A Great Brunch Recipe: Frittata

During the holidays I commonly have two meals a day. Each one chalked full of well-worth it food with plenty of time between meals for the food to settle.

Over the last few years we’ve experimented with several frittata recipes. I think we’ve come up with something that will last. As asparagus lovers we choose this skinny, green, flavorful vegetable as the main personality of this dish, but you could also use artichokes, red pepper, tomatoes, ham, sun-dried tomatoes, bacon, or any flavorful addition.

This is an easy dish, but it does take a little time to bake so allow about a half hour for cooking. Asparagus Frittata

INGREDIENTS
1 TB of olive oil
5-6 red potatoes thinly sliced
6 eggs
3 TB milk
½ cup of mozzarella
½ cup of chopped asparagus (cut into ½ in pieces)
handful of torn spinach
salt and pepper to taste
red pepper flakes

DIRECTIONS
Heat olive oil in cast iron skillet or frittata pan. Place red potatoes in skillet over medium heat and dust with salt and pepper. Cook potatoes until they lose some of their crispiness, about 10 minutes, flipping a few times as they cook. Add asparagus and spinach then cook for a few more minutes. Combine the eggs, milk, and half of the cheese, then add the egg mixture over the top of the potatoes. Sprinkle a bit of red pepper flakes if you'd like to spice it up a bit then top it off with remaining cheese. Cook on low heat over stove-top until eggs are cooked through or bake at 350 for 20 minutes. If you cook over the stove-top make sure you cook on low so the bottom doesn’t burn. Serve with salsa and sour cream.

For a full list of VintageMixer recipes click here.

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Thanksgiving Cooking iTunes Playlist

As the wife of a musician, music is a big part of my every day life. When I’m cooking there’s always music in the background and many times I even get the pleasure of hearing live music as Josh and his band practice at our home. I wanted to give you all something special for this holiday season so I came up with a playlist of some of the songs that I listen to while I’m clanging pots and mixing dough in my kitchen.

A few of my husband’s songs are on the playlist, of course, because he’s my favorite. But I’ve also included many of my other favorites. From the old John Mayer classics to Patty Griffin, one of the best singer/songwriters of all time, the playlist has a variety of songs that I could listen to for hours in the kitchen. I hope you find yourself singing along as you cook up this year’s Thanksgiving meal. Maybe these tunes will make your cooking adventures even more enjoyable.

Click on the title VintageMixer Thanksgiving at the top of the playlist to download the music.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I will leave you with one of my favorite side dishes from a post last year: Pomegranate Corn Bread Stuffing. I will also be posting a great holiday brunch recipe soon!

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Chess Pie

This is the crème de la crème of all southern pies. Bakers beware, once you have this you’ll be making it every year. Chess Pie, often called Crack Pie, is a mysteriously rich & smooth pie. People always ask me about the ingredients and the ingredients are pretty simple, but really, you don’t want to know what’s in this pie as you’re eating it. But I promise, it is worth it! Once a year (or maybe twice) your soul just needs a slice of this buttery, creamy pie.



Some people may call this pie Butter Chess Pie or Buttermilk Pie, but those titles don’t help its reputation during a time when people are increasingly trying to make healthy choices. So, we’ll just call it Chess Pie or Crack Pie. This is soul food at its best!

This is one of those recipes that I think twice about publishing online because it’s quintessential to my recipe repertoire. But I hope to give you guys the best, so I had to share it.




Chess Pie

INGREDEINTS
1 stick of butter (1/2 cup)
2 cups of sugar
½ tsp vanilla
3 eggs
3 TB flour
1/8 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
dash of nutmeg
1 9 in pie shell

DIRECTIONS
In mixer cream butter and sugar together. Add vanilla then add one egg at a time to the mixture. Slowly add flour and salt. Stir in buttermilk then pour into prepared pie shell. Sprinkle the top of the pie with a dash of nutmeg. Bake at 350 degrees for about 50 minutes. After 30 minutes cover the crust edge (an easy way to do this is to cut a circle of foil then fold the foil in half and cut and half circle out of the middle creating a ring of foil to put on the crust edge.
* To make sure the pie is done you can barely shake it to see if it is still liquid in the center.

For a full list of VintageMixer recipes click here.

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Martine, Salt Lake City UT

This week I met a fellow foodie friend at Martine, one of Salt Lake's best European Style restaurants. With flavors from North Africa, Spain and Provence you'll surely fined something delectible on their menu. This tapa style restaurant is a great spot for celebrating a special occasion over a lengthy dinner or for a finer lunch.

