A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Knitting NOT for the NICU: Edible thong panties

 

Edible panties. I'd laugh more but it's so creative I'm impressed in a perve sort of way.

Hey, designed by a porn star and everything! According to this porn actors KNIT between takes.  What a great endorsement that is!  (Life's too short to not at least consider making the Twizzlers panties.)

 http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEsummer04/PATT302calories.html

Light Wheat Roasted Garlic Farmhouse Bread

 

The other night I was whipping up some bread for dinner and Gene walked through the kitchen.  He said "What kind is that?" 

I replied "Just basic bread...why?" 

He said, "Will you make it garlic?" 

"You mean like broil it with butter and garlic after it's done?"

"Nah," he said. "I mean, can you put the garlic in it now?"

There are days when the man is a genius.  I hadn't thought of it.  But I'm sure glad he did!

This bread is a light wheat that uses a combination of all purpose and whole wheat pastry flour, eggs, and a "goodly amount" (love how archaic that phrase sounds) of roasted garlic.  The recipe was inspired by the wonderful Faith from War Eagle Mill in War Eagle, Arkansas, who taught Aunti Miranda, Ann, and I her farmhouse bread recipe last year. In this version I did cut the recipe in halfish so that it now makes one 8-9" diameter boule or one large loaf (for example: bakes nicely in the Pampered Chef loaf crock).

Fresh Mussels and Shrimp over Pasta

 

 

At every Italian restaurant Auntie Miranda and I have been to together that has had mussels on the menu, we've always shared an order. They are always served as an appetizer in a large bowl with the mussel broth nicely seasoned, with crusty baguette slices on the side.  Every single time we always say to each other "Instead of (fill in the blank) why didn't we just order a plate of these for each of us and ask them to put a side of plain angel hair in that wonderful broth?"  I don't know why we never remembered either but I finally recreated the dish at home--so easy and so yummy!--when my grocery store had steamer-ready mussels on sale.  I thought "This is the night I make that dish!"  It was a good as I had hoped.

Better-than-Sonic Homemade Diet Cherry Limeade

 

Tall, juicy, refreshing, AND GOOD FOR YOU?  You bet!  Each tall water glass, about 12 oz, has only 45 calories and counts as a fruit serving... Yum!  I don't mind drinking water during the day but the evenings are when I miss soda the most and this is a great substitution. I love diet cherry limeades so it doesn't feel like a sub at all and I like knowing that I'm NOT drinking empty calories but something that tastes like dessert while giving me needed vitamins and antioxidants.

I'm Not the Only Cook in the House: Thanks Gene!

While I've been out of the loop a bit with a bad back, Gene's been taking up most of the slack around the house which I really appreciate! He's been held back by intimidation of me.  I'm not saying that to embarrass him but I really never considered it until several of our friends admitted they were intimidated to cook for me too.  I don't mean to be intimidating in the kitchen and don't consider myself to be any kind of snobby food gourmande but I get it now.  For all of us who have blogs and are fairly knowledgeable about cooking, it can be intimidating to people who don't have as much experience in the kitchen. For me, it's something that always came naturally because as the oldest and a daughter in a family of five kids I was my mother's sargeant-at-arms in the kitchen for as long as I can remember so I never had to cross that more adult psychological hurdle of "Can I learn to do something that seems hard?"  I never knew cooking could be hard so I never had to face that mind game.

Gene is over the hurdle and doing a wonderful job!

 

I love this pic of the roasted chicken butt but I wanted to make sure you all saw how he did this.

Click below to see more of Gene's meals and recipes...

Sweet Potato Colcannon: St. Pat's Meets the Deep South

 
 

As much as I LOVE colcannon, mashed potatoes with Kale, or any of its "subsidiaries" mashed potatoes with cabbage or spinach or green onions or all of the above, I find this to be a colorful and tasty change of colcannon pace:  SWEET potatos mixed with cooked spinach and green onions. Good AND good for you!

Happy St. Pat's Day: Traditional "Brown Bread" Irish Soda Bread

 

After doing a little research, I found that what I have bought in bakeries in years prior that was advertised as "Irish Soda Bread" is not even close to the daily quick bread baked in Ireland mid-1800's through the turn of the century.  Most of the Irish Soda Bread I've had commercially prepared was a yeasted bread with raisins.  According to the "Society for the Preservation of Irish Soda Bread" that is not even close and it makes sense.  Soda Bread was a daily meal bread, so it wouldn't be sweet or difficult to make. Like American southern biscuits (and the recipes closely resembles that) it would be something homemakers would make quickly and easily every few days to be eaten during regular meals.  So the basic REAL soda bread contains just four ingredients:  flour, salt, baking soda, and buttermilk.  Another little tidbit of interest is that not only does this bread not contain yeast, it didn't even come into existence until the commercial availability of "bicarbonate of soda" or baking soda in the mid-1800's.

Click on either of the links provided here to the Irish Soda Bread web site for more information. I found the author to be very informative and passionate about her subject, to the point of being on the entertainingly cranky side about what does NOT constitute traditional Irish soda bread.  It's a fun read.

Favorite Snack: Vegetable Chips

 
(Photo from Strasburg Country Store Online Catalog, link below)

Who says chips have to be made from only corn or  white potatoes?  One of my favorite guilty pleasure crunch snacks is vegetable chips from The Amish Country Store in Branson.  They have white potato chips in them, but there are also chips made from sweet potatoes, beats, egg plant, zuchini, yellow squash, carrots, and green beans.  I don't waste extra calories on dip. They're wonderful by themselves.  Yes, you can taste the individual flavors but don't push aside any of the vegetables you might not like in "real life", so to speak. I'm not a big beet fan normally but I love the beet chips. The flavor is there but it's muted in one way while heightened in another...you just have to try them to see what I'm talking about.

Not available yet on their online catalog, but when you call in a mail order to the Amish Country Store in Branson they'll add them in, no problem. Right Matt?  :-)

 

Also available at:

Strasburg Country Store in Strasburg, PA 

Or check out hub pages to try your hand at making your own:

http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-make-vegetable-chips

Quick Prep & Easy: Chicken Enchiladas

 

I love Mexican food but so often I have to distance myself from it because of the standard cheese and sour cream covered restaurant fare that pretty much reams a wrecking ball right through the middle of my diet.  I try to justify the cheese in my best Bill Cosby way "Milk product! Milk is nu-tri-tION!" but it just doesn't work that way. Although many people do think of cheese (on a diet) as "the enemy", the cheese is just an innocent bystander, sitting quietly with its nutrition, until it is wielded like a weapon by the hand mounding it on my plate.

Following the "moderation in all things" philosophy, I remade my favorite chicken enchiladas and tamed the two frenemies in this dish, along with cutting down the tortillas which taste yummy but up the carb count if not wrestled into submissions as well.  What did I do?  I cut the cheese (that bad joke was for Hal and Matt) and reduced the number or tortillas.  Instead of serving three tortillas per person with just a smidgeon of chicken filling in each, I used only 4 tortillas for the whole batch (serving 4) and stuffed each with 3/4 cup of filling.  You'd be surprised how many calories and fat those two simple chances make in the big picture. I'll be honest, even taking out that much it's still amazing to me how high the counts still are even though the recipe seems very simple, clean, and pared down.  I think this might be the kind of deception that so easily trips me, and a lot of us, up in judging recipes that SHOULD be diet-friendly that aren't necessarily "bad" for us but not encouraging of losing weight either so I still consider this a "treat" recipe.