Here at the Food on Fridays carnival, any post even remotely related to food is welcome.We always enjoy recipes and food photography, but this is for non-foodies, as well.You can tell us about the lettuce seeds you’ve chosen for this year’s garden or include a photo of your child’s mud pie. Seriously, this is a very open-minded food carnival.  Oh, and don’t forget to paste the broccoli button at the top of your post—count it as one of your five-a-day!Here’s a Mr. Linky tutorial:

Write up a post, publish, then return here and click on Mr. Linky below. A screen will pop up where you can type in your blog name and paste in the url to your own Food on Fridays post (give us the exact link to your Food on Fridays page, not just the link to your blog).You can also visit other people’s posts by clicking on Mr. Linky and then clicking participants’ names–you should be taken straight to their posts.

Food on Fridays Participants

• Stretch Mark Mama (roasted asparagus)
• Ship Full O’ Pirates (bread in my machines)
• Homemade and Wholesome (lentil stew)
• mominapocket (Caesar Salad and homemade croutons)
• Newlyweds! (mushroom and egg casserole)
• It’s All About Love (homemade chicken noodle soup)
• Beauty in the Mundane (diabetic recipes: chicken tortilla soup & cooking with clara video)
• hopeannfaith (cheesecake)
• Shalee’s Diner (fried cabbage)

Food on Fridays with AnnWhen the Belgian Wonder asked for my hand in marriage, my cooking abilities were limited to broiling hot dogs in a toaster oven and baking an occasional batch of chocolate-chip cookies.He, on the other hand, knew how to make a meal! He would brown ground beef and add it to a batch of Kraft macaroni-and-cheese. I mean, compared to me and my toaster-oven hot dogs, he was a regular Wolfgang Puck.So I’ve come a long way.Now that I’ve revealed to you my sordid culinary past, I feel like I ought to redeem myself with some fancy European dish.So I’ll give you Ann-adapted instructions for Chicon au Gratin (Belgian endives with cheese…and ham)This blogger will make you rush to the grocery in search of endives to try every way she suggests. And here’s another recipe for Chicon au Gratin where the instructions are a little different and their photo looks far more delicious than mine. But I never claimed to be a professional. Remember the hot dogs? Anyway, here’s my simple version of:Chicon au GratinBuy as many endives as you think your family will eat. Endives are a little bitter to a sensitive palate, and if you’ve never tasted one, prepare yourself. I could barely choke this down the first time someone served it to me. But it’s grown on me so much that I now get a hankering for it at least once in the winter.Wash the endives, pull off any icky looking leaves, cut off any dirty bottoms, and place in a pot of boiling water (this step is different from the recipe link above–they braised the endives and cooked them differently).Cook them until they are very tender, maybe 15 or 20 minutes, depending on the thickness of the endive. Meanwhile, prepare a roux (oil or butter and flour) to make a white sauce (or some recipes skip the white sauce and just pour on some cream).My mother-in-law has a trick to make the white sauce slightly more healthy—she ladles some of the cooking water into the roux. That way she doesn’t need to use so much milk and adds a few nutrients from the vegetable.When the endives are soft, you have to drain them.I poke them with a fork and transfer them tip-down to a drainer.When the water has dripped out, line up the endives in a baking dish and wrap a slice of ham around each one. You could use about half the ham I did. I got a little carried away. And I just realized I should apologize for such a Lenten-unfriendly post. You could leave out the ham for a vegetarian version.Time for the white sauce. Drizzle over the ham-wrapped chicon.I’m pretty pleased with myself for taking the photo and drizzling at the same time. I’m doing each of those tasks one-handed.More sauce.Don’t hold back. Douse those endives!Next you’ll need some swiss cheese. Hey, look what I found in my freezer:I still have a lot of cheese from that manager’s special. I froze it for occasions like these.Shred it and spread on top. Sprinkle lightly with nutmeg.Then stick it in the oven to broil for a few minutes.I didn’t get a good shot of them dished up on a plate for the Belgian Wonder, but I think you can get a pretty good idea of the final results from this broiling scene.So I’ve gone from broiling hot dogs to broiling Belgian endives in béchamel sauce with imported Swiss cheese.I’ve come a long way, baby.