Cherry Yum Yum. Possibly my favorite dessert.

My Aunt Margie used to make a dessert that I loved as a kid, and still love. She called it "Cherry Yum Yum" and it is so good. My Aunt is long gone now, but my mother still makes this every Christmas and I've made it a few times myself. It's not complicated but oh-so-good.  It can be made with blueberries instead of cherry filling, but I've always loved the cherry the best. Recipe below.

From this past Christmas, a serving of Cherry Yum Yum.

Here's my Aunt Margie's Cherry Yum Yum recipe. It needs a few hours to chill thoroughly so make sure to make it in plenty of time to chill, preferably even overnight.

Aunt Margie's Cherry Yum Yum

3 cups graham cracker crumbs

1 1/2 sticks margarine (or butter), melted

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 can cherry pie filling

1 large can crushed undrained pineapple (cooked & thickened with 3 T. cornstarch)

1 large pkg. cream cheese (8 oz)

12 oz. whipped topping

Combine cracker crumbs, 1/2 c sugar & margarine. 

Blend cream cheese & 1 cup sugar; fold in whipped topping. 

Spread half of graham cracker crumb mixture in bottom of 9 x 12 baking dish. 

Add half of cream cheese mixture. 

Spread on cherry pie filling and pineapple; add remaining cream cheese mixture. 

Top with remaining crumbs. 

Refrigerate several hours before serving.

(Super Easy) Corn & Black Bean Salad

I am all about easy cooking.  This one doesn't even require cooking come to think of it.  Going to a late afternoon cookout tomorrow and need a good and easy--and tasty--side dish to take.  Even I can't screw up this one.  Mix the following--listed below--ingredients together in a bowl and that's it.

Corn and Black Bean Salad

Here's what you mix together:

can of corn, drained

can of black beans, drained

chopped small onion

chopped medium sized tomato

chopped jalapeno pepper (seeds and veins out)

2 tablespoons lime juice

4 tablespoon olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

and a little cilantro (if you like it) fresh or dried

The above picture doesn't do it justice.  It really is a pretty mixture of colors and textures, and a lot of great flavors that compliment one another.

Piedmont Farm Tour - Day 2 Slideshow

On day 2 of the Piedmont Farm Tour last weekend, we visited Timberwood Organics, Fickle Creek Farm,Chapel Hill Creamery, Pickards Mountain Eco Institute and Four Leaf Farm:



If you'd like to see which farms are which, and some captions, you can see the Flickr set here.

Slideshow of Piedmont Farm Tour - Day 1

I previously blogged about the Piedmont Farm Tour, which was held last weekend. I went both days, enjoyed myself thoroughly, and took some pictures. These farms sell flowers, produce, herbs, meat and eggs to our local farmers markets.

Below is the slideshow from the first day (last Saturday) and we visited several farms in northern Orange County: Maple Spring Gardens, Wild Hare Farms, Captain J.S. Pope Farm, Anatoth Community Garden, a farm not on the tour (a friend knew the farmers) and we saw llamas and alpacas there, and the last farm visited was Whitted Bowers Farm, a biodynamic farm.




Tomorrow I'll put up some pictures of the Day 2 of the Farm Tour.

If you'd like to see the captions of the pictures in the slideshow, detailing which farms the pictures are from just click here.

Hey, want to tour some local farms?

This upcoming Farm Tour definitely looks like something I'm going to participate in, and I'm surprised I didn't know about it before now. That's one big reason why I'm posting about it, to get the information out there in case you want to participate too.

If you've read books like Animal, Vegetable, Miracle or The Omnivore's Dilemma, you might be more interested than ever in being acquainted with exactly where your food comes from. I am. And if you shop at your local Farmer's Market whenever you can, do you sometimes wonder what these farms look like, or how they operate? You should consider taking part in the 14th Annual Piedmont Farm Tour on the weekend of April 25 & 26th from 1pm to 6pm. A pdf map with lots of useful information can be found here.

