I am a dessert girl. If you didn’t know that already, just take a look at my thighs and you’ll easily notice that desserts and I spend a lot of time together. What can I say… I like something sweet. Even if I am stuffed full after dinner, I can always find space for dessert.

I enjoy making a delicious dessert, but do you know what I love making even better? A delicious dessert that has a beautiful presentation and takes less than 10 minutes to make. This recipe…the one I’m blogging about today for the easy, low calorie Oven Broiled Blueberry Dessert… is just that. Dump some fresh blueberries in a ramekin, add some yogurt, brown sugar, put it under the broiler for a few minute and voila! The sugar caramelizes on the top, the blueberries warm and soften, and oh my goodness… talk about delicious.

Next time you crave dessert but really don’t feel like spending a lot of time in the kitchen whipping up something fabulous, go for the Broiled Blueberry dessert. Delicious enough for company or for a night where you just need that something sweet to fend off a craving.

Low Calorie Oven Broiled Blueberry Dessert (adapted from Aug / Sept 2010 Simple & Delicious Magazine)

• 3 cups fresh blueberries, rinsed and patted dry
• 1/2 cup light vanilla yogurt (or sour cream)
• 4 Tablespoons brown sugar

Divide blueberries among four ovenproof 8-oz ramekins. Spread with sour cream and sprinkle with brown sugar. Place on a baking sheet.

Broil on high 4 inches from the heat for 5 minutes or until bubbly and sugar is caramelized

Summertime… when the living is easy. Or at least it was when I was a kid. I have fond memories of playing Red Rover, having dance contests to politically incorrect songs, working lemonade and brownie stands on 30th Drive, playing Wonder Woman in my underoos. Life was easy and carefree. As I got older, playing outside turned to sun tanning on tin foil with baby oil (hello, skin cancer), bleaching my hair with Sun In and listening to top 40 tunes (which are now considered retro/oldies…am I really that old??)

Even though the memories of the activities I participated in during the summer changed over time, there is one thing that was present all throughout my childhood during the summertime. My mom and her love of Ice Cream Soda floats. I cannot have an ice cream float without flashing back to being in the kitchen watching my mom pour the soda over the ice cream and watching the bubbles fiz up, almost pouring over the edge, but stopping just in time. For me, summer is not complete without our fair share of ice cream floats.

That’s why when Simple and Delicious magazine had this delicious looking Cherry Chocolate Float in their most recent issue, I knew I had to have one. My kids had never had an ice cream float, other than root beer, and I couldn’t wait to share with them what equals summertime to me.

What do you think about when you remember your childhood summers?

Cherry Chocolate Ice Cream Float from Simple and Delicious Magazine

• 1 cup water
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 cups carbonated water, chilled
• 3 tablespoons maraschino cherry juice
• Chocolate syrup
• 14 scoops chocolate ice cream
• Whipped cream in a can
• 7 maraschino cherries

• In a large saucepan, bring water and sugar to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer for 5 minutes. Cool. Stir in carbonated water and cherry juice.
• Drizzle chocolate syrup in each of seven chilled glasses. Place two scoops of ice cream in each glass. Pour carbonated water mixture over ice cream; top each with whipped cream and a cherry. Serve immediately. Yield: 7 servings.

The other day, I was sitting in a room full of moms, when a lady came in with a screaming toddler. He had cut his big toe something awful and needed a band-aid. In that room full of moms, I was able to open my purse and pull out a first aid kit with band-aids. He had his choice…flexible band-aids, round band-aids, liquid band-aids, invisible band-aids…I had an arsenal of band-aid choices. 10 minutes later, a little girl came over crying her eyes out. She had a splinter and her mom was looking for tweezers. Guess who had tweezers? Moi. I was feeling so proud of myself because I was prepared. I looked, for a brief few minutes, like that mom who really had her stuff together. Head held high, I was feeling pretty good about myself. This mom of 4 has it together, people!

Fast forward 6 hours later and I was at the ballpark watching my 6 year old play ball. My 3 year old climbs up onto the bleachers, loses her balance and lands in a huge puddle of spilled nacho cheese sauce. With nacho cheese sauce from head to toe, she was absolutely filthy. I dig in my purse, knowing that since I am now “Mrs. Has It Together”, I would have something to remedy this situation. I pull out my wipes container, open it up and it is empty. Empty! “Mrs Has It Together” would never leave the house with an empty wipes container. Kicked down on the togetherness pole several notches, I had to sheepishly look around and ask some other moms if I could have some wipes to clean up my cheese covered child. So much for that little pipe dream I had about being the mom who has it all together.

