Recipe Catch Up - Week of 7/12 - Mystery Chicken & Neiman Marcus Bars

So, it turns out that I actually made two things the week of 7/12. I kinda thought I had, but I could only specifically remember the Neiman Marcus Bars. But, a look in the camera revealed a picture of a chicken sandwich. I could only guess it was Mexican-style, since the photo showed chips & salsa as a side dish. So the question was, where did the recipe come from? I checked my "recipe box" on the Food Network website and my "starred items" on my Google Reader. Nothing looked familiar. I glanced through a couple of cookbooks. Didn't see anything. I checked in all the spots (other than where they belong) where I stash the recipes I print out. I didn't find it. So, I have picture with no recipe. I guess I might never know. It sure looks like it was good, though, doesn't it?

So on to the Neiman Marcus Bars. My first experience with this delicious dessert was several months ago. Alec and I went to a small town nearby for a sausage festival. In addition to the sausage (which I of course didn't eat) there was a bake sale. We had received free tickets for the sausage meal, so we decided to buy something from the bake sale to support the organization. Okay, that's not the only reason. We picked out a yummy looking plate of something called "Neiman Marcus Bars." We had never heard of them, so we decided to give them a try.

They were delicious! I started looking for a recipe, and I found quite a few, but none of them sounded exactly like what we bought. I never made them, and I kind of forgot about them for a while.

Until I was getting ready for my mom to come visit and trying to pick out some recipes to try while she was here. I pulled out a cookbook she gave me a long time ago, but I had never used, called "An Appetite for Art" which was published by the NC Museum of Art. As I was leafing through it, what did I see but a recipe for Neiman Marcus bars! So, I decided to give them a try.

Neiman Marcus Bars
from "An Appetite for Art" complied & edited by Elizabeth K. Norfleet for the NC Museum of Art.

Ingredients
1 box pound cake mix
1/2 c. butter
3 eggs, divided
1 c. chopped pecans
1 lb. confectioner's sugar
1 8-oz block cream cheese

Directions
Preheat oven to 350. Grease a 9-inch x 13-inch pan with butter.

In medium bowl with electric mixer combine cake mix, butter, 1 egg and pecans. Press mixture into pan bottom.

In another bowl, beat with mixer to combine: sugar, cream cheese and 2 remaining eggs. Spread over cake mixture.

Bake for 35-40 minutes or until golden brown.

Cool and cut into bars. Makes 16 bars.

The Verdict
First of all, it made way more than 16 bars! I sent Alec to the office with about 1/2 of them! They tasted yummy, but I vaguely remembered a different texture from the ones we bought. It seems like maybe those had pecans in the cream cheese mixture as well as the base, or maybe just sprinkled on top. I will probably try another version next time!

Cake Decorating - Week 2

I'm doing two blog posts tonight because I am so excited to show my first cake!

The first week of cake decorating class, there wasn't anything to show. In class, we just went over the lessons, went through the tools in the class kit, learned how to make the "Class Buttercream" icing and how to ice our cakes. One good tip I learned was how to get smooth icing: after you spread the icing, let the cake sit a while until the icing starts to firm up. Take a piece of wax paper and lay it over the top. Run your spatula over the wax paper. Pull up the wax paper and your icing will be smooth! (That is if you wait long enough - I didn't the first time. Humidity can also be a factor - like I can do anything about that in TX!) Do the same thing with strips of wax paper wrapped around the sides of the cake.

So, for Week 2, we had to bake an 8-inch round cake and ice it. In class, we would learn to use the star tip to fill in designs and a thin, round tip to do lines.

I make my cake from a mix. Normally I like to bake from scratch, but someone I know who has taken the class advised me to just use a mix, because there's enough to worry about with getting the icing ready and practicing the techniques without worrying about if the cake is going to come out, and mixes are hard to mess up!

Here is my cake, with the base icing. I give myself a B- for the smoothness.

"Why," you might ask "is it shaped like that?" Well, that would be because the dog ate my homework.

I had baked the cake and put on one coat of icing. Alec and I were in the living room watching the Olympics. I heard a noise in the kitchen and I yelled "River, get down." Here's what happened next:

Alec: What is she [River] doing?

Me: I think she was trying to get on the counter & lick my cake.

Alec walks into the kitchen.

Alec: Um, hon, she didn't just try to lick the cake.

I walk into the kitchen and I see this on the counter:

Yes, that would be my cake, with the icing licked off most of one side, and a big bite out of it. After I panicked for a minute (it was around 9 pm and I didn't really have time or energy to make another cake) I had a brainstorm - the design for the cake in the class book was a rainbow! I could just cut off the part River had licked and the design would still fit! So that's what I did.

