And Sometimes Martha Stewart Doesn't Want to Be Channelled

By now I'm sure you know I like to take pictures of my food when I try new recipes. Here is the latest update. My husband actually made most of them!

Peanut Butter Honeycomb Pie (Bon Appetit): I saw this recipe in an old magazine in my office and KNEW I had to make it. It looked wonderful.  All went well until I made the honeycomb. I boiled the corn syrup and honey with sugar and poured it out on parchment paper to set. But it never set. It remained in a perpetual state of warm taffy. Because I had detoured ever so slightly from the recipe in cooking the honeycomb, I tried it again. I tossed the first batch, much to my future daughter-in-law's consternation. She claimed she would have eaten it.  My second batch of honeycomb turned out exactly the same way. It never set up hard. So.... I put it in the freezer. Once it was hard, I hit it with a knife several times to break it into little pieces to sprinkler over the pie. I also substituted milk chocolate for the bittersweet chocolate drizzle, because......well, I just don't like dark or bittersweet chocolate. Here is the finished pie:

 

Not everyone in the house loved it, but it quickly disappeared, eaten by our resident peanut butter fans.

 

Shepherd's Pie with Potato Crust (Southern Living): LOVED this. We used ground turkey instead of chuck and I found it so delicious I almost sat down with a spoon to eat it like it was a carton of ice cream. It's got a layer of sweet potato slices on the bottom and a layer of Yukon gold potatoes on top. This was for my son's benefit, who tries to eat turkey, whole wheat pasta and brown rice when he can.

 

 

Notice this was baked in the same pie plate as the Peanut Butter Honeycomb Pie. The plate was a gift from my son and his fiancée and I use it for lots of things other than pie. The first time I used it was for a round loaf of garlic bread and dipping sauce.

 

Pork Cutlets with White Beans and Roasted Peppers (Woman's Day): No picture. After reading this recipe again, I realized it was just fried pork chops with a side of bean salad. We just followed the part of the recipe that applied to the pork chops and found them a little too vinegary.

 

Picadillo-Style Chicken Taco Salad (bhg.com): This is a "not quite there yet" dish. We made the filling using ground turkey but didn't set it up on lettuce or sprinkle the cheese or crushed tostado shells on top because we figured that wouldn't heat up well. Who likes warm wilted lettuce? So the filling is a little bland, but probably would be very nice once the cheese and chips are included to add some saltiness.

 

Stay tuned for the next round of recipes. We constantly try new recipes. When they don't work out, there is always peanut butter and jelly!