Friday, January 16, 2009

Pear apple sauce, Nigella's peanut butter squares, Knorr Soup Dip, & Primanti Bros. Sandwiches

Al and I went shopping at Costco, to load him up with non-perishables to take back to college, and I bought a bag of Anjou pears, thinking I needed a lot of pears for the pear upside down cake for the soup supper. But of course, it was a Costco super large economy size bag of pears, AND the pears themselves were ginormous, so both cakes only used up three. A few days ago, I made a batch of pear apple sauce to use them up, and even though I had my doubts while it was cooking - it looked like slices of apple and pear boiling away in juice (I used cider, and left out the lemon zest called for) - I put it through a China cap and when chilled, it thicked up just right - I thought apples had more pectin than pears, but I think this shows it's the other way round ...
Last night, Rach had a party to show off her new beau. They are both eating gluten-free, so I made a batch of Nigella's peanut butter squares, as a GF sweet. Even though Nigella prides herself on being a cooking de-mystifier (in contrast to Martha, who I swear leaves out crucial techniques from all her recipes, to ensure that no one else can make them as good as she does), my squares did not come out looking like this -
- they were much thinner. I think the recipe should say 8-inch square pan, rather than 9-inch. Also, the chocolate top is a lot harder than the peanut butter bottom, so to get them to cut nicely, flip them over so the peanut butter's on top, then flip back to serve.

Since I made a peanut butter dessert, I made Knorr soup dip instead of my spicey peanut dip. It was just as good as you remember it, served with lots of veggies, rice chips, and rice crackers.
Tomorrow, I plan to make Primanti Bros. sandwiches for the Steeler game, like my brother does - they have the coleslaw and French Fries inside the sandwich. They're really sandwiches, not hoagies, like I thought - I don't think I ever have eaten one while in the 'Burgh, only a fish sandwich from Wholeys. Dave makes his without meat, because he usually doesn't eat it, but I think I'm putting salami in mine. And I just bought a six pack of Rolling Rock to go with.

2 comments:

Professor Dave said...

I tried using ciabatta like rolls yesterday; they were okay, but I like the soudough bread better. Your picture looks yummy.

Deb's Lunch said...

It's not a picture of my sandwich - it's from Primanti's web site! so a facsimile of the real thing - I used soft white grocery-store style Italian bread.