Comfort Food

I had a rough week.  It definitely had some high points like going to dinner with the Peds Rheum Family (well, at least that's how I like to think of them!) on Thursday night at Blossom downtown.  Yep, I drug Rick downtown after work for dinner.  It's a miracle that either one of us made it back over the Bridge, but it was for a good cause.  Dinner was delicious (of course).  I had the shrimp and grits as my entree, and at the urging of Dr. Silver, Rick and I split the most delicious dessert I have ever had that wasn't chocolate.  We had red velvet bread pudding!  Words cannot describe how wonderful it was.  I was totally stuffed, but I still managed to eat almost half of it!  Definitely a perfect comfort food.  I would KILL for that recipe!  

In my own kitchen, I made one of my favorite comfort food dishes after a rather stressful day at work on Tuesday.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to make for dinner that night or even if I really wanted to cook.  Rick had suggested pizza, but I wasn't in the mood for that either.  After searching the local grocery store fliers, I realized that sea scallops were on sale, and I immediately thought of one of my favorite comfort food recipes from epicurious.com for Sea Scallops with Mashed Potatoes.  The original recipe calls for tarragon, and I'm not a huge tarragon fan.  In the past, I've subbed rosemary, but Rick's not a big rosemary fan.  This time around, I decided to add garlic to the sauce to give it a little something extra.  As always, it was delicious!!!


Here's what I did....


Sea Scallops with Mashed Potatoes
Ingredients

• 2 pounds Yukon potatoes, peeled, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick), room temperature
• 2/3 cup (or more) low fat milk
• 12 sea scallops, side muscles trimmed
• 1/3 cup dry white wine
• 2 tablespoons chopped shallot
• 2 tablespoons half and half
• 1 tablespoon olive oil

Directions

Place potatoes in a pot and cover with water.  Add salt and bring to water to a boil over high heat.  Boil until the potato pieces break easily when pierced with a fork.  Drain water.  Add 1/2 stick of butter and milk to the potatoes in the pot and whip using a hand mixer.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Set aside.  Before serving the scallops, heat over medium heat (you may need to add more milk if they start to dry out).

Sprinkle scallops with salt and pepper.  Heat olive oil in a large pan/skillet over medium high heat.  Add scallops to the pan.  Sauté until just opaque in center, about 2 minutes per side. Transfer to plate; tent with foil. Reserve juices in skillet.   

Place garlic and shallots in small saucepan. After garlic starts to brown, add wine and simmer over medium heat until reduced to glaze, about 3 minutes. Stir in half and half and simmer 1 minute. Gradually whisk in remaining 1/2 stick butter. Stir in reserved pan juices.

Divide potatoes into 4 bowls, top with 4 scallops, and then drizzle sauce over the scallops.

Enjoy!

Lazy Saturday meal

Yesterday was the perfect day for a lazy day.  I was taking a "rest day" from my NCLEX studying.  For breakfast, we started out with waffles made with the waffle iron that I got for Christmas.  With a little help from Aunt Jemima, we had delicious waffles!  We learned, though, that next time, we'll share one instead of making one for each of us because they were huge!!  

Rick and I spent most of the cold, rainy day on the couch watching the Travel Channel.  Their programming was an afternoon of Food Paradise.  With each episode, we talked about making whatever the subject was for dinner. First, it was hot dogs and then steaks and then hamburgers, and finally, we watched an episode on bar food.  We contemplated making nachos (or heading up to Blues to get some of theirs), and then the show (Bar Food Paradise) did wings.  We were sold!  We haven't made wings in quite some time and minus the breading, that is Rick's area of expertise as I've never been a good fryer.  We decided to do hot wings with Moore's Sauce and another batch with Parmesan and garlic. In addition to the wings, we came up with the idea to do some buffalo shrimp with a half pound of frozen shrimp that I had in the freezer. Much to our delight, everything turned out wonderfully!!!  Here's what we did...