This year’s Piedmont Farm Tour will bring together consumers, farmers, and producers in one of the largest farm tours in the country. It is a great time to go exploring in the North Carolina countryside. With over forty farms to choose from, you and your family can craft an exciting day visiting and learning about farming and agriculture.

If you’re looking for some animal action you can pet goats, hold chickens or rabbits and get up close to cows and sheep. Plant lovers can learn about growing flowers, vegetables, fruits, and berries. See how farmers manage their land with hoop houses, traveling chicken coops, irrigation systems, and greenhouses. Learn how prawns are saving farmland at Stagg Creek Farm, new to the tour this year.

There will be lots of opportunities to buy meat, eggs, poultry, and prawns, so bring a cooler. One button buys a carload of people two days of touring.

The above from Weaver Street Market.

You can buy the button for admission (for a carload of folks) referenced above here.

A list of participating farms at the pdf above or here.

Hope there's good weather that weekend. Sounds like a fun time to me.

Thanks to my pal Jack for letting me know about this tour.

Easy Crustless Spinach Quiche

Not sure I've ever even made a quiche before but I made this one for dinner (and probably lunch tomorrow too).

I used:

1 med. onion
1 10 oz. pack of frozen spinach
5 eggs
Pre-shredded cheese
Garlic powder
Salt and pepper

I'm not a precise cook, but here's what I did:

Dice up a medium sized onion and sautee with a little olive oil and garlic powder until the onion begins to turn brown (carmelize)

Microwave a frozen 10 oz. pack of spinach until thawed (3 min. approx) and drain and throw into the pan with the onion for a couple of minutes.

Break 5 eggs and whisk them. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Add some shredded cheese of your choice in with the eggs (2 to 3 cups, depending on how cheesy you like it) and stir.

Mix the eggs/cheese mixture in with the spinach/onion mixture.

Scoop it all into a lightly greased 9 in. pie pan. Bake for 30 min. at 350.

I threw in a small handful of crumbled bacon I had, but if you wanted it vegetarian, don't do that. :)

A feast for the Chinese New Year

At the Durham Bull Pen residence our favorite Chinese restaurant is Eastern Lights. The Eggplant in Garlic Sauce is excellent. Best Hot & Sour Soup in town too. Last night when we dined at Eastern Lights, our server mentioned that Chinese New Year is coming up--Year of the Ox, incidentally--and that they'll offer a special menu available on those nights, January 25th and 26th. There is even a special deal if you can get a group together for dinner that night, but make your reservations ahead (according to the menu below).

Click on the menu to better see the special dishes and deal for Chinese New Year:



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Mint in Chapel Hill

My good friend Jack allowed me to post here at the Bull Pen his review of the restaurant "Mint" in Chapel Hill:
_________________________________________

MINT

We finally went to Mint, a new Indian restaurant that opened on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. We went for the lunch buffet today. We found the food to be very good. Fresh, medium spiced, and a nice variety of both meat and vegetable dishes.

The buffet today included Onion Bhajais, Aloo Gobi, Chicken Korma, Channa Saag, a black lentil dal (can't remember the name), tandoori chicken, another dish with cauliflower, peas, potatoes, and chick peas that was just the perfect blend of spicy and sweet, an egg curry dish, and of course basmati and a very light nan. The mango lassi was probably the best that I've had. Just very light and refreshing. None of the dishes were heavy at all. The decor was very nice. It was much lighter inside that the Sitar India Palace, which probably added to making the dishes feel lighter.

Since finding Sitar India Palace in Durham about 8 or 9 years ago, it's become our benchmark for local Indian food. I'm sure that I've been there about 40 times over the years and I've never left as much as a single grain of rice on my plate. Everything is just really good there. I have to say that Mint was every bit as good. If I could change one thing about our experience there today, it would be the music. While Sitar India Palace plays traditional Indian ragas and songs, the Mint had on something that I can only describe as new age.

