Pulled Pork Sandwiches

I spent the past week back in Utah visiting my sister and her new baby Sophia...and Caroline and all the other friends I've been missing so much since moving to DC. It feels like I've been gone for ages and like I never left. Kind of surreal. 

One night our friend Lindsey hosted a picnic in my honor and made these pulled pork sandwiches, one of her many specialties. So we thought we'd share it with you.

Orange Jello Salad

Yup, it's a classic creamy jello salad. The one that you always laugh about, but when it presents itself at a party always gets gobbled up quickly. If you want to make it look a little fancier go ahead and put some cut fruit on top right before it finishes setting. Yesterday, I decided to make one for my Book Club later in the evening to add to a tropical themed buffet table. I hoped everyone would love it...

Baked Rice Pudding

We didn't eat a lot of rice when I was a kid. Maybe less than once a month. Actually, I think the only time rice ever really made an appearance was in my mom's rice pudding, which I generally associate with our Monday family night desserts and the orangey-brown casserole dish it was always baked in. My momma believed that rice pudding should have lots of cinnamon on top (which often turned into a slightly scary looking but very tasty cinnamon-pudding crust) and be served with a dash of milk and a very large dollop of ice cream. That was dessert rice pudding.

The next morning the same rice pudding suspiciously appeared as our morning meal, but this time without the ice cream. That was breakfast rice pudding. There's a clear difference. I'm surprised you didn't notice how very clear it is.

Roasted Spaghetti Squash with Parmesan and Herbs

I was rummaging around in my cupboards the other day, struggling to find a serving dish that I knew had to be in there somewhere, when I was startled to encounter a spaghetti squash rolling around. Oh! You're still here! How nice. It was a fortuitous find since I had very little idea what to make for dinner that night, no desire to go to the store, and an odd and unhelpful collection of produce in the fridge.

So although it's May, and in truth I did feel a little strange roasting squash in May, this ended up being a most delightful dinner. I caramelized the onions until they submitted to their sweet brown coloring and topped the squash with a healthy handful of parsley from my garden and a bit of cheese. We ate our squash with  some slightly crusty bread from the farmer's market that had been well slathered with garlic butter and then broiled for a few minutes. Simple but delicious.

Snickerdoodles

Cinnamon and sugar coat these sweet cookies. Snickerdoodles are very similar to your basic sugar cookie, only you don't have to go to the arduous trouble of rolling out and cutting dough. 

And although the name has the word "snicker" in it, there are no broken pieces of the popular candy bar in here, just good ole' fashion ingredients like butter, sugar, flour, etc. So where did the funny name come from you ask? Well, here is what I found on wikipedia: The Joy of Cooking claims that snickerdoodles are probably German in origin, and that the name is a corruption of the German wordSchneckennudeln (lit. "snail noodles"), a kind of pastry. A different author suggests that the word "snicker" comes from the German word Schnecke, which describe a snail shape. Yet another hypothesis suggests that the name has no particular meaning or purpose and is simply a whimsically named cookie that originated from a New England tradition of fanciful cookie names.

Spicy Coconut Shrimp with Mango Basil Salsa

This post is brought to us by my friend Ginny Miller (who you may remember me mentioning in our chocolate zucchini bread post). Mother of two seriously cool little boys, her family lives most of the time in Northern California but is soon to make a summer move to North Dakota. Wait. What? California to the Dakotas? Maybe a little strange for the rest of us, but not if you're a beekeeper. And that, my friends, is exactly what Ginny's husband is.

Beekeeping gets me excited on a number of levels: 1) We wouldn't have much food without bees. Save the bees! I ♥ bees! I plant flowers and herbs and vegetables that will attract bees so they can happily pollinate the neighborhood. 2) What would the world be like without honey? I shudder to think of it. It makes me want to go buy barrels of honey to store in my closet...Dutch Gold honey because that's where the Miller family honey goes. 3) Being a beekeeper means you get to be around bees all the time...which means you get to be outside a lot. And you're kind of saving the planet, too. So the fact that Ginny and her husband made the decision to bring on the bees makes them that much cooler.

But I digress. Aside from being a beekeeping family, Ginny is a great cook and lover of good food. When we were lucky enough to live near each other, our conversations inevitably turned to food and travel. Eating while traveling. Eating food that makes you feel like you're traveling. Traveling for the food. All good options, if you ask me. So please welcome Ginny and enjoy what promises to be a superb combination of flavors.  I can't wait to try it.

Creamy Peppercorn Pasta

I love a good, easy pasta. Really who doesn't? This recipe is full of flavor, but really is easy to throw together. The combination of cream and peppercorns is fantastic, especially if you are a fresh-pepper lover like myself (I like it on almost everything, including my green salads; really you should try it) and I added some balsamic which is quite mellow with the cream, but adds some depth of flavor to the recipe. 

Chili

It's that time again...when we shake things up a bit around here to give you the opportunity to see what other people like to cook (very noble, right?)...to give you a chance read something someone else besides us write about their food...and it just might also happen to be the end of the semester which equals tests, projects, exams, and lots and lots of grading. Cold cereal will be the main course in the Zirker house for the next 2 weeks. Meanwhile, you'll be hearing from Caroline as well as a couple of my favorite cooks. 

This guest post is from one of our most loyal readers (and dear friend), Lindsey R. She has actually already made a few culinary appearances on this blog in the form of her family's cookie salad and buttermilk blueberry pancakes (which I may have made 3 times the past 8 days), but this is her first official post. Welcome, Lindsey!

Rhubarb Crumb Bars

This morning I was dreaming about writing a book called Rhubarb: the Under-appreciated Vegetable Fruit Plant. Luckily, that's as far as a I got, which is a good thing because it's a pretty lame title. It's a plant that can't make up its mind to which culinary variety it belongs; it looks and chops up an awful lot like celery, but is rarely eaten by Americans in anything but pie (though I've been longing to try this savory rhubarb dish). But I happen to love rhubarb. The tartness, the vibrant color, how well it pairs with orange or strawberry, how it feels like early summer when I eat it.