Rick's Wings

Ingredients

chicken wings

flour

Milk

Moore's Buffalo Wing Sauce

Vegetable Oil

For Parmesan wings

Additional Ingredients

Grated Parmesan Cheese (from the container)

Garlic powder

flour

 

Directions

Place the chicken wings in a large bowl and cover them with milk.  Let them soak for 20 minutes.  Place half the wings in a large Ziplock bag and add flour.  Shake the wings to coat them.

In a small bowel, mix 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese.  Add garlic powder to the mixture and stir.  Add the other half of the wings and the flour mix to another large Ziplock bag and shake to coat them.

Heat oil in a cast iron skillet over medium high heat.  Once the oil has heated, add the regular wings first.  Cook them for 10-12 minutes.  The wings can either be covered with the oil, or they can be turned half way through to make sure that each side is a golden brown.  Remove the wings from the oil and place them on a large plate that is covered with 3 paper towels.

Next, add the Parmesan wings to the oil and cook them for 10-12 minutes also.  Remove them from the oil and place them on a separate large plate that is covered with 3 paper towels.

After they have cooled, take the regular wings and place them in another large Ziplock bag.  Add Moore's Wing Sauce to the bag (the more you add, the hotter they will be).  Toss the wings to coat.

Buffalo Shrimp

Ingredients

1/2 pound shirmp (peeled and deveined)

milk

flour

Moore's Buffalo Wing Sauce

Directions

Place the shrimp in a small bowl and cover them with milk.  Let them soak for 20 minutes (we had the wings and shrimp soaking at the same time).

Remove the shrimp from the milk and place them in a medium sized tupperware container.  Add flour.  Cover the tupperware and shake to coat the shrimp.  Add the shrimp to heated vegetable oil and cook for 5 minutes.  (We did them after the wings to prevent the chicken from tasting like shrimp, but in the future, we may cook them in a separate cast iron skillet)  Remove the shrimp from the oil and place them on a large plate that is covered with 3 paper towels.

After the shrimp have cooled, place them into a medium sized Ziplock bag.  Add Moore's Wing Sauce to the bag (the more you add, the hotter they will be).  Toss the shrimp to coat.  

Enjoy!!!

Evilly Sinful Christmas Side: Four Cheese Macaroni and Cheese

Unlike at Thanksgiving, my mom and I actually cook for Christmas.  This year, Rick went home to visit his family, and I headed up to North Carolina to spend time with mine.  Since moving to the Low Country, I don't get to see a lot of snow, and I was happy to see that a little bit stuck around from last week.  As soon as I saw the snow, I called Rick from the road to tell him.  My dad suggested that I bring Rick a snowball home in a cooler so that he could experience it, too.  

I had to share a picture of the Nativity Scene that my mom made

for one the plays that she worked on!

Christmas for me has always meant Christmas Eve with my dad and Christmas with my mom.  For Christmas Eve dinner last night, we had a standing rib roast, and I encrusted it like the one that I did for Rick and I!  My mom and I do a lunch for us, and since it is just us, we have a ton of leftovers!  We pretty much have the same menu every year....ham and a turkey breast, Nanny's potatoes, green bean casserole, and stuffing. She also always does sweet potatoes in honor of my grandfather.  Last week, my mom asked me if I wanted to add anything to the menu, but I couldn't think of anything.  She said that she wanted to do macaroni and cheese, and my immediate thought was of a recipe for Cru Cafe's 4 Cheese Macaroni and Cheese.  I had made this recipe one time before for our church potluck dinner after finding it in an issue of Low Country Living magazine.  I emailed it to my mom so that she could buy all of that evil cheese that goes in it!  I'm happy to report, though, that Cru Cafe has the recipe on its website!  Here it is!

There are a couple of things that make this recipe one that I save for special occasions.  First, it is rather labor intensive.  Be prepared to grade some cheese.  Also, (and someone may have a suggestion to make this process go quicker..if you do, please comment!!!) it takes forever for the heavy cream to reduce. What I do to help it along the way is to use a sauce pan with a larger radius so that there is more surface area to heat the cream.  I also turn the heat up to a medium high for a little while to get the cream to barely boil and then reduce the heat back to medium so that I don't scorch the cream.  I swear it 3 hours!!!   Despite these complaints of mine, it is a delicious dish!


