Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!!!

A couple weeks ago on a Saturday morning, I brought my girls to Food City to pick out a paleta because they were behaving themselves. As soon as I pulled up to the store, I noticed that they were grilling whole chickens out front! Mmmmm... the aroma of chickens grilling!!! They were selling the grilled chickens in the deli for $6.99. If you were willing to shell out $8.99, they'd throw in some salsa and a dozen warm tortillas along with the chicken. Since it was almost lunchtime, I opted for the chicken dinner. I chose the molcajete rojo (molcajete "red") salsa, and it was the perfect complement to the perfectly seasoned chicken! My goodness, it was delicious! It was enough for the three of us, plus the babysitter, to have a very satisfying and flavorful lunch that was muy delicioso.

It's Pumpkin-Everything Time!!!!!

It's that time of year again -- when big displays appear in all our food stores, featuring every imaginable food item flavored with pumpkins and pumpkin spices! Pumpkin cookies, pumpkin ale (more on that later), pumpkin pasta sauce (yes, I tried it - it was good, but I don't think it will be replacing yummy marinara quite yet), pumpkin pasta, pumpkin chips, pumpkin cereal and oatmeal, pumpkin spice latté, pumpkin coffee, and the list goes on and on. If you can conceive of it, apparently you can add pumpkin to it.

I'm drawn to these displays partly for the sheer imagination on display, and also because I don't hate pumpkin spices. I spotted this Sweet Harvest Pumpkin tea on one of the displays for something like two for $5, so I grabbed a pair, one for myself and one for my tea-loving colleague. He loves tea so much, he has a 6-ft. tall bookcase devoted to a multitude of tea flavors! It's very impressive!*

I tried our new tea a couple days ago and it was très yummy! I added Coffee-mate's Natural Bliss hazelnut flavor and it was delicious! Natural Bliss is basically cream and sugar but I’m sure any of the flavors would be yummy.

You see, not too long ago, I broke my cherished sparkly bedazzled to-go cup. I knew I needed a new one, so last week while grocery shopping, I stopped by the in-store Starbuck’s. They had lots of to-go cups, some of them on sale for $9.99, and going all the way up to $25!!! They had very pretty cups for $16.99, but I didn’t see a need to spend so much for to-go cup. I settled on a purple sale cup with the Starbuck's logo. I still thought $9.99 was a lot to pay for a cup!

I decided to try out my new cup with my new tea! Since it’s a little bigger than a regular cup, I threw two teabags into the cup and added my boiling water and natural bliss. I just went ahead and left the teabags in the cup and dashed off to work. Wouldn’t you know it, that little old Starbuck’s cup kept my tea burning hot for hours! I have to admit, my overpriced to-go cup is growing on me….

So get out there and enjoy the bounties of the season!!!!

*

Flag Cookies.... Just in Time!!!

We made these flag cookies last year on the 4th of July to celebrate... the 4th of July! It's a cookie base with a cream cheese spread and fresh strawberries and blueberries -- how patriotic, right! In addition to being patriotic, they are also very yummy (cream cheese and yummy berries.... Mmmmmm!)

Kids love to bake and decorate cookies, so this is a perfect family project. This masterpiece was made by a 6-year-old artist. It's conceptual :-)

Give them a try! Here you go!:

FLAG COOKIES:

I used the recipe for Thumbprint Cookies as the base. You could probably roll them out and cut nice rectangles.. we formed them by hand. I used a piece of wax paper to help me get the sides nice and straight.

Dough:
1 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 and 1/2 cups All Purpose Flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

Cream Cheese Topping:
2  8-oz. packages of cream cheese
4 tablespoons of sugar

Fruit Decorations:
Fresh blueberries, cut in half from top to bottom
Fresh strawberries, with the outer edge of the fruit cut into little strips

1. Make your dough: Cream together the butter and brown sugar. Add the egg yolks and vanilla. Last add the flour and salt.

