Strawberry Shortcake...the Perfect Dinner

This weekend we headed down to visit family in Rye, NY. We had a great time catching up and also had some great food! Dinner was so good that we forgot to take pictures. The scrumptious menu included:

Grilled Jack Daniels marinated flank steak
Brats sauteed in beer with onions
Wild rice salad with cranberries
Potato and green bean salad
Mixed green salad
Whole grain bread
Grilled corn

We also had some fun wines with the appetizers and the meal. The house wine, Gazela Vinho Verde, was light and refreshing - I'm going to have to pick up a case and make it the house wine here. We also had a zinfandel, pinot noir, and a fourth that I can't remember (the effect of trying them all).

Dessert was so good that it could have been a dinner by itself. We had strawberry shortcake with homemade shortbread and vanilla whipped cream. Strawberry shortcake is one of those desserts that I order whenever I see it on a menu and no matter how full I am I make room. The portions were my sized here - huge! Here's a close up picture to drool over:

Thanks to our hosts for a fabulous visit! Stay tuned for the good eats on our road trip back up through Connecticut casino country.

Spice up a Monday Night Dinner

A quick note before this post. Thanks for reading! I'm excited to find out that so many new and old friends stop by to check out what's cooking. I hope that you'll take a minute to say hi in the comments and let me know what you think - or just say hello! It's fun to see all the readers and find out where they are from! Thanks! Now on to the fun....

Cooking almost every night is a challenge - coming up with interesting meals and making sure to vary the ingredients. Often I find myself going back to the same meals and repeating them a little too frequently. The trick is to vary some piece of the meal to keep it interesting.

One of these meals for us is meatloaf muffins. The recipe lends itself a lot of variations - different veggies, sauces, even types of ground meat. For this occasion I kept it pretty simple, but decided to dress them up as 'cupcakes'. The perfect way to spice up a Monday night!

For the 'cake', I used the meatloaf muffin recipe that I previously posted. I cut out foil squares to line my muffin tin (no foil muffin cups on hand). I sprayed them well with some olive oil cooking spray before filling them with the meatloaf mixture. I topped the meat with a good layer of ketchup before cooking.

For the icing, I made some basic mashed potatoes and put them into a large ziploc bag with the bottom corner cut off (a make-shift pastry bag). I piped the potatoes on top and 'sprinkled' them with some dried basil.

For a real party, serve with green bean 'candles'! I have to admit, I feel silly even posting that sentence. Here's the photo anyway!

Guest Post by Jim (our fab photographer)

When our friends Jim and Chris came over for dinner last month for the Good Cook Doris photo shoot, I made a quick apple-cinnamon pull apart bread with biscuits. Jim put his own spin on it with fresh peaches and cinnamon rolls. Looks delicious!

Make sure to check out Jim's photography too!