National Jelly-Filled Doughnut Day

Today is National Jelly-Filled Doughnut Day!


I used a recipe that I had cut out of the 12/3/02 issue ofWoman's World magazine but never tried before. The doughnuts were easy to make and turned out great. The filling was Smucker's seedless blackberry jam. They were a yummy after-lunch dessert.




Some powdered sugar fun was inevitable. Silly boss!






Camp Menu

B) Bagels and English Muffins with spreads
fruit, cereal, muffins

L) BBQ pulled pork sliders
pepper parmesan potato wedges
fresh cole slaw
donuts

D) cheese and pepperoni pizzas on herb crust
caesar salad
cut peaches and pears
OREO dirt cups with a sour gummy worm

National Chocolate Ice Cream Day!

Today is National Chocolate Ice Cream Day!

To celebrate I got a box of Healthy Choice fudge bars to serve as dessert after supper. It's kind of cheating on my project but I don't have an ice cream maker (yet?) and all my free time today between lunch and dinner was spent at Costco anyway.


Camp Menu:
B) bagels, english muffins, fruit, cereal, fresh baked muffins (blueberry, maple bacon, lemon poppy), yogurt and granola

L) cream of broccoli soup, chicken fajita bar, rice, black beans, beef nachos with cheese sauce, baby carrots, celery sticks

D) make-your-own sandwich bar (wheat bread, hoagie roll, toasted burger bun, croissant, turkey, ham, salami, swiss, provolone, american, lettuce, tomato, red onion, banana pepper, jalapeno, mayo, mustard, honey mustard, ranch, zesty fry sauce), pesto pasta salad with fresh mozz and sundried tomatoes, chips, baby carrots, celery sticks and fudge bars

National Applesauce Cake Day (and a new camp favorite)

Today is National Applesauce Cake Day!

I found a recipe in the Food For Fifty cookbook that we have. The cake was full of raisins and walnuts and had a cream cheese frosting. It was good, but not exciting enough for me to want to put it on my make-often list.

Lunch today was a baked chili and cornbread dish. Very easy and tasty.

Supper today was "YAA-FIL-A" sandwiches. Soooo yummy!

We have some people on staff from the South and they are huge Chick-Fil-A fans. Unfortunately there are no Chick-Fil-A restaurants anywhere near here. Being the wonderful person that I am, I located a copycat recipe for their sandwiches. The ingredients were surprising but it worked. Let me tell you, it got rave reviews. I served the fresh fried chicken on a buttery grilled bun with toppings (lettuce, onion, pickles, mayo, mustard, honey mustard, ranch, spicy fry sauce) on the side so each person could customize their own. Baked crinkle cut fries and a leftover dessert bar completed the meal. This one is definately a keeper!

The only hard part was that I did my frying in a 12" electric skillet which made the cooking process take a long time (since only 4 or 5 pieces fit at a time). Maybe it's time for the camp to buy a fryer. Maybe...

National Gingerbread Day

Before I get into today's holiday, let me say that the blueberry frozen yogurt (that I wrote about yesterday) was delicious. Today was a warm and sunny day and this was the perfect cool treat for our outside lunch. I will definately be trying some other flavors soon.

Today is National Gingerbread Day!

I don't know about everyone else but I usually only think of gingerbread at Christmas time. Here's a picture of some gingerbread cookies I made this past December.

They were decorated to look like all of our full-time staff members and their families. Each person got to take their cookies home with them. I'm "the one" in the purple dress.

With today being too busy (and too nice out) for me to roll and cut and decorate enough cookies for our Summer staff, I decided to do gingerbread bars instead. The Land O Lakes website had a simple recipe (http://www.landolakes.com/recipe/1068/easy-gingerbread-bars) that was delicious. Best part is that it called for sprinkles. A little friend once told me that sprinkles are candy confetti and they make everything better. I agree! Red and green sugars seemed appropriate for a Christmasy cookie. There were requests for me to make them again soon. I guess gingerbread is not just for the holidays anymore!

There's 3 American Food Holidays today!

Today is National Cheese Day!

