Dill Macaroni Salad

Dill weed. It's a silly name for a tasty herb. An herb I have not much explored. I gathered some recipes, was offered some more, and have been patiently waiting for my dill to be usable. It has reached that point.

I decided to start with a dill macaroni salad. Why? Because I am unfamiliar with dill and I am very familiar with macaroni salad. I found a recipe using dill for a potato salad, and just adjusted it to fit with the way my mom makes macaroni salad to create some sort of monstrous taste-pile of goodness.

I found the dill to be pleasant to work with. Very easy to chop and with a pleasant smell. The reason I have been so hesitant to venture into this culinary realm is due to the fact that I absolutely despise pickles, and in my mind "dill" and "pickle" are forever together. I thought maybe the flavor in pickles that I can't stand came from dill. I was wrong. Turns out that anything pickled, even olives, instantly triggers the up-chuck reflex. Gross.

I have since learned the error of my ways. People have made many delicious treats involving dill, such as the ever hilarious Dill Dip. As much as I now know that dill is not the reason for my pickle hostility, I still am a little uncomfortable with it. Hence the familiar recipe made in a new and crazy way.

Plus, this has mayonnaise in it. You can't go wrong with a recipe involving mayonnaise. I love the stuff! In the recipe I wrote that you should use 1 cup of mayo, however keep in mind that more is always an option. An option I frequently choose. Needless to say, yet I'll still say it, I highly enjoyed this foray into the joys of dill weed.

Click here for the recipe!

Read more...

Minty Raspberry Limoncello

It's starting to be a tad bit sweltering out, so it's time to make cooler and more refreshing recipes for this here blog! What's more refreshing than a liquored up citrus drink? A liquored up citrus drink with mint! I'm a genius. Also I've been wanting to use mint in more things, and this was the first thing that came to mind. I have future plans of turning this into a semifreddo. I can already taste it, and damn it's good.

There's no real story of how this drink came to be. Mostly just that I love Limoncello, I wanted to use it in a mixed drink with mint, and I happened to have a bottle of Raspberry Lemonade in the fridge. And so this delightful, lush drink of summertime refreshment was invented! 

You can easily substitute the Raspberry Lemonade with any other juice type drink you may have, for example I think a grapefruit juice would be an acceptable substitution.

The Limoncello, however, should not be substituted simply because I adore it. Go ahead, buy a bottle. You'll need it once you try this golden elixir. I use it mostly when I'm making fruit ice creams, and it's glorious. I usually simmer frozen berries in a little bit of Limoncello and sugar and then mix it into the custard to become the main flavor. I will be posting those recipes eventually, but on my main website and not the blog. No worries, I'll give you a link to it.

And yes, the bottle is almost empty. Time to get some more!

What is Limoncello? I'll just tell you how wiki describes it: 

Limoncello (or lemoncello) is an Italian lemon liqueur mainly produced in Southern Italy.  Traditionally, it is made from the Sorrento lemon, though most lemons will produce satisfactory limoncello. Limoncello is traditionally served chilled as an after dinner digestivo. Along the Amalfi Coast, it is usually served in small ceramic glasses themselves often chilled, the Amalfi coast being a center of both ceramic and limoncello production. This tradition has been carried into other parts of Italy.

Sound good? Yeah it does. It's tasty all on it's own, but sometimes it's fun to have brightly colored mixed drinks in the afternoon and not get completely wasted.

The nice thing about Limoncello, besides the color and usefulness, is the flavor. When you drink it, it's very clearly alcoholic but much smoother than vodka. When I have vodka in a mixed drink, no matter how much or little, it's the overpowering flavor. In this drink, you can taste the lemony goodness, but it's a subtle note that pleases your taste buds without feeling like you were just punched in the mouth. 

Click here for the recipe!

Read more...

"Infinite Riches in a Little Room"

While I was on vacation in New Hampshire last week, I found some old timey cookbooks that my family had told me were up there. First, let me briefly explain the house. It's really just an awesome cabin that a very nice lady left to my Grandpa back in the day. My entire family uses it for vacationing in the summer. It's a nice place, very much in the woods, and I am very much allergic to it. But it's still fun.

Anyway, so there were old cookbooks, and I had a chance to briefly go through them and take some pictures of recipes that I would like to try. Most I will have to change since they include a lot of cooking and frying in a large quantity of fat, but I'm sure I can figure it out.

 I have a plan of trying the recipes, and good or bad I will post them with both the original recipe written word for word as well as my own updated version of it. They're a little tricky because they have a lot of vague measurements and silly instructions (half a glassful of wine; besprinkle with sugar). I imagine this will be fun for me. Especially the recipe that involves baking egg yolks, slicing them, dipping them in pancake batter, and frying them in fat, and serving with fried parsley. Yum and death. That's in a book from the 1890's.

I did decide to share now with the world a page of quotes from one of the books. It's called: Favorite Recipes Cook Book, A Complete Culinary Guide, and it's from 1931. It has lots of good recipes but I think the quote page was my favorite. Sorry it's awkwardly split up. I was having trouble taking pictures with my less than perfect camera in a very dim room. I will try harder next time I'm there.

Read more...

Gardening Fun

Gardening is fun, especially if you have someone else do it for you, and then reap the benefits. That's how I roll. Earlier this year, my dad and brother (with my assistance, of course!) felt the need to make a huge garden structure thing, in order to keep the deer and critters out as well as to make us look fancy. I must admit, it does look nice. I mostly helped by halfheartedly digging a hole with a post digger. Turns out that I don't enjoy manual labor. At least I tried!

We planted some seeds, planted some already started plants, and I re-potted my herbs so they could have room to stretch. And holy crap did they stretch! The sage went insane! Especially in the past couple of days. I mean, it was doing alright outside, then when I looked at it yesterday they were giants! I definitely need to use them soon. And the basil has been growing well, but it seems some bugs might like it too since the leaves have little holes in them. Oh well, I still used some today in my grandma's sauce.

The parsley and dill had all but died before I re-potted them. Now they're coming back strong! It's quite exciting. And I also cheated and bought rosemary and mint since I couldn't find mint seeds, and the rosemary smelled too good to not buy. The mint is the only one not in the garden, I put it in it's own pot right under my window. No real reason for that, it's just where the pot already was.

Lots of stuff is growing, and I'm kinda looking forward to all the fresh and free vegetables that will be coming later in the summer. Oh, and the strawberries! I have learned that strawberries fresh off the vine are ridiculously fantastic.

Now you can all look forward to summer recipes with home grown ingredients besides just the herbs (which are finally usable and can fulfill the purpose of this blog!). I'm gonna make zucchini bread, butternut squash risotto, grilled vegetable sauces, green bean casserole, soups, desserts, drinks, anything and everything I can!

Now I'm freaking hungry.

Watch out, it's pic heavy below the cut. Click them to see them bigger
Ignore that is says to click for the recipe. What it really means is to click for the pictures.

Click here for the recipe!

Read more...

Spicy Mango Dip

I had a whole thing typed up about this recipe, and then somehow deleted the entire thing. I don't really feel like typing it all again, so I'll sum it up.


~Made it in Boston. Had a BBQ. Good times
~Made it again, some changes, still tasty. Good times.
~Made it for Memorial Day. More changes. Used fresh mint from my garden. Good times.


Perfect summer-time dip recipe. Spicy, sweet, and refreshing at once.

Play with ingredients, change, substitute, have fun. If you have a lame allergy to mango, like Karen does, use peaches or something instead.


 Done. Enjoy!

Click here for the recipe!

Read more...