As for me, I take pleasure in dining for lunch at the places I can't often afford for dinner. Since I worked for 3 years in Park City, I am still rounding up my favorite lunch restaurants in Salt Lake and this is near the top of the list for sure.

As you walk in you feel as though you've entered some posh New York cafe with the dark wood booths, white linens, and fancy bar. The food is certainly not served with New York attitude or European blasé but with Western friendliness and hospitality.

It was terribly hard to choose something from the menu...Szechwan Chicken Pasta with Vegetables, Southwestern Chicken Salad with jimica and queso fresca, or Roast Beef Panini with brie, figs, and arugula. I went for the Panini but will have to go back to try some of the other great things on their lunch menu. My friend ordered the Hot Pastrami and Swiss which was also a good choice although we both agreed that my panini was better. Here are some photos if I haven't convinced you already that you must try Martine.
Martine Cafe
22 East 100 South, Salt Lake City
lunch: mon - fri 11:30am to 2pm
dinner: tue - thu 5pm to 10pm, fri - sat 5pm to 10:30pm


More Salt Lake Restaurant Reviews by Vintage Mixer

Read more about Martine, by Heather on The Examiner.

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Baby Gifts on Etsy

I wanted to give you guys the best tip ever for baby gifts: Etsy. There are so many fun homemade things on Etsy but I am especially impressed on the baby gift selection. I found these adorable booties for the baby shower last week and now I think I'm hooked for baby gifts.

Usually, I can't afford to pay a lot for presents but I always want to give something extra special. And since I'm not as crafty as I would hope to be I'll leave it to someone else to create something fabulous for me, like Deb from Hand Made Baby Love. She crochets baby booties and beanies and has several other items up for sale on her etsy shop. Not only is she a totally gifted artisan but she is also super gracious and kind. I didn't allow much time for shipping and she made sure my present arrived before the shower.

So, for the next time you need a baby gift try Etsy.com or go straight to HandMadeBabyLove store on Etsy for fabulous handmabe gifts by Deb.

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Button Cookies

I loved these cookies we made for the Baby Shower and they were the perfect take away gift. They would also make for great Christmas cookies. The recipe is pretty basic but I spiced it up with some lemon to make them a bit more savory. I can add lemon to most anything so, if you are not a lemon fan like me, just skip the lemon and they will be your favorite butter cookie recipe.

Lemon Button Cookies
adapted from Food and Wine
makes 4 dozen

INGREDIENTS
2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/2 cup cornstarch
Zest of 1 lemon plus a few squeezes of lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 350°. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. In a food processor, pulse the butter with 1/2 cup of the confectioners’ sugar until combined. Add the cornstarch, lemon zest and juice, vanilla and flour and process until a soft dough forms. Transfer the dough to a work surface and divide it into 4 equal pieces.

On a lightly floured work surface, roll each piece of dough into a 12-inch rope. Cut each rope into 12 pieces and roll each piece into a ball. Transfer the balls to the baking sheet; they won’t spread much. Bake the cookies on the center rack of the oven for about 22 minutes, until the bottoms are golden but the tops are still pale.

Sift the remaining 1 cup of confectioners’ sugar into a bowl. Add 12 warm cookies to the bowl at a time and toss to coat. Transfer the cookies to a clean baking sheet. While the cookies are still warm, poke 4 shallow holes into each one with a toothpick or skewer to make a buttonhole pattern. Let the cookies cool completely before serving or storing.

For a full list of VintageMixer recipes click here.

9 comments

A Baby Shower and Pumpkin Crunch Cake Recipe

I was honored to help host a baby shower for a dear friend of mine last week. I told my ESL class of this American tradition of baby showers and was fascinated to hear about all of their cultural traditions surrounding celebrating the birth of a baby. I think my favorite was from Taiwan. The mother of a new baby gives out red dyed eggs to those who come over and bless the family with a gift or money. Although this sounds unusual to us as I began to think of our American tradition of baby showers, some of our traditions are pretty funny as well, like games dealing with diapers and candy candy bars, or watching the bride open every gift she receives. I guess what seems normal to one culture could seem very strange to another.

Part of the baby shower culture in America is the idea of hosts. The mother to be usually asks or is offered by friends to host the party. As hosts of this shower, we divided the responsibilities up and much to my surprise I was given the sweet opportunity to organize the yummy foods for the special evening. Of course, as soon as I was told my responsibility for the shower my mind was quickly filled with ideas of little treats and girly delights for the party. To worsen my indecisiveness I sent a tweet out on twitter to see if anyone had any other great food ideas. I got lots of great responses and was able to narrow down from there.

