Sweet Southern BBQ Sauce

For dinner last Monday I felt inspired to make a Jdawg's copycat sauce. But I'll be honest, the sauce didn't really remind me of Jdawg's sauce at all, except for that it was a little sweet, a little barbequey and a lot delicious. But still we didn't think it tasted like Jdawg's.

But don't let that discourage you one bit. Because the sauce was still wonderful. And our hot dogs turned out really great. Especially because the homemade buns and homemade coleslaw we put on top. (Those recipes will be coming soon, once we tweak them a little to perfection).

But in the mean time enjoy this delicious sweet barbequey sauce, over some Costco hotdogs (only the best) and the best buns you can find.

3/4 cup ketchup
1/2 cup bbq sauce
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup honey
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp soy
1/2 tsp onion salt

1. Combine all ingredients in a small sauce pan.
2. Heat over medium until boiling.
3. Boil for one minute.

4. Remove from heat.

5. Enjoy on top of hot dogs, chicken, burgers or whatever you want (really).

PS. This was so good that we each ate one and a half dogs. Yum Yum.

Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

One of our favorite snacks is dipping pita, chips or crackers into hummus. And although we're not picky about our hummus, our favorite flavor is roasted red pepper hummus. Finally this week we made our own hummus for the first time, and it was so simple, we'll definitely be making this recipe again and again.

This made quite a bit of hummus, if you're having a party it'd be a good amount, but for the 2 of us it was more than we needed. But we put some in jars and froze it. And we've already opened one of the jars and let it thaw in some water and the fridge and it tasted as good as new. But you could cut this recipe in half if you don't want to make as much.

2 15.5 oz cans garbanzo beans/chickpeas, drained **
2 TBS chopped garlic

1/3 cup tahini (sesame paste)***
1 large red pepper
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin


**Did you know that garbanzo beans and chickpeas are the same thing? I saw some recipes calling for one and some calling for the other so I had to get to the bottom of what the difference was. And after a little online research I discovered that they are they exact same thing. -- So why can I find chickpeas and gabanzo beans at the store? No idea. But don't stress over it. Just get the can that is the cheapest.

***We purchased the Tahini at the Sunflower Farmer's Market in Orem, which is a whole foods kind of place. I think a place like Trader Joes would definitely have it too. It can be found near the organic peanut butters.



How to roast a red pepper:
1.Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Cut red pepper in half, remove seeds and place in oven.
3. Bake for about 15 minutes.
4. Remove red pepper halves and place in a zip lock bag, and seal.
5. Let sit for 15 minutes
6. Remove from bag and peel off skin using your hands.

Roasted Red Pepper Hummus
1. Roast your red pepper.
2. Slice your red pepper.
3. Either using an electric food processor or a kitchen aid meat grinder attachment, puree you garbanzo beans/chickpeas**, red pepper, tahini and garlic, until smooth.

4. Transfer puree into a medium sized bowl and add lemon juice, salt and cumin.
5. Stir to combine.
6. Store covered in the fridge until you are ready to eat.
7. Enjoy on your favorite sandwiches, wraps, pitas, crackers, etc.

 

What is your favorite kind of hummus? 

What do you like to eat your hummus with?

Guacamole

 

 When I was 14 years old my parents moved from Taylorsville, UT to Fallbrook, CA. I, like most of you, had never heard of Fallbrook. But I quickly learned that it was about 30 minutes from the beach, and from my cousins house (two of the most important things for me at the time). 

Fallbrook is located just off of the 15 freeway on your way to Mexico, in north county San Diego. Fallbrook is a small town, with only about 40,000 people making it sometimes called "The Friendly Village".

Another fun thing about Fallbrook is that my paternal grandmother actually grew up in Fallbrook. Back in the day when Fallbrook was even smaller than it is now, my grandmother's family lived on a farm. There is even a street in Fallbrook named after my great grandfather.

And lastly, Fallbrook is known for its avocados. Fallbrook claims to be the "Avocado Capital of the World" and even has a yearly avocado festival. 

Before I lived in Fallbrook, I don't think I had much experience with avocados. I didn't dislike them, but I don't think I really liked them either. But of course since I lived in the avocado capital of the world, I at least had to give them a chance right? Well now I love them. I love guacamole. I love turkey, bacon avocado sandwiches. I think I could almost eat a piece of an avocado by itself, or at least with a little salt on it. 

So finally this last week, I made homemade guacamole. Maybe for the first time. And it was SO delicious. And Nate even loved it too. He says he'd never had fresh guacamole before, so he never really liked it. But this stuff may have converted him.

