This weeks Blog of the Week is

‘The Pioneer Woman Cooks’

This great cooking blog is written by Ree.

The recipes have detailed instructions with step by step pictures, which is extremely helpful for both novice and experienced cooks.

There is nothing more frustrating to a newbie than to not know if there mixture looks as it should.  Well Ree has this well and truly covered in her instructions.

Lots of fabulous mouth watering recipes with pictures that I know you are just going to want to dive right in and try. 

I found myself browsing for quite some time through The Pioneer Woman Cooks and I am sure you will do the same.

Ree also provides her recipes in a printable form so if you are like my friend Paula who prints off recipes for her Recipe folder, then this is ideal for you.

A great site that I thoroughly recommend you visit.  Check out the Pioneer Womans Pasta Primevera.

Important: We do our best to make sure our reviews are as accurate as possible, but we are only human after all. So when you are ready to buy a product reviewed on our site please click through to the merchant to make sure you are getting the right product with all the features advertised.

We have just added our latest cookware review and this time it is for the Calphalon 10pc Tri-Ply Copper Cookware Set.

If you have always wanted a set of copper cookware, but like me have thought twice about spending thousands of dollars for the privilege, then this is the cookware set for you.

We have found this set on the net
for under $450 which is exceptional value for money.

The Calphalon Tri-Ply range is stylish and durable and should last you a lifetime.

Read our full review of this cookware set here: Calphalon 10pc Tri-Ply Copper Cookware Set

Or check out our complete list of Cookware Reviews.

As promised in an earlier post, I am going to spend a little time over the next couple of weeks catching up on some recipes that I have downloaded from cooking blogs on the net.

I tried the first recipe on my list last night and because it was so nice I had it again tonight. This one was for Homemade Gingerbread Latte which came from the Baking Bites blog.

As you can see from the photo, my presentation skills aren’t that impressive. Just compare my photo with the one on Baking Bites and you will see what I mean. No matter though as it tasted delicious.

Although it was by no means difficult to make it was a little fiddly mostly because I only had whole cloves which I had to grind before using. Plus you have to heat milk, boil water, and whip cream in addition to getting all the spices together and mixing with the coffee and molasses. Still it was definitely worth the effort and something that I will be making again.

It tasted a bit like a Chai Latte and I love Chai Lattes!

The Nashi pear, Pyrus pyrifolia, are widely grown for their refreshingly sweet fruit and they are a popular food in Asia.

Nashi are sometimes called the Asian pear, however it has many names and is also know as a Japanese pear, Korean pear or Taiwan Pear, sand pear, apple pear, bapple, papple, and bae. In India is it called nashipati.

Imagine if you will, the crispness of a Granny Smith apple combined with the juicy ripe taste of a pear and this will give you some idea of what these delicious fruit are like. Actually they are not as sweet as pears but have a light refreshing taste. I keep mine in the fridge so the flesh is cool to eat.

Because of their high water content and grainy texture, Nashi pears are generally not baked in pies or made into jams, however, they can successfully be added to salads, cheese platters, meat dishes, juiced or made into a very tasty fruity chutney. Why not add some to your next Waldorf Salad instead of apples, they are crisp, crunchy and don’t turn brown.

Nashi Pears are low in saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium and are a rich source of antioxidants, vitamin C and folate. One medium sized (130gm) raw unpeeled Nashi Pear has 14 carbs, 4.5 gms fiber, 0 fat and 230 kjs

Nashi Pear Bruschetta
(as featured in Burkes Backyard)

Ingredients

2 cups Nashis, peeled and diced
juice of 1 lemon
50ml walnut oil or olive oil
black pepper, to taste
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
1/2 cup lettuce or rocket leaves, roughly chopped
Italian bread, sliced
200g cheese, soft blue is nice but any soft cheese works equally as well

Method

1. Slice the bread and grill the slices.
2. Spread with the cheese and top with the Nashi mix.

Article courtesy of Guest Author Nia from Survival Wytch and Cooking with Nia

My daughter has embarked on a journey to becoming a “JOY” maker. My daughter finds joy everywhere she goes. She is meticulous and careful, artistic and creative and loves people and discovering new things. 

What has this to do with becoming a chef you might ask? Well, being a chef is a creative occupation requiring a love and joy of preparing food for others. Without this love it is merely a process and not a creation.

My daughter wants to:

1. Travel – in order to experience and visit other places and work overseas and learn from international chefs. To discover how these chefs remember their childhood and how joy was tasted in their homes.

2. Discover – new ingredients and meld flavors, match and compliment textures, create dishes from exotic ingredients and capture the flavors of the wonderful places they originate from. In other words, wringing out her true artistry in an edible medium.