To reheat any leftovers, do it slowly on the stove while adding milk.  Be sure to stir while slowly reheating it (think low setting).  For ours on Christmas, we used elbow-shaped pasta.  Because my mom has sulfur allergies, she got us organic brown rice pasta.


Cru Cafe's Four Cheese Macaroni and Cheese
Ingredients
8 cups of heavy cream, reduced to 4 cups
1 pound dried orecchiette pasta
1 cup pepper jack cheese, hand grated
1 cup cheddar cheese, hand grated
1 cup fontina cheese, hand grated
1 cup mozzarella cheese, hand grated
1/4 cup olive oil
For final cooking
1/2 cup pepper jack cheese, hand grated
1/2 cup cheddar cheese, hand grated
1/2 cup fontina cheese, hand grated
1/2 mozzarella cheese, hand grated
salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Reduce cream to approximately 4 cups by
simmering over medium heat in a medium sized sauce pan.  Bring several
cups of well-salted water up to a boil over high heat and cook the
pasta until al dente.  Cool down rapidly in cold water then drain
well.  Coat the pasta lightly in olive oil to prevent sticking.  Set
aside.

Grate all the cheese, keeping them in separate piles.  Once the cream
is reduced, whisk in the four 1 cup quantities of cheeses.  Heat over
low heat until the cheese is fully melted.  Set aside.

In a big mixing bowl, combine the remaining cheese, pasta, and cheese
sauce.  Add salt and pepper to taste and mix well without breaking up
the pasta.  Pour into a casserole pan and bake until lightly brown on
top (about 20-25 minutes).

In Search of the Perfect Pimento Cheese

For some reason, I've been craving pimento cheese.  I'm blaming the small little sandwich that I had at our church picnic back in October.  

In the South, pimento cheese can be found all over the place...in sandwiches, on celery, with potato chips, on burgers.  When I was growing up, I was not a fan.  I'm not really sure why either.  You would think that as Southern child who loved cheese that it would've been right up my alley, but it wasn't.  Maybe I had it confused with cottage cheese.  Maybe I had tried some version that was really spicy which turned me off.  Whatever the reason, I didn't like it until my friend Amy shared some of her mother's pimento cheese one night several years ago.  She made served it grilled cheese style, and I was in love.  

After that, I tried various store bought brands, and most were misses. The deli at Harris Teeter, however, has the best pimento cheese in the world.  You can get regular or with jalapenos.  The Publix version, however, offers a lot to be desired.  I blame it on the green onions in theirs.  My friend Kelly is enamored with Palmetto Cheese which is a brand out of Pawley's Island, SC, and I have to admit that it was excellent.  But you know me, I want to have my own homemade version!

My first stop in my hunt for the perfect recipe started with the cookbook that my church recently put out.  There was a simple one with all the basic ingredients...cheddar cheese, pimentos, mayo, but for some reason, I sought more.  Could it really be that simple?  Another recipe in that collection had pecans in it which to me just doesn't seem right.  The version in my Southern Living All-Time Favorite Recipes, Volume 1 included grated onion, Worcestershire sauce, and ground red pepper.   I decided to go with the simple one and then try adding to it from there.  I didn't go all crazy and just added a couple of things.  Not bad for my first try!  I think that if I had it to do all over again (and I will!), I would substitute a sprinkle of red pepper for the ground black pepper.  Something about it is a little overpowering.  I've left out the pepper in the recipe below.


If I try it again (which I'm sure I will), I'll be sure to post any updated changes.



Pimento Cheese
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups shredded sharp cheddar (from a bag)
1 cup shredded mild cheddar (shredded by hand)
1 4 oz jar of diced pimentos 
1 cup light mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt



Directions
Mix ingredients together in a bowl and enjoy!

