Search Results for: Free PDF 2024 Efficient Oracle 1z0-1074-23: Oracle Cost Management Cloud 2023 Implementation Essentials Unlimited Exam Practice πŸ”… Immediately open [ www.pdfvce.com ] and search for ⇛ 1z0-1074-23 β‡š to obtain a free download ☎1z0-1074-23 Test Questions

How To’sday: How to Make Easy, Fluffy Rice

Yummy fluffy rice

I don’t have a rice cooker. I also don’t let that stop me from making fluffy mounds of rice. And since I appear to be in the mood for cooking dishes that work nicely with this versatile grain, I thought I’d tell you how I go about making a batch of rice quickly, easily, and without anything you don’t already have.

Rice!

Rice, as you know, starts as solid grains with the potential to develop into light, airy morsels of goodness when cooked well. The internet seems to be full of horror stories about rice cooking that turn these grains into batches of starchy paste or edible kernels still solid in the middle and decidedly un-fluffy, and rice cookers are offered as the suggestion for remedying these problems. I learned to cook rice, from my mom, with nothing more than a pot and a lid, and I’ve always been pleased with the result. Plus, the method is really easy: in fact, the hardest part is leaving it alone so the rice can do its job.

Here’s what to do:

(more…)

Blackberry Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream

If you’ve never spent time in Southwest Ohio, you might be surprised to know that it is home to some pretty unique foods. Aside from standard midwestern fare, not only one but two chains of restaurants devoted to Cincinnati chili speckle the region, each of which has ardent followers who flock there for liquid-y chili served atop spaghetti and under a mountain of cheddar cheese.

As someone who grew up in the Southwest, chili means something very different to me. The local fare I was far more enthusiastic about was the delectable dessert served at Graeter’s Ice Cream. Sold both in ice cream parlours and also by the pint at area grocery stores, Graeter’s features seasonal flavors amongst a collection of favorites, and one of their most beloved varieties is Blackberry Chip.

I’ve been scheming to invest in an ice cream machine for the last couple of years, and I finally took the plunge earlier this summer and got one. Frivolous? Perhaps. Necessary? Certainly not. But utterly worth it? Ab.So.Lutely.

This ice cream features one of my favorite tastes of summer: blackberries! Sweet but tart, these berries not only lend their lovely flavor to the ice cream but also provide their spectacular hue. The whole berry doesn’t end up in the final ice cream, just the juice, but with fresh berries you’ll end up with plenty of blackberry flavor.

(more…)

Peppered Parmesan Squash Strips

Hot and bubbly

Summer produce is just the best, isn’t it? Each week, I have to hem and haw and force myself not to buy everything I lay my eyes on. It’s so easy to literally have my eyes bigger than my stomach… or my weekly menu.

But squash is something I buy every week when it’s in season. Sometimes zucchini, sometimes yellow squash, mostly both. And most summer meals in our house, coincidentally, contain these delicious and prolific veggies, so I try to mix it up and try new methods to cook them. This one is one of my new favorites.

Pretty yellow squash

Adding a bit of parmesan and pepper to thin strips of squash turns them into long, skinny chips of a sort. To help with that long and skinniness, I use a mandoline, a tool that I resisted for years (why not just use a knife) but now adooooooooore.

(more…)

Egg & Avocado on Toast

Avocado and Egg Toasts
There are so many magical things you can do with an egg. Having grown up with them almost exclusively scrambled, hard-boiled, or whipped into cake batter, I’ve recently worked on expanding my egg repertoire at breakfast. Sometimes I’ll roll them up in breakfast burritos, other mornings I’ll toss them on an English muffin, and some mornings I’ll make one of these beauties.

But on super-special mornings, I’ll buy a precious avocado and smear it across toast to a beautiful, green canvas for a gently fried egg.

Breakfast is coming
Mash the avocado
I’ve loved avocados for a long time, but I was previously skeptical of their ability to translate to breakfast. Lord, I was so wrong. The flavor and texture of the avocado and the egg together are fantastic. The avocado needs no additions, though admittedly, I did try mixing in salsa one day, and while it was delightful, I still preferred it all by itself.

Avocado on toast
The eggs, while you’re smashing avocado, fry gently with their yolks unbroken. If you’re not a fan of runny eggs, don’t worry, just break the yolks with a fork and cook them a bit longer on the second side for a firm yellow center.

Pretty pretty eggs!
Finishing the egg frying
Breakfast is almost ready!
This simple breakfast is super-quick for rushed weekday mornings when you want to pretend, just for a minute, that it’s already the weekend. And it’s fancy enough even for the weekend. Why go out for breakfast when you can stay in your pajamas and have this?

Avocado Egg Toasts


Egg & Avocado on Toast

Makes 2 servings

1/2 an avocado
1/2 T butter
2 eggs
seasoned salt
black pepper
2 slices of bread

Scoop the avocado out of the skin into a bowl. Crush the avocado with the back of a fork until it is mostly crushed. Heat a frying panΒ  over medium heat. Once warm, add the butter to the pan and coat the bottom of the pan as it melts. Crack the eggs into the pan without breaking the yolks, keeping the eggs separate. Sprinkle lightly with seasoned salt and black pepper.