In addition to the cake, we had to take a bunch of icing to class. We were supposed to color the icing for the rainbow (I'd misunderstood and thought we were going to do that in class, so all mine was white. But, here are all my containers ready to go:Class went a lot better than I expected. I've tried a little bit of cake decorating to enhance some of my bundt cakes from my patterned pans. I've never done very well. But, I was pleased with my results. I think my rainbow looked really good. I didn't do so well with the border around the bottom, but I don't have a turntable, so it's a little difficult.

Alec took the cake into work today and he said everyone liked it.

Next week, we will learn to make clown figures, and icing roses!

Recipe Catch-Up - Week of 6/28 - Roasted Chicken Breasts w/ Lemon, Garlic, Rosemary & Seasoned Potatoes

Well, I scanned through my camera, and it didn't jog my memory for the two weeks of recipes I'm missing. I thought maybe it was because I forgot to take pictures. But, what I actually forgot was that our camera was broken. So that would explain why there are no pictures. I guess those two weeks are just gone forever.

Anyway, the week of 6/28 I made this:

Roasted Chicken Breasts w/ Lemon
from Good Things Catered by Katie

Ingredients
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, trimmed of excess fat
1 1/2 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened but not melted
Zest of 1/2 large lemon, lemon reserved
2 large cloves of garlic, minced or pressed
2 tsp fresh rosemary leaves
1 tsp olive oil
1 tsp fresh parsley, finely chopped
3 russet potatoes, washed thoroughly and cut into 3/4 inch cubes
Kosher salt ground pepper

Directions
Preheat oven to 425 degrees and line large baking pan with foil for easy cleanup.

Pat chicken breasts dry, season liberally with salt and ground pepper, and place breast-side up at least one to two inches apart in pan.

In small bowl combine butter, lemon zest, garlic, and rosemary and stir with spoon to thoroughly combine. With back of spoon, spread butter mixture on top of chicken breasts evenly.

Slice reserved lemon and place slices in pan around the chicken.

In medium bowl place cubed potato and toss with 1 tsp olive oil, parsley and salt and pepper.

Scatter potatoes around chicken breasts.

Place baking dish in oven and cook about 30-40 minutes or until thickest portion of chicken breast has reached 175 degrees.

Remove from oven, take chicken breasts out of pan onto a warm serving platter and tent with foil.

Take one pinch more of Kosher salt to sprinkle over potatoes, toss and place back in oven for 5-10 minutes.

Remove potatoes and serve with chicken.

The Verdict
Of course, I have no idea if I substituted anything. More than likely, I used either Yukon Gold or red potatoes. I have a vague recollection of picking up the Russets in the grocery store and Alec requesting something different. How I remember that, I don't know. I remember the most random things.

Anyway, I do remember it was good, and I will probably make it again!

Couch to 5K, Week 5, Day 3 Reprise #1

I tried this one last night - 5 minute warm up walk, then 20 straight minutes of running. I didn't quite make it. After 10 minutes of running, I had to slow down to a walk for a minute to take a sip of Gatorade (note to self - pour into sports bottle next time!). After I went back to running, I only made it 3 minutes more. But hey, I can run for 10 minutes!

I'll give it a try again tomorrow . . .

Couch to 5K - Week 5, Day 2 Reprise

Yesterday I went to the gym to do my running. It was less than 100 degrees, but still over 90. I've told myself I'm not going to run outside until it's 85 or below. Of course, that could be *ages* from now. But, better to run on the treadmill than pass out.

So anyway, I did Couch to 5K Week 5, Day 2. Since I am doing it with the podcasts this time I'm basing on time, not distance like I did before. The interval is:
5-minute warm up walk
8-minute run
5-minute walk
8-minute run

After the warmup, the distance is supposed to be 2 miles. The problem is that 2 miles in 21 minutes is just over a 10-minute mile, which is *way* too fast for me. So, I am counting the 5-minute warm up walk in my distance.

I was disappointed with my 2-miles-in-31-minutes time from Tuesday because I know I ultimately need to be faster than that. So, yesterday I tried to kick it up a bit. About 5 minutes into the 2nd run interval, I started to feel like I couldn't do it. But, instead of slowing down to a walk, I just reduced the speed a couple of notches so I was still running, but not as fast. I made it through 2 minutes and then reduced it one more notch for the last minute. But, I did run the whole 8 minutes!

