One of my bestest buddies had a birthday recently. About a year ago we were talking about cakes and he was pretty adamant that he wanted to have a dippin’ dots cake for his birthday, so being a good little boy, I made a note of it and have been waiting to surprise him with this thing. You have to special order them from the Dippin’ Dots stands but you can check their website for the nearest location.

It was pretty good but definitely one of the sweetest cakes I’ve ever had. The base layer is crushed up sugar cookie and the dippin’ dots are held together with some sort of caramel-sugary-sweet syrups all which combine to be your daily intake of sugar for a month. While I’m a cookie cake man, its a good alternative for those looking for a unique cake idea.  Oh, and while the cake is not big for $30 it easily served about 12 of us.

Happy Birthday Scotty!

PS - there is also a pure fudge dippin dots cake that looks fantastic.

This is one of my all-time favorite dishes and probably my favorite “leftovers” dish, so much so that I make a huge portion just so I can eat the leftovers for the next few meals (breakfast included!).  The original recipe is good but I’ve added some modifications.  Swapping out the regular pasta for whole wheat pasta, prosciutto for ham (leftover holiday ham works great), 2% milk for Whole milk and adding some mozzarella to the fontina.  Also with everything, I tend to avoid enriched white flour and use whole wheat flour, it dramatically changes the taste and texture of food but to me its worth it.

Also, I changed the order of the steps so I could dirty less dishes and just use one 4-qrt sauce pot.  Hey, I’m all about efficiency!

Bechamel sauce:

• 1 stick unsalted butter (4 ounces)
• 1/2 cup and 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 quart whole milk, at room temperature (we use 2%)
• Pinch fresh nutmeg
• Sea salt and white pepper
• 1 cup grated fontina
  1/2 pound thinly sliced prosciutto, julienned (we have also used big chunks of ham)
  1 pound dry rigatoni
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, diced

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Cook the pasta al dente, drain in a colander and set aside.

Bechamel sauce:

In a 2 quart saucepan, melt the butter over low-medium heat. Add the flour and whisk until smooth, about 2 minutes. Always stirring, gradually add the milk and continue to whisk until the sauce is smooth and creamy. Simmer until it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. This will take approximately 10 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in nutmeg, 1/2 cup fontina, prosciutto(ham) and season with salt and white pepper.

Into a greased 13 by 9-inch baking dish, pour the pasta with cream sauce. Mix cream sauce and pasta thoroughly with a wooden spoon. Smooth out top and sprinkle with remaining 1/2 cup fontina/mozzarella. Dot the top with diced butter and bake in oven for 25 minutes or until bubbling and the top is golden brown.

Here’s the original Giada recipe

I can take absolutely no credit for this chicken it came from a friend of a friend but it is delicious and a must try.  It’s wicked easy and takes just a few minutes of prep time. Use a whole chicken, about 4lbs, and marinate it a day or 2 in advance for prime deliciousness.

Marinade for one 4lb. bird:
¼ Cup of soy sauce
2 tsp. Sugar
2 crushed cloves of Garlic
1 ½ tsp. Five Spice mixture
2tb. Peanut Oil

1. Mix ingredients in a gallon zip lock bag.
2. Put chicken the zip lock (try to squeeze out as much air as you can).
3. Shake it like a Polaroid picture: Shake bird in bag
4. Now leave it alone for a day or 2! But turn occasionally.
5. Place bird, ideally on a roasting pan but any baking dish will work as well.
5. Since the bird will get very crispy… move the oven rack so the bird sits in the top 1/3 of the oven.
6. Turn oven 425 degrees – takes 1.5 hrs depending on how big of a bird you have.
7. Roast bird 2/3 of the time breast down and 1/3 of the time breast up.
8. Remove from the oven and let the bird sit for 20min before carving it up.

Wolfpack Celebration Video @ the N and O

I think James C. says it best

An especially sweet video this week…it’s fun to watch O’Brien express some restrained joy with Andre Brown, a player who’s been critical in the team’s transition from Amato to its new head coach.

Ya gotta love Andre Brown, his joy is 100% genuine

I tend to have a lot of friends that are picky eaters which makes them hard to cook for. That in itself is fairly ironic since I used to be the pickiest of eaters and now it has come around to bite me in the ass.

I have just started enjoying eating fish in the last three years, thanks to being able to get some of the best seafood anywhere during my frequent trips to the Outer Banks of NC, but I have not yet found an easy way to cook it. Until now.

I was watching Dave Lieberman on Food Network, whom I really enjoy for his simple recipes, when I saw him cook a wicked easy fish that looked really delicious. It was a Baked Seabass with Garlic and Herb Bread crumbs. Since at the time Sea Bass was pretty expensive I opted to go for Cod which was a bit cheaper but any white fish will do.

