Ripped Baguette with Garlic-Parsley Butter

Not particularly diet-friendly ... but yummy just the same! This Ripped baguette with Garlic-Parsley Butter from Tyler Florence goes great an Italian dinner or with a steak on the grill. It's one of those recipes that you can make in advance, wrap in foil and put it in the fridge until you are ready to throw it into the oven or on the grill. It comes out perfectly every time ... except of course, if you forget to take it out of the oven, which I did with the second loaf last night. Luckily I discovered my mistake before the smoke alarms went off ... but just barely!

Hopefully these entries will keep making it to the blog. We're having some computer problems here. Have I mentioned my strong dislike of Wild Blue lately? Don't even get me started. And I thought satellite internet was gonna be great. Grrrr!



Ripped Baguette with Garlic-Parsley Butter
Recipe by Tyler Florence


5 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
1 garlic cloves, minced (1 to 2)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 baguette

Melt 1 tablespoon of the butter in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until it softens but does not brown, 1 to 2 minutes. Let cool. Then stir this garlic butter into the remaining butter in a small bowl. Stir in the parsley, olive oil, salt, and pepper.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Rip open the baguette lengthwise, so that it opens like a book but is not ripped entirely in half. Smear the inside of the baguette with the garlic butter. Wrap the baguette in aluminum foil and bake until heated through, 10 to 12 minutes.

Taste and Create VIII: Mom's Apple Banana Bread

For taste & Create VIII, I was paired with Stephanie from A Whisk and a Spoon. Stephanie lives in Australia and let me warn you, you can spend an awful lot of time paging through her blog and drooling over her gorgeous pictures. I had to laugh when I found out that I was paired with A Whisk and a Spoon because I am so not into baking. Stephanie obviously is and I worried what she would think when she saw my blog. I doubt there's a single baked good in mine.

I'm not sure why I don't bake. I like a good cheesecake or muffin as well as the next person. I guess I had this idea that baking is messy and precise and, well, just not me. I may have to re-think that position. After going through all of Stephanie's recipes (and gaining a couple of pounds just looking at the pictures!) I settled on a happy compromise: Mom's Banana Apple Bread. It has three bananas and two apples in it. That makes it healthy, right? ;-) Yummy was never in question. I love banana bread. Add in pieces of apple sauteed in brown sugar and cinnamon and how could you possibly go wrong? The recipe was simple. It went together in no time at all (with the help of my new stand mixer. Yeah!) And the apples filled the kitchen with a glorious cinnamon-y smell (I kept thinking how nice those apples would be as an afternoon snack, but I was good and added them all to the bread. Next time though ... )

Definitely a hit around here. Even the picky girls loved it. I'd planned to take some up to my mom but there isn't enough left! We'll definitely be making this one again and again. This is definitely one recipe that's worth running a couple of extra miles for!