While the eggs cook, toast the bread and smear avocado evenly over both pieces. After eggs have cooked for about two minutes, flip carefully with a spatula and sprinkle the opposite side lightly with black pepper. After about 30 seconds, gently lift the eggs onto the toasts, placing them on the avocado.

Serve and enjoy immediately.

To the Farms! Piedmont Farm Tour 2012

If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: one of the biggest perks of living in hot, humid, far-from-home Durham, North Carolina is the immense support for local food amongst those who live here and in the surrounding cities and counties. With multiple farmers markets close by, dozens of restaurants that source their ingredients locally, and thousands of people willing to patronize them all, it’s no wonder these counties contain a vibrant network of farms, ranches, and community gardens.

One shining example of this community’s commitment to support local growers is the Piedmont Farm Tour. Hosted each spring over two weekend afternoons by the Carolina Farm Stewardship Assocation, forty local farms throw open the barn doors, as it were, and welcome in carload after carload of people eager to see the source of the food they buy each week at our region’s farmers markets. A couple of friends and I were some of those people.

(more…)

Savory Honey-Glazed Nuts

I realize that I’m a few days late for writing a post about an easy party snack that takes very little effort, is tremendously delicious, and is great for sharing since it is HIGHLY addictive and calorie-dense. My bad.

But lucky for us, there are more reasons to celebrate and indulge coming right up. Valentines Day! The Olympics! Saturday!

If you don’t have a good roasted nut recipe in your arsenal, this is an excellent candidate. I’ve previously relied quite heavily on these little gems, but I’m glad to now have another that doesn’t scream “HOLIDAYS!” quite so loudly. You can use any mix of nuts you like: I had planned to only use cashews and tossed in pecans on a whim, but I now think I like the pecans even more than the cashews.

(more…)

Garlic Basil Butter

Hi there.

I don’t want this to be awkward.

But this is my first post in, oh, almost two weeks.

I’d love to say that I’ve been off somewhere exotic, tropical, and completely cut off from the internet to offer an excuse. But the truth is that I’ve been right here in good old North Carolina, I’ve just been working immense amounts of overtime. Which is great! It just means that the few hours I do have to myself, all I really feel like doing is collapsing into bed for a couple chapters of my book before I fall asleep.

I am really looking forward to this three day weekend not to relax, but to get caught up on cooking, editing photos, planting the next phase of my two little gardens, and on general maintenance of my life outside the office.

Some gardening, though, cannot be stopped. The basil continues its seemingly unending life, and while I know that I could just cut down all the plants to nip this in the bud, I’m now sorta curious to see how long they can last. But that decision means that I must find things to do with basil besides making pesto or layering it onto sandwiches. And voila! I stumbled across this recipe and decided immediately to try it out.

(more…)

Potato Cheddar Soup

Yesterday was dreary. And lazy. I got up at 11:30 and did approximately nothing until 4:30. Nothing. It. Was. Glorious. Lazy days like this come rarely. I can normally talk myself into doing something moderately productive, even on the weekends: errands, cooking projects, editing photos, planting seeds, writing posts. But yesterday, for five surprising hours, nothing.

I crave soup on days like yesterday. Something warm, something filling, something that simmer and bubbles on the stove while the gray sky presses down outside. I have some old standbys, yes, but my friend Sara brought this one to my attention a while back, and let me tell you: it’s perfect for a dreary, lazy day because it’s super easy and comfort food to the max.

(more…)

Favorite Party Mix


You might think that since Christmas has passed the holiday party recipes will be over. You would be incorrect.

I love the build-up to Christmas, and must confess, have never enjoyed the week between Christmas and New Years as much as the week prior. But! I have several days in Oklahoma with my mom’s side of the family, and it’s not really Oklahoma unless there are 15-20 people in my Grandma’s house cooking, eating, talking, and laughing for several days straight.


Party mix has been a holiday treat at my house and my grandma’s for as long as I can remember. Yes, I know that there are a gazillion recipes for this, many of which can be found on the sides of any Chex cereal box. (I assume that Chex stays in business entirely due to holiday party-goers and their demand for handfuls of this salty, toasted treat.)

(more…)

Cranberry Orange Cheesecake

I haven’t really addressed the food-elephant in the room of this time of year.

Thanksgiving!

This year, the gathering around our Thanksgiving table was rather small, just little old Brad and me, in fact. But that didn’t stop us from preparing a full-scale Thanksgiving feast. There was cornbread stuffing (well, dressing), broccoli casserole, warm cream biscuits, mashed potatoes, a three-legged turkey with no wings, smooth brown gravy, mini pumpkin cream pies

and cranberry sauce.

For me, cranberry sauce as a kid was one of two things: a can-shaped block of cranberry plopped on a small serving dish, or my grandma’s favorite cranberry salad. I was never a particularly big fan of either. But as usual, Deb over at Smitten Kitchen piqued my curiosity to try a homemade, incredibly simple cranberry sauce, and I doubt I’ll ever go back. It’s tart and lovely and full of little orange peel surprises all the way through.

Cranberry and orange are two of my favorite holiday flavors, and when combined, they only improve one another. So instead of making a teeny tiny batch for our teeny tiny guest list, I opted for the full batch so that I could play with the leftovers.

But what to make?

(more…)