use real butter

Recipe: lemon meringue pie

Feeling puckery lately? If you’ve been cruising the food blogs, then most likely you’ve run across one or two or four hundred Daring Bakers brandishing their lovely Lemon Meringue Pies.

that’s right kids, we knead to bake

Jen of The Canadian Baker hosted the challenge this month and it was down to the wire for me this time. I started my treatment on Thursday and thought I’d recover with enough time to do the challenge yesterday but… things don’t always go as planned when your body gets pumped full of poison! However, I didn’t want to abandon my fellow DBers, so I managed to make a handful of tartelettes. Forgive me for the lack of detail I usually devote to my DB challenges. She’ll be right next time.

mixing the dough

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: roast chicken artichoke pasta

You’re probably familiar with artichoke dip. It’s a great goto appetizer for guests and especially when I used to host stitch-n-bitches. It really boils down to a lot of fat with fiber, I mean a lot of delicious fat with fiber! I’ve had it in restaurants and I can’t stand their versions because they skimp on the arties and load it with even more creamy filler. Blegh.

I made so much soup and stew and curry last week that we were working on leftovers when I remembered I had planned on roast chicken. The chicken wouldn’t wait and I didn’t want to chuck it in the freezer, so I went ahead and roasted it, then put it in the fridge. Instead of having it straight, I had a smack of inspiration.

preparing to harvest the meat

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: quinoa, fruit and nut salad

I first read about quinoa three years ago in a food article and I tucked it away in my head. It is a great Scrabble or Tiles word to use up that Q, and everyone around you who isn’t a food dork declares it isn’t a word. What do they know? Quasar is another good one, but that has nothing to do with food. I only sampled quinoa a few times in restaurants, but lately I’ve been trying to work more grains into my diet because I love them and it is really a lack of exposure that has kept me from experimenting in the kitchen more than anything else.

dried quinoa

**Jump for more butter**