 

4 avocados

1 tomato

1/2 onion

1 tsp salt

1/2 lime

1. Cut avocados in half, remove seed and scoop out avocado with a spoon.

2. Dice tomato and onion.

3. Puree 3 of your tomatoes with a blender.

3. Put your last avocado, tomato, and onion in a food processor.

4. Pulse until they are desired size.

5. Put pureed avocado and pulsed vegetables, salt and the juice of your lime.

6. Combine with a fork.

7. Enjoy with some tortilla chips or on top of some yummy mexican food.

 

What is your city famous for?

Pearsauce

Asian Pears (peeled, cored and cut into quarters or halves)
1 1/2 cup sugar


We have an Asian Pear tree, it gives us delicious pears every year.  This year was no different but they were small, really small.  They still were tasty to eat, but I didn't want to just bite into one because of a worry about worms.  I wondered what can I do with all these pears cluttering up my counter space.  In case you did not know you pick pears early and let them ripen off the tree.  If they ripen on the tree they become very mushy and lose their flavor.

Craig suggested drying them, but I thought that was a lot of work besides just cutting, coring and peeling them; you have to cut them into very thin slices.  So I decided to try and make pearsauce just like applesauce.  We still had to peel, core and cut but the small pieces were quarters and Craig even just left them as halves.

Since this took a little bit of time, probably about 1 hour, I let the cut pieces soak in cold water to prevent browning.  Once we were finished with this, I drained the water off, placed the pears in a stock pot and covered with water.  I brought them to a boil and let them cook about 10 minutes, until soft.  Then I drained this water off, let the pears cool just slightly about 5 minutes, placed half in my blender and blended until there were no chunks left.  I did the same to the other half.  By this time I had about 6 cups of blended pears.  Place the pears back into the stock pot, add 1 and 1/2 cups of sugar and let simmer for about 5 minutes to dissolve the sugar. 

I suppose you could bottle this afterwards but it was already 10:45 on a Saturday night and I did not want to stay up any later.  I choose to place the sauce into 3 -  2 cup size freezer containers and freeze the sauce.

I keep 1 for eating and the other 2 are in the freezer for later eating in the season.  I really am not sure how well these will be unthawed but I think it is quite tasty right now.

I am sorry I don't know exactly how many pears we used about 3 times this bowl worth.

If your pears are normal size it might not take as long to prepare.  I don't think I would buy pears to do this and I believe you probably could use any pear such as Bartlett, not just Asian.

Salsa #2

Can you believe that until this week I had actually never made my own salsa. Shocking right? I love chips and salsa for a snack, or for a side to any good Mexican meal.  But I have always just bought salsa at the store. One of our favorites is Chachie's mango peach salsa, which has just the right amount of sweetness. I also really love Pace's medium salsa with just the right amount of kick. And although this salsa recipe is not really like either of those recipes, I'm not too picky. Plus this tastes a little more authentic to me, like something you would find at a yummy Mexican restaurant. 

Inspired from this recipe, this salsa was so easy to make, and with all fresh vegetables its really good for you too. I will definitely be making this recipe again and again, and now that I know how easy salsa is I may even be brave enough to try additional recipes.

2 large tomatoes

1/3 yellow sweet onion

1/2 red pepper

1 jalapeno

1 tsp chopped garlic

1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp chili powder

1/3 cup cilantro **

1 lime

**I love cilantro and would have added more if the hubby loved it as much as I do. This was still a decent enough amount that I could taste it almost as much as I liked.

1. Chop up tomatoes, onion, pepper, and jalapeno into small (maybe dime sized) pieces.

2. Put tomatoes and onion into the food processor. 

3. Pule about 15 times. Set aside. *

4. Juice lime and add to mixture.

5. Put red pepper, jalapeno and seasonings into food processor.

6. Pulse about 15 times. Combine with tomatoes and onions in bowl. 

7. Stir together. 

8. Put mixture back into food processor (I did this in 2 sets)

9. Pulse until it has the desired consistency.

10. Pour into a bowl and stir everything together.

11. Enjoy on top of some tasty Mexican food or with chips and salsa.

* If you have a large food processor you could probably do steps 3-9 together, mine didn't fit everything at once so I had to do it in sets.

 

This was so good we ate all the salsa within 2 days. A few of the bites were a little spicy, so you could probably choose to use less of the jalapeno if you want.

What is your favorite salsa recipe?

Fresh Salsa and Chips

You have to love tomatoes, to enjoy this salsa.  It is best within 1/2 hour after making. 

1/4 sweet yellow onion - chopped into little pieces
2 large (homegrown - if possible) tomatoes - chopped into little pieces
1/2 sweet yellow pepper -chopped into little pieces
1 garlic clove - minced
4 tiny dashes sriracha chili sauce
1 Tbs. sugar
1/2 tsp. chili powder or to taste
cilantro - torn into small pieces (to taste - I but in 3 stalks)
salt and pepper to taste

Put everything together in a bowl, stir together gently. 
Eat with Kirtland Tortilla Chips

I love to eat this, but I really love fresh tomatoes .