2. Form the dough into rectangles about 3x4 inches in size, and a little less than 1/4 inch thick. Bake them at 350 degrees. Get them out of the oven when the edges just barely start to change colors (to brown).

3. Make your cream cheese topping by mixing the cream cheese and sugar together. Prepare your fruit.

4. When the cookies are cooled off, use a small offset spatula to spread the cream cheese topping across the top of the cookies. Arrange the blueberries in one corner to act like the star-spangled part of the flag. Arrange the strawberry strips into red and white stripes.

5. Eat them! Share them! Everyone will love them!!!

Here's a picture of our work product. Most of the cookies kept with the flag theme :-)

And the original Thumbprint Cookie recipe:

HAPPY FOURTH YA'LL!!!!!!!

Cheeeese!!!!!

If you love cheese, you need to get this bag of shaved fontina and parmesan cheese, and put it on your salad. This salad is so simple, but cool and refreshing and flavorful!:

SPINACH SALAD WITH A PEAR AND LARGE FLAKES OF CHEESE

Spinach leaves, lightly chopped
One ripe pear, chopped up
Large flakes of fontina and parmesan cheese
Olive oil
Red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper

Layer your salad starting with the spinach, and put the pear on top. I like to put my dressing on before I add the cheese flakes. Enjoy!!!

Mmmmm!! Pineapple!!!

I stopped by the 99 cents store yesterday to pick up a couple crossword puzzle books. While I was there, I saw some fresh pineapples. They were on the small side (which is probably why they were at the 99 cents store) but they looked very fresh, so I bought one, because it was 99 cents. Later, I chopped it up to serve as a side dish at dinner. It was sweet and yummy! Maybe I'll go back and get a couple more!

For Your Viewing Pleasure....

That's pastrami on a challah roll with thousand island dressing and cole slaw.  Courtesy of Chompie's of course.  Order these, and you get three of these little beauties on your plate.  OMG Soooo yummy!!!!!

Making Good Food Better

I've always found these granola bars a little on the dry side.  Still, for $1.99 a box, they're good enough for the kids.  (Because the Kind and Clif bars are for me.)  But now that I've tried them with the one thing that makes everything better (cream cheese) spread on top of them, I might switch over.  Well, probably not, but I might eat them once in a while.   :-)

You Can't Eat Raw Cranberries, Silly!!!

Every week I buy tons of fruit.  I drink it in my smoothies, and we also eat fresh fruit every day.  I'll get whatever fruit's on sale that looks yummy.  A couple weeks ago while shopping, my then-6-year-old asked me why I never buy cranberries.  I told her that you can't eat them raw, they're not very good.  She insisted that she likes them.  I looked at the price: $2.99, and decided to buy the cranberries.  We tried them the next morning, and of course, they're very sour and not yummy at all.

But now I had a whole bag of fresh cranberries, and noone willing to eat them.  Not ready to let them go to waste, and not exactly craving cranberry sauce, I looked at this bag of cranberries, turning it over in my hand.  VOILA!!!  There it was, right on the back: a recipe for Cranberry Nut Bread.

I already had all the ingredients!!!  (Luckily for me, I have two orange trees in my back yard, with ripe oranges on them!)  I cooked it right then and there!

CRANBERRY NUT BREAD

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon grated orange peel
1 egg well-beaten
1 and 1/2 cups fresh cranberries, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup chopped nuts - I used walnuts and pecans

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan - I like to cut parchment or wax paper to line the bottom (and maybe even the sides) of the pan, and grease the parchment too.  That makes the bread come out of the pan easier.  Sometimes I'll even sprinkle a little flour into the greased pan.

Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in a medium mixing bowl.  Stir in orange juice, oil, orange peel, and egg.  Mix until well-blended.  Stir in cranberries and nuts.  Spread evenly in loaf pan.  Bake for 55 minutes until a toothpick (or bamboo skewer) inserted into the center comes out clean.  I had to bake it a few extra minutes till the skewer came out clean.  Cool on a rack and then take it out of the pan.  Slice and eat!!!