The two desserts that were on the buffet were the traditional kheer (Indian rice pudding) and a sweet carrot dish which looked similar to a persimmon pudding. I had neither, as I was just stuffed from my first and second rounds at the buffet.

The lunch buffet runs $9 on weekdays, and higher on the weekends. Before we left, we asked to see a menu so we could see what else they had. And they had a lot. We want to go back for supper soon and order something a little spicier. I did see that they had goat curry (which I love) on the menu. I'll probably give theirs a try.

I definitely recommend it.

_________________________________________

Thanks Jack for the review and I can't wait to try this place out soon. -- DBP
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"Cold Oven Pound Cake" . . . mmmmmm

Over the Thanksgiving holidays, my 87 year old grandmother was reminiscing about how good a "Cold Oven Pound Cake" is, and how she hadn't had a slice from one in a long while. For Christmas, my mother decided to make one for her. I was fascinated by the "cold oven" part and so was my mother. Verdict? Heartily recommended. Honestly, it was hands-down the tasty pound cake I'd ever had, so I thought I'd share the recipe here.

COLD OVEN POUND CAKE

2 sticks butter
1/2 cup shortening (butter flavored Crisco was used)
3 cups granulated sugar
5 (yes five) large eggs
1 cup milk
4 tsp. vanilla
3 cups all-purpose flour (measure first, then sift it)

All ingredients should be at room temp. Grease and flour a large tube pan. Cream together the butter and the shortening, then slowly add sugar while stirring. Add eggs, one at a time and beat well after each egg is added. Add the vanilla to the milk. Add a little flour and then a little milk alternately until it is all mixed in well.

Pour batter into the large tube pan. Place in a COLD oven and turn to 300 degrees and cook 1 hour. Turn oven to 325 degrees and bake 30 minutes more.

So moist and dense and practically melts in your mouth. Enjoy!

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Bull Pen Lounge

Some friends and I found ourselves downtown after 6 pm on Sunday, having just seen Milk (yes, it's as good as all the reviews say) at The Carolina. We wanted to grab some coffee and sit a bit and talk about the film before we all went our separate ways for the evening. Blue Coffee was closed and every place else seemed to be too. So we headed over to the Marriott, which is conveniently hooked onto The Carolina Theater upstairs --I always forget about that--to see if the Marriott's "Bull Pen Lounge" was open. It was. I honestly couldn't remember the last time I'd been there.

The coffee wasn't bad, and we tried some desserts on the menu, and relaxed and dissected the film we just watched. The service at the Bull Pen was fine, although our server was wearing latex gloves, which was odd. We weren't rushed and the place wasn't busy on a Sunday night anyway. Here's what desserts we tried, and they were fairly tasty (but for the completely out-of-season 'fresh' strawberries which tasted faintly of strawberry):

Cheesecake

Creme Brulee

Strawberry Shortcake

Collard Green Sandwich?

Yes. That's correct. A collard green sandwich. Never heard of them until recently and the only place I've ever seen them is at a stand at the Autumn Leaves Festival in Mt. Airy, NC. (It's a street festival, held on the downtown streets, not in a parking lot, incidentally. All the downtown businesses are opened and packed with customers with money in their pockets. I'm just saying.)

Anyway, this past Saturday I went to the Autumn Leaves Festival, and I already knew the line for the collard green sandwich would be long. It was about a 25 minutes wait in a long snaking line, and as people passed by they would shake their heads and say, "they sure must be good." I think the novelty of it can't be discounted either. They are tasty, however.

What are they? Simple--cake cornbread, sliced in two pieces, a big spoonful of collard greens, and a slice of crispy pork. I snapped a few pictures so you could see too.