One little secret weapon I have in my life that makes me feel like I can inch up on the togetherness ladder a bit each day is black beans. They are healthy, delicious and so versatile. If there is one thing I keep in my pantry in abundance, it is cans of black beans. Why do they make me feel like I have it together? Because… you can heat up a can of black beans, sprinkle some cheese on it and call it a side dish. Mix black beans, corn, taco meat and cheese and put over tortilla chips – you’ve got nachos. Mash ‘em up some, mix with cream cheese, some chili seasoning and cheese and you’ve got a dip. Black beans are so easy and versatile. The one problem with black beans is, they don’t ever seem to last around here long enough to make it into an actual recipe. They are my go to food when I need to feed people in a pinch. Black beans are what allow me one step closer to that esteemed title of “Mrs. Has it Together” and for that, I bow to the bean, forever grateful. We all know, I need all the help I can get.

Turkey Black Bean Burgers (from Simple & Delicious Magazine)

• 3/4 cup canned black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 egg white
• 1/2 cup shredded zucchini
• 1/2 cup finely chopped sweet red pepper
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 pound ground turkey
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 4 hamburger buns, split
• 1 small onion, sliced
• 4 romaine leaves

In a small bowl coarsely mash beans. Add the egg white, zucchini, red pepper, chili powder, onion powder, pepper and salt. Crumble turkey over mixture and mix well. Shape into four patties.
In a large skillet, cook burgers in oil over medium heat for 4-5 minutes on each side or until a meat thermometer reads 165° and juices run clear. Serve on buns with onion and lettuce. Yield: 4 servings.

This is the first in a series of interviews that will be running a couple of times a week on Dine & Dish. In conjunction with Adopt a Blogger, I will be introducing you to the Adopt a Blogger #3 matches and giving you a little peek into their adoption experience. I hope you will enjoy the interviews. Make sure to stop by and say hi after you have read what they have to say. Oh – and if you are participating in Adopt a Blogger #3 and want for you and your match to be featured in an interview, let me know.

Also, make sure to check out the end of this post for the Effortless Egg Rolls recipe from Simple and Delicious magazine. So good, so easy and so worth trying out!

Interview and recipe after the jump:

Interview with Adopt a Blogger #3 Matches – Jennifer of Jenn Cuisine and Amy of Playing House

(more…)

We leave on our Spring Break vacation this coming Friday. We are heading south to visit my parents, who live near sunny South Padre Island, Texas. With three kiddos, flying is typically not at all economical, so we usually make the 2 day drive all packed into the good old minivan stuffed to the top with treats and toys to entertain us all. Out of the five of us, I am normally the one who gets what my husband refers to as “car ADD”. I do pretty good on the way to places, but it is driving home that forces my ADD to come out. I can’t sit still, I get restless and I can hardly wait to get out of the car.

I know that several of you are master’s at vacation preparation. I am great at planning, but I never start packing things until the night before we leave. I know that probably makes some of you squirm to even imagine putting off packing until the last minute, but it seems to work really well for us and I rarely forget to bring something important along.

In the couple of weeks leading up to vacation, one of the routine things we do is to try to clean out the freezer and pantry as much as we can by using the food we have on hand in our meals for the week or two. We come up with some pretty interesting combination’s, especially when the countdown to vacation draws nearer.  The night before vacation tends to be the most mis-matched meals of all, but my kids do not seem to mind. I love coming home to a cleaned out pantry, fridge and freezer… a clean slate to start planning with again!

These Peanut Butter Cake Bars are one of those perfect “clean out the pantry” type recipes. Most everything in this recipe includes items many of us keep on hand. Plus, if you make these right before vacation, you will have a tasty treat to take on the road with you – nothing says peaceful road trip like keeping your kids mouths full of food the whole way!

Peanut Butter Cake Bars from March/April issue of Simple & Delicious Magazine

• 2/3 cup butter, softened
• 2/3 cup peanut butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 package (11-1/2 ounces) milk chocolate chips

In a large bowl, cream the butter, peanut butter, sugar and brown sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture. Stir in chocolate chips.
Spread into a greased 13-in. x 9-in. baking pan. Bake at 350° for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack. Cut into bars. Yield: 2 dozen.

Looking for some more great recipes to clean out your pantry, fridge and freezer? Check out what these food bloggers have to offer:

• Clean Out the Pantry Minestrone Soup from A Year of CrockPotting
• Clean the Freezer Chili from The Perfect Pantry
• Banana Cake with Caramel Espresso Frosting from Fresh From the Oven
• Clean Out the Fridge Lemon Curd Cheesecake Tart from Zoe Bakes
  

I’m going to preface this post by saying that I am just about the last person in the world to be passing out Photoshop and food photography tips.  That may be the case, but I am going to do it anyway! My dear friend, Julie Lackey, who is an extremely talented portrait photographer, shared this tip with me awhile back and I have used it more than I ever thought I would.