1. Preheat oven to 350o F
2. Coat at baking dish with butter or non-stick spray
3. Place the fish in the dish and season with salt, pepper, lemon zest, lemon juice, and thyme
4. Melt a 1/2 stick of butter in a large skillet with 3 smashed garlic cloves. As soon as the butter starts to bubble, turn off the heat and let the garlic infuse the warm butter for a few minutes.
5. Remove the garlic from the butter. Add the bread crumbs and lightly toss until all the butter has been absorbed. Turn the heat off, stir in 1 cup parsley and season, to taste, with salt and pepper.
6. Spread the bread crumbs over top of the fish and bake for 12-15 minutes.

This dish is simple and comes out amazingly flavorful and even a novice fish cooker like myself can make like a pro in very little time.

Heres the original recipe on FoodNetwork

I try to cook meals that are a bit healthier for me and usually they turn out comparable to the full fat / not-as-healthy versions but this recipe plain stunk! There is nothing more disappointing then having a grand idea for breakfast the night before, get all excited to make it when you wake up, and then immediately want to throw it away. Dejected. Totally let down. Hopefully, this doesn’t happen to you as often as it does to me because I hate being left hungry in the mornings!

I’ve been following a self-modified version of the Abs Diet from MensHealth and its been going great (down 4 pants sizes!) and when I saw their Cinnamon Stuffed French Toast I thought it would be perfect for my pre-football game Saturday morning breakfast. Boy was I wrong! I really think the problem was the stuffing, the texture of the ricotta just didn’t work for french toast and it definitely wasn’t sweet enough. I think next time, I’ll try a low fat cream cheese based filling .

Stuffed Cinnamon French Toast

• 2 Tbsp part-skim ricotta cheese
• 2 slices whole-grain bread
• 1 tsp honey
• Pinch + 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 egg
• 1 Tbsp 1% milk
• Handful of fresh berries

*the original recipe called for sliced almonds which I didn’t have, but i didn’t think it would have made that much of a difference in the end.

1. Spread the ricotta on your bread, drizzle with honey and a pinch of cinnamon.

2. Add your top slice of bread and proceed with your typical french toast making procedure.

It was terrible, but I ate it anyway, probably b/c almost anything is good with fresh blueberries! Is it just a bad recipe? or did I do something wrong?

At least the picture came out well!

recipe on MensHealth.com

If any of you are like me and don’t know anything about your local candidates because all we hear about are the Presidential candidates then I have a great link for you. Project Vote Smart - Results for 27560 will give you great info about where the candidates stand on most topics so you can make an informed decision rather than just voting down the party line. For Example, I had no idea about REP Congress Candidate William ‘BJ’ Lawson until I read and agreed with 95% of his stances.  This being one:

I would prefer to eliminate the federal income tax system, and replace it with a constitutional, progressive, and direct consumption tax that targets nonrenewable energy with damaging environmental side-effects. Our 67,000 page income tax code is our biggest obstacle to innovation, job creation, and sustainable economic growth.

Check out the site and make an informed decision.  Also, Vote for DEM Ronnie Ansely for NC Ag Commissioner b/c he doesn’t support the gas chamber for dogs in the pound like his opposition does!

the TBJ reports that ESPN radio will no longer be carried by 850thebuzz and 620thebull and will move to 99.9FM the Fan starting Jan. 5th 2009.  I just thought I should update my 3 readers in case any of you like ESPNRadio as much as I.  If you haven’t ever listened, I suggest listening to ‘The Herd’ at 10-1pm, it is fantastic.

What the heck Facebook? Apparently they are no longer allowing the upload of pictures by email from the iPhone, instead are requiring I open the facebook app to upload a mobile photo.

Sorry, we cannot support uploads sent via email. Upload photos from your iPhone with our free application, Facebook for iPhone:

. Now its not that big of a deal, just a minor inconvenience for someone like myself who was so used to uploading mobile pictures via the mobile@facebook.com email address, it was just that much easier. I really have no idea why they would force this change but to me, it sucks.

One of my favorite shows, The Amazing Race, rolled through one of my recent travel destinations, Cambodia, on the latest episode.  While its really cool to see such an obscure place on TV that I’ve been to, its more saddening to hear that 2 of the contestants didn’t even know that Cambodia is in Asia, let alone where it actually is located.  The teams visited Siem Reap which is the home to Angkor Wat and also one of the fastest growing tourist destinations in SE Asia.  Maybe its just a bit of sentimental attachment that I have to Cambodia but I’m not sure they showed a good representation of what Cambodia is actually like. 

They showed cars zipping around, gas stations, and a fancy airport rather than a dirt road packed full of mopeds with people or pigs piled on top, street markets and one of the most amazing structures I’ve ever seen.  Phil, the host, described Angkor Wat as the largest religious structures in the world which helps gives the viewer some perspective but I don’t think the footage to accompany the commentary was very flattering.

Ok enough pointless rambling, just had to put my 2 cents in on the topic