I still wasn't quite up to 2 miles when the podcast ended so I kept at the walking speed until I got there. In the end, I did 2 miles in 28:38 minutes, which I was happy with.

Cooking Update

Cake Decorating
Monday was supposed to be the first day of my (re-scheduled) cake decorating class. But, it didn't happen. When I got to the store, I found out the class had been postponed because the Wilton people did not get the instruction books sent to the store. The instructor said that she was going to call and get them sent straight to her so she'd be sure she had them so we can start next week. Plus, she said she's going to try to get us an extra free gift for the trouble! Yeah for free stuff! Actually, it wasn't so bad for me, but I feel really bad if anyone was from one of the outlying towns and had a 20 or 30 minute drive.


Recipes of the Week
I've tried lots of new recipes that I haven't posted. Most of them are for Mexican food. It occured to me last week that I'd tried 2 or 3 Mexican entrees in a row. So, I made a Mexican salad to take to the pool party we went to Saturday. But then I made a really yummy Italian dish on Sunday. I just checked the blog and the last new thing I posted was June 13! I'm really going to have to dig deep in my memory to recall what all I've made. Let's see:


Week of 8/2- Black Bean & Corn Salad, Pasta Carbonara
Week of 7/26 - Grilled Chicken & Veggie Tacos
Week of 7/19 - Chicken Taquitos
Week of 7/12 - Neiman Marcus Bars
Week of 7/5 - maybe nothing; I was out of town most of the week, but it seems like I did *something* new the day I left.
Week of 6/28 - Roasted Chicken Breasts w/ Lemon
Week of 6/21 - no idea
Week of 6/14 - no idea


So, that's 2 totally unaccounted for weeks, plus 1 week I'm not sure about. I'll have to scan through my camera and see if that jogs my memory

Back on the Running Bandwagon

I've been a real slacker lately about my running. About 3 weeks ago, I decided I needed to go back to Couch to 5K and decided I'd pick up kind of where I left off, at the beginning of Week 5. Now that I have an iPod, I looked for podcasts for the program, and found one at http://www.djsteveboy.com/1day25k.html. I liked it because it actually had different ones for each day of weeks 5 & 6, which are different every day.

Last Thursday, I didn't want to go to running club, but Alec made me feel guilty so I did. It was over 100 degrees that day. I knew the distance I was aiming for was about 2 miles, so instead of going our whole course, which is a full 5K, I decided to just go to the one-mile point and then turn around and go back. I managed the first running interval (5 minutes) but after the 3-minute walk break, I was so hot that just couldn't bring myself to run anymore. So, I just kept walking.

I got back to our starting point around the same time as Alec and our new friend, M. My time was about 28 minutes. That's not bad for mostly walking.

As we always do, we were standing around chatting after the run and I started to feel a little nauseous, so I decided to sit down. I perched myself on the edge of a pickup tailgate. A few minutes later, I started to feel like I was going to pass out. I called for Alec and he came over and helped me lay down. Various people offered towels, cold water and Gatorade. I laid there for a while while Alec rubbed ice cubes over my arms & legs, put a cool cloth on my head and poured water into my mouth. I never actually passed out, but I sure felt bad. Finally, I felt better and we went off to dinner an everything was fine. I figure it was the heat.

The next day, we were helping M & H (H is actually Alec's new co-anchor) move in to their apartment (again, in the 100+ degree heat) and I started to feel sick again. I never actually got dizzy, just felt kind of weak, so I sat inside for a long while.

I had to go to the doctor yesterday anyway, so I talked to her about it and she said it's likely heatstroke and I just need to be extra careful about hydrating if I'm going to run outside.

But, I decided that instead of risking running, or even walking outside when it's this hot (which is for the foreseeable future) I will just go to the gym and run on the treadmill.

So, that's what I did last night, and the happy news of this post is that I did the Couch to 5K, Week 5, Day 1 successfully, if slowly. For 2 miles, I took exactly 31 minutes. At this point, my plan is to just work on getting my endurance up in the gym while it's hot outside and then once I can get back outside, hopefully I will be able to get my speed up. Most of the 1/2 marathon training programs I've looked at start with the assumption that one can run 3 miles, so my goal is to spend the next 5 weeks getting to that point so I can start the serious training in mid-September.

I still haven't picked out an official training program for the 1/2 marathon. I've looked at several, that go over various lengths of time. My friend R. said that she always makes sure that she has more weeks left before her race than the plan asks because there's always going to be that day, or that week, that you don't train for whatever reason and it's better to repeat a week or two than to get to your race week without having logged the appropriate number of long runs. I think this is good advice, especially since my training period covers Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's!