Cheese is one of the best foods ever. Really! So many great flavors and ways to enjoy them. But since I got a late start on this food-day adventure I chose to keep it simple and make a grilled cheese sandwich. Not just any grilled cheese, an EPIC grilled cheese. Yes, I know epic is a grossly overused and already outdated word but it seemed appropriate.

What makes this sandwich special is an extra slice of toast in the middle. This is a classic American on White bread. Can you see how it is just oozing with cheeseyliciousness?

Today is National Frozen Yogurt Day!

I have never made frozen yogurt before and I don't have a machine that makes it. Thankfully I found an easy recipe using ingredients that I already had that could be made in a saucepan.(http://www.ehow.com/way_5313162_frozen-yogurt-recipe.html)

Blueberries in the blender

Cooking with sugar and lemon juice - great swirls of color

Cooled with milk and yogurt added


It needs to be in the freezer overnight. I'll post the results tomorrow.

I'm hoping it's better than the spinach ice cream!

Today is National Cognac Day!

I didn't make anything special for this, so here's a website with some info for anyone who might be interested. (http://www.cognac-world.com/)

American Food Holidays...Let's Celebrate : )

June 3rd was National Donut Day. It was also the 1st full day for our Joshua Project (staff of college students) so I wanted to celebrate both of these great things. We don't have any good donut shops here in Bozeman so I made my own.





The top ones had chocolate powdered sugar - which later turned into a decliciously fudgy mess - and the bottom ones had cinnamon sugar. This was only my 2nd attempt at making donuts (the 1st try was an epic fail) and they came out pretty good. Next time I will make dough the night before so they have more time to rise, and perhaps frost them and add sprinkles. Because really, sprinkles make everything better!

The idea of "National (some kind of food) Day" intrigued me so I did some research to find the origin. Along the way I got distracted - as always - but did end up finding a great list of American Food Drink Days at http://www.tfdutch.com/foodh.htm. That inspired another great idea. I have challenged myself to make something each day that co-ordinates with the food being honored. The people around camp are pretty excited about this and many have volunteered to be taste-testers.

Retreat Food (Friday)

BREAKFAST:

Burrito (scrambled egg, sausage, home fried potatoes with peppers and onions, shredded Cheddar/Jack cheese, salsa...in a tortilla)

Cranberry Orange Coffee Cake with Walnut Topping

Pears

LUNCH:

Thai Style Chicken with Peanut Sauce

Basmati Rice

Steamed Broccoli

Mandarin Oranges

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, since today was National Oatmeal Cookie Day!

True story: This morning I was flipping through the camp's recipe book trying to decide what kind of cookie to make for dessert. I picked oatmeal raisin because I have not had them in a long time. After they were baked I found out it was "their special day". (Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of them but they did not all get eaten so if anyone really wants to see them let me know.)

SUPPER:

Cheese Lasagna

Green Beans

Caesar Salad

French Bread (there was none left for me)

(Does anyone know how to officially count the layers of a lasagna? Is it how many layers of noodles, or how many layers of fillings, or how many layers of noodles plus fillings, or something else? Just wondering)

Dessert was

SMOKIN' SMORES

I first saw this idea at the camping conference we went to last month, and have noticed it several times since on catering and specialty food websites. This mens' group seemed to be the perfect time to try it out.

Use melted chocolate (either a good ganache or candy melts - anything that will harden after being melted) to "glue" a marshmallow or 2 to a graham cracker square. Leave 1 corner dry for a clothespin. After the chocolate has set attach a clothespin to each cracker. This will give you something to hold on to as you torch the marshmallow, and a safe way to pass it out.

As with any trend there are fancy and expensive presentation options available for purchase. I just arranged mine on a sheet pan with parchment paper. It's best to have them all set up a good amount of time before you need them.

Then comes the best part....use a butane torch to roast the marshmallow. Go around the edges and as the top part flames up, give it to the guest who will be eating it so they can blow it out.

This one's a bit well done. Do you know how hard it is to hold something and light it on fire and take a picture of it all at the same time? It's hard!

This dessert was a huge success. It is not expensive and makes a memorable experience. One guy ate 6 of them.

Food on a stick = fun

Food on fire = fun

Food on a stick AND on fire = so much fun