Posted by Amanda on October 27, 2010
My time is running short on the things I can do before the baby shows up, but that doesn’t stop me from convincing “The Hubs” a good family outing is in order. Michael usually has to work on Saturdays so we were really excited when Pearl Farmer’s Market decided to add a Wednesday evening to their time slot.
The fall brings the in a great variety of okra, peppers, squash, radishes, and leafy greens to add to your soups to help fight the chill…..or just satifisy your soup tastebuds since this is Texas and it isn’t going to get to cold anytime soon.
You can find all the same vendors you would see on a busy Saturday at Pearl, with the new addition of Wheeli Gourmet, a moroccan inspired food trailer, that has the best french fries around. Wheeli’s trailer is one of the most fun looking trailers I’ve ever seen and they run on bio-fuel & try to use as many local ingredients as possible (a big plus for me since im a big local gal).
After we gathered our veggies, and extra goodies the day wouldn’t be complete without a trip to La Gloria. We’ve never had a bad experience, aside from overly friendly waiter (who really wouldn’t bother me if I wasn’t pregnant) and the food is always spot on. I’d love to tell you which foods to get, but seeing as I’ve eaten the whole menu (twice) I can just say try anything and it’s worth it.
I’m hoping to get some more posts up soon, but in between going into early labor & helping Michael with his new blog it’s been hard finding the time. If your wondering where my partner in crime Megan is she is busy in the Project Food Blog Contest so please go and vote for her.
Next post will be on my baby shower & all the cool foods were going to make…err if I don’t go into labor 
Hope to post more my lovelys don’t miss me too much.
Posted by Amanda on October 4, 2010
As you may have noticed we haven’t posted in awhile. Megan has been busy with her new writing gigs and I..well I had major life changes.
After much debate Michael and I decided to take an offer that has been on the table for a few years now in San Antonio. We are both the pastry chef”s of a bakery and are excited to be doing our own thing.
I was born in San Antonio and jumped between here and Austin all my life. It’s crazy how many things change yet stay the same. For instance I’m staying in the same house I grew up in, with the same neighbors that remember me torturing their kids, but the area has changed drastically.
San Antonio is just now starting to blossom in both the social media & food scene which makes it exciting for me to start fresh somewhere where I can start a name for Two Forked without having to stand out in a huge food blogging community like in Austin.
So my first order of business was to meet all my fellow foodies in SA and what better way to do that then throw a potluck. Our theme was Halloween/fall and though were few our food was mighty. From monster sliders to zombie tonic we had all our bases covered and plenty of food to spare.
So what were these sinfully delicious items brough?
Waspy Red Head – Savory Bread Pudding
Symigoddess – Monster Pork Sliders W/Pickled Harvest Sweet Onions, Pickled Hatch Carrots & Fresh Pumpkin Bread
LindaCPrice - Zombie Meatloaf
YuppieFoodie - Bacon Wrapped Dates, Carmel Apples, & Spooky Cheese Balls
And then there was little old me – Pumpkin Custard Tarts & Zombie Tonic
It was a blast and I couldn’t stop eating the whole time, which is just how it should be at one of these events. As the ladies post their blogs I will also have link to there experience at our first event and as a bonus I thought I’d share with you my zombie tonic.
I’m already putting aside posts so I can be on top of things now that were a little settled so be prepared for some awesome holiday recipes.
Zombie Tonic
One Bag of Key Limes Juiced
12 Lemons Juiced
Can of Big Red
Sugar to taste
Fake Fingers (real ones don’t do well in citrus)
H20
This is super easy and the soda can be switched with anything. I made a double batch and with the other half I used peach fresca which gave me a nice tart flavor that reminded me alot like the red sweet tarts. So after you get all your lemons juiced into a pitcher add the soda, then fill the to the top with water. Add sugar to taste and that’s it! I’ve been playing with different things I can make with soda that won’t give me a caffeine high since I’m so close to my due date and this one has to be my new favorite. Although with Big Red not much can go wrong.
Posted by Two Forked Mamas on August 13, 2010
It’s that time of the year where in front of every grocery store you’ll see piles and piles of hatch peppers being roasted. All of Austin has Hatch fever trying out new recipes and restaurant specials, which is funny because in this heat you would think we would shy away from spicy food.
I love Hatch peppers, enough to where I will by them roasted fresh and just put a little salt on them and enjoy. Those were the days I didn’t have 3, soon to be 4, people asking me what’s for dinner. Aside from the usual things you could make I wanted to try something different this year. With this baby I eat green bean casserole almost everyday and when I can’t make it I’m buying it in the frozen section (gross I know but it gets the job done).
