Blackberries!

Our local Bountiful Basket had a great deal on blackberries the other day, so I bought a flat.  I've never had so many blackberries and have been having so much fun finding recipes to use with them.  However, I have to hurry to use them because Dale likes to just snack on them-they're disappearing fast!

I wanted to make a crisp or cobbler with them but couldn't find a recipe that looked exciting.  Finally, I decided to just use one of my all time favorite recipes for an apple-cranberry crisp and substitute in the blackberries.  It was delicious.  The sweet apples balanced perfectly the tart berries.  And, of course, with a big ol' scoop of vanilla ice cream, how can you go wrong?!

The recipe I used is a modification of a Pampered Chef recipe.  I used the fruit part of the recipe and then add the topping from a recipe that a friend of mine gave me--it is the best, all time recipe for a crisp topping.  (Shh--the secret is graham crackers!)  I get so many compliments when I use this topping.

Here's the recipe.....enjoy!  (I just exchanged blackberries for the cranberries in the recipe.)

Apple Cranberry Cobbler (part of which is credited to Pampered Chef)

4 apples, peeled, cored, and sliced

1 16-oz can whole berry cranberry sauce

1/3 cup brown sugar

3 Tablespoons flour

1 tsp. cinnamon

Topping:

1 cube melted butter

8 graham cracker squares (not rectangles) crushed

1/2 cup oats

1/2 cup flour

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

Combine the first five ingredients in a large bowl and pour into a large baking dish.  In a separate bowl, combine all the topping ingredients.  Mix until combined and crumbly.  Sprinkle topping over fruit.  Bake at 400 degrees for 30-35 minutes until apples are tender and top is golden brown.

Two New Yummy Ideas--BBQ!

Dale's good friend Steve celebrated his 50th birthday at the end of April.  We went to the family BBQ and party and discovered some new delicious ideas.

The first was so obvious but one I had never thought of.  They had a big bowl of homemade salsa that they had just dumped a bunch of salad shrimp into--it was fabulous!  And so easy.  We came home and made one of my favorite salsas (from Pioneer Woman, see link below) and added some salad shrimp.  We scarfed it down in record time.  A few weeks later we made it again and this time added in some medium shrimp.  It was just as delicious with the "better" shrimp but not superior.  That's good so you know you can make it with whatever shrimp you have on hand.  It's Dale's new favorite chip dip.

The next discovery was carne asada.  Now we've had carne asada before at restaurants but I had never thought about making it ourselves before.  What I found out from the chef that night was that there is a local Mexican market that cuts and pre-marinates the meat for you.  You can just go pick it up and throw it on the grill.  I did some research so I could find the market and found the meat to be a little expensive.

A few days later I just happened to be at my local grocery store and found they had "carne asada" meat already packaged up (at a great price) just not marinated.  I bought it, marinated it in onions, garlic, lime and cilantro and we grilled that up--fabulous.  Perfect sliced, on a grill-toasted tortilla with a little salsa.  YAY--we'll be doing this a few more times this summer.