Rockin' the Pinterest Recipes

Yes we are! I have finally being making a point of going to my assorted "food" boards on Pinterest to try some of the recipes I pin. 

Today we had a family celebration for a couple of birthdays and had reservations for brunch (which ended up being lunch) at the Rainforest Cafe at Downtown Disney. They have pretty good food, but it comes with Disney prices. 3 burgers, 2 coconut shrimp entrees, a veggie pasta dish and a kid's spaghetti plus drinks and a $16 chocolate volcano "cake and ice cream" was just over $200. At least the parking was free.

At any rate, mid afternoon rolls around and my 6 coconut shrimp and green beans have left me starving. Wednesday I picked up some Boar's Head ham and King's Hawaiian rolls to make Hawaiian Ham & Cheese Sandwiches. The recipe can be found HERE at Pip & Ebby along with a ton of other good stuff.

Being the bad blogger starving person that I was...there are no photos. Rest assured, they more or less resembled the lovely photos on the recipe site.

My review? A little time consuming to slice the rolls and difficult not to squash them flat. I used dijon mustard because I don't like yellow mustard. None of the mustard flavor comes thru in the final product so if I make them again i'll just use the yellow mustard. They are crazy rich. I think I could cut back on the butter. 

Mr. Paisley's review?  "Tasty!" and he doesn't like ham. Go figure.

I *LOVE* King's Hawaiian bread of any type, but I think i'll just use it plain to make cold sliders...unless the hubs actually requests these. 

This morning I made Lokshen Kugel

Loksehn Kugel you say?  Yes. I say.

One of my co-workers came in  yesterday and was talking about a bunch of food that her neighbor brought over to her before work. Apparently leftovers from Thursday's Rosh Hashanah meal. She went on and on about this noodle pudding dish. I  suggested it was kugel and she was sure it wasn't. So on my break I googled some kugel recipes and came across this one at The Shiksa in the Kitchen

Sweet Lokshen Kugel 

I sent it to her and she said "yes yes - that's exactly what it looked like!" Go figure...kugel, just like I said.

So I decided I would whip this one up this morning. My house smells AHHHH-mazing because of the cinnamon sugar topping. Too bad it doesn't FEEL like fall outside here in Central Florida - it sure smells like it in here!

Oh dear...someone couldn't wait long enough to take a photo.

Busted!

This is a great base recipe and in the comments on the recipe page there are several additions and tweaks and I fully intend to try at least a couple of them.

This is a VERY rich dish. Woo boy! It's very good and heavy. I think I'll try to lighten it up next time with low fat sour cream and fat free cream cheese while I add that crushed pineapple someone mentioned (yum!). 

I've also decided it may be time to retire my vintage Oster blender. It works like a champ, but more often than not I end up having to split up my ingredients that need to be blended because the pitcher is just too small. Including this one - 6 eggs, 1 brick of cream cheese, half a stick of melted butter, 2 cups of sour cream and a cup of cottage cheese...that filled up the blender TO.THE.TOP. and I still needed to add the sugar and salt LOL. Yeah, no...I ended up blending what was in there and dumping it all in the Kitchen-Aid mixer. It worked...just left me more dishes to wash!

Anywho - I gather this is a traditional dish served at various Jewish holiday meals or events. I'm not Jewish. I've never had kugel before, though I've heard friends speak of it. So I thought I'd break out of my cooking rut and make something new.

Glad I did!