I decided on a soup bar for a light dinner which I enlisted the help of a few of the attendees to bring soups for. We were feeding about 50 people so this made it much easier to offer variety. We ended up with about 6 different soups and I picked up some breads from Great Harvest: Ciabatta and a loaf of Harvest Blend. I love both of these breads and they are easy crowd pleasers. Hopefully my fellow foodie friends can forgive me for not making the bread from scratch when you hear about all of the desserts.



Desserts
Hot Cocoa Cakes
Baby Button Cookies
Chocolate Dipped Coconut Macaroons
Pumpkin Crunch Cake

I got the recipe for the Pumpkin Crunch Cake from a lady in Dallas, TX. I first tried it when we were traveling through there this October with Josh's music and tracked down the recipe because it was so delicious. The recipe is originally from a Cafe in Texas called The Bluebonnet Cafe, fitting for this Southern decadent recipe.
Pumpkin Crunch Cake

INGREDIENTS
1 14oz can of pumpkin
1 large can of evaporated milk
1 1/2 cups of sugar
2 tsp of pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp salt
4 eggs
1 box yellow cake mix
1 1/2 cups of chopped pecans
2 sticks of butter/margarine (I only used one..2 seemed a bit extravagant)

DIRECTIONS
Beat together the first six ingredients and pour into a 13 x 9 greased pan. Sprinkle dry yellow cake mix evenly over the pumpkin mixture. Add chopped pecans over cake mix. Thinly slice butter/margarine and place over pecans. Bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes and serves with whipped topping.

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Extreme Makeover, Blogging Edition

Is it allowed for a blogger to go back and spice up some old posts? Are you supposed to leave the first embarrassing ones up for all to see or is it ok to go back and at least make the post look a bit better?

Well I'm going to break the rules,(it won't be the first time in my life to break some rules), and upgrade some of my old recipe posts that I thought were worthy of better photos. I will spare you with the old photos, just be glad I made the switch. Thank you Kevin, for teaching me how to take better food photos! I know I still have a lot to learn but the photos are getting much better with every meal.

Here are a couple of recipes made the cut for new makeovers.

Spicy Vegetable Soup

Grandma's Cornbread Chicken
Here is a complete list of all of my posted recipes.

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Toasters, Salt Lake City UT

There's an additional location to a local favorite! Many of you downtown folks know and love Toasters, so much so that you probably also hate that they are so busy all of the time and lack seating to accommodate their loyal clientele. I have good news for you, they have an additional location still close to downtown but with lots of seating.

Why do people love Toasters so much that they needed to open another store? Gigantic toasted gourmet sandwiches on fresh made breads with premium deli meats and cheeses. Still need more reasons... imported chocolates like kinder eggs, illy coffee, haribou candies and so much more. You should go an see for yourself.
When you go, try their turkey avocado sandwich, its the most popular. The tuna salad sandwich is also a great choice. And you can't leave without a kinder egg no matter how old you are!

Toasters
New location: 30 East 300 South
Mon-Fri 7am-6pm
Sat 10am-6pm
Sun 11am-3pm

See what others have to say about Toasters on Urban Spoon


Click here for a list of all VintageMixer Reviews

4 comments

The Anthropologist

Many of you know my love of Anthropologie, but for those of you who don't I will enlighten you. When I was probably in 7th grade my older sister took a trip to Chicago and visited a really fun shop called Anthropologie. At that time they were probably in only a few cities in the country. She walked in a knew this shop was exactly my style. She brought me home a catologue and ever since then I've been a loyal anthropologie fan. (thanks a lot sis for getting me hooked on this truely innovative and completely extravagant store) Even though I can't afford much of what they sell, I still find myself wandering around the store seeking inspiration for my home and my wardrobe. If I'm actually looking to buy something I usually try to b-line straight to the clearance section, which occasionally has prices that I can afford.

I really try to live within my means, which for me means I don't usually shop at Anthropologie but I do shop for Inspiration there.

I recently got an email announcing a new website, The Anthropologist, that they are sponsoring that features artists in all fields and gives their story of inspiration. The site is up, although it doesn't have much on it yet, I think it will be a fun read for loyal anthropologie fans like myself or just those looking for some sources of influence.

I love the idea of an anthropologist, gaining insight to the world from taking a step into completely different cultures. In a way, I hope to be an anthropologist of sorts, acquiring more depth of who God is by taking a glimpse into the many unique cultures of the world.