Another Katie Classic: Spicy Shrimp Pasta

This recipe is one of the first ones that came into my cooking repertoire. The first time that I ever made it was back in 1998. I found it in the Southern Living 1997 Annual Recipes Cookbook, and it is super easy which was perfect for me back then. I've made a couple of changes from the original recipe, but I still love it to this day. I've made it for quite a few people and shared it with several of them. I also like it because it provides two nice size servings. I hope that you enjoy it, too!


Spicy Shrimp Pasta
Ingredients
8 oz of linguine
3/4 pound peeled, deveined shrimp
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup green onions, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning
1/2 cup whipping cream
1/4 cup cooking wine with lemon
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (sometimes, I sub the Parmesan-Romano blend)
2 teaspoons dried crushed red pepper
5 teaspoons dried parsley

Directions
Cook linguine per box directions in water that has been salted and seasoned with garlic powder. Drain, return to pot, and set aside.

Heat olive oil in a large skillet and add green onions and garlic. Saute until tender. Add Cajun seasoning and stir for one minute

Stir in shrimp and whipping cream. Reduce heat and simmer for 3 minutes, stirring often. Stir in wine and simmer for 3 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add sauce, Parmesan cheese, and red pepper to the pot with linguine and heat over low heat, stirring gently. Stir in parsley and serve immediately.

Would it really be a Low Country blog without Shrimp and Grits?

Before I moved to the Charleston area, I had never tried shrimp and grits.  I always thought that it sounded like a pretty cool dish since I pretty much like anything involving shrimp and I am a fan of grits.  Grits are definitely a Southern thing, and it's really hard, if not impossible, to try to explain what exactly grits are to someone born and raised outside of the South as I learned when my cousin had her bachelorette party in Charleston this summer.  I joined them for dinner one night at Magnolia's, and several of the girls were from up north.  It was amusing trying to explain grits to them when they saw them on the menu.  Magnolia's has awesome shrimp and grits, by the way, and even though I contemplating ordering something else, I couldn't resist and had to order them!  I knew I would regret it otherwise.

I am really lucky to have access to such wonderful local shrimp.  The shrimping industry is a huge part of life in the Low Country, but unfortunately, the downturn in the economy has really hurt the shrimpers.  I try my best to buy local whenever possible.  The picture is on that I took of shrimp boats on Shem Creek here in Mount Pleasant a couple of years ago.

Since first trying shrimp and grits, I've had them at I don't even know how many places around town.  Sometimes, they were awesome, and sometimes, they weren't.  You can get them with brown gravy or more of a tomato-y sauce with the grits.  Over the years, I've also tried out quite a few recipes in search of one that I would be proud to call my own.  The one complaint that I do have with making them is that to make a to die for dish, you've got to use heavy cream with the grits.  Not half and half, not low fat or even whole milk...straight up, bad for ya, hip-expanding heavy cream.  Trust me when I say that it is definitely worth it.  And no, instant grits will NOT do!!!!  You've got to use the stone ground variety.

Shrimp and Grits

For the Grits:

Ingredients
1 cup stone ground grits
4 cups low sodium chicken broth
6 tablespoons butter
1 garlic clove minced
3/4  cup whipping cream

Directions
Bring chicken broth, whipping cream, butter and garlic to a boil in a heavy saucepan.  Gradually whisk in grits and return to a boil.  Continue to whisk constantly.  Reduce heat to low.  Simmer uncovered until grits thicken, whisking often, for around 15 minutes.


For the shrimp:
Ingredients
2 pounds of large, uncooked shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/3 cup shallots, chopped
1/2 cup sweet onion, chopped
1/2 cup green pepper, chopped
2 large garlic cloves, minced.
1/2 cup white wine
1 can diced tomatoes
2 tablespoons fresh parlsey
2 tablespoons fresh chives
Creole seasoning
4 ounces of prosciutto, cut into thin strips
1-2 tablespoons Extra virgin olive oil

Directions

Season shrimp with Creole seasoning and set aside.