One of the things I hate about the winter months in the midwest is how dark it gets so early in the evening. This frustrated me as a kid because it always meant we had to come in earlier from playing. Now, as an adult and one of those crazy people who can always be found taking photos of the food she cooks, the early sunset means that it is that much harder to get a good photo of dinner in the natural light. Around this time of year, a lot of food bloggers will be posting baked goods and desserts simply because it is too difficult to take a good photo at dinner time.

Enter my friend Julie and her Photoshop tip. This tip works if you take a photo and notice that the image is too dark, which usually happens when your flash is off and there isn’t enough natural light pouring in. I am not a techie, so please excuse my non-technical terms as I flubber through sharing this with you.

1. Open your dark photo in Photoshop
2. Up at the top toolbar go to the “Layers” tab and then drop down and select “Duplicate Layer”
3. If your layers window isn’t open on the side of your PS main window, go up to the top toolbar, go to the “Windows” tab and select “Layers”
4. OK – now that the layers window is open, you should see a drop down menu in it that shows “normal”. Click on that and go down to where it says “screen”. Your photo should brighten up immediatley. If it is too bright, adjust the opacity (located in your layers window) to a lower percent.
5. Now, go back up to the Layers tab on the top of your Photoshop screen and drop down to “Flatten Image”
6. If your photo still needs to be brighter, repeat steps 2 – 5.
7. When I have the photo as I want it, I usually adjust the saturation slightly to give it a little pop of color and will also sometimes do a curve adjustment

The photo below was a prior version of the one at the top of this post. To save this photo from ending up in my computer recycle bin, I made the changes listed above and was able to salvage it. Many of you probably know this tip, but for those of you who don’t, I hope you found it helpful! Thank you, Julie, for sharing this tip with me and for allowing me to showcase my dinner in a new light.

What is one of your favorite photo editing tips?

And now for the recipe… a quick and easy one from Simple & Delicious magazine!

Thai Shrimp Linguine (from Simple and Delicious Magazine)

20 min | 5 min prep

SERVES 3

I have been thinking a lot about family recipes lately. The other day I called my mom for the millionth time asking her to repeat her spaghetti and meatballs recipe to me. I know most of it by heart, but I like calling her to hear her version of it, just to make sure I have it exactly right. I then end up writing it down on a post it note or on the back of an envelope, usually never to be seen again.

My sister recently went through a divorce…in fact her divorce was final at the end of October. It is hard for me to write about because it is still so fresh and personal with all of us. I have known her now ex-husband since they started dating when I was 14 years old. I looked up to them both and felt like they had the “perfect marriage”. As things often are, what appears to be reality often isn’t. I love my sister and hate that she has had to go through this pain…a pain that I know she never envisioned being a part of her life. Even though the marriage has ended between the two of them, some wonderful things have come out of their relationship. I have a nephew who is incredibly talented, brilliant, witty and wonderful. I also have a niece who is loving, beautiful, compassionate and smart. We have lots of great memories, laughs and family moments that will always be in our heart. And, last but not least, our families have swapped some pretty tasty recipes.

What would our birthday parties be like without his great-grandma’s sugar cookie recipe or our grandmother’s homemade ice cream recipe? I have several emails from his mom sharing family recipes that I have asked for. Not to make light of the situation, but if these two families didn’t unite at some point in history, our recipe boxes would be void of some great tasting things.

The Viva Diva Cafe (home of Viva paper towels) is hosting a great family recipe contest on their website and they have asked me to be one of the judges when the contest has closed. The prizes are fantastic… top prize is a $1000 gift certificate to Willams Sonoma. 2nd prize, a KitchenAid Professional 600 series mixer and a set of OXO utensils. 3rd prize is an Apple iPod Nano 8GB and JBL On Stage II Speaker System.To enter, all you need to do is register with The Viva Diva Cafe (which seriously takes less than a minute) and then enter your favorite family recipe. Whether it is one passed down from generation to generation within your own family, or a recipe snagged up from a relationship lost, head on over to The Viva Diva Cafe and share it with us.

The recipe I am sharing with you today is not one that has been passed down from generation to generation in my family, but the cup and saucer shown have a story to go along with this post. My sister, one evening feeling hurt and angry about the divorce, decided to take her wedding china out to her back porch and have a little therapy session with it. She put a blanket down on the concrete porch and began throwing pieces of her china against her homes brick wall watching the pieces fall into the blanket (which I thought was brilliant… much easier to clean up!). After she broke the first setting, she called me feeling much better and explained to me what she was doing. I, being the sensitive sister that I am, applauded her for finding a way to let out her aggressions and then thinking of the most important thing first said… “Ummmm, if you are just going to be crashing your china against the wall, would you mind saving out a place setting for me for my food photography photos?” Yep… you can call me Mrs Sensitive if you want.

