily thrown together I was not able to follow the recipe exactly.

Here is a shot of the ingredients I used.  Note the lack of fresh basil and Greek yogurt.  I used milk to give it a creamy-ness, but I be the first to admit it really didn't do the trick.  It also needed like 8 times more cheddar.



I had an assistant whip up some extra buttery garlic bread for dunking.

Let's just use this post as a little time filler for the show stoppers that are hopefully coming next week.  They can't all be winners right?

Thanksgiving Burger

Since Thanksgiving leftovers seem to be an endless burden in this household, I took it upon myself to finish them off for good for tonight's dinner.

Feast your eyes on my Thanksgiving burger!



Let's go from the bottom up: Texas toast, cranberry sauce, burger, sweet potato casserole, stuffing, turkey.



And get a load of this overhead shot.

In the words of Usher let us say oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh my gooooooooooood.

Yea it was that good.

Thanksgiving

I know I've left you all with baited breath waiting to find out what I made for Thanksgiving.  I can gladly say the wait is over my friends!  I give you Thanksgiving dinner!

The dinner menu consisted of: turkey, stuffing, corn bread pudding, sweet potato casserole, glazed carrots, braised brussel sprouts, broccoli casserole, twice baked potatoes, and cranberry sauce.

The dessert menu consisted of: pumpkin cheesecake, pecan pie, cream puffs, and apple butter seven layer bars.

How do you make those wonderful sounding apple seven layer bars you ask? Well I can certainly share that!

This is the ingredient line-up.  The recipe can be found here. 

I must say they came out wonderful!

We definitely had a delicious Thanksgiving, I hope you did too!

Cranberry Sauce

Ok, ok, I know Thanksgiving is still 3 days away, but the ladies in this household simply cannot hold back from cooking any longer!  Racking our brains for what can be made 3 days in advance we came up with cranberry sauce and the stuffing saute stuff (apples, celery, onions, pecans, craisins, mushrooms).

For the cranberry sauce I combined ingredients from a few recipes I looked at on the Food Network web site.

 I chose to use orange juice, lemon and orange zest, cinnamon, nutmeg, and brown sugar.

The cranberries literally pop while they cook.  Look out, they might burn you!

This is the lovely mush it all turns into when it's finished.  Dammit it's just impossible to take food pictures at night. Ugh. Well, I promise you it tastes good annnnnd I hope you are excited to see what else I cook up this Thanksgiving!

Tamale Pie

This is a dinner I've been meaning to re-make for a while now.  The first time I made it I took some really awful photographs that I just couldn't allow myself to post on this blog.

The original recipe for chicken tamale pie can be seen at pinch of yum's blog here.  The first time I made it with chicken, this time around I doubled the recipe and made it vegetarian with zucchini.

Here's the ingredient line-up.  I used a real egg and not egg substitute the recipe calls for.

I was going to take a picture of how disgusting the corn bread layer looks in the mixing bowl so we could all laugh about it, but it was really just to gross to permanently put on the web.  Instead here is a lovely photo of the finished product.

Instead of an image of the gross mixing bowl I'll let you have this unappealing photo to remember me by.  I know it does look spectacular, but trust me its crazy good.  One eater claimed "this is quite possibly the best thing you have ever made. ever."  P.S. it was not my mother, so it gets even more credibility.

Make it for dinner this week, I promise you'll love every last bite of it.

Brown Sugar Toffee Bars

I'm finally getting an opportunity to bake again now that the power's back on! Woooohooo! Sadly I missed 3 co-workers birthdays and one co-worker farewell.  I will definitely have to make it up to them somehow..... But until then I give you brown sugar toffee bars!

The recipe can be found at cookies and cups.  In a rare moment I followed the recipe exactly. Crazy times.

Action shot of the toffee bits add-in.

Booooo for winter and daylight savings time making things all dark so early in the kitchen.

I brought these to a party and they were a huge hit.  They disappeared in about 5 minutes.  To be quite honest with you, I myself was not particularly dazzled by them.  This is most likely because I needed this to be about five times more disgusting, i.e. chocolate, peanut butter, and and Oreo on top.

Pulled Pork Wontons With Cheese Sauce

I'm back babies!!!

Let me just start out by saying I did not have power for 11 days.  11 f-ing days with no power and no heat.  Can you just imagine that for a second.  Imagine sleeping in a house that is 40 degrees.  And then its snowing out. And I can't bake anything! And it's dark and I can't cook! Yea it's been one heck of an 11 days.  I really missed this blog and I missed cooking even more. 

For the first time I made pulled pork with the cut of meat you are supposed to use, pork shoulder butt.  This meant there was waaaaay more pulled pork leftover than usual.  What to do with an excess of pulled pork? Why, make pulled pork wontons of course!  They will require a dipping sauce though and yes a home-made cheddar cheese sauce is the one to do the trick.

The idea for the wontons came from Life's Ambrosia.  She uses all sorts of fun ingredients to jazz her's up, but I just took the pork and plopped it in a wonton wrapper.

The cheese sauce recipe came from Serious Eats.  I followed this recipe exactly as is and I wouldn't have it any other way.  It's crazy good make it even if you don't make the wontons.  

Ooooooohhhh I am drooling.  My stomach is grumbling for these babies.  They were so damn good.

Hurricane Hiatus

I apologize due to the hurricane I have no power and no oven and no Internet access. Therefore there will be a brief hiatus in all things terrible for you at This is Why KTC is Hot. I hope to be back in business soon!