Tropical Storm Texas Peanut Butter Sheet Cake

Tropical Storm Gaston is fixin' to strike a glancing blow on the Houston area later today and we're already seeing rain. I'm thankful it didn't have time to become a major hurricane, but it could make grilling those burgers and hot dogs for our Labor Day cookout this evening a damp outing.

Since it's just a Tropical Storm and not a Hurricane, Gaston doesn't rate the Texas Chocolate Sheet cake. So I decided to bake this Texas Peanut Butter Sheet cake instead.

Tasting of the batter and frosting proved promising! The technique is similar to that of the Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake except that mini-marshmallows are added to the frosting to help spread the peanut buuter. If you want to try the recipe, which you can find here, I advise you to make a double recipe of the frosting because it didn't come close to covering the cake the first time. I'm planning to serve it with vanilla ice cream.

Recreational Cooking

Getting Babs and my SIL together for a couple of days guarantees that you will get some really good food as they egg (pun intended) each other on in their favorite sport of Recreational Cooking.

Here's what they served up this weekend at the bay:

Elvis Presley's Favorite Pound Cake topped with fresh peaches and homemade vanilla ice cream. Just don't ask how much butter is in this! It took the two of them to complete all the batter beating the recipe specified. Recipe available here if you are interested.

Some kind of cheese type appetizer made with several types of cheese and cubed french bread. At first Babs feared it would come out like a "low rent cheese puff" but it was pronounced a keeper by the hungry throng when it came out of the oven. She served it with a marinara sauce, as suggested in the recipe, but we all agreed that it didn't need the sauce. Of course Babs added some dry mustard and nutmeg to the original recipe.

And there would be no family weekend gathering Chez QG without the beloved Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake, topped with more of SIL's fabulous home made ice cream. She's convinced the oven in our bay house produces a better TCSC than the one at her house. I'm not getting involved in that controversy, but will say the one she made this weekend was definitely one of the best ever!

GA 219 Goes To Ground So QG Cooks

For those of us PresbyPolityGeeks who are NOT attending GA 219 in person, the GA has gone to ground for the next couple of days as commissioners burrow into a millionty committee meetings that are not being streamed live. So until the next plenary meeting on Wednesday, we rely on our blogger, Facebook and Twitter feeds to learn what is happening.

Here's a shout-out to the Presbytery of New Covenant delegation: they have their own blog ( PNC Notes from Minneapolis) and several new posts went up today from commissioners. Keep up the good work! Pray for our EP Rev. Mike Cole as he testifies against the Middle East Peace report today.

Meanwhile, I've been cooking, so I'll share two "keeper" recipes from yesterday's Fourth of July festivities Chez QG.

The first one is a variation of the beloved and famous Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake-- the Texas Strawberry Sheetcake.

Kudos to blogger Homesick Texan for the recipe which you can get here. Everyone really LOVED this. It is easy, very fruity and moist.

The second one is a super fabulous Truffle Mac and Cheese. I got this one from the site What We're Eating. Here's the link to the recipe. It's a rather fussy recipe, so not exactly something you're going to whip up on a weeknight to go with your meatloaf. However for a special occasion it is outstanding. My guests gave it 5 stars and requested a re-run for Labor Day and Thanksgiving.

As I always say, when the goin' gets tough at GA, the tough get cookin' at home.

Retro Recipes

This Thanksgiving my sister, Music Mary, made a couple of the old recipes I remember my mother making for every Thanksgiving and Christmas family gathering back in the '60's. It has been years since I made her Crab Dip and it was just as delicious as I remembered it.

Portia and Babs didn't remember it at all, but really liked it and asked for the recipe so they could serve it at the Ugly Christmas Sweater party they are hosting in a couple of weeks. (More on Ugly Christmas sweaters later!).

Here's the recipe:

Hall's Crab Dip

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Combine 1 can crabmeat, 8 ounces of cream cheese, 1 tsp. minced onion and 1/2 tsp. horseradish. Put in baking dish. Top with toasted slivered almonds. Bake for 15 minutes or until bubbly.

My mother always served this with Triscuits and a side of bourbon balls chased with bourbon on the rocks. How WASP were we? Really. Really. WASP.

Thanks to Music Mary for reviving this delicious tradition and all the memories that came with it.

Did you partake of any retro recipes at Thanksgiving? Care to share? And if you have any creative ideas of what to do with leftover homemade cranberry sauce (it's really yummy, too), I'd love to hear them.

Thanksgiving Eve Dinner Ideas

If you're like me, expecting Thanksgiving Day guests to arrive on Wednesday, you are not only planning the food for that day but for the night before.