Chai Tea Latte (from Simple and Delicious Magazine, October 2008)

15 min | 5 min prep

SERVES 2

Yesterday afternoon, the two year old in my family had a meltdown… in the middle of the grocery store. Let me tell you, it was a lovely site. First, refusing to wear her shoes and then refusing to sit in the cart, my normally sweet and laid back daughter completely lost it. Running off, laying in the middle of the aisles and screaming at the top of her lungs, she really let everyone within a ten mile radius know that she was not happy. I would attempt to pick her up, and she would  scrunch up her legs, pushing me away, and would scream even louder. Three kids, lots of grocery store trips, and this was my very first time to experience such a show firsthand.

Most sane mom’s would pick up their child and leave the store with their groceries un-purchased. Me? Nope – I continued to let her make a scene simply because I had these luscious, juicy, aromatic peaches in my cart and I couldn’t bare to walk out of the store without them. Women, who apparently have never had children or who were as terribly annoyed as I was kept giving me dirty looks in the checkout lane. But, as stubborn as my two year old, I refused to leave without my peaches.

And I can honestly say… all the dirty looks, all the built up frustration, all the cussing at my husband for traveling for work this week which lead me to go to the store with my three kids in the first place… all of that was well worth it when I took my first juicy bite.

In fact, I may even brave the store with the temper tantrum thrower again tonight. This simple recipe (even though my whipped lemon cream had a meltdown of its own) is worth any embarrassment I may face.

Peaches with Lemon Cream, from Simple & Delicious August 2008

INGREDIENTS

DIRECTIONS

In a small mixing bowl, beat cream until it begins to thicken. Add the brown sugar, vanilla and lemon peel; beat until stiff peaks form. Cover and refrigerate until serving.
Brush cut sides of peaches with oil; place cut side down on grill rack. Grill, covered, over medium heat for 10-12 minutes or until peaches are tender and begin to caramelize.
Place peaches on dessert plates; fill with lemon cream mixture. Yield: 6 servings.

I sat down at 2pm this afternoon to write an article for Her Life Magazine. At 10:42pm this evening, the article still is not written. It has nothing to do with the fact that the article is a difficult one to write. The story is fascinating and I pretty much have how I want it to go all planned out in my head. The problem is… I keep getting distracted! Hubby came home with chocolate…so of course that distracted me right from the get go. Then the kids wanted to go to the swimming pool so of course I couldn’t turn that down. The Pedi Egg Blogher add grabbed my attention (and yes… I was swayed enough to buy one get one, plus the lotion and the upgrade to the Deluxe – what a deal!), etc. Just about everything sounds better to me right now than sitting down and writing the article I am supposed to be writing. So what do I do? Sit down and procrastinate some more by writing a Dine and Dish blog post!

Are any of you out there like me? You go to get the mail and notice weeds in your flower bed, so you stop to pull the weeds and completely forget to get the mail. You go to grab your address book so you can sit down and write a thank you note and when you open the drawer to find your address book you notice that you stashed a bill in there when company was coming last week, which reminds you that you forgot to finish downloading your Quicken transactions so you head to the office to do that… moving the thank you note to the next days to do list, once again. You head to your freezer to pull out a roast to thaw for dinner, and by the time you search through your freezer you completely forget what you are looking for and end up closing the door without pulling anything out? I think FlyLady calls us “Sidetracked Home Executives“… I know that term sums it up very well for me.

There is one appliance I am very thankful for that really helps with my distracted brain, and that is the microwave. I rarely use the microwave for anything other than the defrost function, but the letters on that button are barely legible because I use it so often. I love the defrost function. I can just picture the focus group who sat around and determined that microwaves needed a defrost function. A room full of “Sidetracked Home Executives” who feel like they really accomplished something that day if they remembered to take the meat out of the freezer to thaw. I seriously feel like I should be awarded or something on those days! “And Kristen gets a medal today for actually making it to the freezer, pulling out the meat and having it thawed in time to cook it for dinner without having to turn to the defrost button on her microwave for assistance.” <applause, applause>

Thanks to my microwave defrost button, we still get to eat pretty good around here. I have been wanting to share this recipe with you for quite some time now, but I keep getting distracted by other things to post. Lemon Chicken Spaghetti Toss is probably one of the most regular recipes on our menu. We have it at least once or twice a month, and have been for the past several years. This is a recipe that I can even pull through without getting too distracted by other things. I typically have all of the ingredients on hand and my entire family enjoys it.

Now – I’m going to share it with you immediately because as I was going to pull the recipe from my Zaar account, I got distracted by a chocolate cake recipe I want to go and check out. Enjoy!

Lemon Chicken Spaghetti Toss (adapted from a past issue of Quick Cooking magazine)