Gotta love some of those Good Housekeeping recipes

This last issue of Good Housekeeping has a whole bunch of recipes I wanted to try, so I flagged some, and set myself the goal of making a few of them.  This is the chicken pot pie; I was intrigued because it called for phyllo dough as the top crust*, and I happened to have some phyllo dough in the house.  It also called for parsnips, which I had never worked with before.

The parsnips were not a powerhouse of flavor; they were kind of like albino carrots.  I thought they functioned mostly as a filler, as potatoes sometimes do.

I loved this pie; it made a lot - will certainly make again!

*I usually prefer to have a bottom crust as well, but the recipe didn't call for it, and as this was my first time with this recipe, I didn't want to experiment.

Comfort food - beef pot roast and peas

Have to love pot roast and peas - one of my favorite meals....the only way it can be improved for me, is with some Yorkshire Pudding.  But I agreed to have this meal with noodles, which is my sister's preferred carb.  This was a celebratory pot roast.

Question - why was this pan constructed like this?

Just a question to anyone out there - why was this double range skillet constructed with a well around it?  This skillet, and I confess I ordered it online, has a "well" or "moat" running around the perimeter, that is supposed to catch fats and juices.  It sounded like a good idea....but when frying omelets, guess what happens to the eggs?
This is an attempt at an omelet with some vegetarian sausage patties next to it. 
The pan is otherwise new and sturdy; I guess I will just wait until the non-stick coating starts to chip, then I will quickly, oh yes very quickly, get a different model.

Eggs benedict with salmon

On or about February 12th, my husband got a hankering for eggs benedict - the ol' brunch go to.  But he wanted it with a twist; with smoked salmon on it, instead of the more common canadian bacon.
Well, we bought the salmon, also known as Nova Scotia Lox, at the supermarket in the deli section, and set about constructing our eggs benedict.
We poached the eggs - and later found out a trick for poaching them with some flavor, which I will get to in a future post - and prepared the Hollandaise sauce.
It was more a matter of timing and constructing the lovely layered stacks, and we were rather pleased and surprised when there they stood - why don't we make this more often?

Julia Child's pain de mie

On Jan 11, I took out my Mom's Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking cookbook again, and made the recipe for Julia's pain de mie.
It took a lot of kneading and waiting, hoping that that yeast would react and work its magic.
It did not disappoint!

One loaf went to some friends as a belated holiday gift, and I divvied up the other one.  Some of the best toast - spread with real butter - ever!!!

Apple pie

So it was kind of cold last weekend; a rarity these past weeks, so I thought, in an idea stolen from my sister, who was over in Bayside whipping up just this dish, it would be cozy to do an apple pie!!!!
The crusts, admittedly, are from Trader Joe's; I find these frozen crusts, that you defrost and roll out slightly, to be a little bit sweeter and clingier (is that a word) than the Pillsbury that I usually use.
Gala and Granny Smith apples to that; with cinnamon and sugar, and my Mom's secret weapon: butter.  Little specks of it, carefully positioned througout the pyramid stack of apples.

With french vanilla ice cream.

Special guest dish: Hubby hamburgers

Last Saturday - we had a special guest chef in the kitchen - my husband!!! He loves making his famous hamburgers - they have even been featured in a special kitchen down south in Alabama!