Since I need to do a lot of prep work tomorrow, today I am going to make a huge pot of chili that I will serve Wednesday evening to all the out of town guests. That way I just have to heat it up, add some tamales and a salad, and serve! Hopefully there will be enough left-overs for anyone wanting lunch the next day since we are having dinner in the late afternoon. Plus Portia will bring some chocolate and peanut butter chip cookies for dessert.

I don't really have a written recipe for my chili--good native of San Antonio that I am--but here is an attempt to document it:

3 lbs chili ground beef
2 lbs stewing beef, cut in bite size chunks
2 large onions, chopped
head of garlic, minced
2 cans tomato paste
1 can stewed tomatoes or diced tomatoes with jalapenos
6 to 8 tablespoons chili powder
3 tablespoons cumin
salt to taste
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
3 tablespoons harina or flour
2 cans pinto beans

Saute the chopped onions and garlic in a bit of olive oil until soft and transluscent. Add the meat in batches and brown. Return all browned meat to the pot and add the canned tomatoes and tomato paste. Add the salt, chili powder, cumin and cocoa powder and combine well. Cover with water and simmer until the meat is tender.

Once the meat is tender, add the canned beans with their juices. Simmer another 10 minutes. Taste and add salt if necessary. Combine the harina or flour with equal amount of water and stir into chili to thicken. Cook until thick. Serve!

Note: this is not very hot chili, so offer sliced jalapenos or hot pepper sauce for those who like it very spicy. The cocoa is a traditional Mexican ingredient.

What do you do for dinner on Thanksgiving Eve? Go out? Have a favorite pre-Turkey Day recipe you would like to share? Let the cooking begin!

Friday Crawfish!

It's high crawfish season down here in southeast Texas, and we're grateful for the blessing of mudbugs--especially in the form of the already picked and cleaned tails!

A couple of weeks ago I remembered a favorite crawfish recipe from the past and made it down at the bay house. What a hit it was!

Fair warning--this is not for dieters, but for a night when you feel like splurging. I made it with reduced fat Velveeta and no-fat half and half and it still tasted plenty rich. I'm sharing the recipe below.

What's your favorite crawfish recipe?

Crawfish Fettucini

1 stick butter
1 bunch green onions, chopped, with tops
1 each, chopped: green bell pepper and yellow onion
4 ribs celery, chopped
2 TBL minced garlic
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup water
2 pounds crawfish tails (the ones from Louisiana--not China!)
1 (12 oz) package egg noodles
1 lb. box hot Mexican Velveeta, cubed
1 pint half and half
1 to 3 TBL Cajun seasoning

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Melt butter in medium pot. Add green onions, bell pepper, celery, onion and garlic. Cook on low for 20 minutes or until reaches desired tenderness. Stir in flour and blend well. Add water, then crawfish tails.

Continue to cook on low heat.

Boil egg noodles in a large pot. Drain. Return noodles to pot with crawfish and veggies and add cheese. Stir well. Pour mixture into a large casserole dish.

Heat 15 minutes. Remove and let stand 10 minutes before serving. Serves 6 to 8, depending...

In Search Of New Entrees

Someone once wrote that there are only five entrees that Americans really cook and eat, for all our fascination with the Food Network and celebrity chefs. Chez QG those dishes are: meatloaf, grilled steak, baked chicken breast, spaghetti with meat sauce or balls; and El Jefe's favorite Greek Shrimp.

This week in a fit of culinary boredom, I decided to try out two new recipes: Gnocchi with Chicken and Pineapple-Shrimp kebabs. El Jefe gracefully ate the gnocchi, which also had gorgonzola cheese and pinenuts. Truly, chicken/gorgonzola cheese/pinenuts is a wonderful combination on a nice green salad. On hot gnocchi, not so much.

Last night I tried out the kebabs. I didn't cut the pineapple and red bell pepper thin enough for the shrimp. Result: I had to take the shrimp off and cook them in a pan because they didn't touch the grill! The garlic-lime-cilantro sauce that was drizzled over it was a keeper, though.

Babs was with us last night too, and brought a recipe for a Garden Risotto that she wanted to try, so we added that to the menu. She tweaked it by adding mushrooms to the spinach, onions, green peas and asparagus that went in the dish. Delicioso! Clearly the student has surpassed the teacher here.

Will the risotto make our dinner rotation? Probably if Babs is here because it is quite "fiddly" and requires lots of standing and stirring. If she's not, there's always the risotto in a box.

What five dishes are in your dinnertime rotation? Add anything new lately?