New breakfast idea

This is a revised post, much better finished product.

My husband posted this to my page from something someone posted and I changed it a little bit.

Bacon, French toast and egg bake

12 slices bacon, par-cooked

6 slices bread – cut in 2-3 inch rounds

1/4 cup butter

1/4 cup maple syrup

6 eggs

3 cups milk

1/2 cup shredded Monterey jack cheese

Cut bacon into 1 inch pieces. Cook bacon until crispy. Dice bread and toss with bacon pieces. Melt butter and maple syrup together and pour over bread mixture. Place eggs in greased casserole dish. Top with cheese. Combine milk and eggs. Pour egg mixture over bread and cover, let sit overnight. Bake in 350 degree oven 25-35 minutes until puffed and egg is cooked through. Remove from oven and let cool.

 

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Yummy sides

“You were the best part of my vacation” was told to A Chef of Your Own chef, Linda after cooking for a vacationing family this week. Great food and company, the guests are returning home this weekend, but asked me to share two recipes from the side dishes eaten this week.

Creamed Spinach

4 Tbls butter, plus more for pan

1/2 onion, chopped

salt and black pepper

2 garlic cloves

2 tsp red chili flakes

1 3/4 cups heavy cream

1 cup parmesan

1/2 cup sour cream

1 lb organic spinach

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Butter 8×8 baking dish. Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion and a pinch of salt. Saute for 3 minutes, add garlic and red chili flakes and saute for 2 additional minutes. Add  cream and parmesan. Heat until just beginning to bubble. Stir in sour cream and spinach. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. Pour into prepared baking dish and bake 15-20 minutes until bubbly.

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Happy Easter

A Chef of Your Own worked with a Rabbi this week to create some meals for Passover. My aunt sent me an article on “the new Kosher Foods” they had some Red Velvet Macaroons in the article, but no recipe. I went looking and found one to adapt for these. As an homage to Passover, I didn’t use any flour but you can substitute flour for the ground almonds I used.

Red Velvet Coconut Macaroons

11 oz sweetened flake coconut

2/3 cup sugar

4 tsp coconut

tsp red food color jel

10 Tbls ground almonds

1/4 tsp salt

4 egg whites

1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Combine egg whites and sugar in a bowl and place over boiling water. Whip on high until merengue forms, about 15 minutes. Stir in remaining ingredients and drop onto parchment lined cookie sheets. Bake 15 minutes or so, until lightly browned. let cool, Enjoy

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These look really yummy!

A Chef of Your Own found this recipe on Facebook, on Living the Country Life page. They looked so yummy, I couldn’t resist making them for breakfast. They were a little messy, but I added plenty of love to make up for it.

Cinnamon Roll Pancakes~~Southern Mama~~

Ingredients:

for the Pancakes:   4 cups all-purpose flour …  8 tsps baking powder   2 tsp. salt   4 cups milk   4 tbsps vegetable oil   4 large eggs, lightly beaten

for the Cinnamon Filling   1 cup butter, melted   1 1/2 cup brown sugar, packed   2 tbsp ground cinnamon

for the Cream Cheese Glaze   1/2 cup butter   4 oz. cream cheese   1 1/2 cups powdered sugar   1 tsp. vanilla

Directions:   To make the Cinnamon Filling:   Mix the three ingredients together. Place in a disposable piping bag and snip the end off or put in a Ziploc bag and snip the corner off.   To make the Pancakes:   Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients in another bowl. Stir them together until everything is moistened leaving a few lumps.   Heat your griddle to exactly 325 degrees. You don’t want these to cook too quickly, and you won’t want your cinnamon to burn.   Make desired size pancake on greased griddle and then using the piping bag and starting at the center of the pancake, create a cinnamon swirl. Wait until the pancake has lots of bubble before you try to turn it. You will find that when you turn it the cinnamon swirl will melt. The cinnamon will melt out and create the craters which the cream cheese glaze will fill.   To make the Cream Cheese Glaze:   In a microwave safe bowl melt the butter and cream cheese and then stir together. Whisk in the powdered sugar and vanilla. Add a little milk if needed to make   it a glaze consistency.   Place pancake on plate, then cover with cream cheese glaze.

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Warm Indian Spiced Lentil Soup

A Chef of Your Own will be doing a demo at The Fresh Market in Dr Phillips, Orlando today from 1-4. Would love for you to stop by if you are in the area, just to say hi.

Warm Indian Spiced lentil Soup

Ingredients:

3  tablespoons TFM Extra Virgin Olive Oil, divided 1    onion, diced 3    carrots, diced 3    celery stalks, diced 1  package  tofu, drained and cubed optional 1/3 cup   Blackstone Chardonnay 1  package  Jaali Bean Lentil Soup Kit 1 1/2 cups TFM Vegetable Stock 1  can  coconut milk dollop  Greek yogurt, for serving (optional) 1  package  Stonefire Naan Bread, for dipping

Preparation:

Heat a large soup pot over medium high heat for 2 minutes. Add 2 tbsp of the olive oil and swirl to coat. Add vegetables and cook until they begin to soften and onions become translucent, about 5 minutes. If using, add cubed tofu and cook until browned, about 5 minutes. Remove pot from heat and add wine, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan.Return pot to heat and cook until liquid evaporates, about 2-3 minutes. Add 1 tbsp olive oil and the spice packet contained in the soup kit and cook for 40-50 seconds, stirring continuously until fragrant. Add vegetable stock, package of lentils, and coconut milk and bring mixture to a boil. Lower heat to medium low, cover and cook for 25 minutes. Serve immediately with Greek yogurt on top and naan bread

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Another Guest, Rachna Dave, a travel writer

Please help me welcome Rachna, to my blog sharing a little of this great city I live in, Orlando.

