First Friday Food

Cold Brewed Coffee: Update

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I did a First Friday Food post about cold brewed coffee a while back, but we had an amazing discovery which deserved an update! If you use cheese cloth instead of paper coffee filters, the filtering time goes from about 2 hours to about 1 minute! We still filtered the grounds out once with a mesh strainer, but with the cheese cloth you basically just pour the coffee through, no waiting. We couldn’t tell any difference in the final product.

It’s not very often that you can so easily improve your efficiency by 6000%! In fact, doing it this way seemed easier and faster even than using a Toddy. Plus you can reuse the cheese cloth, so you don’t even have to throw away the paper filters. It certainly changes making cold brewed coffee from, “you better really like it” to “why not?”

Sweet Potato Fries

/ Shane / Leave a comment

The Reason:

Sweet potato fries are delicious, not to mention healthier than regular fries. This one is double good, since you’re not actually frying the french fries in oil. Believe me, this is a much better use of sweet potatoes than those gross, marshmallow-topped dessert/vegetable dishes so popular around Thanksgiving.

The Journey:

The hardest part about this is peeling and chopping the potatoes. Sweet potatoes have a much tougher, sort of papery skin than a regular potato does, so you definitely don’t want that in there.


For my money, you want these to be pretty decent size. I guess that’s just personal preference, but they shrink up a little bit in the oven, so you want to start bigger than you want.

Once you have them chopped up, the rest is easy. Mix them in a bowl, put ‘um on a sheet, and bake ‘um.

The Verdict:

They’re great. We make these all the time, so obviously we like them. The kids love them too. It’s sort of a race to get a hold of any, since everybody gobbles them up as fast as possible.

The Recipe:

Modified from Ingrid Hoffmann’s Sweet Potato Oven Fries recipe.

  • 3 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into strips
  • 2 teaspoons olive oil (significantly reduced from original recipe!)
  • 1 teaspoon paprika
  • 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
  • Coarse ground rock salt and freshly ground black pepper (optional, but we didn’t use any)

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees F.

Place the sweet potatoes in a large bowl and toss with olive oil until the sweet potatoes are coated. Add the paprika, chili powder, coriander, salt, and pepper; toss to distribute evenly.

Arrange the coated fries in a single layer on the prepared pan. Bake for 20 minutes on the lower rack until the sweet potatoes soften. Transfer the pan to the upper rack of the oven and bake 10 minutes longer, until fries are crispy.

Blue Cheese Bacon Coleslaw

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The Reason:

Well, first off, I’m not sure you need a reason for Blue Cheese Bacon Coleslaw. Blue Cheese Bacon Coleslaw IS the reason. But this recipe has always been a hit, including Grandma Butterfly’s birthday, and I might also remind you that this was the #1 recipe at baconfest.

The Journey:

Well, there’s not much of a journey here. I don’t really remember why we made this the first time we made it, but you could see by looking at the recipe it was going to be good. Somehow, though, it’s even better than it looks!

I’m not even that much of a coleslaw fan, but this one I can guarantee.

The Verdict:

Awesome. Even ants love it, based on what happened when I spilled a bowl of it on our back porch and summoned every ant in a 10 block radius. They kept waiting around, hoping I would drop more, so I eventually had to poison them before they carried me back to their underground ant kingdom, to slavishly make Blue Cheese Bacon Coleslaw for the rest of my life.

The Recipe:

Recipe originally from Bon Appetit.

  • 8 bacon slices, chopped
  • 3/4 cup mayonnaise
  • 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon honey
  • 16 ounces purchased coleslaw mix
  • 1 cup crumbled blue cheese

Make sure the bacon is nice and crisp, and then dry it on paper towels. Whisk the mayo, vinegar, and honey in a large bowl. Stir in coleslaw, cheese, and bacon. Cover and chill.

Don’t dump the coleslaw in before whisking the other ingredients or Sara will be very mad at you.

Vanilla Coconut Ice Cream

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The Reason:

Well, first off, do you really need a reason to make ice cream? I don’t. But I guess if I had to have a reason, just having a nice sunny day seemed reason enough.

The Journey:

Sara heard a rumor that you could make ice cream without any cow’s milk, so we wanted to give it a try. Instead of milk, you use coconut milk, which we happen to have around the house for various reasons.

We have a human-powered “ice cream ball” that can be used to make ice cream without the use of electricity. Basically, instead of having a motor-driven paddle which mixes the ice cream, you have to do the rolling/shaking/what have you yourself. We bought it thinking that we could take it camping with us and make ice cream around the campfire. However, that never actually came to pass, because usually when we are camping we are with a big group, so this little ball doesn’t really make enough ice cream.

For just our family, it makes just the right amount, and kids are a better source of energy than electricity anyway. It gives us an excuse to be outside on a nice day, followed by a nice cold treat.

The Verdict:

Excellent! I don’t think I’d want coconut ice cream every day, but it was a nice treat. The vanilla is an important part of it, since it tones down the coconut a little bit. This would be perfect to make when camping, because it is much easier to transfer canned coconut milk than regular cow’s milk that has to be refrigerated.

The Recipe:

Recipe from Go Dairy Free.

Ingredients:

  • 4 cups coconut milk (full fat)
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 tbsp vanilla extract

Stir the coconut milk and sugar together until the sugar is dissolved. Add the salt and vanilla and freeze in an electric or hand operated ice cream freezer.

Artichoke and Walnut Pesto Pasta

/ Shane / 3 Comments

The Reason:

Well, we really just needed something that was as different from pancakes as possible. This is a nice, summer-y sort of pasta salad that we have found extremely useful for potlucks.

The Journey:

I’d say one of the best parts about this recipe is that it has a lot of greens in it. Throw in whole wheat pasta and walnuts, and it’s decently healthy. Just look the other way when you put in the oil and parmesan cheese!

I’m a guy who loves me some pesto, but this pesto is really nothing like what you would traditionally consider pesto. It’s very thick and pasty, and it isn’t a basil-based pesto, so it doesn’t have that distinguishing taste.

We often make it with spinach instead of arugula, but I think the arugula does add a little more flavor. Of course, you might want to chop it up a little bit if it is too big for a bite.

This recipe makes a lot of pasta. Even when it’s gone over pretty well at potlucks, we still have a lot of leftovers afterwards. It works pretty well cold though, so it works well as something a little extra in your lunch.

The Verdict:

To be honest, I think it could use a little something extra. It doesn’t have a lot of flavor, which is maybe surprising considering how many delicious ingredients you put in it. Looking at that list, you’d expect it to be pretty flavorful. On the other hand, you have a lot of healthy ingredients in there too, so it’s a pretty good way to get a lot of greens! (parsley, arugula and artichokes)

The Recipe:

The recipe is originally from the “Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats” cookbook.

1 lb whole wheat spiral or penne pasta

4 oz. walnuts
15 oz. artichokes
1 clove garlic
zest from 1 lemon
1/4 cup parsley
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
black pepper
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

3 cups arugula (or spinach)

Cook the pasta. Combine all the rest of the ingredients except for the arugula into a food processor until a thick paste forms. Combine the warm, drained pasta, pesto and arugula into a large bowl (arugula will wilt slightly). Add pepper to taste.