Sorry, we already ate most of it before thinking to take a picture.  I told you it was good.

Peach Sauce

This is nothing orginal, but Craig and I got an idea.  We had lots and lots of peaches on our tree and what is quick and easy to do with all of them.  We had made this delicous Strawberry Sauce from Our Best Bites and loved it.  The two ideas clicked and we made peach sauce.

4 cups of peaches (peeled and pitted and worms/bugs/bird bites removed
1 cup sugar
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Peeled and pit the peaches (sorry - I did not count how many) to make 4 cups of peaches.  I only halved my peaches because you blend them later.  Put into a large saucepan, add 1 cup of sugar. Cook over medium heat for 5 minutes to dissolve the sugar.  You can break up your peaches more while you stir them.  Remove from heat and add the almond and vanilla extract.  Stir in extract.  Let cool and then pour into your blender and blend.  It only takes about 30 seconds to blend until there are no chunks.  Serve/save in fridge or freezer until you want to use.  (We put half in the freezer for later)

Use on toast instead of jam, use for a pancake/waffle syrup, use over ice cream, eat straight, dip cream puffs into (this was the first reason for making it because we had 5 hungry boys over and cream puffs left over from Aimee's reception a year ago that had been sitting in the freezer)

I think this was delicious.  I hope you enjoy it too.

Ranch Dressing/Dip

1 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 tsp dried chives
1/2 tsp dried parsley
1/2 tsp dried dill weed
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp onion salt
a few sprinkles of pepper

1. Put all ingredients in a bowl.
2. Mix ingredients together with a whisk.
3. Refrigerate for 30 minutes before serving.

 We used this ranch dressing for a new pizza recipe we tried. But we had some left over and dipped some chips in it. It tasted delicious and was perfect for both.

 

I'm not sure how it would taste actually on salad, but according to the reviews on allrecipes, its good on salad too. A few people replaces buttermilk for the sour cream, so you could try that if you want, but we don't like buttermilk.

Anyway, I know a lot of people like making their own dressings because their without preservatives and the bad stuff for you, so you should try this. And try it on a salad and let me know how that goes.

Poppy Seed Salad Dressing

1 cup sugar
2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cup oil (any kind, I used olive oil)
3/4 cup rice vinegar (I usually use this but was all out so I used white wine vinegar instead)
2 Tbs. mustard ( I love dijon mustard, so I added this for a little more zing)
1/2 onion (yellow or white or sweet) chopped  (I have also made it with a red onion - the dressing will be pink)
2 Tbs. poppy seeds

Add first six ingredients in a blender or magic bullet (this works so easily), mix up and it will chop up the onion until smooth.  Remove and mix in poppy seeds.

This is a lot of dressing.  So when I choose to make it, I either cut it in half or in 3rds.  There is still plenty for several days.  Since it really is easy to make up just a few minutes, then I can have it fresh.

My niece Brooke Brown shared this recipe with me.

Strawberry Sauce

This recipe is stolen from Our Best Bites.  It really is delicous and can be used for any sauce topping.  We started with waffles and syrup but I added it as part of a homemade salad dressing recipe from my sister-in-law Cherie the other day (the salad dressing I cut the oil in half and used olive oil and replaced the raspberry sauce with strawberry and it was delicious on our lettuce berry salad)

1 pint strawberry
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp almond extract

Clean and hull strawberries.  You can cut them up but there is really no need.  Combine berries, sugar and extract in a medium sauce pan.  Cook for 5 minutes, stirring and breaking down the strawberries constantly.
After 5 minutes remove from heat and let cool.  I have a plastic blender so I let cool completely or the heat pressure will make it explode inside your blender. Blend on pulse until it is smooth.  Use over golden butter waffles with homemade maple syrup.

Homemade Maple Syrup

Although it really is fake flavoring - I grew up with this syrup and it is my favorite still.  I love warm syrup and find the thick store bought lacking.

1 cup water
2 cups sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp maple flavoring

In a medium pot add water and sugar.  Mix well, bring to a boil - stirring occasionally.  Let boil about 1 minute.  Add vanilla and maple flavoring and let boil another minute or so.  The more you let it boil the faster it will crystallize in your fridge.  You can make more or less syrup depending on your portions; with the sugar and water it is always 2 to 1.  Whatever is left over can keep in your fridge to use another time and just reheat in the microwave.  It will crystallize over time.  But it is still good.  Serve over waffles, pancakes or french toast.