Corner Bakery Cafe

As you know, Bowling Green has 100s of restaurants to choose from and bakeries are becoming one of the more frequent finds. Corner Bakery Cafe opened up this year, taking over the lot of the late Beijing Chinese buffet that was once shaped like a boat.

This restaurant, which features breakfast, pasta, soup, salad, sandwiches, and baked goods, was founded in 1991 (the year I was born). Their BG location is currently their only KY location.

A couple of weeks after it opened, Mom and I decided to check it out for breakfast one Saturday.

It was crowded when we got there, making it hard to find a table, but there were only a couple of people in front of us at the register. We beat the 9am BG breakfast rush.

After we both ordered and squeezed into tables, we set our sticks with numbers on said table and waited for our food. The staff works very efficiently at Corner Bakery, finding most tables with ease and constantly moving about to see that tables stayed clean.

We were both excited when our food arrived.

I picked the Smoked Bacon and Cheddar Panini with a side of breakfast potatoes. Mine was really simple–bacon and cheese on sourdough bread hot and fresh off the grill. The eggs were the perfect fluffy texture while the bacon was good and crisp, but not over cooked. The cheese and crunchy on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside, bread tied it all together. And the potatoes…they just might have been my favorite part about the whole meal!

Mom got the Anaheim Scramble with harvest toast and breakfast potatoes; she agreed with me about the potatoes being fabulous. We both also really liked her toast, which was a great multigrain with a nutty depth of flavor. She also really enjoyed her scrambled eggs (and she’s picky about her eggs) that came mixed with bacon, tomatoes, green onions, cheddar cheese, and avocado.

Since I had already had coffee that morning, I resisted the temptation to intake more sugar and caffeine and stuck with a glass of water. Mom ordered tea and was disappointed when they delivered a hot cup of water and a tea bag; she’d been expecting something made in house.

I see a return trip in our future, especially since I still need to try something from that tantalizing bakery case! We did buy Grandma a blueberry muffin and my husband a ginormous cinnamon roll, but I didn’t get the chance to try either of these. I really want one of their peanut butter whoopie pies.

But I don’t see this becoming a weekly breakfast place for us. The only reason I say that is because they are a bit pricy. But they have excellent food and it’s a wonderful splurge.

 

Cheesy Sausage and Potato Pie

At some point last month or the month before, one of the grocery stores I frequent had Johnsville ground Italian sausage on sale, so I decided that I wanted to try making something new. Did you know that the Johnsonville website has a bunch of great recipes?

I decided that I wanted to try this wonderful-looking savory pie.

Sometimes the bonus result of new recipes, a bonus for me at least, is the fact that I get to buy new cooking supplies! In this case, I needed a pie pan. I also got to work Pillsbury’s refrigerated pie crust for the first time.

This recipe is very easy, but the fact that it has to be baked for an hour means that I don’t consider it a good choice for a week night meal.

After lining the bottom of your pie pan with one pie crust and trimming the edges, you fill it with ground Italian sausage, frozen potatoes, shredded cheese, cream of potato soup, and some spices. Then, you carefully layer the other crust on top and trim it. Make sure to cut some slits into the top so that your pie doesn’t explode in the oven!

I used some onion powder in place of actual onion and accidently used a smaller can of soup than was called for. Otherwise, I stuck to their recipe.

Kevin and I both really enjoyed this. Not only was it tasty, but it was filling and huge, which meant we had the rare occurrence of leftovers. This pie is dense with plenty of sausage and potato goodness to each bite and a creaminess from the cheese and soup to tie it all in. Using a bigger can of soup might have added to the texture, but we didn’t really miss it.

The crust was great too. It was really easy to use and cooked up crunchy yet tender. I’d like to make a sweet pie with it at some point.

Cheesy Sausage and Potato Pie

Ingredients

• 1 pound ground Italian sausage (I used mild)
• 2 cups frozen, diced potatoes
• 1 cup green onion, sliced (or 1/2 tbs onion powder)
• 1 10.75 ounce can of cream of potato soup
• 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1/4 tsp ground sage
• 2 pie crusts, 9 inches

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Brown and drain sausage.
3. Mix all of the ingredients for your filling.
4. Place on pie shell inside of pie pan, pressing against sides and bottom. Trim off excess.
5. Add filling mixture and then place second crust on top. Trim off excess.
6. Press edges with a fork to seal and cut slits on top of the pie.
7. Bake for 1 hour and let stand 15 minutes before baking.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

Unlike the vast majority of Americans, I didn’t make a turkey or even the typical feast on Thanksgiving. Instead, I prepared a little precooked ham, some homemade mashed potatoes, frozen bread sticks, and a little can of creamed corn.

It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was good.

Cooking Note: When heating up a precooked ham, put in a baking dish with about a half cup of water and cover with foil. Then put it in the oven for around 30 minutes. I put mine in for 20 minutes and it was lukewarm to cold by the time we sat down to eat it.