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A crowd pleaser for any occasion

My college mentor and dear friend, Kelly, gave me this recipe. She used to make it when a group of my closest friends and I would come over to her home to discuss life, love, God, and seek advice from her. Every time we gathered it was a sweet time of learning and connecting with each other. We could easily eat a entire bowl full of this stuff as we got lost in each other's company and chatted for hours. Now, this yummy dip takes me back in time to those special girls-only evenings in college.

Don't be deceived because this dip is not only for women, the men also love it! I have made it on several occasions and the many musicians hanging out at our house eat it up. Recently, I brought it to a party and was inspired by a photo on tastespotting to put the dip in a small pumpkin. It was so fun and all we brought home was an empty sad pumpkin.

Creamy Cinnamon Fruit Dip

INGREDIENTS
8 oz cream cheese (don't use fat free or your dip will be chunky)
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
3 tsp milk

DIRECTIONS
Melt cream cheese in microwave for 1 min then combine with all other ingredients. Serve with apples or whatever fruit is in season.

For a full list of VintageMixer recipes click here.

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The Wild Grape, Salt Lake City UT

Last week I experienced my first 'tweet-up' with a bunch of fellow food blogger friends in the area. All of whom I knew online but never met in person. It was fun to get to know each other and share a meal together.

If you've been reading my blog for a little while you may have found out that much of my love for food stems from my love of sharing a meal and enjoying the company and conversation of others. My ideal dinner might extend over several hours with a couple glasses of wine and long, authentic conversation. I believe we all have an inner need for community and relationships and my outlet is shared meals. So obviously a dinner with a bunch of Salt Lake Foodies was a joy for me!

Not only did we try a place I hadn't been to before but we connected with each other about our life and our different spheres of the foodie world. Everyone who came was so interesting and unique yet we all share a love for food.

Here are short bios to help you get to know some of the Salt Lake City foodies:

@slclunches: Marketer for a local engineering company and freelance food writer for several local and national companies. She also loves dogs especially her Great Dane. Blogging for The Examiner.

@TwoPeasandPod A vegetarian who loves eating healthy and exercise plus the occasional sweet treat. She works in the health industry and blogs about her an her husband's kitchen creations. Blogging at Two Peas and Their Pod.

@BarbaraBakes A joyful mother of four who loves feeding her family with delicious foods and baked goods. She is also part of the Daring Baker's Challenge. Blogs at Barbara Bakes.

@foodfinery Mother of and wife first and foremost and foodie secondly. Not only does she have a taste for good food but for good shoes as well. Blogging at the Food Finery.

@thetablerunner: Mother of @littletweet who also joined us, cooking instructor and event planner. Born into a line of good cooks, she loves cooking inspirational foods and planning extravagant events. Blogging at The Table Runner.

@Phemom Mother and baker with a bun in the oven. She is also a part of the Tuesdays with Dorie food bloggers. You can find her blog at PheMomenon.

The Wild Grape
The Wild Grape....a fun find among Salt Lake City restaurants. We had nothing negative to say. We all ordered different items off of the menu and enjoyed each of them. Here are a few shots of what we tried.
Braised Pork Cheeks: Sweet Paprika Sauce, Blue Cheese Polenta, Fennel
Morgan Valley Lamb "Sugo": Forrest Mushrooms, Fresh Papardelle, Grana Padano
Smoked Portobello Sandwich:
Toasted Focaccia, Roasted Pepper, Chèvre
Tempura Butternut Squash: Cinnamon Scented, Butternut Risotto, Wilted Greens, Pomegranate Molasses
This is what I ordered and enjoyed it but I could have used more of that delicious Pomegranate sauce for sure.

I think the Wild Grape has a great modern atmosphere with an excellent menu. Lots of fall flavors right now including Butternut Squash Risotto Saffron Vegetable Stew and Butternut Squash Soup. The wait staff were attentive and knowledgeable about their offerings.

The Wild Grape
481 E South Temple
Lunch: Mon-Fri 11am-3pm
In Between Menu: 3pm-5pm
Brunch: Sat-Sun 9am-3pm
Dinner: Sun-Thur 5pm-10pm, Fri & Sat 5pm-10:30pm
Late: Wed-Sat 10:00pm-Till Close (11:00 - Midnight)


For more photos and additional thought on the lunch and dinner menu at Wild Grape check out The Salt Lake Lunch Examiner and Gastronomic SLC.

Click here for a list of all VintageMixer Reviews

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