your favorites -- tuesday's take 5 -- week 8

thanks to everyone who has been playing along with tuesday's take 5.

what is your favorite food scene in a movie?

what is your favorite breakfast food?

what is your favorite ethnic cuisine?

what is your favorite thing to snack on?

what is your favorite kitchen gadget?

answer these 5 questions on your blog today and enter your name (or your blog's name) in the name field below and a permalink (the url for your blog post with the answer to these questions and not just to your main blog page) to your blog post in the url field. thanks for playing, see you next week!

hawaiian slut

last sunday when I was in austin, I went with my sister into the bar where she works. the guy that was bartending, mike burgess, asked me what I wanted to drink and I said "I don't know, something fruity" the drink he made me was really good, when I asked him how he came up with it he said there are always these annoying girls that come in and don't know what they want, they say they just want something fruity, so he came up with this drink to make for them.


wait, does that mean that I am one of those annoying girls??

1 shot regular rum
1 shot malbu (or coconut) rum
splash of cranberry juice
splash of sweet and sour mix
pineapple juice

1. fill a glass with ice and add the shots of rum
   
2. add the splashes of cranberry juice and sweet and sour mix
   
3. top the glass off with pineapple juice
   
4. stir and serve
   

somedays it just happens that way . . .

yesterday morning, mike had to work, so he was not able to make biscuits for me.  then, while he was at work, he found out that olive branch, one of our favorite restaurants had finally reopened after being closed for a couple of months and moving.  so michael promised me that he would make me biscuits this morning and then we would go to olive branch for lunch.

we ended up sleeping in this morning, so it was after 11 before mike started making his biscuits, but they were definately worth the wait.  so, we weren't really hungry for lunch for a while, but at about 2:30 we decied to venture out for lunch and to go run some errands.  on our way into town, we stopped at the gas station by our house to get a sunday paper and for me to get a coke.  now, I need to tell you that I love fountian cherry coke. it is the greatest thing in the world, and one of the main reasons that I stop at this gas station is to get a fountain cherry coke (I even know exactly how much they cost so that when I am in a hurry in the mornings, I can just run in and get my drink and leave them the money on the counter and not have to wait for them to check me out).  well, today I went up to the fountian drink machine and noticed that they had replaced the cherry coke with coke zero, which will not work for me (on the bright side, I have been trying to kick my soft drink habit for a while now and this may just be the thing I need to do it).

so we headed into town to go to olive branch for lunch, and I was already going over what I was going to get in my mind (did I want the french toast or the blt?).  when we pulled up, I noticed that all the chairs were on the tables and the lights were off.  I looked on the door and sure enough, they close at 2 pm on sundays and it was 2:45 by then.  since we couldn't really think of anything else that sounded good, we decided to go run the rest of our errands and see if we thought of something.

we finished our errands and were not any closer to knowing where we wanted to go.  then mike suggested double daves (a pizza chain here in texas) buffet .  that sounded good to me, they have fountian cherrry coke and I have been craving their cinnamon sticks.  so I call double daves to make sure that they have a dinner
buffet on sunday and they said that they do, but it didn't start until 5 pm (by now it's about 3:40 pm).  we decide that we could go home and unload and then come back into town for dinner at 5 pm.  which we did and it was great.

so all in all, not a bad food day, but not as wonderful as it could have been. we will try olive branch again next weekend!

my mom's BBQ sauce

growing up, my mom made the best BBQ sauce.  as I have said before, my dad BBQ'd quite often, so I watched my mom make this sauce many times.  I never saw her use any sort of recipe, so I just assumed that it was a recipe that she had developed and tweaked over time.  I asked her a few weeks ago to send me the recipe because I wanted to make it for our cousins reunion.  I was shocked later when I got an e-mail from my day with a scanned in recipe card with the recipe in my late grandmother's handwriting.  it has been about a year since I lost my grandmother and seeing this brought such tears to my eyes.  just as I got my love of cooking from my mother, she got her love of cooking from her mother and I am eternally grateful for the wonderful gift that she has given to both of us.  I got to thinking after looking at the recipe for a while that I always type my recipes, I think it makes it easier to keep up with them and share them with others.  but now I see what a gift it was to see this in my grandmother's handwriting, I need to make it more of a point to write things in my own handwriting occasionally.

1 large onion, minced
1/4 cup bacon fat or margarine
1 can tomato sauce
2/3 cup ketchup
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup vinegar
tabasco, salt, and pepper to taste

1. saute the onions in the fat.
2. add the other ingredients and heat to boiling

juice from sweet pickles can be used instead of vinegar

root beer bbq sauce

this is my favorite sauce to serve with pulled pork.  I let the leftover pulled pork sit in the leftover sauce in the fridge and it makes great sandwiches!  you can also substitute dr.pepper for the root beer to make a great sauce for wings. 

2 liter bottle root beer
½ cup sliced onion
1 ½ cups apple cider vinegar
½ cup ketchup
¼ cup yellow mustard
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon tabasco
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1. pour root beer into a large pot with the sliced onion and reduce to 1 cup over medium heat (takes about 1 hour).
   
2. add vinegar, ketchup, mustard, lemon juice, Worcestershire, Tabasco, salt, and pepper.  stir well to combine and simmer 20 minutes.
   
3. finish with butter to give the sauce extra body and flavor.