Heat olive oil in a heavy, large skillet over medium-high heat.  Add onions and green pepper and saute for 3 minutes.  Add garlic and shallots and saute for another 2 minutes.  Add shrimp and saute for 2 minutes.  Remove shrimp from the skillet.  Add wine and boil until reduced to glaze (around 5 minutes).  Add diced tomatoes (juices included), parsley, chives and prosciutto and simmer for 2 minute.  Return shrimp to the skillet and simmer for another 2 minutes.  Season with salt and pepper if desired.

Add grits into bowels, and top each serving with shrimp mixture.  It should serve 4-6.

Enjoy!

Saturdays in the South

As I'm sure you've been able to surmise, Saturdays in the South always involve college sports.  This time of year, it's college football., and in a month of so, it will be college basketball time.  This evening, Rick's Carolina (not to be confused with mine which is the REAL Carolina--UNC) will be taking on Tennessee in what he calls "Big Boy Football."  It looks like even Halloween is going to take a backseat to the game tonight which is fine with me.  I'm in an interesting place in my life when I don't have children and I've had enough Halloween fun over the years to feel no regret in sitting this one out.  Due to the lower percentage of children in my neighborhood, we are going to be hanging out here to watch the game.  I picked up a bag of candy just in case some trick-or-treaters come by, but Rick is hoping that we don't have many to interrupt the game.  Of course, that would mean that we get to enjoy all those little fun-sized bags of M&Ms!


We are FINALLY going to be making the pork tenderloin recipe from the Vera Bradley cookbook that I picked up while in North Carolina this evening for the game.  I opted not to marinate it for the whole 24 hours, but hopefully, 10 hour will be plenty of time.  I'll definitely be blogging about it tomorrow.


This morning, we were debating what to do for breakfast. I was trying to talk Rick into making me breakfast in bed, but unfortunately, I was unsuccessful.  On the fortunate side, however, I was too tired to make the pork chops that he brought over last night so we decided to fry them up, put them on biscuits, and have a pork-filled day!  Being from the South, frying is a part of life.  I'm not a huge fryer, but over the past year or so, I've become more comfortable with it.  Pork is another stable in any good Southerners diet (albeit a bad one).  My home state of North Carolina is known for its fabulous barbecue, and I was converted to the vinegar-based style during college.  I'll have to post my crock pot "barbecue" recipe here at some point.


So here is the goodness (and badness for the waist line) that we called breakfast this morning.  Rick put the whole pork chop on his, but I halved mine and ate the other half on the side (pictured in a wee-bit blurry picture below).



Saturday Morning Pork Chop Biscuits

Ingredients
2 Frozen Grands Biscuits
2 pork chops
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
3/4 cup bread crumbs
1/4 cup panko
flour
Vegetable oil


Directions
Preheat oven to 375F.  Once oven is preheated, place biscuits on a ungreased baking sheet.  Cook for 16-22 minutes.


Heat oil (about 1/4 inch deep) in a heavy skillet.  

In a bowl, whisk together egg and milk.  In another bowl, mix together bread crumbs.  Place on a plate to coat pork chops.  Place flour on the plate to dredge pork chops. Dredge a pork chop in the flour and shake off the excess.  Dip the pork chop in the egg-milk mixture, and the coat with bread crumbs and panko.  Repeat with the other pork chop.


When the oil is heated, place the pork chops in the oil.  Cook for around 4-5 minutes per side for a total cooking time of around 10 minutes. Use a knife to cut the chop to check for doneness.  Cooking time will vary based on thickness of the pork chops.  Place the pork chops on a plate covered with paper towels to drain.  Once drained, place the pork chop in the biscuit.  

Rick likes to put  a little mustard on his.  Enjoy!!!

Chicken Parmesan

When Rick and I were deciding when to do the new pork tenderloin recipe that I've been wanting to do (it has been postponed until the weekend), we started talking about which recipes that I've made that we both love. We actually have this conversation quite often, and he always brings up the Parmesan-crusted tilapia as one of his favorites. Another one that we both agree on being in our favorites list would be Chicken Parmesan.

