About Anita

Valentine’s Day Cookies

Decorated Cookie Cakes have a new face. This recipe was first posted December 12, 2013.

Now a Valentine!

I really love this recipe. Two cookies with a layer of frosting, then slathered all over and topped off with coconut, become a delicious surprise for Valentine’s Day. This cookie cake was always a Valentine’s Day cookie … Made many times for a classroom full of children. Those days are gone but my children still love these. We hope you will give this recipe a try. Continue reading


Super Bowl Linguica Stuffed Mushrooms

Time for one more Super Bowl Party Recipe, Linguica Stuffed Mushrooms. Stuffed mushrooms are a winning appetizer, and go great with beer! Wine works too. These pictured are not bite size. They are three inch portobellini mushrooms.

Choose the size of mushroom you want to use. Bite size cremini are great for a crowd.

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Salty Pretzel Chocolate Chip Toffee Bars

Super Bowl Sunday Dessert

Love salty and sweet! Pretzel chocolate chip cookies look inviting but I wanted to do something a little different. So … I took my Chocolate and Walnut Toffee Bar Recipe and changed it up with pretzels, white chocolate, butterscotch chips, sea salt, and a bit of peanut butter.

What a great combination of tastes!

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Portuguese Style Chicken Wings &

Blue Cheese Dip

Super bowl or Anytime

Chicken Wings Portuguese Style

These Chicken Wings, Portuguese Style, are spicy enough to be called Buffalo wings. Serve with a blue cheese dip and you have a crowd pleaser. Add heat with cayenne pepper. Or if you have few guests that appreciate hot … have a great hot sauce on the side.

Crispy when baked in the oven. Crunchy when pan fried for a few minutes and then placed into the oven to finish cooking.

Chicken Wings Portuguese Style with Blue Cheese Dip for Super Bowl Sunday!

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Spare Ribs With Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Another Super Bowl Food

Spare Ribs With Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Here Garlic Mashed Potatoes have been added to the Stove Top Spare Ribs Recipe, previous post. This definitely changes the ease of finger foods for the Super Bowl party. But oh so worth it!

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Tender Stove top Spare Ribs

Easy Spare Ribs

Easy Spare Ribs

This recipe, just 30 minutes start to finish, is amazingly simple. Use the marinade for vinho d’alhos if you are looking for a more traditional Portuguese dish. Or try this simple finger-licking recipe.

Last week I visited my Grandmother Rose’s niece, Margaret De Mello. I had taken a few old photographs I inherited from my grandmother … hoping we could identify family or friends. Margaret was generous with her time and recipes. We talked about years past … her family’s home was the hub … We, cousins and second cousins, remember Aunt Alice’s as an adventure … kinda like another world.

Being the eldest daughter Margaret was right up front when the annual ritual pig slaughter took place. She helped with cleaning the casings for the linguica and preparing fifty pounds of onions for the morcellas among many other chores. All the daughters in the family became great cooks. It wasn’t unusual to visit and find one of the girls in the kitchen baking a cake.

Margaret shared many of her recipes with me. This spare rib recipe is one. The ingredients, you’ll agree, are not Portuguese cuisine in origin. But Margaret has years of experience cooking pork. I knew the recipe would be impressive. And it is so simple. This method of cooking can be used with any sauce you choose. I am hoping you choose to try this one.

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Portuguese Meatballs and Pops for Super Bowl Sunday

Portuguese Meatballs and Pops

These savory Portuguese meatballs cannot be mistaken for Italian or Swedish meatballs. They have a taste all their own. If you cook Portuguese dishes you will immediately recognize the spices used as Portuguese cuisine favorites. The meatballs are formed, dipped in egg, rolled in fine bread crumbs, and precooked slightly in hot olive oil. Then the meatballs are transferred to a red sauce of tomatoes, paprika, pickling spices and red pepper flakes, to finish cooking. The breading is a good finish for small meatballs to be served as appetizers. For meatballs sandwiches I opt out of the breading process and brown the meatballs without it.

These pops were a cinch and can be mixed up quickly. The time to process the rolls is somewhat lengthy. But if you are putting together the meatballs and sauce the preparation and rising times, meatballs and pops, knit nicely.

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Oatmeal Raspberry (Valentine’s Day) Cookies

Oatmeal cookies With A Taste Of Raspberry Or If You Like, chocolate

This not too sweet Oatmeal Raspberry Valentine’s Day Cookie is a mouth-watering surprise. This recipe is not labor intensive but gives that impression. Your family, your Valentine will enjoy this tasteful treat. If raspberry is not your favorite try strawberry. Or for a really decadent surprise sandwich these with a chocolate filling … maybe even white chocolate with a drip of red food coloring mixed in for the occasion.

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No Worries Oven Braised Beef Stew

Oven Braised Beef Stew

This oven braised beef stew only needs your attention for a few minutes. Then you pop it into the oven to slow cook for at least 4 hours. It does tolerate longer cooking if needed. This is a treat for my visiting daughter. Yep, we are back with the family favorites and comfort foods. But I’m moving to tapas next. Everyone loves tapas, don’t they?

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Best Peanut Butter Cake

Peanut Butter Cake

Eating habits have changed over the years. And so have many old recipes. We are more conscious of the nutritional value of what we eat. We scrutinize  ingredients. We change up recipes adding good ingredients and eliminating the bad. One of the ingredients we now change out is vegetable shortening, substituting vegetable cooking oil or butter. Vegetable shortening has had a facelift, too, however. Crisco, for one, changed their almost 100 year old formula to remain in the competition. Trans fats have been eliminated. But still we gravitate to the oil and butter. What really competes well with the taste of butter!

Old cake recipes most often use shortening as the fat ingredient. Substituting oil or butter for the shortening can be tricky. The texture of the cake changes and often times not for the better. There are just some cake recipe ingredients better left alone. This Peanut Butter Cake’s ingredients are from the 1950 edition of Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book with slight variation. I’ve just simply made this a quick one bowl mix.

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