Blake Makes

Watch this video in HD. Stay tuned for the Sparkle video (Part 2) on BlakeSips.com soon!

Hello Blake Makers! The momentum is building, and we’re starting to film more and more food shows for you to savor and enjoy! Gustav delayed post-production on our last show, but it’s up now, ready to be watched, commented on and shared with everyone you know.

Go watch now on BlakeSips.com or BlakeTakes.com. We’re shooting another show tonight. Lobster and champagne! Stay tuned!

Hello, Blake Makers. Gustav has come and gone, and we survived. Well, we lost the fence in our backyard, but we’re not complaining. We were going home to Alexandria, Louisiana for the long weekend, but our little holiday quickly turned into a week-long evacuation. 

At first, it looked like Gustav was going to slam right into New Orleans, but right at the end, it jogged a little West, and hit Baton Rouge (and eventually Alexandria). People started going a little crazy in Central Louisiana, but as they were preparing (panicking), I ate pie.

Lea’s Lunchroom is in Lecompte, Louisiana which is about 20 minutes outside of Alexandria.

They are known for their pies, and I’ve always wanted to eat there (like literally all my life). I needed to get away, and get my mind off the storm.

Pie’s good at that. 

It was lunchtime, and I was hungry, so I started with a plate of red beans and rice.

They were alright, but I think mine are better (two words, Blue Runner). To be honest, I just got the beans to justify eating a ton of pie. I guess I was right to feel a little embarassed, because the waitress looked at me funny when I ordered three slices.

From where I was sitting, I could see the glass case filled with pies - there had to have been at least 50 in the case.

Most of them were topped with gobs of tanned mounds of meringue. I browsed the list at my table, and chose banana cream (pictured above), coconut cream, and pecan.

Let’s take the banana and coconut at the same time since they were essentially the same pie.

Both had too much meringue, and their custards didn’t taste homemade. They didn’t have much flavor, or at least the kind of flavor I like. The banana contained large, awkward slices of the fruit, and the coconut was sprinkled with toasted flakes.

The pecan pie, however, was a horse of a different color. Its flavors were dark and deep and sticky - just like I like it.

The pecans weren’t whole, but chunky (I hate it when they’re minced). I’d go back to Lea’s just for another slice of this pecan bliss.

I actually bought a whole pecan pie to bring home, and ride out the storm with.

I bought the pie on Saturday. By Monday, it was history.

I don’t like to ruminate on these storms. They come. They go. We move on. But I just had to share a little glimpse of what we woke up to the day after Gustav came ashore.

Hello, Sooper Heroes (and Blake Makers)! Sorry I’m posting the winners a day late. Fay knocked out our internet this weekend, but better late than never. The first Spoon Sisters giveaway broke the Blake Makes record. We had the most comments ever on a single post! Give yourselves a pat on the back.

The following winners were selected completely at random (well, almost). I couldn’t resist the Dr. Seuss poem!

1. Kristy
2. Ashleigh
3. Denise
4. Kelly
5. Elly
6. Nikki
7. Susan
8. Amy
9. Derek
10. Stephany
11. Melissa
12. Rachel

CONGRATS!

You should have your spoons in about a week. Special thanks to both the big and little Spoon! Trust me when I say this is just the beginnning. Stay tuned for our next giveaway!

This giveaway is officially closed! We’ll announce the winners this weekend! Stay tuned!

Remember my dear friends, the Spoon Sisters? They blogged about all kinds of spoons in their post a couple of weeks ago.

In it they mentioned the dipping spoons and how they brought us together.

When I introduced them, I told you that we’d be giving away some of their spoons, and that day has arrived!

I’ve got 12 sets of dipping spoons to giveaway! Comment on this post for your chance to win.

You’ve got all day to comment, but at midnight tonight, the contest is closed.

Make sure you’re a registered Sooper Hero. Good luck!

Don’t ya just love alliterations? This will be a short post, because these shrimp are so simple.

Skewer them and generously coat them in Chinese chili garlic sauce (the prepared kind you get in the grocery store).

Throw them on your grill (outdoor or Foreman), and minutes later you’re eating.

They were spicy and sweet, and we ate them with grilled vegetables right off the grill.

Every now and then, you stumble upon something simple and amazing in your kitchen. Discoveries like these used to happen all the time in mine, but my food muse has been conspicuously absent lately. However, I learned today that a good cookbook can bring it all back.

I’ve written several times before about our Gourmet cookbook (Patrick’s wedding present to us), and today we cracked it open in search of something healthy and lite. This wrap looked promising.

I hate to bury the lead, but this wrap was SCRUMPTIOUS!

It’s got pickled red onions, and an amazing spicy mayo concoction that I literally ate by the spoonful.

First, I had to make the onions. I sliced a red onion and blanched it for 60 seconds in boiling water.

The deep purple rings went all pale pink, and when they did, I drained them.