Now out of all the casseroles out there I happen to be a green bean casserole addict. I have had some really good ones… and some really bad ones that involved lots of cheese on it and other ingredients I just can’t even type. You might even classify me as a snob because I insist that you NEVER EVER EVER EVER use canned green beans.
So today when I saw tweets about how Hatch peppers had been sighted I thought hmmmm why not make Hatch green bean chicken casserole. Are you hungry yet?
Hatch Green Bean Chicken Casserole
1 can Cream of Chicken soup
8oz Chicken Stock
1 Chicken Breast
2 Mild Hatch Green Chiles (Roasted or Fresh)
A bunch of cilantro
2 Ears of Corn
1 1/2 Pounds of Fresh Green Beans
2 Cloves of Garlic
1/2 a Onion
Salt Pepper & What ever seasonings you feel like tossing in.
Can of Frenches Onions
To Prep:
Clean your green beans. (Meaning cut off the ends if they look funky or if they’re too hard)
Cut off the kernels from the cob.
De-seed your Hatch peppers, cut off the stem, and chop into bite size pieces.
Chop up the whole bunch of cilantro (or half if you’re not a cilantro lover).
Add all of the above to a stock pot with your chicken stock adding water until everything is barely covered with liquid. Cook for 20 min. on medium heat. You don’t want to get everything to soft because it’s sooo much better with a little crunch, plus we still have an oven trip later.
Cube your chicken and lightly bread with salt pepper and flour and add to a seperate pan (you’re going to want a big pan to hold everything). Cook your chicken nice and golden brown, turning the pieces every so often. Once you have a good color on your chicken you can add your onions and garlic (you don’t want them to burn while your chicken is cooking). Saute for a few minutes and then take your pot of green beans and toss all of it together in pan, adding the cream of chicken as well. Put your French Onions on top and cover with aluminum foil. Cook in oven for 30-45 min.
Posted by Megan on August 2, 2010
Amanda is the pregnant one, but there’s no reason for me not to make mocktails, right? Because I work all day and then have to take care of my son and make dinner, I am pretty beat by the time the little one is in bed. While other mamas might pop a beer, I’m not usually one for drinking after a certain time during the week. Mostly because it makes me sleepy (until I’ve had a few) and I have too much to do!
I really just want something refreshing, so I’ll turn instead to sparkling waters or juice infusions. After Amanda talked about her mocktail I decided I should do one too.
It’s a bit past blackberry season here, but I always have frozen fruit on hand. If you don’t thaw them ahead of time, it can easily be done by putting a handful in a shallow bowl of water and microwaving for about 20 seconds or so. You don’t want them warm, just thawed.
This recipe also uses Cucumber DRY Soda. Although the Vanilla Bean is my favorite flavor, I think the Cucumber is most versatile when it comes to mixing.
Blackberry Basil Fizz
serves one
5 blackberries
2-3 tablespoons basil simple syrup*
6 oz Cucumber DRY soda
In a highball glass, muddle blackberries with simple syrup. Add soda and enjoy.
*To make basil simple syrup:
1 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 cups sugar
Handful of fresh basil leaves
Heat water and sugar together until sugar has completely dissolved. Add basil leaves and cover; let steep for 10 minutes. Remove basil leaves, pour into jar and store in fridge.
P.S. We apologize for the lack of posts! We have been very busy with life lately and hope to step things up. We have many ideas planned for the coming months so please stay tuned!
Posted by Megan on June 28, 2010
There are lots of places in Austin that I haven’t been to, but thankfully now I can cross Jeffrey’s off that list. I saw on Yelp that there was going to be a special Yelp Eats! week, featuring prix fixe menus at about a dozen of the nicest restaurants in town. Amanda and I immediately decided we need to fancy mamas’ night, and after a bit of thinking we settled on Jeffrey’s.
It was easy to decide what to have. The prix fixe menu had three courses, with two choices for the starter and dessert, and three choices for the main. We quickly dismissed the vegetarian option (it sounded lovely, but we wanted meat!) and ordered one of everything else so we could split it.
Since Amanda is pregnant I had to soldier on alone and bear the task of sampling the alcohol. I started with the Mora Julep, a concoction of bourbon, mint, blackberries, Dolin blanc, and ginger beer. It was very tasty and actually refreshing, which is not what I expect in a drink with bourbon. Since the blackberries are still exploding here I loved seeing a drink with them featured. I also decided to do the wine pairings with the meal, but I’ll be honest – I don’t know much about wine, other than I like whites more than reds, so sadly I don’t have much to say about them. They were good, and the wine served with dessert was from South Africa, not a place I’d think produces wine!