The first time that I made it was just prior to my starting this blog. We had gone out to dinner a couple of weeks before that, and Rick had ordered Chicken Parmesan. I left the restaurant with dinner-envy as I wished that I had ordered that instead of what I had. Don't you hate when that happens? Something wonderful came out of it, though: I started scouring the internet for the perfect Chicken Parm recipe. Luckily for me, foodnetwork.com provided a couple that I was able to combine and tinker with to create this one.  

While I was taking the pictures for this blog entry, Ty kept trying to get to see what I was up to and get to the food.  I thought I'd include the picture with him peaking up from the chair, too.  Enjoy!!

Chicken Parmesan
Ingredients
4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cups of Italian bread crumbs
1 cups of panko (Japanese bread crumbs)
Fresh ground black pepper
All purpose flour (for dredging)
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons of reduced fat milk
Vegetable oil for frying
6 Cheese Blend grated cheese
Cheddar cheese
Marinara sauce (recipe to follow)

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 F.

Put each chicken breast between two pieces of plastic wrap and pound them out to a uniform thickness (around 1/3 inch).

In a large bowl, mix together salt, Italian bread crumbs and panko. Season with fresh ground black pepper.

Place flour on a large plate. In another large bowl, whisk together eggs and milk. Dredge a chicken breast in flour and shake off excess. Next, dip the chicken breast into the egg mixture, and then dredge in the bread crumb-panko mixture, shaking off an excess. Transfer to a baking sheet and repeat with the remaining chicken breasts.

In a large skillet, pour vegetable oil to a depth of 1/2 inch. Heat the oil over medium heat until it registers 400F on a deep frying thermometer. Fry one breast at a time until golden brown on each side (around 6 minutes total). Using tongs, remove the chicken from oil and place on a paper-towel covered plate.

Lightly brush a baking dish with olive oil. Cover the bottom of the baking dish with half of the marinara and place the chicken over the sauce. Cover with remaining sauce. Scatter 6 cheese blend on top, and sprinkle a little bit of cheddar cheese on top of it. Bake until sauce is bubbling and the cheese is brown (around 30 minutes). Serve immediately over the pasta of your choice.

Marinara Sauce
Ingredients
1 jar of store bought marinara sauce
1 sweet onion, chopped
1 green pepper chopped
3 gloves of garlic, minced
1/2 cup fresh basil
Extra virgin olive oil
Italian seasoning grinder

Directions
In a medium sauce pan, heat sauce over low heat. Add basil. Stir occasionally.

In a medium skillet, heat oil over medium high heat. Add onion, garlic, and green pepper and season with Italian seasoning. Stir until vegetables are tender (around 5 minutes). Transfer to the sauce and raise heat under sauce to medium. Cook (stirring occasionally) for another 10 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste.

Tomato-Basil Crab Bisque and Grilled Cheese

Looking for something that wouldn't aggravate the dental work that Rick had this week, I chose to make us soup this evening. Rick readily admitted that he isn't much of a soup person, but I was hopeful that this delicious Tomato-Basil Crab Bisque from epicurious.com. I was excited because I was going to get to use some of the crab stock that I made a while back. In this recipe, I substitute it for the bottled clam juice and also mix a little bit in with tomato juice in place of the Clamato juice required by the recipe. Instead of using crackers, I decided to make cheese crisps to go with the soup. The meal wouldn't be complete with out a yummy multi-cheese grilled cheese sandwiches!!! Because he had dental work done today, he did want to take any chances with the cheese crisps after he had half of one. He confesssed, though, that if circumstances were different, there wouldn't have been any left. He did enjoy a grilled cheese and a little soup, though.

Here are the recipes:

3-Cheese Cheese Crisps

Ingredients
1/2 container of 3-cheese blend
Fresh ground pepper to taste

Directions
Preheat oven to 400F. Spray a baking sheet with Pam Cooking Spray, or grease the pan, or cover with parchment paper. Mix cheese and pepper in a small bowl. Place one tablespoon of the mixture on the baking sheet and space about 1/2 inch apart. Bake until golden and crisp (around 3-5 minutes).