I returned the onions to the pan, and added 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar, 3/4 cup water and 1 tsp. salt.

I brought it all to a boil, and simmered for another 60 seconds. By this time, the onions looked a bit like candy (which is my way of saying they were hard to resist).

I set the pan aside to cool. After a bit, I poured its contents into a bowl and let it chill in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Next, I made the mayo. For this you’ll need to buy a small can of chiles in adobo sauce.

Combine 1/4 cup mayo with 2 tsp. of chopped chiles in adobo. I did this in my little food processor, but you could do it by hand.

Finally, assemble! Heat the tortillas (we used whole wheat ones, and I heated them right on the smooth, glass cooktop). They bubbled and scorched a little in a few places - about 40 seconds per side.

Spread the tortillas with the spicy mayo, then layer on thin slices of turkey. Add four or five ringlets of the pickled onions. We adapted this recipe by next adding alfalfa sprouts and crumbling on some goat cheese. Wrap it up and devour!

For some reason, we only bought a few slices of turkey, so after three wraps (1 for Beez, 2 for me), we were all out. I wanted more, so I made another one with just the mayo, onions, cheese and sprouts.

I never missed the turkey.

Are you like me, and keep lists and menus in your head? When we cook something good, it gets put on a list. Our most popular list is the one we keep to serve company. The other, lesser known (lesser used) list is for the food we would cook for parties. These balsamic glazed drumsticks are perfect for both.

Now that Bridget and I are eating healthier, we’re buying fewer bottles of olive oil, and more bottles of paradoxically sweet balsamic vinegar. We seem to be putting it on everything these days (chicken, pork chops, salmon), which is taking a toll on our poor poodle’s nostrils. First the recipe, then the sneezing.

Put the following in a gallon-sized Ziploc bag:

• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 5 rosemary sprigs
• 5 garlic cloves

Seal the bag and squidge everything together to mix and to dissolve the sugar. Toss in 10 to 12 chicken drumsticks, and let it chill in the fridge for about 2 hours.

Bake the lovelies in a blazing-hot (450 degrees) oven for 30 minutes until they look like mine above.

Bring the marinade to a boil (it’s safe, we’ve made this many times and haven’t died, yet), then reduce the heat. Simmer and thicken the sauce for about 15 minutes. Brush it on at the end, or do like me and dip them in. A bit of chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley makes this fancy company slash party food.

Ooo! I just thought of something. I bet using drumettes would make this perfect party pickings for fancy finger foraging.

Chopper Sneezes

An interesting and peculiar phenomenon occurs every time I reduce balsamic vinegar. If you’ve done it, you know that first burst of vinegary steam can be quite caustic - acrid enough, it seems, to make my poodle sneeze. It’s like clockwork. No matter where he is in the house, we’ll hear a cute little poddley sneeze. I feed him a little piece of chicken to make up for the abuse.

Get a sneak peek.

Hello, Blake Makers. I have an extra special treat for you today. A few months ago, I had the pleasure of connecting with the Spoon Sisters. Like most of the people I meet these days, we haven’t actually met in person. We had an hour-long conversation over the phone which was all we needed to feel like family. I loved how they both got on the phone, talked over each other, and finished each other’s sentences. It was so cute, and so very Spoony!

Well, I loved them so much that I asked if they’d be interested in guest blogging right here on Blake Makes. They loved the idea, and so here we are. This is the first of what I hope will be many posts from the Spoons. I’ve asked them to blog about the nifty little finds that they sell on their site. Oh, and because this is Blake Makes, you know we’ll be giving some away (stay tuned)!

I’ll let the Spoons take it from here. Ladies, after you!

The Spoon Sisters happily here and feeling honored that we are guest bloggers on Blake Makes! So, we have to say a big thank you to Bon Appetite magazine for bringing us together. You see, the magazine featured one of our favorite type of items… a set of spoons…Dipping Spoons that is (You ask what are Dipping Spoons? Hmmmmm…read on). Blake saw the feature and contacted us. The rest is Internet history.

We have a gift website, www.spoonsisters.com, that’s been around for almost seven years now. We’ve been called “quirky” by Time Magazine; “one of the best websites you probably never heard of” by Lucky Magazine, “convenient shopping with useful gifts sporting cool twists” by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and “at the top of our must-click list” by Redbook.

Yes, we really are sisters - that’s always the first question that we get asked. Known as the “Big Spoon” and the “Little Spoon,” we’re nicknamed based on age, not size. Our gift site sells products that are “classic to kitsch and funny to functional.” With a name like ours, we are also partial to kitchen related products and gadgets, and, of course, we have a category on our website called “Spoon Related”….how could we not!?!

Let’s face it, Spoons are a truly universal item…but we do our best to find odd, quirky, and sometimes totally off the wall interpretations of our favorite utensil and we’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to a few.

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