But we also wound up with a lot of leftover ham. Ham for days isn’t a bad thing because, well, I like ham and I like eating leftovers; having leftovers is one of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving. My husband, on the other hand, doesn’t eat a lot of leftovers.

This brought me to the dilemma of how to make ham and potatoes more appealing for him so that all of it would get eaten.

Yesterday, I remembered that I had bought a two pack of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls. I also remembered that it seems like there’s a very real possibility that everything tastes good when stuffed in a crescent roll.

Except, perhaps, things like gummy bears.

So, when I got home, I told my husband that I was planning on putting cheese and ham in some crescent rolls.

In response, he said, “what about the potatoes?”

Hmmm…what about the potatoes, indeed?

After popping open one container of roll dough, I decided to leave them in twos. Two crescent rolls left attached = one square/rectangle that is easier to stuff.

When doing this, try to make sure that you press the seams together to try to prevent food from escaping while it’s baking.

After setting the oven to preheat at 375 degrees, I filled each with two small spoonfuls of mashed potatoes, which I sprinkled with salt and pepper; a pinch of mild cheddar cheese; and ripped up pieces of ham.

I put these on a baking sheet lined with Reynolds Parchment Paper and then baked them for what wound up being a total of 12 minutes.

These were super tasty, but still a little doughy. So, in the future, I think I’ll bake them for 15 minutes instead. Also, I think it would be good to mix up chopped up ham and shredded cheese into the mashed potatoes to use to stuff the rolls instead of just layering them like I did.

Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 package of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls
• Precooked ham; I didn’t have the honey variety
• Shredded cheese; I used mild cheddar
• Already prepared mashed potatoes
• Salt & pepper, to taste

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees
2. Line baking sheet with parchment paper and use as your work surface. Once you’ve opened the crescent rolls you’ll find that 2 rolls together create a square/rectangle. Spread these out and pinch the seams that connect the two together
3. In a bowl, gently mix together the rest of the ingredients
4. Using a spoon place portions of your filling into the middle of your squares of crescent dough. Then, fold the ends of the dough together and over the filling so that there aren’t any openings
5. Bake for about 15 minutes depending on your oven

Cooking Note: As you can tell, I didn’t really measure anything when I made this the other day. Use however much and whatever type of ham and cheese and potatoes you want. Also, one pack of crescent rolls yields 4 pockets of ham goodness.

The next time that I make these, I don’t think I’m going to use potatoes. I’m going to see what happens with just ham and cheese.

Loaded Potato and Buffalo Chicken Casserole

Dinner last night was wonderful! I’ve found that I like cooking and feeding people. I’ve also discovered that I have a secret longing to spell “potato” with an “e” at the end.

The first time I had this dish was when a friend of mine made it for the two of us to eat while she was introducing me to Dr. Who, which is amazing, by the way!

Alrighty, the recipe is as follows…

Ingredients

1/3 cup olive oil

1 1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoons freshly ground pepper

1 tablespoons paprika

2 tablespoons garlic powder

6 tablespoons hot sauce (since only two out of five of the people eating this enjoy hot sauce [my boyfriend and I], I didn’t include the hot sauce in the sauce; I had it on the table in case anyone wanted it)

double the above ingredients to have two sauces; see directions below

10 whole medium potatoes, cut into 1/2 inch cubes (the recipe suggests you leave the skins on, so I did, and it was tasty)

2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1/2 inch cubes (this was my first experience cutting raw chicken; Grandma helped me, actually she took pity on me and did much of the chicken cutting)

2 cups fiesta blend cheese or a mix of cheddar and Monterey jack (2 cups of shredded cheese = one standard sized bag; depending on how much of a cheese person you are, I’d suggest that you put two bags on there)

1 cup diced green onion (I don’t like onions, so I didn’t include this)

1 cup cooked and crumbled bacon (I adore bacon, but didn’t include it; I think it was primarily out of laziness)

Directions

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. (Yes, you really do have to turn the oven on that high.)

Coat an 9×13 inch baking dish with non-stick baking spray and set it aside.

In a large bowl, mix together the olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder, and hot sauce. Add the cubed potatoes and stir to coat. (I mixed this by hand because it was easier to manage than with a spoon.)

Carefully scoop the potatoes into the prepared baking dish, leaving behind as much of the sauce as possible.

Bake the potatoes for 45-50 minutes, stirring every 10-15 minutes until cooked through and crispy and browned on the outside.

While the potatoes are cooking, add the cubed chicken to the bowl with the leftover sauce to coat. Put it in the refrigerator to marinate until the potatoes are ready. (Realistically, there won’t be any sauce left after you’ve coated the potatoes, so make a second, separate sauce for the chicken.)

When the potatoes are fully cooked, remove them from the oven and lower the oven temperature to 400 degrees.

Top the cooked potatoes with the raw marinated chicken.

In a bowl, mix together the cheese, bacon, and green onion and top the raw chicken with the cheese mix.

Return the casserole to the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through and the topping is bubbly.

Serve with extra hot sauce, ranch dressing, or sour cream