Multi-Cheese Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Ingredients
Bread, two slices per sandwich
Butter
American cheese slices
Six-cheese blend
Cheddar cheese

Directions
Butter one side of two slices of bread, and repeat for desired number of sandwiches. In a small bowl, mix a handful of cheddar and a handful of six cheese blend together. Place one piece of bread buttered side down in a pan that is heated over medium heat. Cover the top bread with the cheese mixture and let the cheese begin to melt. Add a slice of America cheese and the other piece of bread. As the cheese continues to melt, flip the sandwich. Continue to flip until the sandwich is lightly browned on both sides. Repeat steps for each sandwich.


Tomato-Basil Crab Bisque

The following recipe is my adaptation of the epicurious.com recipe.
Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  
• 2 cans (6 oz) crabmeat
• 1 can diced tomatoes
  
• 1/3 cup plus 3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups tomato juice
• 1 cup crab stock
  
• 1 cup whipping cream
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 1/4 cup white wine
  
• 2 teaspoons Old Bay seasoning
• 1/4 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Directions

Heat olive oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Add crabmeat, tomato, 1/3 cup chopped fresh basil, and garlic. Sauté 2 minutes. Whisk in flour; stir 2 minutes. Whisk in tomato juice, 1/2 cup crab stock and next 5 ingredients. Reduce heat to low and simmer until slightly thickened, about 10 minutes.

Stir in lemon juice; bring to simmer. Season with salt and pepper. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Chill uncovered until cold, then cover and keep refrigerated. Bring to simmer before continuing.) Divide soup among 6 bowls. Sprinkle with remaining 3 tablespoons basil and serve. Serves 6 as a first course.

Breakfast for dinner

This week, Rick hasn't been able to come over since he has had to do work at home in preparation for next week. I remember him having to do this last year, but it still makes me a little lonely without anyone to cook for besides myself. Tonight, I really needed to go to the grocery store, but with the darkening skies approaching, it would be a much better idea for me to whip up something for myself that didn't require that I leave the house.

My freezer had a couple of lonely frozen meals, but I save those for weekdays when I don't have leftovers to enjoy the next day. I also didn't feel like thawing out the half pound of shrimp either. The one thing that caught my eye was the bag of frozen Grands Biscuits. My stepmother introduced me to these wonderful, frozen delights several years ago when I was visiting North Carolina. At first glance, it doesn't seem possible that these small frozen disks will become a delicious fluffy biscuit, but trust me when I say that such a miracle does happen! I tossed around the idea of using the little bit of sausage that I have left (before it goes bad) to do a sausage biscuit, but then it hit me...biscuit and gravy!!!!

Making gravy is really pretty easy. While the biscuit was baking in the oven, I browned enough sausage to make a patty and broke it up along the way. Once the sausage was cooked, I reduced the heat and added 1% milk to the pan (enough to cover it) and two splashes of heavy cream. I also added about 1 tablespoon of all-purpose flour and little bit of fresh ground pepper and salt. I used the heavy cream because I know what a pain it can be to get the gravy to thicken when using reduced fat milk (which is what I usually do). I let the mixture come to a boil and thicken before serving over the halved biscuit. I know Rick was jealous when I told him about my dinner. :)

Here is the recipe. I left it a little open with the ingredients so that it can be adjusted for more than one person. Enjoy!!!


Biscuits and Gravy
Ingredients
1 frozen Grands Biscuit per person
1 sausage patty per person
Milk
All Purpose Flour
Fresh Ground Pepper
Salt

Directions
Preheat oven to 375F per direction on the Grands Biscuit bag. Once the oven has preheated, cook biscuit(s) until they are golden on top (probably around 15 minutes).

While the biscuit(s) is/are cooking (when you have about 5 minutes of cook time left on the biscuits), brown sausage over medium high heat. After it has cooked thoroughly, add enough milk to cover the sausage, around 1 tablespoon of flour, and salt and pepper to taste. Reduce heat and simmer to let the mixture thicken.

When the biscuit(s) are done, take them out and half them. Cover biscuit with gravy. Divide gravy mixture evenly between biscuits if doing more than one.