3. Praise and Notoriety – The opportunity to prepare nutritious full flavored food with fresh exotic ingredients for the enjoyment of every guest that samples what she prepares. Having friends and family and customers return just for a tantalizing aroma, a fine delicate morsel, a satisfying explosion of flavors and textures, and praising her for her culinary competence.

4. The opportunity – to share her joy of creating dishes, of having fun in the kitchen. She loves enjoying a glass of wine while chopping and stirring and sharing good conversation, and the tasting there is always the tasting to share.

5. Pride in tradition – She will make her family proud, the family traditions can survive, the skills learnt from me and my mother can live on in her to share with others.

A chef is an artist, a musician, a skillful craftsman, a perfumer, a creator, an innovator and with these tools joy is created.

My daughter will be a chef, a master of all five – a ‘JOY’ maker.

Today I spent a bit of time just browsing the net looking at food and cooking blogs. There are so many high quality blogs out there – it just amazes me sometimes.

I easily get sidetracked and you wouldn’t believe how many recipes I have printed out to try. I have a bit of a backlog at the moment but I am determined to try as many as possible.

Today I found a few recipes that I couldn’t resist. The first one was a nice recipe for Pumpkin Pie. Since it has been Thanksgiving in North America there are plenty of Pumpkin Pie recipes to choose from at the moment. I thought I would try this one over at Cuisine Capers.

I also found a recipe for Baileys Creme Brulee which I found at the Berry Simple blog. Creme Brulee is easily my favorite dessert so a variation of it that includes Baileys Irish Cream has got to be good.

She also has a yummy recipe for Cauliflower Cheese. I like a recipe that can make a vegetable taste good.

And the last recipe I found to try this week is for Homemade Gingerbread Latte from Baking Bites. Now I am not a big coffee drinker…generally I will only drink a Cappucino when I am out and about… but this sounded delicious and I have all the ingredients except the cream.

So now that I have posted these here I am forced to make them, which is a good thing, otherwise they would be sitting in the ever increasing pile of recipes. Stay tuned for the results.

Our latest review has just been uploaded and it is for the All-Clad Stainless Roasting Set. All-Clad is one of our favorite brands of cookware so we love reviewing their products.

This one probably came a little late for Thanksgiving but Christmas is just around the corner and a traditional Xmas dinner isn’t the same without a roast turkey with all the trimmings.

Read the full review here: All-Clad Stainless Steel Roasting Set Review

If you are lucky enough to have a Farmers Market in your area then you already know that the freshness and quality of the produce by far beats anything you could ever buy at a regular food market.

Generally a Farmers Market brings together farmers and other producers of food from surrounding regions to a central market where they can sell their produce.

The benefits of a Farmers Market are fresh produce (since it comes direct from the farm), exotic foods and a fantastic assortment of organic products.

In our local area we have two farmers markets and the last time I went to one of these there were only three stallholders so obviously there really wasn’t much to choose from. Subsequently I never went back.

With this in mind, I really wasn’t expecting much when we decided to take a visit to the second market on the northside of the city.

Fortunately for me, after entering the big hall, I was pleasantly surprised as this market had what looked like over 100 vendors and there was plenty to choose from.

The first stall we stopped at was selling a wonderful array of breads and cakes. We ended up purchasing an Italian loaf to have with dinner tonight.

It will go well with the pate and cheeses we had bought during the week. If only we had waited, we could have purchased it all fresh at this market.

We then moved on and tried out a few different foods. These markets are a great place to taste test before you buy. You just don’t get the opportunity to do this at most regular food markets. Today we sampled some Italian biscuits, a variety of different flavored sausages and (grass fed beef) meat balls.

The owner of the meat products is from Minto Galloways Stud at Yass, just north of Canberra where we live. He emphasised how tasty the meat was and he was right. The meat balls had no added herbs or spices and yet the taste was just wonderful.

They have also won awards for various regional shows around Australia and one of the more outstanding wins was for Grand Champion Bull at the 2006 Melbourne Show. As you can imagine, we couldn’t go away empty handed so we ended up buying some of the ground beef to try later in the week.

One of the other more interesting things we found was the Exotic Mushroom stand. I have never seen such a great variety of unusual looking mushrooms.

Normally we see these type of mushrooms dried but these were all fresh and looked as though they had just been picked.

Apart from those pictured we also bought some King Brown mushrooms which were just as oddly shaped.

We are going to try them all tonight just sauted in a little butter and oil. I want to experience the real flavor of these mushrooms so we aren’t going to waste them by mixing them into another dish. Just straight on their own is enough for me.

After wandering around the market for about an hour, we finally came out with a huge loaf of Italian bread, a variety of mushrooms, some ground beef, a handful of organic garlic and a big bag of beautiful red juicy apples.

Next time I will go prepared with a little more cash (no credit cards accepted here) and a big bag to take everything home in.