Weekend Cooking 6/2

Each weekend, Beth Fish Reads hosts Weekend Cooking.  This is perfect for me since I love food and cooking almost as much as I love books!

I haven't written a Weekend Cooking post in about a month - just too busy, especially on weekends!

Our house (and our kitchen table) has been filled all week with college students home for the summer! Our oldest son came home from his freshman year of college last week and has been getting together with old friends from high school, as well as new friends from college. So, I've been cooking in bulk all week! Last Monday, I made a quadruple batch of strawberry-chocolate chip pancakes for a group of hungry college students who'd spent the night, my son had a couple of old friends over on Tuesday who stayed for dinner, and we've hosted his new girlfriend for dinner twice. I'm having a blast seeing all these "kids" who've hung out at our house since they were kindergartners, now all (mostly) grown-up and also meeting his new friends from school.

And, for a change, I used a couple of Rachael Ray recipes this week, instead of all Cooking Light recipes as usual! Many of her recipes are too high in fat for my taste, plus she douses everything with cheese, and I am dairy-intolerant, but she has a few recipes that we love.

On Memorial Day, I made Rachael's Adirondack Red Wing Burgers (basically buffalo chicken burgers) which are a favorite here. They have all the flavors of buffalo chicken wings in a tasty burger. I just leave out the cheddar cheese on my burger.

Later this week, I made another of our favorite Rachael Ray recipes, Chorizo-Tortilla Tortilla. This is basically a Mexican-style frittata, very quick and easy to make for a weeknight dinner...and delicious! I mostly follow her recipe but cut back on the eggs and cheese (do you really need a dozen eggs to feed 4 people?).

Tonight, we are getting together with old friends, a group of friends we met when we all lived in New Orleans over 20 years ago. We were all young engineers and scientists then, most of us just out of college, living in New Orleans - we had a blast and bonded for life. Now we all live here in Delaware (not really a coincidence - we all met when we worked for DuPont and this is its headquarters), and we all have kids, and we are still close friends. My contribution tonight is one of our all-time favorites from Cooking Light, Mocha Pudding Cake. This is a super-easy dessert and oh-so-yummy! It's also like a magic trick - you pour hot water over the batter and in the oven it separates into cake on top and pudding on the bottom.

Well, I have another big batch of pancakes to make up (I'm thinking blueberry today)...whenever these late-nighters finally get up! Hope you have enjoyed your food and cooking this week.