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Pineapple Pie

 

Pineapple Pie is a light, fluffy dessert that I had at my mother's house last week. Our family still gets together every other Sunday for Sunday dinner, and my mom likes to use us as guinea pigs and try out new recipes at these gatherings. This cream cheese based pie is one of those experiments. It's a delicious combination, very summer-y tasting, and not too heavy after a good supper. Pineapple Pie uses a graham cracker crust, which you can make yourself (the recipe for the crust is included), or you can buy a store bought graham crust. This recipe is very easy and tastes great, and it's a pie! Three things that make a keeper in my book.

Leftover Tuesdays #4 - Asian Noodly Thing

 

It's time again for my favourite food blogging event - Leftover Tuesdays! This months event is being hosted by Mary at Ceres and Bacchus, and was started by the ever clever David at Cooking Chat. My creation this month is a little bit of a stretch as far as "leftovers". The ingredients really were leftovers, as far as it goes, but I didn't cook the first round with them. Mr. Chef had a dinner party on Saturday night, and 'leftover' from that was one leek, one stalk of celery, some odds and ends of fresh parsley, and half an onion. MY contribution is the ground beef I took out of the freezer in anticipation of supper on Saturday night, which was still in the fridge, waiting to be used. So all the leftover odds and ends turned into Asian Noodly Thing. It's the combination of quite a few similar recipes, but using all the bits from my fridge. It tastes pretty good, quite different then my usual ground beef dishes, and it did, in fact, use the leftover half package of Instant Noodles in my pantry too (Clean the Kitchen Tuesdays, anyone?). If you'd like a little kick to this dish, and have a leftover hot pepper or two, you could add that for some heat.

Whole Wheat hand-me-down Breadmaker Bread

For a while it seemed like everyone in the known world had a breadmaker - except me. And then, luckily, they went out of fashion and I finally got one via my mother's friend. It's a circa 1994 Westbend Bread and Dough maker, not quite as sleek as some of the fancy new ones I've seen around, but it does make bread. Of course, being a hand me down, the bread machine came with no instructions or recipes. I searched the net for some Whole Wheat bread recipes, and found this one and a half pound loaf on the Westbend site. I liked that the bread recipe contained an egg for extra protein, used only whole wheat flour and didn't call for gluten flour (because I didn't have any). This bread cooks up nice and light, not too crumbly, and it slices beautifully. It might also be my imagination, but it also seems to stay a little fresher longer than some of the other bread recipes I've tried.