Cranberry Orange Muffins

Cranberry Orange Muffins for breakfast potluck in the morn! These came out very well! I used a recipe from Cooking Light magazine, BUT replaced a few things like using 1 1/2 cups of flour and 1 1/2 cups of whole wheet flour and 1/2 cup of butter instead of canola oil ;)

Good stuff for sure,

Mama's Oven!

Mama's Oven

Ok, for anyone who has NOT been to Mama's Oven in the Medical Center area of Houston, you MUST go!
If you're lucky, Mama will actually be there and for me at least, she completely made the trip! Probably one of the sweetest ladies I have ever met, and she calls you "precious" and "sweetie" and "hun" all day long, and for me, that's about the best thing EVAR for a local joint!
The oxtails were AWESOME, the mac n cheese makes you think of home, and for some reason, the candied yams kept making me think of my Aunt's house! The cornbread had that slight hint of sweetness as you sopped up all the homemade brown gravy too! Talk about comfort food!
I'd stay away from the iced tea, but other than that, wow. I hear the service is really slow, but not on weekdays! My old coworker and I got super prompt service and of course, mama took care of us!

New ideas, mint chocolate chip cookie and notes for lasagna

So I've been thinking about this one for a long time. I would have to say that it was all inspired by my friend Sophia and her sis, Melissa's almost fanatical love of mint chocolate chip icecream.

So anyways, I wanted to put these ideas down before I totally lost them through time.

Mint chocolate chip icecream cookies
Mint flavor provided by either peppermint or mint extract OR a homemade mint leaf infused vodka. I don't think the infused vodka would be able to provide the punch necessary, but it's an exotic way to do it. Eventually, that would become cost prohibitive I think especially in the bang for buck equation...
Shaved dark chocolate of course, I'm thinking at least 50% cacao content.
Using a chewy sugar cookie base, probably incorporate heavy cream into it to really get the texture right...
Green food coloring of course to get the right color...
Maybe a hint of citrus, like a bit of orange oil or something to give it that extra flavor layer...



Now as for the lasagna, I was just watching Tyler's ultimate, and he brings up a great point in his bolognese sauce. He purees carrots, celery, garlic, basil, parsley, and onions and adds it to the sauce with heavy cream and a TOUCH of CINNAMON! Ok, so I definitely like the cinnamon addition.

I'm thinking instead of pork and ground beef, we add a third layer of veal, so ground pork, beef, and veal. I've done some chilis with that combo and it works VERY well.
Heavy cream for sure. I like his trinity, but I'm thinking that plus a bit of spice, jalepenos, and instead of canned crushed tomatoes, a base of my roasted herb tomatoes would work very well.

Definitely use whole milk ricotta cheese and plenty of mozarella or I'm thinking maybe alternating layers of mozarella and a great farm fresh goat cheese. That little bit of sour from the goat cheese would really be nice!


Ok, that's all the ideas I've got for now, more to come later (and hopefully some trial pics)

Hello World

Ok, Hello to anyone who stumbles across this little blog! The primary posts on here are going to focus on my cooking experiments and motorcycle tuning/modification experiments. haha, yes, odd no?

I have been known to bake cookies while changing the oil on a bike before (using gloves and washing hands of course!) ;)

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Hiero's Experiments