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!

Vegetarian Biscuits and Gravy???

I had a dentist appointment this morning, but it wasn't until 9:45, which meant I had some time to kill after dropping the kids at school.  So I decided to search for something yummy to eat, like a breakfast burrito.  As I drove past Whole Foods Market, I remembered that they have a salad bar there, so I stopped to see if maybe, just maybe they also have an eggs and bacon bar.  Sure enough, they also have a hot breakfast buffet for something like $7.99 a pound.

While browsing my choices, I noticed a pan of "Vegetarian Gravy" next to the homemade biscuits.  I decided to give it a try, even though I had never heard of vegetarian gravy before, and could not imagine what it was made out of.  It looked just like gravy.

It was pretty good!  It tasted like.... gravy!

So that's my story.  I sat down and had vegetarian biscuits and gravy and a lovely cup of coffee from the other part of the store.  That was a nice way to start my morning, and well, I survived the dentist chair.  :-)

Easy Cheesy Cheese Straws Please!

When we were little, my mom used to make these cheese crackers that me and my brothers and sisters could make the dough into whatever shapes we wanted.  After she baked them we could eat the crackers we made.  They were cheesy and yummy, but I have no idea where her recipe came from.  I thought she may have consulted Joy of Cooking, but no cheese crackers there!

I was inspired to try making them last week after the Supreme Court struck down the laws banning same-sex marriage.  Don't ask me why my mind went there because I have no clue!  I went ahead and got a recipe off the internet, and me and the girls sat down and made many heart shape cheese crackers.  They're yummy with broccoli cheese soup!  I suppose if you want lovely crackers like the ones pictured above, you should probably pipe them out of a pastry bag with a star tip.  Otherwise you might end up with something like these:   :-)

Ingredients

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
2 cups shredded sharp Cheddar, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Directions

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.

In a food processor, add the butter, cheese, flour, salt and cayenne and process until a smooth dough is formed. Scoop it into a cookie press, fitted with a flat ridged tip. Pipe the dough in 2-inch strips onto a lightly greased cookie sheet. (Alternatively, refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes and roll on a lightly floured surface into a 1/4-inch thick rectangle. Cut into smaller rectangles, about 2 by 3-inches, with a pizza wheel or sharp knife.) Bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove to racks to cool.

Recipe courtesy of Paula Deen

Read more at: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/zesty-cheese-straws-recipe.html?oc=linkback

Breaking News: Salad Haters Like Salad

Vegetables are good for us.  Grown folks know that and we want the kids to eat them.  But what a waste of time, money and food to serve up vegetables that they refuse to eat.  I recently decided that after school gets out, I would not give them anything sweet, including fruit or juice.  So what is left?  Vegetables, bread, cheese, and water!  And plain nuts!  Luckily they were receptive to things like celery with cream cheese, carrots, and cucumbers with salt (the small yummy ones).


Yesterday I decided to try giving them lettuce spears with ranch drizzled on them.  Guess what, they liked it!  They asked for more of them today!  I cut the romaine lettuce leaves in 2 down the middle (along the center vein) so they can eat them with their fingers.   That's all.  :-)