For extra yumminess, serve with Cream Cheese Topping.

CREAM CHEESE TOPPING

1 8-oz. package of Cream Cheese
2 tablespoons of Sugar

Mix the cream cheese and sugar together until it's smooth and spreadable.  A fork works well for this.  Spread it on top of anything to make that food better!

Heaven......

Smoked fish + a 6-pack of beer = Pure Heaven.  I found this one at Chompie's.  It's smoked whitefish.

That's CAULIFLOWER??????????

When we were little, my mom had one way of serving cauliflower: whole, drowned in cheese sauce and baked.  It was pretty delicious but it seemed like a lot of trouble for a veggie side dish.  By itself, cauliflower is pretty bland, so it really needed that cheese sauce.

I haven't bought cauliflower on a regular basis for a long time, so I don't know how I thought of this.  Mashed Cauliflower!!!  I thought to myself, let me just treat it like a potato: boil it, mash it with cream and butter, and put it on the plate next to my steak.  Anyways, it was delicious with my little New York strip steak and a small arugula salad.  And it didn't make a huge mess!  Here's the whole meal:   :-)

EASY STEAK

Make sure you get a good cut of steak, like a ribeye, New York strip, T-bone, skirt steak (churrasco), etc.  I usually end up with a bone-in New York strip because I can sometimes get those for $4.00 at Fry's, which seems like a pretty good deal compared to the other steaks.  And it's very tasty!

Steak
1 Tbsp. Butter
Salt and Pepper

Season your steak with salt and pepper.  Melt the butter in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat.  Make sure the pan is hot enough for the steak to sizzle when it hits the pan.  Place the steak in the melted butter, seasoned side down.  Now you can season the other side with salt and pepper.  Fry your steak until it starts getting brown (see picture), then turn it over and fry the other side.  It doesn't take very long, just a few minutes.  When it's done the way you like it (i.e., rare, medium, well done), take the steak out of the pan and let it sit for a couple minutes before you cut into it.  Pour the melted butter from the pan over the steak before you serve it.

You can also serve your steak sliced.  It's super yummy if you pour the butter over the slices!

MASHED CAULIFLOWER

1 Head of Cauliflower
2 Tbsp. Heavy Cream
1-2 Tbsp. Butter

I cut the cauliflower into pieces but I don't see why you can't leave it whole to boil it.  It fell apart when it got soft anyways.

Boil the cauliflower in lightly salted water until it's soft, then drain it well.  Add the heavy cream and butter, and cream it with an immersion blender (also called a "stick blender").  That's it!!

BABY ARUGULA SALAD

Baby Arugula Leaves, lightly chopped
Lemon Juice
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper

I like to chop my salad greens lightly so that I don't end up with giant salad leaves on my fork.  I'm kind of obsessed with arugula right now.  You should be able to get the baby arugula leaves in a bag or a box, cleaned and ready to eat.

Dress the arugula with lemon juice instead of vinegar, for a nice lemony taste.  Add your olive oil and salt and pepper.  Super easy!

USELESS TRIVIA:

My mom is Japanese, so she can't pronounce "arugula" very well, even though she's lived in America for decades and doesn't seem to have trouble with other English words.  She thinks she says it just fine.

A Case of Unexpected Yumminess (Go SUNS!!!)

Every day I drink a fresh fruit smoothie for breakfast.  I usually put an apple in it, 1/2 a pear,  whatever fruit is on sale that week, like strawberries, raspberries, or grapes, and orange juice.  Every once in a while I'll buy a branch of fresh ginger to add in. 

This morning, nearing the end of my fruit stash for the week, I had one apple and one pear left, along with some ginger, so that's what went into the smoothie.

What a surprise!  It was refreshing and delicious!  Here's the recipe:

SMOOTHIE WITH FRESH GINGER

One apple
One pear
A one-inch piece of ginger, peeled
Orange juice - enough to cover the fruit

Place everything into the blender and blend it up until it's smooth.  Pour it into a Phoenix Suns glass and drink it!