And for dessert, a bit of sweet potato cobbler:

Five Points Cafe open (for real real)

When I was downtown this afternoon I noticed Five Points Cafe (at 347 W. Main, beside Toast) was open and customers were enjoying food and beverages inside. This may have happened yesterday or last week or ?? I haven't been keeping close tabs on it, really, but it has opened and closed once or twice in the process of getting really and truly open-as I hope they are now. Going for something easy, I ordered a coffee to go and it was tasty. No Splenda packets yet, but I'm not one to quibble about the little stuff. I had my camera so I asked if I could take a couple of pictures (the lady at the counter was quite nice about the request albeit perplexed), so here you go. I asked for the menu, but was directed to the green chalk board, so I snapped a pic of it (you can double click it to make it large enough to read).








I also met a nice fellow from Democracy Durham inside, so a big shout-out to him!

We are "America's Foodiest Small Town "

Or at least "Durham-Chapel Hill" is, according to Bon Appetit :

Imagine a place where foodies not only have a favorite chef, but also a favorite farmer; a place where the distance between the organic farm and the award-winning restaurant is mere miles; a place where a sustainable future is foreseeable. It's all a reality in Durham-Chapel Hill.

The article include recipes, such as North Carolina Peanut Pie and great shout-outs to all our favorite places such as Parker & Otis, Chapel Hill Creamery, Fickle Creek Farm, and much more.


Check it out: America's Foodiest Small Town


Thanks RR!

Daisy Cakes, finally.

I've had a few weekends out of town, so I haven't found a good chance to check out Daisy Cakes. Today on the way to the Durham Farmer's Market, we saw "Sugar," the Silver Airstream and stopped for a couple of cupcakes.

We chose a Raspberry Frosting on vanilla, and a Coconut, which was the special of the day. They were beautiful and tasty. Not out-of-this-world tasty, but very good--and I mean, heck, one can now stop at a cupcake and coffee place on the way to the Farmer's Market! That is a concept worth supporting, even if I have to definitely watch my cupcake intake.

Anyway, they'd sold out of a good number of things by the time we were there (sometime after 11am), but there was still some cupcakes and coffee left. Woo Hoo! The lady taking our order was pleasant, although I'm sure she'd been there for hours at that point. There was a small line but it went fast.



Here's a picture Sugar, the Daisy Cakes Airstream, parked at the corner of Geer and Foster, across the street from Man Bites Dog Theater.




Official site of Daisy Cakes for more information. Carpe Durham has some more information on Daisy Cakes, and so does Valerie at We Love Durham.

Roe, Roe, Roe your boat . . .

At this point, I've sampled sushi from several different places in Durham and in Chapel Hill, and even in Atlanta, but so far the best, as far as I'm concerned, is at Sushi Love in Durham on Erwin Road.

Lenore blogged about Sushi Love twice at her place, here and here, and Carpe Durham blogged about it here. So naturally I had see what all the fuss was about. I went along with my 2 best sushi-eating pals. And, I might add, they concur with my assessment of it being the best sushi so far that we've tried.

Here's our boat of sushi. I thought the boat was very cool, but I like boats of almost any description anyway. If I can't be at the helm, at least fill it up with sushi and put it on table!



And thanks to Jack's hard work (thanks!), we have this illustrated picture of the sushi we three enjoyed (you can click it twice to make it larger):



The rolls tasted exceptionally fresh, crunchy when they were supposed to be, and soft when they were supposed to be. The rice was good and soft but held together well.

And one last observation. Our server was very patient with us. We wanted to really look at the menu thoroughly and make our choices together, so it took us a while to get our order together. She was very pleasant about that and I appreciated it.

I think overall I liked the Insane Eel Roll the best. We agreed that even the pickled ginger tasted above average.

We'll be back for sure.

Eno in Chicago

This place caught my eye as I walked down Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Eno? Hey, I know an Eno (river, that is). So I walk over take a closer look and it looks like a place we might like. Another kind of Eno. Later that evening we take a stroll down brightly lit Michigan Avenue--it was a beautiful breezy night, sidewalks full of people and plenty of activity at 11pm.



Our view from our table:



A friendly Chicago greeting as we step inside, as I've come to expect and enjoy. Nice table by the window and plenty of time to peruse the menu. So many flights of wine, cheese, and chocolate. Oh what to pick on this menu!