The meal started off with an amouse bouche of mini cheese gougers, and then the starters arrived. The short ribs, served with potato puffs and horseradish creme were lovely and tender. I’m not a big fan of beef for a starter, but these were good.
I also think I would have been more impressed with them if the crispy oysters, served on potato chips, had not been so freaking tasty. Half were served with pineapple pico de gallo, and the other half were “Octavia” style and served with something called bacon royale and tomato vinaigrette. Seriously, we could have had a meal with just these oysters. I’m not a big fan of the raw oysters, and I probably have been ruined forever for them now!
Before our mains were brought out we were surprised by a plate of pickled shrimp with fried green tomatoes. Let me just say that these were the best shrimp I have ever had. A forkful of the shrimp and crispy coated tomato with some cold and creamy avocado on top … ohhh. Food bliss, I’m telling you.
Our mains were a porcini-rubbed filet migon with potato butter, and sticky quail with grilled rice onigiri. We weren’t too impressed with the quail, which seemed to have been bathed in soy. The rice and pickled green peaches helped offset the saltiness a little, but overall I was disappointed.
The filet, on the other hand, was perfect. The mushrooms weren’t overpowering and the meat just melted in your mouth. The potato butter, which was whipped potatoes blended with an insane amount of butter, is just the sort of comfort food you look for after a long day. I need to figure out how to make it without killing my arteries during recipe testing.
We were positively stuffed at this point, but desserts were still to come! We had banana pudding ice cream sandwiches, and “chocolate intemperance”. While the banana pudding ice cream was very yummy, we were confounded by what the menu called “house-made Nilla Wafers”. They weren’t very wafery at all, and we were actually worried they weren’t cooked all the way through. However, our waitress confirmed it with the kitchen that they were indeed meant to be this way. The taste of the wafers was OK, and mostly marred by the fact the texture was kind of gummy. It was also disappointing that the ice cream was a halfway melted mess when it arrived on our table.
The “chocolate intemperance” was a chocolate overdose! It was a flourless chocolate cake with chocolate mousse, chocolate top, chocolate crisped balls, and sea salt, served with chocolate ice cream. It was yummy but we couldn’t eat more than a few bites because it was incredibly rich, and after the meal we had just eaten it couldn’t be done. We did pair up the banana ice cream with the cake, and they went very well together. It seemed like it would be a good choice to pair the cake with a non-chocolate ice cream to cut the richness, but restaurants seem to think they need to have one insane chocolate selection. Hey restaurants! You don’t!
Overall it was a great meal, and I’m going to be sure to come back to Jeffrey’s. In fact, just a couple of days after we visited, Groupon posted a deal for Jeffrey’s! I call that serendipity. And next time, I’ll get a few more of those oysters stuffed in my mouth.
Jeffrey’s
West Lynn at West Twelfth
jeffreysofaustin.com
512-477-5584
Posted by Amanda on June 18, 2010
I’m going on my 13th week of pregnancy, and with dealing with the heat, hyper kiddos, and a business, sometimes I miss the days where I could go to a happy hour and have a nice drink. I have tried making mocktails before but usually it just tastes like a sorry attempt at a sophisticated kids drink. I decided to tweet Bill Norris, Austin’s rock star of mixology, about what I could do to make my drink as close to the real thing as possible. His advice was Dry Soda as my base.
If you don’t know who Dry Soda is, you should. The best way for me to describe it to you would be the wine of soda. Don’t expect your usual sickening sweet sodas that so many depend on to make it through a day, but a more refreshing bubbly drink. Their current flavors are Cucumber, Vanilla Bean, Lemongrass, Rhubarb, Juniper Berry, Kumquat, & Lavender, which open up a wide variety of ideas for creating amazing cocktails and mocktails.
I’ve had Dry Soda’s Lavender, Kumquat, and Lemongrass before and knew that with my pregnant belly my best bet to not startle the baby would be Cucumber. The Cucumber flavor is amazing and I always add it to my ginger ale for a crisp, refreshing pick-me-up.
So when it came to making a mocktail I instantly new what I was going to make. I decided on watermelon for my base flavor, simply scooping out balls of melon for the kids and collecting the juice for my drink. For sweetness I made a jalapeno simple syrup, which you make just by adding 2 sliced jalapenos to your syrup as it’s boiling. The last touch was a squeeze of lime and a pinch of hibiscus salt to bring all the flavors together.
I was really nervous on this not coming out, but I was pleasantly surprised that it really did taste like a cocktail without the boozy goodness. Michael added some white wine to his and had a spritzer, and I was thinking Campari would be a good addition to it as well.