Orlando Concerts

The home of Mickey Mouse, Orlando attracts tens of millions tourists every year for its world-class theme parks, white sand beaches, fabulous cruise trips, notable shopping malls and concerts. Universally known as The Theme Park Capital of the World because of Walt Disney World Resort, Orlando is also called “Hollywood East” as there are a number of movie studios.  Family vacationers find no better place than Orlando to escape from the boredom of daily hectic schedules and rejuvenate themselves with rock music, reggaeton, hip hop and Latino music concerts after a day at the thrilling rides and spectacular shows of the world’s best theme park.

The Orlando International Fringe Theater Festival, The Harriett Lake Festival of New Plays, and Orlando Cabaret Festival take place during spring, yet Orlando welcomes the lover of art and music in the months from Jan to March too. There are various venues that host concerts regularly, such as House of Blues and Hard Rock Live. Orlando tour without attending a concert in House of Blues or Hard Rock Live is incomplete, especially for music aficionados.

Spring and summer months are the best time to visit Orlando and most of the headlining concerts take place during these months. However, concerts in Orlando take place year round and keep the entertainment live in the city in all the seasons. Both of the venues, Hard Rock Live and House of Blues, offer an exceptionally delightful experience round the year to make sure the tourists have an insight into Orlando’s love for music, no matter what time of the year they visit.

House of Blues vs Hard Rock Live

The House of Blues located at the Walt Disney World Resort is renowned widely for the intimate performances it hosts; Universal’s Hard Rock Live is in itself the best because it enjoys the title Orlando’s “Coliseum of Rock.” With double capacity and versatility to adapt the seating arrangement as per the acts, Hard Rock Live enjoys more patrons.

Second to none, Hard Rock Live is host to other performances as well besides just music concerts. Performances of top comedians such as Wand Sykes at Hard Rock Live catch the attention of tourists and locals alike. Over the years, it has become a top-notch nighttime hub in Orlando.

House of Blues is fine dining restaurant too that serves lip-smacking American and international cuisine. The Sunday Gospel Brunch at House of Blues is just amazing: buffet of Southern cooking as well as music performances by top gospel groups. Whether you visit the place during day time or at night, rest assured you would get to enjoy the best of gospel, jazz, rock and reggae performances by renowned and up-coming performers.

 

Author Bio: Rachana is an adept travel writer. She writes travel tips, guides and news. Presently, she is working with CheapOair – Cheap flights.

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Total Orlando is my guest today

A Chef of Your Own would like to welcome guest blogger, Kevin Maw from Total Orlando, Editor of Orlando’s Premiere Travel Guide.

 

Linda’s remarkable success as Orlando’s best personal Chef service connects beautifully with the origin of our Orlando Travel Guide.

After years of visits to Orlando, punctuated with frustrating lunches and dismal dinners, our family vacations swiftly became a little seed for our pet project!

Our passion for great food gradually evolved into our humble but ‘almost tasty’ Orlando vacation guide that now fills our entire working day (and many evenings)!

We didn’t originally set out to spend our vacations in Orlando’s finest (and worst) restaurants, but, inadvertently, we quickly amassed a huge catalogue of restaurant reviews that we thought might be fun to share on the Internet.

We felt it only appropriate to add in some detailed theme park information, complete with some really nice photography and then a section of activities ‘beyond the parks’ and www.totalorlando.com was swiftly born in the Spring of 2012!

Our restaurant section is the most fun and is of the most comprehensive Orlando Restaurant Guides out there as far as we are aware!

Our tech guy; James has made it really easy to pick out the very best restaurants by selecting ratings or cuisine types to find your perfect places to eat.

Our food qualifications are minimal, but our decisions can be trusted we feel.

We are consistent, never accept free meals, we never announce ourselves to the restaurant staff and we only consider the very highest of standards to be worthy of a 5 star rating only!

The most difficult part of any restaurant review is splitting that final decision down.   Many great restaurants complain that we only rated them as a 3 star.  In our book, a 3 star is a great achievement, as it literally means ‘good’.

So many guides have in our opinion gone astray and that is perhaps reflected in our rating system!

Now, if we dare leave the table briefly, and move off to those all-important theme parks, we have also tried as hard to be factual and objective.

With young children in our team, we were often frustrated by expeditions deep into a park just to face being ‘split up’ unexpectedly as a result of pesky ride height restrictions!

Our Find Your Park tool fixes so many problems for families like ours.  Enter your kid’s height and all of Central Florida’s rides show up in a flash!  If you want to narrow that down a little by ride speed or just pick out the shows, again, they appear right in front of you, all of them!

One thing that we have learned as a result of our many trips to Orlando, is that planning and preparation is the key to success, an opinion that is very much shared by Linda as she creates her amazingly tasty dishes!

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Chocolate Lava Cakes

I found this recipe on line and is adapted from Paula Dean’s Home Cooking
Molten Lava Cakes
10 Tbls butter
8 oz (1 cup) semi sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3 lagre eggs
3 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla
optional: 2 Tbls coffee liquor or coffee
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Spray 6 – 6oz custard cups, set aside. In a medium bowl, melt chocolate chips and butter either in micorwave or over a double boiler. Add flour and sugar to chocolate. Stir in the eggs and yolks until smooth. Add vanilla and coffee if desired.
Divide the batter evenly between the cups. Place cups on a cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes (I let them bake for 15 minutes) The edges should be firm but the center will be runny. Run a knife around the edges to loosen and invert into dessert plates or serve in the cup.

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