We ended up getting the Faux Bordeaux and the Pinot Envy flights of wine. The wine we liked best of the six was the 2006 Eola Hills Pinot Noir.



For the cheese, we chose The International and the Silky Smooth flights. The Quicke's raw cow milk cheddar from Devon was the best of the cheeses we tried. The chocolate flight was one we picked out specifically with just truffles. The dark cherry flavored truffle was the best of the three.





Eno from the sidewalk:



I'd definitely go back and plan to the next time I'm in Chicago. I really should also try Durham's Six Plates and I'm sad to say I haven't so far.

In an unrelated matter, a spider waits in his web on a busy N. Michigan Avenue corner, in a planter. Not sure how good business is there for him:

Easiest Corn on the Cob Ever

I suppose chances are you know this already, but I ran across the easiest method for cooking corn on the cob (if you have a microwave) and it worked so well I thought I'd post it. First of all, I didn't want to heat up the kitchen by boiling a big pot of water. Nor did I want to stand over a hot grill, even though grilling an ear of corn makes them crazy tasty.

So here's what I did and it worked perfectly.

FRESH CORN ON THE COB (MICROWAVE)

Cook fresh corn on the cob in microwave with husks and silk intact. They will cook in their own natural moisture.

Place on paper towel. Turn ears over and rearrange after 1/2 cooking time.

Cooking Timetable:

1 ear - 1 1/2 minutes
2 ears - 3 to 4 minutes
3 ears - 5 to 6 minutes
4 ears - 7 to 8 minutes
6 ears - 8 to 9 minutes.

When ears are hot to the touch, remove and wrap in kitchen towel or foil.

Let stand at least 5 minutes. Remove husks and silk (which is easier than when cold) and serve.

So good!

Heirloom Cherry Tomatoes

Found these heirloom cherry tomatoes (below) at the Wednesday afternoon Durham Farmer's Market. Can't wait to eat 'em! The berries and peaches smell so good in my kitchen right now, and I decided to splurge and buy some Strawberry Chevre and Mediterranean Chevre to try from Elodie Farms.


The good thing too is knowing it all came from local farmers. How cool is that?

Durham Farmer's Market today

As Kevin noted over at his blog Bull City Rising, lots of stuff not to be missed at the Durham Farmer's Market today (and pretty much every Saturday--and Wednesday afternoons too).

Free Yoga on a shady slope:


Great music by The Blue Tailed Skinks:


Chef Ingram of Four Square giving out yummy samples:


Beautiful crafts at The Durham Craft Market:


Walking tour offered by Preservation Durham:


Oh, yeah, and the fantastic local food:

Brunch at Alivia's

Lately one of my favorite relaxing things to do is to enjoy brunch with friends on Saturday or Sunday morning at Alivia's, at the corner of Main and Gregson Street. First of all, it's close by. Second, the coffee is some of the best in town. Also, it's not cramped and you can easily spread out a newspaper and read without feeling rushed. There's plenty of space on the inside of the restaurant and on the outside too, where there are some tables in the shade to be found. It's relaxed and the staff is pleasant and not obtrusive or too-darn-peppy. I hate too-darn-peppy, particularly on the weekends before Noon.

My favorite dish for brunch is the Poached Egg with Steak Hash, and with a steaming cup of fresh coffee too. When I eat this, I'm not ready for supper until late in the day. Some of my friends' favorites are the Shrimp and Grits, and the Stuff Challah French Toast. To tell the truth, I've never seen anything coming out of the kitchen that didn't look delicious.

Poached Egg with Steak Hash

Stuffed Challah French Toast

Shrimp and Grits

After brunch, it's nice to stroll around BrightLeaf Square a bit, and I always find myself in Off-Beat Music, browsing the CDs and happily patronizing our local merchants over the big-box stores.

Have a great Sunday in Durham . . .