Tormented Kitchen

Hi followers! I'm back with an actual recipe!  It's one of my oldest, favorite things that I learned from my mom. It's the easiest and most delicious fruit dip. We even have a German-sounding made up name for it. We call it Frutenglasa. To say it, the last "s" has to sound a bit like a "j" or "zh" sound.  It's great with strawberries or fruit salad. It's great with watermelon when it's hot during summertime. You can even smear it on crepes or a puff pancake, add some fruit and have a very elegant dish. Mom has a top secret, special change she does to this recipe that I will share, too.  For special occasions, she will substitute orange liqueur (like Cointreau, Grand Marnier, or Triple Sec) for the orange juice.  My last batch, I only subbed 1 tablespoon of Triple Sec and kept the other 2 as OJ. This stuff is almost addictive. And I have even stuffed it inside birthday cake as a filling layer. Super awesome stuff it is. ...

Hello readers! I've been slow to post this, mainly because I forgot to hit post!  Silly me! So let's take a look back at the 2014 Best in the West Rib Cook-off.  It was in the typical location along Victorian Square between the Nugget hotel and the Sparks Century 14 Theater.  In recent years, many of the older building were demolished and turned into a vast parking lot. This comes in very handy for events like this. There were rib booths spread out more toward the theater. Normally they are crowded together all down Victorian Avenue, and the lines of people waiting for food can get very long. It can be hard to even walk. I liked that the booths were further apart. We tried a few places that we didn't recognize. Everything was hot and fresh off the grill.Yum! In my opinion, that is the best way to eat ribs. We didn't get tickets to the Rib Village this time. No, we took our time meandering through the vendors on foot and stopping at places t...

Hello again my friends. This year is really flying by. I woke up and realized that we are one month away from Christmas! Goodness! I have to start getting seasonal decorations up! Speaking of seasonal things, it's getting to be citrus fruit season in the stores. Have you also noticed the bags of clementines and mandarin oranges everywhere? I usually see them under the brands of Cuties and Halos. They're so tiny and tasty. I had a flash of brilliance and bought a bag. They are great to send for the kiddos lunches, or drop a few in my purse to snack on at work. I've used clementines in cooking as well.  They are so easy to add since they're seedless and add a lovely and gentle sweet orange flavor. For fun, I made crepes and a sweet whipped cream- ricotta filling, enhanced with the juice and zest from clementines. They were divine! I knew I had to share the recipe with you, because they were too good to keep to myself. By the way, if you don't have access to...

Hello, friends. I'm sharing more cake-y goodness today. Cake photos! WARNING: Some cakes are nice to look at, some cakes are less than perfect. It seems like every other cake has a problem. Now, let's get gawking! Everyone, jump in the time machine! Wait, what? Time machine? Back to 2011. We'll start with Tinkerbell and her fairy friends. I ordered this from Safeway's bakery. They had an example cake (click this for reference photo) on display that was very cute. It was a rectangular cake with layers and the fairies sitting in different places, like along a waterfall and stream.  The cake I took home was not layered and was nowhere as detailed as the example cake. No edge piping. Shortage of flowers and vines. Horrible cake writing. Shortage of talent on the decorator's part. Thanks Safeway. Total. Cake. Fail. 2012 was a bad year for birthday cakes. It  was also the year my son wanted a very fancy shaped homemade Optimus Prime Transformer cake. I attem...

Hello dear followers!  Is it really, officially Autumn? The weather is slowly cooling down, the days are getting noticably shorter. I suppose it will be Winter before we know it. Speaking of cold and winter, my daughter turned six last week.  She insisted on doing a Frozen theme. Well, my idea for executing the Frozen theme was pretty basic. I did not go all out like some of those mamas on Pinterest with way too much free time on their hands. I kept it simple. We gave out Frozen party favor baggies with various candies for the girls, and cars baggies for the boys. We gave her a few Frozen things as gifts. The cake was really the only thing that adhered to the theme. And I didn't even make it myself! I have been so short on time since school started! We ordered a half sheet cake from the Atlantis Bakery, simple white cake, white buttercream filling and frosting. I asked for light blue edge piping and darker blue text for "Happy Birthday Haley".  They offered an edible ...

One of my favorite things from childhood was eating fresh peaches from our peach tree. Back in Oklahoma, I had planted a peach pit it in our garden and it thrived! The tree was huge and just outside my bedroom window. We enjoyed sliced fresh peaches with sugar, peach ice cream, and peach pie. Mom always made the best peach pies.  I could never understand why people frequently added cinnamon to their peach pie. It covered up the peachy flavor. Fast forward to grown up Jenny and her house in Nevada. We planted our own peach tree a few years ago and it finally produced a nice crop of fruit. I devoured a few peaches right away, then we peeled and sliced the rest. We froze a bunch for later and made two pies. We even had sliced peaches and crepes for breakfast the next day! These pies were as simple as could be. No cinnamon. No almond extract. Just peaches, sugar, and tapioca to thicken the juices. And they were divine! Ingredients for one 9-inch pie 4 cups peeled and ...

Hello again, dear readers. It's almost summertime here in Nevada. You can basically say we had our one week of Springtime weather, so it might as well be called Summer already. We just had Memorial Day. The waterparks are open for business. People are out fishing and camping. It's time for every scout's favorite campfire treat. S'MORES!!!! I'm sure most people are familiar with the original s'more.  If you've seen the latest Hershey TV ad, then you've seen Hershey's chocolate teamed with Jet-Puft marshmallows and Honey-Maid graham crackers. Now, those are good, BUT I can up the ante. I can IMPROVE THEM!!! What you need is to think outside the s'more. You need to evolve the s'more, layer by delicious layer. You must know by now that is not health food. It's a devilish delicious treat. Let's start with the cracker. You can stick to graham crackers if you like. I picked up a box of Honey Grahams at Trader Joe's, as well...