Fav Things: Home ground burgers at the cabin

A few of my favorite things:
* Summertime
* Quiet cabins on the lake 
* Dinner with friends
* Meat Grinder for the kitchen aid to make our own ground beef!

This meat grinder was a thank-you gift from some friends. H has been putting it to great use by grinding his own chuck to make hamburgers.
By grinding the meat yourself - the meat doesn't have time to settle and air pockets still remain to hold lots of juice. If you want to kick it up a notch - just add in frozen butter cubes, salt, and pepper. It's really amazing. These are the best hamburgers I have ever had.

Into to the grinder: chuck steak cut into rough cubes and butter cubes that have been frozen
After meat is ground: add 1 egg yolk per pound of meat, salt and pepper. Gently pat into disc shapes with indent in the middle. Grill as normal.

For this dinner, we also grilled up zuchini and corn. Pair that with a potato salad - and you have TOO MUCH to enjoy. Perfect for a weekend at a friend's cabin.

Fav Things: SCOOPS

Stainless Steel Spring-Loaded Scoop
$12-$18

The scoop comes in many sizes. I have 2 in my tool drawer - one small and one bigger. I used the bigger one to make some Banana Chocolate Chip muffins recently. You can squeeze the handles and it releases your dough very easily. It is a great way to ensure equal portions so your baking is complete at the same time!

Good uses: muffin batter, ice cream balls, chocolate truffles, cookie dough, sandwich filling (think pretty appetizers!)

What do you use your scoop for?
muffins for the office

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins
adapted from epicurious.com

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2 large)
1 large egg
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup white chocolate chips
1/2 cup walnuts: chopped, toasted and cooled
* note: I freeze my bananas and put on defrost in the microwave for about 1 minute. great for this recipe!

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line twelve 1/3-cup muffin cups with foil muffin liners. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in large bowl. Mix mashed bananas, egg, melted butter and milk in medium bowl. FOLD banana mixture into dry ingredients just until blended (do not overmix). Stir in chocolate chips and walnuts.

Divide batter among prepared muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full. Bake muffins until tops are pale golden and tester inserted into center comes out with some melted chocolate attached but no crumbs, about 32 minutes. Transfer muffins to rack; cool.

Favorite Things Wednesday: Beater Blade

As I read the Splendid Table email this morning and the Rose Levy B email last night - I felt very thankful for having this great hobby/love/interest in life - and thankful to have a kitchen that I love with almost every gadget that I have ever needed to use (after a few years of collecting). It's amazing too that other people show up - and don't have the same feeling. It's great how the kitchen fits the cook! Now - remembering my last several kitchens is what really makes me feel thankful! Whether it was living without an automatic dishwasher, or not having space for another set of ramekins - I am now very thankful for my kitchen tools. So -I'm going to share my 'favorite things' and how they have made my life better!
favorite things Wednesday:
Kitchen Aid Beater Blade

http://www.amazon.com/Design-Beater-5-Quart-KitchenAid-Mixers/dp/B0015TH9PO

$30

Benefits: Continuously beats, scrapes, folds and mixes ingredients for KitchenAid, Cuisinart, Viking and DeLonghi stand mixers. Virtually eliminates hand-scraping and batter build-up on the blade, Made in the USA.

** You can even get it in PINK if you have a 5 quart kitchenaid! Hopefully, they will make this in fun colors for the 6 qt soon.

** Issues: Lately, it has been making loud noises when I use it. It sounds like it is coming from the scraping - not the mixer. It makes mixing batters so much easier and faster that I live with
the noise.