We’re really looking forward to making more Dry Soda mocktails and cocktails as we go through baby #2′s journey.
I wanted to post an exact recipe but it all depends on your preference on what flavors you want more. Michael added less jalapeno simple syrup and more watermelon juice, and I had a even mix of everything. Let me know how it works for you!
Posted by Amanda on June 10, 2010
My cravings lately are on opposite ends of the food spectrum. From wanting egg rolls with fish & chips, to salsa with pasta, my body just can’t seem to decide what it wants. So last week when it came to the task of what’s for dinner I was so fed up with my cravings I just didn’t care what we ate, as long as it was out of the house.
Megan, myself, and Michael (my husband) sat on AIM and posted votes on where we should eat. I voted Shady Grove, because at least they would have that salad dressing I love so much. Michael voted for a place he didn’t know the name of, but tried to describe. I knew he was talking of strEAT as did Megan, but he argued with us until I showed him their website … wanna guess who was right?
{ Continue Reading “Eating at strEAT” » }
Posted by Megan on June 4, 2010
This past Sunday we took our boys to 24 Diner for a mom-and-son brunch. Granted, our children are under the age of 4 and so don’t quite understand the importance of things like “brunch”, but it’s good to start instilling an understanding of how things work at restaurants that don’t have kids’ menus.
{ Continue Reading “24 Diner” » }
Posted by Two Forked Mamas on June 1, 2010
One of the most essential things you can learn how to cook is stir fry. I know I’m not the only one who thinks so, as Jamie Oliver recently showed over 1000 people how to cook stir fry as their first dish on his Food Revolution show. And yet, somehow stir fry remains one of those mystifying meals. I’m not sure if its Asian background makes it seem too exotic, or people get stuck on the idea that it must be cooked in a wok (it doesn’t).
Stir fry is a staple in our house; something we eat almost every single week. Its versatility makes it a meal that I never get tired of. And once you learn how to cook a basic stir fry, you can change it up however you want for endless variations.
{ Continue Reading “411 Stir Fry” » }
Posted by Amanda on May 15, 2010
Having 2 kids going on 3 makes it hard not to take the easy way out. Stores are littered with quick fixes that are made to catch your kids’ eyes. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack time all neatly packaged in bright colors, masking the bad that’s hidden inside. Granted there are products now that are made with less chemicals and all-around good stuff for your kids, but there’s nothing like seeing your kids light up when you make them something yourself.
The one thing my kiddos always want at the store is Poptarts. Who wouldn’t want something coated in sprinkles and filled with sugar?! There are times where I see the chocolate s’more Poptarts and think, “Mmmm, maybe just this once.” Rather than give in, I make my own version of those sugary “breakfast” treats that I can just pull out of the freezer whenever I want to feed the kiddos.
What’s great about making your own breakfast tarts is the sky is the limit with flavor options. You can stick to your tradition brown sugar filling, peanut butter & jelly, or maybe even something savory like ham & cheese. I just bake a batch and whatever we don’t eat that day, I can put in the freezer and pop in the toaster the next time the kids need a quick breakfast. This is a must have recipe in my books.
LifeSavers
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 sticks butter
- 2 eggs
- 4 cups all purpose flour (you can do half AP and half whole wheat)
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 ounces milk
Preheat oven to 325.
Okay, so this is your typical creaming method of mixing with a paddle attachment in your kitchen aid. First add your sugar & butter and cream till light/well mixed. Slowly add your eggs scraping the sides to make sure everything is combined. In a separate bowl sift baking powder, flour, and salt, then add your flour to the sugar mixture in thirds, alternating with milk.
Once you have mixed it for awhile it should look crumbly (if tacky you can add more flour), so you are going to have to take it out of the bowl and do a little kneading until you have a tight dough. Roll out about 1/8 inch, putting filling in the middle. Then you take the bottom of top piece and egg wash and then just make sure all the edges are closed. You can put a little egg wash on the top and add sugar or even sprinkles before you put them in the oven. Bake them for 12 minutes or until golden brown and they are ready to eat.
If you just want to bake and save just wait till they cool and then you can wrap them up in an airtight container. We keep our for 2 weeks but that’s just because they don’t stay in the freezer long.
Photo taken by Megan
At this point you’re probably thinking “She didn’t post a filling!” You’re right I did not, because I want all of you to take my “LifeSaver Challenge”. I want you to go and bake like crazy and send me pics of what crazy fillings you’re using and how much your family loves them. So who’s going to take my challenge?
Amanda
|
|
|
